Bluebird, page 30
Eva sits still, purse perched on her knees.
You have been reading my papers.
Do not believe everything you read.
There were lies in Anna Ptaszynska’s file. The Doctor has been writing down lies.
Anything real could be unreal, and anything unreal could be the truth.
And now he will have to explain which is which.
The Doctor is smiling. Watching her think.
Eva stands, walking briskly through the candlelight, and sets her purse on a table, blocking it from her father’s view. She doesn’t turn around when she says, “You know I am not coming with you.”
He chuckles. “Of course you shall. My friend Dr. Schneider was approached by a Mr. Cruickshanks and was assured that you were part of the ‘package.’ But we have not been contacted again …”
She looks back. “That’s because Mr. Cruickshanks is dead.”
“Ah, well. I am sure you’ve realized by now that there is more than one Mr. Cruickshanks. But luckily, you were so kind as to put a notice in the paper, and even to come to the Schneiders’ today. Wasn’t little Marta’s party nice? And you had a young man with you, too. Rolf says he is the nephew of one of the surgeons, a Jewish surgeon, and that he has been asking uncomfortable questions at the hospital. Rolf was very hurt, to think you might prefer a Jew. We shall have to have some little talks together, I think. Once we are settled.”
Eva turns, back against the table, keeping a hand on the purse behind her. “So Rolf doesn’t mind, then? That I am Anna Ptaszynska?”
The Doctor puts his brows together, pipe in the corner of his mouth. “Tell me the truth. Does it make you ill, to ask me that?”
“No,” she says. And it’s almost not a lie.
“Oh, Inge. My little bird. I am going to enjoy having you back so very much. There is still much to learn from you, I think, and it will be fascinating to see how you have progressed. But let us have one thing clear between us. You are not Anna Ptaszynska.” He sits forward in his chair. “Because Anna Ptaszynska does not exist.”
Eva keeps her face serene. Because that can’t be true. “I know who I am.”
“Do you? You have no question in your mind?” He looks at her face carefully. Knowingly. “No questions for your Papa?”
She looks back at him, smoking and musing in his chair, and for a moment, she’s six years old with a nuthatch in her hands, squirming beneath the same shrewd gaze. She has to ask. She can’t help it. “Who was Erich?”
“Oh, Inge.” His face looks sad. “Do you not remember? Erich was your brother.”
She shakes her head. “Mama couldn’t have children, could she?”
“Think carefully. Adolf was born the night I took you to Berlin, to hear Wagner. You were so excited to find him, when we came home …”
She had been excited. And Adolf must have been six or seven months old.
“All right, then. Who is Annemarie?”
“Who?” the Doctor asks.
“Annemarie Toberentz.”
“You can’t have forgotten your neighbor. Wasn’t she your friend? Yes, we will have to have many little talks …”
“She was with Anna. I remember.”
“And are you very certain about your memories, Inge?”
“Stop calling me that. And yes, I am certain.”
“So, tell me, if your memory serves you so well. What did you do with the bird?”
Eva grips the table behind her, the rain scouring the windows, reaching inside herself. Searching. She can see the box. Feel the soft blue feathers, the grip of her tightening hand. But she can’t remember what comes next.
The Doctor’s eyes are dancing again. Eva narrows her gaze.
“If Anna Ptaszynska does not exist, then I wonder who Mr. Cruickshanks thinks he will be reading a file about.”
“Ah, well,” says the Doctor, sucking on his pipe. “I am sure he would like to have an Anna. Very much so. But he doesn’t need her. He only thinks he does. The process of splitting the personality, of placing a hypnotic suggestion, bending a mind to a certain will, it’s all so … messy. Overcomplicated, inefficient, and the outcomes are impossible to predict. When all you really need to make another person do what you wish is the application of the right leverage. That is simple science. And a more elegant solution. I proved this time and time again at the camp, in experiment after experiment …”
He smiles. “But this, it isn’t what others want to hear, is it, little bird? You must show progress to keep the interest of those in power. You must pique their curiosity. And the idea of the ultimate control …” He pretends to shiver. “It is so tempting.”
