The Innocent (24 page)

One of the two recorders, the one not in use, needed a valve replacement. He sat down to the job and took his time unscrewing the cover plates. This was what he would have been doing if nothing had happened. He wanted it to last. He replaced the valve and then he poked around, looking at the connections and the soldered points on the signal activation. When he had the covers back on he continued to sit there, pretending to think.

He must have fallen asleep. He was on his back, the light was on, he was fully dressed and he couldn’t remember a thing. Then he remembered. She was shaking his arm and he sat up.

She said,
You can’t sleep and leave everything to me
.

It was coming back to him. He said,
Everything I say, you’re against it. You tell me
.

She said,
I don’t want to tell you. I want you to see it for yourself
.

See what?
he said.

For the first time in hours she stood. She put her hand to her throat and said,
They won’t believe it about self defense. No one will. If we tell them, then we go to prison
.

He was looking around for the gin bottle, which wasn’t
where he left it. She must have moved it, and that was fine with him because now he was feeling sick. He said,
I don’t think that’s necessarily true
. But he did not mean it; it was true, they were going to prison, German prison.

So
, she said.
I have to say it. Someone has to say it, so I’ll say it We don’t have to tell them, we don’t say a thing. We take him out of here and put him where they don’t find him
.

Oh my God
, he said.

And if they do find him one day
, she said,
and they come and tell me, I’ll say, Oh, that’s very sad, but he was a drunk and a war hero, he was bound to get into trouble
.

Oh God
, he said, and then,
If they see us taking him out of here, then we’re finished, it will look like murder. Murder
.

That’s true
, she said.
We must do it right
. She sat down beside him.

We have to work together
, he said.

She nodded, and they held hands and did not speak for a while.

In the end he had to go. He had to leave the cosy chamber. He nodded at the two men and went out through the double doors, and swallowed hard to adjust his ears to the lower pressure. Then he was kneeling by a desk. There were the two empty cases. He decided to bring them both. Each one could hold two of the big Ampex recording machines as well as spares, microphones, reels and cable. They were black with reinforced edging, and had big snap locks and two canvas straps that buckled around for extra safety. He opened one up. There was no lettering, inside or out, no Army codes or manufacturer’s name. There was a wide canvas strap handle. He picked them up and started along the tunnel. He had trouble squeezing them by the people by the amplifier racks, but one of the men took a case and carried it along to the far end for him. Then he was on his own, bumping along the tunnel to the main shaft.

He could have carried them up the stairs one at a time, but the fellow at the top saw him there and swung the derrick out and started the electric winch. He put the cases on the pallet,
and they were up before he was. He went back past the earth mounds, up to ground level, out through some awkward double doors and along the side of the road to the sentry. He had to open up his cases for Howie—just a formality—then he was off along the open road, off on his holidays.

It was deep enough to be a nuisance, his new luggage. It banged his legs and forced his arms out and made his shoulders ache. And this was empty luggage. There was no sign of the carrot-top kid. In the village he had trouble reading the bus timetable; the figures drifted upward diagonally. He read them as they moved. He had forty minutes to wait, so he set the cases against a wall and sat on them.

He was the first one to speak. It was five
A.M
. He said,
We could drag him down the stairs now, carry him to one of the bomb sites. We could put the bottle in his hand, make it look like something happened with the other drunks
. He said all this, but he knew he did not have the strength, not now.

She said,
There are always people on the stairs. They come in from the night shifts, or they go off early. And some of them are old and never sleep. It’s never really quiet here
.

He was nodding all the time she spoke. It was an idea, but it was not the best idea and he was glad they were thinking it through now. At last they were agreeing, at last they were getting somewhere. He closed his eyes. It was going to be all right.

