Along the Infinite Sea (42 page)

So when he appeared through the rose-colored mist, dressed in full uniform, flanked by a lanky adjutant, even more giant than I recalled, I looked into his pale heavy face and my lips moved in prayer.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Johann stopped and took us in, the five of us, Stefan and me and the three children who clung to us.

“Papa?” said Florian, and I tightened my hand around his, and for some reason, perhaps Johann's splendid uniform, perhaps the faintness of the early light or the stern lines of Johann's face, my son stayed right where he was, next to my leg.

Johann's gaze flicked down to Florian, but I saw not the slightest softening of his stiff expression. He turned to the adjutant and muttered an order, and the adjutant turned to the guards and barked in a high and crackling voice, the German words so shrill that I had to pick through them one by one to understand.

By then, the men were already scrambling to obey. One of the guards took Florian by the arm and yanked him ahead, while another prodded his rifle into the small of my back. We stumbled forward. Johann turned smartly and led the way; the adjutant stayed behind with the truck and the other guards. Stefan walked a pace or two ahead of me, limping a little, holding Else's hand. Her ribbon had come loose, and her dark hair spilled about her shoulders. She clung to Stefan's hand with both of hers.

“Johann, please,” I called. “The children. For God's sake. Have mercy.”

But Johann's massive legs marched on, his field-gray shoulders remained square and polished in the soft dawn. To the right, I spied the familiar lines of the black Mercedes, parked in the mist at the edge of
the clearing. The sight made my stomach contract. Henrik's heavy body slipped downward on my hip. “Please, slow down,” I said, and Johann stopped and, without even turning, pointed to the car and ordered the guard at my back to put the woman and the children inside.

“No!” I shouted, but I couldn't fight the guard, not when Florian hung from one arm and Henrik lay heavily on my hip. And then I thought, Yes, why not, put the children in the car where they will be safe. Where they won't see what happens. The guard jerked the door open and pushed the small of my back. Florian crawled onto the seat and found the steering wheel. I set Henrik down with my shaking hands and turned for Else.

But Else wouldn't leave Stefan. She wrapped her arms around his leg and clung, like a sobbing burr, impossible to extract. The guard, exasperated, grabbed her small shoulder, and Stefan, without warning, swung his fist into the guard's face. The man stumbled back with a cry. The blood flooded downward from a cut under his left eye. Stefan pressed forward, hitting him again, hitting his jaw and nose, knocking the rifle from his hand, and the attack was so swift and vicious that the other guard was only just turning, only just setting his rifle to his shoulder by the time the other guard fell to the grass and Stefan swooped the dropped rifle into his hands.

The gun, at last, that he needed.

As soon as Stefan's fist had connected with the guard's jaw, I ran to Else, who stood stunned a few feet away, her red mouth open in a frozen scream. I lifted her in my arms and tossed her into the car, and when I whipped around, slamming the door behind me, the second guard fired his rifle at Stefan.

“No!” I screamed, but it didn't matter, the bullet whistled past and hit the car instead, punching a perfect hole in the rear bumper.

In the same instant, Stefan fired back twice,
bang bang
, and the guard's head snapped back, and then his entire body staggered and flew, like a man kicked by a horse, and the pieces of his skull and his brain splattered the damp grass and the gray wool of Johann's left arm
in tiny pink chunks, while a crimson flower opened over his chest. His feet twitched and then went still, and I thought, as I compressed my cheeks between my two shocked hands: Now he will kill Johann. My God, Stefan is going to kill Johann.

5.

The day after our wedding, the morning after our wedding night, Johann and I had driven down to Italy along a southern route, because the Alpine passes were already covered in snow and Johann did not want to take such a risk with his beautiful car and his new wife. We reached Nice by evening and Johann asked if I would like to stay overnight or to drive straight through, and I glanced at the glassy dark Mediterranean and the red sun dropping below it, and I said I would like to drive straight through, if he wasn't too tired. So we did.

Johann telephoned ahead to the hotel in Florence, so they were expecting us when we arrived just before dawn. He carried me up to the room, which was old and decorated with beautiful stuccos, and the sleepy bellboys followed with our luggage. We were to stay in Florence for two weeks, and I remembered thinking, as I lay on the bed and listened to Johann's exhausted snoring, it would be lovely to stay forever.

