The Linz Tattoo (55 page)

“First the gun—throw it well away. And then
the girl. Make up your mind, Hagemann. There isn’t any more
time.”

Things might have gone either way in the
pause that followed. Hagemann seemed not to know what he dared
believe.

“On your word as an Aryan, Christiansen?” he
asked finally.

“Yes, if that’s what it takes. On my word as
an Aryan.”

It must have been the hardest decision he
had ever made in his life, but finally Hagemann did ease the barrel
of his pistol away from Esther’s throat. He held it up, as if to
show it off to Christiansen, and then, very gently, he tossed it to
one side. For another instant he stood there holding her, as if he
couldn’t bear to be parted from her, as if he were waiting to see
if he was about to die.

Quite suddenly, he pushed her away, starting
back from her like a man who had been bitten by a snake. Her hand
was still clenched around the opening of his jacket pocket, and as
she fell she ripped it away with her, the pocket simply coming off
in her grasp, the contents spilling out onto the beach, tinkling as
they struck the stones.

And, of course, Hagemann understood. He
stood staring at her, his face dark with hatred.

“Run, Hagemann. Sixty seconds—don’t push
your luck.”

And that was what he did. His eyes dropped
to the muzzle of Christiansen’s Sten gun, and then widened with
terror, and then he ran. His footsteps ground against the
pebbles.

And Esther was down on her hands and knees,
searching among the loose stones.

“He had it in his. . . I know it’s here. I
know. . .”

“Come away, Esther. There’s no time.”

“But it’s here.” She looked up at his face,
pleading but determined. Nothing would move her. “It’s here. . .
It’s— Yes, I found it! See? I. . .”

There really was no time now. Hagemann was
already climbing the gangway to his boat. Christiansen took Esther
in his arms, giving her the only protection he had left to offer.
He covered her with his body and lay down on the beach.

It sounded like the end of everything. The
noise of the explosion seemed to reach them in waves, one after the
other. It was terrible. They could feel the fire. The last day
would be like this.

And when they turned to look, the boat at
the end of the pier had simply ceased to exist. In its place was an
inferno, black and red, shooting out in every direction, mirrored
in the black water until it seemed to fill the world, burning their
eyes so that they couldn’t bear to look at it.

“What is it—what HAPPENED?” Esther screamed,
burying her face in Christiansen’s chest. All he could do was put
his hand on her hair.

“It’s Mordecai’s Roman candle,” he said.

26

Linz, Austria: March 25.1948

Esther never relinquished the key she had
picked up on the beach that night. The next afternoon, in
Marseilles, Inar bought her a thin gold chain for it so she could
wear it around her neck. She thought perhaps she might wear it the
rest of her life.

They all left together, by sea. Inar had a
little boat. He disappeared for a few minutes and then suddenly
there it was, at the end of what remained of the pier. They all had
to wade out into the water to get aboard—even Jerry Hirsch, who was
alive after all but whose left arm was in a cast up to the
shoulder—and they got away just as the first sirens were sounding.
None of them had been hurt except Inar, who had been shot in the
leg. The bullet had gone straight through, so he cleaned out the
wound himself. It was a gruesome process and must have been
terribly painful, but from the calm deliberation of his manner one
might have supposed he was merely oiling a bicycle chain.

They said their goodbyes in Valencia, early
that morning. They would see Jerry again in Munich, but Itzhak and
Amos were going home. Inar bought two tickets on the train to
France. They stayed in Marseilles for two days, and on the night
before they left Inar took her to hear a concert—a string quartet,
but they didn’t play anything by Bartók. “You’ll have to get used
to this sort of thing,” Inar told her. It made her feel as if they
shared a delicious secret. After the performance Inar took her
backstage to meet the violist, who turned out to be a friend from a
place called “Juilliard.”

The next day they stopped off in Bern for
three hours. Inar left her to wait in the train station, and when
he came back he was carrying his cello. He was smiling—it was the
first time she had ever seen him really happy, and he was like a
different person. It made her believe that the past might really be
over.

