Fatherland

heard her put down the book, then she joined him on the bed, wriggling close to him.
    "And you?" she breathed into his ear. "Will you come out with me?"
    "We can't talk now. Not here."
    "Sorry. I forgot." Her tongue tip touched his ear.
    A jolt, like electricity.
    Her hand rested lightly on his leg. With her fingers, she traced the inside of his thigh. He started to murmur something, but again, as in Zürich, she placed a finger to his lips.
    "The object of the game is not to make a sound."
    Later, unable to sleep, he listened to her: the sigh of her breath, the occasional mutter—far away and indistinct. In her dream, she turned toward him, groaning. Her arm was flung across the pillow, shielding her face. She seemed to be fighting some private battle. He stroked the tangle of her hair, waiting until whatever demon it was had released her. Then he slipped out from beneath the sheets.
    The kitchen floor was cold to his naked feet. He opened a couple of cupboards. Dusty crockery and a few half- empty packages of food. The refrigerator was ancient, might have been borrowed from some institute of biology, its contents blue furred and mottled with exotic molds. Cooking, it was clear, was not a priority around here. He boiled a kettle, rinsed a mug and heaped in three spoonsful of instant coffee.
    He wandered through the apartment sipping the bitter drink. In the living room he stood beside the window and pulled back the curtain a fraction. Bülow-Strasse was deserted. He could see the telephone booth, dimly illuminated, and the shadows of the station entrance behind it. He let the curtain fall back.
    America. The prospect had never occurred to him before. When he thought of it, his brain reached automati cally for the images Doctor Goebbels had planted there. Jews and Negroes. Top-hatted capitalists and smokestack factories. Beggars on the streets. Striptease bars. Gangsters shooting at one another from vast automobiles. Smoldering tenements and modern jazz bands, wailing across the ghettos like police sirens. Kennedy's toothy smile. Charlie's dark eyes and white limbs. America .
    He went into the bathroom. The walls were stained by steam clouds and splashes of soap. Bottles everywhere, and tubes, and small pots. Mysterious feminine objects of glass and plastic. It was a long time since he had seen a woman's bathroom. It made him feel clumsy and foreign—the heavy-footed ambassador of some other species. He picked up a few things and sniffed at them, squeezed a drop of white cream onto his finger and rubbed at it with his thumb. This smell of her mingled with the others already on his hands.
    He wrapped himself in a large towel and sat down on the floor to think. Three or four times before dawn he heard her shout out in her sleep.

2

    Just before seven he went down into Bülow-Strasse. His Volkswagen was parked a hundred meters up the street, on the left, outside a butcher's shop. The owner was hanging plump carcasses in the window. A heaped tray of bloodred sausages at his feet reminded March of something.
    Globus's fingers, that's what it was—those immense raw fists.
    He bent over the backseat of the Volkswagen, tugging his suitcase toward him. As he straightened, he glanced quickly in either direction. There was nothing special to see—just the usual signs of Saturday morning. Most shops would open as normal but then close early in honor of the holiday.
    Back in the apartment he made more coffee, set a mug on the bedside table beside Charlie and went into the bathroom to shave. After a couple of minutes he heard her come in behind him. She clasped her arms around his chest and squeezed, her breasts pressing into his bare back. Without turning around he kissed her hand and wrote in the steam on the mirror: PACK, NO RETURN. As he wiped away the message, he saw her clearly for the first time—hair tangled, eyes half closed, the lines of her face still soft with sleep. She nodded and ambled back into the bedroom.
    He dressed in his civilian clothes as he had for Zürich, but with one difference. He slipped his Luger into the right-hand pocket of his trench coat. The coat—old surplus Wehrmacht issue, picked up cheaply long ago—was baggy enough for the weapon not to show. He could even hold the pistol and aim it surreptitiously through the material of the pocket, gangster-style: "Okay, buddy, let's go." He smiled to himself. America again.
    The possible presence of a microphone cast a shadow over their