The Second Winter, page 1
Copyright © 2016 by Craig Larsen
Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 267 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Larsen, Craig, author.
Title: The second winter / by Craig Larsen.
Description: New York : Other Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015039575| ISBN 9781590517888
(softcover) | ISBN 9781590517895 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945–Denmark–
Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3612.A765 S43 2016 |
DDC 813/.6–dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039575
Publisher’s Note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
A Portrait of Polina
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Fredrik
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Hermann
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Amalia
Chapter 10
Angela Schmidt
Chapter 11
Franz Jakobsen
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
The Family Gregersen
Chapter 16
Polina’s Sky
Chapter 17
The Wall
Chapter 18
Oskar
Chapter 19
Where the Road Turns
Chapter 20
Paper Hearts
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
A Pair of Gloves
Chapter 25
An Overdose
Chapter 26
Polina Captured
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Fredrik’s Want
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Amerika
Chapter 31
Acknowledgments
About the Author
A PORTRAIT OF POLINA
1.
East Berlin. August 1969.
The bus window framed the image with the geometric clarity of a camera lens. Beyond the glass, on the ground floor of a faceless apartment block, a pigeon was trapped in the sooty mesh of a torn screen. The boulevard had narrowed into a single lane approaching the border into West Berlin, and traffic had slowed to a crawl. On board the tourist coach, only one passenger noticed the stricken bird. Its wings were spread wide. Its scrawny chest was thrust out. In the blur of the woman’s peripheral vision, for a brief instant the creature became a child — a girl, straining to free herself, her arms pinioned behind her back. Surprised by the violence of the image, the woman twisted in her seat to watch as long as she could. The pigeon’s feathers were snared on the jagged wire. Beneath its claws, dust rose from the concrete windowsill like smoke. Threads of down fluttered to the sidewalk.
The woman’s fingers slipped on the chrome handle on the seatback in front of her as the pigeon slid from view. It was a humid afternoon, and Angela Schmidt was suddenly aware of how sweaty her hands were. She barely smiled when she met the eyes of another passenger — the timpanist, Franck, wasn’t it? — then faced forward again, allowed her gaze to return to the grim façades of the buildings passing outside the filthy windows. The other members of the symphony had changed back into their casual clothes before boarding the two coaches hired by the orchestra for this tour. She was still wearing the same formal dress she had worn for the concert the evening before. In the dense air, the charcoal gown was becoming as heavy as a soggy blanket. The woman next to her — a short woman with hairy forearms and olive skin — shifted and tried to catch her attention, but Angela ignored her. What was taking them so long? How much farther before the checkpoint? She tried to forget the trapped bird, she tried to make herself comfortable in her seat, but couldn’t. Her stiff costume, she realized, stood out from her colleagues’ more colorful outfits like a stone dropped into a field of grass.
Fifteen minutes later, the brakes squealed, and the bus lurched then trundled over fractured pavement as it followed the other bus off the boulevard into a parking lot. The Berlin Wall loomed beyond a chain-link fence crowned with rusty barbed wire. Angela’s grip tightened on the chrome bar. She sat up to get a better view out the front, then instructed herself to relax. If she appeared too nervous, the border police would fasten on her. This wasn’t Angela’s first visit to East Berlin. She knew the drill. Usually, crossing back into the West, the inspections were cursory. Passport control was managed by a company representative. There were fifty people on this bus at least, half the symphony — too many to question. All she had to do was remain calm. She was a violinist with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester of Munich. She had been playing the violin since she was five. She had been with the orchestra for six years, since she was thirty-one years old. She was respected, married to an industrial designer. She and her husband paid their taxes, they lived in an apartment with a spare bedroom, drove a 1967 Mercedes-Benz 250 sedan. All she had to do was relax. Relax. She wiped her hands on her thighs, folded them deliberately in her lap, shook the tension from her shoulders.
The diesel engine settled into an unsteady idle, sputtered, then came to an abrupt stop. The hydraulic system hissed, the door swung open. A man dressed in a green uniform climbed the stairs. His eyes darted up the aisle. Angela looked down at her fingers. The cheap ring Lutz had bought her five years before, when they were finally married, caught the diffused sunlight like a small chunk of plastic. Lutz was having an affair. They had never spoken about his infidelity, but Lutz didn’t try to hide it. She didn’t want him to. It was worse to lie to each other, wasn’t it? Relax, Angela, relax. She reached for her throat, through the fabric of her dress touched a diamond and sapphire pendant dangling from a delicate platinum chain around her neck, made certain that it remained hidden beneath her collar.
When she dared to raise her eyes again, the border patrolman was three steps up the aisle, pacing slowly. Another soldier, shielded from view, was on board as well, speaking to the driver in German so guttural that he could have been choking. The patrolman’s uniform was perfectly pressed. There was something fastidious about him, something precise. He was wearing glasses an engineer would wear. Even from this distance, Angela could see how immaculate the lenses were. His features were fine, his skin unshaven but smooth. The hair visible below the rim of his cap was clipped short, close to the scalp. When their eyes connected, Angela froze. She dropped her gaze, straightened the ring on her finger, forced herself to breathe.
