The Fury of Rachel Monette (33 page)

“Yes, Mr. Victor Reinhardt, I'm ready,” Rachel said. “I want my son.” She pointed the microphone at his face.

28

Rachel watched the color drain from Calvi's face. His skin turned gray before her eyes, gray and damp. But he did not faint, or try to run away, or even drop his cigar: she felt the strength of will which kept him from doing any of those things. Slowly and deliberately he extended his right arm and pressed the stop button of the tape recorder with his index finger.

It was very quiet. Faintly Rachel heard a man chanting by the Wailing Wall. Sergeant Levy stood in the center of the square, his feet planted wide apart, his face lifted up to the sun. Rachel lowered the microphone to her lap.

“Who are you?” Calvi asked softly.

She watched the gray eyes. “Adam's mother.” She saw no fear, no surprise, no comprehension. “It won't work. I know all about Siegfried and what happened to the women there. What you helped make happen to them.” She thought she saw his pupils wince, but it was over very fast.

“You work for Grunberg?” Calvi looked around as if he expected to find someone standing over his shoulder.

“Who is Grunberg?”

Calvi regarded her carefully. “You don't know Grunberg?”

“No. Let's not play games, Mr. Reinhardt—”

“Don't call me that,” he said angrily. He glanced quickly into the square—Sergeant Levy was watching them. “It's not my name,” he added more quietly.

“It was. You've gone to a lot of trouble to cover it up, you've killed a lot of people, but I know the truth.”

“What are you saying? I've never killed anyone in my life.”

Rachel thought of Dan, and Andy, the Kopples, their maid. “You had them killed then, if you prefer to put it that way. And for some reason your man kidnapped my boy. Maybe he did it on his own: I don't even want to think why. I just want him back.”

Calvi's eyes seemed puzzled. It was useless to watch them. He had them under control, like marionettes.

“You are not making sense to me, Miss Bernstein,” he said, almost as if he wanted to help.

“Bernstein is my unmarried name. My husband's name was Monette.” He knew the name; for less than a second his guard went down, long enough. “Daniel Monette. He was stabbed to death.”

“I didn't kill him, Miss Bernstein, or have anyone kill him. I never heard of him until this moment.”

“I suppose the name Hans Kopple means nothing to you either.”

Calvi waited a long time before he replied. “The name Hans Kopple I know,” he said at last. “I knew him during the war.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

He thought. “August of 1942,” he said quietly.

“And you haven't seen him since?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been to Nice, Mr. Calvi?”

“Several times.”

“When was the most recent?”

“Really, Miss Bernstein, I don't understand what you are leading to.”

“Just answer the question,” Rachel said fiercely.

“Keep your voice down.” Calvi looked across the square. Sergeant Levy had stopped watching them and again had his face tilted up to the sun.

“Answer me,” Rachel repeated more quietly.

“It must have been three years ago this summer. I went to a congress of parliamentarians.”

“You weren't there yesterday by any chance?”

“Of course not.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Easily. Why do you ask?”

“Hans Kopple was murdered in Nice yesterday afternoon.”

Calvi's eyes narrowed very slightly. “Do you know who killed him?”

“Someone who didn't want him to tell me who you really are. But he was too late. I already knew. Hans Kopple was killed for nothing.” She paused. “Have you any idea who might have done that?” she added coldly.

He shook his head. “Do you?”

“Yes. A tall man, tall as you. Who likes to dress up as an Orthodox rabbi.”

“Why do you say that?” Calvi asked quickly.

“Because the man who took my boy was wearing rabbinical dress.” Now for the first time since she had called him by his real name she saw fear in his eyes. “Would I find rabbi's clothing hanging in one of your closets, Mr. Calvi?”

“No,” he answered in a low voice.

“That's not good enough. You are a convincing liar, but a liar all the same. Understand me, Mr. Calvi: I don't accuse you of killing my husband. The blond man did that. But you took my boy, didn't you?”

“The blond man?”

“The one who does your murdering for you.”

“No one does any murdering for me,” Calvi said furiously.

“Or should I say did. He's dead. I killed him.” With astonishment, and disgust, she heard the pride in her voice.

