Tamar (38 page)

Dart still couldn’t bring himself to approach the table. Albert Veening looked at him curiously.

Dart said, “I don’t understand. What’s he doing here? How did he get here?”

Agatha said, “We don’t know. Hendrika heard a noise and came down. She found him slumped outside the back door. He’d smashed a pane of glass with his elbow; I assume he hadn’t the strength to get to his feet and ring the bell. Now, we’ll need morphine, Ernst. And dressings and disinfectant.”

“Yes, I . . . Of course. I’ve brought my things.”

Dart turned and closed the door. When he looked back at the table, Koop’s eyes were open, staring at him. The bloodless lips pulled back from the teeth and let out a groan of pain, or perhaps recognition. Koop’s right arm moved, his hand groping at the pocket of the filthy trench coat that hung down towards the floor.

“He’s awake,” Albert said.

“You must lie still,” Agatha murmured. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”

Koop lifted his face from the table and mumbled something, his speech too slurred to be understood. His hand came out of the pocket with the Luger in it. His arm rose, shaking, to aim the gun at Dart, who could neither move nor speak.

“Christ Almighty!” Albert cried out.

Sister Agatha seized Koop’s arm and slammed it down onto her raised thigh like someone breaking firewood. His body lifted slightly from the table as he screamed. The pistol clattered across the floor and spun, twice, at the edge of the lamplight. Koop’s face made an awful damp-sounding slap as it fell back onto the table. Then he was motionless.

The others stood frozen too: Veening, open-mouthed, the blood-smeared scissors in his hand, staring at Dart; Sister Agatha with her hand pressed to her heart; Dart hypnotized by the gun. It was Sister Agatha who moved first. She pressed her fingers to the side of Koop’s neck, then lifted one of his eyelids.

“God forgive me,” she said. “I thought I’d killed him.”

Albert said, “He’ll be half out of his mind, of course. Exhaustion, loss of blood, pain. He must have thought you were the Gestapo or something.”

“I suppose so,” Dart said, not believing it.

He picked up the Luger and put it on the draining board next to the sink. Then he crossed to the table. The smell that arose from Koop was very bad. The slaughterhouse stink of congealed blood was mixed with something sharp and sour, like the scent a fierce animal might leave in the night to mark its territory.

When they had cut Koop’s clothes away and washed his wounds, Albert said, “He may not look it, but this is a very lucky man. The bullet that sliced across his back tore some muscle and chipped the shoulder blade, but that’s all. It looks worse than it is. The one in his thigh must have missed the femoral artery by less than a centimetre. If the person who shot him had aimed a little more to the left, Mr. de Vries would be dead twice over.”

There were so many dark calculations happening in Dart’s head that he could not think of anything sensible to say. He managed to nod, as if in agreement.

Koop’s shallow breathing changed. He sighed like someone dreaming something sad.

“His eyelids are moving,” Agatha said. “He’s regaining consciousness.”

Albert Veening said, “The bullet’s still in his leg, and it’s deep. It’ll have to come out. Do you have any surgical experience, Ernst?”

“No.”

“I thought not.” Veening sounded unhappy but not surprised. “I haven’t done any surgery for more than twenty years. I still have my old instruments somewhere, though.” He didn’t move.

Sister Agatha looked at him for perhaps three seconds before she said, “So, Albert? Go and get the damn things.”

When Veening returned, Koop was shaking and mumbling even though his eyes were not open.

Agatha said, “He’s lost a lot of blood and is dehydrated. I don’t know if he can take enough morphine. It might well kill him.”

Albert opened his leather case and took out a pair of long forceps. “I’m going to have to dig around with these,” he said, “and I need new glasses. Ernst, give the poor bastard a shot, and make it a big one.”

“Are you asleep, or are you pretending?”

“I’m asleep.”

Marijke laughed softly, then slid her hand up his chest and nipped the lobe of his ear. “It’s a beautiful morning,” she said.

“I don’t care. I’m still asleep anyway.”

“You’d make a lousy farmer. You like your bed too much.”

“Mmm . . . no. I like
our
bed too much.”

Tamar stirred at last. He stretched, arching his back, lifting her. “Is that what I’ll be? A farmer?”

