Short Stories: Five Decades (49 page)

“Do you know what his name is?” Greta asked rhetorically. “Rosenthal! A Jew. Freda!”

Garbrecht sighed, his breath making a hollow, sorrowful sound in the cold midnight room. He looked up at Greta, who was standing over him, her face set in quivering, tense lines. She was usually such a placid, rather stupid, and easygoing girl that moments like this came as a shocking surprise.

“You will have to find someone else,” Garbrecht said wearily, “if you want to have Freda’s head shaved. I am not in the running.”

“Of course,” Greta said icily. “I knew you wouldn’t be.”

“Frankly,” Garbrecht said, trying to be reasonable with her, “I am a little tired of the whole question of the Jews. I think we ought to drop it, once and for all. It was all right for a while, but I think we’ve probably just about used it all up by now.”

“Ah,” Greta said, “keep quiet. I should have known better than to expect anything from a cripple.”

They both were silent then. Greta continued undressing with contemptuous asexual familiarity, and Garbrecht slowly took his clothes off and got into bed, while Greta, in a black rayon nightgown that her American Lieutenant had got for her, put her hair up in curlers before the small, wavy mirror. Garbrecht looked at her reflection in the mirror and remembered the nervous, multiple reflections in the cracked mirror in Seedorf’s office.

He closed his stinging eyes, feeling the lids trembling jumpily. He touched the folded, raw scar on his right shoulder. As long as he lived, he probably would never get over being shocked at the strange, brutal scar on his own body. And he would never get over being shocked when anybody called him a cripple. He would have to be more diplomatic with Greta. She was the only girl he was familiar with, and occasionally there was true warmth and blessed hours of forgetfulness in her bed. It would be ridiculous to lose that over a silly political discussion in which he had no real interest at all. Girls were hard to get these days. During the war it was better. You got a lot of girls out of pity. But pity went out at Rheims. And any German, even a whole, robust one, had a hard time competing with the cigarettes and chocolates and prestige of the victors. And for a man with one arm … It had been a miserable day, and this was a fitting, miserable climax to it.

Greta put out the light and got aggressively into bed, without touching him. Tentatively he put his hand out to her. She didn’t move. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’ve had a long day. Good night.”

In a few moments she was asleep.

Garbrecht lay awake a long time, listening to Greta snore; a wavering, troubling reflection from a street light outside played on his lids from the small mirror across the room.

As he approached the house in which Seedorf kept his headquarters, Garbrecht realized that he had begun to hurry his pace a little, that he was actually looking forward to the meeting. This was the fourth week that he had reported to the fat ex-Captain, and he smiled a little to himself as he reminded himself of how affectionately he had begun to regard Seedorf. Seedorf had not been at all demanding. He had listened with eager interest to each report of Garbrecht’s meetings with Mikhailov and Dobelmeir, had chuckled delightedly here and there, slapped his leg in appreciation of one point or another, and had shrewdly and humorously invented plausible little stories, scraps of humor, to give first to the Russian, then to the American. Seedorf, who had never met either of them, seemed to understand them both far better than Garbrecht did, and Garbrecht had risen steadily in the favor of both Captain Mikhailov and Major Dobelmeir since he had given himself to Seedorf’s coaching.

As Garbrecht opened the door of Seedorf’s headquarters, he remembered with a little smile the sense of danger and apprehension with which he had first come there.

He did not have to wait long at all. Miss Renner, the blonde who had first talked to him on the street, opened the door to the ex-Captain’s room almost immediately.

Seedorf was obviously in high spirits. He was beaming and moving up and down in front of his desk with little, mincing, almost dancing steps. “Hello, hello,” he said warmly, as Garbrecht came into the room. “Good of you to come.”

Garbrecht never could make out whether this was sly humor on Seedorf’s part, or perfectly automatic good manners, this pretense that Garbrecht had any choice in the matter.

“Wonderful day,” Seedorf said. “Absolutely wonderful day. Did you hear the news?”

“What news?” Garbrecht asked cautiously.

“The first bomb!” Seedorf clasped his hands delightedly. “This afternoon at two-thirty the first bomb went off in Germany. Stuttgart! A solemn day. A day of remembrance! After 1918 it took twelve years before the Germans started any real opposition to the Allies. And now … less than a year and a half after the surrender … the first bomb! Delightful!” He beamed at Garbrecht. “Aren’t you pleased?” he asked.