“Just not reality,” she says.
“Reality is the condition we create for ourselves. If one side believes the other can do it, then the power is already gained and with much less fuss. It is the idea they need. And it is our ticket to a new life. New research. Isn’t that wonderful? And imagine, Inge …”
He scoots forward in the chair. Eva presses her back into the table.
“Imagine the secrets to be discovered. We have lost so much this past year. A golden age of science. The Führer was a man cruelly let down by those around him, but he was a man of principle. A man of vision …”
Like Cruickshanks said. Apparently it was impossible to have “vision” and morals at the same time.
“And as such a man, the Führer removed all barriers to scientific discovery. Think of it, Inge. Take two parents of lesser blood. They have one child that is exactly as one might expect, while the other, through some far-off mixing of the bloodlines, shows all the signs of being racially valuable. What an opportunity! To see how the inferiority of one might be bettered, elevated, when compared to the other who is so naturally superior? And if such experiments could still be done, if we could learn from them, could we not create techniques to better all of the lower races? Create a new world? A better world, full of better people?”
And who gets to decide, Eva thinks, who is better? And who isn’t?
She’d seen a glimpse of his “better world.” It was a pile of dead bodies.
“And yet, who would allow such learning now?” the Doctor says. “The world is weak. Sentiment is allowed to rule science. But we are being given a second chance. Men of vision are willing to let me work on. To create the new world, no matter what they think I am actually doing. And I think that is worth a little fib or two in a file, don’t you? To catch the interest of those in power? Anna Ptaszynska is my own invention. The key to the new beginning. And really …” He sits back in his chair. “I must say, I prefer it to a noose.”
He smiles.
And Eva smiles back. Don’t believe everything you read, he says. So she won’t. She will believe what she remembers.
And she remembers being Anna. She remembers violets and gunshots and Annemarie and her mother’s voice. But those smooth, blank spaces in her mind, where Anna the killer’s memories were supposed to have been, they have disappeared. Dissolved. Sugar in the stormy rain. Because they never happened. The Anna Ptaszynska with the special word, who would shoot a man and finish her dinner, who would kill who she was told, when she was told, that Anna had never existed. Because the Doctor had made her up.
And there is something else she knows. Something the Doctor does not. She has read the file from his desk. The file with her German name on the outside and her Polish name on the inside. And that hadn’t been written for anyone but himself.
She keeps her smile. “You did not invent what I remember. I know who I am.”
“I am tired of this game. Let us have no more of it. You are Inge Louisa von Emmerich. My little girl. There is no Anna Ptaszynska.”
She is Anna. And Inge. And Eva. One person, united. Wanting the same thing.
Justice.
She turns her back on the Doctor and unsnaps her purse.
“I was Anna,” she says. “And I am not your little girl, and I do not belong to you. And I will not be making that call. Because you cannot make me do anything that I don’t want …”
She opens her purse wide in the candlelight. Lightning sparks the thunder outside, but now it is her fear that is electric, zapping through her veins.
The gun is gone.
“Oh, my dear little bird,” the Doctor says, standing up from the chair. “You might be surprised to know what I can make someone do.”
SHE IS SO tired this time. She doesn’t want to wear the pink dress.
She doesn’t want what comes after.
But there is the brown box, and she knows what is inside. She can hear it scrabbling.
She lifts the lid, and the bird is soft, sweet, heart beating in her hand.
She will call him Papa, she will call the woman Mama. She will say the German. She won’t do the things that make her sick.
She holds tight to the bird and goes to Papa’s desk. And she picks up the paperweight, blue and orange. Pretty like the bird.
And so heavy in her hand.
THE GUN IS NOT THERE.
Eva breathes. And breathes. Looking down into her purse. The holster is empty.
How can there be no gun?
“I will not call Cruickshanks for you,” she says. She keeps her back turned, sliding her hand deep into her purse. Where her fingers find the handle of the bread knife.
