CHAPTER 11
Bridget made a move to lunge at him, and Landa flinched, his body flattening back to the threshold, the little grin on his face quickly fading as he changed the subject.
"A knife wound will bleed a great deal," he spat in as bored a voice as he could conjure, embarrassed at his bodily response to the woman's threat. "Not only would you have to dispose of my body rather quickly, but you'd have quite a mess to clean up, a mess right in your doorstep."
"It'd be worth it," she hissed, her grip on the knife strengthening. Cleanup would be difficult, but the task was at hand. First she had to ensure her success. Her empty hand reached down to take off a pump. She watched Landa roll himself sideways so that he was now in a seated position in the doorway, leg tucked behind him, his gaze locked on her all the while.
Landa watched her solemnly as she removed her shoes.
"What are you doing?" he questioned, watching her hand deftly slide the little strap through the buckle, swiftly removing one shoe and then the next. It reminded him of their time in the theater office, when he'd slid the cream pump on her foot, watching her face go from horror to acceptance of her deserved fate. He should have killed her that night.
Thank God he's lost his leg, she mused as she stood before him in her stocking feet, realizing how much slower the amputation had made him. Even his crutch was somewhere behind him, useless for helping him get to a standing position.
This would soon be over. Just like Sgt. Wilhelm in the tavern, Landa would get no last words. She would not be tripping or teetering on those heels when she went for the kill.
A feral growl exiting her throat, Bridget Von Hammersmark attacked. Landa's eyes went wide with horror and he threw his hands up in the air in an attempt to push his would-be assassin back and away from him as she held the knife in her clenched fist, plunging it towards flesh.
The knife descended, creating deep gashes in Landa's forearm in its attempts to find his head, his neck, his chest. Though nowhere near fatal wounds, the gashes had struck bone in their descent, creating rivulets of hot blood that ran down his arm as he attempted to shield himself from the weapon. Again the knife descended, burying itself in his shoulder and causing him to scream out, mere inches away from being a fatal plunge into his neck.
Bridget was in a frenzy and she'd soon find her mark. He'd worked so hard to recover at the hospital, just to die here today!
Landa had miscalculated this woman very badly. Surely his initial proposal to free her of the burden of a future ward had been an acceptable offer, hadn't it? He'd presumed she'd be larger yet from this additional month of pregnancy, mellowed and weakened by the presence of a baby growing inside her. Instead, it was as if she had taken on the strength of two people, two people who both sought to kill him and would very soon achieve their goal. He'd never seen someone act so unhinged and it had caught him completely off-guard. Not only that, but his whole body ached, his arm and shoulder wounds throbbing in extreme pain. He'd provoked a savage beast disguised as a pregnant woman.
Suddenly Landa cried out and flattened his entire body to the ground, his hands moving to cover the back of his neck, face against the floor. He would have to proceed to plan C, a contingency plan he never thought he'd have to enact.
"Stop!" he yelled out, waiting for the knife to enter the back of his skull. He was completely helpless now in this position, not even capable of seeing what was coming now, what with his eyes buried in the carpet. "You must keep me alive! My pension—it's all yours!"
"What?" Bridget blurted, the tension quickly decreasing in her forearm as she gripped the knife. She was utterly baffled by his sudden surrender and blinked several times, noticing that her assailant had completely ceased to try to fight back, to even defend himself any longer. Now Landa simply lie there on the floor, looking much like a hostage or prisoner, his face smashed into the carpet.
"I mean it—it's all yours! My military pension!" he shrieked, voice muffled by the carpet fibers. "Have mercy on me!"
"Ha," she scoffed, rolling her eyes at the man before her. "Do you think money is more important to me than peace of mind?" she shot back. "I can only have peace of mind when you're dead."
"I suppose," he began, the volume and pitch of his voice having returned to normal as he turned his head to speak more clearly, "but you've no money, no relatives, and you're living in a country hostile to you. The moment you cross the threshold of a hospital, they will be digging into your past, your aliases, all that."
"And how is allowing you to live going to change that?"
He began to lift himself off the carpet as if doing pushups, his biceps bulging under his shirt as he lifted his head to look at her. Blood had begun soaking into her carpet. Damn it; that will take quite a while to scrub out. His eyes were locked on hers.
"You'll have money, so you can support yourself and your child. You'll have someone who can ensure that you are safe and healthy. You'll even have someone who can deliver your child."
"HA!" she roared. "Are you implying that I let you stay here with me? You must be joking, Colonel Landa! It will never happen."
Landa curled his body around so he was now seated on the floor in front of her, his good leg positioned under him. His voice and his demeanor had softened considerably. Demurely, he folded his hands in his lap.
"I am of no further threat to you, Bridget. You are the mother of my child." He let out a sigh as he continued. "These past several weeks in hospital have been rather eye-opening and I very much wish to be a father. In case you didn't notice, I left everything behind, too, when I came to America."
"You mean the bodies of the countless Jews you killed? Not to mention your Nazi brethren. You don't deserve to be a father. You deserve to die."
He noticeably cringed at her statement but kept silent. Instead, he simply peered up at her, his chin tilted down all the while, giving him a beaten dog's appearance. She heard him swallow, the way he seemed to be panting now.
His eyes fell as he bowed his head. "It seems you cannot benefit from a man with lots of money who owes you his life."
"How so?" she spat, staring down at the top of his head. "It was I who shot you."
He looked back up at her in the same pitiful manner as before, body unmoving.
