The Rendezvous (24 page)

‘I can see that,' Julia said. ‘But I don't see where you're leading. She's run off with Karl, and because of her mental state you're anxious about her, is that it?'

‘She's run off with the German who interrogated her! That's who your boy friend is – a war criminal called Brunnerman, wanted by the Jews for murder!'

Ruth couldn't keep it in any longer. Then, having done it, she saw the expression in her brother's face and went to him, trying to put her arm round him.

‘Bob, darling, don't get so upset. I know it's awful …' He took her arm and disengaged it.

‘Go away from me,' he said. ‘Go to hell and go away from me.'

‘Amstat is a German war criminal,' Joe Kaplan explained to Julia. ‘A lot of them escaped after the war and settled in places like Argentina or Chile or Brazil. Amstat hid out for twenty years, until he met Terese here and was fool enough to try and take up with her where he left off. My people, the Israelis, are looking for him, but we've lost him. We didn't know until now that he and Terese were together. We wondered if you might know where they'd go – have any memory of something said to you. But, first, because you were in love with him yourself, I'd like you to look at these. That's what was done in Poland at his order. That's why we want him.'

He laid the four photographs down on the table beside her. Nobody spoke; she picked them up and looked at them, quickly and then slowly, examining each one. She got up so suddenly that they slid to the carpet at her feet.

‘I'm going to throw up,' she said. ‘I know where the bathroom is …'

‘And that,' Ruth said bitterly as she ran out, ‘would be most people's reaction to this. I'd better go to her.'

‘I'd leave her alone,' Joe said. ‘It's just shock. It's the best thing. They're not very pretty pictures anyway.' He bent down and put them back in the envelope. He had gone to his office and brought them for this purpose. Julia was out of the room for some minutes. When she came back, she was very white, but she had put on lipstick and smoothed her hair; she looked herself again.

‘I'm sorry about that,' she said. ‘But I'd never seen anything like that before. It was one of the children's bodies that did it.' She took a cigarette and lit it. ‘I'll tell you anything you want to know, Joe, but I want to ask Bob something first. Does she know who he is – does she recognise him?' Joe answered her:

‘Obviously, if they've run off together. She's got her memory back – through him. He's probably the only person in the world who could have brought it back.'

‘Okay,' Julia said. ‘Now, tell me, what kind of a woman is your wife that she'd go off with that? With a man who did what I saw in those pictures?' She didn't wait for an answer. ‘I lived with that man for two years. I wanted to marry him. Do you know why I vomited just now? Why I really vomited? Because he'd touched me! Because I'd been to bed with a man who'd done that to human beings! I'm sick. Bob, sick to my stomach at the very idea of it. I don't think I'll ever feel clean again. What kind of a woman is your wife? You haven't told me! She knows what he is, doesn't she? She knows what he did, and she's with him now, helping him? Sleeping with him? Thank Christ I'm just a plain American woman. Joe, ask me anything you want – anything I can do to help you get him, just ask me! Could I have a drink, please? Some brandy?'

‘Did he ever go on holidays with you?'

‘No, not with me. I liked the sun; he never wanted to travel. I remember him saying he hated the sun. I thought he meant Argentina.'

‘He probably did,' Joe said. ‘He didn't go shooting, climbing, have any cabin he rented for trips – anything like that?'

‘No,' she shook her head. ‘Not that I ever heard of; he wasn't a very communicative type. I can understand why. Where do you think they've gone?'

‘He left Chicago and disappeared, that was nearly four days ago now. Until Bob called to say Terese was missing, we didn't know which direction he had headed. But he went to Boston, picked her up, and they left together on Thursday. They've probably gone south again, trying to get into the South Americas eventually. That's where most of them get swallowed up. They have money and a car, and two, maybe three, full days' start. Our people were watching the airports, naturally, but for one man, not a couple. Bob! Where's Terese's passport?'

He raised his head; Julia looked at him, and he seemed to have become a weary, middle-aged man in the course of the last hour.

