The Death of a Much Travelled Woman (15 page)

“Are you expecting violence?”

“Oh, there’s always something with the police,” Karin said, shrugging. “I’ve been in demonstrations over the years where I narrowly escaped being beaten badly. But of course I plan to keep the baby well away from any of that. It’s important that we have babies and children at the demonstration. We want to show how destroying the wetlands and bird habitats will affect their future.”

“How did the bird-watching go?” Elke asked when I returned. Marianne was mercifully at the university, no doubt lecturing her adoring students about Gloria de los Angeles. Elke poured me a glass of wine, and I sank into one of the huge leather sofas.

“It was wonderful to be outside, out of the house,” I said. “Elke, are you expecting violence at the demonstration? A real confrontation with the police?”

“We’re not going to instigate it. It may be provoked.” She sipped her wine thoughtfully, the sober Bolshevik.

“By the police?”

“Possibly. But to tell you the truth, I’m also a bit worried by a few people in the core group, not the older ones, but Astrid, for instance, that young woman with the tattoos who says so little. She is an environmental scientist and understands a tremendous amount about biological diversity, but other than that I don’t know much about her. She is a bit vague about her past.”

“I like the DNA spiral up her arm,” I admitted, and Elke smiled.

“Well, Astrid did tell me she thought you looked intriguing.”

“What about those two men in the leather jackets, Tall and Round?”

“I know them pretty well,” Elke said. “The tall one, Peter, I worked with long ago on anti-nuclear issues. He was quite combative then. Sometimes I’ve wondered if Peter is trying to push our group into a stronger and more aggressive stance. At other times, I think he is very clear-sighted about our difficulties, and that’s good.”

“And the round one?”

“Until now Kurt hasn’t been very politically active. I think he just follows Peter’s lead. But he is quite sincere in his interest in birds. He is a very enthusiastic volunteer.”

“What about Karin?”

“Karin used to be a heavy-duty politico, but all that’s changed now that she’s with Helmut. He was never involved in anything during the seventies and eighties, though how that’s possible, I don’t know.”

“Karin said he’s nervous about the demonstration.”

“I can’t imagine him strangling a seagull,” Elke said. “He’s not that type.”

“Could any of them have written those letters?” I persisted. “And why?”

Elke shook her head. “Anyone
could
have done it. Why, I don’t know. Maybe someone wants to create a feeling of threat. So that our group will feel more isolated, more fearful, and be easier to manipulate. It’s happened before.”

I was going to press her further, but the door swung open and Marianne, arms full of papers, books, and groceries, burst in. “Tonight I’m going to make Chilean food,” she said radiantly and gave both of us kisses. You really couldn’t dislike her. Even though you knew she was going to keep you up half the night.

A week passed, two. I began to suspect that Marianne did not sleep, for I rarely saw her working. She was forever in my room or catching me in long conversations when I was on my way to the bathroom. I wrote to Lucinda that perhaps one should make a new vow: never to stay with strangers just to use their washer-dryers. I wrote to Nicola, hinting that I might be willing to return to London sooner than expected. I wrote to my editor Simon saying the translation was going a little more slowly than I’d planned. On the other hand, my German was improving.

The night watches at
The Juliette
seemed to be having their effect. There had been no more incidents and only one letter, which the birdwatchers had promptly turned over to the press. The media had become quite involved, and everyone was expecting a great deal of publicity for the demonstration on Saturday. All Friday was taken up with preparations, sign-making, phone calls, photocopying of fact sheets.

Friday evening, when Karin called to say that Sappho was under the weather and she wouldn’t be able to spend the night on
The Juliette
, I saw my chance. Elke had asked Astrid to substitute. I’d been wanting to see where that DNA spiral ended up.

“Why don’t I come too?” I offered.

“What a good idea,” said Marianne instantly. “Astrid, Elke, Cassandra, me, we’ll all spend the night there. It will be fun, like a party.”

We arrived about eleven, Elke in black leather, Marianne in a big quilted jacket and a dozen scarves, and me in some scavenged warm clothes. Astrid was planning to meet us there. There was a thick fog over the river and a smell of oil and fish. The docks were lit, with weak, eerie yellow lamps, but there were few people about. Water slapped against the docks, and intermittently came the hollow blast of a fog horn, lonely and yet warning of danger.