Next to her, the olive-skinned woman ventured something in a whisper. The few words sent a wave of adrenaline through Angela’s chest. Her skin tingled. It took her a few beats to understand the woman’s question. You don’t think they’ll go through the bags in the hold, do you?
Angela offered the woman a curt smile.
“That could take hours,” the woman said, “if they do it thoroughly.”
Angela had to stifle herself. She wanted to whisper shhh! so forcefully that her lips twitched. She was still on edge. The dark streets of East Berlin still haunted her. After the concert had ended the night before, she had stayed behind in the symphony hall when the rest of the orchestra boarded the buses for the hotel. She had locked herself in a stall in the women’s room until the voices receded and she was certain that the cleaning crew was finished with their work. Then — with the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony still replaying itself in her head — she had felt her way across the stage and out of the pitch-black concert hall. At midnight, East Berlin was deserted. She hugged the walls, found cover in the shadows. Certain that she was being followed, she ducked into a bar, then detoured down an alley in search of the address she had been given by her cousin in Munich. Now, the echo of her frantic footsteps rang in her ears. For God’s sake, Angela, relax. Her hands were squeezed into fists, and she told herself to loosen them.
Walking the length of the bus, the patrolman let his fingers brush over the top of the seatbacks. His footsteps paused. Angela’s gaze traveled up his arm, across the stiff collar of his shirt, to his thin, bloodless lips, the chiseled beak of his chin. He had taken notice of a particularly large bag in the overhead rack, and he appeared to be reading the tag on the handle. His Adam’s apple ratcheted up and down, needle-sharp against the silk of his throat. “Amanda Christian,” he said.
Two seats forward, next to the window, a blond-haired woman straightened in her seat.
“This suitcase belongs to you?”
&nbs
The patrolman pulled it from the rack. “It is a large bag for such a short trip.”
The woman shrugged. “I am a singer,” she said. “I don’t carry an instrument, I carry my costumes.”
The patrolman hesitated, then shoved the bag back. He focused instead upon another, smaller suitcase next to it. “To whom does this case belong?”
No one answered, and the patrolman yanked the rectangular, varnished case from the rack. When it dropped from the ledge, it twisted on its handle with a jolt. The patrolman’s arm flexed. He kept the case suspended above the row of passengers, dug out the name tag with his thumb. From her seat, Angela could see that the label was blank.
“Hmmm? Whose suitcase is this?”
Toward the front of the bus, a man looked over his shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “That’s mine. What’s the problem?”
“No problem,” the patrolman said. “I would like to open this case, that’s all.”
“It’s a horn,” the passenger said.
“Open it.”
“It’s a trumpet.”
“I only see a trumpet case,” the patrolman said.
“I’m a trumpet player.”
The patrolman propped the case on the edge of a seatback. When he tried to unsnap the clasps, they were locked.
“You have no right —” the trumpet player began.
“Get up,” the patrolman said.
“I —”
“Stand up.”
The trumpet player’s face reddened. Angela watched him pull himself to his feet, shuffle into the aisle. His jacket caught on the blue vinyl seatback. He pushed past the person seated next to him, unaware that he was knocking her knees sideways.
“Do you have a key?”
The trumpet player reached into his pocket. The key jangled against some change, then fell to the floor. Angela noticed how thin his auburn hair was as he bent to retrieve it. His mustache was much thicker.
“Here you are,” the trumpet player said.
“Open it yourself.”
From where she sat, Angela had a good view into the case. As the lid rose, the shadow inside fled, revealing the polished surface of a professional’s trumpet, snug against a worn velvet cushion. The smooth contours of the instrument glistened like molten gold. “You see,” the trumpet player said. “Nothing but my trumpet.” Nevertheless, the patrolman lifted the instrument from its cradle and searched the well underneath.
Watching them, Angela’s thoughts returned to her trek through East Berlin the night before. After losing her way, she had finally stumbled on the apartment block where her aunt lived with her husband. The garbage hadn’t been picked up in two weeks, and she had had to step over bags of trash to enter the building. Martina Bloch was still awake, waiting. Even though the windows were blacked out with rags and newspaper, only a single lamp was burning. The old woman cracked the door open and peeked into the hallway, then grabbed Angela’s hands. A thin silver bracelet slid down her bony wrist. She pulled Angela inside and locked the door behind her, then held her niece at arm’s length in trembling hands. You’re so beautiful, my dear, the old woman said, so tall and slender, so much like your father. Despite his own desire to see Angela, Martina’s husband had already retired to the bedroom. He was seventy-six years old, and his health was failing. Through the thin walls, Angela had heard the creaks and whines and labored breathing of a fitful sleep. The smell inside the cramped apartment, of tinned sardines and weak tea, came back to her now with a sudden intensity.
