even, her features happy, smiling, one hand curved around the handle of the knife.
Four
1.
He slept, not having expected to; slept soundly, the brow smooth but for that wrinkle round his broken eye. When he woke, she was standing in the room, halfway between door and bed, a model airplane hanging from a thread an inch above her head. She smelled of food. It wasn’t anything that she was holding; she herself smelled of it, smoked pork and sauerkraut, the sour tang of pickles. The bedside lamp he stretched to light found a spot of grease still moist upon that puckish chin. From his perspective, belly down, face half burrowed in his pillow, there was no way to see her hump. He noticed other things. The rigid structure of her bra made poignant those gentler protrusions of her body, and for a moment he marvelled at her, at her slimness and her leggy grace, the buttoned tightness of her blouse. But then, as though on purpose, she turned and made a show of her deformity; bent over the corner desk, where tin soldiers, corralled in distant boyhood, still huddled in a circle at the centre of the oaken plane, and went through its drawers one by one. What she was looking for was in the bottom left. She retrieved it, blew off the dust, threw it over to him (tousle-haired, sitting up, fumbling witless for his wits), onto the rustic tartan bedding, the smell of childhood seeping from its down.
“I didn’t steal it,” she said brusquely, took his measure with her sullen gaze. “She put it here herself.”
It took him a moment to realize it was a frame, a picture, he was holding, and another to connect it to the empty square on the wall that had pushed his mother to such fury. A wipe of his sleeve was unable to erase what proved to be not dirt but a crack in the glass that ran from bottom left towards the centre, forked lightning leaping from the lacquered frame. The picture, a portrait, was familiar, not just in outline but in its lighting and pose. It was one of a handful that had been in constant circulation even in Switzerland, a publicity shot taken early in the war. Robert had never cared for the moustache. It sat on the lip like a rectangle of tar; hid the furrow; drained all rhythm from the hard line of the mouth. Adolf Hitler looked sullen in the picture, masterly; a little heavy in the jowls. The hairline crack made incisions in his collared throat. Robert studied the picture, then dropped it on his lap; turned his attention over to the girl. He was wearing nothing but his shirt: buttons gaping at the chest. All at once he worried what sort of bulges his body might have cut into the bedding in his sleep.
“How long have you been here?”
“Some minutes. Your eye moved under the lid. The good one.”
A memory returned to him, of a long valley overgrown with summer wheat; bent stalks swaying to the breath of breeze. Somewhere in that porous sky, where dream had given to reality, he’d been troubled by the ardent caw of crows.
“I was dreaming,” he smiled.
She shrugged, one shoulder leading on her crooked trunk, then peeled a finger from her long-boned fist and pushed it near his face.
“That eye was moving. The other one was dead.” She bent closer, breathed sauerkraut onto his mouth. “Is it blind?”
“No,” he answered, aware that the lid had fallen shut, and pulling it up now with his thumb. In his confusion he edged away from her and drew the bedding closer around him. The movement dislodged the picture on his lap and sent it crashing to the ground. Neither of them moved to pick it up.
The girl turned away again, resumed her survey of the desk. She pulled the topmost drawer out of its compartment then dropped it on the table-top, spilling soldiers left and right.
“It’s full of her stuff,” she said, sifting through the contents with both hands. “Photos, magazine clippings. Letters of congratulations, thank-you notes, commendations. Her Party correspondence. Nice stationery, some of it. She even
Four
1.
He slept, not having expected to; slept soundly, the brow smooth but for that wrinkle round his broken eye. When he woke, she was standing in the room, halfway between door and bed, a model airplane hanging from a thread an inch above her head. She smelled of food. It wasn’t anything that she was holding; she herself smelled of it, smoked pork and sauerkraut, the sour tang of pickles. The bedside lamp he stretched to light found a spot of grease still moist upon that puckish chin. From his perspective, belly down, face half burrowed in his pillow, there was no way to see her hump. He noticed other things. The rigid structure of her bra made poignant those gentler protrusions of her body, and for a moment he marvelled at her, at her slimness and her leggy grace, the buttoned tightness of her blouse. But then, as though on purpose, she turned and made a show of her deformity; bent over the corner desk, where tin soldiers, corralled in distant boyhood, still huddled in a circle at the centre of the oaken plane, and went through its drawers one by one. What she was looking for was in the bottom left. She retrieved it, blew off the dust, threw it over to him (tousle-haired, sitting up, fumbling witless for his wits), onto the rustic tartan bedding, the smell of childhood seeping from its down.
“I didn’t steal it,” she said brusquely, took his measure with her sullen gaze. “She put it here herself.”
It took him a moment to realize it was a frame, a picture, he was holding, and another to connect it to the empty square on the wall that had pushed his mother to such fury. A wipe of his sleeve was unable to erase what proved to be not dirt but a crack in the glass that ran from bottom left towards the centre, forked lightning leaping from the lacquered frame. The picture, a portrait, was familiar, not just in outline but in its lighting and pose. It was one of a handful that had been in constant circulation even in Switzerland, a publicity shot taken early in the war. Robert had never cared for the moustache. It sat on the lip like a rectangle of tar; hid the furrow; drained all rhythm from the hard line of the mouth. Adolf Hitler looked sullen in the picture, masterly; a little heavy in the jowls. The hairline crack made incisions in his collared throat. Robert studied the picture, then dropped it on his lap; turned his attention over to the girl. He was wearing nothing but his shirt: buttons gaping at the chest. All at once he worried what sort of bulges his body might have cut into the bedding in his sleep.
“How long have you been here?”
“Some minutes. Your eye moved under the lid. The good one.”
A memory returned to him, of a long valley overgrown with summer wheat; bent stalks swaying to the breath of breeze. Somewhere in that porous sky, where dream had given to reality, he’d been troubled by the ardent caw of crows.
“I was dreaming,” he smiled.
She shrugged, one shoulder leading on her crooked trunk, then peeled a finger from her long-boned fist and pushed it near his face.
“That eye was moving. The other one was dead.” She bent closer, breathed sauerkraut onto his mouth. “Is it blind?”
“No,” he answered, aware that the lid had fallen shut, and pulling it up now with his thumb. In his confusion he edged away from her and drew the bedding closer around him. The movement dislodged the picture on his lap and sent it crashing to the ground. Neither of them moved to pick it up.
The girl turned away again, resumed her survey of the desk. She pulled the topmost drawer out of its compartment then dropped it on the table-top, spilling soldiers left and right.
“It’s full of her stuff,” she said, sifting through the contents with both hands. “Photos, magazine clippings. Letters of congratulations, thank-you notes, commendations. Her Party correspondence. Nice stationery, some of it. She even
Similar Books
