The Pale House (41 page)

“And now?” she asked.

“Now?” His mouth twisted, and he drank from his glass. “I don't know. Somewhere along the way, I lost myself. The Nazis, this war . . . sometimes I just want to turn away and hide and let it all pass by. But a man I met here two years ago helped me to understand that was not an option. It's not choices you lack for in life, it's decisions. And I decided to change the way I . . . approached this war. But I was still hiding, and that younger me—he's tired of hiding. Of the lies, the frustrations. He just . . . he wants to tear people apart with his hands and piss on their graves.” He felt a flush of embarrassment as he said it, and wondered if it was really him talking, or the alcohol. “I'm afraid I'm going to give in to the worst in me. I don't know if I can manage to be one or the other.”

“And would that be so bad? To give in.”

“Bad? It's . . .” He frowned, confused by her, by himself. “It's not who I am. Who I want to be.”

“Who we want to be . . . What we end up being . . .” She sipped from her glass and ran her hand down her robe where it lay across her thigh, smoothing the fabric out. “It's not the same thing, is it? Who we want to be lives up here,” she said, tapping the side of her head, “and the other lives out there, in the real world.”

“Well, it's the one out here with us who worries me,” said Reinhardt. He drank from his glass, remembering those Albanians. Two quick bursts. No consideration. No calculation. Just reaction. “I killed men tonight . . .” He trailed off.
waited. “I killed men I probably should not have.”

frowned. “Is there a difference?” Reinhardt looked at her, blankly. “In what you just said? Were there others you should have killed, instead? Or did these men deserve to die, but not by your hand?”

Reinhardt reached across and took the bottle, even though he knew he should not. He could already feel a tingle from the alcohol, so little was he used to it now, and he did not want to lose control of himself. He offered it to
, but she cupped her palm over her glass, and so he poured a small measure into his.

“I don't know if there's a difference. I meant to say, it was wrong. I did something wrong.”

“Did you come here for forgiveness, then, Reinhardt?” Again, he looked at her, startled by the tone in her voice. “I have none to give you, and I don't think you need it, or want it. For sympathy? I have so little of it left, and what do I know of what you did? Of what you've done. If you came for understanding for your losses, I can give you that. The UstaÅ¡e took all from me. They took my husband first, and gave me back a monster. Then he gave them my child and made her into something worse than him. So I could say, take what you need. Do what you must. But that's the easy way, isn't it?

“Listen to me . . . What do I know, Reinhardt? What freedom do I have? It's . . . What's important, anymore? I don't know, sometimes. And then sometimes, I think all that's important is this city. This community. It . . . we . . . deserve to come through this, after what we've been through.”

“What about you? What do you want?”

“Ask rather, what do I deserve? What do any of us deserve?” She shrugged, looked away. “Does it matter? I play a role. I am a widow of a senior UstaÅ¡e,” she said to the wall. “A man who died in glory for the cause. And so they, they put me in a gilded cage and I spend my days in black, because I am supposed to, mourning a man . . . mourning a man who . . .” She stopped, looked down. “Never mind. I try to work, even if they don't want me to, and I do my best for the people of this city, even if it is not mine, and I will never really be one of them. What little influence I have, I use for them.”

Reinhardt smiled, gestured at the room with the glass. “You call this gilded?”

She smiled as well, the mood lifted slightly, but the smile was sad, rueful. “It's not the house in Bistrik, is it?”

“I remember that house. I remember the photographs. On a piano. I remember flowers in a vase, the scent they gave.” Her frown faded. “I remember the coffee you served, with cardamom. And I remember you. I remember your elegance. Your poise. I remember . . .” He stopped. It seemed the pressure of her eyes had dammed up his words. He looked away at the candle, and then drank again, deeper still, the warmth buzzing through him.

“What do you want, Reinhardt?” she whispered.

