The Informer (7 page)

The train stopped and the doors slid open. Gaelle was amazed they worked when the men were kicking and grunting, shoving and hitting. One of the young men in a white shirt was bleeding from the nose, and the drops on the floor looked like red buttons that weren’t the same size. This
man reached down, still dripping from the nose, and dragged a friend of his outside, onto the platform. Then Mani, Georg, Karl, and the other Red Front Fighters tumbled out the door onto the platform, too.

They formed up into two sides. Georg, Mani, and Karl and the other members of their group on one side and the young men in brown pants and white shirts on the other. Everyone hesitated, thinking things over. They swore at one another. Mani spit at the men in brown pants. Georg threw a ball bearing. Gaelle came up to the door, and as she was about to step out onto the platform, the door slid shut.

The train jerked. Karl turned from the men who were opposite him and looked at Gaelle, not seeming to judge her so much as to understand. Mani turned away from the line of men, too, and as his eyes caught hers, with the faintly greasy piece of glass of the door between them, he nodded and then, as clearly as though he were speaking out loud, he asked by his expression, the movement of his eyes, in the electric moment when he reached into his pocket for a ball bearing, just how she was going to make up for this.

Karl went on staring at her as the train began to move, and when someone hit him, he just shrugged if off and continue to stare, a little hurt now, or so it seemed, and this only made Gaelle angrier. How dare anyone accuse her? What the fuck did they know? Had they been down on their knees in front of a park bench? Had they put a face next to that of a beautiful young woman to see what fate had done just to show its power, its delight in the chaotic? Then Mani, Karl, and the others disappeared into a jumble of arms and legs as a large, brown, earth-colored thing flew over the platform. Gaelle realized that it was a potato with nails in it.

Gaelle sat there, her hands shaking. Every now and then one of the people in the car looked at her, but she didn’t look back. Had someone been killed, and if that had happened, was she involved? Would she pay the price, even though she had clearly told Mani to get lost, to go screw himself, since as far as she could tell, no one else would do it. Would the police track her down in the park or at her apartment? She thought of the three-room place she had rented not too far from the Tiergarten. Her fingers trembled at her lips, and the movement reminded her of the wings of a moth she had once touched. When she looked down, she realized that the
fight could have been an illusion, and if it hadn’t been for the stain on the floor, she could almost convince herself of that. Underneath it all she was disappointed she had let herself consider love or affection or anything like that at all, and now she told herself she would put that into her own, most dark recesses, into a place that was going to be sealed up for good. She trembled with the effort, to get ready to do business, since that was what was so obviously required.

The train stopped. She got off and stood on the platform. Then she turned to look back along the tracks where the train had come from, and in the distance, vastly diminished, she thought she could make out the platform where Mani and Georg and the others might still be fighting. The rails were shiny and curved away into the distance. She paced back and forth, looking for an angle, a way to fix this up, to make sure she had some help. The atmosphere on the platform, which was a kind of perfume of fear, was precisely what Hauptmann had left her with: it was the scent of being alone. Then she was angry that she had found herself so neatly suspended, as she often was, between what she tried to do and what it got her.

She crossed under the tracks to the other side of the station so she could catch the next train back the way she had come. Blocks of apartments stood by the river, which made a silver path. Then she walked back and forth, wanting the train to come and dreading its arrival. What was she going to do if she got back and they were still fighting?

The train arrived and she got on. Men rustled newspapers as they shook them out and folded them, and the scent of the women’s perfume hung in the air. There wasn’t so much of that as there had been before the slump, but it was nice to smell. She felt the lurch of the car and wondered what would happen if the police went to her parents’ apartment. At least she didn’t live there anymore.

The train pulled into the station where the young men had been. She got out of the car and looked across to the other platform, but it was empty. The train pulled away with a highly geared whine, which sounded to her like a toy being wound so tightly it would finally break. She was sweating.