Calvi's eyes flickered; his jaw dropped a fraction of an inch. He didn't say a word.

“How can you keep denying it? It's written all over your face—you know what I'm talking about.”

“I'm glad the blond man is dead,” Calvi said slowly. “But you are mistaken, Miss Bernstein. He did not work for me. I don't know exactly what is happening, but I think I am as much a victim as you are. Please believe me. I know nothing about your son. Or your husband.”

Something in his eyes, or in his tone, or perhaps in her mind at that moment made her realize that despite all her reasoning and all her hopes he was telling her the truth. She had dug and dug, dug down as far as Simon Calvi, but she had not dug deep enough. He was digging too, she thought, but in a different direction. Perhaps he was digging up while she dug down: like moles underground they had touched in the blackness. She shot one final round.

“Listen to me. You must be aware what would happen to your career if what I know about you became public knowledge. An Israeli politician, a leader of the Oriental Jews—who is not an Oriental Jew, not even a Jew, but who spent the war as a Nazi guard at a concentration camp where medical experiments were performed on Jewish women.”

“I was not a Nazi,” he said hotly.

“A soldier in Hitler's army, then. It won't make any difference.”

They stared at each other. Drops of sweat hung on Calvi's upper lip. Rachel felt her own sweat in her armpits and the small of her back. “And babies,” she continued quietly. “I forgot to mention that it is almost a certainty that medical experiments were performed on babies at Siegfried.”

“I didn't know.” His voice was hoarse.

“No, you had gone before that became apparent. At least to Kopple. You can explain that to the press. Or the courts.” She leaned across the tape recorder and placed her hand on his: “Or you could tell me how to find my son. Maybe you didn't take him—but you have information you're holding back that will lead me to him. I'm not a fool, Mr. Calvi. I can see that. Tell me what it is and I won't breathe a word of what I know. I will let you live out this fraud for as long as you want.” Rachel heard herself pleading with him, but she made no attempt to change her tone. She kept her hand on his.

He looked up, across the square. She followed his gaze. The Bar Mitzvah was over. The boy and his family were returning in high spirits. Even the boy seemed delighted: he would never have to go through that again, and he had his stereo. He yanked off his skull cap and stuffed it into his pocket. They flowed around Sergeant Levy like a river around an island. Sergeant Levy reached down and patted the boy on the head. The family grinned nervously, perhaps only because of Sergeant Levy's size, but the boy didn't seem to mind.

Calvi noticed the cold cigar between his fingers and let it fall to the stones. He watched the American family trail across the square in the direction of the Jaffa Gate and a late lunch. “It's not the fraud you think it is,” he said to Rachel. He drew his hand away and twisted on the bench to face her:

“You are right. I am not a Moroccan Jew. But I am a Jew. A Jew and a German.” Rachel watched the gray eyes closely but they were opaque and far away, in space and time. “If real name means the one you are born with, then Reinhardt is no more my real name than Calvi. Even less.” His voice rose: “I made Simon Calvi real, far more real than Victor Reinhardt ever was.”

“What name were you born with?” Rachel asked softly.

For a long time Calvi said nothing. The bearded old men rocked back and forth, each one alone with the pitted stones. The wall answered all their prayers just by being there.

Calvi raised his eyes up, over her head, toward the horizon. “Victor Mendel,” he said at last, as if he had gone to the edge of memory to find his name.

He laughed a short laugh. An embarrassed laugh. “Victor Mendel. Who the hell was he?” And suddenly he looked at Rachel as if they were old friends sharing a joke from long ago. The surprise made her inhale sharply, the surprise of his familiarity and her reaction to it: she wanted more knowledge of this man for its own sake. Wild thoughts darted through her brain. I'll sleep with you if you tell me where Adam is. He probably has no idea where Adam is, and if he does he probably doesn't know he knows. I'll sleep with you anyway. Rachel bit hard on the inside of her mouth, to bring her mind to order. She tasted blood on her tongue.

“Who was Victor Mendel?”

But he chose to start somewhere else. Old friends have time to digress. “Names. They can be as dangerous as wearing the wrong uniform in a battle. What is wrong with giving them up if they become unsafe?”

Rachel was not sure whether the question was rhetorical, but she had an answer: “Because whenever you do you give up a little of yourself.”