“Which of these bags belongs to you?” The patrolman’s voice shattered Angela’s reflection. His eyes were on her, scanning her formal dress. She felt him pause over her bare shoulders, her breasts.
Outside, the rumble of engines became the whistle of wind — a sound Angela remembered from her childhood. Before he died in the war, her father had taken her sailing. The shrill, lonely rush of wind through the rigging and masts of the boats in the harbor had fascinated her. On the water, she hadn’t liked the cold, or the way the boat tipped, but there had been something spellbinding about the sound. “I — my name is — I play the violin,” she said. Although she was stuttering, the strength in her voice surprised her.
“And which bag is yours, Fräulein?”
“My suitcase is underneath with the others,” Angela said. “That violin there belongs to me.”
“This one?” The patrolman lifted the case.
Another bead of sweat slipped down Angela’s temple, tickling her skin. Her thighs were suddenly moist, and she remembered making love to Lutz the very first time. When his fingers had found her vagina, he had entered her so roughly that it hurt. Despite the violation, or perhaps because of it, she had come immediately. When he had grabbed her by the neck, she had smelled herself on his fingers.
The case slid off the rack with a scrape. Angela wondered whether the patrolman would notice that it was heavier than it should have been. “Is it locked?” he asked her.
Angela couldn’t find her voice to answer. Her body stiffened. Lutz’s fingers had dug into her spinal column at the base of her skull. His thumb had clamped her jugular. Her head had become light, her vision had blurred, her thoughts had soared away from her like hatched butterflies.
“Open it,” the patrolman said.
Angela couldn’t move.
“Open it,” the patrolman repeated. His eyes found hers.
“We’re all Germans,” a voice said, a few seats back.
“What’s that?” The patrolman pivoted stiffly, located the man who had challenged him.
“You heard me,” the man said. “We’re all Germans here.”
“There are laws,” the patrolman said.
“Why are you harassing us?”
Angela recognized the director’s voice. Had he realized that his violinist was smuggling something across the border in her violin case? He had been in the lobby this morning, drinking a coffee, when she had rushed into the hotel, just in time to grab her belongings and board the bus. She watched the patrolman’s hand tighten on the handle then shove the case back onto the rack.
“Where is your suitcase, sir?” the patrolman asked the director. His fingers loosened on the handle, then let go.
“Here you are,” the director said, proffering a small leather bag that had been resting at his feet. “I’ve already opened it. You can search my things. I have nothing to hide. None of us do. You’re only wasting our time.”
When the patrolman stepped past her, Angela shuddered. The lingering, antiseptic scent of his soap wasn’t strong enough to conceal the stench of animal underneath. Just like a dog, she thought. This man is no better than a dog.
2.
Kraków, Poland. August 1938.
A young girl crossed a bridge on the outskirts of Kraków slowly, one hand trailing behind her, her fingers running over the rusty guardrail. In her other hand, the girl clutched a doll with black hair and a red dress. Mossy green, the Vistula rippled beneath her in the breeze, but the water could have been standing still. The river was low, barely flowing at the end of a dry summer. Beyond the sandy, stony expanse of the riverbank, reeds were drying into gray stalks. In the distance, through the heavy iron girders that supported the span, the spires of the Wawel Cathedral carved an ornate edge into the hazy afternoon sky — or perhaps it was the invisible weight of the sky, the young girl reflected idly, that gave definition to the stones of the cathedral. It was a long, hot day at the height of August. If not for the wind, the humidity would have been stifling. The high-pitched buzz of cicadas and crickets was so loud that the girl didn’t hear the approach of a bicycle. The rattle of its wheels over the cobblestones penetrated her thoughts in the same moment that the rider called out to her.
“Hey there, little beauty.”
Polina twisted around. Her hair, uncut and unruly, caught the wind and tangled in front of her eyes. She swiped at it. She had chipped a front tooth the week before, and when she squinted into the sun, her raised lip revealed a small gap. Her first thought upon hearing the voice was that it belonged to her uncle — her father’s brother, Czeslaw — and this sent a twinge through her heart. But the man on the bicycle was a stranger. The dark stubble on his cheeks and a split in his dry lips drew themselves from the blur of movement. His eyes fastened on hers. They were black, but they shined like polished stones. The wind gusted, tossing her hair across her face again, wrapping her white linen dress against her thin body. Then the stranger had pedaled past. She turned on her heel to watch him, then once again started on her way. After a few paces, she reached for the guardrail, as before let her fingers trace its rough texture. She liked the feel of the rusty iron bubbling through the thick paint. The tiny holes had sharp edges, and despite the heat, the slick, mottled gloss was as cold as a slab of ice. It struck her that the metal was disintegrating. The bridge wasn’t as solid as it appeared. If she moved slowly enough, she might step into a void.
