Kino (10 page)

Chapter 8

Pulp Fiction, Barbarella, The Wages of Fear.
Uma Thurman, Jane Fonda, Yves Montand: film posters that could've been anywhere, like the faint morning light falling in through the curtains. Wherever she was, it was very early. Mina was gliding awake out of a muddled dream involving palm trees, windmills, and her father spitting insults at her. Wherever she was, it was cold and Mina pulled the thick covers tighter around herself as she tried to retrace the events of the previous day: the bomb threat, the department store, the stranger at the Holocaust memorial. The notebook and Dr. Hanno's flushed cheeks as they read it together on his couch, red wine and more
Döner
–

Oh shit.

This was not her airline-comped room at the Tegel Ramada.

This was Dr. Hanno's bed.

Mina lunged out from under the covers, bare feet on cold hardwood, eyes anxiously searching the room. She found herself wearing black-and-white silk pajamas emblazoned with the likeness of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Below the chest pocket, it said “You know how to whistle, don't you?”

Dr. Hanno's pajamas.
Oh God, please no
. With one swift motion, Mina pulled the fluffy covers off the bed.

It was empty. She felt for her wedding ring, still on her finger. Good. Whatever had happened, she was sure she hadn't slept with Dr. Hanno.

Relieved, Mina considered lying back down. According to the cheap digital clock on the bedside table, it wasn't seven yet. But her heart was beating fast now; the shock and the cold had woken her up for good. She put on her clothes and stepped out into the living room: large, bright, with wood floors. Judging by what she could see through the tall windows, she was on the fourth of five floors. The room was lined with shelves stacked with books, DVDs, video tapes, and film memorabilia. In a corner, a flat screen TV was stuck on the menu of the
Die Nibelungen
DVD, the heroic theme playing over and over. Had they watched that? Mina couldn't remember. Had she been drinking a lot? Her head felt fine, more or less.

Dr. Hanno was asleep in his clothes on the standard-issue futon that doubled as his couch. On the coffee table in front of him, stacks of papers, books, photocopied pages, and a laptop were crowded together amongst remains of Turkish food, half-empty coffee cups, and beer bottles.

Mina was remembering bits and pieces from the journal: the fire at the Koblitz estate, the amputation, Steffen and the Belvedere, the dragon, Lang's wrap party. And, the last thing she'd read before falling asleep, something about Penny and Lilly that she couldn't quite piece together.

The mysterious man who had snuck up on her at the memorial had told her not to show the journal to Dr. Hanno, but she hadn't been able to hide it from him. She knew how excited he'd be, and she'd been right: “A major discovery!” and so forth. It was a way to make up for losing
Tulpendiebe
, perhaps. Now, on his futon, smiling in his sleep, he looked so young, so innocent. He reminded Mina of a boy she'd slept with a few times in college, Eric Ambrose. Poor, goofy Eric Ambrose.

Mina watched Dr. Hanno's chest rise and fall and thought of Sam. At the hospital, she had watched him sleep for an entire week, but not once had he looked as peaceful and content as Dr. Hanno now. All that tossing and turning, it had driven her crazy. She was glad not to be there, at the hospital.

There had been no word from Sam. Mina had called of course, but it was an impossible hour in New York and the nurse had been curt. She'd said something about a “biphasic pattern,” taken down Dr. Hanno's phone number, and hung up without a good-bye.

Then it dawned on Mina that she'd have to fly back today, and her heart sank. Another airport, and back to her plastic chair in the hospital. At least she'd have time to read the rest of the journal on the plane.

Speaking of. Where
was
the damn journal?

Another jolt of fear ran up Mina's spine. She rifled through the mess on the table. Had she managed to receive and promptly lose yet another obscure item from the past? The notebook wasn't on the table. It wasn't under the table. It didn't seem to be on the floor.

She shook Dr. Hanno awake. “The journal. Where is the damn journal?” There was more panic in her voice than she'd expected.

