Bluebird, page 26
Jake lights a cigarette. He studies the sky, the clouds, and the nearest tree branch. Eva pulls her knees up to her chest, bare feet on the damp towel. Now she’s cold.
And then Jake asks, “Why did you take the bread knife?”
It’s not the question she expected. It’s not a question she wants to answer.
“Things have gone missing from Powell House before,” he says. “Food, usually. But a lady one time, she made off with the fire poker. It’s hard to trust, I guess, when you haven’t been safe and you haven’t been fed. But that’s not why you took the bread knife. Is it?”
Eva turns her face away.
“You were going to kill him.”
She tightens the grip on her knees, listening to Jake’s breath blow smoke.
“See, something just didn’t sit right with me, after I walked away that day. The whole thing stuck in my throat. Because either Hollywood needs to hand you a trophy, or when you saw … him, that man, in the hospital, he was not somebody you wanted to see. It was the whole reason I believed the crazy story you spun me in the first place. And when you went in that bedroom, saw that stuff all over the walls, that was not a girl hoping to be with her precious daddy. You were scared sick. I saw it. I felt it, in the closet. But then you lied to Cruickshanks. You took that file.”
Eva stays still on her towel.
“And so what gives, I ask myself. Why would a girl want to get in that apartment so bad she’d risk a jail cell, if not to see her father? And if it wasn’t to see her father, then why not give him to Cruickshanks? Whose side were you on? I couldn’t get it out of my head. So you know what I did? I went down to Martha’s office and got the AFSC’s reports on their relief work in Germany. They send them out to all the programs. Crazy detailed. And what do you know but a Miss Schaffer of the Berlin office sent in a report on a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in June of 1945 …”
Eva can see Miss Schaffer at her desk in Berlin, in her brown jacket with the starburst patch on its sleeve. The AFSC will work with Germans who are not Jews, that particular Mr. Cruickshanks had told Eva. So it will look right. Legitimate …
What would Miss Schaffer have done if she’d said her father was the Doctor of Sachsenhausen?
Offered her some help, probably.
“And when I’d read enough of what went on in that place to make me sick for a lifetime,” Jake says, “I went and got this …”
He throws his cigarette out the window, reaches into the back, and brings up a black metal case, dropping it on the seat between them.
Anna Ptaszynska’s file.
Cruickshanks never had it. Eva takes a long breath. “How did you …”
“They give you two keys when you rent those lockers, Eva. I took the thing home, walked over to Mrs. Schumaker’s, and she read me every word. She’s eighty years old and it took a while. I told her somebody was writing a novel …”
He runs a hand through his hair, grabs the steering wheel.
“Can he really do it, what it says in those files? Say the word and make a person do things? Make people kill their best friend and not remember?”
Eva thinks of Liebermann whispering stories in the dark. “There are people who say he can.”
“And you were going to kill him. That’s what the knife was for. That’s why you were looking for him.”
She listens to the happy family, the children laughing on top of the rock. And she says, “Yes.”
“And you still plan to. To kill him.”
“It is justice.”
“A knife is not justice, Eva. Nuremberg is justice!”
She shakes her head.
“You have to give him to Cruickshanks.”
She shakes her head again.
“Give him to Cruickshanks,” he says. “Please.”
“And where is the justice in that?” she snaps. “Do you think your government isn’t interested in what my father can do? That they don’t want to control their enemies? Cruickshanks doesn’t want to put my father on trial. He wants to give my father a job. A place for research. To continue his experiments …”
Jake is shaking his head. Like she’s crazy. “That’s just not true …”
“It is true! They want spies, assassins who don’t care who they kill or if they die. And this, they tell me, will stop wars. Anna Ptaszynska and Sachsenhausen are going to happen all over again …”
“But you’re talking about war criminals here, Eva! Nazis, in the United States. Experimenting on American citizens like they did in the camps. We just don’t do that …”
“Like they did not do it to Jimmy?”
Jake goes quiet.
“They brought me here to lure my father out of hiding. So they can make sure no one else catches him. So he will not go to trial. So he can do his work. For them. They think I am … loyal.”
“So go to somebody else, then. Not Cruickshanks.”
“Who? Do you know who in your government is giving the orders? Who will take my father to trial and who will not?”
Jake doesn’t answer. Because there is no answer.
“Cruickshanks said if my father is caught, even by another country, even with all the right evidence, that the United States will make sure he is not convicted. Dr. Kurt Blome, from Dachau, he will be put on trial next year. In Nuremberg. And Cruickshanks told me that he will be acquitted …” Eva sits up, looking in the side mirror. “He will be acquitted before the trial has even … begun …”
A black car is pulling into an open space of the overlook. And Eva knows the man in the driver’s seat. She knows him at a glance. The Cruickshanks from the Zanzibar.
And Anna’s file is sitting between them on the seat.
She turns to Jake. “Move.”
“What?”
“Move. Now!”
She looks back. The door of the black car is opening. And Jake is just staring at her.
She crawls over the file and over him, shoving him out of the way.
“What the …” He spots the man getting out of the car. Eva turns the key, and the engine roars.
