The Second Son

Hoffner said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Gutierrez barely moved.

“There was a man with a camera,” Hoffner said. “A German. A few days ago.”

Gutierrez showed nothing.

Hoffner repeated, “There was a man with a camera-”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“You know why I ask.”

Gutierrez continued to stare at the wall. Finally he said, “Yes.” He was unrepentant. “I know why.”

“He came about the crates, about Hisma.”

“Yes.”

Hoffner waited and then said, “Did he set the fire?”

The question came so effortlessly-questions like these always did-even if every moment beyond them lay in their grasp.

Gutierrez’s stare hardened. “You mean did he murder my wife and daughter?”

And there it was. Why not call it what it was. A low humming began to fill Hoffner’s ears, but he refused to look at Mila. “Yes.”

Gutierrez said, “You ask only about the one with the camera. Why not the other?”

“The other is not my concern.”

“No? He also wanted the one with the camera.”

There was a pounding now in Hoffner’s chest, the urge to grab Gutierrez by the arm, scream in his face-Was this Georg? Was this what my son has become? — but instead he asked again, “Did he set the fire?”

Gutierrez waited, his cruelty unintended.

“No,” he finally said. “That is my misfortune. Are you here to rid me of my burden?”

Hoffner felt his breath again. He said, “Then the fire was an accident?”

“There are no such things.”

“And the guns?”

“Guns,” Gutierrez said, with quiet disbelief. “What guns? We have no guns. There will be no guns.” Self-damning made such easy work of the truth. He refused to look at Hoffner. “You need something more from me, you tell Sanz to come and get it himself. He does me a favor. Otherwise no more messengers, no more visitors, no more questions from this German, that German, talk of those crates”-his voice trailed off-“make room for those fucking crates.”

Gutierrez shut his eyes, trying not to see it.

“A can of oil”-it was little more than a whisper, the creases of his eyes wet from the memory-“a tiny can of oil and all that heat.” The tears ran and he forced his eyes open. He looked at Hoffner. “God has sent His message, and I damn Him for it.” Gutierrez looked upward. “Viva la Republica,” he said. “Viva la Libertad. Do you hear?” He looked again at Hoffner. “My cause is no longer yours. No longer Sanz’s. No longer His. Either shoot me or get out of my town.”

Gutierrez stood. He moved past Hoffner to the curtain. He was about to step through when Hoffner said, “The other German. When was he here?”

Again Gutierrez’s gaze hardened. He peered into the room. This time, though, he hadn’t the strength for it. He was suddenly aware of the tears, and he wiped them. “I don’t know,” he said. “Two days ago, three.”

“He came to ask about the one with the camera?”

“Yes.”

“In this place?”

Gutierrez nodded.

There was no point; the man had nothing more to give.

Hoffner nodded and turned to Mila, and Gutierrez said, “He was strange, that German.” Hoffner looked back and saw Gutierrez staring at him. “Not like the others,” said Gutierrez. “Not like the one with the camera. He had death in the eyes.”

“There are Germans like that now.”

“No.” Gutierrez shook his head. “Not SS. Not soldiers. Something else with this one.” It was as if he were seeing the man in front of him. He stared a moment longer and then pushed through the curtain, and Hoffner watched as the cloth puckered and grew still.

That night they stayed in Tarancon.

The days were slipping by, but Hoffner let them go. He might have convinced himself it was to keep them safe: they had been lucky last night; driving after dark seemed beyond even a Spaniard’s arrogance. Or he might have said it was for the time he could take with Mila, hours to sit or walk or stare up from a rusted bed and wait for the breeze to find its way into a room so small that the ledge of the window served as table for both pitcher and glass.

But the truth was easier than that. Hoffner simply believed Georg was alive. He had no idea why he believed this, or why he knew Georg would still be alive when he found him, but time was no longer a concern. There was nothing he could point to in the last days to make this sudden certainty real, and yet here it was.

Hoffner had felt it only once before, this kind of ease, in the same heat, the same silence, the same taste of soured milk in the air. It sat deep in his past and yet lay quietly by his side, and Hoffner chose not to ask why.

He sat up and took a sip of the water, brown with silt. He stared out through the window and saw the hills under the moon.

Mila said, “He’s out there.”

He had thought her asleep. He nodded and lit a cigarette.

She said, “You thought he’d set that fire.”

Hoffner felt the heat of the room on his face. He let the smoke spear through his nose. He said nothing.

She said, “And what if he had?”

Hoffner took another pull as he stared out. “But he didn’t.”

“No-he didn’t. So you don’t have to save him from himself.”

He looked at her. “What does that mean?”

“The way you do with the other boy. Sascha. That’s the one you think you need to save. Georg didn’t set the fire, so it wasn’t your fault.”

He continued to stare at her. “That’s a stupid thing to say.”

“Is it?”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” She reached out and took his cigarette. “So I’m left to bring out the trite and the obvious.” She took a pull. “I’m thirsty.”

Hoffner handed her the glass and watched as she drank.

He said, “I made him what he is.”

“No one makes anyone else into anything.”

“He was sixteen. A boy. I had a girl on the side.”

“A boy with a cheating father. What a remarkable story.”

“I threw it in his face.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Then you’d be wrong.”

She held the glass up to him and he took it. He turned and set it on the ledge. And he stared out and knew that somewhere people were sleeping.

“It was at a railway station,” he said. “This girl. Sascha was there. He saw us together. There were words. I didn’t see him for eight years after that. It’s been another nine since.”

“Because he saw you with a girl?”

“You don’t see it. It sounds … different now. Small. It wasn’t. It’s what I was. It’s what he knew I was.”

“And what you were makes him what he is now? That must be so much easier to believe than anything else.” She reached across him and tapped her ash out the window. Her hair played against his chest, and she lay back.

He said, “So you want me to be blameless?”

“No. You’ll never have that. I loved my husband, even when he had a woman in Moscow. He stopped it, and we went on.”

It took Hoffner a moment to answer. “It’s different.”

“Why? Because you think a woman needs to forgive? Because your wife forgave you every time she knew you had another one?”

“He was a boy.”

“My husband wrote me at the end. He said he deserved to be dying. Freezing to death, and he needed to tell me it was because of what he had done to me. How much he regretted it. Can you think of anything more stupid than that?”

Hoffner hadn’t the strength for this. “No. I suppose not.”

She sat straight up and forced him to look at her. “Don’t do that. Don’t ask to be forgiven because you can’t forgive yourself. You’re here for Georg. You risk everything for Georg. But it doesn’t make you a better man that you do. You do it, and it’s enough.”

Hoffner stared at her. “And it’s enough for you?”

She looked at him. Hoffner thought to hold her but she lay down. He lay beside her and brought her back into his chest.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

And he slept.