I had slept for an hour or two before the bells of the cathedrals woke me. There was some light creeping between the slats of the shutters. I turned my head and for an instant the sight of Johann's sleeping face shocked me. Then I remembered: we were married.

I rose and went to the suitcases, which had been left unpacked because we were so tired. I opened up mine first. I hung my dresses in the wardrobe and put my underthings in the drawer; there were not many, and I thought perhaps we would do a little shopping. Italian clothes were supposed to be beautiful. When I had emptied my own bags, I turned to Johann's single brown leather-covered trunk, plain and
ancient, and I hesitated. But we're married now, I remembered. He's my husband, and a wife is supposed to unpack her husband's things, to make his life more comfortable for him.

So I opened the trunk and discovered a miracle of precise and efficient packing, no more than I supposed I should have expected. I put his shirts and underclothes in the drawer, and I hung his suits and his single dress uniform, which he had worn for our wedding. At the bottom of the trunk I found his pistols.

There were two of them, exactly alike, made of cold black metal and utterly forbidding. I stared at them for a moment, not quite sure what to do, and then Johann's voice came to me from the bed.

“Annabelle? What are you doing?”

“Unpacking. What would you like me to do with your pistols?” I said it casually, as if cold black service pistols made an everyday appearance in my life.

“Bring them here.”

I picked up the pistols, one in each hand, and brought them to Johann, who was sitting up in the bed, a little blurry still, his bare chest dusky in the shuttered light. He took the pistols from me and explained that these were Lugers, the Pistol 08 manufactured by the Mauser works, a very fine example of German engineering and craftsmanship. He showed me the mechanisms and let me hold one and lift the safety on and off, so there would not be any tragic mistakes. A pistol like this was not a toy: it was a tool, a weapon of extreme lethality. Did I understand? Because the thought of some accident occurring to his Annabelle, of any harm at all coming to his beloved wife, was too much to bear.

I said I understood, and he placed them in the drawer of the bedside table, next to his head.

I sat on the edge of the bed, a few inches away, and nudged him playfully. “What kind of man brings pistols along on his honeymoon?”

“A man who is ready to protect his wife at all times,” he said, and his face and voice were so serious that I lost my smile.

“But surely we're safe here,” I said, gesturing to the dark and elegant room around us.

He shrugged and said you were never completely safe in this world, that the threat always came when you least expected it, and his words reminded me how his first beloved wife had died without warning. How a wicked invader had stolen into their bedroom and killed her, and Johann had been helpless to stop it.

I leaned down and kissed him deeply and honestly, almost passionately, and he lifted me into his arms and told me that he would take me out to the shooting range when we arrived home in Germany. He would show me how to use a pistol properly, so I could protect myself if such a thing ever became necessary, God forbid.

As it turned out, the snow had already fallen by the time we reached Schloss Kleist, covering the shooting range in a thick blanket of virgin white, and the secret of firing a lethal black Luger pistol remained unknown to me.

But I had been assured, over and over, by those who knew my husband well, that I had nothing to worry about, because Johann was an expert.

6.

By the time Stefan had fired his rifle, by the time the guard's body had hit the ground, already dead, Johann had drawn his pistol from the belt at his waist and stood calmly, oblivious to the gore around him, pointing the barrel at Stefan's chest.

Perhaps fifteen yards of grass separated them, no more. At such a short distance, even the thick yarns of mist were no impediment. The burnt scent of saltpeter filled my nose and stayed there. I couldn't breathe it in, could not even draw the air into my lungs to scream or plead or reason. My feet stuck to the ground, planted side by side in front of the closed door of the Mercedes, where the children sat waiting.
I wanted to run out, to stop them, to throw myself on Johann's pistol. But if I moved, I would distract Stefan, and Johann would fire.

Or the other way around.

I heard Wilhelmine's voice. Wilhelmine, who now lay dead in the hallway of her house in Stuttgart.

You do not know that the two of them, they are like Javert and Valjean? They are immortal enemies.

Neither man spoke. Each mouth sent regular white plumes into the November air, but no words. There was already so much between them, a long and tangled history of which I knew almost nothing, incidents and encounters that had occurred before I met either man. Dark-haired Stefan holding his stolen rifle, fair Johann with his pistol. Like a duel, like a pair of Regency rakes, except that it was real. Except that one of them would actually kill the other.

Which one?

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.

So intent was I on the two men standing across from each other, still as volcanoes, pointing their weapons, that at first I didn't notice the other guard when he stirred from the grass behind Stefan.