‘It's right here, with mine. I always keep the travelling papers. We've never been abroad apart.'

‘Then they haven't left the country,' Joe said. ‘My God, that's something to go on!'

‘America's a big place,' Ruth said. ‘They could hide out for ever here.'

He turned and looked at her; he was a slight man, bookish and short-sighted, the Jewish professor or doctor, the conventional Semitic intellectual type, but he had a dignity and a sense of purpose which was old in his race when the North American continent was uninhabited jungle and desert. He dominated them all for those few seconds.

‘We'll find him,' he said. ‘There won't be any place on earth big enough for him and people like him to hide in. I'm only sorry, Bob, Terese is with him.'

‘She doesn't know what she's doing,' her husband said. They had abused her, both the women; Joe hadn't commented, but he too condemned. Terese was his wife and he loved her; he tried to say it, but it wouldn't come out properly; it came out as an excuse.

‘She's ill – she's not responsible! None of you have even tried to be fair! Joe, for God's sake, we've got to find them! – I've got to get her back. She could get hurt in this. Nobody's thought of that! You talk about the Israelis catching up with Amstat – what about Terese?'

‘I told you,' Joe said. ‘I'm sorry. I don't think she's sick, Bob, or doesn't know what she's doing. I think she's crazy about him. If it's possible that a man like that could feel anything so human as love, he must be crazy about her. They won't leave each other now. As far as her safety is concerned …' He shook his head. ‘I can't give any guarantee at all. I'll drive you home, Julia – that was a large brandy on an empty stomach. If you think of anything, call me – day or night, it doesn't matter. Good night, Bob. If I hear anything I'll let you know at once.'

In the car neither he nor Julia spoke until they were almost at her apartment. ‘He'll be killed, won't he?' she said.

‘Yes,' Kaplan answered. ‘And if she gets in the way, she'll die with him. There's nothing I can do to stop it.'

9

They stayed two nights at a small hotel on Lake Itasca; it was a clean, unobtrusive place, and they registered as Mr. and Mrs. Hudson with an address in Newark. They had been travelling at a fugitive speed for the first two days; the Thursday they left Boston, Amstat drove all night while Terese dozed beside him, and she drove most of the following day; they covered nearly a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, and then he insisted that they spend a night so she could rest. They toured the cheap rooming-house area of Chicago and found a place to spend the night. But the choice was a mistake, a return to his old habits when he was on the run and alone; the scruffy boarding houses were all he could afford in those days; now there was something suspicious about a man and a woman, especially a woman dressed like Terese, with that indefinable air of money about her, driving a good car, staying in a place where travelling salesmen of the bottom grade and an occasional out-of-town visitor were the regular customers. He and she stuck out like sore thumbs, and, feeling this, they paid up and left very early the next morning.

The next night they chose a hotel in Minneapolis where they fitted into the general scene much less conspicuously. They shared the long hours of driving, Amstat insisting that she changed over after two hours because the high speeds and long monotonous highways were especially tiring. After Minneapolis they turned off the highway and made their way up to Lake Itasca where they felt able to relax a little; he took a double room with a private bath, and watching them together the hotel manager decided that they hadn't been married very long. They sat out on the terrace and held hands like honeymooners. He was a sentimental man with an over-worked, short-tempered wife, and when he pointed out Mr. and Mrs. Hudson to her, she took a long, calculating look at them as they came in and went over to the elevator to go up to their room.

‘Nice-looking couple,' her husband said. ‘Nice to see folks like that. He's so crazy about her it's like a neon sign.'

‘Yeah,' his wife said. ‘That's because they're not married; that's for sure!'

‘Not married?' He was genuinely pained at the suggestion. They were high-class people, the Hudsons; he was a foreigner of some kind, probably Norwegian – the manager had worked it all out in his mind, and placing his residents was a favourite game he played while his wife did the accounts. They were class, these two, especially the woman. He thought she was pretty enough to eat in a pie, as he put it to himself, and the last thing he wanted his wife to say was something that tarnished the image he had created for them.

