Exiles (19 page)

Jorge shrugged. “Just the photographs,” he said.

“Just the reviews,” Melissa said.

“Just the obituaries,” Spiegel said. “Just kidding,” he added.

“Then you haven’t seen the story,” Tracy said. “There’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

“Arrest?” Jorge said. “For last night? Surely it was not his fault, about the fight. And as for the bill, I will speak to Mario—”

“They should arrest that bitch,” Melissa said.

Tracy ignored her. “Someone’s been seen trying to cross the border illegally,” she said to Spiegel, “and the police have put out the word that it’s you. Here, look at this.” Tracy pulled from her purse a rolled-up copy of the morning paper from Stockholm.

Spiegel scanned the story. The only words he recognized were those of his own name. His hands began to shake. “Holy shit,” he said. “How did you find this?”

“Monika. She called me yesterday.”

“The girl who was on the TV with me?”

“Then it was
you
that we saw on that show!” Jorge said.

“Those goons in the club last night were right,” Melissa said. “You’re a TV star.”

“You better explain everything to them,” Spiegel said.

“Yes,” Tracy said. “You have to know.” She explained that she had come out to Flogsta that night to cut Spiegel’s hair so that he could pass for Aaronson. She told them about the television show, and how it had ended in chaos.

“And after that,” Spiegel said, “I thought I was done. I could come back to Flogsta and enroll in school again and maybe earn some credits and go home at the end of the semester, having done my bit, played my part, carried my share of the weight.”

“Man, you have carried more than your share,” Jorge said.

“So what happened at the border?” Melissa asked. “Can anyone read that newspaper?”

It was just a short item near the bottom of an inside page. In the margin, Monika had scribbled a rough translation:

The Swedish border police have issued an arrest warrant for a man, believed to be an American student, who was seen attempting to enter the country via the Hälsingborg ferry while carrying a handgun.

The man was identified as Leonard Spiegel, who has been active with the antiwar student movement at his university in the United States.

Spiegel had been arrested in America and charged with damaging government property, a military draft office, but the charges against him were dropped.

It is unknown why he was carrying a handgun or where he had obtained the gun.

It is believed that Spiegel was enrolled as an exchange student at Uppsala University. It is unknown how long he had been abroad or where he had traveled. The border police have stated that they intend to turn Spiegel over to American authorities, who will hold him for questioning and for possible deportation or trial.

“Aaronson,” Spiegel said. “He’s screwed.”

“Yes. Somebody must have been watching him. The police caught up with him, they wanted him for questioning, but he eluded them once again. They think he’s you.”

“Just what you wanted.”

“Hey, easy,” Tracy said. “At least he’s not under arrest.”

“But why did Monika call you?” Spiegel asked. “How did she know anything about me?”

“She didn’t, at first,” Tracy said. “We got together for coffee yesterday, and we had a long meeting. She asked me for help. Her student group monitors all the papers. The Stockholm headquarters had just sent her this news clipping. They asked her to find out about ‘Leonard Spiegel,’ and if he was really an American student in Uppsala.”

“I see,” Spiegel said, although he was not sure that he did. “So how much did you tell her?”

“I told her everything,” Tracy said. “How you have always been mistaken for Aaronson, how you took on his role, his life, that you even took his place on the TV broadcast.”

“Why did you tell her?” Spiegel asked. “The fewer people who know that Aaronson’s gone, the safer he is. Why not let her just go on thinking I’m Aaronson until we figure out exactly what happened at the border?”

“She can help us figure that out,” Tracy said. “We need help.”

“I do, too,” Melissa said. “I’m confused.” She turned to Spiegel. “So this guy Aaronson was the one they saw at the border? And the police think he’s you?”

“Right,” Tracy said. “He’d been using Lenny’s passport. So now we have to lie low and give Aaronson a chance to get back across the border.”

“He can’t cross into Sweden with my papers, now that I’m a wanted man.”

“He’ll find another way,” Tracy said.

“I ought to try to get out the word, at least to the people who care about me, that I’m here, that I’m safe.”

