Heroes by David Hagberg (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📗

be love. This last was causing him a lot of trouble.

Katrina did not fit the mold, his image of how a girl should behave. He knew he was being terribly naive. In Gottingen they’d laugh at him. In Wisconsin they’d turn away. His loyalties tugged him toward Wisconsin, his heart toward what Gottingen represented.

He looked at himself in the mirror over the wash basin. His was a baby face. But his eyes were open and honest, or at least he gave that impression. A cowlick in the front jutted up at an odd angle. His mother was still fond of wetting two fingers with her tongue and patting it down. He shook his head. He hated it.

When he was little, she’d moisten the corner of a handkerchief with her spit and use it to wash off a smudge on his cheek or nose. All mothers did it, and he didn’t know of any kid who liked it.

He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to stay here, but he knew he could not. He wanted help. Someone to make the decision for him. Someone he trusted. He turned away, unable at that moment even to face himself. They had made the decision for him. GET OUT NOW. That was the message.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly to relieve the pressure on his chest, then stepped out of the bathroom. Katrina was there with his coat.

“I know,” she said, looking at his face. “I feel the same way, too.”

He smiled. Wouldn’t it be something, he thought, if he did say the hell with it all and just stayed here.

She helped him with his coat and his scarf, and then she kissed him. “I love you, Edmund Dorfman.”

“I love you, Katrina Mueller,” he said solemnly.

She gave him his sandwich wrapped in a piece of newspaper, kissed him again at the door, and then began to cry. “Verdammt,” she swore. “Get out of here.”

There was nothing left to say. Deland trudged down the stairs, then crossed the street; he hesitated a moment. He looked up at the apartment. Katrina was in the window, looking down at him.

They waved to each other; then he turned and headed back to his rooming house at a brisk pace, her feel and her odor still lingering with him.

It was nearly six-thirty by the time Deland made it back to the house. He snuck in the back way and made it up to his room without encountering anyone. Once he was safely inside, he flipped on the light. Almost instantly he knew someone had been here.

The pillow on his bed was straight! Both doors to his Schrank were closed! And the things on his desk were ever so slightly rearranged!

Someone had been in here! Either an amateur or someone who did not care that Deland knew about it.

With shaking hands Deland opened the calculator case, pulled the calculator out, and pressed the correct sequence of numbers and operations so that the bottom cover would drop off. He looked inside, but there was no way of telling if they had found the radio. It did not appear to be tampered with.

He quickly closed it again and buttoned it up in its leather case. Then he grabbed the smaller of his two bags and stuffed a few items of clothing into it.

At the door, just before he shut out the light, he looked around the room that had been home for more than nine months. They were on to him. It was not surprising that they had searched his room. Except for the radio, however, there was nothing incriminating here. It was the room of a bachelor mathematician. Nothing else.

He reached inside his coat to his breast pocket to make sure he still had his train tickets, and at first he thought he was dreaming.

The tickets were not there.

He put the calculator and overnight bag down and reached deeply into the pocket. It was empty. He unbuttoned his coat and frantically searched his other pockets. There was nothing!

His heart was thumping. It was hard to catch his breath. He forced himself to slow down and to carefully search all of his pockets. But the tickets were simply not there.

Still forcing himself to slow down, he searched his room, inch by inch—the bed, his Schrank, the desk. There was nothing. No tickets. They were gone.

Christ! He must have lost them on the way here. Somewhere out in the snow … Another thought struck him. Maria Quelle’s apartment. He had taken off his coat and had tossed it on the brown easy chair in the living room. Later, Katrina had picked up his coat.

They were there. The tickets were there! If Katrina had found them, she’d know he was lying. Or would she? He had bought roundtrip tickets. If she had seen them, she’d think he was coming back tomorrow evening.

He grabbed his bag and the calculator, shut out his light, and managed to get out of the house without anyone seeing him.

He lingered in the shadows at the back of the large house for a minute or two until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. There were no strange cars parked on the road. There was no one here. No one watching for him, yet he hesitated still another moment. He was frightened. They knew about him. They had searched his room. If they talked to Katrina, they’d know he was on his way to Berlin. They shot spies, or hanged them. But he just couldn’t close his eyes and make it go away. He couldn’t turn around, go back up to his room, get a good night’s sleep, and show up at work tomorrow. It just didn’t work that way. He was here; it was up to him to get out.

Mindless of the cold now, Deland hurried down the street. He had to leave his bicycle. He could not park it at the railroad station. It would be a dead giveaway.

An Army truck passed him, but then