The gray eyes fastened on her own; there was a gentleness she had not expected. “I suppose all women must learn that when they marry,” he said.

At that moment Rachel remembered the guidebook lying on the bench between them. It occurred to her that she was invading her own privacy as much as his.

Calvi patted his pockets, but he had no more cigars. His last one lay at his feet. He left it there. “Statistically,” he said, “Victor Mendel was a very lucky boy. He exists. He still exists. How many Jews who were living in Munich in 1938 can say the same?”

“I don't know.”

“Very few. Ninety percent of the Jews alive in Germany before the war were dead by the end. And the war ended a long time ago. That war. So I am a survivor. I don't make a cult of it the way some others do, but I am a survivor with my dues paid in full.”

As he spoke his eyes grew less watchful, the muscles in his face relaxed. Rachel knew there would be more and waited while he thought.

“Innocence is the currency. Survival is bought with innocence. You are born with an abundance of innocence and no knowledge of how to survive: you spend your life trading one for the other. But it only works one way. You can't buy back your innocence.” Calvi rubbed his hands together as though they were suddenly cold, despite the afternoon sun. “My account has been overdrawn for years.” His tone was light, and had nothing to do with the look in his eyes. They were sad and lonely.

“Tell me about Munich in 1938.”

“Everyone knows about Munich in 1938. There is nothing to tell.”

“I meant how did you go from Munich into Rommel's army?”

The sadness and loneliness sank out of sight as quickly as lead in water. Calvi glanced at Sergeant Levy, who had begun pacing slowly back and forth. “You know so much about me, Miss Bernstein. It's very disquieting.”

“I haven't heard what I need to know.”

“I'm sorry, I don't know anything about your son. No amount of pressure will force me to reveal something I don't know. You are making a mistake.”

“No.”

Calvi sighed. “What do the police say?”

Rachel answered with a sarcastic grunt. For a minute or two they both watched Sergeant Levy walk. There was nothing lumbering about the way he did it—he had the quick sure stride of a gymnast or fencer. His size made it look dainty.

“Munich. 1938.” Calvi's hand moved from his thigh to his pocket, stopped, and returned to the thigh. “How old are you, Miss Bernstein?”

“Thirty-one.”

“So the war was finished before you were even born?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever heard of Kristallnacht?” The German was music on his lips.

“Of course.”

“Not of course, Miss Bernstein. People forget. Soon it will be just a footnote in a textbook. Kristallnacht. November the tenth. It was the night that the Jewish community in Germany was shattered like a pane of glass. Did you know that for months after Kristallnacht over half the Jews who died in Germany were suicides?”

“No.”

“From that night on everyone knew. We knew, even if we did nothing about it. What message could be clearer? We were finished. Many heard the message but did not believe it. My father was one of those. I suppose he had a lot to lose, my father. He was a doctor. We had a big house, a maid, a cook. I was the only child. I went to a good school. On weekends I rode through the countryside with my Aryan friends, on my own horse. Mozart, I named him.” He shook off the memory. “I've never told this to anyone. Why you?”

“I asked.”

Calvi smiled, and continued. As he spoke the smile faded like a last firework against the night sky. “My father was already a doctor in the past tense by November the tenth. Jews had been forbidden to practice medicine a few months before. He was not even permitted to treat Jewish patients, except as an orderly. But through all this he was convinced that the persecution was temporary. He was a cultured man. The Nazis were common hoodlums, drawn from the lowest elements of society. He made that point many times to my mother when she tried to persuade him to take us out of the country while we still had a chance. ‘The natural order will reassert itself,' he would say. He didn't understand that was exactly what was happening.

“On Kristallnacht a band of thugs came to the front of our house. My father went to the door. I wanted to go with him but my mother made me hide with her upstairs. I was sixteen years old and could have insisted that I stay with my father, but I was afraid and yielded to her. We watched from a window on the third floor. My father was a big man, as big as I am. He opened the door. No one hit him. No one tried to force his way into the house. Their leader, a man half my father's size, simply stepped up to him and spat in his face. The saliva slid down his chin, onto his silk cravat. They laughed and went away. We were lucky.