I didn't see him place his hand on the ground and hoist himself up, shaky and enormous and silent. Only when he leapt toward Stefan's back did the sight of him register in my brain, and I knew, even as my mouth opened, even as I screamed
Watch out!
that I was too late, that I had failed, that Stefan was the man who would die this November morning.

Crack.

A puff of smoke drifted from the tip of Johann's pistol, and the guard dropped from Stefan's back, leaving half of his forehead behind.

Stefan staggered sideways under the impact, and set his knee on the ground. My feet moved at last. I ran across the grass and took Stefan's weight on my chest; I wrapped my arms around Stefan's back and gasped,
Are you hurt? Are you hurt?

No, he said.

He looked over my shoulder. I turned, too.

Johann, face impassive, put his pistol back in his holster. He walked toward the second guard, examined him for a second, and turned to the two of us, Stefan and Annabelle, sitting stunned in the bloody grass.

“Get in the car. We must leave at once, before the border closes.”

“When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge

than to let him keep her.”

S
ACHA
G
UITRY

GEORGIA
•
1966

1.

Bed rest, the doctor says, and Pepper's not pleased.

“But there's nothing wrong with me,” she says. “I'm fine, the baby's fine.”

“By the grace of God. You're lucky that lovely Mrs. Dommerich found you and brought you in, after a fall like that.” He peers at her over the clipboard. He has nice blue eyes, she thinks. Maybe a little too blue. Could you trust a man with eyes that blue? He says, like it's her fault: “I still don't quite understand how it happened.”

Pepper considers telling him the truth. There's no reason she shouldn't, really, except that he wouldn't believe a sitting United States senator would behave so ignobly at the scene of a traffic accident. Certainly not in a humble seaside town like Saint Mary's, Georgia. She holds up her hands helplessly. “My crutches slipped.”

“Hmm.” He pats her foot. “We've reset the bone, and this time there will be no more walking about until it's healed. Especially not on slippery November sidewalks. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Pepper says meekly. “Whatever you say, sir.”

He leans forward over the bed. “It's not going to work.”

“What's not going to work?”

“That pretty face of yours, darlin'.” He straightens, winks, makes a note on the chart, and walks to the door.

“Doctors these days,” says Pepper.

“I heard that. And you're lucky I don't tell your father.”

“Tell me what?” says Dadums, walking through the open door with two steaming cups of coffee.

2.

As Thanksgiving dinners go, Pepper's had worse. You wouldn't believe how many Schuylers could fit in a single Georgia hospital room, holding plates of rubber turkey and canned gravy, just like Mums didn't used to make, ever. Pepper's little nephew Lionel listens to her stomach with a stethoscope and announces it's twins. Maybe triplets.

“Good,” Pepper says. “You can adopt one of them.”

Daddy avoids looking at her stomach at all, but at least he's there, blaming everything on her mother, dodging volleys of returning blame. The water in his glass is probably vodka. Her sister Vivian's husband reads Pepper's chart and assures her that the—what had she called him?—goddamned hayseed country doctor out here really does know what he's doing, no matter how many times he drops his
G
's and calls her darlin'.

“He's rather handsome, too,” says Mums.

“Give it a rest, Mums. You've already got a dishy young doctor for a son-in-law. You don't need another.”

“Just an observation, that's all. If you'd taken more of my advice, you wouldn't be in this little fix, now, would you?”

“If I'd taken more of your advice, I'd be keeping the drunks company in the church basement.”

In short, another festive holiday with the Schuylers.

3.

Daddy remains behind, after an exchange of eloquent glances with her mother that ends in a resigned sigh. He drops down in the chair next to the bed and asks her what the hell happened.

“It's a long and sordid story.”

He doesn't take her hand and say,
Try me.
He really, truly doesn't want to know the details. He strokes his chin a few times, and then he lights a cigarette and blows the smoke out to the side. His face is gray and heavy. “Well,” he says at last, “at least you're all right now.”

“I'd say that's a matter of opinion.”

He stares at her ankle. “Next time, come to us a little earlier, all right?”

“Now, why didn't I think of that?” She smacks her forehead.

Her father says to the ankle: “I just—I didn't know what to do with you. Whether to let you make your own mistakes or step in. You were always full of trouble. I was damned if I did, damned if I didn't. Maybe that's no excuse, but it was true.” He turns back to her face, the seat of her trouble. “And I didn't want to hurt your spirit. I loved your spirit.”

