Authors: Jonathan Rabb

Tags: #Literary, #General, #Historical, #Fiction

The Second Son: A Novel (45 page)

BOOK: The Second Son: A Novel

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The note was folded, with Lotte’s name written across it, when Hoffner heard her behind him. He turned and saw her in the doorway. How long she had been there was impossible to say.

She said, “You can tell me what it says now, if you want.”

Hoffner looked up at her. He shook his head. “Better to read it.”

“We’re going. It’s been decided. My father says you’ll come with us.”

Hoffner waited. “I’ve tried the going, Lotte. It doesn’t much work for me.”

“Mendy won’t understand.”

“No, he probably won’t. You’ll help him with that.”

“Did he die in peace?” She spoke with no trace of empathy.

“Yes,” he said. “I think he did.”

There was no reason to tell her how much Georg had loved her, or how the boy had been his life. She knew. She would find that comfort. What she could never know was the unimagined horror and emptiness of his death.

Hoffner stood and moved across to her. He held out the note.

“It’s nothing too important,” he said. “The names of people who can help you, where there’s a bit of money. Something for Mendy. You’ll read it after I go.”

She stared up at him. She had always been able to see so quickly through to the heart of things. “And where is it you’re going, Nikolai?”

He tried a quiet shrug. “Just out. Find a drink.”

He saw the first break in her otherwise flawless stare. “Is that it?”

Hoffner had spent a lifetime showing nothing. It came so easily. “There are plenty of places to find a drink tonight. I’ll make my way.”

He needed her to believe the lie. He needed her to give him this, here at the end. But her own sadness was too much to leave any kindness for others.

She said, “I would never forgive you for that, Nikolai. Neither would Mendy.”

Hoffner looked into her face. So much pain, he thought, and so much more to wait for. He tried a weak smile. If nothing else, he had to save them from that.

“Mendy needs to be safe. You need to be safe. Safe no longer exists here.”

“And you couldn’t find that safety with us?”

Again Hoffner waited. “He won’t always be a boy.”

She stared up at him, and he brought his arms around her. Her eyes were wet when she let go. She wiped them with her handkerchief.

Hoffner took a last glance at Mendy and headed for the stairs.

* * *

The deep of night came more quickly than Hoffner expected. This far west the trees were more sparse, the sky a churning of clouds and stars.

The sound of water against stone beat out a quiet rhythm. He stared down into the canal and saw the strength of the current. He remembered how quickly it had taken little Rosa Luxemburg, a minute or two, a sudden swirling, and then gone.

Hoffner had imagined he would feel more at this moment, a chance to regret or despair. Instead, he stared with a kind of childlike wonder at the coal black of the water, and thought, It isn’t much of anything to stop a life. It isn’t much to know what has come before, and to know how it must weigh on what is to come. And it is only then, in that absolute silence, that a man can say, This is enough. No matter what longing or hope live on and elsewhere, that silence cannot tell him to step back. It can only weigh on him all the more deeply. Hoffner stepped closer to the embankment. He looked out into the darkness. He imagined the water would be cold.

There was a popping overhead, and he looked up to see the sky filling with lights. They were sending the games off with fireworks. How easy to imagine Berlin covered in light. How easy to watch the lights fade and convince himself to embrace the chill of his own cowardice and fade away with them.

But not tonight, he thought. Not when he knew which life it was that had come to an end. There was nothing here. Nothing. And there was no reason to mourn it.

Hoffner stepped back. Out by the trees, a second set of lights flashed. Car lights. Hoffner stared out across the water for a moment longer and moved toward the car.

Inside, Radek was smoking.

“We need to go,” Radek said. “He’ll fly with or without you.”

Hoffner got in, and Radek put the car in gear. He said, “You saw what you needed?”

“You have the papers?”

There was a tinge of frustration in the answer. “Yes, Nikolai. I have the papers. They’re still in my pocket.”

Radek would get them out—Mendy, Lotte, her parents. Radek would do this for him.

“You know I could set you up as well,” Radek said. “Paris. London. You’re sure about this?”

The car emerged from the trees, and Hoffner stared out as the city flickered and pitched above him. He closed his eyes and let Berlin slip forever from his grasp.

* * *

A lifetime later a dying sun lingered across the water as the old Hispano-Suiza ground its way along the coast road. Mueller slept, Hoffner drove, and the first glimpse of Barcelona’s Montjuïc appeared on the horizon.

Hoffner felt the heat. He felt the damp from the sea. And he felt a rush of life that, if not entirely his, lay just beyond that horizon in the waiting arms of the only faith he had ever known.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The earliest idea for this book came during a trip to the Semana Negra festival in Gijón, Spain, and my first encounter with Paco Ignacio Taibo II. PIT II is a force of nature, unique and untamable in his commitment to writing. He was instrumental in sending me in the right direction when it came to preliminary research, and even more important as the story began to come together. If he shares a passing resemblance to any of the characters in this book, it is out of deepest admiration, nothing more.

Chris Ealham at Saint Louis University in Madrid was perhaps the most forgiving of my sources—fielding queries at all hours of the night—and by far the most essential. His understanding of Spain at the outbreak of the civil war is nothing less than encyclopedic. He is a remarkable scholar, although why he should have at his fingertips the best anarchist truck route out of Barcelona on August 3, 1936, remains a thing both of awe and mystery to me.

James Amelang at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid was the first to bring the story of the protest games to my attention. He was also an absolute mine of information when it came to primary texts on the early days of the war. For all his digging I am eternally grateful.

Sarah Crichton, an editor of unerring intelligence and artistry, knows Nikolai Hoffner perhaps as well as I do. She posed just the right questions to make sure there was always a clarity and a humanity to him as he made his way across Spain. I wouldn’t have made the trip without her.

All such trips begin and end with Mort Janklow, my agent. Without him there would not have been a second, let alone third, book in this trilogy. I thank him for his wise and honest counsel, his passion, and his unflappable faith in this book.

As ever, Peter Spiegler was there at every stage of the manuscript, with sympathetic encouragement and a seasoned eye, and I thank him for his abiding friendship.

My parents remain great readers, but I owe a special gratitude to my father, a brilliant writer who long ago taught me the craft of writing, perhaps even despite myself.

And finally, my wife, Andra, and my children, Benjamin and Emilia—there is nothing without them and everything with them.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Rabb is the author of
Shadow and Light
,
Rosa
,
The Book of Q
, and
The Overseer
. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife, Andra, and their two children, Emilia and Benjamin. He is a professor of writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

ALSO BY JONATHAN RABB

Shadow and Light

Rosa

The Book of Q

The Overseer

SARAH CRICHTON BOOKS

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc.

First edition, 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rabb, Jonathan.