Transgression (5 page)

J
ack rolled the finger into the farmer’s oily rag and tucked it inside the breast pocket of his police jacket as casually as if he’d just purchased a five-cent cigar. “Do you think you could keep this to yourself for a day or two?”

“I’d like to forget it altogether,” Clarence replied. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

A large yellow dog, old and mangy, was stretched out in the doorway of the drive shed. He lifted up his head and watched the two men.

“It was on your property,” Jack said.

“On the line between our place and Alf Timmon’s to be exact, Chief.”

“Whose side of the line?”

Clarence already knew it was on his side, but according to Jenny only by a yardstick or so. “It could have come from anywhere.”

“Wife, two daughters and a son. Is that what you said?”

“That’s right.”

“How old is your son?” Jack could see a wave of anger colour Clarence’s tanned face, which was just what he wanted.

“Why?”

“Just asking.”

“Seventeen.”

Jack nodded. He moved toward the open doorway, stepped around the dog and walked out into the bright sunlight.

Clarence, feeling more desperate than he wanted to, followed him.

“Mr. Broome,” Jack said, “what I’ve learned about police work is this, you should always look for the most obvious solution. Do you know where I picked that up?”

“No.”

“Sherlock Holmes.” Jack’s tough face broke into a grin. “This is what I think. Someone had a break-down. Maybe a farm wagon, maybe a car. Something. They jacked it up, the jack slipped, and bang. Pinched off a finger.”

“That could be it, all right,” Clarence replied, looking relieved. “The side road’s just one field over.”

“Because of the pain, shock,” Jack went on, “they forgot about the damn thing. Or couldn’t find it. I’m going to stop in at the hospital. I’m betting that a week or so ago some stranger came in to the emergency department with a bloody hand wrapped in a bloody shirt.” He patted his breast pocket where the finger was bulging out. “I hope I have your word that no one here will say anything about this for now.”

“You’ve got my word, Chief,” Clarence said.

His wife and the younger girl were still standing on the side porch. Jack’s grey eyes, cold now, looked them over. He could see the other girl lurking in the kitchen. “How old’s your older daughter?”

“Madeleine? She’s thirteen.”

She’ll be blabbing to her friends within the hour, Jack thought to himself. He walked to the battered cruiser and opened the door with a hand criss-crossed with a multitude of old battle scars. “I’ll let you know how I make out in a day or two.”

“Thanks for coming out, Chief,” Clarence said.

The finger lay on a white saucer beside the sink in Jack’s kitchen. The house was silent, just the far-away ticking of the mantle clock in the den. His wife was not there, which simplified things. She wouldn’t have appreciated what Jack was up to-she wouldn’t have understood it.

He’d thought of dropping in at the hospital on the way back, though not to inquire about some stranger’s injured hand-he already knew the
answer to that one-but to look in on his wife. Instead he’d driven by, staring resolutely down the street, not even looking at the place. For one thing, he could hardly visit with a detached finger in his pocket, though he supposed he could easily have locked it in the glove compartment. It was more that he wanted to sustain his buoyant mood. For the first time in a long while, he could feel the blood pumping through his veins.

Jack turned the water on, just enough so there was a steady dripping in the sink. He wetted an old toothbrush and began to clean off the knuckle end of the finger. The faint sweetish smell of carrion wafted up into his nostrils. That was the other reason for not going into the hospital. Ruth was all eyes now, the familiar plump flesh that used to define her face gone, her body withering away except for her lower torso. That’s where the cancer was, a growing mass of useless bone-white cells. The smell of death was in her room.

Jack winced a little. He’d make sure to visit her that evening, just as he’d been visiting her faithfully every evening for over a month, but he couldn’t do it that afternoon. He just couldn’t.

Bits of dirt and black caked-on blood began to wash away. He held the bone end up into the sunlight and examined it closely. There were several score marks on its shiny surface, as if someone had been working away trying to detach it with a tiny chisel. This was what he’d suspected all along. The splits in the skin where the purple flesh showed through hadn’t been made by pecks from the hen, they were too old-looking, and they weren’t the result of decay, either. They were tiny bite marks. The finger had been gnawed off the hand it had been attached to, either by mice or a wayward rat. That’s what had set his pulse racing the moment he’d seen it. Either by homicide or by accident, there was a very dead body out there somewhere.

Was it male or female? Jack studied the nail and the puffy white flesh for some time. Even cleaned up a little, he couldn’t tell. Not a scrap of nail polish. But then, not one hair, either. It was too far gone.

