The Crooked Maid (16 page)

“Ah,” said Karel. “Sophiĉka. She’s a lost soul. Came here because this is where her husband died; shot down by flak. Left the hotel and rented herself a room so that she’d meet the natives. And now she has no idea what there is for her to do. Write stories, naturally—but what about, God only knows.”

He stood up all of a sudden, stood naked and dripping, gestured for a towel. She gave him the one hanging from the hook on the wall. His nakedness did not frighten her. She had seen her share of naked men. He dried his hair and shoulders first, then wrapped the towel around his hips.

“You know what she says to me last night?” he went on. “We were talking with our hands, you understand, her jabbering in English, and me making sense of it best I can. Vienna is finished, is what she says.
Finito
. For journalists, she means. No more stories here. She even heard they are going to do a movie. In the fall. With Orson Welles. She was really quite upset.”

He bent over, prised a pack of cigarettes from the trousers on the floor, lit up.

“All the same, she has some interesting ideas. About Beer. She says a lot of people are being picked up by the Russkies at the moment. It’s piqued her curiosity. The Cold War, she calls it, the Soviets taking on the West. ‘Vienna is turning into an Intelligence playground.’ She liked the phrase so much, she found a pencil and wrote it down.”

Anna frowned and shook her head. “It’s exactly what the detective said to me, that Anton might have been ‘requisitioned.’ But the very idea is ridiculous! They only just released him. And besides, what does Anton know that would be of interest to them?”

“Ridiculous,” Karel mused. “Is it really? Well, listen, in the camp Beer spent a lot of time with this officer. Oh, no, not like you think. He was, you know, curing him. Head-shrinker stuff.”

“So?”

“So I don’t know. Sophie thinks it’s
relevant
.” He chuckled at the word, spat smoke. “It’s just an idea anyway. I’ll ask around. See what I can find out. Of course, I’ll need some money—”

He smiled at her, clutching his towel, smoked his cigarette in even drags. All at once she was annoyed by his brazenness. She turned away from him.

“You’re clean,” she said. “Now get dressed and get out.” Then a thought occurred to her. “There’s one thing you can do for me,” she said. “To pay for your bath.”

“Go on.”

“I’m going to see someone. I need a chaperone.”

“Who is it?”

“Kis,” she said. “My husband’s—friend.”

“I’d be delighted.” Karel Neumann yawned, stepped into his underwear. “But first, do you have any more coffee? No? Well, I’ll just pop down and drink one with Sophie. She gets lonely when I’m not around. And then, later, we can go and see this Kis.”

2.

Anna had arranged to visit an old school friend for lunch and felt it was too late to cancel. Karel agreed to meet her mid-afternoon in front of Kis’s apartment building. Lunch was uneventful. Her friend, Gerlinde, had lost her husband in the war and had reverted to living with her parents. They sat across from each other eating the poor fare while her mother fussed over them like a servant. She actually winced when Anna started cutting the gristle out of the morsel of pork she had served up. Both mother and daughter praised Anna’s attire in a manner that ill concealed their envy. They might have accepted a gift of money, but Anna decided against it, not from delicacy, but from some incoherent feeling that she must uphold a sense of pride that they themselves had long abandoned. All she left them with was a box of French chocolates that they took care not to unwrap. There was no telling what price it might fetch on Vienna’s streets.

Anna arrived at Kis’s house with time to spare and found a bench not far from it, sat down to rearrange her makeup. Neumann was some minutes late. He strode up with his loafer’s walk, kissed her hand in smirking imitation of a ballroom cavalier. His cheek was dark with afternoon stubble, the smell of beer tart on his breath. Here he was, the only person in the world with whom she shared her husband’s secret: a drunk buffoon with hands as big as hocks of ham. Still, it was better than seeing Kis on her own. She accepted Karel’s arm and they strolled over to the open door.

“Have you met him before?” Karel asked.

“Once. You be quiet now. I’ll do the talking.”

This time there was no cleaning lady mopping the floor. Instead the house was alive with the shouts of children playing in the yard. They mounted the stairs, found Kis’s door. She hesitated, gathered her thoughts. Beside her a mighty fist reached out, hammered boldly on the door.

“There’s a bell, you know.”

“Yes,” he said, “but I like the noise.”