"But then you called the ambulance and you went along with my explanation as to what happened. You didn't even tell the hospital staff what I'd done to you. And for that, I owe you my life." He blinked, looking down at the ground. "So… you can take it now, if you wish. I'd rather you wait."
With that, he lifted his head, exposing his neck to her, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed. Landa's eyes locked on something in the distance as he continued sucking wind, his chest heaving with exertion.
Bridget could only gape in shock as Landa waited for his execution, his hands remaining in his lap all the while. Her eye caught movement through the open door, the ability of it to be closed impeded by Landa's body. She could see quite clearly now that a man was walking his dog on the sidewalk less than fifty feet away. Even if Landa did not intend to resist her, surely his instincts would take over once the knife sunk in. She would be heard.
Wordlessly, Bridget strode away from Hans Landa, clutching the knife as she took the weapon to her room.
A dark figure turned the doorknob with their left hand, the right hand steadily aiming a pistol. Slowly, with quiet steps, the figure moved into the room, the firearm never wavering. Suddenly the hinges squeaked in protest and the intended target of the weapon was awake.
"Wh-who's there?" Hans Landa muttered, his eyes now slits, not yet adjusted to the light pouring into his room. It was the dead of night, his first night at Bridget Von Hammersmark's bungalow, after he'd spend the better part of three hours scrubbing his own blood out of her carpet, his raw knuckles not nearly as sore as the hastily bandaged gashes in his arms. "Is that you, Fraulein?"
Bridget took another step into his room, noticing with glee just how far away Landa had placed his crutch. No way would he be able to get to her in time.
"I thought we discussed the conditions of my stay quite clearly," Landa babbled, using his bandaged arms to pull himself into a seated position.
"I cannot sleep knowing you are here," Bridget shot back, keeping the weapon on him. "My ability to sleep is worth far more than your damn pension checks ever could be."
"Worth more than four hundred and fifty dollars a month in perpetuity?" he shot back, voice full of nervous laughter. "I respectfully disagree."
"The fact is… ich vertraue dir nicht," she spat, frowning. I don't trust you.
"Believe me; the feeling is mutual!" Landa replied, throwing his bandaged arms up in a kind of mock surrender, eyes wide. "May I remind you that it is you who have in fact tried to kill me—let's see, three—no, four—times since I arrived in California, in comparison to my one. First you shot me, then sought to poison me, then you knifed me, and now you are returning to your trusty little sidearm once again. I could argue that I in effect cancelled out my own attempt to kill you when I brought you back, so now we're 0 and 4. And yet, you cannot trust me?"
Bridget shook her head, reaching over to turn on the bedroom light. As soon as she flicked on the light, Landa was forced to close his eyes. Too bright.
"This needs to end." Her gun remained aimed at his chest and she was not smiling. She could see that he had taken off his shirt at some point—this southern California weather was uncommonly hot and humid year-round; the bedclothes she'd purchased were more akin to German weather.
Landa looked so small sitting in bed, so vulnerable. And yet, it was this exact approachable, friendly nature that made Landa so incredibly deadly—no one suspected him of such violence, such evil. She could not be fooled by this façade of harmlessness.
"Why does everything have to be so black and white, good and bad and all that?" Landa replied. "Did we not devise quite the mutually beneficial deal? And yet it hasn't even been twelve hours since I rented that post office box, and you are already going back on your part of the deal. I have to go in to the post office to get the checks; I can't very well do that when I'm dead. I gave the postmaster very explicit instructions, you know."
"I don't care. I can't have you staying here."
"I would certainly not mind living elsewhere," he replied with a smile, "but then most of my pension check will be used to pay rent for wherever I choose to stay. The rent around here in particular is preposterous! If I then gave you whatever was left over after my rent, utilities and food, you'd probably get maybe one hundred dollars a month, if that."
"Then go back to Nantucket and send me checks in the mail."
"Did I not make it clear that I want to be a father? Not an absentee father, mind you, but someone who has actually met his child."
"A child you forced into me."
"But a child nonetheless," he said with a shrug. "As I said before, I would gladly take the child off your hands if that is your wish."
She narrowed her eyes.
"How do I know you won't do that anyway?"
"You will have to trust me, just as I have to trust you not to kill me. I certainly couldn't get very far on this leg while carrying an infant; can you picture it? I'd sooner drop the little bugger on its head and all this would have been for naught."
"I won't put anything past you."
"And yet you're the one with the gun, and I'm the helpless victim. If you were intent on shooting me dead, you would have done it already, and your next-door neighbors would all be awake right now, trying to figure out where that loud gunshot came from. Give your poor arm a rest."
After a couple of seconds of tense silence, she lowered the weapon, holding it at her side.
"I think you should sleep in your car."
"Are you kidding me? That wouldn't be comfortable in the least. You know, if it makes you feel any better, just lock your bedroom door. Problem solved. You think a cripple like me can sneak into your room in the night while hopping around on one leg?"
He watched her face; she wasn't paying attention to anything he was saying now. It seemed as if an idea had occurred to her.
"I know what to do," she muttered.
With that, Bridget promptly left his room, returning with a small garbage can.
"Your toilet," she muttered, placing the item on the carpeted floor.
Before he could process this strange comment, she turned on her heel and left the room, propping a chair under the doorknob to prevent his escape.
"Are you trapping me in here?!" he called out, his voice muffled by the door. "But what if there's a fire?"
She smiled now.
"Climb out a window."