"A dreadful man"
The Story Thus Far: Another excerpt also from near the beginning [See entry for 12/20/2007, "Chapter One" - Ed. note] in which the beautiful and Mysterious Young Woman appears to be spying on the Baron and our hero Fred.
[Dear Reader, it was bitter cold last night and the wind howled ominously, blowing open the French windows and bending palm trees to precariously horizontal angles. Which kept me awake questioning everything. Have I made a terrible mistake? Or am I just feeling lazy? This is unlike my usual routine; this is not just dashing off some haphazard report on the local natives and sundry activities to send back to HQ. This is hard work. Is it worth it?]
Egon Schiele, detail, self-portrait. Egon's father, Adolph, died of syphilitic insanity on the last day of 1904, although the family reported the death the following day, in the new year, in order to qualify for a larger pension.
Rivka pulls the young man whose arm she's linked in hers against a tree, out of sight. "Kiss me," she commands, pressing him into the old tree trunk's mossy bark, wrapping her arms around him as he obeys, keeping one eye on that other young man sitting with the Baron. The suspiciously handsome young man who looked at her. Suspiciously American. Suspiciously many things. Everything about him is suspicious.
"Enough," she says abruptly, disentangling from Avi. He begins to complain in Hebrew, catching his breath. She cuts him off.
"Speak English," she orders.
"You are impossible," he replies. His face is flushed. "You are crazy, and you are making me crazy." But Rivka knows he is only partly serious. He pretends to frown and pout. Rivka smiles. She looks again over his shoulder at their subjects.
"I told you," Avi says, because it is obvious Rivka wants him to repeat what he's already reported. "The Baron comes here every day. The American is from an auction house in the States. Ingrid told me."
Ingrid is one of the maids in the Baron's household. "Ingrid wants me badly," Avi adds, taunting.
He is trying to make Rivka jealous. Which is flattering, even though she has known Avi since they were children, and then again in the Army. He is only a year younger, but at twenty-eight she feels as if she is much older and his senior. She has seen things. Avi has been to the States, but Rivka has lived in London; she has studied art history at the Courtauld Institute in a Robert Adam house in Portman Square; she has spent a year sharing a bed-sit with an English Rose who kept secrets and never seemed to bathe. They put shillings in the radiator to stay warm and there was no shower; even to Rivka who has endured far worse it was a hardship posting. It is still one of the mysteries about the English, their lack of bathing. As for the American, she can't tell from this distance.
"Can we go now," Avi asks. "I tell you, the American is just the courier. He is the 'gopher.'" He says the word as if he is proud of knowing it. "A schlepper," he adds, because Rivka's father used to teach them Yiddish words.
"And you know it is books he will be taking," she asks. Avi nods. "To New York?" Again, affirmative.
Rivka frowns. Books. But not London, not Heathrow, which would have been different. Heathrow was easy. The smart dealers know how to get guns through Heathrow, crates of books being such a useful cover. That's why so many English book dealers also dealt in antique firearms, it made it that much easier to handle the real thing.
She watches as the chauffeur steps forward to push the Baron's wheelchair, the old man hunched over like a doll or a child wrapped in his blanket, his bony rat face shadowed by the black homburg perched like a fat raven on his head. The American follows alongside awkwardly. There were ravens at the Tower of London, she remembers. Zykon B was invented to kill rats, she reminds herself, until the Nazis used it on people.
A warm sunny day, but watching the old decrepit creature being wheeled back to his Daimler, a chill like an icy finger down her spine makes Rivka shiver. This is not about guns for militants or South Africans or the Irish either. The Baron is a shrewd businessman. Like all the old Nazis, he is an evil man, he is a dreadful man, but shrewd.
Rivka wonders if the American knows how much danger he is in.
[Dear Reader, it was bitter cold last night and the wind howled ominously, blowing open the French windows and bending palm trees to precariously horizontal angles. Which kept me awake questioning everything. Have I made a terrible mistake? Or am I just feeling lazy? This is unlike my usual routine; this is not just dashing off some haphazard report on the local natives and sundry activities to send back to HQ. This is hard work. Is it worth it?]
Egon Schiele, detail, self-portrait. Egon's father, Adolph, died of syphilitic insanity on the last day of 1904, although the family reported the death the following day, in the new year, in order to qualify for a larger pension.
Rivka pulls the young man whose arm she's linked in hers against a tree, out of sight. "Kiss me," she commands, pressing him into the old tree trunk's mossy bark, wrapping her arms around him as he obeys, keeping one eye on that other young man sitting with the Baron. The suspiciously handsome young man who looked at her. Suspiciously American. Suspiciously many things. Everything about him is suspicious.
"Enough," she says abruptly, disentangling from Avi. He begins to complain in Hebrew, catching his breath. She cuts him off.
"Speak English," she orders.
"You are impossible," he replies. His face is flushed. "You are crazy, and you are making me crazy." But Rivka knows he is only partly serious. He pretends to frown and pout. Rivka smiles. She looks again over his shoulder at their subjects.
"I told you," Avi says, because it is obvious Rivka wants him to repeat what he's already reported. "The Baron comes here every day. The American is from an auction house in the States. Ingrid told me."
Ingrid is one of the maids in the Baron's household. "Ingrid wants me badly," Avi adds, taunting.
He is trying to make Rivka jealous. Which is flattering, even though she has known Avi since they were children, and then again in the Army. He is only a year younger, but at twenty-eight she feels as if she is much older and his senior. She has seen things. Avi has been to the States, but Rivka has lived in London; she has studied art history at the Courtauld Institute in a Robert Adam house in Portman Square; she has spent a year sharing a bed-sit with an English Rose who kept secrets and never seemed to bathe. They put shillings in the radiator to stay warm and there was no shower; even to Rivka who has endured far worse it was a hardship posting. It is still one of the mysteries about the English, their lack of bathing. As for the American, she can't tell from this distance.
"Can we go now," Avi asks. "I tell you, the American is just the courier. He is the 'gopher.'" He says the word as if he is proud of knowing it. "A schlepper," he adds, because Rivka's father used to teach them Yiddish words.
"And you know it is books he will be taking," she asks. Avi nods. "To New York?" Again, affirmative.
Rivka frowns. Books. But not London, not Heathrow, which would have been different. Heathrow was easy. The smart dealers know how to get guns through Heathrow, crates of books being such a useful cover. That's why so many English book dealers also dealt in antique firearms, it made it that much easier to handle the real thing.
She watches as the chauffeur steps forward to push the Baron's wheelchair, the old man hunched over like a doll or a child wrapped in his blanket, his bony rat face shadowed by the black homburg perched like a fat raven on his head. The American follows alongside awkwardly. There were ravens at the Tower of London, she remembers. Zykon B was invented to kill rats, she reminds herself, until the Nazis used it on people.
A warm sunny day, but watching the old decrepit creature being wheeled back to his Daimler, a chill like an icy finger down her spine makes Rivka shiver. This is not about guns for militants or South Africans or the Irish either. The Baron is a shrewd businessman. Like all the old Nazis, he is an evil man, he is a dreadful man, but shrewd.
Rivka wonders if the American knows how much danger he is in.
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