The Children's War (147 page)

15

“I
WONDER WHY
JÄGER?” Barbara asked as they stood alone on the deck of the ferry. “I mean, Niklaus is obvious, but I wonder why they chose Jäger for our last name.”

“I think it’s their idea of a joke. A play on my last name,” Peter replied, staring off across the water. He could not help but think how much Joanna would have enjoyed the ferry crossing. The wind carrying the taste of salt, the untrammeled view to the horizon . . . She had so loved taking that cruise around the island of Manhattan with Zosia. They had been careful then, he had not gone along in case there was any media attention, but Joanna had filled him in on all the details.

“Halifax?” Barbara repeated a bit more loudly, thinking that the wind must have swallowed her words.

“Chase,” Peter responded. “The English verb
chase
can be translated to the German
jagen.
Get it?”

“Oh.
Jäger,
hunter; chaser, Chase. I see.” Barbara wrinkled her nose in annoyance at her tenuous command of English. “Don’t you think it’s dangerous using such a name?”

“No . . . or maybe, or I don’t know.” It was hard to care. Mistakes were so inevitable that it seemed that only luck kept them alive in any case. Would it have hurt less if Joanna had been killed by the bomb blast? Or by a car accident? Or by disease, like Anna? She would still be dead, the only difference is he would have been unaware of that surveillance photo. They could have pulled it off; she had been so convincing! But for that photo, she might still be alive.

Barbara huddled closer to him and he put his arm around her. It was cold out in the bitter sea breeze, and even the bright sunshine could not warm them, but the air felt fresh and they both preferred shivering in the wind to the crowded and unprivate atmosphere below.

As they stood and gazed in silence, the nebulous shadows on the horizon became recognizable as the white chalk cliffs of Dover. He pointed them out to Barbara.

“I know,” she said without thinking. “I’ve been watching them for ages.”

“Oh.” He suddenly felt foolish. He fumbled in his coat and located his new sunglasses. He held them a moment trying to convince himself that they were not ominous, but as he brought them toward his face, he could feel the knife tracing a pattern over his eyes, and he decided to put them back in his pocket and settle for squinting. As he let his eyes relax again, the cliffs slipped back into unfocused possibilities, and his thoughts turned to his last words to Zosia. He should have said something more profound or more conciliatory. The problem was, each time he thought about it, he thought of something different he should have said. Her declaration of love had surprised him—perhaps he should have told her he loved her as well. It would have been a lot better than what he had said. If he was killed, would she raise their child knowing that the last thing he had said to her was so stupid?

“You don’t have to wear that just because we’re posing as married,” Barbara said, pointing to the ring that he was twisting round and round his finger. “German men often don’t.”

He stopped fidgeting with it. “I know,” he responded absently. After a moment he added, “I want to.”

Several hours later their train was speeding through the Kentish countryside and they both watched the view in fascination. Barbara had never been to England, but he was equally unfamiliar with most of his country. He had in his life only ever been outside the Greater London Administrative District—GLAD, in its ludicrous English acronym—on six occasions, only three of which had
been legal, and none of those journeys had taken him southward except the oneway trip he had made in a closed and windowless carriage en route to his imprisonment.

The tunnels of the coast and rolling hills inland eventually gave way to the sprawling housing of the suburban villages: the English slums, the German estates, the petit-bourgeois apartments of mixed German low-class or English Conciliators. Here and there were the “unreconstructed” zones—areas that had never been rebuilt after the invasion—and then there were the “illegal” zones— areas where the local administration had withdrawn housing permission and had then exacted a destructive revenge on the resultant squatters. The burned row houses looked abandoned, but Peter knew the streets of rubble hid thousands of homeless sheltering illegally among the crumbling brick walls. By virtue of their undocumented residences they were subject to immediate arrest or deportation for resettlement; nobody really knew what happened to them after that. Not surprisingly, “terrorist” acts were almost invariably followed by a city zone being declared illegal, or as the administration put it “unsafe,” and the resultant homeless population was driven to bribery and acts of desperation to find other legal residences.

They stepped out of the carriage into Victoria train station. He scanned around, confused by the changes wrought during his absence. “Ten years,” he muttered.

“What?” Barbara asked.

“Nearly ten years to the day since my arrest. A lot has changed, there’s so few English signs anymore!”

“It’s not illegal,” she stated as a sort of question.

“No, just discouraged. You know, if you wanted to advance in a career, or stay in a good school, it was better not to speak it. Still, there used to be a lot of information posted in English.” He looked around a bit more. “That seems to have changed.”

The taxi took them to a busy road near Eva Braun Station, just west of what had been Regent’s Park. It was a relatively undestroyed region of town and at the beginning of the gated German residential community to the north. Their area was not inside the gated community, but was easily accessible to the Germans who lived there and therefore attracted German specialty shops and their attendant low-ranking German residents.

They looked at the row of buildings pressed one against the other and located their address. Downstairs was the bookstore they would manage—above that was their tiny flat. There were two more floors above theirs—both were apartments reached by a stairway located in the next-door building and therefore completely separate from their residence.

They entered the store. A woman looked up questioningly from the book she was repairing.