She hears the Doctor sigh.
“You do not listen, Inge. Did I not say that I am very good at making others do what is best? Rolf?”
Slowly, Eva brings out the bread knife, up and up, trying not to let her arms move.
“Rolf, where are you?”
The knife is out. And then she’s sliding it back down again, into the waistband of her skirt.
“Stop skulking, Rolf! We have been waiting …”
Hinges creak on the other end of the living room, but when Eva turns, one arm bent to hide the knife handle, it isn’t Rolf she sees walking through the door. It’s Jake. Hair wet and glistening in the dimming candles, hands held up and away from his body. Because Rolf is behind him. Rolf has a handful of his shirt collar.
Rolf has the barrel of her mother’s gun pressed into the back of Jake’s head.
Eva takes a step and stops. Rolf is panting, sweating, twitching with something like anticipation as he walks Jake around the furniture. He wants to shoot him. He’s only just keeping himself from pulling the trigger. And Jake knows it. She can see it when their eyes meet.
He knows how close Rolf is to killing him.
Eva blinks once, slow. And turns to her father. She’s Inge’s inferno now. A blaze. A seething, silent tornado of fire.
“Do you see how easy control is, my little bird?” The Doctor knocks his pipe into the cold fireplace, gets his hat and coat. “We are all going together, and you will make a telephone call, exactly as I wish. See? Leverage. Simple science.”
“He was in her room,” Rolf says. “Dressing himself!”
“And you should be glad of it,” says the Doctor. “If she didn’t like him, she wouldn’t be likely to do what we say, now would she? Now where is my file?”
“It was not there. He would not say where!” He jerks Jake by the collar. “And you would not let me … I can make him …”
“No, no, it doesn’t matter. It will be tedious, but I can write it out again.” He smiles once at Eva and taps his forehead. “It’s all up here. I might make them better, even. Mr. Cruickshanks would like that. The telephone is not working, Rolf, and we can’t wait longer. We are leaving, rain or no. Get your purse, please, Inge …”
Rolf watches her walk back to the table. “You degrade yourself,” he hisses. But he’s also looking at her legs. His trigger finger is twitching.
She turns to her father, obedient, ready to go, purse in one hand, the other at her waist. She meets Jake’s eyes once more, and he sees. He can’t understand what any of them are saying, but he knows what she had in her purse, and he can guess what is now hidden beneath her hand. She turns her body, so Rolf and her father won’t.
The Doctor is still smiling at her. So pleased.
He thinks he’s won.
He opens the latch to the terrace door, and suddenly the storm is with them, rain slapping down in wind-driven sheets.
They step into the gale, the Doctor first, then Eva, then Rolf walking Jake in front of him. She’s soaked in seconds, water running down her forehead and neck until there’s no point in trying to wipe it away, her white blouse sticking and clinging. Up and off the terrace and across the lawn, through slick, wet grass, toward the little rise and the driveway beyond it. The lightning is farther away now, the thunder a more distant rumble. Eva scans the tree line, but it’s inky black, and when she looks back at the house, the candlelight is so dim the room is almost invisible through the rain.
She stays as close as she can to Jake and Rolf’s itchy trigger finger, the knife handle beneath her hand. Jake is going to do something. She sees it in the set of his mouth. The first time Rolf loosens his grip, he’s going to make a move.
Eva is not sure he can make that move fast enough.
They climb the rise, Eva sliding in her black heels, and when they get to the place where Mr. Cruickshanks died, she hears her father cursing in German. There’s no car in the driveway.
“Where is Schneider?” he says. He looks around, a little waterfall running off the edge of his hat, and sees the edge of the dilapidated summerhouse. He goes to the steps and looks down, then looks back to Rolf. “Wait here,” he says. “Out of sight. And if either of them tries to leave, shoot him somewhere that won’t kill him right away, yes? I’m going to find Schneider.”
Rolf nods, then jerks his chin at Eva to go down the steps first.
