Along the Infinite Sea

  “I’m just—oh, dear—the sun—”

  I sagged to the ground, and as I did I caught the motion of one single man stepping reflexively out of line, some distance to the left, at the edge of a row about halfway down the column.

  4.

  I protested that I was quite all right, just a passing dizziness, but Lieutenant Helmbrecht insisted that we head to the infirmary and see the doctor. He took my elbow and led me down the center aisle, and I clutched my hat to my head and watched the faces stream by, until we had gone halfway down and I saw them, as if they were magnets: a pair of hard caramel eyes trying not to find me.

  “Lieutenant Helmbrecht! Wait a moment!”

  “Yes, Frau von Kleist?”

  “That man there! I think—I’m not sure—”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, no.” I went on, stopped, and turned again. “No, I must examine him.”

  “Why, what’s the matter?”

  “Has he been seen by a doctor recently?”

  “All our prisoners are under the close supervision of the barracks government. If any symptoms of sickness are detected, they are immediately referred to the infirmary.” He trailed just behind me, grasping at my elbow, but I was marching like a nurse now and would not be grasped. Stefan’s neck beckoned ahead, sunburned instead of white, dark hair cropped so short it was only a shadow at the bottom of his cap, but this time it was really his. It was Stefan, really Stefan, a few yards away. In a few seconds, I would be touching him.

  “I am a trained nurse, Lieutenant Helmbrecht, and I am quite sure I saw symptoms of typhoid in that man.”

  At the word typhoid, the lieutenant stopped short. I went on, turning down the correct row, and then I stopped before Stefan. Or rather, an apparition who resembled Stefan: too brown and bony and empty to be the man who had faced me on a fourth-floor bed of the Paris Ritz and laid his finger across my lips. The scar shone white against his sunburn. On his chest, the red triangle-shaped badge bore a number I couldn’t quite read.

  “How lucky I am wearing my gloves.” I touched the corner of his eye, which was pleading with me.

  “Frau von Kleist!” exclaimed the lieutenant.

  “Oh, dear,” I said. “This is very serious. How are you feeling, prisoner?”

  “Get the hell out of here,” Stefan muttered in English.

  “I see. Very bad indeed. Let me see your palm.”

  I took his hand and turned it over. His palm was scarred and blistered. I ran my finger over the lines. “Have you had any episodes of rash, prisoner? Dizziness and headache?”

  “Please go.”

  I gave him back his hand, but not before I had slipped a capsule from the inside of my glove and placed it in the center of his palm. His fingers swallowed it at once. “Take this at once,” I said in English, and then I turned to the lieutenant, who stood at the end of the row, barking at the terrified prisoners to get back in line.

  “Lieutenant, it is as I feared. He can hardly stand. He is almost delirious. He must go the infirmary at once for treatment, before he infects the entire camp.”

  “My God!” said Lieutenant Helmbrecht. He turned to the guard who hovered next to him. “Take that prisoner to the infirmary at once.”

  The guard, horrified, stepped down the line and took Stefan’s elbow. He threw me a last look of shocked understanding and staggered forward. As he did so, his hand came up to his mouth.

  “You see?” I said. “He is falling on his feet. You may need an orderly and a stretcher.” I bent down to help him up and whispered in English, as we rose together: Be ready.

  The guard took back Stefan’s elbow and forced him down the row. The prisoners stepped back in horror as we went, covering their mouths. I walked a pace or two behind and watched the back of Stefan’s neck as it bobbed and slumped like the neck of a man on the brink of collapse. I thought for an instant of Tosca, instructing her Mario to play his part well, to convince the guards he had really been shot, and then I remembered that this was real, that I had actually done this, that I was actually walking down this row of prisoners at Dachau under the September sunshine, hoping I had not just given Stefan a death sentence.

  “Well,” I said to Lieutenant Helmbrecht, when the prisoners were dismissed and the assembly ground returned to peace, “how very fortunate for you that I am a trained nurse. Of course, these gloves should be burned at once.”

