Bluebird, page 27
He doesn’t turn his head when he says, “The Quakers believe that if a person does something bad, evil even, then you have to consider what pushed them to the act. That they’re probably just doing the same evil thing they were taught by somebody else. Violence to violence. And that more violence isn’t actually justice, because it only turns the circle. Restarts the cycle. Over and over again.
“But what I don’t get about that is consequences. When you do things, there are consequences. And if there weren’t, then people would figure out that they can go around doing whatever the hell they want, whenever they want, whether they were taught that way or not. And where’s the love, where’s the justice, when you don’t keep those things from happening to somebody else? Like in the camps.
“So on the one hand, the Quakers are right, and if that’s what everybody did, it would be a different world. On the other hand, where’s the responsibility? What’s the balance? I don’t know. I really don’t.”
She doesn’t know, either. She doesn’t want to be the judge. Jake swings both feet to the floor, elbows on his knees.
“Look. What I’m trying to say to you is, I’m going to help you. I’ll help you kill him.”
Eva fixes her gaze on Jake, all the different pieces of herself working in perfect unison. And she says, “No.”
“You get to make a choice. So do I.”
She flips back the blanket. “No.”
“You’re the one who convinced me, Bluebird. It’s justice.”
“It’s not your war!”
“Yes, it is.” He looks up. “My dead family in Berlin say so.”
And there is nothing she can say to that.
Eva gets up, sits back down again. Closes her eyes. Why hadn’t he run? Caught that fast train? Stayed away when he had the chance?
“Why did you come here?” she whispers.
“Well, you are my assignment. And I did say anything you need.”
“Stop,” she whispers.
“I’d also like to point out that you can’t actually stop me.”
Eva jumps to her feet and goes to the door. She doesn’t even know where she’s going.
Jake stands. “Your friend is out there.”
She turns. “Soviet or American?”
“No idea. He’s just sitting back there in the trees. Smoking. I almost asked him for a cigarette. I’m out.”
She drops her hand from the knob. Jake puts his hands in his pockets.
“Come on, Bluebird,” he says. “You don’t have to do everything by yourself.”
Eva turns her back on him. Goes to the dressing table and sits on the bench, arms wrapped hard around her middle. He should have found an airplane. An ocean liner. Anything.
He should have run.
“All those things you told me,” he says, “and this is what makes you cry.”
She swipes her cheek, angry. Jake grabs a chair and sits in front of her.
“Look. Look at me.”
She can’t look at him. He takes one of her hands instead.
“I’ve had all night to think about it. I’m going to help you, because there have to be consequences. Because … we’re in America. We’re supposed to be living in the place where people don’t escape from these things. We’re supposed to be better than this. And I don’t see another way to stop it, and I won’t leave you on your own. And … there’s something to be said, you know, for the punishment fitting the crime …”
Eva looks at the fingers around hers, clever fingers with calloused tips, and she thinks of the posters hung on all the street corners of Wernigerode when she was young. Jews were like vermin, the posters said. Jews were like germs. But she is the one. She is the contagion. Infecting everything she touches. Making everything dirty.
She’s making him dirty.
Eva takes her hand away from his, wrapping her arms back around her middle. “You said to me, that I wanted to know what it felt like … to play in the mud.”
She sees Jake wince.
“But that was not me,” she says. “It was you.”
He has his jaw clenched, gaze on the floor.
“You were the one playing in mud. And now, you’re back in it.”
He’s shaking his head.
“You don’t belong there.”
“Shut up …”
“Get out of it, Jake! Please …”
“Shut up!” he says. And he grabs her head in his hands and kisses her. Hard. Once.
Eva’s eyes fly open in surprise. Jake’s gaze is angry. And beautiful.
And then she kisses him. Hard. Not once. And he lets her. Fingers sliding over the stubble of his jaw, into his hair, nearly coming off her bench to push him back against the chair. He gets both her hands in one of his, holding them still against his chest while his thumb strokes her cheek.
“You are not dirty,” he says against her mouth. He runs a finger down her neck, down the edge of the dressing gown, and kisses her once more. Slow. Then he sets her hands in her lap and stands. He walks away to the window seat, arms crossed, looking out into nothing. “But … I can’t do that again.”
Because in the world she’d belonged to—her old, sick world—people like him had always been less. Because people like her had murdered people like him for being less. Because her past and his future are a poisonous mix.
Eva folds her hands. She feels full, and hollow, watching Jake watch the dark. His breath is still coming fast. Shoulders rising and falling beneath his shirt. And she hates that girl in his future. The one who will deserve him.
“I’m going to help you,” he says, “because it’s justice. It’s what I’ve decided and no regrets. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says.
Jake glances back, taking her in. She can tell he wants to come to her, but he doesn’t.
“But what if you can’t trust me?” she asks. “What if he tells me to do … something, and I do it?”
This time when Jake looks back, one corner of his mouth is up. “You seem to do a lot of things your daddy would say no to.”
It’s true. But it’s not the same, and Jake knows it. He goes to the bed and picks up the metal case.
“Here,” he says. “Read it. The whole thing. See what it says.”
