There were two hours left of 1938. In Danzig it had been snowing on and off all day, and a gang of children was enjoying a snowball fight in front of the grain warehouses which lined the old waterfront. John Russell paused to watch them for a few moments, then walked on up the cobbled street toward the blue and yellow lights.
The Sweden Bar was far from crowded, and those few faces that turned his way weren’t exactly brimming over with festive spirit. In fact, most of them looked like they’d rather be somewhere else.
It was an easy thing to want. The Christmas decorations hadn’t been removed, just allowed to drop, and they now formed part of the flooring, along with patches of melting slush, floating cigarette butts, and the odd broken bottle. The bar was famous for the savagery of its international brawls, but on this particular night the various groups of Swedes, Finns, and Letts seemed devoid of the energy needed to get one started. Usually a table or two of German naval ratings could be relied upon to provide the necessary spark, but the only Germans present were a couple of aging prostitutes, and they were getting ready to leave.
Russell took a stool at the bar, bought himself a Goldwasser, and glanced through the month-old copy of the New York Herald Tribune which, for some inexplicable reason, was lying there. One of his own articles was in it, a piece on German attitudes to their pets. It was accompanied by a cute-looking photograph of a Schnauzer.
Seeing him reading, a solitary Swede two stools down asked him, in perfect English, if he spoke that language. Russell admitted that he did.
“You are English!” the Swede exclaimed, and shifted his considerable bulk to the stool adjoining Russell’s.
Their conversation went from friendly to sentimental, and sentimental to maudlin, at what seemed like a breakneck pace. Three Goldwassers later, the Swede was telling him that he, Lars, was not the true father of his children. Vibeke had never admitted it, but he knew it to be true.
Russell gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and Lars sunk forward, his head making a dull clunk as it hit the polished surface of the bar. “Happy New Year,” Russell murmured. He shifted the Swede’s head slightly to ease the man’s breathing, and got up to leave.
Outside, the sky was beginning to clear, the air almost cold enough to sober him up. An organ was playing in the Protestant Seamen’s Church, nothing hymnal, just a slow lament, as if the organist were saying a personal farewell to the year gone by. It was a quarter to midnight.
Russell walked back across the city, conscious of the moisture seeping in through the holes in his shoes. There were lots of couples on Langer Markt, laughing and squealing as they clutched each other for balance on the slippery sidewalks.
He cut over to Breite Gasse and reached the Holz-Markt just as the bells began pealing in the New Year. The square was full of celebrating people, and an insistent hand pulled him into a circle of revelers dancing and singing in the snow. When the song ended and the circle broke up, the Polish girl on his left reached up and brushed her lips against his, eyes shining with happiness. It was, he thought, a better-than-expected opening to 1939.
His hotel’s reception area was deserted, and the sounds of celebration emanating from the kitchen at the back suggested the night staff were enjoying their own private party. Russell gave up the idea of making himself a hot chocolate while his shoes dried in one of the ovens, and took his key. He clambered up the stairs to the third floor, and trundled down the corridor to his room. Closing the door behind him, he became painfully aware that the occupants of the neighboring rooms were still welcoming in the new year, loud singing on one side, floor-shaking sex on the other. He took off his shoes and socks, dried his wet feet with a towel, and sank back onto the vibrating bed.
There was a discreet, barely audible tap on his door.
Cursing, he levered himself off the bed and pulled the door open. A man in a crumpled suit and open shirt stared back at him.
“Mr. John Russell,” the man said in English, as if he were introducing Russell to himself. The Russian accent was slight, but unmistakable. “Could I talk with you for a few minutes?”
“It’s a bit late…” Russell began. The man’s face was vaguely familiar. “But why not?” he continued, as the singers next door reached for a new and louder chorus. “A journalist should never turn down a conversation,” he murmured, mostly to himself, as he let the man in. “Take the chair,” he suggested.