Then the bus driver was shaking him. He was still on the cases, and the driver had guessed he was waiting for his bus. This was the end of the line, after all. He had forgotten nothing, he knew it all the moment he opened his eyes. The driver took one of the cases, and he took the other. Some mothers with small children were already seated, off to the city center, to the department stores. That’s where he was going, he had not forgotten a thing. He would tell Maria, he had stayed with it. His arms and legs were weak, he had not got them going yet. He sat at the front, with his luggage on the seat behind. He did not have to look at it all the time.

As they headed north they stopped to pick up more mothers
and children and their shopping bags. This was the purposeful, head-down punctuality of rush hour. Now it was cheerful, chatty, festive. He sat with their separate voices behind him, the mothers’ bright conversation founded on agreement, ruptured by little laughs and complicit groans, the children’s irrelevant squawks, finger-pointing exclamations, lists of German nouns, sudden frets. And him alone at the front, too big, too bad for a mother, remembering the journeys with her from Tottenham to Oxford Street, in the window seat, holding the tickets, the absolute authority of the conductor and the system he stood for, which was true—the stated destination, the fares, the change, the bell ring—and hanging on tight until the great vibrating important bus had stopped.

He got off with everyone else near the Kurfürstendamm.

She said,
Don’t go to the
Eisenwarenhandlung,
go to a department store where they won’t remember you
.

There was a big new one across the road. He waited with a crowd for a policeman to stop the traffic and wave the people on. It was important not to break the law. The department store was new, everything was new. He consulted a list on a board. He had to go to the basement. He stepped on the escalator. In the land of the defeated, no one need walk downstairs. The place was efficient. In minutes he had what he wanted. The girl who served him gave him the change and the
Bitte schön
without a glance and turned to the man at his side. He took the U-Bahn from Wittenbergplatz and walked to the flat from Kottbusser Tor.

When he knocked on the door she called out,
“Wer ist da?”

“It’s me,” he said in English.

When she opened the door, she looked at the cases he was carrying, and then she turned back inside. Their eyes had not met. They did not touch. He followed her in. She had rubber gloves on; all the windows were open. She had cleaned up the bathroom. The place had the atmosphere of a spring clean.

It was still there, under the blanket. He had to step over it. She had cleared the table. A pile of old newspapers was on the floor, and on a chair, folded up, were the six meters of rubberized
cloth she had said she would get. It was bright and cold in here. He set the cases down by the bedroom door. He wanted to go in there and lie on the bed.

She said, “I made some coffee.”

They drank it standing up. She did not ask about his morning; he did not ask about hers. They had done their jobs. She finished her coffee quickly and began to spread the newspaper on the table two or three sheets thick. He watched her from the side, but when she turned in his direction, he looked away.

“Well?” she said.

It was bright, and then it was brighter still. The sun had come out, and though it did not shine directly into the room, the reflected light of huge cumulus clouds illuminated every corner, every detail—the cup in his hand, an upside-down headline on the table in Gothic script, the cracked black leather of the shoes protruding from under the blanket.

If all this suddenly disappeared, they would have a hard enough time getting back to where they had once been. But what they were about to do now would block their way forever. Therefore—and this seemed simple—therefore, what they were doing was wrong. But they had been through all that, they had talked the night out. She had her back to him and she was looking out the window. She had removed the gloves. Her fingertips were resting on the table. She was waiting for him to speak. He said her name. He was tired, but he tried to say it in the old way they had used, tilted gently upward like a question, whenever they recalled each other to the essentials—love, sex, friendship, the shared life, whatever.

“Maria,” he said.

She recognized it and turned. Her look was hopeless. She shrugged, and he knew she was right. It would make it harder. He nodded his acknowledgment and turned away and knelt beside one of the cases and opened it. He took out a linoleum cutting knife, a saw and an axe and set them to one side. Then, leaving the blanket and the last in place, and with Leonard at the head, Maria at the feet, they lifted Otto toward the table.