Jack wrapped it up in waxed paper and put it in the refrigerator. Ruth had replaced the old icebox just after the close of the war. She’d done it on her own in a fit of compensation for her grief, Jack had assumed. The new refrigerator had a freezer compartment, too, but he wasn’t sure about freezing the finger, at least not yet.

He washed his hands and wandered back toward the den. He’d avoided that room for about the last four years, but now that he was alone in the house he’d often find himself in there. Ruth had rearranged it about a month after receiving the telegram. Regret to inform you. What? That your twenty-seven-year-old son, flesh of your flesh, heart of your heart, had died somewhere near a place called Dieppe.

Jack had looked it up on a map. Dead. Witnessed by a fellow soldier to be dead. Buried hurriedly during a full-scale retreat and presumably still interred there somewhere, lying peacefully by the French seaside. That’s what Ruth liked to think. Jack knew better. Food for the gulls a long time ago, for a myriad of insects and scuttling creatures.

Jack stood in the doorway and contemplated the arrangement of photographs. Kyle in his Royal Hamilton Light Infantry uniform, Kyle on parade, Kyle on leave with his buddies in England. Kyle as a two-year-old holding on to a tasselled cushion in a photographer’s studio. At four looking all alone and tiny on an eight-seater toboggan. A variety of school pictures. Lots of pictures of Ruth with Kyle. Two tattered ribbons that Ruth had resurrected, a blue for second, a white for third. Jack didn’t even know what they were for.

There were no photographs of Kyle with Jack on display, though Jack thought there must be at least a few somewhere. Jack and Kyle had not been close, and he knew the absence of pictures was meant by Ruth as a silent rebuke, a rebuke that had lasted four years.

He had acknowledged it without a word in his own defence. He didn’t even know what his defence might be.

A
fter Adele returned home from work, she lay on her bed and tried to will herself to sleep, but she couldn’t.

Manfred Halder. When she whispered those words and conjured up a picture of him standing in the glare of the sun, his pensive face, the dew sparkling like diamonds all around him, everything now more vivid in her mind than when it was actually happening, what she felt most was a paralyzing fear. What would happen to her if they became friends, if they shared secrets, if they were seen together?

She drew up her knees. Unthinkable things.

There was a temptation, too, though, she had to admit this, and almost because of the danger. To be attracted to a German felt perverse and strange-it shortened her breath.

What was there to hope for in her life? Nothing.

Of course this wasn’t true. There was hope for her father, more than hope, an absolute certainty that he was alive and that he would be returning to her soon. She could almost see him limping up the street. The neighbours would stream out of their houses to greet him. Adele would fly out the door.

She finally fell into a fitful sleep. She was roused four hours later by the shrill sounds of Bibi and Jean bursting into the house from school.

This was meat day. Two days a week the shops were supposed to have meat and you could use tickets to purchase the allowable ration, which had been reduced by the local commandant to enough for only one meal, possibly two, if you ate a translucent portion. With some luck, Old Raymond
might have managed two vile-looking blueish sausages with the family’s five tickets, or a piece of blotchy green beef she would have to boil and boil.

When Adele reached the kitchen, the racket was even louder than usual. Short and pudgy Bibi was standing on top of the table, and Jean, lankier and even more excitable than his younger brother, had attached himself to Old Raymond’s neck and was hanging down his back.

“Hurrah, hurrah!” they both cried. “Raymond has got a chicken!”

Old Raymond, with Jean still attached, held up a scrawny old hen.

“My God, it’s beautiful.” Adele touched its feathers. “How did you manage this?”

Old Raymond’s rheumy eyes lit up. “Ask me no questions,” he said, and Jean and Bibi chimed in, “I’ll tell you no lies!”

Adele knew the answer anyway: purchased on the black market.

Old Raymond stretched the chicken out on the counter so everyone could have a turn squeezing its legs and poking its feathery breast. Having secured the bird, and since meat tickets were good only for the day, he’d also traded the family’s tickets for a bag of macaroni, five eggs and a piece of cheese. These transactions were illegal, as well.

Adele kissed him on his soft velvety cheeks. “You are a genius,” she said.

“Thank you, Madame Downstairs,” Old Raymond replied.

Jean and Bibi hooted to hear Adele called such a funny name. Old Raymond had taken to calling their absentee mother Madame Upstairs. Out of sheer exuberance, Jean seized Bibi in a headlock. Bibi started to kick and scream. Adele put some water on the stove and tried to ignore them. Old Raymond retreated out the back door toward the small stone cottage in the centre of the Georges’ gardens. He’d occupied it since before Adele could remember. He’d take a nap there now, as was his custom. It was up to Adele to prepare the meal.

