The German (18 page)

In the backyard, he grins when he sees my chickens, and I tell him that I hate the birds, but I appreciate their eggs, and he thanks me again for the dinner.

This comment – though meant as nothing more than flippancy – unsettles the unremarkable man and the fear is back in his eyes. I smile and clap him on the back and try to soothe his disquiet, but this man is not comfortable with thoughts of death, so I wait for the power of the comment to fade, and I ask if he would like another drink, and he tells me there is something else he would prefer. I still do not know this unremarkable man’s name.

~ ~ ~

The sun has set, and sweat cools on my belly and chest. A dim light from a single lamp sends shadows over the bed. Next to me the unremarkable man rests with his eyes closed and a vague smile pulling his lips. I smell dirt and rot, and think of a concrete cell and of being cold, colder than I’ve ever been before. I think of a blood-filled hole and flakes of scab dropping from my chest, and I wonder on how it is that I’m alive?

Was it the Bolivian? Did he impart this magic to me? Is it a flaw in my own design? Or am I like Caligari’s narrator, perfectly mortal but deluded into believing the macabre in an attempt to camouflage my own infirmity?

In thinking of the Bolivian, his gaunt feminine face returns to me and once recognized he remains behind my eyes. Have I ever spoken of this man? Have I ever written down our meeting and the token of loathing he pressed into my palm?

I cannot remember…but I do remember.

Nearly twenty years ago I lost my post at the Reichstag and left my country for Bolivia and the City in the Pit.

I do not enjoy this assignment. As a military advisor, I witness the sloppiness of the troops and the indifference of the officers. Many times I attempt to show them the proper German way to train and deploy an army, but my efforts are rewarded with shrugs and laughter. More discouraging is the attitude of the Bolivians toward my disinterest in women. The Catholic Church has already commandeered this place, and sins of flesh – particularly those they find unspeakable – are mocked and cause for much outrage. I grow frustrated with the culture, and though La Paz is a beautiful city, I enjoy it little. I come to call it the City in the Pit, because of the towering canyon of stone in which it sits, demeaning it the way its populace demeans me.

This night, as is often the case, I dine with officers in the hotel restaurant, eating bland pieces of fish and overcooked vegetables. I choose to excuse myself after the meal, but my hosts will not hear of it. Instead, they escort me upstairs. Whores wait for us in a vast suite. They lounge on sofas, drinking wine from the bottle, their breasts exposed shamelessly as if they have already performed their services. The assortment of breasts is surprising to me; some small as to be hardly noticeable, some great melon-sized; some still firm with youth, and others hanging like drained leather flasks. The men walk into the room smiling and laughing, reaching for selections from this unappetizing menu, whereas I remain frozen by the door. A tall captain named Zamora tells me to take my pick of the women, and I understand that he is testing my manhood, using a worthless scale for its measurement, and I take great offense from this insulting challenge, but I smile and bow politely. Then I wish him a good night and depart.

Downstairs I take a bottle of whiskey from the bar and carry it with me into the streets, cursing my hosts and drinking deeply. After an hour I am very drunk, and find myself wandering in a strange part of the city. All around me are low dark shops and the impression of larger buildings behind them. I turn about to get my bearings, but the darkness cloaks the hillsides, erasing topographical landmarks that might have guided me in the right direction. Drinking more and missing my homeland, where I might find myself in a steam bath with any number of attractive opportunities, I lean against a shop that reeks of rotted flowers and hear a clatter coming from down the street.

Men shout and stomp the road. To my drunken mind, it sounds like the approach of a full unit, but it is merely a handful of men – four, maybe five – chasing after another man with sticks and harsh words. Though I have no interest in the squabbles of these Bolivians, a good fight strikes me as a wonderful thing, and I push away from the wall.

The chased man wears white pants and a loose tunic, only a shade darker than the trousers; his skin is so dark I make out no features of his face. He is willowy thin and when he runs he looks like a great marionette being jerked about by unskilled hands. Mid-block he changes his course and dashes across the street, away from where I stand and vanishes into a pitch-black alley. Those behind him run with greater determination and far more grace, but somehow, less speed. Though they gain on this raggedy doll, it seems they should have had their prey in much shorter order.

I leave the corner and cross the road, changing my grip on the whiskey bottle as I approach the black corridor ahead, where I see a number of shirted backs milling in the gloom. Still they shout and a shrill cry comes from within, and I reach the alley with a cock full of blood. Indifferent to the cause of the chase – What care have I for the squabbles of these undisciplined people? – I believe the greater fight will come from the pursuers, so it is they I attack. I shatter the whiskey bottle over a black-haired head, dropping one of the men outright. His comrades turn to see what has caused the commotion, and I swing the bottle again, slicing into the arm of a burly Bolivian with a thick and scruffy beard. He clutches at his arm and looks at me confused, and I bring my knee up to his balls and when he drops and gapes up at me, I smash my forehead into the bridge of his nose, and he falls unconscious on the paving stones. Hands are on me now, holding my shoulders, seeking purchase on my arms, but the fight is still building, and I will not be denied this conflict. I dig in my feet and push back, shoving whichever man has gotten behind me into a wall. His grip on my shoulders loosens and I step away in time to avoid a kick meant for my own balls, but landing instead against this other man’s thigh. I take three punches to the face and one very painful blow to the ear. Caramel-colored hands and faces surround me, but I continue to struggle, striking out at every shape in the gloom. In time two men run off and two lie on the stones at my feet. The last man tries to reason with me. He shouts and points deep into the alley, likely at the man he has been chasing, but he speaks the native gibberish these people called
Quechua
and I do not understand a word of it. I shout back in German, calling him weak and foolish and any number of obscenities. And if I were carrying my sidearm, I would shoot him then, so infuriating do I find the meaningless babble he launches at me. But I have no gun, and the bottle lies in useless shards around me. I charge the man, who continues to point, shaking his finger into the darkness at something I cannot see. My attack on this last man is brutal and were I not drunk I would end it much sooner, except I am very drunk and my body is charged as if imbued with the power of Thor himself. I punch teeth from the man’s mouth; dislocate his right eye so that it bulges against his swelling lids; one hand is crushed into the stones by my polished boot; and he vomits blood until he finally lies quietly.

