The faceless voice was German; she would hear it in her dreams long after the danger was over. Her mother, her father, her brothers, aunts, cousins, grandparents had all marched into the maw of history because of a German voice. The guttural rasps in the throat still had the power to terrorize her, the deceptively rounded vowels that could pierce a heart.
They placed her on a cot. The fat interrogator attached electrodes to her mouth with clumsy fingers. The anxiety was not on her account, she realized, but resided in the shadows with the faceless German who had, no doubt, given instructions.
The arrogant voice begins:
“Jewish cow, is it not true that you and your son are part of a Jewish conspiracy to take over Patagonia?”
Even his Spanish sounds German.
“We know everything, whore. We even know the name chosen for the new homeland: the Republic of Andinia. Does that surprise you? What is your son’s role in the conspiracy?”
She hesitates.
Then someone pushes a button somewhere and the fire starts in her mouth. She no longer knows who she is, she no longer cares. She can’t stop shaking, even when they tire of this recreation. Goldie never knows whose finger actually pushes the button, but she’s convinced it’s the German whose voice fills her dreams.
“Excuse me, lady.”
The memory of pain, the need to escape from it, brought Goldie back to the Bathurst Street bus, still on her way to the doctor’s.
“Excuse me, lady.”
More students had boarded, a thicket of bodies manoeuvring around her. A dark, heavy man with angry eyes was heading toward her and she knew they’d found her. He was a tall man for whom she, all five-foot-one of her, would be candy. The words in her head conquered time and space to land in his mouth. We will get you to talk, Jewish whore.
In a second, Goldie pushed her way roughly through some students.
“Well pardon us, lady.”
Standing on the step, feeling the kidnapper’s breath on the back of her neck, she pulled the cord continuously. It chimed every few seconds.
“Okay, lady, we get the message,” one kid said. “Maybe she has to go to the bathroom.”
When the bus finally came to a stop a block above College Street, Goldie hurled herself out the door and began to run. If only she hadn’t worn these heels. She dashed across College Street. She’d run like this in her nightmares, aching from fear, past eyes and eyes and more eyes, in shoes that wouldn’t stay on. She could hardly breathe now after two blocks. Blisters had formed on the heels of both feet. Danger lurked behind lampposts, window blinds, in the most quiescent of eyes. She would never be safe. She stumbled once, twice, finally through the blur of her exhaustion she turned to search for her pursuer. No one.
She stopped. The overcast sky hung low over rooftops, cast shadows on the street. Like a loosenecked owl, she scanned in all directions at once to check for danger. The old houses whispered their secrets, their paint in shreds, their rails studded with rust. I will follow you till you drop. I will get you one day. I am always there.
So she was spared another day. She had surprised him and escaped. At least she had reached College Street. Goldie limped up to the cement island to wait for the streetcar. If she hadn’t been so absorbed with the streetcar approaching in the murky distance, Goldie would, no doubt, have noticed the swarthy little man step up beside her on the island.
When she finally decided she was standing in the right place to go east on College, she turned, startled at the unexpected proximity. How had this one slipped through her defences so easily? The intruder was disguised as an Italian labourer in jeans and heavy plaid shirt, carrying a lunch pail big enough for an unassembled machine gun. How stupid did they think she was? He could have a half dozen guns in there, or knives. And handcuffs, they would need handcuffs. He had dark greasy hair like the other, but his skin was coarse and red as if he worked outside. They were so clever about these things; there was nothing they wouldn’t do to fool her.
Glaring at him produced no reaction. He looked back, but blankly. These were confrontations she would rather have avoided, but she had to defend herself.
“Stupid they must think I am,” she addressed the little man finally. “Stupid and blind.”
The man blinked, then smiled with brown crooked teeth. “You ‘a trouble, lady?”
“Me you don’t fool. I know they send you for to get me. I know their dirty tricks.”
The man looked around, as if an explanation might hang in the air, as if someone might translate. Failing that, he boldly proceeded.
“Ahh,” he lifted his free hand (the one that would hold the gun in the lunchbox), “my hand she’s a-dirty. I no toucha. You no worry.”
“You don’t take me so easy. Not this time.”
The little man continued to smile but it was forced now. When the streetcar stopped in front of him, he motioned for Goldie to get on first.
She couldn’t believe the audacity. Crossing her arms, she planted herself on the island like a tree waiting for the storm.
“I’m not so stupid like that,” she said.
The man quickly climbed aboard and when inside, turned on the top step to face Goldie one last time. This was it, she thought, now comes the gun, the knife, the last pain through the heart. Hello, Enrique.
Before the doors folded shut, he opened his decaying mouth and replied, “You too olda for me, lady.”
chapter three
Wednesday, March 28,1979
Rebecca was looking over the morning’s test results. Every now and then she glanced up at the print of Van Gogh’s Wheat Fields and Cypress in the waitingroom to reassure herself that none of David’s paintings had escaped the basement. She wondered whether Iris had realized when she put up the Van Gogh how turbulent it was, the thick heaving clouds filled with energy, the dark trees springing from the ground like flames. Iris chuckled on the phone as she booked an appointment with a patient. Without warning the front door flew open and Mrs. Kochinsky wobbled in. She was wearing a stylish navy blazer over beige trousers but something seemed askew, as if she hadn’t put them on straight. Or maybe it was the sweaty bangs of greying brown hair that stuck to her forehead. But, she still looked a decade younger than her sixty years.
“Mrs. Kochinsky!” Rebecca exclaimed. “How are you?”
“Not good!” she said and hobbled over to the waiting-room instead of approaching the counter. She dropped into one of the chairs and appeared to be trying to catch her breath.
Rebecca stepped toward her, concerned. “Are you all right?”
Mrs. Kochinsky looked up at Rebecca and absently lifted the damp bangs off her forehead with her fingers. “I’m so glad you’re back, Doctor. But bus — bus ride killing me. A man....” She suddenly glanced up at Iris, who had stopped talking on the phone to listen.
“Come into my office, Mrs. Kochinsky,” Rebecca said.
One of Iris’ eyebrows shot up in mock offence.
Once they were seated privately, Rebecca said, “So, it’s been some time since we last met. How’ve you been?”
The dark half-moons under her patient’s eyes hinted at the anxiety, the web of paranoia she’d woven around herself.
Mrs. Kochinsky shook her head. “Not good, not good.” The charming Spanish-Polish inflection. “All winter I have such trouble sleeping. The other doctor — Romanov — he no good. He don’t understand. Only wants me take drug for sleeping. Maybe I don’t want sleep.