They had to wait a day before Jerry showed
up at their hotel in Munich, and then Inar hired a car and they
drove to Linz. It was evening by the time they arrived, too late
for anything except dinner. The expression on Jerry’s face when he
bid them goodnight at the door of the restaurant was strained and
uncertain, as if he were embarrassed to be seen with them.

“Why is he like that?” she asked as they
walked back to the pension where they had taken a room. It had
rained that evening and the sidewalks were still wet. “Why does he
act as if he didn’t trust us?”

“Because he doesn’t. Palestine will be
partitioned in three weeks, and that’s all Hirsch can think about.
Everyone who isn’t his friend is his enemy—that’s just the way his
mind works.”

“After all this, aren’t you his friend?”

“No.”

“But he has what he wants. It’s over, isn’t
it?”

“No. It won’t be over until tomorrow.”

That night she sat on their bed in her
nightdress, her arms wrapped around her knees, listening to Inar
play the cello. She felt she could very happily spend the rest of
her life just this way, in a tiny room with him, watching the way
his strong fingers moved over the strings. She wondered how long it
would take for her to learn to recognize all of the music he
played, or if there was too much of it for that. Inar said there
wasn’t a lot written for the solo cello, but she didn’t think she
had ever heard him play the same thing twice. Sometimes he would
even play something he had written himself, and then smile and ask
her how she liked it. When she didn’t know how to answer he would
just laugh.

Tonight he played Bach, slow and tragic so
that she wanted to cry. He could do that, make the music into
something almost like a state of soul. He could make her believe he
understood everything about her. She loved him so much it was like
being in pain.

And when he came to bed, and ran his hand
down her back in a way that made her tremble, it was as if the
music were still playing somewhere. It was as if they never would
have another tomorrow. She felt helpless against his great
strength, and that helplessness itself was a kind of ecstasy. But,
no, the past was not over yet.

In the morning Inar telephoned down for
their breakfast. He seemed unwilling to let go of their little
moment, almost as if he were afraid it would never come again.

“What do I have to do?” she asked.

“Nothing much. We’ll drive you to the
Osterreichischer Bankverein, and you’ll go inside and clean out
your safe-deposit box. It’s all perfectly legal—they must have your
signature on file. Did von Goltz ever ask you to sign
anything?”

“Yes. A little yellow card the night we
escaped from Waldenburg. He made a joke about wanting it for his
memory book.” Suddenly she felt ashamed, unable to look him in the
face. “Inar, do you mind so very much about the General and—the
rest of it.”

“Let’s not worry about what I mind and don’t
mind. After today it’ll be as if it never happened.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

There was a knock at the door and a woman
wearing an apron over her black dress brought in their tray. Inar
had nothing except a cup of coffee, and while he sat in his chair
and drank it he talked about his family in New York—it seemed he
had an old aunt he liked very much, and cousins—and a place called
“Broadway” where he had worked before the war.

“Could you still work there? I mean, if you
went back?”

“Maybe as a bass player. I could pick up
jobs as an arranger, or maybe even take up conducting. I could go
into teaching—find a little ivy-covered university and give lessons
on the cello and spend the weekends writing quartets. I might even
like that. Don’t worry. We wouldn’t starve.”

It was the first time he had spoken as if he
assumed they would always be together. But when he smiled he made
it seem like nothing but a wistful dream.

When they went downstairs Jerry Hirsch was
already waiting for them on a bench in the entrance hall. He was
looking at a newspaper, which he quickly folded up and put away
when he saw them.

“I was reading the news from home,” he said.
“The Syrian foreign minister is making lots of vague threats. I
wonder if that means he hasn’t heard about Hagemann yet.”

“I rather imagine it means he has. He must
assume you’re in full production by now.”

The look that passed between the two men
suggested a division so old and so clearly understood by each of
them that they hardly even needed to mention it. Their care with
each other was a symptom of respect across an unbridgeable divide
that had nothing to do with personal feelings. It simply didn’t
matter whether they liked each other or not. They could never even
pretend to be friends. It always made Esther profoundly uneasy to
be around both of them together.