“The owner of the shop has sent me to take over the management of his
store,” Peter said, handing her a thick packet of papers. “Here’s my letter of appointment and references.”

“Ah, yes.” She smiled. “I’ve been expecting you.”

That night they stayed in a bed-and-breakfast. As Barbara slept, he pulled back the curtain and stared out the window at the desultory nightlife, listened to the yapping of a dog, watched the mist settle on the ground. He tried to remember what life in London had been like, what he had been like back then, but instead, all he remembered was another strange little room and another sleeping city.

It had all been because Karl had taken a business trip. Mercifully, Peter had not been required to go along, but less fortuitously, Elspeth had been forbidden from accompanying her husband. She fumed over her exclusion, mulled over it, and then, on Karl’s first night of absence, she had tiptoed into Uwe’s bedroom, tapped Peter on the shoulder, and indicated that he should follow her. She ignored his desperate, silent objections, and he had eventually followed her into her bedroom. As she shut the door behind him, he had pleaded quietly to be allowed to leave. With the children at home, with Uwe perpetually waking up, how could they possibly spend the night together?

It was one of the most unsettling nights of his life. He had spent the entire time listening for movements outside the door, listening for Uwe to call him. He was completely unable to give Elspeth the attention she expected, and eventually, tired of cajoling him, she had fallen asleep next to him. He got up to leave then, but she awoke and commanded him to stay. So he did, nervously napping next to her the entire night. It was not even flattering—she did not want to spend the night with him, did not want to hold him as she slept, she was just using him to express her anger at Karl’s absence, and if they were discovered, he was the one who would die.

The next day, at breakfast, Elspeth abruptly announced to the children that she would be visiting her sister Constanze near Dresden. Ulrike would be in charge, Teresa would help out, and Horst was warned not to bully his sisters during her absence. And, by the way, Peter would be coming with her.

They left that evening, arriving late and checking into a hotel with the plan of visiting Elspeth’s sister the following morning. Once they were alone in the room, Elspeth ran her finger seductively down his face and along his shirt. “There! Now you not only don’t have to worry about the children, you also have plenty of time. But first”—she turned away to pick up the room-service menu— “what shall we have to eat?”

It was the nicest meal he had eaten in a long, long time, and in the carefree atmosphere of their private room, Elspeth was almost charming. His worries eased as he refilled their wineglasses and he began to relax. He even toasted his “beautiful, merciful lady” with something approaching neutrality, if not actual sincerity. It was odd; upon their return everything would be back to the usual highly polarized hierarchy, Elspeth included, but for that night, she treated him
as though he were an equal—give or take a few bad habits on her part and a few typical concessions on his. Long after she had fallen asleep, he stood and stared out the window looking at the nightlife of a city he knew not at all, but one that had, for a brief time, given him a measure of humanity.

The next morning Elspeth made the trip to her sister’s house. She took him along like some sort of trophy to be sniffed at and inspected. The sisters hugged enthusiastically, then Elspeth plucked at his sleeve and pulled him to stand in front of Constanze, announcing proudly, “And this is my manservant.”

“Not at all what I expected,” her sister exclaimed as she walked around him. “Mother described him quite differently.”

“She would, wouldn’t she.”

“Yes. Never quite satisfied with anything, is she?”

“No,” Elspeth agreed tersely. “What did she say?”

“Oh, that he looked nearly dead on his feet,” Constanze answered as though he were incapable of understanding her. “But he looks quite lively! I guess, though, that was when you had him working in a factory job?”

“Oh, that was my husband’s harebrained scheme. Anyway, that’s long in the past.”

“Yes, just as well, judging from what Mother said. You certainly don’t want to tire this one out.” Constanze smiled at him as though, unable to comprehend her words, he might still be made to understand that she was complimenting him. “You’ve had him, what, three years?”

“Not quite.”

“I’m really surprised you haven’t visited earlier.”

“Ah, well, you know, after last time . . .”

Constanze nodded knowledgeably.

He felt his face grow hot with embarrassment as he continued to stare at the patterns on Constanze’s fine wool carpet. From behind him Elspeth reached up and petted his hair. He visibly shuddered and Constanze frowned slightly, then asked knowingly, “Touchy, though?”

Elspeth nodded. “High-strung.”

Constanze reached up slowly toward his face as if trying not to frighten a wild animal. She touched him gently, seductively, then let her fingers trace down his face, along his chest, and onto his thigh, which she then smacked approvingly. “Well done, Elspeth!” She nodded happily. “Well done.”

He was sent off to the kitchen to get something to eat while the two women visited. Elspeth’s sister seemed to run a much more relaxed household, and the plate of food that was set before him by a smiling old woman was reasonably generous if simple.

“So, you’re the new one?” she asked.

“I guess so,” he answered between bites of fresh bread and cheese. God Almighty, why couldn’t Elspeth be this relaxed! Fresh bread!

“How long have you been lying with her?”

He glanced sharply at the old woman, then returned his attention to his food. “I’m afraid,” he answered dryly, “that would be illegal and therefore completely out of the question. Besides”—he smiled wickedly at her—“it would be immoral and immorality does not exist among our
Übermensch.”