“You know I’m backed into a corner. And you must have a hand in it.”
“A hand in it?” Bondi leaned towards her, and his voice dropped, though its diction was precise enough for it to be heard over the sweeper. “We’ve always kept a hands-off policy at your own insistence.”
“Well somebody has their hands all over me,” Judit said. Then, stupidly, she blushed. She said, “It’s really cold in here,” just to say something.
Of course, Bondi removed his coat and laid it across her shoulders. He wore a sweater under it, not a cheap one. She’d been right about the hair; it was thin on top and short around the ears. The coat smelled like expensive cologne.
She gave him the note. He got up from the table and walked towards the window where the light was better. He looked at the slip of paper with the same deductive focus that he’d turned on Judit, examining both front and back. Then, he took out a little notebook from his pocket and wrote something down with a pencil; he filled a page, flipped it over, and wrote more. Then, he walked back to her. “How long has this been in your possession?”
“Maybe three months,” Judit said.
“More than three months? Less than three months?”
“Why does it matter?” Judit said. “I went to that address. He lured me there so he could stop the project—”
“Arno Durmersheimer doesn’t want to stop the project,” Bondi said. Now it was Judit’s turn to be under that gaze. She could feel him watching and recording what his statement did to her face. “Of course, we have his handwriting on file.”
“He lured me there. And Chabad black-hats locked me in a room for a week!”
“Chabad goes its own way,” Bondi said. “Sometimes they’re useful, but only by coincidence.”
“Why don’t you ask me how the videotape with the explosives got into the archive? It came from Loschwitz.”
“Not my jurisdiction,” Bondi said.
“Durmersheimer was in Loschwitz. Why don’t you ask me what he had to say?”
“That doesn’t interest us.”
“He’s an unrepentant fascist, an enemy of the Bund!”
“Mrs. Klemmer,” Bondi began.
“And you people let him go!”
Bondi said, “Judit.” At the sound of her given name, Judit stopped talking. Then Bondi said, “Arno Durmersheimer works for us.”
Judit stood up. The coat dropped from her shoulders. The sound of the power-cleaning ceased, and all she could hear was her own raw breath expelling and contracting, the rain hitting the window, the buzz of the fluorescent lights.
Bondi said, “I’ll get you a cup of soup.”
“You planted those explosives and then tipped them off,” Judit said, “to get me off the project.”
Bondi paused for a moment before saying, “That’s faulty logic. We want you on the project. Very much. There’s important work to do.”
“Then why is my archive locked?”
“Standard procedure.” He turned around, picked his coat up off the floor, and set it on an empty chair. “The area has been cleared. The contents have been transferred or discarded. Now sit down.”
Judit did not sit down. “If you want my help, get me back in there!”
Bondi shook his head. “That’s not how it works. Those aren’t the terms. First of all, if you cooperate, that means you’re under our protection.”
“I don’t need protection,” Judit said.
Bondi said, “You do. You’ve been mourning for almost four years. It’s made you—”
“What? Unhealthy? Has it affected my complexion? Should I take a vacation? Should I drink more soup? You sound like my mother.”
“It’s made you into a child,” Bondi said. He said it, and Judit wanted to strike him, but he did not back down. Rather, he set a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and said, more gently, “Your nose is running.”
“I’m not a child,” Judit said.
“I know,” said Bondi.
“I don’t need protection.”
“You do,” Bondi said. He handed her a handkerchief, and she took it. She didn’t blow her nose, but she did wipe it, and also her eyes. “Judit, you do. You say you work best independently. Judit, no one works independently. You’ve put yourself in vulnerable situations that have led to consequences you did not intend, but they’re real consequences. Frankly,” he said, “you need protection from yourself. As things stand, you have no choice.”
“I can’t listen to language like that,” Judit said.
“I thought you weren’t a child,” said Bondi. He made a move to brush the hair out of her eyes, and she flinched. He retreated, as though he were taming a fox. “Understand,” he said, “that what I tell you will always be in your best interest. Arno Durmersheimer killed your husband.”
“And I suppose he was working for you then,” Judit said.
Bondi ignored the interruption. “He served his time. He is a bitter man, and drinks too much, and sometimes he gets confused, but he would no more try to stop this project than he would blow himself to pieces.”
“What about those explosives?”
There was a pause. “That’s still under investigation, and it’s sensitive. At this time, as you are well aware, Loschwitz business is still officially beyond our jurisdiction. I must ask you to steer clear of it. We don’t want you distracted or embroiled in any needless controversy. Your teeth are chattering.”
“Don’t get me soup.”
“Then take my coat again,” Bondi said. “If we’re going to work together, you will need to face facts, and face them courageously. Maybe someone was a fascist yesterday. He’s not today. Times change.”
“Facts don’t change with them,” Judit said.
“That’s right. And that brings me back to my earlier point. You have no choice. Facts don’t change, and choices are illusions. If you’re lucky—and you happen to be very, very lucky—you can have opportunities, but they’re not the same as choices. You are obliged to take any opportunity that has social utility. You have the power to use your gifts for the greater good.”
She could foresee the room in Johannstadt, closer to the museum, the warmer room. It would be up a flight of stairs, and there would be a single lamp on a night table and maybe a desk, a chair, a bed. They’d meet, and what would come to pass would be of a piece with Judit’s promise of cooperation and submission. That promise and its consequences made her feel as though she’d stepped across a border. That afternoon, though, she believed something else would happen too. She said, “Mr. Bondi, maybe I don’t have a choice. But if I do what you say, what do I get in return?”
“You serve justice,” Bondi said.
“Which means?”
“Which means you use your considerable gifts to tell the truth.”
“That Russians killed my husband,” Judit said.
Bondi said, “Arno Durmersheimer killed your husband. As I said, he’s a bitter man. But I believe he has reason to be. He’s been used, just as we’ve all been used. Now we have a chance to tell the true story of our country.”
Somehow, what Bondi said was not bombastic. The new material from Moscow would soon be followed by yet more tapes and footage, and the direction it was leading would change everything. If she resisted, what was she resisting? Was she still the willful Bundist girl who wanted time to stand still? The stories that she’d grown up with had been comforting, but she’d been vomiting up pieces of those stories for so long that there was nothing left. And what could fill those empty spaces? Empty spaces weakened you, and predators would scent that weakness, circle, and move in. She thought of Charlotte.
Still, Judit said, “I don’t believe that Durmersheimer killed my husband.”
“The case is closed,” said Bondi.