“The woman who runs this place promised our
car would be perfectly safe parked outside overnight. Was it still
there when you came in?”

Hirsch nodded. “This place is a long way
from New York, isn’t it.”

“Yes, it’s a long way. My leg is bothering
me a little this morning, so why don’t you drive. Can you manage
all right with your arm?”

“Sure. It can use the exercise.”

The bank was perhaps two kilometers into the
center of the city. Nothing they saw on their drive suggested that
Linz had sustained any war damage, but the people, if not actually
ragged, were at least shabbily dressed, as they were everywhere in
the occupied territories. It was a clear, bright morning, a proof
that spring was really upon them. Inar sat with Esther on the rear
seat and held her hand. He seemed far away.

When they stopped the car, Inar got out and
held the door open for her. He remained standing on the sidewalk,
and when she turned around to look for him, just before stepping
inside the bank, he smiled and waved in encouragement.

The clerk who took care of the safe-deposit
customers sat on a stool inside a tiny cage. Why this was necessary
was unclear, since he didn’t look particularly ferocious and there
was nothing in the cage with him except half a dozen registry books
and a large metal card file. He was about fifty, thin and pinched.
His hair was light brown and carefully combed and his skin seemed a
little too large for him. He peered at Esther without smiling, as
if unsure what she could possibly want in such a place.

“Yes?” he said at last. “May I help
you?”

Esther pulled up the chain from underneath
the collar of her dress and showed him the key.

“I have a box here. My name is Fräulein
Esther Rosensaft.”

The clerk took down one of his books and
looked something up. It seemed to take him a long time.

“The number, please?”

“3454641.”

“Yes—would you sign this, please?” He pushed
a yellow card toward her through the opening in his cage, and
Esther wrote her name on it. He checked it against another card in
his file. Nothing in his face betrayed whether or not he was
pleased they were a match.

“Yes. Now if you would please give me your
key?”

They went back into the vault together and
the clerk took out a key of his own, which he kept tethered to a
long silver chain that ran from a loop around one of his suspender
buttons into his left-hand trousers pocket, and opened a small
metal door from which he extracted a black box, also metal, the
approximate size and shape of a kitchen drawer. He handed it to her
with all the ceremony of someone ridding himself of a public
trust.

“I expect you would prefer to examine the
contents in private?”

Esther was shown into a room not much larger
than a shower stall, where nevertheless there was a desk and a
chair. She sat down and the clerk closed the door on her. It was a
relief, she discovered, to be alone.

The box contained nothing except a large
manila envelope, strangely bulky. When she opened it she understood
why. Inside was a set of papers, perhaps an inch thick and held
together between stiff back covers, and a 9-millimeter Luger,
standard Wehrmacht issue. There was also a note.

Dearest Esther,

If you are reading this you have survived in
spite of everything, for which I am thankful. I leave you the
pistol in case Hagemann is waiting for you outside, since you will
have to kill him or he will certainly kill you. Be sure to
disengage the safety catch and then, when first you see him and
before your courage has a chance to fail, shoot him. Keep pulling
the trigger until the magazine clicks empty. No one would ever
think to punish you for ending the life of so wicked a man, so you
will be safe. I would have given much to see his face when he sees
what you have brought him from this dark vault. Please don’t fail
me in this. I have a right to my little joke.

Ulrich

Yes, the General would have to have his
little joke. In the first few minutes, as she struggled with the
impulse to weep, she hardly knew what in her confusion of feeling
took the first place. There was fear at the narrowness of her
escape, and there was a bitter loathing. Had they all gone through
so much for so little? It seemed so.

No, this she would not show to Inar. They
both had enough to forget without this. There was a wastepaper
basket under the desk; she tore the note into the smallest pieces
she could manage before she threw them in. She would have burned
them if she could. She would leave the pistol behind.