F
rom the very beginning, from the moment they laid hands on him, it went wrong. Now that rigor mortis had set in, it was in fact all the easier to lift him. His legs stayed out straight and he did not sag in the middle. He was face down when they picked him up, and like a plank. The transformation caught them unprepared. Leonard fumbled his grip under the shoulders. The head drooped. The last, pulled by its own weight, slid out of the skull and fell onto Leonard’s foot.

Over his shout of pain Maria cried, “Don’t put him down now. We are almost there.”

Worse than the pain of what he thought might be a broken toe was the fact that there was issuing from under the blanket, from Otto’s brain or mouth, a cold liquid of some sort, which was soaking into the lower part of Leonard’s trousers.

“Oh Christ,” he said, “get him up there now, then. I’m going to be sick.”

There was just room for the body stretched out diagonally on the table. With the lower part of his trousers clinging to his shins, Leonard limped into the bathroom and hunched over the lavatory bowl. Nothing came. He had had nothing to eat since the
Rippchen mit Erbsenpüree
of the night before. He preferred to think only of its German name. When he looked below his knees, however, and saw a smear of gray matter edged with blood and hair highlighted against the dark wet cloth, he retched. At the same time he struggled to take his trousers off. Maria was watching him from the bathroom door.

“It’s on my shoes as well,” he said. “And my foot is broken, I’m sure of it.” He got his shoes and socks and trousers off and shoved them under the basin. There was nothing to show on his foot but a faint red mark at the base of his big toe.

“I’ll rub it for you,” she offered.

She followed him into the bedroom. He found some socks in the wardrobe, and trousers rumpled from Otto’s occupation. By the bed were his carpet slippers.

Maria said, “Perhaps you should wear one of my aprons.” That seemed all wrong. Women made pies and baked bread in aprons.

He said, “I’ll be all right now.”

They went back into the other room. The blanket was still in place, that was something. On the floor where Otto had been were two big damp patches on the carpet. The windows were wide open and there was nothing to smell. But the light was relentless. It picked out the fluid that had soaked Leonard. It was greenish and was dripping from the table to the floor. They stood around, reluctant to make the next move. Then
Maria went to the chair where her purchases were and began to explain them. She took a deep breath at the beginning of each sentence. She was trying to keep things moving.

“This is the cloth, how do you say it,
wasserdicht?”

“Waterproof.”

She was holding up a red tin. “This is the glue, rubber glue, which dries quickly. Here is a brush to spread the glue. I use these dressmaking scissors to cut the pieces.” Like a demonstrator in a department store, she cut a large square of cloth as she spoke.

This detailing of her methods helped him. He took his own things over to the table and set them down. There was no need to explain them.

“Right, then,” he said too loudly. “I’ll make a start. I’ll do a leg.”

But he did not move. He stared at the blanket. He could see each separate fiber of the weave, the infinite replication of its simple pattern.

“Take the shoe and sock off first—” was Maria’s advice. She had the lid off the tin and was stirring the glue with a teaspoon.

That was practical. He put his hand on Otto’s ankle and eased the shoe off by its heel. It came easily. There were no laces. The sock was a disgrace, matted with embedded filth. He peeled it off quickly. The foot was blackened. He was glad he was by an open window. He rolled the blanket up until the legs were exposed from just above the knees. He did not want to start alone.

He said to her, “I want you to hold him steady with both hands here.” He indicated the upper leg. She did as he asked. They were together now, side by side. He took up the saw. It was finely toothed, and was sheathed for safety in a fold of cardboard held in place by a rubber band. He got that off and stared into the crook of Otto’s knee. The trousers were black cotton and shiny from wear. He held the saw in his right hand, and with his left he held Otto’s leg just above the ankle. It was colder than room temperature. It drew the heat from his hand.

“Don’t think about it,” Maria said. “Just do it.” She snatched another breath. “Remember I love you.”

It could not be, of course, but it was important that they were together in this. They needed a formal declaration. He would have told her that he loved her too, but his mouth was so dry.