He knocked again, then stepped back when Gustav Kis opened the door. Anna recognized him at once; later, she would be surprised that she
had done so. The man who had opened the door to this flat nine years ago had been young and gently plump; had owned a clean, fine-pored, almost luminous skin, and a thinning crown of lightly oiled hair, worn neatly parted to one side. The one who stood in front of her now was fat around his thighs and midriff but had seen the weight fall off his cheeks; was bald on top, with only a sparse island of hair plastered to his forehead. The skin had coarsened, a rash of pimples clinging to his chin. What remained was the speed and harmony of his gestures, the hint of femininity as his hands rose in surprise.

“
Grüss Gott
,” he said, looking first at Anna then at the bulk of Neumann looming behind her. “How can I be of service?”

“I’m Anna Beer. Dr. Beer’s wife.”

He smiled, a little nervously perhaps. Behind him, in his hallway, the face of a man emerged at one of the apartment’s doors, looked over at them, then disappeared. He might have been one of Kis’s lodgers.

“I am afraid,” he said, “I do not recall a Dr. Beer.”

“Please, if we could just have a moment of your time.”

“If you must,” he said, stood aside, then led them into the hallway and on to the second door on his right. The room was large, well-appointed, and clearly served as both his living room and bedroom. A little table stood by the window, on it the remnants of his cold lunch. The large bed was half hidden behind an Asian folding screen, ornate dragons writhing in black lacquer. Two bookshelves were entirely crammed with records. On the wall a large pale rectangle indicated a space where a wardrobe had once stood. There was a blotchy mirror but no pictures.

Kis pointed them towards the sofa and drew up an armchair to sit across from them. “I remember now. Dr. Anton Beer. He treated me for hives. But that’s half a lifetime ago.”

“Herr Kis,” she said, sat stiffly on the edge of her cushion. “I have quite an accurate picture of the nature of your relationship with my husband. You will believe me that I have no desire to spell out the details. My husband and I have been living apart these past years.”

The fat man smiled at her, slid quietly from buttock to buttock. He interlaced his stubby fingers, looked over to Karel. “And who is this gentleman?”

“Never mind him. He is here to assist in what is to me an unpleasant duty. The fact is, Herr Kis, my husband has disappeared. Or rather, he has not been seen in several days, and he hasn’t come home. I would like to know whether you know his present whereabouts.”

Kis shook his head with almost comical emphasis, the chin swivelling from shoulder to shoulder. “No,” he said, “I do not.”

“But he has come to see you, has he not?”

“No.”

“Please, Herr Kis. Tell me the truth. When did you last see him?”

“Not for—” He stopped, gave an affected little cough, then started coughing in earnest, one hand searching his pockets for a hanky. “Not since the war, Frau Doktor. Thirty-nine, maybe ’40. He had me over for dinner one evening. Yes, I believe that’s the last time I saw him. The fall of 1939. We’d just taken Warsaw.” He smiled, coughed again, tucked away the handkerchief. The reference to dinner stung her, conjured pictures of dessert.

“You are quite sure?”

“Quite, quite sure.” Kis rose to dismiss them. “I’m afraid I have some pressing business to attend to.”

Anna stood, allowed herself to be walked to the front door, Karel Neumann by her side.

“My compliments,” Kis said in parting, happy now, bending his neck to suggest a bow.

They heard him lock the door behind them and quietly descended the stairs. Outside, in front of the building, her eyes found Karel’s. The big man was smirking.

“He’s lying, you know.”

Anna was inclined to agree. “What do you want me to do?” she asked. “Beat it out of him?”

His smirk grew wider. “Wait here,” he said. “It appears I forgot my cap upstairs. I won’t be a minute.”

He turned, but she stopped him, put a hand upon his arm. “Don’t—” she said. “You’ll get arrested.”

Playfully he cupped her face, the palm so large she felt herself disappear into its curve. “Is kind of you to worry,
Pani Beerová
,” he said in his broadest Czech accent. “But I’m just fetching hat.”

She watched him re-enter the building and charge gamely up the stairs.

3.

Kis opened the door, listened to Neumann’s explanations, and announced he would look for the cap himself. Unperturbed, the big Czech strolled after him into the flat then closed the door of Kis’s room, where its owner was crouching on one knee, searching the worn carpet.

“I cannot find it,” he said, flustered to find his visitor had followed him.

“Kis,” said Karel. “That’s Hungarian, isn’t it?”

Kis looked up at Karel as though he required reappraisal. “My grandfather,” he said at last. “Are you—”

“No, no,” said Karel, pushed past him, sat down on the couch where he had sat before. “Sudeten-Bohemian, with splash of Gypsy. Which is to say, Viennese.” He made an expansive gesture with his bony hands. “So when did you last see Beer?”