It’s all shadows inside the summerhouse, old furniture hunching like dark figures in the lightning flash, the glass walls smeared with rain. The trees creak over their heads on two sides, smacking the glass, water dripping down through the roof into puddles. And just beside her foot, a cigarette butt is ground into a crack between the flagstones.
“Sit,” Rolf says in English, positioning Jake on the low wall of a disused fountain in the center of the room, so he can hold the gun more comfortably against his head. He jerks Jake’s shirt collar, still bunched in his other hand, and Eva hears him mutter, “Move, Jew, so I can shoot you.”
Jake has not made a sound since she first saw him, and he doesn’t make one now. But she can see his white shirt in the gloom, the tension in the fast rise and fall of his chest. She can see the gray-green of his eyes. Watching her.
She’s a fire wind.
She smiles a little at Rolf, arm crossed at the waist over her soaked blouse, the knife handle biting into her arm. Then she says, in German, “The Doctor always makes people give him what he wants, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Rolf replies, wary.
“So what do you do? Do you fight it at first, or do you just give it to him?”
Rolf scowls at the back of Jake’s head. “It is not like that. Not that way. Otto needs me …” He straightens, lifts his chin. “Otto needs me to find his patients. No one else can. He trusts me. It is important to choose … the right ones. And I am good … at finding …”
Good at finding weakness, Eva thinks, and she has a sudden memory of that woman in the apartment, with the Doctor there. Rolf likes weakness, when it isn’t his own, and the Doctor always gives a reward. And so what is Rolf’s? Is Rolf allowed to be cruel? Do what he wants?
Or is she the reward?
Rolf had said as much, right before she hit him with that chunk of concrete. But she hadn’t understood things then. And wouldn’t the Doctor be so intrigued to discover what happens when you cross the lesser blood of a Polish Communist with a good German pedigree? One long, interesting experiment.
She looks Rolf in the eyes. “Was my father difficult to please?”
“Sometimes.” He adjusts his grip on the gun and Jake’s collar. “But your father is an important man. He …”
Rolf pauses. Swallows. Eva is coming across the summerhouse, walking slowly toward the fountain.
“He knows things … that other people do not. You should … respect him …”
Eva stops just before the tips of Rolf’s boots without looking at Jake. Wind and rain smack the glass, but she has Rolf’s full attention.
“You’re cold,” she says. “Would you like a cigarette?”
“Yes, all right,” he whispers.
“He keeps them in here.” And she runs her hand slowly down to Jake’s shirt pocket. Rolf watches, fascinated, as she pulls out the pack of cigarettes, touching all the ends to find a dry one. She takes one out and puts it between Rolf’s lips, then tosses the pack in Jake’s lap, reaching in his pocket again for the matches. Slowly. She can feel Jake’s heart hammering. She can also feel his hand, reaching very carefully beneath the hem of her skirt, looking for the blade of the knife.
She strikes the match, keeping Rolf’s eyes upward. The scar on his cheek jumps out jagged and pale. He looks at everything of her he can see in the match light. Then she lights the cigarette, waves out the match, and throws it in the fountain.
The cigarette glows orange in the rainy dark. But maybe not bright enough.
“What has my father told you about me?” Eva asks. She takes the cigarette from Rolf’s mouth, so he can exhale.
“What should he have told me?” Rolf asks, and Eva feels her brows go up. That had been remarkably shrewd. For Rolf.
Jake’s hand is halfway up now, feeling for the knife.
“Did he tell you I used to run off with the chauffeur?” Eva takes a drag on the cigarette, and Rolf’s mouth opens. Just a little. She can see the gap in his teeth. He shakes his head.
“That I used to steal his files and read them?”
“No. He did not say that.” She holds the cigarette while Rolf inhales, making an ember of the tip.
“He probably told you I would be a good wife, didn’t he? Do you think he told you the truth?”
Rolf looks her over again, appraising, breathing out a cloud.
“Do you think I will be an obedient wife?”
