Going Over (18 page)

“You dyed your hair,” he finally said.

“Pink,” I mumbled.

“You cut it,” he said, “like Cleopatra.”

And we stood there staring, out over the wall, past the asshole guards, toward the church, down the canal, to the place where the boys had been mean. We stood there and we didn't say a thing. And for a long, long time, that was enough for me.

“It was only a kiss,” I finally said. “And it wasn't my choice. Believe me.”

There's nothing but slush on the ground. The boot prints and shoe prints and cart trails and tires are all obliterations. At the Bethaniendamm the artists smoke outside on the steps, they drink their coffees, they stand huddled together, three to a shawl, but not Sebastien, so far as I can see, with his Frenchified German, his one eye smaller than the other, his first wrong impressions of me. It's early, too early, and I circle the church, walk around to the back that used to be the front, before the wall went up so close. My graffs are how I left them. My blues are radiant, true. Arabelle's fill isn't bad after all. My wall tells a story; it speaks. A boy on a bike sails by behind me, a basket of bread tied to his fender. Two old ladies pass, their chins dipped down, the hems of their aprons dragging beneath the thready edges of their dark wool coats. A skanky dog with mud on its snout takes a big sniff of my ankles, and still I stand here looking at the wall. Bread and Toilet. Tightrope. Boot in the face. I think about Savas and
Meryem, about the things they know, have seen. I think about fear, how it sticks. I think,
If Stefan doesn't answer soon
 . . .

If he actually doesn't
.

The bells above my head are silent.

The guards in their smeary tower are likely asleep.

A rat with an abominable tail scuttles by.

My graffing is good. My graffing is a promise.

Stefan
.

I back away and head off in the other direction, round the red drum of the church. There's much inside—Herr Palinski and his ten-fingered Bach. I walk the distance and lean against the door; it gives. The inside of St. Thomas Church is tall and white and hollow. It feels cratered out by the moon—arched and swollen, ruffling up. Everyone who has ever sung for Herr Palinski has quit, infuriated by his impossible perfectionism. But when he plays his Bach in his black turtleneck all is forgiven, and people say that it's like Bach himself has been resurrected inside the church that God protected from the bombs.

Herr Palinski playing is an artist working and I sit alone with this song that slides against itself and rises high inside the echoing caverns. Any movement I make is a mistake, and so I sit with my feet still and my fingers quiet as the Bach goes out in waves and skims the fluted columns, the walls, the tinted light of the arched windows, the dried flowers from weeks ago. The old part of the song crests against the new part, doubling it, restoring it, and it is not until the song is over that I realize that
I'm not alone in here with Herr Palinski and his Bach. In the far balcony, the reverend sits, his hands pushed together in prayer. He wears his everyday clothes and his California glasses. He lifts one hand and waves, a sign that I should wait, and now I hear his footsteps on the interior stairs. His footsteps, then nothing, then the reverend again, hurrying down the center aisle on his way to me.

“Ada Piekarz,” he says.

“Reverend Schindler.”

“To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“The Bach,” I say, and he nods.

He sits beside me, presses his fingers to his chin, and waits for the next concerto to begin. “No. 5 in F Minor,” he says. “The second movement.” It's the wedding song, the processional, and it's so goddamned beautiful holy.

“Oh, God,” I say, and there's crying in the word. Reverend Schindler slides his big pale hand over mine and nods and that's it, because that's all there has to be when Herr Palinski plays Concerto No. 5. We don't move until the song is over. We don't move until Herr Palinski stands and hurries through his sheets of music, his head bowed, his eyes avoiding ours. The door flies open, the cold air blows through. The door bangs shut again. The reverend takes his hand from mine.

“I have heard about Savas,” he says. “And I am sorry.”

There are things that you'll need. There are lies that you'll tell. That night, in your room, you sketch a thousand different versions of a flying fox. That morning you read gravity and physics. You go through the trunk of your grandfather's things looking for gadgets or signs. You scope low on the balcony, pursuing breaks in the walls, narrow channels, passable distances, chances. You go back into your room and close the door and practice your posture with arrows.

When you arrive at the park, he's there, sitting in a crook, a pyramid of dirty snowballs on the ground beneath him, snug against the base of the tree. His feet dangle in their too-big sneaks. He's got a cup of something steaming in one hand.

“You're a little late,” he says.

Is it a jab? Is it friendly? You don't know; how could you know?

He shrugs. Swings his legs, loose and long, knocking the dirty hem of his trench coat and exhaling hard, cold, white
breaths. He looks like he's been here all night, guarding the linden, angling for practice, getting bored and blaming you. You stare at him through the dawn, across the park. You watch him take a long sip from his steaming cup, blow on the naked flesh of his hands, leave the trench coat open to the black T-shirt, the dangle of chains at his neck. He slurps and jumps and the snow splats, and now he's pulling something out of the ripped lining of his ruined trench coat, all of it hard to see, given the light. He turns back toward the tree, lifts his arms, and curses. He steps aside, and that's when you see what he's done. A puny bull's-eye target, handpainted. Hung by a string from a low branch, but not the lowest.