“I don’t think so,” Tracy said. “We have to wait them out. Either they’ll drop the charges against you or they’ll take some steps to find out more about you. But until we know that Aaronson is safe, you have to come home with me. You have to go back to being Aaronson, to give him some cover.

Can you do it?”

“Of course,” Spiegel said. “But so many people know who I am. They’ve seen me, since the TV show. It will be hard to convince them, to make them believe that I’m not here, that I haven’t been here . . . ”

“We’ll have to work up a story that you left the country for Denmark a few days ago,” Tracy said. “When was the last time you went to language class?”

“Not for nearly a week. But other people have seen me.”

“Like who?”

“We won’t say a word,” Jorge said.

“I know you won’t, but there’s Luis, and Lisbet.”

“I will talk to them,” Jorge said.

“And those drunks in the club last night.”

“Yes. At least
they
thought you were Aaronson,” Melissa said.

“But I told them I wasn’t. I told them I’d never been on TV.”

“Fuck, we can’t waste any more time,” Tracy said. “We have to get you out of here. Let’s just pack up your stuff so it looks like you went away for a weekend or something and get you back to my place.”

“Come on, Jorge,” Spiegel said. “You can help me pack. And when I’m gone, if you want it, you can have my room.”

“Thank you,” said Jorge. “I will treat it like one of my own.”

“Yes,” Spiegel said. “I’m afraid you will.”

Not until that evening, when Spiegel had unpacked his duffel once again and settled back into the by now familiar environment of Tracy’s apartment, did Tracy tell him all that she knew about Aaronson.

They were sitting at her kitchen table, drinking tea. For two days, the phone had been ringing. People wanted to talk to Aaronson about his fight with Edström. The
Herald Tribune
was asking for an interview. The Social Democrats offered support and asked if Aaronson could speak at one of their May Day rallies. The American Deserters Committee in Stockholm issued a call for a nationwide mobilization to combat racism and violence, and they were pressing Aaronson to release a statement and provide testimony. Tracy had been fending off the requests, telling everyone that Aaronson had to “get his head back together.” She had also been trying to work things out with ARMS. She’d called an emergency session of the steering committee and told Zeke, Reston, and the Worm what little she knew about Aaronson. She told them of her plan to have Spiegel continue living with her until Aaronson’s safe return to Uppsala. The guys were willing to go along with her scheme and to shield Spiegel, even from the membership of ARMS, at least for a short time, but not forever. Their loyalty to Aaronson, or their dependence on his skill at organization and finance, was waning during his long and troublesome absence. “He’s supposed to be our leader, and he ain’t leading us nowhere,” Zeke said.

But Tracy argued that if Aaronson took a hit it could be fatal to the whole ARMS movement, that they could not abandon him in his time of crisis, and her arguments prevailed. “We’ll give him a week to show his face or to get us some word of his plans,” Reston said.

Give him to May Day, Tracy pleaded. Till then but no longer, they said.

“If he ain’t back by then,” Zeke said, “I’m taking over the leadership, and Reston will handle the finances.”

Tracy agreed. What did it matter to her? If Aaronson was still gone by May Day, there would no longer be any reason for her to stay in Uppsala. Trying to hold together the ARMS movement, trying to keep Zeke and Reston in line, she felt like a thin tether between two wild dogs tied to a rotting post. At some point, the tether would snap.

She explained the deal to Spiegel: He would have to keep a low, almost a flat-line, profile. She would tell the ARMS rank and file that Aaronson was exhausted after his trip to Germany, that he was leaving the daily operations up to the steering committee. Spiegel would have to stay in the apartment, and if he did leave he would have to avoid going to places where people might recognize him as Spiegel.

“I guess I am under arrest,” Spiegel said.

“Does it feel that way?” Tracy asked.

“No. Prison would be different. There are parts of this I like.”

“The food? The view?”

“The company.”

“Yes, I think we can make the most of this.”

Spiegel wondered then, for a moment, exactly what she meant, if her insistence that he move back to her apartment could in any way be taken as an overture. He liked being near her. He regretted not pushing his advantage right after the TV show. He should have gone back home with her that night. His long night of drinking in the Penny Lane, he realized, was a kind of penance for his foolishness. But fate had done for him what he could not do for himself, restoring him to Tracy’s proximity. This time, he would not give way to a ghost.

