Christopher's Ghosts Read Online Free PDF

dollar was worth two trillion Reichsmarks and a single egg sold for eighty billion marks. Now that the Reichsmark was four to the dollar once again, keeping the animals was a foolish extravagance, but Hubbard refused to give them up. His trust fund yielded enough to live on, and—always a surprise—he sometimes made a little money from writing. He dipped into his meager capital, a sin against which he had been warned all his life, so that they could have their horses and their yawl, Mahican , which was docked at Lori’s family home on the island of Rügen on the Baltic Sea.
    By the time Paul got out of bed, the clock told him that his mother had already departed. There was no possibility he could join her, even if his injuries had not prevented it. His entire body ached where it had been punched and kicked, especially his insides. The mere thought of being in the saddle, riding at a trot, was agonizing. Paul had not been forbidden to go back to the park. His parents never forbade him anything. They had trusted his judgment ever since he was old enough to go out on his own. He had crossed busy streets by himself when he was barely able to talk. Nevertheless he felt that he might be doing something that they had trusted him not to do when he decided to go to the Tiergarten. He went anyway. He had no choice in the matter. He usually caught his first glimpse of the girl in the morning. This time, if he saw her, he would walk up to her, look her in the eye, shake her hand, thank her. He would take the second step now that she had taken the first. Or so he told himself. In minutes Paul was dressed and on his bicycle, eating bread and butter with one hand and with the other steering around streetcars and automobiles and steaming heaps of horse manure. The Christophers lived in Gutenbergstrasse, only a few blocks west of the park. He was through the gates of the Tiergarten inno time, drifting on his bike down a gentle hill that led to the meadow where the girl usually appeared.
    He locked his bicycle to a rack and continued on foot. It was a sunny day in June. A breeze from the west and the horses on the bridle path (Paul could feel hoof beats in the turf beneath his feet) had stirred the dust. It hung like gauze in the slanting silvery light that shone through the trees. Such birds as were still singing this long after the sun had risen seemed far away and muted. In the distance—everything seemed distant—someone played “My Blue Heaven” on a harmonica. Paul sang along, silently. It was one of his father’s favorite shaving songs. Hubbard woke up every morning with a song on his lips. In an off-key baritone, he sang all his songs as if they had been written about him and Lori and Paul: Yes sir, she’s my baby/no sir, don’t mean maybe. Paul wondered what yesterday’s leader would have done about these decadent songs, written perhaps by Jews, if he had heard them. Taken names and reported them to No. 8 Prinz-Albrechtstrasse? Thrown the harmonica into the Neuer See? He smiled. He knew that there was nothing funny about National Socialists, but he could not help it. They were so serious, so absurd, so numerous.
    Then he saw her. She stood on a slope above him, the hazy sunlight in her face. Behind her stood a line of trees. He expected her to move back into them as usual and for an instant, before he smothered the image, he thought of the innocent nude Rima in her Venezuelan fastness. Then the girl came walking down the hill. She moved like an athlete and looked like one too, long-legged, erect, natural, unselfconscious. Not marching at all, just walking like a natural person. Paul let her come to him. When she reached him she did not offer to shake hands, nor did she smile. She looked him over with minute attention. His face was still a mask of iodine and bandages.
    “You don’t look quite as bad as I expected,” she said. She spoke English, as before.
    Paul said, “Nothing serious.”
    “Yesterday I thought they