Bluebird, page 31
“I suppose he might have lied about that.”
And Jake has the knife blade. Working it down.
“Inge!”
The Doctor’s voice comes sharp from the steps. Jake freezes, knife in hand.
“Come away from him. I went all the way down the road and I can’t find Schneider …”
Eva leans close, keeping Rolf’s eyes fixed on her face.
“Did he tell you that I am his daughter?” she whispers. “Because if he did, he lied about that, too.”
Rolf’s half-closed eyes open up. “What?”
The Doctor is shaking the water off his hat. “Can’t think why Schneider would have gone …”
“You are not his blood?” Rolf whispers.
“No.” Eva smokes the cigarette.
“How do you know?”
“Because I can remember my parents, and he was not one of them.”
“… we will wait for that boy to come back,” the Doctor is saying, “and take their car instead. Inge! I said to come away. Rolf, what is she saying to you …”
Rolf doesn’t break his gaze with Eva. “But he said …”
Eva smiles. “Do I really look German to you?”
And Rolf looks at her. Really looks. Her hair, her eyes. And the expression on his face is not shock or even disgust. It is hatred. Pure betrayal.
“What kind?” he says. He isn’t wet from rain. He’s sweating. The gun has moved a little to one side. “What kind of people were your parents?”
Eva shrugs. “Polish. Communists …”
Rolf makes a noise in his throat.
“Rolf!” says the Doctor. “What are you …”
“She’s not German,” Rolf says. And then he screams. “She’s not even German!”
And Jake rolls suddenly to one side, stabbing backward with the knife. The gun explodes, blinding, deafening. Eva throws herself at Rolf, knocking him off-balance. Another shot goes off and they fall to the cracked, wet floor. But Jake is up and turned around, coming with the knife. Eva scrambles, planting her knee on Rolf’s wrist. The gun comes loose, and then Jake has the knife blade across Rolf’s throat.
Rolf exhales and goes still.
And then there is no sound but the rain running down the windows, dripping through the roof, and the ringing echo in Eva’s ears.
She sits up, her knee still on Rolf’s arm. Jake must have gotten Rolf somewhere with the knife because there are streaks on the blade, dark against Rolf’s throat. They exchange a quick look. Jake’s jaw is set, his breath coming hard. And he has a narrow gash along his cheekbone. Where a bullet passed.
So close.
Then Jake reaches out into the darkness with his free hand and brings back the gun. He lays it on her palm.
And she’s an explosion. A blast of heat and light. Eva jumps to her feet and turns.
The Doctor is sitting on the floor beside the fountain. Sweating, gasping, blood running through his fingers where he’s holding his thigh. He has a bullet in his leg.
Good, Eva thinks. That’s for Mina.
And it is time. For justice. She raises the gun.
“Inge,” the Doctor says.
She walks forward. And now Rolf is laughing behind her, spread-eagled on the floor, muttering something about German babies. The Doctor scoots backward through the puddles.
“Inge, what are you doing …”
“This is for Mina,” she says, “and Rosa, Alfred, Piotr, David, Matya, Oskar …”
She walks forward, watching her father’s face change from confusion to fear. He’s clutching his leg.
Rolf giggles. “Gods among men …”
She says the names. All of them. And then she is standing at the Doctor’s feet. There’s one bullet left in her mother’s gun. “This,” Eva says, “is your justice.”
“Justice?” The Doctor pulls himself up to the edge of the fountain, leaving a bloody place behind on the floor. “What do you mean by justice? Do you mean, what is fair? You were not the valuable one, but I saved you. You would have been killed, but I made you my daughter. Made you better. And now you will kill me? Is that fair? Is that your justice?”
“Shoot him!” Rolf screams.
“Eva,” Jake says. “You can still choose …”
The Doctor shakes his head. “Inge, you are not going to shoot your Papa.”
“Why not?” she asks.
He smiles through gritted teeth. “Because I love you.”