The Juliette
looked normal, untampered with, as we unrolled our sleeping bags and lit the lantern. Elke poured us some tea from a Thermos and Marianne chattered.

“Last night I translated the story about the married woman and the servant boy, Cassandra. Isn’t it a good one?”

“Is that the one where they couple frenetically or where they frenetically couple?” I said.

Elke laughed and then turned it into a cough.

“I admit,” said Marianne without blushing, “that there is a certain amount of heterosexual romance in the stories, but…”

“Romance!” said Elke. “It’s nothing but soft pornography in the tropics!”

“It’s not! It’s beautiful writing. Help me, Cassandra. Help me defend Gloria from my unromantic girlfriend.”

“It’s not beautiful,” I mumbled, thinking, Now I have to leave Hamburg by the morning train. I’m glad my clothes are all washed.

“What?” said Marianne. “
Wie bitte?
I didn’t hear you.”

“What’s that noise?” said Elke, sitting bolt upright.

“Where?”

“On the dock, coming down the dock. Is it footsteps?”

“It’s just Astrid,” said Marianne. “Astrid,” she called out, but there was no answer.

The footsteps stopped, not far away. They didn’t move away again.

“You’d better call some of the others on the cellular phone,” I said.

“Yes.” But Elke searched and could not find it. “We must have forgotten it.” She took the flashlight and shone it out on the dock. There was not a sound.

“Probably just rats,” said Marianne determinedly. “Now, Cassandra, tell me what you were saying. I didn’t hear it…about Gloria.”

“I’m going out to investigate,” Elke said.

“No, Elke,” said Marianne, but Elke slipped up the short ladder and on to the dock. We saw her light flicker down the dock and then disappear.

“Elke!” Marianne shouted. There was only the sound of the fog horn.

“I’ll go see what’s happening.” I said.

“Don’t leave me alone, Cassandra!”

“I’ll be back in a second.”

I crawled out of the boat on my hands and knees, keeping my flashlight extinguished. I made my way over to the harbor wall and inched along it in the direction that Elke had disappeared. The cement was cold and clammy. The fog was by this time so thick I could see almost nothing. Not even the boat I’d just left.

My nerves were wound to the highest degree, so that when I heard the thump of someone leaping onto the boat, and Marianne’s shriek, cut off, I froze and couldn’t move. Who was more important for me to save, Elke or Marianne? Let me rephrase that: Who, given the fact that my feet seemed to be stuck to the wet wooden planks of the dock, could I save?

The question soon became more than academic. There was nothing more to be heard from Marianne, except some banging on wood. Had he—she?—shoved her in the tiny water closet? After a few minutes, the boat’s engine started. Was he planning to steal the boat with Marianne on it? Was he planning to dump her into the river somewhere?

Adrenaline finally unlocked my knees. I fell forward and started creeping back on my belly over the dock to
The Juliette
. Whoever was driving the boat didn’t seem terribly practiced; he maneuvered clumsily away from the berth, knocking against the pilings. As the boat began to pull away, I jumped as quietly as I could into the stern, which was open and had a table and built in seats. I barked my knee sharply on one of the seats.

Limping and crawling, I made my way to the door that connected the back of the boat with the middle sleeping cabin. It was locked. I would have to squeeze around the side of the boat to the pilot’s cabin in front. But the boat was hardly stable enough at the moment for any tricky maneuvers. I hung on as the unknown pilot made an ungainly turn away from the other berths, putting us in the direction of the river. I thought of those huge container ships out there somewhere in the fog. This idiot hadn’t even put on any lights.

Very faintly, from the dock that had completely disappeared in the thick white mist, I heard feet running and a thin cry, “Marianne! Cassandra!” Well, at least Elke was safe and could get help. Preferably before we sank or were involved in a major collision.

For we were heading out of the inner harbor into the huge, invisible river.