“I already told you—” Kis flushed, finally understanding the situation. Almost instantly a sheen of sweat settled on his pimply face. He took a step back, raised a finger in his guest’s direction. “I will call the police.”

“No, you won’t.”

Karel stood up with no particular hurry, crossed the distance separating them with a single step, caught Kis by the florid tie hanging from his ruddy throat, and hit him. It wasn’t an angry gesture, or even particularly threatening. He hit him with the flat of his hand, not hard but repeatedly.
And with every blow Kis gave a soft little cry, as though of surprise. And no matter how often Karel hit him, Kis answered every blow with precisely this cry of surprise until, at last, Karel relented and watched the pale cheek fill with blood.

“Come now,” he said, no more angry than before. “When did you last see Beer?”

A tug at the tie manoeuvred Kis over to the couch. En route Karel scooped up a decanter of brandy. Before he sat down, he returned to the little coffee table on which it had stood, fetched two nicely cut glasses, and settled them in front of them. They sat side by side like two passengers on a bus. Kis had tears in his eyes. His cheek had turned a violent shade of red.

“I haven’t seen him since the war—” he began.

“Have a drink,” said Karel, poured him a glass, and placed it to his lips. Kis gave signs of struggle, then relented at once when Karel turned his eyes on him. Feeding him like a toddler, Karel poured the whole of the glass down his throat. It was followed by a second. Kis’s sweat had spread from his face to his whole body, a patch of wet emerging on his fatty chest. There was a smell to it quite out of keeping with its freshness. Casually, as though not to startle him, Karel stretched an arm behind Kis’s neck and took hold of his far earlobe between forefinger and thumb.

“He came here, I suppose,” Karel said, “sometime in the past two weeks.” His fingers pinched a little, relented when Kis spoke.

“Once. He only came once.”

“Go on, tell me about it.”

But Kis wasn’t talking.

“What’s the big secret? I already know you are—” Neumann stretched out his free arm, swivelled the hand, and let it droop affectedly from his strong wrist. “Whatever you call it.”

He took hold of the decanter, forced another drink on Kis. A second pinch, a little more forceful, prodded him into story. And every time Kis stopped, Karel hurt him a little and fed him booze. After a while he started speaking less guardedly. Perhaps he had begun to enjoy his confession.

“He came maybe a week ago. Just walked up to the door. I didn’t recognize him.”

“Thin?”

“Yes. And—” He looked for the word. “—dishevelled. I was entertaining guests, and he simply walked in, not saying a word, not even a greeting. Sat in a corner of the room, eyes on the wall. The guests left pretty fast. I expected him to talk then, but he simply sat there, waiting.”

“Why did you think he had come?”

“I don’t know. To say hello, I suppose.”

“Look at you sweat! There was more to it than that.”

“We had not parted—That is to say, we parted in perfect equanimity. But later, during the war—”

“You weren’t drafted.”

“No. Heart trouble. But then, in ’43—” He looked up terrified, awaited eagerly his glass of brandy. “—they caught me. A denunciation. I was interrogated. Everyone kept shouting at me. They wanted names.”

“And you gave them Beer’s.”

“Yes. Not right away, you understand. But soon enough.”

“And now you thought that Beer had come to have it out.”

“I thought he was dead. But there he was, sitting in my living room. Smelly he was, nothing like his old self. Thin as a rail. And the way he looked at me: shifty, always from the corner of one eye. So there I was, babbling, saying nothing really, and all the time I was wondering how much did he know. Then it occurred to me that he was giving me a chance. To make a clean breast of it. That he had said to himself, sitting in the camp, ‘If Gustl tells me, of his own free will, I will let it pass. But if he doesn’t—well, then.’ I swear I almost saw it: him sitting in his prison clothes, a pink triangle on the chest, plotting revenge. So I came out with it, and even while I was talking, I could see he was surprised. I faltered, but I had already said too much; I had to finish my story. He just looked at me, and it struck me that he was still a very handsome man, he just needed a good wash. ‘Nineteen forty-three,’ he said, the first thing he’d said all
night. ‘The Russians took me in ’43.’ He started grinning then, like a madman, one eye staring at the wall. Next thing I knew, he had changed topic and started telling me all about this girl he used to know, some sort of cripple; how he’d sworn to find her, see she was all right. He got very agitated, as a matter of fact. I didn’t say a word. It occurred to me that he was lonely. Nobody else around in whom he could confide. That struck me as odd, you know. He is a doctor, after all. He must know any number of people, but he came to me.”