Finally she crossed over to the other side of the station, went downstairs and under the track and then climbed the steps, and on the platform she felt the presence of the fight, which seemed to linger like smoke. The air
was warm, but she hugged herself and walked back and forth, although she stopped at some red drops about the size of a coin. The brightness of them, like new red paint, reminded her that she wasn’t finished with Mani. The contest hadn’t been decided, not yet.

Two uniformed officers, the Schutzpolice, stood in the street under the track. Mani had told her that in a street fight, which the police had tried to break up with men on horses, Mani had used a knife to stab a horse. He said it had been a black horse and that the blood seemed all the redder, all the more glistening, as it had run down the horse’s black leg.

“So, you’ve come back.”

The man with the blue eyes stood on the platform.

“You,” he said. “I’m talking to you. Girl, come.”

“Girl?” she said.

“All right. Woman. Is that better? Come,” he said.

He was tall, heavy in the shoulders, tanned, with bright yellow hair. He held out his hand and beckoned to her. An approaching train made a whine, and overhead some pigeons flew into the air, their wings fluttering with an anxious sound.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said.

“What makes you think you could hurt me?” she said.

He smiled. Then he stepped closer, and as he did, she saw that one of his hands was swollen. He put it in his pocket and tried to look nonchalant.

“Why do you want to hang around with those people?” he said.

She stood there, thinking that she should slap him. She’d had enough. A hard, loud smack. Then she took an inventory of his features, his combed hair, which shone in the light, his rough, definite good looks, his broad shoulders, his smile.

The man glanced at her scar and watched as she turned her head a little to let him see it. He blushed.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s go downstairs.”

“Why should I go anywhere with you?” she said.

“Because you want to,” he said.

“And what are we going to do?” she said.

“We’ll have a glass of beer,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

“And why do you want to do that?” she said.

He looked around.

“You know what kind of trouble I could get into, just being seen with you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“Have you ever taken a chance? Done something you shouldn’t?”

He looked at the scar.

“Can I touch it?” he said.

She stared at him.

He looked around, too, and he wasn’t smiling either. “If I’m willing to take that chance, it means I really want to talk. Doesn’t that count?”

She took a step down the stairs, but he reached out and took her arm.

“No,” he said. “Not that way. Can’t you see the cops?”

They turned and went back to the other end of the platform, the two of them walking side by side. Then they went down the stairs and stood under the elevated tracks next to a support, which was a sort of steel pylon, four corners that were held together with metal Xs, all the way up to the tracks overhead.

He looked around.

“We shouldn’t be seen together,” he said. “You from your side, me from mine.”

They went into a restaurant that had a long bar at the back, parallel to the windows at the front. This made the place bright, and the surface of the tables, which was a black marble, gleamed under a cloud of cigarette smoke. Some tables were arranged on the sidewalk, but Gaelle and the man went by them, inside to a table as far away from the door as possible. The man went to the bar, where people got out of his way. He brought back two glasses, which he put down just like that. Bang.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Aksel,” he said. “And yours?”

“Gaelle,” she said.

“Gaelle. And, Gaelle, where do you live?”

“On Fliegstrasse,” she said.

“There’s a park there,” he said. “I know the place.”

“It’s a small park. Kids and their mothers.”

She wanted to say something to insult him, to make this end. Why couldn’t she be more in control of things like that? She had another drink.

“So,” he said. “What are you doing with those guys?”

“I have my reasons,” she said. “What about you?”

“In the middle of the street fights everything is clear. That’s what I like.”

“And are you going to be doing some fighting someplace soon?”

“You think I am that stupid,” he said. “You come here with me, and then I tell you things? And you tell your pals?”

“I thought you wanted to talk,” she said. “That’s all.”

“And what about you? Don’t you want to talk to me? Isn’t there something eating at you?”

“No,” she said. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“You’re sure? You look worried,” he said.

The bar was filled with cigarette smoke, and down at the end someone laughed. It all seemed so ordinary, really, just a bunch of men having some beer while outside two uniformed policeman went by.