“Very,” said Garbrecht diplomatically. He was not fond of bombs. Maybe for a man with two arms, bombs might have an attraction, but for him …

“Now we can really go to work.” Seedorf hurled himself forcefully into his leather chair behind the desk and stared piercingly out at Garbrecht. “Until now, it hasn’t meant very much. Really only developing an organization. Trying out the parts. Seeing who could work and who couldn’t. Instituting necessary discipline. Practice, more than anything else. Now the maneuvers are over. Now we move onto the battlefield!”

Professional soldiers, Garbrecht thought bitterly, his new-found peace of mind already shaken, they couldn’t get the jargon of their calling out of their thinking. Maneuvers, battlefields … The only accomplishment they seemed to be able to recognize was the product of explosion, the only political means they really understood and relished, death.

“Lieutenant,” Seedorf said, “we have been testing you, too. I am glad to say,” he said oratorically, “we have decided that you are dependable. Now you really begin your mission. Next Tuesday at noon Miss Renner will meet you. She will take you to the home of a friend of ours. He will give you a package. You will carry it to an address that Miss Renner will give you at the time. I will not hide from you that you will be in a certain danger. The package you will carry will include a timing mechanism that will go into the first bomb to be exploded in the new war against the Allies in Berlin.…”

Seedorf seemed to be far away and his voice distant and strange. It had been too good to be true, Garbrecht thought dazedly, the easygoing, undangerous, messenger-boy life that he had thought he was leading. Merely a sly, deadly game that Seedorf had been playing, testing him.

“Captain,” he whispered, “Captain … I can’t … I can’t …”

“The beginning,” Seedorf said, ecstatically, as though he had not heard Garbrecht’s interruption. “Finally, there will be explosions day and night, all over the city, all over the country.… The Americans will blame the Russians, the Russians will blame the Americans, they will become more and more frightened, more and more distrustful of each other. They will come to us secretly, bargain with us, bid for us against each other.…”

It will never happen, Garbrecht said dazedly to himself, never. It is the same old thing. All during the war they told us that. The Americans would break with the British, the British with the Russians. And here they all were in what was left of Berlin: Cockneys, Tartars from Siberia, Negroes from Mississippi. Men like Seedorf were victims of their own propaganda, men who listened and finally believed their own hopes, their own lies. And, he, Garbrecht, next week, would be walking among the lounging American MP’s, with the delicate, deadly machinery ticking under his arm, because of Seedorf’s hallucination. Any other nation, Garbrecht thought, would be convinced. They’d look around at the ruin of their cities, at the ever-stretching cemeteries, at the marching enemy troops in the heart of their capital, and they’d say, “No, it did not work.” But not the Germans. Goering was just dead in the Nuremberg jail, and here was this fat murderer with the jolly smile who even looked a bit like Goering, rubbing his hands and shouting, “A day of remembrance! The first bomb has exploded!”

Garbrecht felt lost and exhausted and hopeless, sitting in the wooden chair, watching the fat man move nervously and jubilantly behind the desk, hearing the rough, good-natured voice saying, “It took fourteen years last time, it won’t take four years this time! Garbrecht, you’ll be a full colonel in 1950, one arm and all.”

Garbrecht wanted to protest, say something, some word that would stop this careening, jovial, bloodthirsty, deluded lunatic, but he could get no sound out between his lips. Later on, perhaps, when he was alone, he might be able to figure some way out of this whirling trap. Not here, not in this tall, dark room, with the fat, shouting captain, the broken mirror, the somber, incongruous, brooding picture of Lenin, Seedorf’s obscure, mocking joke, that hung on the cracked wall.

“In the meantime,” Seedorf was saying, “you continue your regular work. By God!” he laughed, “you will be the richest man in Berlin when they all get through paying you!” His voice changed. It became low and probing. “Do you know two men called Kleiber and Machewski who work out of Mikhailov’s office?” He peered shrewdly at Garbrecht.

“No,” said Garbrecht after a moment. He knew them. They were both on Mikhailov’s payroll and they worked in the American zone, but there was no sense in telling that, yet, to Seedorf.

“No matter,” Seedorf laughed, after an almost imperceptible pause. “You will give their names and this address to your American Major.” He took a piece of paper out from his pocket and put it down on the desk before him. “You will tell the Major that they are Russian spies and that they can be found at this place.” He tapped the paper. “It will be quite a haul for the Major,” Seedorf said ironically, “and he will be sure to reward you handsomely. And he will have a very strong tendency after that to trust you with quite important matters.”

