He smiles and nods.
“Is that true?”
He opens his mouth and forms a word, then another, but no sound comes out. Then his voice kicks in, as though he were transmitting through radio static, and he continues without going back to the beginning of his sentence. She pieces it together.
He has said, with a convivial grin, “Why would I lie to you?”
“To make me feel better.”
That sounded harsh — as though she were angry at him. She has no reason to be angry. Especially at him, especially now.
He shrugs as if to say, “Fair enough,” then folds the Post and hands it to her. It’s crumbling at the seam but the page is intact. A photograph of an old man walking down the steps of a building in Washington. He’s flanked by a middle-aged woman and three men in suits.
RUDOLPH RELINQUISHES US CITIZENSHIP. She skims the article: Nazi…. NASA…. War crimes come to light….
“Dora,” says Jack.
Madeleine looks up. “The rocket factory.”
“Bang on,” says Jack, and she is glad to have pleased him. “Remember Apollo?”
Rudolph, Dora, Apollo. What kind of story is this?
She looks back at the article. Arthur Rudolph. Wernher von Braun’s right-hand man. He has left the U.S. rather than face charges of crimes against humanity dating back forty years, to his time as general manager of an underground factory called Mittelwerk.
“They don’t say anything about Dora here.”
“They never do,” says Jack, and she hears the old sarcastic note. “It was a code name.”
She looks back at the article. Yet another old Nazi. “Took them long enough.”
“Rudolph managed the space program, he and von Braun got us to the moon.”
Rudolph with your nose so bright…. Concentrate.
“The Americans pinned a medal on him, and now they’re finished with him they want to fling him in jail,” says Jack.
“Isn’t that where he belongs?”
Jack shrugs reasonably—“You’re probably right”—and sighs reaching for today’s paper: “Fella in Texas just got an artificial heart, how do you like that?”
She can feel her mind glazing, fights the pull of the news, the TV, the smell of baking. “Dora — that’s where Mr. Froelich was.”
“That’s right,” says her father. “He was a slave.”
Slave. The word is like a wound. She watches his profile. Finer, the skin drawn more closely than before over the bones, the involuntary sadness at the corner of the eye that comes with age — exacerbated in his left eye by his old scar. His mouth still set against all odds, lips moving slightly as he reads — he never used to do that.
She wonders how to bring up the subject. What she has come here to tell him.
“Tens of thousands of them died, and some were hanged right in front of that fella’s office.”
Madeleine looks back at her father. “What?” Then at the photo again. She reads the caption: Rudolph and daughter….
“He’s trying to come to Canada now.”
“We won’t let him in, though.”
“Probably not. Not at this point.”
“Is that what—? Did he get into the States because of Project Paperweight?”
“Paperclip.”
She returns the disintegrating Post to the newspaper pile as it dawns on her — what her father is telling her. “Is this the guy Mr. Froelich saw?” Maybe his hearing is going a little, because he doesn’t answer. “Dad?”
“No,” says Jack.
“What?”
“That’s not the man Henry Froelich saw.” He continues reading his Ottawa Citizen. “They just performed laser surgery on a man in Detroit”—he pronounces it “lazzer”—“zapped a blood clot in his brain, pretty soon we won’t need surgery at all. They’ll map the human genome and get in there and engineer everything at birth.”
“Did Mr. Froelich ever tell you who he saw?”
Jack nods, and she waits as he lifts the clear plastic mask to his face and takes a drink of oxygen before she asks, “Who?”
“An engineer.” He exhales through his mouth. “Henry didn’t know his name.” He looks at her for a moment, and she waits for him to speak but he returns to his paper.
“Did you tell the police?”
“Tell them what?”
“About the engineer?”
“Hank told them.”
“How come they didn’t do anything?”
“I don’t think they believed him.”
Because his story was tied to Ricky’s alibi. The one she helped to undermine. She tightens her hand around the medal again.
Jack raises the mask toward his face, pauses—“It was a different time. We were after Communists then, not Nazis. Old war”—then inhales.
It takes her a moment to realize that he has said, “Cold War.” He draws in the oxygen slowly, his lids half closing as though in prayer. He will be asleep soon. Then it will be too late in the evening. And if she waits till morning, the sunshine will persuade her that she’s fine and ought not to burden him with her story. She knows now how to begin. Dad? I have to tell you about something sad that happened to me a long time ago, but don’t worry, the story has a happy ending. See? I’m happy.
She watches his face fall — like a slackened sail, it abandons expression, and it’s clear how much effort has gone into the rigging of an ordinary smile. Are we all making that effort all the time, unaware of what it costs?
He glances at the mask but doesn’t reach for it. He turns his clear blue gaze on her. “What is it, sweetie?”
It’s suddenly painful to hear him. Not because his speech is faint or laboured but because it is not. She is hearing her father’s voice for the first time in — how long? It has been eroding, crumbling like a shoreline. She feels tears standing in her eyes. Is it because of what she has to say, or because, at the sound of his voice, her father has returned? As though a younger version of him has been permitted to come up from the shades and sit here in the living room of the condo. If she closes her eyes she will see the back of his sandy crewcut, elbow out the car window, hairs on his forearm combed by the breeze. Who wants ice cream?
“I’ve been feeling….” She wishes she had the excuse of an oxygen mask to hide the rise of sorrow.
She closes her eyes and hears him say, “Spit it out, old buddy.”
She opens her eyes and smiles. “I used to feel guilty.”
“Why, what for?” His blue eyes have sharpened. Even his left eye is awake.
“Because I made Ricky go to jail,” she says, and feels her forehead wrinkle at the childish syntax. “Because … I think my testimony caused him to be convicted.” Her face contorts, and she begins to breathe through her mouth.
Her father is looking at her hard.
“No it didn’t.”
It’s his man-to-man voice. If she didn’t know him so well, she might think he was angry with her. But she knows he’s worried.
“I’m okay, Dad. It’s just, you know, over the years, I’d read in the paper”—seeking refuge in a sarcastic tone—“‘convicted on the evidence of child witnesses’ and I’d think, ‘Gee, maybe he actually was guilty and I don’t have to feel so bad,’ and that’d make me feel worse.” She needs to say the words. About Mr. March. And then something will be all right. Say it. She opens her mouth but nothing forms except a pool of saliva under her tongue.
Jack says, “You weren’t the only witness.”
“I know.”
“Those two little gals — one of them was a friend of yours, what were their names? Martha?”
“Marjorie.”