“I tried to give you a nice time. And what do you give me? Contempt,” he said. He looked right at her.

She leaned close to him and came into the slight odor of his hair and skin, and she knew that her perfume made him lean toward her. The perfume was muted and made a special scent, different on her skin than it was in the bottle. She leaned closer, and then said, “Thanks for the beer.”

“That’s all you have to say?” he said.

“No,” she said. She looked right at him. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know what you think about us on our side.” He put out his hand. “Well, I won’t forget you.”

She almost took it, but then stopped and turned into the smoke in the bar, which was as thick as a layer of fog near the ceiling. She tried for a businesslike gait, square shouldered, passing the men at the small round tables who read newspapers, smoked, and tried to discover something in the thin lines of print. She turned and looked back when she was outside.

Aksel was still looking at her, smiling, and when she was about to turn away for good, he blew her a kiss. It was so sudden a gesture that she almost
felt it, like the touch of an insect against her cheek. And while she had been infuriated, she kept thinking about it. Then she went back up to the station to go one stop to the Zoologischer Garten station and as she waited for the train, she thought, Fuck them all.

After the delicious, momentary relief from thinking this way, her sense of fear came back almost as though it were a gas that seeped up from the ground and hung around her. Like something escaped from a sewer.

She thought of the slick texture of her mother’s dress, of the comfort of being there in her mother’s lap, and the attractions of going home were so enormous that she momentarily forgot her isolation. But she had already tried that, and so she stood on the platform and stared into the distance. At least she took some comfort that the desire to be loved was now carefully hidden, sealed off in the most secret and darkest of recesses.

T
he man on the train from Moscow to Berlin was Russian, but he was traveling under the name “Gerhard Schmidt.” He was over six feet tall and wore dark pants and stylish shoes made of very thin leather, which he got through the Italian embassy. His jacket was European, too, but his topcoat was Russian, long, heavy, and with a skirt that came down below his knees. He was vain about his broad-brimmed hat. He had emerged from steam on the platform of the Moscow train station as though materializing out of a dream, one hand carrying his small suitcase in which there were two shirts, two changes of underwear, his razor, a badger shaving brush, and a pistol. There was no need to worry about the pistol, since he traveled on a diplomatic passport. He had one other suitcase, too, which was filled with reichsmarks. Fresh, new, just printed. They were well made, and he doubted if someone from the German mint would be able to tell the difference between these notes made in Moscow and the ones produced in Berlin.

He turned and looked through the steam to the entrance of the platform. The streets had been almost deserted, just some hungry people who were trying to find something to eat. He thought about the days just after the revolution in Moscow when wooden houses had been pulled down for firewood. And when the peasants in the countryside had withheld food, the army had been sent to collect what was needed. The Russian peasant was going to have to be dealt with, and the question was how. Hunger. That was one way. In fact, as he smelled the machine-scented steam, he thought it was probably the best way to deal with them. Hunger was something they should be able to understand.

He thought about the Moscow River, too, and how, when it was still and reflected the city, it gave him a moment of clarity. Nothing moved
then. Just the mirror of river, which showed the buildings on the other side, the bridges, the sky. It was the only memory that made him homesick when he was away, and while he had been sent to many places in Russia recently, he wasn’t so comfortable leaving Moscow just now. People like him had gone to Italy or France, and then when they had come back, they had been destroyed because they had seen how people lived in Europe. Or just because they hadn’t been able to keep up with developments in Moscow. And so while it was an honor to be chosen to go to Berlin, he still looked uneasily at the steam, the glistening engines, the lighted train cars. Gerhard Schmidt thought about the people the police had been pulling out of the Moscow River recently, officials of one kind or another. Then he shrugged and got on the train.

