Amerika (20 page)

“Let’s get out of here,” Peter said. “I’ve got a bottle of whiskey I’ve been saving for a special occasion, and this is definitely it.”

They all started along the courthouse corridor, laughing and talking, but abruptly fell silent when they saw Helmut Gurtman awaiting the approaching group. Tall and sinister, in his black uniform with the glittering gold medals, he blocked the door.

“There is someone I wish to see,” he said.

“The man’s done nothing,” Peter Bradford said. “All he did was stand where your men placed him.”

“You anticipate me incorrectly,” said Gurtman with a malign, forced smile. “I wish to see another family member, one who will accompany me gladly. Alethea?”

He held out his black-gloved hand and Alethea, shamed but helpless to resist, moved toward him. Gurtman understood that humiliation could be repaid in many ways.

Will Milford sat hunched forward in the shadows of his dining room, at the head of the table, staring at one of the photographs on the sideboard. There was just enough light cast from the kitchen for him to make out the face of Mary, his long-dead wife.

“Damned if I don’t wish you’d been here today,” he was saying. “Us old farts, we marched in there and gave ’em some hell, and after that Devin, he stood up to ’em too. What more can they do to us? Bum down our house? Kill us?”

He laughed into the darkness. “Hell, that’s about all’s left now. I’ve lived too long, Mary. Things don’t make sense anymore.” He heard a knocking at the door but ignored it. It could have been the Angel of Death, he didn’t care. “They won’t leave a body alone, Mary,” he muttered.

The door opened and closed, and Will heard footsteps. A shadow fell across the table.

“Dad?”

Will looked up uncertainly. Devin stood in the doorway.

“I. . . wondered if Alethea was home yet.”

The old man slowly shook his head.

Devin could not guess his father’s mood. He knew he had intruded, but something in him had to reach out.

“Dad?”

Will looked up at the tone of the voice. “She was raped, you know. They tell you that?”

Devin’s lips moved but he could not speak. -“Right after they took the houses. Alethea’s and Ward’s too. She got mixed up in some fool thing— trying to blow up something. She always was a spunky kid. Mary and her were like they came from the same seed—even when she was little—more like buddies than mother and daughter.”

Devin sank carefully into a chair. He prayed he wouldn’t break whatever spell had led his father to confide in him.

“Caught her after curfew, four of ’em. Foreigners.” He shook his head. “Don’t ask me why she’s still going out there. It make sense to you?”

“I don’t know,” Devin said softly.

Will stood up and Devin did the same. The old man put out his hand. “I respect what you did there today,” he said. Devin shook the hard old hand, too moved to speak. Will turned and walked toward the stairs. “I reckon there’s no point in you bein’ down at the creek like one of them damn squatters.”

He started slowly up the stairs. Devin watched him go, then he took his father’s place at the head of the table.

* * *

It was far past midnight when the Rover stopped at the end of the long driveway and Alethea climbed out. She didn’t shut the door, just walked away. The driver cursed her in Spanish and roared into a U-turn, slamming the open door in the process.

Devin heard the commotion and was waiting in the kitchen when she came in. Seeing him, she leaned back against the wall. She wore a dark blue windbreaker and had a fresh, ugly bruise on her right cheek.

“Waiting for the bad girl to finally get home?” she asked.

At that moment, he felt more compassion for her than he had ever felt for anyone in his life. “AM . . . I’m sorry . . .” he began.

“I don’t want your goddamn sorry,” she said wearily, in a flat voice. “I don’t want the pity... the understanding . . . the forgiveness . . . the—”

“It’s my fault,” he said.

“Hey, that’s good. That’ll do it. That’ll let me sleep better.”

She tried to push past him but he grabbed her and held her tight. When she winced in pain, he released her.

“Fine,” she said, “A little sadism from the bad guys, why not a little from the good guys? It must be a trend.”

“For God’s sake, don’t take this alone.”