His visitor sat back and crossed one leg over the other, hitching up his trouser as he did so. “We have met before,” he said. “A long time ago. My name is Shchepkin. Yevgeny Grigorovich Shchepkin. We…”
“Yes,” Russell interrupted, as the memory clicked into place. “The discussion group on journalism at the Fifth Congress. The summer of twenty-four.”
Shchepkin nodded his acknowledgment. “I remember your contributions,” he said. “Full of passion,” he added, his eyes circling the room and resting, for a few seconds, on his host’s dilapidated shoes.
Russell perched himself on the edge of the bed. “As you said-a long time ago.” He and Ilse had met at that conference and set in motion their ten year cycle of marriage, parenthood, separation, and divorce. Shchepkin’s hair had been black and wavy in 1924; now it was a close-cropped gray. They were both a little older than the century, Russell guessed, and Shchepkin was wearing pretty well, considering what he’d probably been through the last fifteen years. He had a handsome face of indeterminate nationality, with deep brown eyes above prominent slanting cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and lips just the full side of perfect. He could have passed for a citizen of most European countries, and probably had.
The Russian completed his survey of the room. “This is a dreadful hotel,” he said.
Russell laughed. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“No. Of course not.”
“So what are you here for?”
“Ah.” Shchepkin hitched his trouser again. “I am here to offer you work.”
Russell raised an eyebrow. “You? Who exactly do you represent?”
The Russian shrugged. “My country. The Writer’s Union. It doesn’t matter. You will be working for us. You know who we are.”
“No,” Russell said. “I mean, no I’m not interested. I-”
“Don’t be so hasty,” Shchepkin said. “Hear me out. We aren’t asking you to do anything which your German hosts could object to.” The Russian allowed himself a smile. “Let me tell you exactly what we have in mind. We want a series of articles about positive aspects of the Nazi regime.” He paused for a few seconds, waiting in vain for Russell to demand an explanation. “You are not German but you live in Berlin,” Shchepkin went on. “You once had a reputation as a journalist of the left, and though that reputation has-shall we say-faded, no one could accuse you of being an apologist for the Nazis…”
“But you want me to be just that.”
“No, no. We want positive aspects, not a positive picture overall. That would not be believable.”
Russell was curious in spite of himself. Or because of the Goldwassers. “Do you just need my name on these articles?” he asked. “Or do you want me to write them as well?”
“Oh, we want you to write them. We like your style-all that irony.”
Russell shook his head: Stalin and irony didn’t seem like much of a match.
Shchepkin misread the gesture. “Look,” he said, “let me put all my cards on the table.”
Russell grinned.
Shchepkin offered a wry smile in return. “Well, most of them anyway. Look, we are aware of your situation. You have a German son and a German lady-friend, and you want to stay in Germany if you possibly can. Of course if a war breaks out you will have to leave, or else they will intern you. But until that moment comes-and maybe it won’t-miracles do happen-until it does you want to earn your living as a journalist without upsetting your hosts. What better way than this? You write nice things about the Nazis-not too nice, of course; it has to be credible-but you stress their good side.”
“Does shit have a good side?” Russell wondered out loud.
“Come, come,” Shchepkin insisted, “you know better than that. Unemployment eliminated, a renewed sense of community, healthy children, cruises for workers, cars for the people…”
“You should work for Joe Goebbels.”
Shchepkin gave him a mock-reproachful look.
“Okay,” Russell said, “I take your point. Let me ask you a question. There’s only one reason you’d want that sort of article: You’re softening up your own people for some sort of deal with the devil. Right?”
Shchepkin flexed his shoulders in an eloquent shrug.
“Why?”
The Russian grunted. “Why deal with the devil? I don’t know what the leadership is thinking. But I could make an educated guess and so could you.”
Russell could. “The western powers are trying to push Hitler east, so Stalin has to push him west? Are we talking about a non-aggression pact, or something more?”
Shchepkin looked almost affronted. “What more could there be? Any deal with that man can only be temporary. We know what he is.”