“Do you even know how to drive?”
She throws the car into reverse and hits the gas, whipping it around, timing the gear change to spin the wheels forward again with barely a stop. The pedals are easier to reach in this car. Or maybe she’s grown.
The new Mr. Cruickshanks is already back in the driver’s seat, getting his engine going. Eva stomps the gas and they fly up the mountain road. The metal case is on the floor with her wet towel and her purse, Jake sliding around on the seat.
“Watch it!” he yells. “This is Uncle Paul’s car!”
She skids in the dirt around a curve. They’re going up and up, a steep drop-off with trees to one side. The car is more powerful than her father’s. It accelerates quicker.
“Where does the road go?” she asks.
“How the hell should I know where the road goes!”
“Scheisse,” Eva hisses.
They take another hairpin turn. What the road does is wind its way up a ridge, and then start back down again. They hurtle down the hill, and ahead, to the left, there is some kind of track, two wheel ruts through low-hanging trees. Eva takes it, and now pine needles and the ends of branches whip the windshield. As soon as enough branches are behind them, Eva brakes, and Jake has to catch himself from being thrown into the dash.
“I don’t know who’s going to murder me first,” he says. “You or Uncle Paul …”
“Shhh!” She turns in the seat and kills the engine. Listening.
And faint through the trees, she can hear another motor. Seconds later, and the black car passes, rushing down the hill. Eva holds up a hand, and Jake stays quiet. The motor sound doesn’t stop. It fades. But it won’t be long before he figures it out. Eva starts the car, throws it in reverse, and hits the gas again.
Jake says something she doesn’t understand and probably shouldn’t. The twigs and leaves are hitting them now as well as the leather seats. She spins the wheel, turning them backward onto the main road, changes gear, and now they’re driving up the mountain again, around the hairpin turns, as fast as she can take them. Jake doesn’t say anything more. He just hangs on.
They pass the scenic spot with the family on the boulder. The gates of Sky Island flash by, and at the bottom of the hill is the farm she’d passed with Patricia, the big red barn sitting not far from the road. The gate is open. Eva pulls a sudden left through the gate, down a bouncing, muddy drive, around behind the barn, stopping just before she hits a fence post. She puts the car in park and turns the key.
And suddenly, she can hear the breeze blowing. Birdsong. They’re hidden from the road, and there isn’t another car or even a tractor in sight. Just green fields with the hills rising, and one uninterested cow. Jake sits back. He looks at the cow. Then he pulls out a cigarette and lights it.
“So, where did you say you learned how to drive?”
Eva turns her head, gazing out the open window.
“Oh, no,” Jake says. “No. Whatever answer it is you have to spill, it cannot be worse than what you’ve already told me.”
She looks him right in the lovely eyes. “The chauffeur taught me.”
“Right. The chauffeur taught you.”
“I would … Sometimes I would steal my father’s car.”
Jake tilts his chin. “I bet you enjoyed it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you had one hell of a time, just then.”
She turns her face away again. Her pulse is still racing. Her hair blown wild. And she’s on a stranger’s farm. Barefoot. In a bathing suit. Jake stares out the window, smoking.
“So, who was he? In the black car.”
“A Cruickshanks. He was with us in the Zanzibar.”
“ ‘A Cruickshanks,’ you say? There’s more than one?”
“I don’t know how many there are now. The one you met is dead.”
“Did you take him for a little drive?”
He isn’t funny. And he doesn’t seem to think he is, either.
“So what did he want?”
“This,” she says, touching the metal case. Or it could have been her that he wanted. Or Brigit.
“And how did you say the other one died?”
“The man in the rusty car. He’s an agent. Only … Soviet.”
Jake breathes. Heavy. “And you’ve been sitting up here by yourself with a bread knife in your purse, have you?”
She doesn’t say anything. He blows smoke into the breeze. The cow watches, swishing its tail.
“All those things I said to you that day. You took it on the chin. Like you’ve taken a beating or two.” He pauses. “Have you, taken a beating or two?”
Eva doesn’t want to answer that. She doesn’t have to, because he takes her silence as an answer.
“What about the rest of your family? Do you have brothers, sisters?”
“Stop,” she whispers.
“And what about Brigit? You know what happened to her, because you were there, weren’t you?” He waits through her quiet. “Were you there?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?” She looks away. “Come on, Eva! Who and where?”
“Russians. Soviets. In my house …”
“And only Brigit? Or was it you?”
“It was Brigit and … stop! You don’t need to … feel sorry …”
“I’m not trying to feel sorry for you, I’m trying to understand you!” He tosses the cigarette out the window, running his hands through his hair again. “This is all about Brigit, isn’t it?”
She bites her lip.
“Because you already know what’s in that file, don’t you? What he did to Anna. Playing sick games with her mind. Giving her little things to kill, just because he said so. He ruined her …”
“He didn’t ruin her.”
“… and you think they’ll lock her up or something. That’s why you think you have to kill him. Because you know that Brigit is Anna, don’t you?”
She shakes her head.
“I heard what Cruickshanks said. He thought she was, and Bets said Brigit was speaking Polish …”
“Brigit is not Anna.”
