A Shroud for Jesso (15 page)

“No joy ride,” Jesso said.

She shrugged. “It won’t last long,” she said. Then she looked at the two women across from them, who kept staring at her, and then she looked someplace else.

The market town was Bad Brunn. They got off and walked to the bus terminal across the square. The sun was up now, and the air was clear, without moisture. Not like Hannover or Hamburg, with the constant dampness blowing in from the North Sea. This was a warmer climate, with country smells; the houses looking small and busy.

They climbed into the yellow bus and waited for it to fill up. The motor started to shake the bus, they took a slow turn around the fountain in the middle of the square, and then came the country road. This time it was cherry trees along both sides, cherry trees and every so often a dead one. It was a very old road. They took twenty miles of it and then they got out; over egg baskets, apple crates, and tools lying in the aisle, they finally got out, they watched the bus hobble off with blue dust behind and stood in the gravel where the two streets of the village crossed.

“This is it,” Jesso said.

Renette looked down both streets. She laughed but didn’t say anything. She smelled a cow odor in the air, and when she looked at the rutted dirt roads again she was reminded of Pomerania. Except that the low houses had slate on the roofs, or wood shingles. In Pomerania they used swamp grass.

“The whitewashed job over there, with the balcony,” Jesso said. “That must be the one that rents rooms.” He picked up the suitcase. “At least, that’s what the information guy said.”

But Renette wasn’t listening. She was still looking at the village street. It had been a bad moment, seeing it. Not that there was swamp grass on the roofs; there wasn’t. But the streets with the spaced, squat houses, with the dirt ruts and a chicken walking across, had suddenly felt like the desolate time, like the dank and poor time before Johannes had helped her and she could leave her home. And all this in spite of the sunshine on the street and the peaceful warm smells in the air. Jesso hadn’t noticed, of course. She saw Jesso crossing the road ahead of her and for a moment she felt like running.

Then she followed him. Suddenly it was easy, because everything was different now, as different as having left the rotten estate and having joined Johannes. Now she could even be through with Johannes and it would not turn bad again. She had lost poverty. First, through Johannes, who had given her the comforts of his money Then she had done with another poverty, now that Jesso had come. It was a freedom.

He was waiting on the other side of the road and they went to the whitewashed house together.

The room had a balcony. Inside was the low ceiling of the peasant house, a tile stove in one corner and a monster closet against one of the walls. The rest of the room was mostly bed, and the bed was mostly feather blanket.

“Let’s lie down,” she said.

Jesso put the suitcase in the closet and stepped to the bed. “Like rolling in dough,” he said.

“Good.”

She stretched herself out and sank into the feathers. “Watch your clothes,” he said. “You haven’t got any others.”

“I’ll take them off,” she said.

She got up and stood with her back to him so he could get at the buttons. He undid them.

“Come,” she said. She lay on the feather bed and he sat down beside her.

“Soft,” he said. “Better than that lousy ride on—”

“Your clothes are still on,” she said.

“Yeah. Sure.” He undressed.

“Jesso,” she said.

The sun was going higher outside and the village street was empty because the men worked in the fields and the women worked in the gardens. None of that meant a damn to Jesso or Renette, and later they went to sleep.

Renette had to borrow a pair of shoes from the landlady because her high heels weren’t any good outside. And Jesso bought a clean shirt from her, a heavy linen thing that smelled of lavender because the landlady had been widowed for almost ten years and since that time there had been no call to take her husband’s things out of the trunk.

They went to the Gasthof, where the bus had stopped. Inside there was a sweet odor of freshly ground flour and the smell of beer. The wet beer stink was strong, but after a while they didn’t notice it. They ate at a long wooden table—boiled potatoes, boiled beef, and boiled cabbage, and then coffee that was gritty on the tongue because it had been boiled too. Only the beer was good. Jesso had some, but Renette just smoked and sat by.

After a while they took a walk past the last houses and through the fields. The evening air was full with hay odors and the spice of herbs. It was very quiet. Only insects were singing in the air. They thought of walking a piece farther, to the bridge over the creek ahead, but the mosquitoes got thicker and they turned back.