Now it was time to move. I inched as slowly and carefully as I could along the right side of the boat, trying not to look down into what seemed awfully black, cold-looking water. Forward, forward, I thought. Just think forward. Around us there seemed to be nothing but a damp brackish cloud. Finally I squeezed to the right-hand door. How could I possibly get in without being seen? I peeked through the window. No sign of Marianne. At the wheel on the other side of the cabin was a figure all in black, with a ski mask, not exactly a sight to inspire confidence. I thought it was a he, but couldn’t tell much more in the shadows. Was it Tall or Round? Was it Astrid?

A fog horn went off somewhere close-by, and I almost lost my balance and toppled into the water. I grabbed the door handle, and it turned and gave, propelling me into the little cabin and straight at the figure at the wheel.

“You will pay for this,” I unexpectedly said in German (
Wie Bitte?
’s lesson on future tense maybe?), and grabbed the wheel and gave it a sharp turn. The boat made an abrupt change of direction and the momentum knocked the figure to the other side of the boat, out through the left door, which had swung open in the turn.

I waited for the splash and looked around frantically for the life preserver. Some lighted shape, a buoy I hoped, appeared and disappeared, but not before we ran into it. I struggled to recall my very brief lesson in river piloting from Marianne.

Yes, Marianne. I had to get her out of the toilet, but I was afraid to let go of the wheel. In fact my hands were now frozen fast to the wheel. And meanwhile, where was that life preserver? Where was, in fact, that splash of a human body hitting water?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shape clinging to the side of the boat. He—for now he was not just provisionally but actually masculine—had managed not to fall, but to hold on to the left side just as I had on to the right. I couldn’t see him well, still, and was afraid to turn my eyes from the window in front of me, though I could see very little in that direction either. He was shouting to me in German.

“Speak English!” I shouted back.

But if he could, his brain was as jammed as mine was, and it wouldn’t come out.

I forced myself to remember some basic conversation. “What’s your name, please?”

“Helmut.”

“Helmut. The father of Sappho?”

“Yes, yes.”

“What are you doing?”

But I couldn’t understand his response. “
Wie bitte?
” I shouted back, seeing something boat-shaped on the right, and jerking the wheel so that we missed it by inches.

“I only wanted. Only wanted to scare Karin. Not to go to the demonstration. I hate violence.”

“What about that seagull?”

“A mistake. I’m sorry.”

Should I believe him? My mind said yes, but my instincts were still all wrapped up with that damned television program, once forgotten in my memory bank, now resurrected and imposing itself on reality.

There was the harbor at night. There was a murderer on the loose. There was a boat and a man overboard. There was a chase. There were a lot of people crying, “
Halt! Polizei!
” There was a big crash, and just before the crash had been the Imperative. Watch out for that boat up ahead. Turn! Turn!

What the hell was he saying now? I could barely hear for the banging on the w.c. door behind me. “Hold on, Marianne!” I called, and then to Helmut, “
Wie bitte?
”

“Turn!” he was suddenly screaming in English.

“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” I wrenched the wheel around, but not quite quick enough. And that’s all I remember for a while.

I had a mild concussion, but the doctor said I didn’t have to stay in the hospital long. Bed rest for a week or two and then I should be able to return to normal. Marianne was of course pleased to nurse me. She came into my lovely guestroom every half hour to see how I was doing and to chat. Helmut had been taken into custody but had been released. After his wild ride on the side of the boat, he was only too happy to confess to the officers on the police boat that had caught up with us and that, in fact, I seemed to have run straight into. He’d been worried about Karin as he said. He’d told her he wouldn’t be home in time for her to go stay on
The Juliette
with Elke. He thought only Elke would be on the boat and that if he lured her off, he could take
The Juliette
up the river and then sink her somewhere. Not very nice, but it could have been worse. For him, of course, it was worse, because they wanted to charge him with kidnapping and reckless endangerment of life. But the birdwatchers refused to press charges. Their demonstration had gone off splendidly, with only a little healthy bashing here and there, and there was hope for the future that the Elbe wetlands might be saved.

“Of course Karin is not speaking to him at the moment,” Marianne reported. “But in the end she’ll probably forgive him.” She looked wistfully at me from the side of the bed. “If only I hadn’t been locked in the toilet. I could have helped you, Cassandra. I could have steered us to safety.”