Dr. Hanno groped around for his glasses. “Oh,” he mumbled. “Oh.
Es tut mir leid
.”

“What?”

“It's right here.” He rolled off the futon, and there it was, under his ass, a standard issue spiral notebook with a yellowed cover. Mina picked it up and leafed through the pages, as if to make sure they were still filled with Kino's jittery handwriting.

“Did you read any further? After I fell asleep?”

Dr. Hanno yawned, rubbed his eyes. “That would have been inappropriate. With your permission, though, I scanned the pages so there's a backup–just in case you should lose it again. This material is invaluable.”

Mina wasn't sure she liked the idea of Dr. Hanno keeping a copy of the pages, but she didn't know why. She shrugged it off.

“What time is it?” Dr. Hanno wanted to know.

Mina clutched the journal to her chest. “Time for coffee.”

His kitchen was small, and Dr. Hanno worked quickly to set up breakfast–rolls, dark brown bread, a plate with cold cuts, Nutella. Mina was used to a bowl of cereal on most days, unless she somehow woke up early enough to join Sam for oatmeal, or they went out for brunch. The week before had been nothing but doughy hospital bagels with Philadelphia cream cheese.

She went for the Nutella, carefully transporting the gooey hazelnut spread from the jar to her slice of bread. She didn't want to get any on the journal, which she had propped open under the edge of her plate. They'd only gotten about a third into the book before she'd passed out from exhaustion. Without taking her eye off the page, she sank her teeth into the bread.

“This is the part I don't understand,” she said between bites, “‘My Lilly, my Penny!'? Is he saying my grandmother was in the movie? And what does
‘Dreckfotze'
mean?”

Dr. Hanno just drank coffee. He hadn't even gotten out a plate for himself. “It's not a very nice word. It refers to–” was he really blushing? “–a part of the female anatomy–and yes, I do believe your grandmother's maiden name was Penelope Greifenau.”

“Are you sure? Oma Penny? That was her in the movie, the blonde girl?”

“You didn't know she was an actress?”

“I had no idea. My God, she was beautiful.”

“According to a footnote I found in a Murnau biography, she refused to be interviewed.”

“Sounds about right. I was terrified of her as a kid.”

Dr. Hanno watched with something like pity. Mina realized that he must have known that it was her grandmother in the movie all along, but he hadn't bothered to tell her. She let the last bite of her Nutella sandwich sink back to the table. “That was her, in the movie. I have to talk to her.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

Dr. Hanno rubbed his hands together, instantly excited.

Mina washed down her last bite with a swig of coffee while Dr. Hanno dialed directory assistance in California. He handed her the phone. Mina hadn't really thought about what to say when a distant voice at the other end cackled “hello.”

“Oma Penny? It's Mina, your granddaughter.”

A cough. “Detlef's girl?” Another cough, a sound like phlegm. “What do you want?”

“I saw you in the movie–”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“
Tulpendiebe
. I saw you in
Tulpendiebe
and I want to–”

“Impossible. It's been destroyed for sixty years. All the prints were burned. You're talking crazy.”

The theme from
The Godfather
began playing somewhere. It was Dr. Hanno's ringtone, coming from his cell phone on the window sill. He picked up– “Broddenbuck,
am Apparat
!”–and started to talk in rapid German. He sounded agitated. It was hard enough to hear her long distance call, and Mina waved for him to leave the room. He didn't. “
Langsam
,” he said. “
Ich verstehe kein Wort
!”

Mina raised her voice, trying to drown him out. “Oma, I'm telling you. I've seen
Tulpendiebe
. The movie just showed up on my doorstep. I'm in Berlin because of the projector. You were so beautiful with all the flowers. Lilly, the Duke's daughter. I had no idea. Nobody ever told me.”

Oma Penny was silent for a second. “What do you mean about the projector?”

“The movie was in a weird format, and they only have it here. I don't–”

Dr. Hanno cupped his hand over his phone and turned to her. “
Doppelnockenverfahren
,” he said.