Her face tightened in pain. “What’re you gonna do about it? Dammit, what’s anybody gonna—”

Choking back a sob, she ran from the house, across the dark lawn. For a moment Devin was frozen, then he raced after her.

She was running fast but he was faster—for an instant he was the fleet athlete of three decades past. When he caught her, she fought him for all she was
worth, hitting, kicking, and crying. He held her tight until she went limp, crying in jagged, choking gasps. He continued to hold her, tears streaming down his face as the frustration of a lifetime spilled out in their union of grief. Finally, purged of tears, if not sorrows, he led her back into the kitchen. They sat at the battered old table and after a time she began to talk. She showed little emotion, as though it were something that happened to someone else.

“The patrol caught us,” she began. “We scattered. Reinforcements were sent. They found me behind the hardware store. In the trash dumpster, actually. Funny, huh? They took turns with me, four of them.”

“Ali, you don’t have to . . .”

“Yes, I do have to. I complained—as you might guess—and lodged a protest with the SSU. A few days later a car arrived from the barracks. I was taken to the commander. Helmut had the men beaten in front of me. At least he said they were the ones, I wasn’t sure. It made me sick, but I was glad. It felt good to get even. He invited me to dinner in his quarters. He was charming. Told me I was still beautiful, still desirable. He made love to me. I let him. Again and again. Then he tired of me. I felt rejected. Tried to make myself desirable for him. In the end I humiliated myself. Begged him to see me. He did. He turned me over to his second in command. And he watched. I thought, Jesus, where does this end? I told myself when I reach sergeant, I’ll kill myself. But I didn’t go back. Just drank a lot. Then he called. Said he wanted me. Needed me.”

She moved her hand aimlessly across the tabletop; her eyes brimmed with tears. “So now it comes in streaks,” she continued. “We’re like a bad addiction. You don’t really like it, but it’s all there is. Every time I
go back, I swear I won’t do it again. It hasn’t been so bad. He never really hurt me—until today. How can I hate him so much and be so afraid he won’t want me? Pretty degraded, huh? That’s the way people react. If it doesn’t happen to you, you have all sorts of ideas about how strong you’ll be—how you’ll live up to the idea in your head, all those expectations of yourself. But then, you just end up surviving. No heroics—no strength of character. Not even dignity. Just afraid your rapist won’t take you to bed.”

Chapter 9

The phone rang
for a long time before the Major roused himself to pick it up. “Gurtman,” he said, his voice suddenly as clipped and icy as though he’d been wide-awake.

“Helmut, it’s Mikel.”

“What the hell time is it? I was sound asleep.”

“In answer to your question,” said Andrei’s aide, “it’s four
a.m.
But I must say I’m surprised that you’d be able to sleep after the hu
mil
iation you suffered today at the parade.”

Pricked, Gurtman sat up straight in bed, intent now on defending his version of events. “I suffered no humiliation, Mikel. I performed my function. Crowds are mercurial, irrational—”

“And defiant,” Mikel interrupted.

“Occasionally defiant,” Gurtman acknowledged. “And occasionally in need of being reminded that defiance does not come without a cost.”

“It’s late, Mikel. What are you getting at?” “Gurtman, with all your posturing and your strutting, does it ever occur to you that you should rattle your saber a little louder? Either that or keep it

sheathed.”

“It’s not my way to keep it sheathed, Mikel. You know that.”

“Precisely. Which is why some of us feel a more convincing show of force might be appropriate after the embarrassment you were handed today.”

“And just who,” Gurtman asked, his ears now burning from this assault on his vanity, “does this ‘some of us’ include? Does it include Colonel Denisov?” “This is not an official phone call, Gurtman,” said Mikel. “In fact, this conversation has never taken place. Sweet dreams, my gentle major.”

Late one night in the Chicago Loop, the police raided an outlaw cabaret and spoiled Kimberly Ballard’s greatest role.