“I just wanted to survive this war. I wanted to come out the other end. Alive. But I realized surviving wasn't living. It was just a way of hiding. I thought, once, I had found a way around that, but it has not worked out like I thought it would. And now, here I am. A Feldjaeger. More authority and power at my fingertips than any man should have. And I can't . . . I can't square it with who I think I am.”

Reinhardt looked at his glass, took a deep breath, then drank what was left. He winced, teeth clenched, and waited for the burn to pass. Moving carefully, he put the glass on the table, and with one finger pushed it away. “I used to think it was enough that I would catch the guilty,” he said. The glass moved with little fits and starts, jerking away, until it was at the end of his reach, sitting next to his gorget, each of the links of its chain a curlicue of light from the candle. He brought his arm back, rested his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands. “Toward the end, in Berlin, when everything came apart under the Nazis, sometimes it would even be enough that I knew. That they knew I knew. Here, now, I know . . . I
know
the Ustaše are behind the killings I'm investigating. And I
know
they are setting themselves up to escape what they've done.” Her eyes shifted, burned into him. “But it's just not enough to know anymore. It never was. And what I feel—when I'm not thinking of finding my way through to the other side of this war—is guilt. That I let people down. The man I was supposed to meet tonight. Those people in the forest. There was a girl . . .” He stopped as he thought of the girl in her father's arms and his throat became too tight and his thoughts too confused.

“You're too hard on yourself.”

Reinhardt's mouth twisted, looking at the glass. “Maybe so.”

“You are. And you did not come here for truths like that.”

“No.”

“What did you come here for?” Her voice was soft, the light from the candle inking the fine lines at the corners of her eyes.

Reinhardt knew it, then, the answer, but the words were so hard to say, and it was why he no longer wanted to drink. He wanted no excuse for his words, and wanted no cushion for if they did not work.

“To be with you. I came here for you.”

She said nothing, only looked at him. He looked back at her, breathing high over the lump in his chest, that fear of rejection, and a fear of his own inadequacy, and that he no longer had a right to such things, but then her hand moved, tentatively. Her thumb slid gently across the top of his hand, fell naturally into the groove between his own thumb and fingers. He looked down, then up at her. She was looking at him, her eyes firm and direct, but they glittered in the low light, and he swallowed, slowly. He took her hand, pulled gently, and she came to him, sliding and curving down next to him on the battered old sofa. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders, his hand rising up to stroke her hair, and he turned his face into it, breathing in the scent of her. Slowly, gently, they relaxed against each other. He closed his eyes, and felt the world begin to fall slowly away.

After a while, she shifted slightly in his arms, and he moved with her. They were still, breathing in unison, in rhythm. He shifted, and she turned and lifted her head so her face was pressed into his neck. She kissed him there, a touch of her lips, another, firmer, longer. His lips found her forehead, and he kissed her gently. Their faces brushed, and they looked into each other's eyes. Their mouths touched, moved against each other, and her eyes fluttered closed. His followed, and it was only the sensation that was left, mouth against mouth, a sweet edge from the alcohol, and the rising sweep in his stomach like the deep breath before the plunge.

They broke the kiss after a while, and lay with their heads together. He kissed her eyes, tasting the salt of her tears, her brows, lifted his hand and ran it through her hair. She moved into him, against him, kissed his neck, his jaw. They kissed again, longer, their breathing coming deeper and faster, and Reinhardt gave in to that feeling, that vertiginous pull toward an edge he had not known or felt in so long.

She broke the kiss, breathing fast into his neck. She turned her head gently, one way, then the other, as if she debated with herself, then looked up at him. She kissed him with her eyes open, her fingertips tracing the line of his cheeks, and ducked her head down again. He kissed her forehead, sensing she needed that time with herself. “It's been so long, Gregor,” she whispered.

“For me as well.”

“Together,” she said, raising her head and kissing him.

“Together,” he said, softly, against her mouth. The plunge, the risk, of words once spoken impossible to take back.