“But emotion must never enter into judgment, Papa. Isn’t that what you taught me? You wouldn’t want me to be weak, would you?”
“You were never like them,” the Doctor says, voice soft. “You became something more, just like he”—he waves a dripping hand toward Rolf—“became something less …”
“Shoot him,” Rolf begs.
Jake keeps his voice low. “Eva. You can choose.”
“Would I have done so much, made you my little girl, if I did not love you, Inge? If I did not want so much to be your Papa? And don’t you think, my little bird, that it is fair to give your love to me in return?”
The smile on her Papa’s face is gentle. Knowing. And in the flash of a second, she remembers.
She knows what she did with the bird.
And the Doctor, she thinks, does not know love. He’s never seen it. But she has. And it isn’t fair. And it doesn’t make her weak. It makes her strong.
She breathes. And breathes.
She is stronger than him. She has always been stronger than him.
“Eva,” Jake says.
She looks back over her shoulder and smiles.
And pulls the trigger.
SHE HOLDS THE bird with one hand, Papa’s paperweight with the other. The bird wants to ruffle its pretty feathers. Spread its wings. But it is trapped.
The bird is afraid.
She is so tired.
“Are you ready to obey, my Inge?”
“Yes, Papa.”
The paperweight is pretty, too. Heavy. It will smash things. She looks her Papa in the eyes.
And throws the paperweight through the window.
The glass shatters, a harsh, wrong sound.
And she runs to the broken window and thrusts the bird through. The glass is sharp and stinging. It makes her bleed. But the sky is close. She can feel the wind.
And she opens her hand.
THE WALL OF glass behind the Doctor explodes, shattering into a million shards and tinkling pieces, a cascade of breaking noise over the softening storm. Eva waits for the shivering sound to settle, for a puff of wind to find its way through the summerhouse. For the stillness to come back.
And then the Doctor laughs. He cackles and giggles and wipes his forehead with the back of a bloody hand.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” he says. He clutches his leg. But he’s still laughing. “I knew you couldn’t. You were always weak. Interesting, but weak …”
Eva lets the gun go clattering across the floor. “It would have taken less strength to shoot you,” she says. “But I am not your judge.”
“Weak,” the Doctor says. And he laughs.
She walks around the fountain. It’s easier to see the lawn now that the streaming water has nothing to run down. The rain still falls, but in a soft way, a moon up somewhere behind the thinning clouds. And she thinks she can see them coming, shadows making their way across the pale wet grass. One from the trees on the opposite side of the house, two from the direction of the road.
Eva takes a step through the empty wall onto the lawn, where they can see her. She looks back at the Doctor. “Your consequences are here.”
He stops laughing.
And then Jake is beside her, knife still in his hand, watching the dark figures come. The graze from the bullet has bled down his cheek. But he isn’t dead. And the relief is like air. New air when the cupboard door is opened.
“Is it the Russians?” he asks.
Eva nods.
“What?” says the Doctor. “The Communists? They are not here …”
She can hear him scrabbling to get upright, hissing when the weight hits his leg.
“Inge … no. You cannot …”
She keeps her eyes on the coming men and asks, “Where is Rolf?”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Jake replies. “He’s bleeding pretty bad from his thigh. I tied his belt around it …”
“Inge … Eva. Listen to me!” the Doctor says. “You do not understand. You have to tell them …”
She looks back. The Doctor is wobbling, his coat and cardigan dark with stains. He seems to have just understood the disappearance of Dr. Schneider.
“Where are my papers?” His voice rises. “Where is Anna’s file?”
“I burned your file.”
“Then you have to tell them. Tell them what I can do!”
She shakes her head.
“They’re here,” Jake whispers.
“You do not understand! I must have something to offer!”
And then the man with shiny shoes is stepping into the summerhouse, feet crunching across the floor.
The Doctor moves, quicker than she would have thought on his bad leg, hands scrabbling in the glass. He finds the gun. And he fires.
Nothing happens. He tries again. And again.