She can't say a word.

“You'll understand when you have one of your own.”

She nods.

“We'll take care of you. Everything's going to be all right.”

“But what if it's not?” she says. “What if you open up the newspaper tomorrow and someone's leaked out some story about Uncle Freddie, about how he bribed that senator to get his oil contracts?”

There is a small silence, during which Daddy's eyes grow small and hard, like a pair of agates.

He says quietly: “Who? Who's leaked out some story?”

She shrugs. “Someone might.”

He stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray next to her bed and finishes the water in his glass. He rises from his chair, all paunchy and
once-handsome, smelling familiarly of hair oil and cigarettes and just a hint of booze, and he pats the top of her head, as if she were eight years old again.

“I'd just like to see the honorable gentleman try it.”

4.

Pepper's not prepared for the feeling of relief that drenches her when Florian Dommerich's dark head appears through the crack in the door.

“Am I allowed inside?” he asks.

She sets aside her book, taking time with the tasseled bookmark and laying the volume just so on the blanket next to her thigh. “I don't suppose I'm in any condition to stop you.”

He smiles, and the rest of him unfolds from behind the door, just as capably handsome as she remembers. His hands are full of coffee. Pepper's chest seems to have run out of room for her vital organs, pushing them upward into her throat.

“You're looking well,” he says. “May I sit down?”

She gestures to the chair.

“Mama'll be along soon. She's talking with your doctor. I understand it's bed rest for you, young lady.” He gives her a stern look and hands her a foam cup of coffee. The other one remains in his palm, looking small.

“That's what happens when your mother blocks the street with her three-hundred-thousand-dollar car and causes an accident.” Pepper blows across the surface of the coffee. “How's the car, by the way? I almost wept when I saw the damage.”

“Oh, it'll be fine. We found a good mechanic in Washington. He about lost his jaw when he saw it.” Florian chuckles, and Pepper's a goner. That chuckle.

“Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?”

“Sort of. Two pregnant sisters-in-law snapping at each other, one nephew with pneumonia, one brother quit his job to become a musician and move to California. The usual. You?”

“Vodka in the aspic, arsenic in the cranberry. The usual.”

He grins. “I told you so.”

“Told me what?”

“Your family would take care of you, if you gave them a chance.”

“Trust me, Dommerich. I liked it better when I was on my own.”

“Liar, liar.” He drinks his coffee and smiles at her, a little goofy. There's something relaxed about his face, something pleasant, and she wonders if it's relief, and whether her face looks the same way.

“How's Susan?” she asks.

He runs a hand through his hair. “Susan's back with her folks in Florida. Had a nice Thanksgiving, she says.”

“You talked to her?”

“Called her up this morning. We talked for a bit.” He swishes the coffee in long waves along the side of his cup, staring down intently, like he's calculating sine, cosine, and tangent. “She thinks Hobbes is a brand of shoe.”

“No, she doesn't.”

He looks up. “Yep.”

Pepper puts on a grave face. “She was probably just kidding you.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I'm glad you're all right. I was a little panicked when I got the message at the hotel.”

“The Mercedes got the worst of it.”

He was shaking his head. “I'd never have forgiven my mother if something happened.”

“It wasn't her fault. It was that idiot driving the car. There was plenty of time to stop if he hadn't been trying to light a cigarette. She just wanted to stop him, that's all.”

“Well, at least she did that.”

“Yes. You should have seen her.” Pepper looks at the ceiling and
smiles. “She stripped him bare. Flayed him like he was eight years old. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. I was so mad I hopped out of the car and forgot all about the crutches.”

He gestures to her foot in its outsized cast, lying in state on the pillow. “You won't forget now.”

“No.”

“And now he's out of your life for good. His brother, I mean. Both of them.”

Pepper looks back down at the gentle mountain of her pregnancy, this foreign salient of her once-lithe body. For maybe the thousandth time, she thinks, My God, I'm going to be a mother, and for the thousandth time it doesn't quite sink in. Maybe it won't sink in until the baby's born, until it's alive and kicking in her arms, until it's nursing at her breast, further ruining her perfect curves. Maybe not even then. Maybe the sonofabitch was right, when he spoke to her there in the parlor of the Riverview Hotel; maybe Pepper isn't mother material.

“That depends,” she says. “I mean, it's his baby, too. I can't just say never, can I? I'm kind of stuck with him.”