Eva looks at the case. Reluctant.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says.
She takes the case to the bed, curling into her spot, sitting up against the pillow. Jake almost sits next to her, then opts for the window seat. She pushes the little button, and the lid pops opens.
And there is her mother’s gun.
Jake knows what she’s looking at. “It’s only got three bullets in it.”
Three, Eva thinks, out of eight. That would be right. One for Mama, one each for Adolf and Helga. Two for Erich.
“I was thinking I could get us a better …”
“No.” Eva slides the file out from beneath the gun and shuts the case again. “No. I want this one.”
She can feel him thinking about that. She can feel the room change when he guesses why she wants it. He leans back, lets out a long breath, watching the tiny glow of a cigarette at the edge of the lawn. Eva opens the file.
The papers are smooth. New and crisp. The first page says Project Bluebird with the name Anna Ptaszynska just below. And they are almost exactly the same as the pages sewn into her skirt. With more detail. A little more complete. Notes and charts, familiar now not just from the words she’s read so many times, but from her memories.
Some of those memories are still hazy, like fever pain. Others are clear. Solid. Like being locked in the little cupboard. The emetic dripped on her tongue to make her vomit as soon as she’d failed to “control a thought.” The Doctor had used that one until the wrong thoughts would make her sick anyway. No emetic needed.
And all of it to carefully coax and condition her mind. To make her memories such a source of terrible pain that they were just … sent away. To erase the person who had been Anna Ptaszynska out of her own existence.
Because Anna was less.
And when Anna was gone, the Doctor could start making her “more.” A good German. Loyal and obedient. Compliant to authority. Even when it went against her own sense of right and wrong. Especially when it did. And this was supposed to save her from weakness. Make her stronger. Better.
Eva reads what she did with the bird in the box.
And then she reads what she did when she got older. When the experiment changed. Because if one piece of a mind could be erased, the memories hidden away, what other pieces could be splintered off, hidden in the same way? And what could these hidden pieces of herself then be made to do? And these are the stories Liebermann whispered on the road. The nightmares she can neither remember nor imagine. But they are all crimes. Cruel, and they all say the same thing.
One word, and she is a murderer. Without even knowing it.
Eva sets down the file. Jake is still, stretched on the window seat, an arm behind his head. Watching her.
“Things have been happening at Powell House,” she says. “Things I don’t understand.”
“Okay, like what things?”
“Like the window being shut when I know I opened it. And I can’t remember shutting it again. And … Augusta’s art …”
Jake sits up. “You know Olive left the street door unlocked, right? That the police think some jerk who believes an integrated art show will ruin his nice neighborhood came in from downstairs? And why would you even want to bust up a sculpture?”
Because it had meant something to her. But it’s impossible to explain that to Jake.
“And there were birds,” she whispers. “Dead. Two of them …”
“Does Brigit have a kitten or doesn’t she?”
But there had been another bird. In the seat of her mother’s Mercedes. She’d thought that was Erich, like the pearls in the toilet. But she’d never been sure.
“And none of that,” Jake points out, “is you doing what your father told you to. He hasn’t been anywhere near you, right?”
“Just when we were in the closet. I think he was there, in the apartment.”
“And you were not exactly murdering me.”
She’d been running her hand up his back.
Jake props his elbows on his knees. “I get that in a weird kind of way, it might be … easier on you, to be Anna, than to be his daughter …”
Eva’s gaze darts up.
“… but some kind of cold-blooded killer in a trance who will shoot whoever her daddy says whenever he says it? I don’t buy it. I’m not sure I buy any of it. Those people in the camp, he would have chosen them. Just the right ones. But you’re not Mina. You’re a fighter. You’re a fighter every time.”
She doesn’t want to say what she just read, that “when instructed, Anna squeezed the bird until it died …” That she can remember the bird in her hand, and just how much she did not want to squeeze it.
“You get to choose who you want to be, Bluebird, and you get to choose what you do. You’re doing it right now, aren’t you?”
That has to be a little bit true.
“I think you should burn that file. Get rid of it. We both know what it says.”
Eva looks at the papers. At her father’s slanted hand. Then she gets up from the bed, turns the key before Jake can say anything, and steps out the door and across the hall. She comes back with her skirt on the hanger, and Jake is waiting, arms across the doorway.
“Do you have that knife?” she asks. “That you used on the window?”
He fishes it out of a pocket while she locks the door again, watching as she perches on the edge of the bed, using the tip of the slim blade to pick out the stitches of her skirt hem. She pulls the papers from behind the satin lining, so wrinkled and dirty they’re getting delicate.
Jake has half a smile on his face. Waiting for her to explain.
“They were on his desk,” she says. “In Germany. A file with my name on it. My German name. But Anna’s notes were inside. They’re almost exactly the same as the first pages of the others.”
Jake nods, and Eva gathers up both sets of papers into a pile, taking them to the fireplace and laying them in the grate. Jake doesn’t say anything. Just pushes open the damper, sits down beside her, and hands her a box of matches.
“I’d thought these would be evidence, once,” she says.
“They seem to give people ideas,” Jake replies.
