The One From the Other (27 page)

If Heidi had grown up she might have looked something like the nurse of the man in the wheelchair. She wore a pink knee-length dirndl, a white low-cut blouse with short puffy sleeves, a white cotton apron, lacy kneesocks, and the same sort of sensible shoes as her bearded charge. I knew she was supposed to be a nurse, because she had a little upside-down watch pinned to her blouse and a white cap on her head. She was blond, but not the sunny kind of blond, or the gilded kind, but the enigmatic, wistful kind you might find lost in some sylvan glade. Her mouth was slightly sulky and her eyes were a sort of lavender color. I tried not to notice her bosom. And then I tried again, only it kept on singing to me like it was perched on a rock in the Rhine River and I was some poor, dumb sailor with an ear for music. All women are nurses at bottom. It’s in their nature to nurture. Some look more like nurses than others. And some women manage to make being a nurse look like Delilah’s last stratagem. The nurse at Henkell’s house was the second kind. With a face and figure like hers she would have made my old army great-coat look like a silk dressing gown.

Henkell caught me licking my lips and grinned as he helped me out of the Mercedes. “I told you you would like it here,” he said.

“I love it when you’re right like this,” I said.

We went into the house, where Henkell introduced me. The man in the wheelchair was Eric Gruen. The nurse’s name was Engelbertina Zehner. Engelbertina means “bright angel.” Somehow it suited her. They both seemed quite excited to see me. Then again the house wasn’t exactly the kind of place you would just drop in unannounced. Not unless you were wearing a parachute. They were probably glad of new company, even if the company was wrapped up in himself. We all shook hands. Gruen’s hand was soft and a little moist, as if he was nervous about something. Engelbertina’s hand was as hard and rough as a sheet of sandpaper, which shocked me a little and made me think that private nursing had its tough side. I sat down on a big, comfortable sofa and let out a big, comfortable sigh.

“That’s quite a walk,” I said, glancing back at the enormous drawing room. Engelbertina was already stuffing a cushion behind my back. That was when I noticed the tattoo on the top of her left forearm. Which went a long way to explaining how it was her hands were so tough. The rest of her must have been pretty tough, too. But for now I put it out of my mind. I was trying to get away from things like that. Besides, something good was cooking in the kitchen and, for the first time in weeks, I felt hungry. Another woman appeared in the doorway. She was attractive, too, in the same older, larger, slightly worn way that I was attractive myself. Her name was Raina, and she was the cook.

“Herr Gunther is a private detective,” said Henkell.

“That must be interesting,” said Gruen.

“When it gets interesting, that’s usually the time to reach for a gun,” I said.

“How does one get into that line of work?” asked Gruen, relighting his pipe. Engelbertina didn’t seem to like the smoke and waved it away from her face with the flat of her hand. Gruen ignored her and I made a mental note not to, and to smoke outside for a while.

“I used to be a cop in Berlin,” I said. “A detective with KRIPO. Before the war.”

“Did you ever catch a murderer?” she asked.

Normally I’d flick a question like that off my lapel. But I wanted to impress her. “Once,” I said. “A long time ago. A strangler called Gormann.”

“I remember that case,” said Gruen. “That was a famous case.”

I shrugged. “Like I said. It was a long time ago.”

“We shall have to watch our step, Engelbertina,” said Gruen. “Otherwise Herr Gunther will know all our nastiest little secrets. I expect he’s already started sizing us up.”

“Relax,” I told them. “Truth is, I never was much of a cop. I have a problem with authority.”

“That’s hardly very German of you, old boy,” said Gruen.

“That’s why I was in the hospital,” I said. “I got warned off a case I was working on. And the warning didn’t take.”

“I suppose you have to be very observant,” said Engelbertina.

“If I was, maybe I wouldn’t have got myself beaten up.”

“Good point,” agreed Gruen.

For a minute he and Engelbertina discussed a favorite detective story, which was my cue to switch off, briefly. I hate detective stories. I glanced at my surroundings. At the red-and-white-checked curtains, the green shutters, the hand-painted cabinets, the thick fur rugs, the two-hundred-year-old oak beams, the four-poster fire-place, the paintings of vines and flowers, and—no Alpine home was complete without one—an old ox harness. The room was big but I still felt as cozy as a slice of bread in an electric toaster.