Now I am eager to see what manner of prey these men have cornered, because in their defeat I have made it mine.

I march down the alley, which smells of cat piss and rotten fruit. I withdraw a box of matches from my jacket pocket and strike one. In its flash – for it goes out almost immediately – I see the pale-clothed man crouching against a wall many meters away. Another match flares and I see that this beleaguered man is holding up a palm, though whether this is for assistance or to ward me off, I neither know nor care. When I reach him, I light another match and it keeps its flame. Up, I tell him. You stand up, now. Ernst has protected you.

In the firelight I gather some impression of his face. He has high cheekbones and large eyes, and at first I think that perhaps I have just saved a woman, but there is a masculinity to the man’s jaw, and when he rises to his full height, six inches taller than myself, the question of his gender vanishes. The match burns down and I discard it – light another.

After such a fight, my body sings of muscle and confidence, and I have saved this wretch’s life, for which he merely stares at me. I reach out a hand and touch his cheek and then caress his exotic skin. His eyes grow wide and he slaps my hand away and begins to babble at me in his native language, and hearing it again hits my temples like lightning, and I punch his full lips with every gram of force I can muster. In the dark I grope for him and he slaps at me, and I laugh at this game, until his long nails scratch my cheek.

I strike out with fists and knees and curses. Punching into shadows, hitting his chest and face and the stone wall. When he collapses, my boot suffices to continue the assault. It is easy to blame the whiskey, easier still to blame the ungrateful peasant at my feet, who has insulted my protection of him with repugnant dismissal.

As I straighten my clothing, the wretch begins a fresh chorus of incomprehensible chatter. With my energies spent I find the sing-song of his voice amusing; he is like a punished child making himself feel better with a lullaby. I take a step away and a hot palm wrap around my wrist, so I spin back to this broken peasant whom I cannot see, and feel something damp and writhing slapped into my palm and all the while, he continues the nonsensical chanting. So disturbing is the sensation on my hand, I do not even think to retaliate with violence but rather seek only to flee. I jerk my arm out of his grasp and back down the darkened alley, palm before my face trying to see what this man has placed there. It moves on my palm like a damp poultice or secreting insect, oozing toward gravity but I feel it stinging through my skin as well. I slap my hands together, which only sends spikes of pain into my palm and I scrub it against my trouser leg, which offers the same result. Keeping pace with me in the darkness is the wretched, beaten man. His voice rolls through the alley, taunting and brutal. Finally I reach a point where the light is sufficient to see what he has forced upon me, but there is nothing there. I search my hand front and back. The knuckles are split and ooze blood. The hand has swollen from so much violence, but whatever manner of creature had been put upon me is gone.

A week later I receive word that I am to return to Germany to take on a position of great authority, and the countdown to my execution begins.

~ ~ ~

I climb from the bed with stealth, so as not to disturb my guest and I walk into the living room for a cigarette. It is still early, I note – just after eleven o’clock. The cigarette tastes good to me. I turn on the lamp beside the sofa and look at the palm of my right hand; it is smooth and shows only the natural lines all men possess.

In this moment, I decide that I carry neither a Bolivian’s curse nor a hereditary predisposition to endure. I am a man who is misremembering his past, nothing more, and though this speaks to insanity, it is far more rational than the mystical alternatives. Otherwise, what am I to call myself? Undead? Ghost?

The man with the unremarkable face speaks my name from the room. I crush the cigarette in the tray and return to him. He greets me from where he stands at the foot of the bed. His body is tall and firm and looks golden in the weak light of the lamp. We embrace and kiss and he turns in my arms, facing away so that my hands caress his stomach, and I place my ear against his cool back and listen for his heart, and when I hear the beating, I kiss him between the shoulder blades. Then I again listen for the rhythm.

“I like you, Ernst,” he tells me.

“Yes. I like you, also.”

This is good. To hold a body not eager to flee my touch, to be with a man that is not fire and then smoke – consuming then insubstantial – confirms I am no ghost merely inhabiting a place with no influence on it. In this moment, I am alive, and I hold him tightly to me, feeling the curve of his backside against my waist and the beat of his heart against my ear.

~ ~ ~

I remember the name of the boy whose declaration of love I met with laughter, and the boy’s face returns to me, and I’m startled to remember that like me, his name was Ernst, and his face was very much like my own.

Monday morning, Tom sat in his office, facing Doc Randolph. The doctor puffed on his pipe and wore his customary expression of superiority, though he had added very little to the conversation since having arrived.

“It’s like waiting to be executed,” Tom said. “Two days and no body, but it’s only a matter of time before Little Lenny’s found, and I think things are going to blow up.”

“I guess I can add that to the Henckel boy who was run down and about fifty fights in the last few weeks. Lord, we’re going to have Germans hanging from the trees in the park if we don’t find this son of a bitch.”

“You only need one to hang,” Doc Randolph said. He took a deep puff on his pipe.