She stood, suddenly, and for a frozen moment he thought she was leaving, but then she turned, looking down at him, and slipped off her robe. She shivered as she breathed in, then lifted the nightdress she wore over her head and let it fall to the ground. Reinhardt felt his breath go thick at the sight of her, and he stood up, cupping her face in his hands. “You are beautiful,” he whispered, kissing her. She made a small noise in the back of her throat, and her hands came up to undo the buttons on his tunic. He shrugged out of it, then his shirt. He heeled off his boots, had a moment of panic at how he thought he must look and smell, then let the worry go as he stood naked next to her. They came together again, her palms smooth on the blades of his shoulders, his hands tracing the hourglass of her waist, the flare of her hips, and then she drew him down onto the couch, wrapping her legs around him, and the world was truly gone.

T
he first time was breathtaking, but over so much faster than he would have liked. Her eyes seemed to hold a question each time he moved inside her, and he wondered if his own eyes looked the same, or if there was an answer there in them and if she could see it. Sliding into her, raising himself above her, her breasts moving to their rhythm and their eyes locked together was too much. He found himself teetering on the brink, balancing on the cusp of feelings coming from deep within. She must have read it in his eyes and heard it in his breathing because she locked her legs tighter, pulling him deeper into her, and he shuddered at a release that had seemed to come from long ago as much as it had come from far within him. Eyes clenched tight, he buried his face in her neck. His breath sawed in his throat, a splinter of embarrassment scraping at the edge of his pleasure, that he had not been able to control himself better.

Her arms and legs came tighter around him, holding him in, and then he smiled into her shoulder, kissing her, and the smile became a laugh, self-deprecating. He felt her head turn, the quizzical set to her neck, and then she laughed as well.

“I'm sorry,” he managed, after a moment.

“Well, you said it had been a long time . . .”

He lifted his head to hers, and they smiled and laughed again. Shifting on the sofa, they squirmed together until they found a new closeness, limbs entwined. He pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa over them. She drew his head against her, stroking his hair, and they fell asleep like that.

—

Some time later she woke him, her leg thrown over his hip and her hands moving across his chest, down to his groin. Her breasts were bunched together between her arms, heavy and soft, brushed by light and shadow, and he felt himself stiffening to her touch. She smiled into her kiss, her eyes glittering. Reinhardt kissed her back, and she opened her mouth, surprising him with her tongue, waking him further. He opened his eyes in surprise, found her looking back at him, a set to her gaze that sent a shiver through him. And then she surprised him again as she pushed hard into his mouth, then moved her hips, rising on top of him, then up and down. He gasped as he slid inside her warmth, and she gripped his shoulders hard as she ground herself down onto him.

He took her breasts in his hands, pushing her back and up, and pushed his hips up to meet her. Her face drew in and out of the candlelight as she moved, her hair swinging back and forth. Her eyes fluttered closed, and he felt her body stiffening and her breathing coming higher and faster, her hips grinding down harder and harder.

“Gregor,” she managed, as her breathing hitched and she went rigid. She gasped, then curled over him, her hands clenched in his hair. He wrapped his arms tight around her, holding her down as he pushed up into her. She trembled, and he felt the muscles of her back soften, relax. And then, as he had done, she smiled as she nuzzled into his neck, and their smiles became laughter. It cleansed them, washed them clean, and they fell asleep again.

—

Later in the night, with the candle guttering low, he felt her leave his side and woke and saw the wobble in her balance as she stepped across the room, heard her catch her breath as she put her hand out to a chair to steady herself. She murmured something, some little admonishment, and he smiled. He turned in the warmth of the blanket, feeling the dip in the sofa where she had lain and the curve of his body. There were small noises from the kitchen, wood sliding over metal as she fed the oven. Moments later, she was back, her feet slipping across the floor, back into the warmth and shape of her space against him. She turned, lying with her back against his front, drew his hand around between her breasts, and they slept again.