Lunch was served. I ate it. More than I had expected to eat. Then I had a sleep in an armchair. When I woke up I found myself alone with Gruen. He seemed to have been there for a while. He was looking at me in a curious sort of way that I felt deserved some kind of explanation.

“Was there something you wanted, Herr Gruen?”

“No, no,” he said. “And please, call me Eric.” He wheeled his chair back a little. “It’s just that I had the feeling we’d met somewhere before, you and I. Your face seems very familiar to me.”

I shrugged. “I guess I must have that kind of face,” I said, remembering the American back at my hotel in Dachau. I recalled him making a similar remark. “I guess it’s lucky I became a cop,” I added. “Otherwise my photograph might get me pinched for something I hadn’t done.”

“Were you ever in Vienna?” he asked. “Or Bremen?”

“Vienna, yes,” I said. “But not Bremen.”

“Bremen. It’s not an interesting town,” he said. “Not like Berlin.”

“It seems that these days, there’s nowhere quite as interesting as Berlin,” I said. “That’s why I don’t live there. Too dangerous. If ever there’s another war, Berlin is where it will start.”

“But it could hardly be more dangerous than Munich,” said Gruen. “For you, I mean. According to Heinrich, the men who beat you up almost killed you.”

“Almost,” I said. “By the way, where is Dr. Henkell?”

“Gone down to the laboratory, in Partenkirchen. We won’t see him again until dinner. Maybe not even then. Not now that you’re here, Herr Gunther.”

“Bernie, please.”

He bowed his head politely. “What I mean is, he won’t feel obliged to have dinner with me, as he usually does.” He leaned across, took hold of my hand, and squeezed it companionably. “I’m very glad to have you here. It gets pretty lonely here, sometimes.”

“You have Raina,” I said. “And Engelbertina. Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you.”

“Oh, they’re both very nice, of course. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t know what to do without Engelbertina to look after me. But a man needs another man to talk to. Raina stays in the kitchen and keeps to herself. And Engelbertina isn’t much of a conversationalist. I daresay that’s not so very surprising. She’s had a hard life. I expect she’ll tell you all about it in due course. When she’s ready.”

I nodded, remembering the number tattooed on Engelbertina’s forearm. With the possible exception of Erich Kaufmann, the Jewish lawyer who had given me my first case in Munich, I hadn’t ever met a Jew from one of the Nazi death camps. Most of them were dead, of course. The rest were in Israel or America. And the only reason I knew about the number was because I had read a magazine article about Jewish prisoners being tattooed and, at the time, it had struck me that at least a Jew could wear such a tattoo with a certain amount of pride. My own SS number, tattooed under my arm, had been removed, rather painfully, with the aid of a cigarette lighter. “Is she Jewish?” I asked. I didn’t know if Zehner was a Jewish name. But I could see no other explanation for the blue numbers on her arm.

Gruen nodded. “She was in Auschwitz-Birkenau. That was one of the worst camps. It’s near Kraków, in Poland.”

I felt the eyebrows lift on my forehead. “Does she know? About you and Heinrich? And about me? That we were all in the SS?”

“What do you think?”

“I think if she knew she would be on the first train to the DP camp at Landsberg,” I said. “And then on the next ship for Israel. Why on earth would she stay?” I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m going to like it here after all.”

“Well, you’re in for a surprise,” Gruen said, almost proudly. “She does know. About me and Heinrich, anyway. What’s more, she doesn’t care.”

“Good God, why? I don’t understand that at all.”

“It’s because after the war,” said Gruen, “she became a Roman Catholic. She believes in forgiveness and she believes in the work being done at the laboratory.” He frowned. “Oh, don’t look so surprised, Bernie. Her conversion is not without precedent. Jews were the first Christians, you know.” He shook his head in wonder. “For how she’s dealt with what happened to her, I really admire her.”

“Hard not to, I suppose. When you look at her.”

“Besides, all that insanity is behind us.”

“So I was led to believe.”

“Forgive and forget. That’s what Engelbertina says.”

