Read Online Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes - Free Book Online Page A

antiaircraft weaponry, still alive within the dead lights of the cities. How strange life can be. But André couldn’t have known this as he described his impressions of the trip in an awkward German, from the American Bar at the Hotel Cristina, with a three-day-old beard, shirtless, and moneyless, after having spent the entire night drinking. “Sometimes I wish you were here” was how he finished the letter.
    That he tempted everyone around him was part of his charm, as was his lack of discipline, his way of appearing self-centered and slightly conceited. A touch of womanizer in him. This, Gerta could not ignore.
    Sometimes … she repeated to herself, rereading the letter. What an imbecile.

Chapter Seven
    S he remained standing in front of her door for a while, house key in hand. The door’s strike plate had been forced and little bits of wood were scattered on the floor. Before she had time to think, she noticed how the blood throbbed in her left temple, a vague, discomforting feeling similar to sensing footsteps behind her while walking home. Her entire body tensed up like an arc, the instinctive precaution of the hare who can smell its hunter. She had imagined this scenario so many times in her head that she no longer recognized it. It was seared into her memory the moment she first stepped foot into that jail cell in Wächterstrasse. There was a muffled pounding in her eardrums, consistent, like waves. She had experienced something similar at the lake, several meters below the water. When you swim under water, you can even hear the blood run through your veins, though not a single sound from the outside world can reach you. If someone were to have called her name in that moment, she would not have been able to hear them. Nor the sound of a gunshot, perhaps.
    Instinctively, she held on to the camera bag resting over her stomach and opened the door slowly with her foot.
    â€œRuth?” she called out. “Are you there?”
    As she entered the hallway, her imagination began registering the chain of events bit by bit: the broken lock, torn-up pieces of paper, a load of gutted books all over the hallway, the photographs torn from the wall, the little glass vase in smithereens, overturned drawers, a bead from her amber necklace rolling across the floor, those equilateral crosses painted on the wall. “Filthy Jews.” The same old story … She detected a strange odor in the house. The sound of boiling water coming from the kitchen. A second before she uncovered the pot, she already knew what she’d find. Captain Flint floating on the surface with a broken neck and his tongue sticking out. She didn’t scream. All she did was turn off the flame and close her eyes. A pang of shame and humiliation galloped up her throat, causing her to retch. She needed a cigarette and sat down on the floor to smoke it, her back against the wall under the swastika. Knees bent, her forehead in her hand. Suddenly it became clear that this was never going to end, that it would always be like this. Either black or white. Or this or that. Who you’re with, in what you believe, who you hate. Who will kill you. In her head, she could hear the faint echo of a handsaw: “ Je te connais , je sais qui tu es.”
    All the metaphysical anguish she experienced during those gatherings at Chez Capoulade were now transformed into pure hate. Specific. Clear. It had nothing to do with ideology but rather with instinct, along with the need to break open somebody’s head. To fight knowing precisely why you’re fighting, to revive the reflexes, the basic elements of defense and self-preservation, tense the muscles, learn how to load and unload a weapon, improve your aim…
    â€œIt’s either you or them, Little Trout.” She recalled Karl’s voice on the rooftop, trying to instruct her in case the moment should ever come.
    The memory stirred up something inside. She missed her brothers.