It was better on the small balcony. They sat in the dark and smoked.

“Sleepy?” he asked.

“No. I slept during the day.”

“I know.”

She laughed and then her cigarette glowed. When it went down again she leaned close, toward his chair.

“Are your legs on the railing?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I bet nobody has sat here like that for years.”

“Ten years, maybe.”

“Yes,” she said.

Jesso stretched in his chair, recrossed his legs.

“For a while that’s going to be the news around here.”

“For a while?”

“A week. Maybe two weeks.”

“Make it a day. Maybe two days.”

“We don’t show that soon. A couple of weeks is better.”

“I was in Carlsbad once. Why don’t we go to Carlsbad?”

“What’s Carlsbad?”

“It’s a resort on the Rhine. It’s full of retired professors and old ladies with rheumatism. I’d like to go there, Jesso. Just for the contrast.”

“Just for the contrast this’ll do the same thing. Better, even.”

“Let’s go to Carlsbad.”

“Listen, Renette. You and me, from now on, we gotta stay out of sight. Then when I see Kator, after that we gotta stay out of sight. You don’t know your brother much, do you?”

“You hate him, Jesso?”

“No. But I want to stay alive.”

“You’re with me now”

“Boy!” he said. “You sure don’t know your brother much.”

“But I do. I’ve known him longer than you have.”

Jesso laughed. “You don’t count. Besides, you like him too much.”

Her cigarette glowed again and she exhaled. “I have great respect for him, Jesso.”

“Me, too,” he said.

His tone of voice wasn’t pleasant and Renette tried to see Jesso’s face in the dark.

“We are not talking about the same kind of respect. Yours is more like dislike.”

Jesso let his feet come off the railing and it made quite a racket. Then he leaned over the arm of his chair. He sounded harsh.

“Now you listen to this love story, Renette. First he hires himself out to do a killing, then he tries putting the screws on a guy already half dead. Next comes a double cross to make a corpse, then another one of the same, and I’m the guy he was doing it to every time. So don’t tell me to love your brother, kid, because he’s the one I’m going after, and when I go out for a hit I don’t do any loving.”

When he was through she could still hear the sharp ring of his voice, and for a moment she sat thinking about it, to get clear what he had said. A while back, just days, there wouldn’t have been any reason to think about it. There had been no Jesso. There had just been Johannes. And now the strength of Jesso was taking the place of her brother’s.

But she said, “I don’t excuse him. He needs no excuse.”

“I didn’t ask for excuses. Just don’t sit there and tell me the sonofabitch is the end. He isn’t. Or else I’d be dead!”

The strength of Jesso…. Or else there would be no Jesso, she thought.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” he said, and he was out of the chair now, standing before her so she could see his black shape against the sky.

She didn’t know what to answer and then he did it for her. “You’re on mine. That’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m keeping you.”

“Jesso,” she said. “Do you know why I’m here?”

He was listening.

“Johannes sent me.”

He still didn’t move.

“To make you talk, maybe to make you weak.”

Then she waited for whatever would come next, but his shape against the sky didn’t move for a long time. At first, the way it started out, she didn’t know what it was, but then it was Jesso laughing. He laughed so hard that when he stopped she didn’t know how he had done it. He moved and sat down again.

“That poor sonofabitch,” he said. “That stupid sonofabitch.” He laughed some more. He lit two cigarettes, gave one to her. “So that’s why you’re here.”

“No. That’s why I came.”

“You stayed because of Kator?”

“Because of you,” she said.

“You know he’s through with you, don’t you?”

And then Renette laughed, because what Jesso had said didn’t mean a thing any more. What meant something was the way she felt, the way she suddenly felt that she was through with Johannes. He was out of her fear, her need, and her hopes.

“Jesso,” she said, “I can forget Johannes.”

“Good for you. But I can’t. He’s crapped out before, but I won’t forget him till he craps out for good.”

“Forget him, Jesso.”

