"But maybe the letters are also pretending, Anton," Helga reminded him.
It had happened to her once before in her life, at school. Three hundred girls lining the gymnasium wall, the headmistress in the middle, everybody waiting for the culprit to confess. Charlie had been peering around with the best of them, looking for the guilty one--is it her?I'll bet it's her--she wasn't blushing, she was looking grave and innocent, and she hadn't--it was really true and later positively proved--she hadn't stolen anything at all. Yet suddenly her knees sagged and she fell straight over her feet, feeling perfectly all right from the waist up, but paralysed below. She did it now, not a studied thing at all; she did it before she was herself aware of it, before she had even halfway considered the enormity of the information, and before Helga could put out a hand to catch her. She keeled over and hit the floor with a thud that made the ceiling light hop on its flex. Helga knelt quickly beside her, muttered something in German, and laid a comforting woman's hand on her shoulder--a gentle, unaffected act. Mesterbein stooped to gaze at her but didn't touch her. His interest was directed more towards examining the way she wept.
She had her head sideways and she was resting her cheek on her clenched fist, so that the stream of her tears ran across her face instead of down it. Gradually, as he went on watching, her tears seemed to cheer him up. He gave a mousy nod that might have been approval; he stayed close while Helga manhandled her to the sofa, where she lay again, her face buried on the prickly cushions and her hands locked over her face, weeping as only the bereaved and children can. Turmoil, anger, guilt, remorse, terror: she perceived each one of them like the phases of a controlled, yet deeply felt performance. I knew; I didn't know; I didn't dare allow myself to think. You cheats, you murdering Fascist cheats, you bastards who killed my darling lover in the theatre of the real.
She must have said some of this aloud. Indeed she knew she had. She had monitored and selected her strangled phrases even while the grief tore at her:You Fascist bastards, swine, oh Jesus, Michel.
A pause, then she heard Mesterbein's unaltered voice inviting her to enlarge on this, but she ignored him and continued to roll her head from side to side behind her hands. She choked and retched and her words clogged in her throat and stumbled on her lips. The tears, the agony, the repeated sobs were no problem to her--she was on excellent terms with the sources of her grief and outrage. She did not need to think of her late father, hastened to his grave by the disgrace of her expulsion from school, nor paint herself as a tragic child in the wilderness of adult life, which was what she usually did. She had only to remember the half-tamed Arab boy who had restored her capacity for love, who had given her life the direction it had always craved, and who now was dead for the tears to come running on command.
"She says it was the Zionists," Mesterbein objected to Helga,in English. "Why does she say it was the Zionists when it was an accident? The police have assured us it was an accident. Why does she contradict the police? It is very dangerous to contradict police."
But Helga had either heard it already for herself or didn't care. She had put a coffee pot on the electric stove. Kneeling at Charlie's head, she pensively smoothed her red hair away from her face with her strong hand, waiting for her weeping to stop and her explanations to begin.
The coffee pot suddenly bubbled; Helga rose and tended it. Charlie sat on the sofa cradling her mug in both hands, bowed over it as if inhaling its vapour, while the tears ran steadily down her cheeks. Helga had her arm round Charlie's shoulder and Mesterbein sat opposite, peering out at the two women from the shades of his own dark world.
"It was an explosion accident," he said. "On the autobahn Salzburg-Munich. According to police, his car was full of explosive. Hundreds of pounds. Why? Why should explosive detonate suddenly, on a flat autobahn?"
"Your letters are safe," Helga whispered, drawing back another hank of Charlie's hair and tucking it lovingly behind her ear.
"The car was a Mercedes," Mesterbein said. "It had Munich licences, but the police say they are false. Also the papers. Forgeries. Why should my client drive a car with false papers and full of explosive? He was a student. He was not a bomber. It is a conspiracy, actually. I think so."
"Do you know this car, Charlie?" Helga murmured into her ear, and pressed her more fondly against her in an effort to coax an answer out of her. But all Charlie could see in her mind was her lover blown to pieces by two hundred pounds of Russian plastic explosive hidden in the valance, cross members, roof-lining, and seats: an inferno, tearing apart the body she adored. And all she could hear was the voice of her other nameless mentor saying:Distrust them, lie to them, deny everything; reject, refuse.
"She spoke something," said Mesterbein accusingly.
"She said ‘Michel,' " said Helga,wiping away a fresh onslaught of tears with a sensible handkerchief from her handbag.
"A girl died also," Mesterbein said. "She was with him in the car, they say."
"A Dutch," Helga said softly, so close that Charlie could feel her breath upon her ear. "A real beauty. Blonde."
"They died together, apparently," Mesterbein continued, raising his voice.
"You were not the only one, Charlie," Helga explained confidingly. "You did not have the exclusive use of our little Palestinian, you know."
For the first time since they had broken the news to her, Charlie spoke a coherent sentence.
"I never asked for it," she whispered.
"The police say the Dutch was a terrorist," Mesterbein complained.
"They say also that Michel was a terrorist," said Helga.
"They say that the Dutch planted bombs for Michel several times already," said Mesterbein. "They say Michel and the girl were planning another action, and that in the car they found a city map of Munich with the Israeli Trade Centre marked in Michel's handwriting. On the River Isar," he added. "An upper floor--really a difficult target, actually. Did he speak to you of this action, Miss Charlie?"
Shivering, Charlie sipped a little coffee, which seemed to please Helga quite as well as a reply. "There! She is waking up at last. You want more coffee, Charlie? Shall I heat some? Food? We have cheese up here, eggs, sausage, we have everything."
Shaking her head, Charlie let Helga lead her to the lavatory, where she stayed a long time, throwing water in her face, retching, and between whiles wishing to Heaven that she knew enough German to follow the uneasy, staccato conversation that was reaching her through the paper-thin doors.
She returned to find Mesterbein standing at the front door dressed in his gabardine trench coat.
"Miss Charlie, I remind you that Fr?ulein Helga is entitled to the full protection of the law," he said, and stalked out of the front door.
Alone at last. Girls together.