She had been playing Miss New America for a week; it was a star turn, a sensation. She’d emerge onto the little stage as a southern belle, in an antebellum gown, twirling a parasol, coy and innocent. But then she’d begin to sing a set of mocking lyrics, and her modesty gave way to an immodest striptease. Her chaste dance gradually changing to a bump and grind, she’d slink out of her petticoats to reveal a bikini fashioned from the U.S.-UN-USSR flag.

Kimberly thought the song she sang was silly. One couplet went, “Tell me the truth, tell me a he, what matters to me is my piece of the pie.”

Cole Porter it was not, Kimberly thought, but she made the lyrics work, with her acting, her singing, the magic of her transformation from debutante to slut,
which made it clear that sex and politics were only too closely linked.

She thought the secret of it all was that she didn’t really care about politics. Satirize the Soviets, satirize the Americans—it didn’t matter to her. What mattered was to touch people, to reach them. Outlaw theater was what touched them now in Chicago—not Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams, but short, barbed little skits that reflected the hypocrisy and frustration of the audiences’ lives. The crowded little theater—a converted warehouse—was electric, in large part because what they were doing was illegal. Actors and audience were joined in rebellion and danger, creating a tension that was close to the pitch of battle.

To Kimberly, the theater was home, the only place she could lose herself and become someone else, live another life. For five wonderful nights, two shows a night, she had been Miss New America and it was an answered prayer.

Then the police came.

She had just stripped to her bikini when the whistles began blowing. The music stopped abruptly and she was left standing on the stage, half angry, half frightened, half naked. What was interesting, she thought, was how little panic there was. It was as if everyone had been expecting this all along. It was all so ridiculous. It was just a funny little skit.

A policeman was standing on a chair instructing the audience to march peacefully out the doors. Everyone seemed to be falling into line. Kimberly joined them, head high. A man gave her his coat to wear over her bikini and she marched out past the lines of police toward the waiting black vans. Street people stared at those under arrest.

As she neared a van, a policeman blocked her way. “Not you,” he said. “You can go.”

“What?”

“Go home, get out of here.”

Then she understood. “I demand that you arrest me,” she said defiantly. “I’m as guilty as anyone else. You can’t—”

Mikel approached Kimberly and the policeman. “Get away with this?” he asked, finishing her sentence. “You are under the protection of the area adviser. You are not under arrest. You are free to go. In fact, I would be happy to escort you home.”

Kimberly saw the other actors staring at her from inside the van. “Damn you, arrest me,” she cried. “This is an outrage.”

The door of the van slammed and moved away. She broke away from Mikel and stormed down the dark street. People on the sidewalk began to taunt her. A black man moved sharply through the crowd and took her by the arm. Her breath caught and she tried to pull away, but the stranger’s hand held her fast. His grip was fierce yet somehow gentle, and her fear seemed to flow out of her at the place he touched.

“Give us some room, brothers,” he said to the crowd that surrounded them, and yielding to his tone of quiet authority, the people parted to let them pass. “The little sister’s lost,” he purred. “We gonna help to get her found again.”

Confused but grateful, Kimberly let the black man lead her around a corner and into an alley behind a jazz club. Jazz, like rock and roll, was proscribed by the new regime; the authorities had dubbed it—as the Nazis had—a “Judeo-Negroid perversion.” And now Kimberly understood: this kind man, who introduced him
self as Jeffrey, was regarding her neither as white nor black, rich or poor, but was adopting her as a fellow outlaw.

“You’re safe,” he assured her, waving his hand toward an archaic Rambler sedan. “This car’ll take you home. Trust them.”

The car pulled up to them. Kimberly studied his face intently. “I don’t know who you are, but you look fa
mi
l
i
ar to me somehow.”

Jeffrey opened the car door. “It’s not important. Don’t forget, no matter what your gig, there are Americans around somewhere.”

He did not afford her the time to respond but gently helped her into the car, which took off immediately.