  5.

  The rain arrived at sunset two days later, and by the time we reached the crossroads and parked the car on the grass, it rattled against the windshield as if it never meant to stop. Wilhelmine opened her window an inch or so and lit a cigarette. “Now we wait,” she said.

  I turned my head to glance into the backseat, where Florian lay in a deep sleep underneath his favorite blanket. We had left the Himmelfarbs’ house near Stuttgart an hour ago, when the telephone call had arrived at last, and had bundled Florian inside without even waking him. He had stirred but never opened his eyes, having spent the entire day playing outside with his half-sister, Else. At one point I had gone out to take him in for his nap, but Wilhelmine had stopped me. Let them play, she said. They may not get another chance.

  “Don’t say that.”

  She had shrugged and leaned forward to wipe the mess from Henrik’s mouth. He was sitting in his high chair, and she had been feeding him peas. “Matthias refuses to leave. He says he will not let Hitler drive him away like a dog.”

  “It’s common sense, though. You can’t keep fighting when everyone is against you.”

  “Not everyone in Germany is like Hitler, Annabelle. Most of my neighbors, they are disgusted.”

  “But they won’t speak up, will they? Which is worse, I think. Look at my husband. He never believed in all the Nazi propaganda, but he went along with them, he did everything they asked, because he’s afraid to do anything else.”

  She laughed. “Can you blame him? Did you not see what they have done to Stefan?” When I didn’t reply, she went on. “Anyway, I think you are wrong about von Kleist. He is not bad. He is simply a man of duty, that is all. I mean, there is no doubt that Stefan broke the law, that he killed a Gestapo agent and all these things. He killed that agent with his bare hands, and maybe the man was a bad man, maybe he wanted to arrest Stefan and put him in prison, but he was still a man who had a wife and three children, I believe. So it was your husband’s duty to hunt down the man who had killed this agent, and by God he did.”

  “You can’t possibly be excusing him.”

  “No, not exactly. But I think I understand him. And I will tell you this: I even think, if I were you, I would rather be married to a von Kleist than to a Stefan. I would pick the steady sun over the starburst.”

  “But he is the sun. Stefan is the sun.”

  She shook her head.

  I put my hand on her arm. “Wilhelmine, you’ve got to leave. You can’t stay here.”

  “And where would we go? Germany is our home. Everywhere it is like this, really. There is nowhere we are safe. There is no country on earth that will open its arms and shout, Welcome, Jews! Even in America, you cannot get a visa anymore unless you are a millionaire or a personal friend of Mr. Roosevelt, or I suppose if you are Albert fucking Einstein.”

  How could I answer her?

  We had sat in silence, except for the sound of Henrik eating his peas, until Wilhelmine removed the bowl and lifted him out of his chair to rest on her shoulder. “So we will take our chances, as always. Like our fathers and mothers did before us.”

  I had muddled over her words for hours, and I muddled over them now, watching the rain track down the windshield. There was just enough moon to see the road nearby, to see the shadows of the trees and mountains around us. Wilhelmine tucked her feet up underneath her on the seat and smoked quietly, tipping the ash out the crack in the window. She had been to university
in Stuttgart—that was where she met Matthias—and studied English and history, and she carried about her an air of trouser-wearing worldliness that saturated her skin. I thought Stefan was a fool for letting her go, and that maybe he loved me because I was her opposite. I did not believe in a perverse universe. I didn’t believe in fate, except for the one that bound me to Stefan.

  “I think you are right,” Wilhelmine replied, when I said this thought aloud, a little more delicately. “He was never in love with me. We had some attraction, but I could not satisfy something in him. And he drove me crazy. Always restless, always wanting to change things. Why can you not stay home with your wife and your daughter? I shouted to him. Why do you have to go out and pinch the nose of the fucking Gestapo? And he said that someone had to.” She dropped the cigarette stub outside the window and put her arms around her legs. “I said there was no object. He was going to get killed for no object at all.”