Russell nodded. It made sense. He closed his eyes, as if it were possible to blank out the approaching calamity. On the other side of the opposite wall, his musical neighbors were intoning one of those Polish river songs which could reduce a statue to tears. Through the wall behind him silence had fallen, but his bed was still quivering like a tuning fork.
“We’d also like some information,” Shchepkin was saying, almost apologetically. “Nothing military,” he added quickly, seeing the look on Russell’s face. “No armament statistics or those naval plans that Sherlock Holmes is always being asked to recover. Nothing of that sort. We just want a better idea of what ordinary Germans are thinking. How they are taking the changes in working conditions, how they are likely to react if war comes-that sort of thing. We don’t want any secrets, just your opinions. And nothing on paper. You can deliver them in person, on a monthly basis.”
Russell looked skeptical.
Shchepkin ploughed on. “You will be well paid-very well. In any currency, any bank, any country, that you choose. You can move into a better apartment block…”
“I like my apartment block.”
“You can buy things for your son, your girlfriend. You can have your shoes mended.”
“I don’t…”
“The money is only an extra. You were with us once…”
“A long long time ago.”
“Yes, I know. But you cared about your fellow human beings. I heard you talk. That doesn’t change. And if we go under there will be nothing left.”
“A cynic might say there’s not much to choose between you.”
“The cynic would be wrong,” Shchepkin replied, exasperated and perhaps a little angry. “We have spilled blood, yes. But reluctantly, and in hope of a better future. They enjoy it. Their idea of progress is a European slave-state.”
“I know.”
“One more thing. If money and politics don’t persuade you, think of this. We will be grateful, and we have influence almost everywhere. And a man like you, in a situation like yours, is going to need influential friends.”
“No doubt about that.”
Shchepkin was on his feet. “Think about it, Mr. Russell,” he said, drawing an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and placing it on the nightstand. “All the details are in here-how many words, delivery dates, fees, and so on. If you decide to do the articles, write to our press attachй in Berlin, telling him who you are, and that you’ve had the idea for them yourself. He will ask you to send him one in the post. The Gestapo will read it, and pass it on. You will then receive your first fee and suggestions for future stories. The last-but-one letters of the opening sentence will spell out the name of a city outside Germany which you can reach fairly easily. Prague, perhaps, or Cracow. You will spend the last weekend of the month in that city, and be sure to make your hotel reservation at least a week in advance. Once you are there, someone will contact you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Russell said, mostly to avoid further argument. He wanted to spend his weekends with Paul, and with Effi, his girlfriend, not the Shchepkins of this world.
The Russian nodded and let himself out. As if on cue, the Polish choir lapsed into silence.
Russell was woken by the scream of a locomotive whistle. Or at least, that was his first impression. Lying there awake all he could hear was a gathering swell of high-pitched voices. It sounded like a school playground full of terrified children.
He threw on some clothes and made his way downstairs. It was still dark, the street deserted, the tramlines hidden beneath a virginal sheet of snow. In the train station booking hall across the street a couple of would-be travelers were hunched in their seats, eyes averted, praying that they hadn’t strayed into dangerous territory. Russell strode through the unmanned ticket barrier. There were trucks in the goods yard beyond the far platform, and a train stretched out past the station throat. People were gathered under the yellow lights, mostly families by the look of them, because there were lots of children. And there were men in uniform. Brownshirts.
A sudden shrill whistle from the locomotive produced an eerie echo from the milling crowd, as if all the children had shrieked at once.
Russell took the subway steps two at a time, half-expecting to find that the tunnel had been blocked off. It hadn’t. On the far side, he emerged into a milling crowd of shouting, screaming people. He had already guessed what was happening-this was a kindertransport, one of the trains hired to transport the ten thousand Jewish children that Britain had agreed to accept after Kristallnacht. The shriek had risen at the moment the guards started separating the children from their parents, and the two groups were now being shoved apart by snarling brownshirts. Parents were backing away, tears running down their cheeks, as their children were herded onto the train, some waving frantically, some almost reluctantly, as if they feared to recognize the separation.
