—You just what, Mia?
—I just don’t think he’s real.
—Then let us make certain we never have to find out.
ENTR’ACTE
Rule #5: Don’t Leave a Trace
The war was coming to an end when the Tracker made it to Berlin. As always, the brothers were late—thirteen years behind the traitors. The store the women ran had burned down. Friends had moved away or had died in the trenches. For George, the eldest, this was the end, a final attempt at capturing the traitors before retiring to have children. His brothers would continue without him until his boys were old enough to hunt on their own.
Years of failure had taken their toll on George. He would honor his father’s wishes and spawn a new generation, but he had long stopped believing in their cause. All he had hoped for was to kill his prey and put an end to this pointless chase. Now, staring at the ashes of an old spice shop, he had to come to terms with the idea of watching small versions of himself grow up to live the life he had so resented. That, he decided, would be better achieved with large amounts of whiskey. He sat at the bar in the tavern across the street and asked for the bottle. The barkeep obliged, turned to wash some dirty glasses, and started talking to the wall.
—Shame what happened to Ahmet’s place.
George grimaced as he downed a full glass. The barkeep kept talking.
—Rough day?
George’s throat was still burning. He looked at the patron next to him, facedown on the bar, slowly adding width to a small puddle of drool. He took a deep breath, let the smell of stale beer and cheap cigars fill his lungs, before he acknowledged the barkeep looking at him in the bar mirror.
—Are you talking to me?
—Yeah! I said you look like you’re having a rough day.
—What were you saying before that?
—I saw you looking at the rubble. It’s a shame what happened to Ahmet’s shop.
Two words: Ahmet’s shop. George’s breathing got shallow. He felt a tingle in his stomach. It wasn’t the booze, that hadn’t kicked in yet. This was something he had felt every now and again. Something that always came and went.
—I thought the shop owner was a woman. Sara.
—Sara was the daughter. The shop belonged to her mother, and Ahmet, her husband. Good man.
—You wouldn’t happen to know where they went, now would you?
—Sorry. They just… disappeared.
George exhaled what little hope had sprung inside him and poured himself another glass of whiskey.
—Zum Wohl!
That one didn’t burn as much going down. It wasn’t the first time George tried to drink himself into oblivion. He knew what was coming: despair, followed by rage. A headache, bloody hands. George didn’t care. He always enjoyed that first hour or so, when self-pity was stronger than self-loathing.
—His sister might know.
—…
—Ahmet’s sister. Fata. She’d be over fifty by now but she might still be around.
—Fata. Do you know where she lives?
—Nah. Haven’t seen her in years. Schöneberg, maybe. Fata Hassan is her name. Sorr—
The barkeep grabbed his throat and fell to the floor. It took a few seconds for George to realize he was holding a knife. His knife. George looked at himself in the bar mirror and got angry at the man staring back. He wanted to know more. He had questions his mouth was too numb to ask, and the man gargling on the ground wasn’t answering them. He turned around to see who would, but the room spun the other way. He spotted half a dozen young people sitting in the corner. The floor tilted when he got up to approach them and sent him crashing against the wall. The people laughed at him as if it were his fault, as if he were impotent. George’s knife hand started acting on its own. Blackout.
George was sitting at the youths’ table. Their heads were missing. They all sat there, headless, taunting him. George grabbed each body, one by one, hoping to shake some sense into them. Blackout.
Guilt was for the weak, but George felt ashamed of what he had done. He tried to fix it, put these people’s heads back where they belonged. He matched each one to a body as best he could, but the heads kept falling. George found some cocktail shakers to hold them in place. The whole process was tiring, and when he was done, George sat himself back at the bar for some rest. When he woke, the room had stopped spinning. He saw the scene he had created and decided it was probably best to leave.
The man sitting next to him was still facedown on the bar, but the puddle of drool had grown bigger and redder. George wiped his blade on the man’s shirt and grabbed the whiskey bottle before stumbling out of the tavern. He cursed the blinding sun and headed to Schöneberg on foot, hoping the walk would sober him up faster than he was drinking.
The police stopped him midway. George’s heartbeat went up a notch. He had spent his whole life chasing the traitors. There was nothing else. That was his life. It was his brothers’ life, his father’s. Every day felt exactly like the last, and for as long as George remembered, he had seen the world as pale and bleak. Fighting was the only thing that really got his heart pumping, the one thing that reminded him he was still alive. When four police officers stood in front of him on Goebenstraße, he thought the ensuing battle would be the highlight of his day. He went for one last sip of whiskey, but the bottle was empty, and in a brief moment of lucidity, he remembered two words the dead barman had uttered: “Fata Hassan.”
George got on his knees and thanked the police for stopping him.
—Oh thank God! I’m so glad to finally see someone. Can you help me find my way home? I’ve had way too much to drink and I’m afraid I’m completely lost.
The officers asked where home was, to which George replied that he hadn’t found a place yet. He had just moved to Berlin and had been living with a friend for two days.
—Can you please take me to her place? I don’t know where it is—Schöneberg, somewhere—but her name is Fata Hassan. Please help me.
The Tracker could be very charming, and after a brief stint at the police station, two Berlin police officers drove him to an apartment building on Freisinger Straße. George thanked the officers and entered the building. He found Fata Hassan’s apartment and kicked her door in.
When Fata returned home from work that night, she found a man sleeping in her bed. She did not scream. Instead, she went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. She returned to the bedroom to wake the stranger.
George woke not knowing where he was. He gathered he was in Germany when he heard Fata speak but remembered nothing of what had transpired earlier. It was only when she told him her last name that George realized who he was speaking with. He introduced himself as Sara’s cousin, which brought a smile to Fata’s face. Eager to meet a new member of the family, she made dinner for the both of them. George listened to Fata reminisce about her brother and his wife for hours. It was almost midnight when he finally asked where he could find Sara.
—America! They went to America. I don’t know where. Ahmet said he couldn’t tell me and I haven’t heard from him since. But that’s where you’ll find your cousin.
George’s head was still pounding, but he enjoyed the feeling of normalcy that came with a home-cooked meal. He was polite, did not strangle or stab his host. He thanked Fata for dinner and said he hoped they would meet again. He was almost out of the building when Fata ran after him.
—Wait! I have something to show you! I found this in the family album. You can have it if you want.
In her hand was a picture of a man, two women, and a child. On the back of it, a handwritten note said: “With my beloved wife, our daughter Sara and little Mi’a. 1931.”