She found that she could not answer. They had arrived too quickly at the checkpoint between now and the future. She didn’t dare think about what might be on the other side. She didn’t yet know if they would be let through.

He placed his hand on her belly. “Anyway,” he said, “I think that what you’re growing in here will soon put a stop to us sleeping late, don’t you?”

The first time Koop woke up, there was the shape of a man against a square of painful light.

The second time Koop woke up, he thought he remembered who the man was, but it was like dreaming the answer to a question. Then the man turned into a black-and-white woman, a nun, looming over him.

The third time, he knew who the man was and that he had done something to his arm. He’d made the pain float away on a glossy white cloud. But now, when he struggled to sit up, the pain came back, like knives everywhere. His friends had died, and he’d been tortured on a metal table, that was it. There was a gun somewhere, but when he tried to feel for it his hand wouldn’t move.

The man stood up and came towards him, speaking.

“Koop? Koop, why did you want to kill me?”

He looked different, Koop thought, when he could think. When the bugger had dropped out of the sky, he’d been like other agents he’d collected: well fed, excited, self-important, scared shitless. Something had happened to his face.

It took Koop some time to unglue his tongue. When he managed to speak, it was like a rook croaking. “What day is it?”

“Friday. It’s, er . . . four o’clock. In the afternoon. You got here the night before last.”

“I can’t stay here.”

Dart said, “Why did you try to shoot me?”

“You know damn well.”

“I don’t, as a matter of fact. Do you want to sit up?”

Koop rasped, “Don’t you bloody touch me.”

Dart sat down on the hard little chair next to the door. “The others? Eddy and the others. Are they dead?”

Koop’s eyes filled with tears. It made him furious, and he turned his face to the wall. When he had control of himself he looked the other man in the eye. “It was you, you and that boyfriend of yours. I know it, you know it. If you’ve got any sense, you’ll finish me now. Because if I live, I’ll kill you both for what you’ve done, so help me God.”

He tried to muster up enough saliva to spit at Dart, but all he could manage was a thick dribble that stuck to his lips. “Traitor,” he gasped. “Filth. Damn you to hell.” His rage seemed to exhaust him. His eyes closed.

Dart sat for almost half an hour, gazing at the unconscious man, thinking, working things out. Then he left, turning the key in the lock. In his own room, he opened the little cupboard below the washstand and took out the towel in which he’d wrapped Koop’s Luger. He put the weapon in his coat pocket and went downstairs.

In the dayroom, Sister Juliana was playing her five-stringed guitar to half a dozen patients. One of them was Sidona. As he walked to the door, he heard Juliana say, soothingly, “No, no, dear. That’s not Trago. That’s Dr. Lubbers. You know Dr. Lubbers. He’s nice.”

He went out through the conservatory. In the west, beyond the skeletal trees, the sky was lemon yellow, but darkness was gathering in the air. He turned right towards the kitchen garden and stopped when he saw Albert Veening and Sister Agatha. They were both staring vacantly at the ground. She had been digging but was now resting on the handle of her spade. The lower part of Albert’s face was buried in a woollen scarf, and he leaned forward inside his oversized coat, his shoulders hunched up. He looked like an ancient bird waiting for something edible to emerge from the soil. Dart walked down to them. He lit a cigarette and gave it to Albert, who took two drags before handing it back.

“How is our patient?” Albert asked.

Dart shrugged. “Still feverish. He won’t let me touch him. His wounds will need fresh dressings. I think you or Agatha will have to do it.”

Albert reached out, and Dart gave him the remains of the cigarette.

Albert said, “Sister Agatha thinks it is unwise to keep him here. We do not have the resources. The food.”

Agatha gave him a look full of impatience. “It’s not that,” she said. “He is a danger to us.”

“Just as I am,” Dart said.

“Not in the same way,” the nun said. “Mr. de Vries is full of hate. Poison. I can smell it on the air. And I’m not the only one. Several of the patients have been noticeably more disturbed since he arrived, even though none of them have seen him. Sidona is very distressed, for example. She cannot understand why none of her good angels have visited for the last couple of days.”

“Oh, come on, Agatha,” Albert protested.