Further up the platform a violent dispute was underway between an SA Truppfьhrer and a woman with a red cross on her sleeve. Both were screaming at the other, he in German, she in northern-accented English. The woman was beside herself with anger, almost spitting in the brownshirt’s eye, and it was obviously taking everything he had not to smash his fist into her face. A few feet away one of the mothers was being helped to her feet by another woman. Blood was streaming from her nose.
Russell strode up to the brownshirt and the Englishwoman and flashed his Foreign Ministry press accreditation, which at least gave the man a new outlet for his anger.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” the Truppfuhrer shouted. He had a depressingly porcine face, and the bulk to go with it.
“Trying to help,” Russell said calmly. “I speak English.”
“Well then tell this English bitch to get back on the train with the kike brats where she belongs.”
Russell turned to the woman, a petite brunette who couldn’t have been much more than twenty-five. “He’s not worth screaming at,” he told her in English. “And it won’t do you any good. In fact, you’ll only make matters worse.”
“I…” She seemed at a loss for words.
“I know,” Russell said. “You can’t believe people could behave like this. But this lot do. All the time.”
As if to emphasize the point, the Truppfьhrer started shouting again. When she started shouting back he reached for her arm, and she kicked him in the shin. He backhanded her across the face with what seemed like enormous force, spinning her round and dumping her face-first on the snowy platform. She groaned and shook her head.
Russell put himself between them. “Look,” he said to the man, “this will get you court-martialed if you’re not careful. The Fьhrer doesn’t want you giving the English this sort of a propaganda victory.”
The British woman was groggily raising herself onto all fours. The stormtrooper took one last look at his victim, made a “pah!” noise of which any pantomime villain would have been proud, and strode away down the platform.
Russell helped her to her feet.
“What did you say to him?” she asked, gingerly feeling an already-swelling cheek.
“I appealed to his better nature.”
“There must be someone…” she began.
“There isn’t,” he assured her. “The laws don’t apply to Jews, or anyone who acts on their behalf. Just look after the children. They look like they need it.”
“I don’t need you to tell me…”
“I know you don’t. I’m just trying…”
She was looking past his shoulder. “He’s coming back.”
The Truppfьhrer had a Sturmfьhrer with him, a smaller man with round glasses and a chubby face. Out of uniform-assuming they ever took them off-he put them down as a shopkeeper and minor civil servant. Danzig’s finest.
“Your papers,” the Sturmfьhrer demanded.
“They’re in my hotel room.”
“What is your name?”
“John Russell.”
“You are English?”
“I’m an English journalist. I live in the Reich, and I have full accreditation from the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin.”
“We shall check that.”
“Of course.”
“And what are you doing here?”
“I came to see what was happening. As journalists do. I intervened in the argument between your colleague and this Red Cross worker because I thought his behavior was damaging the reputation of the Reich.”
The Sturmfьhrer paused for thought, then turned to his subordinate. “I’m sure my colleague regrets any misunderstanding,” he said meaningfully.
The Truppfьhrer looked at the woman. “I apologize,” he said woodenly.
“He apologizes,” Russell told her.
“Tell him to go to hell,” she said.
“She accepts your apology,” Russell told the two brownshirts.
“Good. Now she must get back on the train, and you must come with us.”
Russell sighed. “You should get on the train,” he told her. “You won’t get anywhere by protesting.”
She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said, as if it was anything but. “Thank you,” she added, offering her hand.
Russell took it. “Tell the press when you get back to civilization,” he said, “and good luck.”
He watched her mount the steps and disappear into the train. The children were all aboard now; most had their faces pressed against the windows, frantically wiping their breath from the glass to get a last clear look at their parents. A few had managed to force back the sliding ventilators and wedge their faces in the narrow gap. Some were shouting, some pleading. Most were crying.
