one last drag on his cigarette before flicking it to the side.
The way his full lips curl around the cigarette paper, the way his hips swivel as he grinds the butt into the dust, the way he rubs a crick out of his neck using one long-fingered hand—I feel myself blush, followed immediately by the surprise of realizing I still know how to blush. There’s a quick, urgent pull low in my stomach, and this, too, is a sensation I thought had disappeared. There wasn’t enough left of my body, I thought, to manufacture the feeling.
Mr. Mueller raises his eyebrows in a brief greeting when he reaches me. “Hello,” I manage, and then I am immediately certain that the blush is in my voice, too, and that everyone around me can hear it.
He’s just leaned over to take the handle of my valise when I see his neck stiffen. “What did you say?” he asks quietly, in German.
“I—I didn’t—” I stammer.
But he’s not talking to me; he’s talking to another man whom he passed in the courtyard, barrel-chested with nice white teeth. “What did you say?” Mr. Mueller repeats, this time turning to the man.
Mr. Mueller drops my valise and walks back toward the larger, barrel-chested man. His messy curls stick to the back of his neck; his collar is damp with perspiration. I can’t hear what the two men in the middle of the courtyard are saying, only that the man with white teeth looks angry and dismissive, while Mr. Mueller is unreadable. Around me, other people have noticed the conversation, and a few yards away, Mrs. Yost, who had started off with the representative from the other camp, pauses, trying to decide whether to intervene.
The bigger man makes a rude gesture. Mr. Mueller returns it but then begins to step away. It looks like the conversation is over, and I unclench fists I didn’t know I’d tightened. But then, without warning—with something barely perceptible traveling across his face—Mr. Mueller whirls back again. It happens too fast for me to register the full motion; all I know is that I see a blur, and then blood pours out of the bigger man’s nose.
The bigger man lunges forward with both arms outstretched and hits Mr. Mueller with his full body weight. Mr. Mueller stays upright, but barely. He ducks the first punch, but the other man’s second one lands just below his eyebrow. He takes a third to the rib cage. He’s not an intuitive fighter, even I can tell that, and the other man outmatches him by at least ten centimeters.
Around the perimeter of the courtyard, doors and windows open as people lean out to see the source of the commotion. Now they’re on the ground, the big man on top of Mr. Mueller, straddling his chest and pinning his arms to his sides. The bigger man’s hand grinds the side of Mr. Mueller’s face into the ground, and Mr. Mueller’s legs scramble helplessly, wildly scuffing in the dirt.
Get up, I think.
I don’t know why he threw the first punch, I don’t know why he started this fight, I don’t know why he doesn’t give up and beg for mercy.
“Gentlemen!” Mrs. Yost yells, and then to someone I can’t see, “Go get a policeman.” But it will be too late. By the time an officer gets back, Mr. Mueller will have run out of oxygen, will be dead.
I should help him, but I can’t move. Close your eyes, I instruct myself, but my eyelids don’t work. Cover your eyes, I try. Pick up your hands and physically cover them. Do it now.
I should help him, but I can’t move, because if I could have moved, I would have helped him, and I didn’t help him, so that must mean I couldn’t move, and all I can do is stare and stare, like the fight is far away, like it’s happening in the movies.
I’m fading, I’m falling into myself, I’m unable to get my brain to stop, and then, just when I think I’m going to witness something horrible, Mr. Mueller frees one of his arms. He draws it back and, his thumb and index finger making the shape of an L, slams his hand into the bigger man’s windpipe.
The big man’s hands fly to his neck; his face turns purple-red, and his breath comes in pig squeals as he tries to find air. Mr. Mueller scrambles out from under him. Chest heaving, he staggers to the bench, to the