“Don’t ‘oh come on’ me, Albert. Sidona may be crazy, but she has a good nose for evil.”

Albert withdrew a little farther into his scarf and coat, like a careful tortoise. For several moments there was no sound in the garden other than the harsh calls of the rooks. Against the fading light their nests looked like blood clots in a web of black veins.

Dart said, “How long before he’s mobile, do you think?”

Albert sighed. “Hard to tell. The wounds aren’t the main problem, as long as they don’t get infected. It’ll be very painful for him to walk, but he could do it. He’ll be extremely weak, for obvious reasons. He needs a quiet place to rest. And good food.”

“Which we can’t provide,” Agatha said.

Dart watched the rooks. The elms were filling with their restless black shapes. “Can you think of anywhere else he could go?”

“We all know what he has done,” Albert said quietly. “As a result, the poor man has become a plague virus. He delivers a death warrant to anyone who shelters him.”

“Exactly,” Sister Agatha said. “If the Nazis find him here, you know what will happen to us. And if they take us, what do you think will happen to our patients? They’ll be sent to a place worse than hell and die there.”

After a pause, Dart said, “What about the Maartens place?”

When the garden was half filled with shadows, Tamar straightened and let the handle of the spade rest against his thigh. Close to his feet the four surviving hens dragged and stabbed at the upturned soil. The cockerel patrolled some distance away, warily twitching his head and groaning. Tamar stood watching the edge of the sky deepen from yellow to amber. He knew Marijke was there before she spoke.

“You’ve done well.”

He turned. She had her grandmother’s ancient black coat draped over her shoulders and her arms tightly folded. Tamar thought she looked fragile — something he’d never thought before.

“Yeah, not bad. What should we plant here? Potatoes?”

“We’ve been eating the seed potatoes for the past two weeks,” Marijke said. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

“Ah. What else then?”

“There’s carrot seed. I don’t remember what else. I haven’t checked.”

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll sow carrots.”

She leaned against him, her head sideways on his chest. “Are you sure you want to do all this?”

“Yes, of course. We have to, don’t we?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I believe we . . . Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.”

He wanted to touch her face, but there was soil on his hands. He took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. “It’s worth it,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”

So she smiled and then looked away from him. “If we’re going to sow, we’ll have to fix these fences to keep the chickens out. We ought to clip their wings too.”

“We’ll do it,” he said. “We’ll do everything. You’ll have to show me how, though. I know damn all about this business. Now, come on. Let’s get inside. You look cold.”

She put her left hand on his chest to stop him and looked into his eyes. “You have to promise me something,” she said. “Promise me that if you have to go you’ll take me with you. Don’t leave me here alone. I can’t do that anymore.”

“I won’t go. I’m staying here. We’re staying here together.”

“Promise me anyway.”

Tamar packed the transceiver away and descended the barn stairs shortly after eleven o’clock. He was almost at the door when he remembered what she’d said, what he’d promised her. He turned back and went into the loose box and hung the lantern on a harness peg. When he had lifted away the boards from the back wall, he reached down into the gap and pulled out the canvas bag. He took Nurse Gertrud Berendts’s fake ID over to the lamp and studied Marijke’s sombre little photograph, then put the booklet into his jacket pocket with his own. Just in case.

When he crossed the yard, the night sky was a vast tracery of stars.

Dart put the tray on the low table next to the lamp, where Koop could see what it held: a small bowl of broth, a slice of pulpy bread, and a glass of water. Dart took a cigarette from his packet and put that on the tray too. Then he sat down on the chair. Koop watched with rat-bright eyes.

“I didn’t betray you,” Dart said. He managed to keep the tone of his voice dead flat.

Koop turned his face away and said nothing.

“Think about it,” Dart said. “If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you before now. A pillow over your face while you were unconscious. An overdose of morphine. I admit I considered it. Everyone would be a lot safer if you were out of the way. Especially the people here. And I like them a lot more than I like you.”

Koop’s gaze rested on the food. Eventually he said, “So why didn’t you?”

“Because you called me a traitor and I want to know why.”

“Give me some of that water.”

Dart stood and carried the glass to Koop, who took it in his right hand, which shook. Koop drank, urgently.