Tracy broke the silence that had set in between them. “I have a confession to make,” she said.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Not that sort of confession.” Tracy smiled. “I just want to clear the air a little bit here. I want to straighten some things out because we may be together for a while.”

“Sure,” Spiegel said. “Go ahead.” He could feel his heart race. He was drawn to Tracy, and his longing for her was something light and delicate that could be lifted into the air by the slightest wisp of feeling. But it could easily, if it were caught in adverse currents, crash to the ground and be crushed beneath the weight of words.

“It’s about that guy who gave you that pamphlet, the guy you fought with on the train.”

Spiegel let out a little hiss of air. “I thought you were going to say something about you, about us.”

“It is about us. It affects both of us, and Aaronson as well. You have to know.”

Spiegel looked out the window to shield from Tracy’s view his reaction, his disappointment.

“We know that guy. Or maybe not him exactly, but we know his group, his church. Aaronson had some contact with them when he first arrived in Europe.”

“He converted?” Spiegel turned back to Tracy, eager to catch all the nuances of what she was about to say.

“Hardly that. They’re insane right-wing fanatics, vowing poverty and eternal devotion to some divine priest who’s supposed to live on an unmoored boat that drifts around the Baltic. That’s not really Aaronson’s style of worship. But he was forced into some business dealings with the church, in order to arrange his safe passage through Europe. I don’t know all the details. But I know there was some unfinished business, too. He was going to handle another shipment to the church. I don’t know what and I don’t know when.”

“So you’re saying it wasn’t just chance that one of the believers sat with me on the train and tried to beat me into submission.”

Tracy nodded.

“They thought I was Aaronson.”

“Yes,” she said. “They were trying to convey a message to him.”

“But how did they know he would be on that train?”

“That’s one thing I don’t understand,” Tracy said. “Someone must have tipped them off, told them to keep a watch on the Gare du Nord. It had to be someone who knew when you were traveling and who wanted either to screw Aaronson, or to screw you.”

Who could that have been, Spiegel wondered. Iris? Brewer? Tracy? Aaronson himself? Nobody else knew the details of his route or his destination.

“They’ve been watching you closely ever since you were arrested in the States,” Tracy said, “and since you took up with Iris and Brewer and their crowd on campus.”

“Who’s
they
?” Spiegel asked.

“The CIA, the FBI, the military police, everybody. They knew you were coming here. They’re still watching you. It’s just that . . . they’re not sure who you are.”

Spiegel was silent for a moment.

“If they do get Aaronson at the border—or anywhere in Europe—his best hope is to keep your identity and face whatever charges they’re going to lay on him as you,” Tracy said. “You have a clean record. The worst they’d do to you is pull your passport and ship you home. Aaronson could handle that. He could figure out a way to get himself back here to Sweden, so long as you let him hang onto your name. That’s another reason why you have to get used to being Aaronson.”

“I have gotten used to it. I am used to it,” Spiegel said, and he reached across the table to take Tracy’s hand, to draw her toward him slowly, to test her resistance. The room was silent, and the air between them was still. Spiegel parted his lips, just slightly, not to speak but to signify, through a gesture, his vulnerability and his readiness to unfold, like a tender plant exposed to the first sunlight of spring, beneath her radiance and her warmth. Tracy gripped his hand, and her fingers were pliant, alive, like small wild creatures. He could feel her breath on his face, and as her soft lips touched his he set his hand on the hollow of her back. She was standing above him, and the tendrils of her hair brushed against his face, like rain. He reached up to hold her, to touch her shoulders, to bring her down to him. But his hands could not find her, and suddenly she was not there. She’d broken the embrace, the contact, and stepped away from him. Her hip bumped the table, and the dishes rattled.

“I’m sorry,” Tracy said. “I can’t. Not now.”

“It’s okay,” Spiegel said, although he didn’t mean that. He was shaken, and a bit angry, as if he had been led on, perhaps by Tracy, perhaps through a willful misinterpretation of her feelings, fed by his own stunted desires. “When he comes back, I would let you go.”