“Two for Erich,” Eva tells him. “Remember?”
He drops the gun. The Russian nods once at Eva and puts the Doctor on his face on the floor.
And when Eva turns, there is another man stepping through the broken wall. A man with the same shine on his shoes. The two don’t look exactly alike, but when seen apart, and dressed the same, it would be difficult to tell the difference.
She should have known there was more than one man with shiny shoes.
The third figure arrives at the summerhouse, a tall man, blond and ghost-pale in a long, gray coat. He does not step through the glass. He is neat. And mostly dry. Collar turned up to the dying wind. Jake stands just behind Eva, hand on her back, slipping the bread knife deep into his pants pocket.
The blond man observes the Doctor, who is having his hands tied behind his back, trying to explain what he can do for the Soviet Union. But the men with shiny shoes don’t speak much German. The blond man, however, has good English.
“That is him, I suppose,” he says. “Dr. Otto von Emmerich?”
“Yes,” Eva says. “He needs a doctor, and so does …”
But there is an odd sound coming from the darkness where Rolf is. A strangling noise. Eva takes a step, and then the shadow of Rolf’s body bucks up suddenly from the floor.
“Come this way, please,” says the blond man, extending an arm.
Eva hesitates, but Jake presses his hand against her back, urging her away. The blond man gives a short order in Russian to the other two, and then he joins them.
“Cyanide is an ugly way to die,” he says. “And it is not so quick. But the Nazis, it is always what they want. Come over here, please. To wait.”
He steps gingerly across the wet lawn, and when Eva looks back, she can see the Doctor’s coat and pockets being searched, making sure he doesn’t have a cyanide pill, too. Then Rolf makes the horrible choking sound and Jake pushes her on a little faster, to where the blond man has stopped beneath a large branch at the tree line. The pine needles are fresh with rain, Sky Island a brooding shape without even the glow of a candle showing. And when she looks up, the blond Russian is studying her.
“You are Anna Ptaszynska?” he asks.
“No,” says Jake, firm but not unfriendly. “Her name is Eva Gerst.”
The man gives Jake a long look in the half-light. The wound on his face, a glance at his pocket. He knows that knife is there. They can hear the trees drip.
Then the man says, “Von Emmerich’s stories are not of interest to me. The Sachsenhausen prison has held Communists for many years. Thousands of Soviet prisoners of war have died there. We want everyone who was in charge. And many of von Emmerich’s patients were Soviet …”
“I want him to go to trial,” Eva says.
He examines her again. His eyes are the clearest blue. Bright even in the darkness. And they are cold. A pond in winter. For a Russian, he looks exactly the way a Nazi would wish to. “There will be a trial,” he says.
“Not Nuremberg. A trial where the Americans cannot be involved.”
“It will be Soviet.”
“I want proof.”
After a moment, he lifts a shoulder. “I will arrange your proof.”
“And who are you, exactly?” Jake asks.
The cold eyes brush past him again. Over Eva. And then away. The shoulder lifts again. “It does not matter so much,” he says. “We will clean up and we will go. When the Americans come, say nothing. You have not seen us. You have not seen the Doctor. In two days, von Emmerich will be out of the country.”
Eva wants to ask where they are taking him. What her proof will look like. But the blond man has closed the door to questions without saying a word. His gaze is narrowed at the house. Or maybe at nothing at all. Then he reaches into his coat and hands Eva an envelope.
“Wait here,” he says. “Until we are gone. You will not see me again.”
And he just walks away, something rhythmic in his stride. Eva watches him dissolve into the dark, then looks at the envelope in her hand.
And discovers that she is shaking.
Then Jake has her, pulling her face into the dent in his chest. He’s crushing her. She tries to crush him back.
“I thought you’d shot him,” he says.
“I thought I was going to,” she breathes. “But then I remembered. I remembered what I did with the bird.”
“What did you remember?”
“That I let it go.”
Jake sighs, his chin in her hair. “I thought you might have.”
She can feel his blood beating strong against her cheek.