Eva strikes the match. Smells the sulfur. And it isn’t hard at all to put the flame to the first corner of paper.
They sit, side by side, and watch Anna’s life burn.
Eva says, “My father will come to me soon. I put a notice in the newspaper.”
Jake’s glance flicks once to hers. “Want to know what’s in my jacket pocket right now? Dr. Schneider’s home address.”
Eva smiles. Jake uses the poker to help along the flames.
“Turns out that Dr. Schneider canceled his appointments this week. Because he has guests. From out of town.”
“It might not be them.”
Jake shrugs. “They had to run somewhere last minute. We could go there, Bluebird. First thing in the morning. Get the lay of the land. It’s less than an hour away.”
They make their plans while the flames die, while Jake lights one more match, making sure every bit of paper turns to ash.
“You’re sure?” she asks him.
Jake smiles. “No regrets. Remember?”
But then he’s not smiling anymore. He’s looking at her mouth. She can feel him. Smell him. And the longing is a pull that becomes a tug that has to be broken. Jake gets to his feet. Goes to the window seat and stretches out.
Because he can’t do that again.
She knows he can’t.
Eva curls up on the bed. There’s another hour before the dawn. “You can come lie down,” she says. “It’s only … sleeping.”
Jake smiles again with his eyes closed and shakes his head.
“I’m in for a talk in the morning as it is,” he says. “We didn’t go to dinner, and nobody knows where I slept. Either Mick or Tony will pull me aside and mention the idea of leaving a girl in a ‘bad position.’ Wait and see.”
“Will they be angry with you?” Eva asks, hugging the pillow.
“They’re Quakers, not saints. And I wouldn’t be the first to go creeping around Sky Island after dark. Jimmy and Colette were the worst. But you’re new here, and I’m supposed to know better. So I’m thinking the words ‘immoral cad’ might be used.”
Eva closes her eyes. She doesn’t know what that means, but she can guess. It’s probably wrong, she thinks, to wish that he was.
It’s probably wrong to lie there, with Jake on the window seat, remembering what his lips taste like.
Neither one of them really sleeps. And when the sun moves across the sky, they move with it. They take turns with the bathroom, Eva working a few of the wrinkles out of Jake’s shirt with a damp cloth while Jake shaves with her razor—which she thinks is unsanitary—brushing his teeth with a finger. She gets out of the bathing suit, into her skirt and blouse, does a little something to tame her hair. Jake puts the gun in his pocket, and she picks up her purse with the bread knife in its lining.
“Chin up, Bluebird,” Jake says on the way downstairs. “I have to eat or die, so we get to face the music.”
And when they walk into the kitchen, they get a row of hard stares. As if a conversation has just been suspended. Mrs. Kushner frowns beneath her kerchief, the three Petrova girls giggling and ogling Jake until their mother says something stern. But Greta smiles and says good morning, and Eva sees Valentina lost at the far end of the table, staring down into her coffee.
“Good morning,” Eva says to her.
Valentina startles, smiling an apology before she’s lost again. Jake has grabbed two eggs on a plate, eating them while having a conversation to one side with Mick. Eva catches his eye, and the corner of his mouth just lifts. She has to bite back her smile.
The truth is so much worse, it’s laughable.
Eva piles some leftover muffins and two apples on a napkin, quickly, then tells a surprised Patricia that they’re off for a drive and she’ll see them later. Three minutes, and Jake joins her in the driveway with a thermos of coffee, and they climb into the green convertible.
“So?” Eva asks.
Jake grins. “You’re new here. I should know better, and aren’t you really pretty.”
He puts on a pair of sunglasses and starts the car.
THERE ARE NO other cars when they leave Sky Island. Russian or American. They drive down the hill to the village first, where Jake stops for gas, a map, and cigarettes. Eva contributes part of her last American bill to the gas, which Jake is amused to see come out of her bra instead of her purse.
“As if I needed more temptation,” he says.
They study the map, drinking coffee from the thermos while the attendant fills up the tank, cleans the windshield, checks the oil, empties the ashtray. Jake shows her Dr. Schneider’s address—in a suburb that’s actually in New Jersey, but not far—and the other places they’d discussed in front of the fireplace. The plan is straightforward. Uncomplicated, unless they are followed by someone. A plan for justice, Jake says. And to keep them out of jail.
Jake pulls onto the highway going south. The top is still down, wind rushing, whipping at their hair under a sky that is bright but overcast. Glaring. He glances once, then twice, into the rearview mirror. “What do you think?” he asks, voice raised.
There’s a black car getting onto the road behind them. Eva can just make out the shadow of the driver’s hat in the side mirror.
“It could be,” she says.
Jake waits for two exits, then gets off the highway. “Hold up the map,” he says. “Like we’re lost.” She does. He stops at the red light, then drives straight through, back onto the highway. And so does the black car, staying well behind them, keeping pace.
“Yep,” he says. “So how do you want to lose him? Movies or my Auntie Joyce?”
“Movies,” she says. Riskier, but not involving Jake’s family.
“Come over here, then,” he says. “We’re on a date.”