“Why? Because he’s your brother?”

She felt he needn’t have said that. It was nasty, the way Helmut might have done it. But Jesso needn’t have.

“I don’t understand you,” she said, because she didn’t.

“Don’t try. Just watch me forget him once I’m through with him. Pretty soon I’m going to be through with him.”

But she still thought of Johannes the way she had thought of in the past, so she didn’t see what Jesso meant, what he was up against. She herself was through with Johannes, not needing him any more, but not being concerned with him didn’t make him her enemy.

“What you said before, Jesso, about hiding. You mean we run, from now on, we keep running and hiding?”

“That’s a crazy way to put it. And maybe we won’t. Maybe Kator will drop dead.”

She didn’t think he would. She was through with him but he was as strong as ever.

After a while she threw her cigarette over the railing. “Jesso,” she said.

He sat still for a minute. Then he flipped his stub and watched it sail across the road.

“Jesso,” she said again.

He got up, took her arm, and they went inside together. Nothing had changed and she wanted him as before. So far, nothing had changed.

It stayed that way for two days, but after two days the dullness of the place started to get her and something was getting Jesso too. It felt unfinished. If he hadn’t been with Renette, it occurred to him, he might not have thought of waiting. He might have taken the train straight back, hit Kator in the head with his hundred thousand bucks, and asked for the rest of it. But there was Renette and it was just as well to let Kator sweat for a while—but not any more. He had Renette, and now, for the last time, Kator was going to pay.

They caught the once-a-day bus back to Bad Brunn and when they passed the white house with the balcony they laughed at each other because they both, for their reasons, were glad to go.

“And after Hannover, Jesso, let’s go to Carlsbad.”

“How about the Riviera?” he said.

“Or the Riviera.”

“Or we can hit out to Africa. I’ve never been in Africa. Maybe big-game hunting, or whatever you do in Africa.”

“I like the Riviera better,” she said. “I know people there. We can stay there as long as we want, Jesso. I have a small chalet in Menton, from Johannes, and many friends who—“

“They’ll keep. For a while we keep moving.”

“Where, Jesso?”

“Just move. Out of the way, for a while, until—”

“Jesso,” she said. “I don’t like places out of the way. Did you live out of the way?”

“Now and then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. Now and then. The way I live, I gotta watch where I step, and that’s part of it.”

She smiled at him and for a moment it looked half like a frown, but then she shook her head and said, “It sounds too much like running, Jesso. I don’t run any more. I just look and see what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“You,” she said, and she gave him a kiss so that the peasant woman across the aisle made a movement as if she were thinking of crossing herself.

After the local from Bad Brunn they took the through train back to Hannover. They had a compartment and during the warm afternoon Renette slept. Jesso sat by and smoked. He had started to smoke too much. It had started right after deciding to go back to Kator, not to wait any more, because the longer he waited, the more unfinished the business was. He wished Renette would wake up and talk to him. About Kator, for instance. There were a lot of things he might learn about Kator.

He went to the club car, had a drink, and came back. Renette was awake. Her clothes were all over one seat and Jesso could hear the shower behind the door of the tiny bathroom. Then it stopped.

“Jesso?” she called.

“None but.”

“Dry me, Jesso.”

She came out as she was, holding her hair up.

“The big towel,” she said. “See it?”

He saw it. He got the towel and dried her.

“My back red yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Harder, Jesso.”

She turned for him and after a while she was dry. She lay down on the wall bed and after she stretched she said, “It feels good.”

“You look good.”

“So do you.”

“That’s because I’m dressed,” he said.

“No. Because I’m undressed,” she said, and when he started to get up and come to the bed she said, “No. Stay there, Jesso. Stay there a while longer.”

He sat down and grinned at her.

“Talk to me,” she said.

He played the game and talked.

“Nice weather,” he said. “Looks good on your thigh, that sun there.”

She moved her leg and smiled.

“Say something else. Just as brilliant.”

“Well, like Helmut would say, how about love?”

“Helmut would,” she said. “He always talks about love, one form or another.”