“What's that?” you ask.

“You can't shoot at pom-poms,” he says. “Seriously, man. You just can't.” He finds more in his cup. He swallows it down.

There's no waiting this guy out. He's there, and you're here, and if you turn back now, walk away, he wins and you lose all the time you gained by coming long before they'll start looking for you at the Eisfabrik. You ease the quiver to the ground and select an arrow. You unhook the bow from your shoulder, plant your scruffy boots in the slush, nock in.

Click
.

“Hook your fingers,” he calls to you. “Ease off the grip.”

You think he shouldn't stand too close to the target. You think that if he's smart, if he gets you at all, wants to help himself, even, he'll back off, but now he leans forward, his free
hand on his bony kneecap, like he's waiting for your best pitch. Like he's doing you a favor.

“It's all in your back,” he tells you now. “And in your teeth.”

You lower the arrow, the bow, break the stance. You stare at the skinny kid with his black thatch hair and at the birds that have come in behind him—all of them brown, all of them shivery, taking a dirty-snow bath on the far hedge.

“Consistency is in the teeth,” he says, straightening now, putting his hands on his hips. “Trust me on this.”

“Okay.”

“I've got medals,” he says. “At home, I do.”

He lowers his mug to the ground, rubs his hands together, and goes off on a tangent you can't actually follow about frogs and elastic and the principles of physics. Your hand hooks. Your teeth close. You concentrate all your power in the ridge between your shoulder blades. When the arrow flies, it zings, busting a hole straight through the paint-and-cardboard target before it arcs to the ground and sticks, a headless flower. Out of nowhere, the rabbit returns, twitchy and unhappy, leaving a track of panic in the old snow. Beyond the park and the trees there is the sound of kids singing an old schoolyard song. You remember the song. You're not a kid anymore. But Lukas—the kid—is whistling.

“See that?” he says.

You nod.

“Just checking,” he says.

He fits his big hand inside his torn coat and digs out target number two, which is white and blue, painted on old newsprint with a stiff and reckless brush. It comes out crumpled and bent. He snaps it straight, waves it in front of your eyes, makes sure you're watching. He thinks you can be dazzled. He waits.

“What else you have in there?” you ask.

“Where?”

“Your pocket? That coat?”

“Oh, that,” he says, his brow crinkling to help him think. “A bar of chocolate, I guess. A pack of pencils. Keys to the bike lock. An old map. My uncle's compass.” He seems genuinely interested in the answer to this question. Pleased that you would ask. He tips his chin and salutes, Young Pioneers style. Carries target number two over to the far hedge, where the birds had been busy, but now they fly off, distressed. He prepares a ridge and sets the target upright. He stands there, snow in his shoes, trench coat open, black T-shirt stretched across his boy ribs, pointing at the target—a smaller mark, a bigger distance. You raise the bow. You nock. You're not doing this for him.

“Follow it through,” he calls out. “All right? Relax your wrists. Keep your thumb beneath the line of your jaw.” He's farther away, so it's harder to hear. It's easier to listen. You know the arrow is through the second you release it. You don't move, don't even blink, until you hear the paper shred.

“And there we have it,” he says, throwing his arms up, victory style. He hurdles the hedge, and a Trabbi honks. He
returns, the arrow high in one hand, his trench coat flapping as he hurdles back into the park. He plucks the other arrow from the ground on his way toward you. Scoops up his coffee cup. Smiles crooked. Only one side of his face, you realize, actually smiles.

“What's your story, anyway?” you ask, as he slips your arrows back inside the quiver.

“A little of this,” he says. “A little of that.”

“You planning to show up every day, or something?”

“Aren't you?”

Like you're really going to answer that.

Like you won't look for him again, the next day and the day after that, Lukas with his arrow smarts. Lukas with his targets—handpainted, freshly made.

“MissAdaMissAdaMissAda.”

“Yes, honey.”

“MissAda.”

“She just asks for you,” Henni says. “She won't tell me a thing.”

Henni in her bunchy sweater dress. Meryem in the aqua coat with the loose wool weave. I'd heard the crying from down the hall and run. I'd opened the door and found them, one beside the other at the narrow, speckled table, Meryem's fists to her eyes, Henni's big arm dragged across Meryem's delicate shoulders, nobody else around and a pot of oatmeal overcooking on the stove, a tea bag gone cold in a cracked mug.

“What's happened?” I'd snapped the burner heat off and come. I'd stood here, looking from one to the other, trying to figure it out.

“Don't know. She was dropped off and she hasn't stopped crying.”