  “Then why are you risking yourself for him now?”

  “Because I am an idiot, Annabelle.” She picked up her cigarette case from the seat between us. “Anyway, it is the last time. He is your problem now.”

  “But what about Else? He’ll want to see her.”

  “Then he should not have got himself arrested by the Gestapo, should he?”

  I asked if she would let me have a cigarette, and she laughed and lit one for each of us. The smoke burned my lungs, but after a minute or two I noticed my nerves settle, one by one, as if they were being put to bed by a comforting hand. I held the cigarette in front of my eyes and examined it. “It’s not so bad.”

  “I expect they will kill me one day, but I don’t care enough to stop. Just don’t have a second one, and you will be safe.”

  A light appeared in the darkness ahead. Wilhelmine straightened in her seat. “Okay, now. If that is not the ambulance, you let me do the talking, all right?”

  I coughed, put out the cigarette, and said: “You know, your English is really very good.”

  “Eh. I used to watch a lot of American movies.”

  The light resolved through the gloom into a pair of headlamps. “It’s big enough,” said Wilhelmine. Her fingers tapped the steering wheel. A few more damp seconds passed, and then: “It’s them.”

  The air inside the car was like a cigarette fog. I realized I couldn’t breathe. I opened up the door and set my foot into the soggy turf. “Wait,” said Wilhelmine, but I was already walking through the rain to the approaching headlamps, waving my arms, sucking the wet October night into my lungs.

  Wilhelmine caught up with me an instant later. “You fool,” she said.

  “You told me it was them.”

  The glare grew larger and hurt my eyes. I stepped back and she caught my arm. “I might be wrong.”

  The brakes squeaked softly through the drumming rain. A man jumped out of the gray cab almost before the truck stopped. Wilhelmine called to him: Bellende Hunde!

  Beissen nicht, he replied.

  Wilhelmine turned to me. “All right. Let’s get the bastard out.”

  The driver set the brake and opened the door, swearing at the rain. Wilhelmine and I were already dashing to the back of the truck with the first man. He swung the doors open and I hoisted myself onto the bed, slipping and streaming, calling out Stefan’s name.

  “It’s no use,” said the driver. “He’s either asleep or delirious, or both.”

  I flung out my arms and found a warm body on a stretcher. Stefan, I said.

  He muttered a word.

  I ran my hands up his torso until I found his hair, hot and dry, like kindling. I fell to my knees next to the stretcher and cradled his head in my palms, brushing his shorn hair, kissing his cheeks. I whispered to him that I was here, Annabelle was here, he was safe, I would never leave him again.

  6.

  Stefan’s fever broke two days later, right on schedule. He opened his eyes and asked first for a cigarette and then for coffee. I put the cigarette in his mouth and lighted it, and his eyes widened with pleasure.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “I wired my father in Paris and had him send them.”

  “You will go to heaven one day.”

  “I’m already there, Stefan.” I kissed his forehead and went to make coffee.

  7.

  When I returned with the coffee, I led in Florian by the hand. Stefan turned his head toward us, and his face, already stark, went rigid with shock. He stubbed out the cigarette.

  “I was going to wait,” I said, “but he’s really too young to leave alone.”

  Stefan took a long time putting out his cigarette. When he lifted his eyes from the ashtray, they were wet.

  I set down the coffee and lifted Florian into my arms. “He’s yours,” I said.

  “I know.”

  Florian held a biscuit in one hand. His hair, always unruly, spilled into his forehead. He stared curiously at Stefan and then turned to me. “Is he sick?”

  “Yes, darling. Stefan is a little sick. But he’ll be up and about in no time, and you two will have such fun together.”

  Florian turned this over in his head and looked back at Stefan. “Ride horses.”

  “Yes, you can ride horses if you like.”

  “Papa ride horses.”

  “Yes. Papa rides horses, too.”

  In the bed, Stefan held very still, watching his son’s lips as he spoke. His knuckles were white around the edge of the blankets. I carried Florian with me to the chair next to the nightstand and sat down.