“Funny thing about forgiveness,” I said. “Someone has to look and act like they’re sorry for there to be any chance of real forgiveness.”

“Everyone in Germany is sorry for what happened,” said Gruen. “You believe that, don’t you?”

“Sure we’re sorry,” I said. “We’re sorry we got beat. We’re sorry our cities got bombed to rubble. We’re sorry our country is occupied by the armies of four other countries. We’re sorry our soldiers are accused of war crimes and imprisoned in Landsberg. We’re sorry we lost, Eric. But not for much else. I just don’t see the evidence.”

Gruen let out a sigh. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

I shrugged back at him. “What the hell do I know? I’m just a detective.”

“Come now,” he said with a smile. “Aren’t you supposed to know who did it? Who committed the crime? You have to be right about that, don’t you?”

“People don’t want cops to be right,” I said. “They want a priest to be right. Or a government. Even a lawyer, on occasion. But never a cop. It’s only in books that people want cops to be right. Most of the time they much prefer us to be wrong about nearly everything. That makes them feel superior, I suppose. Besides, Germany’s all through with people who were always right. What we need now are a few honest mistakes.”

Gruen was looking miserable. I smiled at him and said: “Hell, Eric, you said you wanted to have some real conversation. It looks like you got it.”

TWENTY-THREE

We got along pretty well, Gruen and I. After a while I even liked him. Quite a few years had passed since I’d had any kind of a friend. That was one of the things I missed most about Kirsten. For a while she had been my best friend as well as my wife and lover. I didn’t appreciate how much I missed having a friend until I started talking to Gruen. There was something about the man that got to me, in a good way. Maybe it was the fact that he was in a wheelchair and yet somehow managed to be cheerful. More cheerful than me, anyway, which wasn’t saying much. Maybe it was the fact that he stayed in good spirits even though his general health was not good—some days he was too ill to get out of bed, which left me alone with Engelbertina. Occasionally, when he was feeling well enough, he went with Henkell to the laboratory in Partenkirchen. Before the war he had also been a doctor and he enjoyed helping Henkell with some of the lab work. That also left me alone with Engelbertina.

When I started to feel a little better myself I would take Gruen outside for a walk, which is to say I rolled him up and down the garden for a while. Henkell had been right. Mönch was a great place for improving your health. The air was as fresh as morning dew on gentian, and there is always something about a view of a mountain or a valley that eventually penetrates the hard membrane of one’s own view of things in general. Life looks better in an Alpine meadow, especially when the accommodation is Pullman class.

One day I was wheeling Gruen along a path cut into the mountain side, when I noticed him staring at my hand on the handle of his wheelchair.

“I’ve only just noticed,” he said.

“Noticed what?” I asked.

“Your little finger. You don’t have one.”

“Actually, I do,” I said. “But there was a time when I had two. One on each hand.”

“And you a detective, too,” he scolded, and held up his own left hand to reveal that half of his little finger was missing. Just like mine. “So much for your powers of observation. Actually, I’m beginning to doubt you were ever a detective at all, my friend. And if you were, you can’t have been a very good one. What is it that Sherlock Holmes says to Dr. Watson? You see but you do not observe.” He grinned and twisted the end of one of his mustaches, apparently enjoying my surprise and momentary discomfiture.

“That’s crap and you know it,” I said. “The whole idea of my coming here was so that I could switch off for a while. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

“You’re making excuses, Gunther. Next thing you’ll be saying is that you’ve been ill, or some nonsense like that. That you didn’t notice my missing finger because the beating detached your retina. Which is also why you haven’t noticed that Engelbertina is a little in love with you.”

“What?” I stopped the wheelchair, kicked on the brake, and came around the front.

“Yes, really, it’s quite noticeable.” He smiled. “And you call yourself a detective.”

“What do you mean, a little in love with me?”

“I don’t say that she’s madly in love with you,” he said. “I say a little bit.” He got out his pipe and started to fill it. “Oh, she hasn’t said as much. But after all, I happen to know her quite well. Well enough to know that being a little in love is all she’s probably capable of, the poor lamb.” He patted his pockets. “I seem to have left my matches back at the house. Do you have a strike?”

“What’s your evidence?” I tossed him a box of matches.