Read Online Where the Bones are Buried by Jeanne Matthews - Free Book Online

mother, like daughter.
    ***
    She climbed the stairs to the apartment just as her across-the-hall neighbor Geert poked his head out the door to retrieve the Berliner Morgenpost . He worked from midnight to six or seven as a bartender at the White Noise Club on Schönhauser Allee. His stubble of yellow beard was always the same length and his gaunt face was perpetually wreathed in cigarette smoke. It was impossible to tell if he’d been to bed yet, or if he ever went to bed.
    He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “ Moin , Dinah.”
    â€œ Moin , Geert. Did you notice anyone suspicious in the hall last night as you left for work?”
    â€œOnly myself. Why?”
    â€œSomeone left an effigy of a dead Indian in front of my door.”
    â€œ Saublöd .” His eyes pinched tight as paper cuts and he blew a mare’s tail of smoke down the hall. “Bloody stupid. No fascist punks around here. The faules in boots and donkey jackets live in Lichtenberg and Marzahn. Where is Thor?”
    â€œOslo. On business. I’m spending the week with my mother and a friend.”
    â€œDon’t worry. I will test the downstairs lock. And I will kill this Dummkopf if he comes back. I will rip out his eyes.”
    â€œThanks, Geert. Will you get his name first?”
    â€œNo problem.” He put the cigarette back in his mouth and vanished like a fume into his apartment.
    Dinah confirmed that her apartment door was locked before inserting her key and pushing inside. Everything appeared normal. Aphrodite had ignored the scratching post and continued to shred one end of the new sofa. Dinah fed her, fixed herself a grilled cheese sandwich, and sat down to sort out her feelings. Anger, fear, aggravation, guilt, and a feeling of ambivalence about the make-believe Indians. The romanticization of the “noble savage,” uncorrupted by civilization, had been a common theme since the sixteenth century. It was simplistic and patronizing, although preferable to attitudes of racial and cultural superiority. But what was that slam about scalpings? Maybe Little Deer had been thinking about an episode in one of Karl May’s books.
    As a matter of fact, American tribes weren’t the only practitioners of scalping. The Germanic tribes of yore were enthusiastic scalpers. In the ninth century, the Visigoths scalped their victims, as did the Franks and the Angles and the Saxons. During the Crusades, lopping off the entire head was all the rage. But during the colonial and French Indian wars in North America, the British and European colonists offered bounties for Indian scalps, including those of women and children, and conducted scalp-hunting expeditions.
    The subject was not one to dwell on. She finished her sandwich and rummaged in the freezer for the tub of Mövenpick Swiss chocolate ice cream. She had gained five pounds since moving to Berlin, but so far she hadn’t opened the pack of Pall Mall filters stashed away in the pantry for emergencies. In fact, cigarettes were losing their psychological appeal. Back in the States, smoking had a subversive, outlaw cachet. In Berlin, it was commonplace. Although it was verboten to light up in public buildings, the streets reeked of smoke and when Geert was at home, smoke leaked from under his door and invaded this apartment. The odor lingered in spite of regular applications of Febreze.
    She grabbed a spoon and dug into the ice cream. She ought to call the Wunderbar to see if either Swan or Margaret had returned. She ought to call her mother’s cell again, or Margaret’s, or Farber’s gallery. She ought to take the Golf to the repair shop. She ought to compartmentalize this Hess farrago and concentrate on her class prep. She ought…
    The buzzer sounded. Terrific. The wanderers had returned. She stuck the lid back on the ice cream and chucked it into the freezer. What kind of a story could she concoct, or what kind of threat, that would motivate