  “I thought it was so obvious,” I said, “but everyone just thinks he looks like me, because he has dark hair and brown eyes.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I would watch you two in the Tuileries, when you went for your walk and your ice cream.”

  “What?”

  Florian struggled in my arms. I set him down and he ran to the window, zooming his toy airplane in an arc above his head. Stefan watched him go. “That was why I came to Paris, Annabelle. The real reason. I could keep myself away from you because I knew this was the right thing, but I had to see my son. I had to know what he looked like.”

  “You knew?”

  “I am not stupid, Annabelle.” He was still watching Florian zoom about the room on his sturdy legs, and the expression on his battered face was so warm and tender I had to look away. “I never meant to disturb you, I swear it. But then I saw you together, and you were so beautiful, and he was so beautiful, and I thought this very dangerous thought. I thought, Please God, let me just speak to her once and set us both to rest. I swore to God I would not fall into temptation.” He shook his head. “Obviously I am not to be trusted.”

  I took his hand. “I am so glad you did. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t be together now.”

  “No, this is true.”

  “So you see? I was right after all.”

  “About what, Annabelle?”

  “The perverse universe.”

  He would not stop looking at Florian, following Florian around the floor, and his eyes were still warm and tender, but a little mournful, too, turned down at the corners like a dog that doesn’t hope for much. “Yes, you were right,” he said softly.

  8.

  Stefan drank his coffee and watched Florian play, while I made some toast and brought a few toys into the bedroom.

  “I suppose I should ask where we are,” he said.

  “We’re on Lake Konstanz, in a house owned by Matthias’s family. Wilhelmine’s husband, though he wasn’t very happy about it.”

  “Ah. I suppose Wilhelmine helped you with all this.”

  “Yes, she did. She found men to forge papers and then find an ambulance. I came up with the plan, though.”

  “A very good plan. You almost had me fooled. Maybe a little risky, tho
ugh.”

  “I’m sorry you had to suffer, but we had little choice except to trick them somehow.”

  “May I ask what was in that capsule you gave me?”

  “It was a weakened form of the typhoid bacterium. One of Wilhelmine’s university friends got it for us. He works in a medical research laboratory. I think it’s an experiment of some kind, but I had to take the risk, and he assured me it wouldn’t kill you.”

  “Ah, very clever. So you gave me this pill and waited for the symptoms to take effect, and then you waited until they made the decision to transfer me to a hospital?”

  “No, that was the clever part. Charles helped me with that. He knew a doctor at the military hospital in Frankfurt. He had him call up the camp and say that they’d heard there was this case, and could they please send you over for trial of an experimental medication? And of course the doctor in the infirmary said yes, because first of all he is a prisoner, too, and second, we had sent him a message in a shipment of aspirin, and third, he gets along very well with the camp commandant.”

  “My brilliant Annabelle. This must have taken a great deal of planning. How did your husband never suspect?”

  I glanced at Florian and lowered my voice. “I left Johann in August, Stefan. You see, I didn’t know. I had no idea he was the one who had you arrested. Wilhelmine told me, and I took Florian and left him that day.”

  I delivered this information like a thunderbolt, but Stefan only gazed back at me with quiet eyes, unmoved.

  “And all this time, he has not tried to find you?”

  “No. He had a concussion playing tennis, that same afternoon. He couldn’t stop me.”

  “Not then, no. But he could have sent somebody. He commands an army, not just the official one but an unofficial army, too. You have no idea how much power he has. He could at least have told the officials at Dachau to be prepared for a possible escape by me.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again.

  Stefan leaned back into his pillow. His face was pale beneath his sunburn. He must have lost fifty pounds since I saw him last; the bones were so prominent on his face, everything sharp and drawn. I had seen bruises and scars on his body, as I washed and dressed him, and I had cried over them. But what alarmed me most was the expression in his eyes. The hollowed-out glassiness, as if he were staring into another universe.