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The Informer - Hardcover

Nova, Craig

 
9780307236937: The Informer
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307236935 ISBN 13: 9780307236937
Verlag: Crown Pub, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

"Forging a survival-based friendship in pre-World War II Berlin, a beautiful but scarred young prostitute and the lame teen who negotiates with her clients interact with a series of power-hungry men who promote corrupt agendas. By the award-winning author of The Good Son."

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

CRAIG NOVA is the author of ten novels and has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is also the recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

PART I

Berlin—1930

Gaelle turned away from the man in the car and stepped out onto the sidewalk, the money in her hand. The instant she slammed the door, she was sure of it. They were coming for her. The black cars on the avenue seemed to be a funeral procession, their movement oddly ponderous and mysterious, too. She had sold information, and yet, at the time she had done it, the future had seemed so impossibly distant, but now, of course, it arrived like claustrophobia. Perhaps the next car would be the one she was afraid of, and if not that, then maybe the one after. She guessed they would slash her, but if she was lucky they wouldn’t do that or spend any time “talking” to her. Perhaps they would send a woman to kill her, but would that be any better?

It wasn’t the actual being dead, she told herself, that mattered so much as how she got that way. That’s why she hated knowing that it was coming, since it exaggerated her fear, the glint of the knife, the expression of malice, the frankness of the job. Perhaps she would be able to make them pay a price, since she had a small knife in her bag, but a lot of informers had carried knives, and what good had it done them? And she had heard rumors, too, that some of the women in the park had been blinded before they had been killed.

She hugged her shoulders and stood there, trying to find a way to cheer herself up. It was only a matter of going back to the darkness of the time before she had been born, but then this left her trembling, since she knew the darkness before she was born was a matter of coming toward the light, but now, if she entered it again (no, when she entered it again) she would be going away from the light. Please, she thought. Please. Then she stood there and trembled. It was the knives that got to her. How long did she have, one hour, two, a night? Maybe even an extra day.

The men who had come to see her, and a couple of the women, too, had tried to impress her, even though she had been paid. They had bragged about what they had done, what they were going to do, how much money was coming from Moscow, what lies the Brownshirts were going to tell, where arms were being stored. She had traded all of it, to the left and to the right, and she hadn’t done so badly, either, that is in terms of money. At least she had her funeral-society dues paid up to Immertreu, one of the Rings, or gangs, in the city.

Gaelle suspected there was a difference in military terms between being a source of information, a sort of glorified gossip, and a spy. Spies were taken out and shot. Or worse. Maybe they talked to a spy for a while first. But in the end it came down to the same thing. And each group had an army. The Socialists, who were trying to run the government, had the Reichsbanner. Then there were the Brownshirts. The Communists had the Red Front Fighters. There were other vaguely military groups, too, the Steel Helmets, Organization Consul, Organization Escherich. She had spied for all of them, or she guessed she had, since often she only knew that a bit of information had been important, but not to whom or why.

Felix smiled at her as she came away from the car, and even in this light his bad teeth were visible. He was sixteen years old, his jacket a little too large for him, but it didn’t make him seem like a child in a coat, but a man who had shrunk. You could see it in his tired, cagey eyes, and in his face, too, which was like that of a feral creature who knew that the most important quality was patience. His fingers touched a button on Gaelle’s blouse and then undid it to expose her underwear.

She gave him the money she had just made, and he reached into his pocket for the other bills and folded the new ones into the pile.

“It’s about like last night,” he said. “Maybe a little slower. But it’ll pick up after midnight. That’s when the gentlemen come out. Why, they may have to spend a little time drinking to get up their courage, but they’re good tippers, you know?”

Gaelle glanced at him uneasily and said, “Yeah. Late. That’s always the way.”

He was beginning to develop some peach fuzz and a little acne, too. Six months before she had found him looking for food in a trash can and had taken him to a restaurant. When he had finished a bowl of soup, a plate of sausages, boiled potatoes, and cabbage, he had said, “Now, why would you do something like that?” He had pointed at the empty bowl. “Why would you waste money on food for someone like me?”

“You’ve got to eat,” she had said. “Why, I’ve been hungry myself. After a couple of days you think about eating your shoes. You’ve got to eat something. Why, I may be trouble but I’m not so bad as to leave you hungry.”

His eyes had widened for a moment, but his surprise, which seemed innocent, only allowed a deeper look into that wary darkness. He shook his head as though someone had hit him with a stick. “Oh, you’d buy me food? You shouldn’t do that. No, you shouldn’t, my cream puff.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “That is an unnecessary expense. We will cut down on unnecessary expenses.” The bottom of the bowl had a little broth in it and he tipped it up to get that. Then he had said, “You and me. We can do some business.”

“You think so?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You could use a little help.”

He lifted his pants and showed the holder he had made for the ice pick he carried inside his sock. The handle was taped to give him a good grip, and he pulled it out to show the tip, which had been ground on the curbs and stone sidewalks of Berlin. The tip showed like a star in the night sky. Then he put it away. The ice pick made him more trustworthy, or dangerous, although Gaelle saw the two as being intimately related.

He had started right away, holding the money, negotiating a price, mak- ing sure her clothes were clean and that she ate something when she forgot. He had been living in an abandoned building with some other boys his age.

Gaelle turned back to the avenue where the cars came along with that casual searching. She hadn’t thought of the information as a betrayal so much as a way of making a little extra money. And she liked the idea of having something serious on someone. It could work to protect you, or it could turn into a good reason for someone to get rid of you. She had thought it would work for protection, and now she saw that wasn’t anywhere near as likely as she had supposed.

So she stood there, looking at the lights, trying to judge which were looking for excitement and which were looking for her in particular.

“You look worried,” said Felix. “What’s bothering you?”

Gaelle just shrugged. She thought about that glint.

“I know,” said Felix. “Why, people think they can get away with things, that we’re just a limping boy and a girl with a scar.” He looked around. “Oh, I know how to look like I’m keeping my place. But they better be careful.”

“I’ve got things on my mind,” she said.

Well, he thought, maybe a gravelstone was allowed to be moody, but these women with a deformity of one kind or another had value in the nighttime market of Berlin. That’s something he could depend on.

“You’re not eating,” he said. “And you got to keep your clothes better . . .”

She wished she could go home and get into the hot water of her bath, where she looked at herself in the mirrors around the tub. Nothing had happened to her body. That was the same, even better...

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Verlag
Crown Pub
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307236935
ISBN 13 
9780307236937
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
306
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