“Yes,” said Garbrecht.

“You’re sure,” Seedorf said inquiringly, smiling a little at Garbrecht, “you’re sure you don’t know these men?”

Then Garbrecht knew that Seedorf knew he was lying, but it was too late to do anything about it.

“I don’t know them,” he said.

“I could have sworn …” Seedorf shrugged. “No matter.” He got up from the desk, carrying the slip of paper, and came over to the chair where Garbrecht was sitting. “Some day, my friend,” he said, putting his hand lightly on Garbrecht’s shoulder, “some day you will learn that you will have to trust me, too. As a matter of …” He laughed. “A matter of discipline.”

He handed Garbrecht the slip of paper and Garbrecht put it in his pocket and stood up. “I trust you, sir,” he said flatly. “I have to.”

Seedorf laughed uproariously. “I like a good answer,” he shouted. “I do like a good answer.” He put his arm around Garbrecht in a brotherly hug. “Remember,” he said, “my first and only lesson—the one principle in being a hired informer is to tell the man who is paying you exactly what he wishes to hear. Any information must fit into theories which he already holds. Then he will trust you, pay you well, regard you as a more and more valuable employee. However …” and he laughed again, “do not try to work this on me. I am different. I don’t pay you … and therefore, I expect the truth. You will remember that?” He turned Garbrecht around quite roughly and peered into his eyes. He was not smiling now.

“Yes, sir,” said Garbrecht. “I will remember it.”

“Good.” Seedorf pushed him toward the door. “Now go downstairs and talk to Miss Renner. She will make all arrangements.”

He pushed Garbrecht gently through the door and closed it sharply behind him. Garbrecht stared at the closed door for a moment, then walked slowly downstairs to Miss Renner.

Later, on the street, on his way to Mikhailov’s office, he tried not to think of Seedorf’s conversation, or the ingenious, deadly device that even now was waiting for him on the other side of the city.

He felt like stopping and leaning his head against the cold, cracked brick wall of a gutted house he was passing, to weep and weep in the twisting, cutting wind. After so much, after all the fighting, all the death, after the operating room in the brewery at Stalingrad, a man should be entitled to something, some peace, some security. And, instead, this onrushing dilemma, this flirtation with next week’s death, this life of being scraped against every rock of the jagged year by every tide that crashed through Germany. Even numbness was no longer possible.

He shuffled on dazedly, not seeing where he was going. He stumbled over a piece of pavement that jutted crazily up from the sidewalk. He put out his hand to try to steady himself, but it was too late, and he fell heavily into the gutter. His head smashed against the concrete, and he felt the hot laceration of broken stone on the palm of his hand.

He sat up and looked at his hand in the dim light. There was blood coming from the dirty, ripped wounds, and his head was pounding. He sat on the curb, his head down, waiting for it to clear before he stood up. No escape, he thought, heavily, there never would be any escape. It was silly to hope for it. He stood up slowly, and continued on his way to Mikhailov’s office.

Mikhailov was crouched over his desk, the light of a single lamp making him look froglike and ugly as he sat there, without looking up at Garbrecht. “… Tell the man who is paying you exactly what he wishes to hear.…” Garbrecht could almost hear Seedorf’s mocking, hearty voice. Maybe Seedorf knew what he was talking about. Maybe the Russian was that foolish, maybe the American was that suspicious.… Suddenly, Garbrecht knew what he was going to tell Mikhailov.

“Well?” Mikhailov said finally, still peering down at his desk. “Anything important? Have you found out anything about that new man the Americans are using?”

Mikhailov had asked him to find out what he could about Dobelmeir last week, but Garbrecht had silently resolved to keep his mouth shut about the American. If he said too much, if he slipped once, Mikhailov would become suspicious, start prying, set someone on Garbrecht’s trail. But now he spoke in a loud, even voice. “Yes,” he said. “He is a second generation German-American. He is a lawyer in Milwaukee in civilian life. He was under investigation early in the war because he was said to have contributed to the German-American Bund in 1939 and 1940.” Garbrecht saw Mikhailov slowly raise his head and look at him, his eyes beginning to glisten with undisguised interest. It’s working, Garbrecht thought, it actually is working. “The case was never pressed,” he went on calmly with his invention, “and he was given a direct commission late in the war and sent to Germany on special orders. Several members of his family are still alive in the British zone, Hamburg, and a cousin of his was a U-boat commander in the German Navy and was sunk off the Azores in 1943.”