Amy and Kuznetsky sat on the only chairs; Gerd had found the checkerboard and played with Paul, the two of them sitting against the wall with the board between them on the floor. Two oil lamps were burning but the light was still dim, and the room seemed full of moving shadows.
Amy was trying her novel again, but every now and then she glanced across at Paul, who was sitting, purposely she guessed, with his face turned away from her. He seemed so unchanged in some ways: there was still the physical reticence complementing the withdrawn eyes, the feeling that he was watching the world rather than taking part in it. There’d been flashes of the old sense of humor, the thread of irony that seemed to run through most of his utterances. His companion’s too. The boy was still there in the man.
But there’d been one change, one that was both subtle and all-embracing. Each of the characteristics seemed to have been exaggerated: the eyes were more withdrawn, the humor more bitterly manic, as if the parts of his being were straining at each other, as if the boy and the man were finding it harder to get along with each other.
His partner was quieter, more watchful. He seemed as diffident as Paul, but she knew he was taking in everything. Gerd had noticed her glances at Paul. Physically he was heavier set, but in some manner he reminded her of a big cat; there was the same blend of self-confidence and constant wariness. And she could almost feel the protective mantle he threw around Paul. In fact the relationship between them seemed almost symbiotic. She felt a twinge of jealousy, then laughed at herself for being ridiculous.
Kuznetsky was doing nothing, just sitting there smoking cigarettes and staring into space. “I’m going to bed,” she announced, getting up. “Sleep well,” Gerd said. Kuznetsky and Paul said nothing.
“Where’ve you seen combat?” Kuznetsky asked after she was gone.
“Almost everywhere,” Paul said, moving one of the black pieces.
“France, the East, Africa,” Gerd answered.
“Where in the East? I’ve taken a particular interest in the Russian campaign.”
“So have we,” Paul muttered.
“The march to Moscow. Almost to Moscow. Kharkov, Kursk, Vitebsk.”
“Which division?”
“Seventh Panzer.”
“The Ghost Division.”
Paul looked up. “Yes,” he said ironically. “Nothing but ghosts now.”
Extraordinary, Kuznetsky thought. The four people in this lodge, like intertwining threads of the twentieth century. First her and the German, now this. They’d fought in the very division his Siberians had faced on the northern outskirts of Moscow in the last days of 1941. Wonderful, terrible days, when every mile recovered had contained a thousand frozen German corpses, when everyone knew that Hitler had been halted in his tracks. It had felt like spring, a blood-soaked frozen spring. Each morning the drop in the temperature had been announced, and his Siberian troops had cheered, knowing that each degree colder would kill another division of the Nazis.
And yet the Germans had fought on, most of them still clothed in denim, many of them half-crippled with frostbite. It had been pathetic, wonderful, beyond reason, beyond humanity. And these two had been through it. He’d known before they answered. It showed in their faces, seeped out through their humor. I have heard the iron weep. In those days there’d been nothing else to hear.
“Lovely day,” Gerd said, stopping by the window to examine the view. Outside, he could see Smith giving the vehicles a final check.
“It’ll get a lot hotter,” Amy said. She turned to Paul, the list in her hand. “Right, what’s your name?”
“Paul Jablonsky.”
“Date of birth?”
“August 5, 1908. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”
“Army record?”
“One Hundred and Thirty-fourth Division. Purple Heart and medical discharge after Battle of Kasserine.”
“Present employer?”
“General Motors. War production consultant.”
“That’ll do.”
“Am I married?”
“No.”
“I wonder why.”
“You never found the girl of your dreams, perhaps.”
“Or found her and lost her.”
Kuznetsky came in at an opportune moment. “Everything’s ready.”
He drove, Paul beside him, Gerd and Amy in the back. There was nothing on the road down the mountain; between Lim Rock and the valley they passed only two trucks. Paul had forgotten how vast America was, remembered Schellenberg’s remark about empty territory, which no longer seemed quite so absurd.
They drove up the narrow, claustrophobic valley, stopping just short of the trestle bridge. “It’s going to be very dark,” said Paul to no one in particular.
“Our eyes will get accustomed,” Gerd said.
“Yeah.” Paul walked across to the area assigned to him, imagined the train pulling to a halt, the doors opening… Another graveyard. The place reminded him of one of those narrow valleys in the Ukraine — where had it been…?
“Outside Rzhavets,” Gerd said, reading his mind.
“The day I drove the T-34,” Paul said, smiling.
“The day you tried to drive a T-34,” Gerd corrected him.
Paul didn’t respond. He was looking at Amy, sitting on her haunches by the side of the stream, noting the vivid contrast between the raven hair and the cream blouse.
“Memories,” Gerd murmured.
Paul wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the T-34 or her. “This is going to work,” he said thoughtfully.
Gerd grunted. “Seems almost too easy. Someone in Washington’s going to suffer,” he added. “And deserves to.”
“We’ve still got to get home, and the problems won’t end when we reach the U-boat. If we reach it. They’ll be scouring the Atlantic for weeks.”
“Big ocean.”
“The approaches to the ports aren’t so big.”
“Well, one step at a time.”
They walked back to the car, where Kuznetsky was already waiting. Amy followed, carrying a posy of small white flowers in her hand. Flowers from a graveyard, Paul thought with a shudder.
At the end of the lodge road the two Germans got out, and Smith wished them good luck with one of his rare smiles and drove himself and Amy off toward Scottsboro. Paul and Gerd ambled along the track, the former engrossed in his own thoughts, the latter wondering how to broach the subject. Straightforwardly, he decided.
“How does it feel to see her again?”
Paul grunted. “How indeed?”
“Why did you never mention her? You’ve talked enough about other women.”
“Good question.” He kicked a stone into the undergrowth. “The one I’ve been asking myself, in a way. What made her so special? Gerd, this sounds crazy, but maybe first love really doesn’t die. Or maybe it was just the time. It was 1933, and I was coming back to Germany, a different Germany, and my father was dying — it felt like a moment between two lives. We met on the ship, had three wonderful days together, and then never saw each other again…”
“Why not?”
“Oh, a series of accidents really. It doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to say is that we, the two of us, those few days, they seemed — not at the time but afterward — as if they’d existed outside normal time, as if they had nothing to do with this world. Again, it sounds crazy, but it was like a moment of innocence — of adult innocence — and everything since has seemed corrupt in comparison…”
“Not only in comparison.”
“True. And she and I were outside all that.”