“Right,” Mina said. “
Doppelnockenverfahren
.”

“Who's there with you?” Penny said. “You worthless ditz. Don't talk about this on the phone. Don't call me again,
verstanden
?” She hung up.

Mina cursed.

Dr. Hanno, too, was cursing into his phone: “
Verdammt nochmal!
Danke
, Frank.”

“She hung up on me,” Mina said. Could that gruff voice really have belonged to the same woman who'd played the frail daughter of the Duke?

Dr. Hanno put a hand on her shoulder, startling her. “That'll have to wait,” he said. “We have to leave, right now. Get your bags.”

“Excuse me?”

But he was already in the living room, picking up books, papers, his laptop, shoving it all into a knapsack. “That was Frank, the projectionist, warning us. Americans came by the museum, asking questions about
Tulpendiebe.
They're on their way here.”

“Good,” Mina said. “Maybe they know what happened. I want to talk to them.”

“No, you don't. Trust me.”

“I don't trust you. I want you to tell me what this is about.”

Dr. Hanno stopped for a moment. “Frau Koblitz. Please. Powerful interests have a stake in your grandfather's legacy. We have to leave.”

“What does that even mean? That's bullshit.”

“You seemed to take the bomb threat seriously. These men are dangerous. You've already been robbed once. Do you want to lose the journal, too?”

That struck a nerve. Dr. Hanno thought the bomb threat had been about her, after all. But hadn't the man in the red leather jacket told Mina not to trust him? Who was she to believe? The one thing she knew was that she didn't want to lose the journal. It was the only palpable thing to come out of this mess, and she was determined to bring it back to New York with her.

Dr. Hanno's house phone rang in Mina's hand. She hadn't even been aware that she was still holding it. Without thinking, she picked it up, blurting, “What now?”

“Uh. Baby? It's me. Are you still in Holland? Where are you?”

Sam.

“Oh Sam, thank God, it's you. I'm in Germany, baby. Germany.”

“You wrote something about tulips.”

Dr. Hanno came in from the bedroom holding Mina's suitcase. He tapped his wrist and twirled a finger to hurry her.

Mina didn't care. Sam sounded confused and weary, but she was relieved to hear his voice. “How are you? They said you're getting worse.”

“It's awfully hot here,” Sam said. “I have bad dreams, and I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm all alone. I don't trust these doctors. They tell me something different every day. Did you hear we bombed a wedding in Iraq? Cluster-bombed the entire village. I saw it on the news. I sweated through all my pajamas. Your father yelled at me. I wish you were here. I miss you.”

Dr. Hanno was picking up Mina's things himself now, stuffing them into her suitcase. He made a point of showing the journal to her before he stuck it into her knapsack's front pocket with her passport.

“Oh baby,” Mina said. “I'm coming home today, okay? I promise. It's been crazy. This guy at the Holocaust monument handed me Kino's journal. I never knew he was missing a leg, or that Oma Penny was the Duke's daughter. She used to be beautiful. I called her in Los Angeles but she wouldn't talk to me–”

The doorbell rang. Dr. Hanno rushed to the window, stuck his head out, and turned to Mina. “
Scheisse
! We have to go. Now!”

“What?” Mina looked down to the street. Below, three men in suits were waiting by the front door. One of them looked up and pointed her out to the others. The door bell rang again, and again, and again.

“What's going on?” Sam sounded even more confused than before.

Mina sighed. “These guys are here looking for me. Dr. Hanno thinks they're dangerous. He wants us to leave. He's actually sweating he's so nervous.”

Dr. Hanno put on his coat, grabbed Mina's parka from the hook, and shook it at her impatiently. “Frau Koblitz, we must go right now. Your grandfather's legacy is at stake.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “Weird. Maybe it's the same guys who came by here.”

“What?”

“After your dad left, these guys in suits came by and asked me questions.”