I stare at him. “It took my mother. I was there.”
“But can you make violence yourself?” As he asks this, he studies me. It’s not kindly old shopkeeper Bela doing the studying; it’s Bela the spy, Bela the soldier, Bela the survivor. “After my family was killed, I got hold of a gun,” he says. “An old, dirty Russian revolver. A few days later, I came across a German officer in an alleyway in the village. This officer, fine leather coat, handsome like a movie star.”
It’s exactly the way he’d described the officer who’d killed his parents and sisters. I stop pacing and listen.
“This German, he was with the town prostitute, shtupping her against a wall. It was dark enough that I could get up close.” He raises a liver-spotted arm, pointing his index finger to the side of his skull, just behind the ear. “I shot him. Right here. No more than ten centimeters away. They both, the officer and the prostitute, fell. The bullet had passed through him and killed her, too.”
“It was—it was the same officer who’d killed your family?”
Bela waves a hand over his face and grimaces. “Oh, who knows. It took off half his head. But it’s the prostitute I think about. Still. To this day.”
He’s silent after that, but continues to study me, evaluating my reaction. On its surface, it’s a horror story—a story meant to shock and frighten. But peel it back and the meaning is different: such are the cruel things we must sometimes do.
“And it will come to that, you know. Should you go after your father,” Bela says. He leans forward, places a hand on my shoulder. “That’s what war means. Bullets and mistakes you have to live with forever.”
I nod. “Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” Bela says.
“For telling me. For the advice.”
“Advice?” Bela gives a little laugh, rests his head against the back of the chair. “And here I thought I was telling you why Texas is better.”
It’s a terrifying world, the one he described. But if no one else is going to act for me, then I have a choice: remain a child and do nothing, or become an adult and do it myself. That, it seems to me, is the difference between the child and the adult, the difference between the girl hunted by wolves and the woman who hunts them.
We hold each other’s eyes for a time. “Of course, times are different now,” he says. “You have an alternative. But theoretically…”
“Yes?” I say, my voice a whisper.
“Theoretically, going it alone would be suicide. Such would be the act of a lunatic. You’d need help.”
I wait expectantly, then prompt him. “Yes?”
“If one had a friend—say someone with connections to that world. The world of intelligence services. Someone to make a few phone calls. Arrange for such help…” He sighs and bats the thought away with his hand as if it were a fly. “Even so, better to go to Texas and forget all this business here. Bela’s just an old, crazy fool, anyway.”
I look down, press my hands against my legs. “I’m going, Bela. I have to. I have to try.”
Bela inhales deeply, closes his eyes. “That is your decision?”
“Yes.” I tuck the papers and copy of 1984 into my jacket. “These phone calls. You’ll make them?”
“I will,” he says. “Bela is owed many favors. And in Israel, such debts are taken seriously.” He rises from his seat and seems suddenly younger than his years, suddenly taller than his old man’s frame. He gestures for me to stand, and I do.
We embrace. It’s not sentimental, not loving. It’s the embrace of comrades.
*
For twenty terrifying minutes, I wait in the computer lab at the public library for a greasy keyboard and an Internet connection. I spend the twenty minutes justifying this, the most insane idea I’ve ever had. The math never comes out right. Courage I don’t have plus an old man’s promise of help doesn’t equal success. It equals zero.
But here I am now at the computer anyway, logging onto the Air France site with fingers that seem like they’re controlled by someone else. Then there it is: JFK-CDG 8:37 p.m. With all my traveling over so many years, I have more than 120,000 miles I can burn through, way more than I need for one-way coach to Paris. The cursor over the PURCHASE NOW button vibrates in perfect rhythm to the shaking of my hand. I give the mouse one final click. Three seconds later, from somewhere in my jacket, my phone gives a soft chime as the boarding pass arrives.
I scurry out of the library and time it just right, arriving at my apartment just when I would normally be coming home from school. Georgina gives me a hug, asks how my last day at Danton went. Fine, I tell her. Sad to be leaving.
“You’re going to make new friends in no time,” Georgina says, holding me tight.
I twist out of her hug and sit at the tiny kitchen table, then draw a circle on the scuffed wood with my finger. “About that,” I say. “Some of my friends, they want to have a going-away party tonight. A sleepover.”
She sits down across from me. “But you were gone last night.”
“It’s my last chance to see them,” I say.
She blinks, sets her jaw. “And where is it?”
“Margaret Saperstein’s townhouse.”
“Will Margaret’s parents be there?”
I roll my eyes. “Unfortunately. Her mom is, like, super strict.”
Georgina goes through a few more questions, but I assure her there will be no drinking, no drugs, no boys. I can tell she still doesn’t like it, but in the end, she gives in. How can she keep me from my own going-away party?
I retreat to my room and put what I’ll need into my backpack. Not the things I’ll want, just what I’ll need. I’m as spare as a soldier, taking only a single change of clothes, along with the list of account numbers, my civilian passport, and a deck of playing cards. Add the clothes on my back and the boots on my feet, and I’m ready to go.
Georgina is waiting for me in the living room. Hands clasped, eyes suspicious. “Be back by noon tomorrow, Gwendolyn.”
“Okay,” I say. “And thanks.”
“For?”
“Everything. Thanks.”
She closes her eyes. “You’re welcome, Gwendolyn. Have fun.”
*
The thing inside me—the thing that first made itself known in the hallway of the self-storage warehouse in Queens—is growing with each step as I march north along the avenue and turn left on Seventy-Second Street. It stretches into me, pulling my skin and body taut like a wet suit. It forces me forward. You are the hero of this story, it says.
My first stop is a little branch bank, and I withdraw the entire contents of my savings account, a little more than $500. I tuck this into my pocket and continue along Seventy-Second to the grand door of the Madisonian. The doorman calls Terrance for me, and a moment later, I’m at the door of his penthouse. He’s waiting for me when the elevator opens.
“Want to come in?” he says.
“No,” I say. “I just need—look, can you promise me something?”
He tilts his head and looks at me. “You all right?”
“Just promise me.”