Page 34 of Geist Fleisch
“Spare a pfennig, Sir?”
Callum paused, turning to the man who’d addressed him in heavily accented but perfectly clear English. The bum sat sheltered between the barren, snow-covered twigs of two bushes, though the word ‘bum’ barely applied. Under the grizzle of a dark, nascent beard, a missing tooth and a day’s layer ofgrime, sat a youth who, from his tattered, oversized clothes to his command of English, seemed more Dickens than Deutschland.
“A pfennig? Please?”
Callum was about to ask the youth how he’d guessed he was English. But questioning the boy, knowing he couldn’t fulfil the paltry request, felt rude.
“Nein, entschuldegung.” Not knowing why he’d answered in German, Callum kept walking, passing a grove of evergreen trees and rounding another snowbank, where he heard the voice again.
“Just a pfennig, Sir? Please?”
He glared at the young man he’d passed just a moment before. He’d not circled around; that much he knew. He cursed himself for looking at the ground as if making sure.
“No,” he grumbled and kept walking.
“No favours between unseen men, eh?”
Callum turned and gave the youth a hard look. “What the hell are you—”
“I thought about letting you go round a third time, or a fourth, or all evening. It seemed cruel.” The young man extended a hand. “Help me up? The snow is slippery.”
Callum reluctantly offered his hand. The man’s face dipped beneath the brim of his hat as he got to his feet. At last, he filled out his enormous clothes, which fit perfectly on Heinrich as he regarded Callum with a satisfied grin. Callum pulled back so fast, he landed on his backside in the snow. “Just what the hell are you?”
“Someone who can make good on his offer, if you’re still interested. That’s more than I can say for Bakker. Thank you for your discretion, by the way. It won’t soon be forgotten.”
“To hell with you,” Callum grumbled, getting to his feet and walking away, right into Heinrich’s barrel-shaped chest. “Look, all of you just leave me be, all right? I’ve had enough!”
“Leave you to what? To be the disappearing man in a disappearing city in a disappearing country?”
“That’s up to your lot. If you’re so confident you’ll win.”
Heinrich laughed. “You still think I’m beholden to that Jew-loathing… what do your friends call him? Angry Chaplin? At least they’re funny.”
“I don’t give a damn if you’re a Nazi or if Bakker just pissed you off. I’m not interested!”
“Ah, see? I knew you were a smart one to pick. Bakker has never ‘pissed me off’ as you put it, but I am a man of interest to him. Too bad I’m completely uninterested. It’s strange. I thought you understood that, yet there you were, going right back to him after—”
“Shut up, will you?” Callum snapped. “The both of you can leave me alone!”
“Do you really want to be alone?” Heinrich let Callum storm off a few paces before continuing. “You want the one thing that scares you the most?”
Callum clenched his fists as he turned. It was an empty threat. Even if Heinrich were human, which he plainly wasn’t, his size and strength dwarfed Callum’s. But if Callum was to rely on his bark, he’d bloody well make it count. “It doesn’t scare me half as much as owing you.”
A genuine admiration crossed Heinrich’s face. “As I said, you’re smart. You can relax, once our business is concluded.”
“We’ve got no business, you and me.”
“Pardon me,” Heinrich paused, conceding this. “Ifour business proceeds through to its conclusion, we’ll owe each other nothing. You can go back to your life, as visible to the naked eye as the day you were born, with no further worry of becoming a figment of your countryman’s imagination. H. G. Wells, wasn’t it? It would make a fine talkie.”
“I’ve never been a big reader. Are we finished here?”
“Reader or not, you’re smart enough not to trudge off through the snow toward… you don’t even know, do you?” Heinrich approached him, his heavy, fashionable coat looming in their snowy, eerily silent pocket of Tiergarten. “Let me make you a simpler offer. I’ll tell you how the boy who just begged you for a pfennig became the man who now offers you your most improbable desires, for they’re both me, Callum. You have only to tell me what it is you want most in the world. Don’t overthink it. Don’t speak for yourself as a child, or as a man ten years from now, or twenty. Right now, Callum. What is it you want?”
Loathe as he was to admit it, Callum’s anger had given way to intrigue. Nothing Heinrich had said was a lie. Callum wanted to know how, somewhere in the back of his brain he’d known from a first glance that Heinrich wasn’t human. And how familiar the boy beggar had seemed! He’d known it then too. But what he wanted most in the world? How was he supposed to answer that?
Heinrich’s coat fell from his broad shoulders into the snow, exposing pale skin stretched over taught muscle, naked exceptfor his boots. His cheeks flushed with ruddy colour as Callum bit his lower lip and looked away.
“You’ve offered me that before,” Callum muttered. “Are you really so full of yourself?”