“That's generous of you.”

“It's not for his sake, or his family's sake. It's for the baby's sake. The baby deserves a father, if his father decides he wants to be a father.”

“Or she.”

Pepper looks up.

Florian's smiling. “Might be a girl.”

“Might be. God help her.”

Florian goes back to swishing his coffee. “So I was thinking . . .”

“You could use a haircut? A decent necktie?”

“Probably both of those things. But mostly I was thinking we might have coffee sometime.”

“Unless I'm hallucinating, that's what we're doing right now.”

“So maybe we could have coffee more often. A regular thing.”

“Don't you have to go back to work on Monday morning?”

“I could visit on weekends.”

“That's a hell of a drive.”

He leans in close, so she can smell the flavor of his shaving soap. “I could fly.”

Maybe she banged her ribs in the accident. Maybe it's pneumonia. A heart attack. Whatever it is, there's definitely something wrong with Pepper's chest. She'll have to ask that nice doctor for an X ray, the next time he comes around.

“It's a dumb idea,” she says. “The dumbest idea I've ever heard. I'm not much fun at the moment.”

“That's okay. I happen to like you when you're not much fun.”

Jesus. Now her eyes.

“I guess I'm not in any condition to stop you,” she says, and then, without thinking, “even if I wanted to,” and thank God the door opens right then, before she can go on to say something even more stupid, and Annabelle Dommerich marches into the room, carrying a big bunch of fragrant pink roses.

“They're really from Florian,” she says, planting a kiss on Pepper's forehead, “but he was too shy to give them to you himself.”

“Mama, for chrissakes,” says Florian.

5.

“Thank God you're all right,” says Annabelle. “I'd never have forgiven myself.”

Pepper lets out an aggrieved sigh. “You were trying to help.”

“Well, I did, didn't I? All's well that ends well.”

“Speak for yourself.” Pepper gestures to the whole lot: belly, bed, cast. “And now I've got my family crowding half drunk around my bedside every second, thanks to your meddling.”

“Yes, I was right about that, too,” Annabelle says smugly. “I just had to pin you down, nice and helpless, so you could see for yourself. And the car will be fixed by the end of the week.
And
I got rid of Susan.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Oh, I may have hinted that Florian was conceived out of wedlock, or something like that.” She leans forward, woman to woman. “He likes you, you know.”

“I know.”

“So don't you go around breaking my son's heart. He's really very tender inside, though he hates to show it.”

“Trust me, I wouldn't dare. I saw what you did to that sonofabitch outside.”

“Good, then. You'll be very happy. I can see you're already in love with him. I'll have that Cartier watch on my wrist by Christmas.” She winks. “Our bet, remember?”

Pepper rolls her eyes and reaches for the cherry Jell-O.

“By the way,” Annabelle continues, examining her fingernails, “I'm taking your advice.”

“I beg your pardon? When did I ever give
you
advice?”

“About my friend on Cumberland Island. I realized you were right, that I was a coward. And I suppose my pride was hurt as well. Every woman likes to dream that a man will pine for her eternally, when the reality is that the poor dears just need some company. They can't manage on their own forever.” She smiles brightly. “So I'm off on the afternoon ferry. Finish off that unfinished business and brush my hands clean.”

Pepper scrapes her spoon around the sides of the Jell-O cup, wondering if it would be bad form to lick it clean. “I'm glad to hear it. Tell me how everything goes. I hope you kick the bitch out.”

Annabelle laughs. “I'll do no such thing. I'm just going to say hello, give him something back, and wish him well.”

Pepper looks up. “But don't you want to wait until the car is all fixed?”

“The car?”

“I mean, what are you going to say?
I've bought back the Mercedes, please don't mind that crumpled mess in the rear wheel well.
”

Annabelle's face clears. “Oh, my dear. I'm not bringing him the car. Why would I?”

“But I thought it was his. His car.”

“No, no. The car belonged to my dear husband, God rest his soul. And it's a beautiful car, and my husband loved it very much and was sorry to see it go, and I'm sure he's very happy, wherever he is, to know that I've found it again. No, for this man, I have something far more valuable.” She looks at her watch, starts, and picks up her gloves and pocketbook, which are made of rich blue leather in contrast to her neat black trousers and cashmere turtleneck sweater. She picks up her coat, made of beautiful aubergine wool, and slings it over her shoulder. “I'm going to be late.”