“Tell me what happened,” he whispers.
Eva tells him. All of it. About Valentina, her father in the office and the things he said. The parts of her father’s file that had been real—her training to forget, her punishments, the bird—and the parts that had been lies. For show. Like Anna the killer. She tells him everything he couldn’t understand in the summerhouse.
There’s a light in there now. She can just see it. A flashlight, maybe, dimmed with a cloth. Whatever they’re doing, it’s silent. She can’t hear Rolf dying. Maybe he’s dead. She can’t hear her father. She closes her eyes. Jake is holding tight to her hair.
“I don’t know if I did the right thing.”
“You did the best thing you could,” Jake says, “so that makes it the right thing.”
She’s not sure that’s good enough. Jake rests his cheek on the top of her head.
“For what it’s worth,” he whispers, “I think you did the right thing.”
But the guilt is there, anyway.
They both look up at the sound of a motor. Soft, far away, and fading down the hill. The summerhouse is dark. Still. They walk back across the lawn and peer into its shadows.
And it’s like nothing happened. There are no Soviets. No Rolf. No Doctor. The floor is wet. She thinks the blood is gone. Even the cigarette butts are gone. There’s just a mess of broken glass, and Eva’s black purse, sitting on the edge of the fountain. She opens it and finds the gun inside. And then she discovers the envelope in her hand. She doesn’t think there’s writing on it, but it’s too dark to see.
“What did he give you?” Jake asks.
“I’m not sure.”
“I’d light a match, but you took all mine.” He gives her a sideways glance. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t.”
“The hell you don’t, Bluebird.” He almost laughs. But he doesn’t.
She puts the envelope in her purse and snaps it shut, and Jake is still, hands in pockets, looking down at the clean stones. Where Rolf had been.
“I guess that’s what it would have been like,” he says. “In the war. Really knowing that the other guy wants you dead. Thinking you’re about to die. And you don’t want it to be you. You want it to be him. You’d do anything to make sure it’s him. And then, when he does die, feeling sorry about it, all the same.” He blows out a breath. “I guess I wouldn’t have done so well.”
“Why?” Eva says. “Because you shouldn’t want to save your own life? Because you shouldn’t be afraid when there is a gun against your head? Then you would just be … you would be unvernünftig.”
That makes him look up. She comes around the fountain to stand beside him.
“It means stupid,” she says. “That would make you stupid.”
He lets out another deep breath. But his shoulders have lost some of their tension. And she’s made him smile. And wince.
“Does your face hurt?” she asks.
“Like fire.”
He takes her hand, looking at her red fingernails in the darkness, his brows together. And Eva knows guilt when she sees it. The guilt for being alive when someone else is dead. She sees it in the mirror every time she thinks of her brothers.
“Shut up,” she says, even though he hasn’t said anything, and she kisses him. Once. Gentle on his mouth, like she had in the abandoned office. She doesn’t want to hurt his cheek. “I won’t do it again,” she whispers. But she doesn’t step away.
“Shut up,” he says, and then he’s kissing her, hard, only this time, he’s the one who doesn’t stop. She doesn’t want him to. He kisses her mouth and her chin and her cheeks and her neck and up to her mouth again, and then the wall of the summerhouse is behind her with the branches tapping, and he doesn’t seem worried about hurting his face. He seems glad to be alive.
She wants to make sure he is glad to be alive.
And then she turns from Jake’s lips, putting a finger on them, listening.
There’s a motor coming, but it’s not soft. It’s the Studebaker, protesting its way up the hill. She can feel Jake’s breath, coming fast on her fingertip. He smiles from the corner of his mouth, and shakes his head no.
“Valentina,” she whispers.
He shakes his head no again. She kisses him once more, quick, feeling his sigh when he lets her go. She grabs her purse, leaving Jake with his hands on his head as she hurries up the summerhouse steps, and flags down the car as the lights pull around the drive. The brakes squeal to a stop, and then Jake is just behind her.
