“AREN’T YOU going to talk to me at all now? You’re acting like a child,” Evelyn whispered. She was sitting on her bed, folding laundry. Adam had stretched out on the other bed next to her. “If I hadn’t told you, there’d be no problem.”
“So now I’m to blame,” he said softly.
“You turn everything into such a big deal.” She snatched Adam’s socks from the radiator and laid them in her lap as she sat back down on the bed.
“A big deal?”
“A colossal deal.”
“You could have apologized, at least.”
“For what, Adam? Because you see spooks?”
“And why didn’t you tell me before? We could have made the call together.”
“How would that have changed things?”
“It would have changed everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“And how, if I may ask?”
“It would have been a shared operation.”
“ ‘Shared operation’—I thought everything we’re doing here is a shared operation.”
“That’s what I had hoped too.”
“Poor little pussycat—”
Adam sat bolt upright and grabbed hold of her wrist.
“You call that blowhard up,” he hissed, “I don’t know how many times, give him our number, and not a peep to me. If Katja hadn’t called here, I wouldn’t have known about any of it. That’s the picture. And now spare me your smart comebacks.”
“And who told you that Katja called?” Evelyn grabbed up the socks in both hands and hurled them onto Adam’s bed. After picking up the folded laundry, she walked over to the wardrobe by the door and sorted things into cubbyholes. “How can anybody be so stupid!” she whispered. “What a numbskull!”
Adam spread the socks out beside him. Evelyn slipped on a cardigan, lay down on her bed, reached across to Adam’s pillow, and picked up the Bible.
“You could at least ask,” he said.
“Why? This doesn’t belong to you either. It was a shared theft,” she said.
Evelyn opened the Bible to the spot where the forms had been stuck as a bookmark.
“What would you have done if he’d asked you for our number because Katja wanted it?”
“I don’t think I would have spoken to him in the first place.”
“And how are you going to go about finding out if he’s an intelligence officer?”
“How did you go about it? Tell him that crazy Adam is seeing spooks?”
“I told him we’d arrived safe and sound. We’d agreed I would at least let him know that.”
“You had agreed that you’d call him?”
“That’s what he asked me to do.”
“Great, maybe you’d like to study in Hamburg?”
“Do you want to go our separate ways?”
“No matter what it is he does, he’s guaranteed to make a lot more than I ever will.”
“You don’t say.”
“Then all our problems would be solved, in one fell swoop.”
“Oh, is that so? It was Katja I was calling about.”
“Katja?”
“Yes, what else? We’ve got so many friends here, I don’t know who to drop in on first.”
“I didn’t know you and Katja were such bosom buddies.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? But, yes, I liked her right off.”
“Because she failed her swimming test?”
“Because she knew what she wanted and followed through on it, all on her own.”
“She once told me about some Japanese guy.”
“Japanese? What Japanese guy? You’re her hero. Without you—who knows where she would have landed.”
“Katja would have come out all right one way or another.”
“Maybe, maybe not. It was heroic anyway. You should remember that, it’d do you good.”
“What good would it do me? After all, you’re always telling me to think of the future.”
“I only mean that the sewing course and this room and Uncle Eberhard—this isn’t what it’s all about. Soon this will all be a thing of the past.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll find something in Munich, something in the city—”
“With a garden and hardwood floors, ideal layout, in a pleasant neighborhood.”
“Even if it’s small, tiny for all I care. I can wait tables again.”
“You’re going to study, not wait tables!”
“I’d like it much better if we could start all over again, living together, but not in a house where everything smells of your family. My pillow doesn’t even belong to me. And people in Munich are desperate to find someone like you—everybody says that.”
“Is that in the Bible?”
Evelyn flipped the page. “Someone like you, who can tailor clothes to order, tailor like you do, with such great ideas. Why shouldn’t things turn around for you? Even if you have to play second fiddle at first, for a year or two, that’s not so awful. You keep an eye on the tricks of the trade, the business tricks, and then take over the clientele. Anyone who’s used you never wants anybody else. You know that. Faith, love, hope—that’s in here somewhere. Love, that we have, and faith in you as well, the only thing you’re missing is the hope, hope, nothing else—and for that you have me. I am hope. I’ll sell my jewelry.”
“Don’t you touch it—no way are you going to do that.”
“My grandma would say it’s the right thing to do. She only wore a couple of things, the rest just stayed in its chest. In case it should ever be needed, and it’s needed now.”
“I’ll find something, Evi. Just not this sewing course, not after that scene.”
“Scene? What scene?” Evelyn sat up.
“Didn’t Gisela say anything?”
“No. She was a little snippy somehow, a little funny somehow.”
“Enough with the ‘somehow,’ ‘somehow’ is awful.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing, I was designing it like I always do—the right way, the better way.”
“Designing what?”
“Her friend Gaby wanted two bows or ribbons, on the left and right, incredible, like a fat bumblebee with tiny wings.”
“And you told her that?”
“It was beyond belief, I thought she was joking.”
Evelyn grasped the edge of the bed with both hands.
“I just told her I wouldn’t do it, that I wasn’t in the gewgaw business.”
Evelyn took a deep breath. “But if that’s what she wanted?”
“She can sew it herself, what does she need me for. Either I sew it or I don’t sew it. And if I do the tailoring, I don’t tailor crap like that. It’s that simple.”
“Oh, Adam—”
“It’s how I’ve always done it and it worked out very well—for my clients too.”
Evelyn reached for a pair of socks, turned them right side out, and coiled them in a ball. Suddenly she gasped, Adam sat frozen in place too. The front door slammed shut downstairs.
“Was that both of them?” Evelyn whispered.
“Don’t think so, just Gisela. He always locks it.”
“You should’ve done it for her sake, for Gisela’s. She’s been so proud of you. You should’ve sewn it, she would’ve had to see what you saw, and would’ve understood—”
“Two missing,” Adam said.
“Two?”
“Two different socks are left over.”
“Just like always.”
“You mean I’ve always worn them like this?”
“You’ve only noticed just now because you’re holding them side by side.”
“Goes against my principles.”
“Then toss them out,” Evelyn said and stood up.
“And you’re sure there aren’t two others somewhere?”
“Somewhere, yes. But not here.” Evelyn disappeared into the little bathroom next door.
When she returned, Adam was sitting on the bed. The bag of socks had been put away. But two were now hanging on the radiator as if they weren’t quite dry.