They had seen what had happened, and now had turned their attention to him. He wondered if they, too, would demand an answer from him.
He stepped back into the doorway, where they could no longer see him. Then turned and ran into the building, toward the shelter of the darkroom.
The mystery of the woman and her vanished children deepened through the afternoon and into the evening. Pavli lay on the cot tucked into a corner of the storage area – that had been a benefit of his success with the photography, to have been moved here by himself. He could be put to work at any hour, without the need for one of the guards to go into the lightless dormitory to fetch him. He didn’t mind that, as it allowed him some privacy and the ability to hide his few small treasures where no one would be likely to find them. The angel’s photo was tucked in a niche behind the highest stack of crates; none of the guards had arms skinny as his, to reach into the narrow space.
From here, he could also hear the comings and goings of the guards and others, and listen in on scraps of their conversations as they passed by the darkroom’s door. Something had happened that had hushed them all to whispers. While Herr Doktor Ritter was away in Berlin… and it had to do with the crying woman’s babies. Pavli lay on his cot, eating a few scraps he had stolen from the kitchen, and wondered what the answer to the riddle might be.
Voices shouting outside woke him up. He could tell from the chill of the air that it was well past midnight. From the darkroom he crept into the hallway, where a window overlooked the graveled drive. He could see Herr Doktor Ritter, still wearing his black gloves and belted trench coat, gesturing angrily at the Scharfuhrer and the other guards behind him; the whole scene was caught in the bright angle of headlights from Ritter’s BMW cabriolet. Pavli listened carefully, keeping well to the side of the window so he wouldn’t be seen, but could make out only that Ritter was chewing out one of the guards, the next in rank behind the Scharfuhrer. The guard tried to give some kind of explanation, some reason as to why he had disobeyed one of Ritter’s orders, but finally fell silent, shrinking beneath the tongue-lashing. Ritter turned on his heel at last and got back into the cabriolet. Its engine growled through the night’s silence as it picked up speed through the gates and out onto the road leading back toward Berlin.
Pavli drew away from the window and returned to the darkroom. The scene in front of the asylum had seemed so strange, like a dream from which one wakes and can only partly remember. The glare from the cabriolet’s headlights had turned Ritter and the guards into ghostly figures, drained of color.
He crawled beneath the cot’s blankets. There had been enough mysteries twining around each other for one night. Answers might come with the day – he closed his eyes and wished for sleep.
Daylight brought nothing but more whispers and the grim silence surrounding them. The guards knew what was up, but were no more likely to tell him than he was to ask. In Ritter’s absence, the Lazarene men and women were left in their separate dormitories, to speculate among themselves as to what had happened. And what would happen next.
Pavli remained undisturbed, even forgotten by the guards and the others, in the retreat of the darkroom. In another night’s darkness, he raised his head from the rolled-up jacket he used as a pillow. The faint sounds from the end of the corridor outside had woken him from the sleep into which he had fallen.
Light slipped beneath the door to Herr Doktor Ritter’s office and laboratory. Pavli hesitated, coming close to drawing back inside the darkroom and the safety of the cot… but only for a moment. He stepped out into the corridor, his bare feet making no sound upon the floor.
“Ah. There is my trusted assistant.” Ritter had his boots up on the desktop as he leaned back in his chair. A bottle and a half-empty glass sat close at hand. “Don’t be afraid.” He made a welcoming gesture to the face that had peered around the door. “Come in. Join me.”
“Pardon me, sir…” Pavli froze with his hand on the doorknob. “I didn’t mean to disturb you… I just wanted to make sure everything was all right…”
“Yes, yes; of course you did.” A note of impatience entered Ritter’s voice. “Of course you weren’t snooping around – why should you?” He picked up the glass and tossed back its contents. “But I’m not asking you to come in here; I’m ordering you to. There, does that make you feel better?” A loose smile raised a corner of Ritter’s mouth.
As he stepped closer to the desk and the circle of light thrown by its lamp, Pavli could see that Ritter still had on his trench coat, the belt unfastened so that the garment was cast back from his uniform jacket beneath, the dark leather draped over the chair’s arm like wings. His high collar was undone, showing more of the unshaven stubble of his neck and chin. Alcohol and fatigue had reddened the rims of his eyes.
“Sit down, Iosefni. Here, you should be drinking, too.” Ritter reached back and fetched another glass off the shelf behind him. “We have a victory to celebrate.” He poured, then pushed the glass across the desk.
Perched at the chair’s edge, Pavli sipped something that tasted like fire on his tongue. It burned all the way down his throat.
Ritter held his own glass up to admire the inch of clear liquid. “You’ve made quite a favorite of yourself among my men. With your little photography studio… very admirable.”
“I meant no harm -”
“Oh, stop trembling like that. Your constant attitude of fear offends me.” Ritter filled his glass again. “What cause have I ever given for you to mistrust my assurances of your safety? I value the work you do for me. Even these portraits you do for the guards – they show a good eye. You Lazarenes are a clever race; much like the Jews in that regard. This shows the principle of selective breeding in action, I suppose. The more attempts are made to exterminate such so-called ‘lesser breeds,’ the surer it will be that the ones who are left are even cleverer and more given to survival. You see -” Ritter broke off, smiling ruefully at the sound of his own lecturing voice. “I shouldn’t tire you with my pet theories. Let us just say that I have some differences with those colleagues of mine who see murder as the only possible response to the challenge presented by the non-Aryan races. You have no idea of the struggle I went through to have your odd tribe rounded up and brought here, rather than sent to… another place. You should thank me, Iosefni; I have kept the lives of you and your brethren safe in the palms of my hands.”
Pavli nodded slowly. He knew that much was true.
“So you will have to forgive me if I deal harshly with those who endanger my research.” Ritter tilted his glass, swirling its contents around. “One of your customers will not be coming back for another portrait sitting. Jurgen – you remember him, the very stocky one? – I’ve had him transferred to the Eastern Front. I don’t imagine he’ll return from there. But that is the consequence of his having disobeyed my express orders. The unpleasant encounter you suffered, the woman bewailing the loss of her twin babies… Jurgen was responsible for that.”
“What -” Pavli looked up from his glass. “What happened to them?”
“The babies?” Ritter’s face darkened with anger. “Waste. Idiocy.” He knocked back the dregs in his glass and slammed it down upon the desktop. “Here, I’ll show you something you might find… instructive.” He reached down beside his chair, into an open satchel of black leather, the kind that ordinary doctors carried. From it he took a heavy glass jar, sealed with a stopper and a smear of wax around the edge. A fluid clear as alcohol but thicker sloshed inside.
For a moment, Pavli thought he saw a pair of goldfish swimming languidly in the jar, the fancy kind with a long trailing tail at the end of their bulbous forms. But they weren’t quite the right shape, and he could tell, even as unlit silhouettes, that they weren’t alive.