‘What you mean, not married? We don't have that kind of thing in this hotel.'

‘George,' she said, and she shook her head at him from side to side, very slowly as if he were an exasperating child. ‘We do have that kind of thing in this hotel, and we'd be well down on the year's take if we didn't. We get married people and unmarried people, only you like it all nice and tied up with ribbons so you keep your eyes shut. I've been running this hotel for fifteen years, and five years in St. Paul before we married, and I can smell 'em! Those two aren't married to each other. That's for sure. Anyway, it's just none of our business.'

‘You've got a nasty mind, Hilda,' he said. He was really disappointed and he knew that his wife was certain to be right. She had a nose for people; she could smell the ones who were going to give a rubber cheque for the bill, and she could smell the ones who were on a weekend when they shouldn't have been. There was no escaping Hilda's instinct, but there were times when he resented it, and this was one of them. Then she said something unexpected for her. He often wondered why she took such a jaundiced view of people.

‘He's sure a good-looking man, though. Takes real care of her, too.'

‘I told you,' he said. ‘They're a nice couple.'

‘Yeah,' his wife said again. ‘Maybe it's because they're
not
married. The guy up in fifteen says he's checking out tonight – wants his bill before seven.'

‘They're leaving tomorrow,' the manager said. ‘I mean the Hudsons; early in the morning. I'll get number fifteen's account made up.'

‘Okay,' his wife said. ‘Then let me have it and I'll check it over.'

The previous night, Terese had slept beside him so deeply that he couldn't bear to touch her; he let her rest, and they had breakfast together in their room and then went for a walk before lunch. She looked less strained and pale, and the crisp spring air had given her colour. Again and again he had blamed himself for giving way and taking her; the courage was there, and the will to stay with him, but she was taxed to the limit by the anxiety, and she was not physically strong. She came up to him in the bedroom that afternoon and put her arms round him. He held her against him and stroked the back of her hair.

‘It's been a lovely day today,' she said. ‘Do you know something ridiculous, Karl?'

‘No, what? What's ridiculous?'

‘I'm so happy,' she said. ‘I've had the happiest day of my life today being with you. Why haven't you made love to me?'

‘Because you're tired,' he said. ‘Because this is exhausting you, my darling. I wanted to last night; I've wanted to so much today.'

‘Well, so have I. I want to now.' His desire overcame him so quickly that he took her to bed without saying anything more; they didn't talk because there was no need that wasn't filled by the simple act of union. Afterwards, she kissed him.

‘Will you get tired of me one day?'

‘Never. Have you really been happy today?'

‘I told you – happier than ever before. I feel free for the first time. I'm with you now, and that's all I can see ahead of me. Just the two of us together.'

‘I shouldn't have taken you with me,' he said. ‘I tell myself this a dozen times a day. I shouldn't have done it. Every time I see you beside me in that car, when I think of what's involved, if I get caught—'

‘You won't,' she said. She sat up and made him look at her. ‘You're not going to get caught. Do you have a gun?'

‘No. I haven't carried one for years.'

‘Well, then we'd better get one, hadn't we?' she said. ‘Two. I can remember how to shoot.'

‘No,' he said fiercely. ‘No, there's not going to be anything like that! You're not going to be involved in anything – listen to me. No, don't argue, listen to me! You promised if there was any danger, you'd do what I said. You promised that in Boston.'

‘That was Boston,' Terese said gently. ‘That was to make you take me. I'm sorry, darling. I never meant to keep that promise. I'm with you right through in this. It's the only way.'

‘Oh God,' he said. ‘What a fool I was – what a damned fool, to listen to you!'

‘Don't say that,' she pleaded. ‘Please, darling, don't say you wish you hadn't taken me. I love you. We love each other. It was right we went together, and you know it!'

‘I don't know any more,' he said. He came back and sat on the edge of the bed. He took her hand and held it. ‘We've been travelling for nearly a week now; I've seen you so tired you could hardly get out of the car; I see the strain of it in your face and it's hardly begun. That's why I decided to stay here for two nights.'