Adele stood in her room and stared at her unmade bed. Everyone had been fed, including Madame Upstairs, all the pots and plates had been washed and put away, and she still had time to take a nap before going off to work. In fact, she had two hours.

Adele walked around the room, trailing her hand along the wall. She stopped in front of the mirror over her dresser and studied her face. Some unknown girl, rash and stupid, was staring back at her.

She rearranged the clothes in her drawers. She took her sweaters out, refolded them and put them back again.

She stared at the boy sitting on his rocking horse. She came up so close to him that his face seemed as large as a normal face and blurred in her eyes. She could feel his breath on her skin. She knew she couldn’t help herself.

Five minutes later Adele was hurrying through the back garden and was about to reach the wooden gate when she heard Jean’s voice call out, “Where are you going?”

“To work,” she answered, looking around, trying to see him.

For reasons known only to himself, he’d shinnied to the top of a tall slender pole that at one time had supported a birdhouse. Clinging there with his hair dishevelled and bathed in red from the setting sun, he seemed to Adele like a sprite from the underworld. “It’s not time yet,” he said.

“They’re calling everybody in early.”

Adele pushed open the gate and hurried away. The sun had disappeared and the clouds were turning deep mauve by the time she reached the park off Ducrot Street. The air felt surprisingly cool blowing off the river. It smelled fishy and brackish. Some children were playing on swings down the hill from where she stood. Dusk was falling quickly-all she could see was their dark shapes flying.

Adele walked to the secluded end of the park. Manfred was nowhere in sight. She sat down on a bench under a tree. She told herself she wouldn’t wait very long. She’d count up to a hundred and then she’d leave. She started to count.

She was back behind the warehouse again. The early morning sun was shining down. She could feel its heat on her arms and on her face. She leaned close to Manfred Halder. She could smell his smoky smell. “I can’t be with you. Stay away from me,” she whispered.

When Adele came out of her daydream, Manfred was standing on the stone wall that ran along the edge of the river. It was even darker than before. His back was toward her and he was looking out across the water.

Adele remained sitting under her tree. She could see the running lights of boats bobbing up and down on the far side of the river. Manfred seemed to be moving a little, too, drifting along, but perhaps it was only the glint of the waves behind him that gave that illusion. She didn’t know what to do.

“It smells fishy here,” she said, coming up behind him.

Manfred turned and scooped his army cap off his shaved head. He seemed amazed. “I am so glad for me that you have come.”

“I am glad for you, too,” Adele said.

Manfred didn’t get the joke, or didn’t let on if he did. He jumped off the wall and said again, “You are here.”

“I have to go to work soon.”

“We can walk,” Manfred said.

They walked beside the wall until Adele could once again hear the sound of the children on the swings in the dark. She turned away and walked up the hill. Manfred followed her. She turned again and headed back to the secluded end of the park.

“I have to inform you that there was no letter from Max Oberg today concerning your father,” Manfred announced.

“Yes.”

“I will keep watching.”

“Yes.”

Manfred stopped to light a cigarette. In the flare of the match, Adele watched his face.

“How do you come to speak French?”

“My major in Stuttgart University. I am a language student. First year. And then I wasn’t. I was a soldier.” He smiled. The match went out and it was dark again. “Your father, he was a doctor, wasn’t he?”

“He still is.” There was a quavering edge to Adele’s voice. She hadn’t meant it to be there.

“Yes, of course,” Manfred replied.

Adele felt suddenly cold and lost. She began to walk toward a street lamp glowing at the edge of the park. Ducrot Street was just beyond, and a bus stop.

Manfred caught up to her. “My father is an electrician. He used to work in building houses. Now he works in making aeroplanes. He writes to tell me that they make hundreds of aeroplanes night and day. That’s what he does.”

To bomb and strafe and kill us, Adele thought.

“He fought in the other war. The insane asylum war. That’s his name for it. Since I was little he has told me everything about his experience in the insane asylum war. He lost every friend.” Manfred caught her arm. “I am afraid I will frighten you.”

“How?”

Manfred took off his cap again and bent down and kissed her. His lips felt cool.

This came as a surprise to Adele because when she’d allowed herself to imagine what it might be like to be kissed by Manfred Halder, she’d felt his lips particularly warm on hers, and infinitely gentle. Instead they felt real and insistent, but almost at once this sweet, physical pressing became a source of pleasure, too. Muscular. Vital. And yes, smoky.

Adele let her mouth open a little. She felt his hand brush against her neck, touch her hair. An unfamiliar rush of blood stirred deep inside her. And now Manfred’s lips were turning warm. She pushed away. “I have to go to work.”

