The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [130]
“But Faith?” Phoebe said. “Setting a—there’s no way. Wolf, there’s no way.”
“I think at that point she honestly couldn’t see the danger,” Wolf said. “All she knew was that these Red Army people had dumped her, and maybe if she’d been bolder, you know, proved herself more … it put her in a frame of mind to do anything. She’d already taken this drastic step, joining them, she’d staked everything on that being right. I think in her mind there was no going back.”
Phoebe felt a trickle of relief. She’d found her bearings, could connect even these drastic motives with the person she knew as her sister. Wolf, too, seemed steadier now.
“You’d think she would’ve left Berlin the minute he died, but she didn’t,” he said, speaking rapidly now. “She must’ve stayed another week, went to the guy’s funeral, found out everything she could about him, children’s names, what kind of car he drove. She actually took a train to the suburb where he’d lived and found his house, stood across the street all afternoon watching people bring food to the widow, saw his older kids come back from school. It’s incredible she didn’t get busted, or questioned at least, except maybe the cops just figured anyone so overtly curious, plus a foreigner, couldn’t be more than a tourist.”
Faith had arrived in Munich in a state wavering between incomprehension and panic. “I killed a man,” she would say, and freeze, staring at her hands or the wall while the fact ricocheted through her another time. She had bouts of uncontrollable shaking, so she couldn’t walk or even sit up; she’d have to curl in a ball and shut her eyes until the shaking stopped. “I killed a man,” she would say through chattering teeth. “God, please help me.”
Wolf held her, trying to get Faith to look at his eyes. “Hey, hey, let’s not talk about killing,” he’d say. “No one killed anyone. There was just an accident, okay?”
But she seemed not to hear, her eyes closed. “I’m sick,” she would say. “I’m so sick.”
She was thin as a knife, her skin blue-white. All day long she would sit alone, thinking of what she’d done, as if some answer would come to her by thinking hard enough. But the answer was always the same: “I killed him. Like a gun to his head.”
“Stop it,” Wolf pleaded. “Look, if you hadn’t been there, it would’Ve happened just the same, Faith, I promise you. The guy would still be dead.”
“But I was there. I had it in my hands. I could’Ve dug a hole and buried it or else thrown it in the river and then he’d still be alive.”
“If you’d known there was a guy to be saved,” Wolf said gently, “you would’ve saved him.”
“But I thought I was,” Faith said, weeping now. “That’s what I thought I was doing—saving that guy. That was the whole point of everything.”
Wolf begged her to come home with him, back to San Francisco. She needed help, needed long-term counseling and therapy—hell, he didn’t know what she needed. But whatever it was, she wasn’t getting it sitting alone in his apartment while he worked at the shoe factory. He agonized over calling her mother and just laying everything on the table, but Faith made him swear he wouldn’t tell a soul as long as he lived. “No one,” she said. “You tell and I’m out the door.” She meant it. Wolf’s biggest fear was that she’d bolt—as long as Faith was with him she was safe, he thought, he could take care of her. But if she ran away, then who knew? So he didn’t call. And as for professional help, Faith greeted the notion with contempt. “Help with what?” she said. Murder was a mortal sin. No one could help her but God Himself.
“Then maybe God will help!” Wolf cried, his own earthly arguments having failed him. “Maybe He’ll forgive you.”
“He’ll punish me first,” Faith said. “And I hope He does it soon.”
She waited. Day after day she sat, waiting for her punishment to begin. She could not understand what was taking so long, then decided this waiting must be part of the punishment itself. But it pained her not to act; her impulse