—

He woke later, a feeling of utter lassitude running through him. Something had woken him, though, his mind circling down after some small sound. He woke easily, calmly, listening, his eyes drifting open and shut to their own rhythm. It was quiet outside. He guessed it was past midnight, and softly, slowly, his mind began to tick over. Thoughts began to circulate, possibilities, questions. What had happened, last night, at that house? Who knew of it? Who knew of the meeting? Who knew Reinhardt would be there? Very few people knew where he was to have been, and those few were all in the army, and nearly all of them in the penal battalion. Someone up there had talked.

He realized his earlier anger had faded, or subsided. Wound down tight within him. Compressed, like strata, beneath the self-doubt that, it seemed, could not be so easily done away with. If the passions of his younger days were not enough to remake him, still he could feel he was different. Yes, the anger had faded, the doubts were creeping in, but in turning inward he had turned backward, tapped that reservoir of memories and feelings, that younger version of himself. He could not let himself become that man again, though. That man had been too dangerous, too foolhardy, too out of control . . .

That was the man who had killed those men at the house. Two bursts. No consideration, only cold calculation. No remorse.
had asked him if it was forgiveness he had come for, but it was not what he sought. He had been acknowledging a mistake. He should not have killed those men. They had had uses. Reinhardt had known that, but he had killed them anyway.

Sometime in the night, he realized, something in him had begun to fuse. Parts that had been separate for a long time. That part of him that yearned toward what he could do as a Feldjaeger, finding some echo of the man he had been when he had fought through and survived the first war's storm of steel. And then there was the other part, the cautious, creeping part, the part that wanted only to sidle and worm its way along, scrimping and miserly with what he thought and even more with what he said. He had measured those two sides so long, keeping that younger, rasher side down, he did not know what he would be like if he gave in and accepted himself as someone who could be both.

A soft brush of sound, maybe from the kitchen, and he knew it was that sound that had awakened him before. Somehow, he sensed
was awake as well, and he ran a hand softly up her arm, whispered in her ear.

“Tell him it is all right.”

She stiffened against him, and then her head turned toward him, her eyes very wide and dark.

“Tell him,” whispered Reinhardt again, softly.

She sat up, wrapping her robe around her as Reinhardt pulled his trousers and shirt on. She walked quietly to the kitchen, called a name in a quiet voice. He heard her voice, soft, coaxing, and then she was coming back, and a boy had his hand in hers.

The boy from the forest.

brought him to the couch and sat, bringing him against her. The boy's eyes looked wide and white as he stared at Reinhardt, saying nothing.

“His name is Neven,” said
. The boy blinked and turned his head up to her at the sound of his name. She ruffled his hair, kissed the top of his head. “I could not leave him with the others. With the elderly couple. They were not his family, anyway.”

“I understand,” said Reinhardt.

“Did you know he was here?”

“Before I came?” She nodded. “I guessed. But it's not why I came,” he said, sliding his hand along the back of the sofa to brush her shoulder, then her hair from her cheek. “How has he been?”

“He seems . . . all right. But he does not say much. I only know he lived with his uncle and sister. They had a little farm, and raised livestock that his uncle would butcher for sale at the market.”

“Where did he live?”

“He does not know,”
whispered, brushing her mouth across the top of Neven's head. “Before the war, he had never been far from where he used to live.”

“Who knows he is here?”

“No one,” she said, laying her chin on Neven's head, her eyes far away.

“You know, they will not stop looking for him.”

“I can keep him safe until the Partisans come.”

Reinhardt looked at him, tilting his head down until the boy looked up at him. “Do you think I can ask him? About what happened?”

“Must you?”

“It's important, Suzana,” he replied, a small thrill darting through him at the use of her name. She nodded, after a moment, and whispered quietly in Neven's ear. The boy never took his eyes from Reinhardt, though his head shook slightly, and his breathing came high and shallow, short little movements of his chest.
held him, rocked him, and gave him his time, until the boy spoke, startling them both.