He didn’t read. He sat upright, hands folded in his lap, occasionally looking out the window at the landscape. It was spring now, but he thought of fall, when the stands of popple around the fields were a haunting yellow. He liked to think about that color, as though if he could just remember it clearly enough, why then he couldn’t ever really feel that he was too far away. And there was another aspect of those fields around Moscow in the fall. Some afternoons the light had a yellow, smoky quality, and while it was like a warm fog, it suggested a kind of ghost of spring, or perhaps it was just the promise of spring. Still, he liked the ghostlike association. That was probably closer to the truth.

He checked to make sure the pistol was still in his bag. He was surprised that he needed to do this, since the bag was never out of his sight, but even though he knew it was there, he still began to feel uneasy. He imagined the trouble he would have if it got out of his hands, and even though he knew this was unlikely, every hundred miles or so, maybe a little more when he tried to resist, he got up and took the suitcase down from the rack and looked inside, glancing at the sheen of black metal, touching it once and then, after he had put the suitcase away, smelling the gun oil on his hand. This was like the scent of fate. Or the scent of fate prettied up, since not only was it machinelike, but it also had a slight, sweet perfume. From time to time, when he wasn’t worrying about the pistol, he thought of the man he was going to see in Berlin.

Gerhard Schmidt didn’t eat much. In the pocket of his coat he had a
couple of rolls and a piece of sausage, wrapped in paper stained with grease, and every three hundred miles he took out his pocketknife, cut a piece of the sausage, and tore off a piece of bread, chewing slowly, watching the countryside go by. He ate with a steady, repetitive motion, more like a man making something in a factory than actually eating. He had his orders, and he supposed he wouldn’t have too much trouble. People in Berlin had to understand that changes were being made in Moscow, and that the factionalism in Russia needed to be settled, and if the other parties in other countries like Germany didn’t give their support, then they would have to be informed of the dangers. No factionalism. What was good for the Soviets was good for everyone. That was his job. He had his methods.

About halfway to Berlin, a young woman sat down next to Herr Schmidt. Her hair was very dark, and her skin was so pale that he thought she was Ukrainian. He hoped that she didn’t have any relatives there, since he knew what was going to happen soon, not to mention things that had already been done. No nationalism, of any group, no desire for independence was going to be tolerated. When she tried to strike up a conversation, he just looked at her. Yes, he thought, she was probably Ukrainian. Then he went back to keeping an eye on his bag or looking out the window.

He slept sitting straight up, hands in his lap. He closed his eyes, pushed his head back a little, and as he slept he could still feel the movement of the train. He dreamed of the Moscow River in the evening when the wind had died down and the surface was as smooth as a ground lens. He knew that the secret to doing what he had to do was to believe very few things. The names of people he had to see. The details of his job. If he cluttered up his head with too much theory and policy, then he would just have to forget it later when it changed. It was better to try to remember that power existed with its own beauty and clarity, like the surface of the river, and that it was his job to act on its behalf. That was all there was to it. It was difficult to see power when it wasn’t being used, and so he thought of it as a shiny and beguiling surface of a river, although one that could wash over anyone who got in its way.

In Germany he looked out the window with that same green-eyed indifference, as though the landscape here were not pretty or ugly or anything at all except as a stage, a location, a site where something was going to happen.

Everything else was secondary. Just when he came into Berlin, he took the piece of paper out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and looked at the last piece of sausage and the last piece of bread. He had made it come out perfectly, and so he ate the last part of it, watching as the train went through the outskirts of the city, which he saw as a smear of smoke above the buildings that manufactured stopwatches. Bicycle tires. Gears. Cable. Sheets of metal.

He stood up and took his suitcases from the rack and then walked along the aisle between the seats. He went down the steps to the platform, where he emerged again from the steam as though he had not taken the train but had been transported by some new process from Moscow. Then he started walking toward the station, where he smelled the sweet strudel, the cinnamon, the beer from the café, and when he came up to the door, he looked in. But that was it. He stood there, resisting it, feeling good that he could control himself even after the days he had been on the train. Instead, he put his bags down and brought his fingers up to his nose and smelled the scent of gun oil. He could still smell it as he walked from the train station to his hotel, a small, cheap place on a side street in the middle of the city.