“… and it says right there in those files that Anna was taken from Polish political prisoners. This is you taking care of Brigit, like you always do …”
“Stop it …”
“You stop! Stop playing with me, Eva.”
“Brigit is not Anna!”
“You know she is! You just won’t …”
“Brigit is not Anna, because I am!”
She watches the words sink into Jake like a stone.
“I am Anna Ptaszynska.”
“ANNA,” THE VOICE says. And it is a melody. Like music.
She crawls toward the voice, across the blue rug, thick and squishing beneath her hands. Around the chair. Across the square of warm sun. Under the bench and over the feet. She likes that part.
And the rug is soft beneath her head, while above, the piano strings stretch and stretch, where the music thrums, rings. The music is over, under, around, and she floats and she floats and floats on the sound.
The shoes that play the pedals are black and the fingernails are red. The fingernails on the keys should always be red.
She waves her arms and legs and makes the shape of an angel in the rug.
And the square of sunshine blinks on the floor. A shadow passing the window. The music stops and the little dog scratches and yaps.
And she listens.
There are voices at the door.
They are the wrong voices.
The wrong sounds. Sounds that startle. Sounds that hurt.
Bang.
Bang.
JAKE SITS BACK. “No. You’re not.”
“I am.”
He’s shaking his head. “I don’t believe you.”
Eva breathes. Lets her head rest on the white leather seat. There are dark wings up in the sky. High and circling. Riding the air.
“When I was young,” she says, “my … father brought me a bird. It was a nuthatch. They lived in the trees outside my bedroom window. I liked them.”
Jake has gone still, gaze on the floorboard. This must be in Anna’s file. He remembers. She can see it.
“He brought it to me again and again. And I can’t remember, but I think I …” Eva pauses. “He always called me his Vögelchen. His ‘little bird.’ That was his name for me. And I think Ptaszynska means something like the same thing. ‘Little bird.’ But in Polish.”
Jake clenches his hands together, forehead nearly on the dash. “What color are they?” he asks. “The nuthatches. In Germany.”
“They’re blue,” Eva whispers. “Bright blue …”
Project Bluebird.
Jake gets out, shaking the car when he slams the door shut. He kicks the tires. Kicks the fence post. Grabs a dry branch from a brush pile and breaks it in half against the corner of the barn. The cow starts moving to the other end of the field. Then he comes to the driver’s side and yanks open the door.
“Move over,” he says. “You’re making me crazy driving around like that.” He starts the engine and they leave the farm, turning back up the hill toward Sky Island. Eva slides the towel over her legs.
They drive through the gates without speaking and without seeing another car. Jake parks, picks up the metal case with Anna’s file from the floorboard and a paper sack from the back seat. Eva gets her purse and the towel. When they walk into the back hallway, Tony is coming out of the kitchen.
“Hey! Jake! What are you doing …”
“Tony, hi. Listen, I’m going to stay a day or two, if that’s all right. I’ll put a little something toward food and everything. And maybe you wouldn’t have to say anything to Martha. Or not right away.”
“Oh.” Tony throws a confused look at Eva in her bathing suit. “Okay.”
“Has there been a telephone call for me?” Eva asks him.
“Oh, sorry, no. Talk later, then, Jake?”
Jake nods, shakes his hand, and doesn’t look back. Eva follows him through the dining room and into the front hall. They switch places, and he follows her up the stairs, down the corridor, straight to her room, and straight inside it, uninvited, shutting the door and turning the key in the lock. He tosses the metal case onto the bed.
“What?” he says, when he finds Eva staring. “You think I’m going to leave you alone up here for two seconds after what you just told me? Here. Bets sent this. And she said to say that yes, they’re yours.”
He hands her the sack, and inside is the blue dress and the pink dressing gown. Eva sighs. She misses Bets. She takes out the dressing gown, turns around, and pulls it on, flipping out her hair and tying the belt. She hangs up the dress and her towel. Jake throws his jacket over a chair and sits on the edge of the bed. Rubs his face. Then he holds out a hand.
She looks at his hand. And takes it. Pale against his suntan. He sits her down beside him.
“Help me understand,” he says. “Please. All of it.”
And so she tells him. All of it. Everything. About Inge. The League of German Girls. Mama, and what happened the day the radio said Hitler was dead. About Annemarie. Going to the camp and what she saw over the wall. It’s a flood. A torrent of information. Jake listens, and asks questions, but mostly he listens. He opens the window and smokes cigarette after cigarette.
She tells him twenty-seven names, just as Liebermann had. She tells him until he can’t stand still and walks back and forth with his hands on his head.
She tells him until she is sick. Exhausted. Curled up on the pillow.
And when she opens her eyes again, it’s dark outside. Quiet. The moon a high, pale spotlight among the stars. She has a blanket over her legs, and the water glass from the bathroom is filled and on the nightstand beside her head. Jake is on the window seat, head back, one bare foot on the cushion. The clock says 2:35 in the morning.
Eva sits up, draws her knees to her chest beneath the blanket, watching him contemplate the darkness.
