* * *
Sonja had just come out of the kitchen to see who’d rung the bell — and to ask whoever it was to keep quiet, so as not to rouse her father from his nap — when she saw Waldemar at the head of the stairs, draping his suit jacket over the banister. Her first impulse was to raise a finger to her lips; her next was to slip into her father’s room and hide under the bed. Waldemar crossed the landing almost soundlessly, moving with surprising grace for so immense a man. His monocle — ridiculous! who wore a monocle any longer? — caught the lamplight as he came forward, giving him an oddly startled look. He smelled strongly of almonds — or was it marzipan? — and Macassar oil and smoke.
“Fräulein Silbermann!” he intoned, as if introducing her to some unseen associate. Sonja thought to correct his mistake — to remind him that two decades had passed since she’d gone by that name — but she had better sense than poor Ungarsky.
“I’m afraid my husband’s not at home, Herr Toula. He’s at the university.”
“The university?” said Waldemar, raising his eyebrows. “Has he still not finished his degree?” He let out a harsh, clownish laugh, a sound he’d never made as a young man. She resisted the urge to ask him where Ungarsky had gone.
“You’ve changed, fräulein,” he said after a pause. “You’ve come into your prime. And so have I.”
“It’s been more than twenty years, Herr Toula.”
“Yes, fräulein. So it would seem.”
She couldn’t think how to answer, so she led him into the parlor, to the yellow divan, and waited on him there as best she could. Ungarsky’s wingtips still stood propped against the baseboard, and the cushions retained the imprint of his shoulders, which sickened her with anxiety; but her guest had eyes only for her. He took her hand in both of his, as if to warm it, and chatted with her about commonplace things — about the twins and the apartment and the price of a bottle of pilsner — until she felt the chill departing from her body. Kaspar would be home soon; she’d excuse herself then, say she had to see about the children. Children are useful for such things, she reminded herself, taking a cunning sort of pleasure in the thought.
“Kaspar is usually home by this hour,” she found herself saying. “I can’t think what’s keeping him.”
“Important work, no doubt!” said Waldemar. “It would be lovely to visit with Kaspar after so many years, of course, but our family reunion can wait. It’s you I came to see.”
The words hung between them like granules of dust, revolving in the air for her to ponder. All at once they seemed to catch the light, to hold still under her gaze, to surrender their meaning. He had returned from his exile to kill her.
“What was it, brother-in-law, that you wished to discuss?”
“So this is the notorious yellow divan!” He snatched up a cushion — lemon silk with lilac lozenges — and brought it to his cheek. “Quite a well-used piece of furniture, I gather. News of it has even reached Berlin.”
She waited for him to go on, but he kept silent.
“Tell me what you want from me,” she said.
Waldemar set the cushion down and closed his eyes. “You mistake the purpose of my visit, fräulein. I wanted nothing more from you than this.”
Three decades before, as a handsome young man, he’d had a gift for making the most casual gesture seem significant, as though he were an actor in a play — and while he was anything but handsome now, he retained an actor’s poise and bearing still. This particular play was a drama, that much was clear; and that it would end badly was never in doubt. But Sonja found herself wondering, as she studied his face, whether they were nearer to the beginning of the play or its finale. This seemed the only question left to ask.
Finally Waldemar opened his eyes. “I did certain things,” he said softly. “During my time away.”
“Certain things?”
He nodded. “When I think of them now, the acts to which I refer — especially when I try to describe them — appear to have been committed by a different man. But I admire that man, fräulein. I respect his fidelity to his cause — by which I mean, of course, the cause of science. It’s important to me that you understand this.”
Sonja gave the least possible nod.
“In the second decade of my exile, when I was still new to Berlin, I joined a so-called brownshirt unit known, colloquially, as the ‘Pimp’s Brigade.’ This was in the time of open fighting in the streets. We were a sad parody of the party ideal — two ex-convicts, on average, for each true man of principle — but the ranks of the Red Front were sorrier still. We more than held our own, I’m proud to say.” Waldemar heaved a sigh. “I was the old bird of the unit, too heavy to fight, so I was given the prison detail. You’ll most likely laugh when I tell you this, fräulein, but I discovered that I had a talent for it.”
Sonja said nothing. The wall above the divan brightened, then darkened, then brightened again. She wondered what on earth was keeping Kaspar.
“My first few interrogations were clumsy affairs, halting and inefficient, and served little purpose other than establishing my lack of squeamishness. With practice, however, I made a remarkable — if perhaps self-evident — discovery. The more fully I brought my own interests to bear on my work, the more fruitful the eventual result.” He glanced at her with sudden concern. “This is all a bit opaque, I’m afraid. I’ll furnish you with a definite example.”
“Brother-in-law,” she said steadily, “I beseech you, as a member of your own family, to consider—”
“For a number of years, as you know, I’ve been interested in the plasticity — for want of a better word — of time: in the shapes that it takes when it’s not flowing smoothly. What I hit on was this. I would explain my ideas to each detainee in turn — specifically, my theory of ‘rotary time’—until I felt I’d made my meaning clear.” Waldemar cracked a smile. “Sometimes this lecture alone sufficed to break them.”
“You talked physics to your prisoners?” Sonja heard herself ask. “You told them about the Lost Time—”
“I tried not to bore my subjects,” Waldemar cut in, with a trace of annoyance. “I chose not to burden them with my personal history. I simply explained how time could be made to change speed and direction, and even — under certain conditons — to stop altogether. I had proven this algebraically, and by the use of non-Euclidean geometry; now I was prepared, I informed them, to prove it again, using nothing but a chair, a length of wire, and a captive human being.” He nodded to himself. “I would pause there, generally, to let this sink in. Then I’d ask them how much time they cared to lose.”
“I don’t understand,” Sonja managed to answer. “I didn’t understand twenty years ago, that night you asked for my help, and I don’t—”
“Of course not, silly goose! I didn’t fully understand then, either. I was two hundred kilometers and ten years removed from that night when the last of the Great Doors was opened for me.” He sucked in a breath. “I was living under a railroad trestle in Budapest, eating snow and coffee grounds to stay alive, when my father came to me on a ray of pure thought. I was dying, fräulein — expiring of hunger and exposure — and for this reason a last boon was granted me.”
“I heard you went to Budapest. There were rumors—”
Waldemar silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I’d spent most of my duration searching for the key to my father’s discovery in the language of numbers — but the secret, when it finally came, was delivered in everyday words. In fact, my dear fräulein, it arrived in the form of a joke. May I share it with you?”
Half a dozen answers, Sonja later told Kaspar, revolved in her mind like horses on a carousel; but Waldemar had no need of a reply.