Professor Brandt brought it closer to his chest, so that involuntarily Jake started to reach out his hand. A few pieces of paper, the only proof Bernie would ever have.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Professor Brandt said. “It’s just that-I want you to take it. If I see him again, I don’t want to say I gave it up. You took it.”
Jake gripped the file and pulled it firmly out of the old man’s hands. “Does it really make any difference?”
“I don’t know. But I can say it, I didn’t give them away, him and his friends. I can say that.”
“All right.” Jake hesitated. “It’s the right thing, you know.”
“Yes, the right thing,” Professor Brandt said faintly.
He drew himself up, erect, then moved away from the light, just a voice again.
“And you’ll tell Lena? That it wasn’t me?” He paused. “If she stops coming, you see, there’s no one.”
He didn’t have to tell her anything. She was asleep on the bed, clothed, the boy next to her. He closed the door and sank down on the lumpy couch to read through the file again, even more dismayed than before, time enough now to see the picture fill up with its grisly details, each one a kind of indictment. Valuable to Bernie, but to who else? Is that what Tully intended to sell? But why would Sikorsky want it? The simple answer was that he didn’t-he wanted the scientists, busily making their deals with Breimer, each page in the file a pointing finger that they thought had gone away. Valuable to them.
He lay back with his arm over his eyes, thinking about Tully, a business in persilscheins before Kransberg, selling releases at Bensheim, sometimes selling them twice. Crooks followed a pattern-what worked once worked again. And these were better than persilscheim, as valuable as a ticket out. Deplorable things might have happened, but there was nothing to involve them but pieces of paper, something worth paying for.
When he awoke, it was light and Lena was at the table, staring straight ahead, the closed file in front of her.
“Did you read it?” he said, sitting up.
“Yes.” She pushed the file aside. “You made notes. Are you going to write about this?”
“They’re points to verify at the Document Center. To prove it all fits.“
“Prove to whom?” she said vacantly, then stood up. “Do you want some coffee?“
He watched her light the gas ring and measure out the coffee, going through the ordinary motions of the morning ritual as if nothing had happened.
“Did you understand them? I can explain.”
“No, don’t explain anything. I don’t want to know.”
“You have to know.”
She turned away to face the stove. “Go wash. The coffee will be ready in a minute.”
He got up and went over to the table, glancing down at the folder, caught off balance by her reaction.
“Lena, we need to talk about this. What’s in here-”
“Yes, I know. Terrible things. You’re just like the Russians. ‘Look at the film. See how terrible you are, all you people. What you did in the war.’ I don’t want to look anymore. The war’s over.”
“This isn’t the war. Read it. They starved people to death, watched them die. That’s not the war, that’s something else.”
“Stop it,” she said, raising her hands to her ears. “I don’t want to hear it. Emil didn’t do those things.”
“Yes, he did, Lena,” he said quietly. “He did.” “How do you know? Because of that paper? How do you know what they ordered him to do? What he had to do? Look at Renate.”
“You think it’s the same? A Jew in hiding? They would’ve murdered-”
“I don’t know. Neither do you. He had to protect his family tooit could be. They took families. Maybe to protect me and Peter-”
“You don’t really believe that, do you? Read it.” He flung open the folder. “Read it. He wasn’t protecting you.”
She looked down. “You want me to hate him. It’s not enough for you that I’m with you? You want me to hate him too? I won’t. He’s my family, what’s left of it. He’s all that’s left.”
“Read it,” Jake said evenly. “This isn’t about us.”
“No?”
“No. It’s about some guy in Burgstrasse with blood all over his hands. I don’t even know who he is anymore. Not anyone I know.”
“Then let him tell you. Let him explain. You owe him that.”
“Owe him? As far as I’m concerned, he can rot in Burgstrasse. They’re welcome to him.”
He looked at her stricken expression and then, angry at himself for being angry, left the room, closing the bathroom door with a thud. He splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth, as sour as his mood. Not about them, except for her unexpected defense, guilty with an explanation, what everyone in Berlin said, now even her. Two lines in the cards. Still here, even after the file.
He came back to find her standing where he had left her, staring at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She nodded, not saying anything, then turned, poured out the coffee, and brought it to the table. “Sit,” she said, “it’ll get cold.” A haus-frau gesture, to signal it was over.
But when he sat down, she stood next to the table, her face still troubled. “We can’t leave him there,” she said softly.