Adele hurried toward the light shining at the edge of the park. Before she reached it, she began to run.

Adele and Manfred continued to meet in the park. They walked hand in hand. They told each other everything. They kissed. Nothing more, but it proved enough to divert Adele’s growing desperation about her father, enough to give her something to look forward to every day with a pounding heart.

“I think I’m going to be an artist,” Adele announced one night. She and Manfred were sitting on their special bench under the tree. The air had turned cold. Adele could see her breath in the dark.

“What kind?” Manfred’s breath billowed out toward her, it touched her breath.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Do you draw?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you write?”

“Sometimes. I did at school. I just feel like I’m going to be an artist, that’s all.”

“I think you will,” Manfred said.

I’ll write a poem for you, Adele thought to herself, a love poem. She knew she loved him. She had to admit it to herself and she did, often, while visiting with Simone or sitting beside the rough women in the factory. I love Manfred Halder, she said secretly, silently. She wanted to tell Simone about him. She almost did, riding on a bus one day, but just as she was about to say, “Remember that German clerk?” Simone had pointed to something out the window. A tall girl was kissing her soldier boyfriend.

“Look at that.” Simone had made a face. “Why doesn’t she just pull down her pants and take a shit in the middle of the road.”

Adele had felt numb.

When the cold weather came to stay, Manfred supplied extra food for the Georges family’s pantry and coal for their heating stove. Under cover of darkness, he’d drop his secret gifts off in potato sacks at the edge of the back lane and Adele would drag them up the path past Old Raymond’s cottage and down the cellar steps.

Old Raymond was becoming increasingly frail, and then he fell too ill to do anything, lying in bed in his cottage most of the time, uncommunicative and with his eyes closed. Adele knew what his trouble was. He’d been forced to wait too long for Henri Paul-Louis.

Adele was sitting in the kitchen one day watching wet snowflakes fall by the window when René walked into view through the back gate. Though it was cold outside, he was only wearing a sweater, his hands plunged inside his threadbare trousers, his long hair frosted and soaked.

Adele felt immediately nervous. She moved to the sink and filled up the kettle. “I’ll make you some almost-as-good-as-coffee,” she said as René pushed through the door. “I bought it from this woman. It’s made out of ground-up chestnuts and lupin seeds and God knows what else. It’s good, though. It’ll warm you up.”

René stamped a rim of slush off his shoes and sat down on a chair. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his thin silky beard was full of silvery rain drops. “I don’t have a job any more.”

“Oh, no.” Adele sat down at the opposite end of the table.

René’s eyes darted here and there as if he were half-starved and looking for food. “They took it away.” He patted his pockets.

“Who did?”

René pulled out a damp-looking package and laid three cigarettes on the table to dry. “They came in trucks and took everything out of the scrapyard. Jews aren’t allowed to own businesses any more. Sam’s locked himself in his room. He won’t come out.”

Adele wondered if René was ill-he looked ill, his face had a strange flush to it. At first, she’d thought it was just from the cold but in the warmth of the kitchen it hadn’t disappeared. It was all she could do not to reach out and touch his cheek to see if he had a fever.

“He won’t eat. We’ve been leaving bits of food outside his door. Now his neighbours are stealing it.” René looked up and grinned at her, but it was more like a grimace.

“That’s awful.” Adele knew better than to say that René should call the police, for everyone knew the police were in the Germans’ pockets. “You’ll have to break down his door, René, you’ll have to make him eat.”

Adele was about to get up and measure out the coffee when René said, “I heard something.” Carefully he picked up one of his soggy cigarettes. “Someone said he saw you with a German soldier.”

Adele’s body froze.

René’s eyes weren’t darting hungrily here and there any more. He was looking straight at her.

“As if I would,” Adele cried out with all the indignation she could muster. “What idiot-friend of yours told you that?”

“He was passing on a bus. It was dark. He just said this girl looked a little like you.”

“The stupid fool! The nerve of him!”

René would never have understood if she’d sat there and explained to him for a hundred years how Manfred could be one of them and at the same
time not be one of them at all, in his soul, in his mind, in his heart. She knew she loved Manfred for who he really was. Her father would have understood this in an instant. But not René. All he would bullheadedly see was Manfred’s uniform. It would set him off. God only knew in what manner it would set him off, though.

Adele stole a glance at her brother. He looked like a tramp, he was losing weight, he never talked about their father any more, refused to even mention his name. Adele wondered how much more he could stand.

“I would never do that,” she said, her voice sounding to her as faint as if she were standing in another room.