Russell tore his gaze from the windows just in time to see a small girl leap nimbly down from the train and race across the platform. The stormtrooper by the door spun to catch her, but slipped in the slush as he did so, and fell face-first onto the platform. As he struggled to his feet a boy of around ten rushed past him.
The little girl’s arms were tightly wrapped around her kneeling mother’s neck. “Esther, we have to get on the train,” the boy said angrily, but daughter and mother were both crying too hard to notice him. The father’s anguished appeals to reason-“Ruth, we have to let her go; Esther, you must go with your brother”-fell on equally deaf ears.
The stormtrooper, red-faced with anger, took a fistful of the girl’s long black hair and yanked. The shock tore her arms from her mother’s neck, and he started dragging the girl across the slush-strewn platform to the train. The mother shrieked and went after them. He let go of the girl and crashed his rubber cosh across one side of the mother’s face. She sank back, a rivulet of blood running onto her coat collar. As the stormtrooper went to hit the woman again, her husband grabbed for the cosh, but two other brownshirts wrestled him to the ground, and started raining down blows on his head. The boy picked up his whimpering sister and shepherded her back onto the train.
More stormtroopers came racing up, but they needn’t have bothered. Like Russell, the watching parents were too stunned to protest, let alone intervene.
“I don’t want to go,” a small voice said behind him.
He turned to find its owner. She was standing on a seatback, face twisted sideways in an open ventilator, brown eyes brimming with tears. She couldn’t have been more than five.
“Please, can you tell the policemen that I don’t want to go? My name is Fraulein Gisela Kluger.”
Russell walked across to the train, wondering what on earth he could say. “I’m afraid you have to make this trip,” he said. “Your mother and father think you’ll be safer in England.”
“But I don’t want to,” she said, a large tear sliding down either cheek.
“I know, but…” Another whistle shrilled down the platform; a spasm of steam escaped from the locomotive. “I’m sorry,” he said helplessly.
The train jerked into motion. A momentary panic flitted across her face, followed by a look that Russell would long remember-one that blended accusation, incomprehension, and the sort of grief that no fiveyear-old should have to bear.
As the train pulled away a tiny hand poked out through the window and waved.
“I’m sorry,” Russell murmured.
Another hand grasped his arm. The Truppfьhrer’s. “You, English. Come with us.”
He was ushered down the platform in the Sturmfьhrer’s wake. Most of the mothers and fathers were still focussed on the disappearing train, their eyes clinging to the red taillight, the last flicker of family. They had sent their children away. To save their lives, they had turned them into orphans.
One woman, her eyes closed, was kneeling in the snow, a low keening noise rising up from inside her. The sound stayed with Russell as he was led out of the station. The sound of a heart caving in.
In the goods yard the Truppfьhrer pushed him toward a car. “My hotel’s just across the road,” Russell protested.
“We will collect your papers,” the Sturmfьhrer said.
As they bundled him into a car, it occurred to Russell that Shchepkin’s envelope was still sitting on his nightstand.
Danzig was waking up as they drove back toward the city center, shopkeepers clearing the night’s snow off their patches of sidewalk. Russell kept his eyes on where they were going, hoping to God it wasn’t some SA barracks out of humanity’s hearing range. As they pulled up outside an official police station on Hunde-Gasse he managed to suppress an audible sigh of relief.
The Truppfьhrer pulled him out of the car and pushed him violently toward the entrance doors. Russell slipped in the snow and fell up the steps, catching a shin on one of the edges. There was no time to check the wound, though-the Truppfьhrer was already propelling him forward.
Inside, a uniformed police officer was cradling a steaming cup of coffee. He looked up without much interest, sighed, and reached for the duty book. “Name?”
Russell told him. “I’m English,” he added.
The man was not impressed. “We all have to come from somewhere. Now empty your pockets.”
Russell did as he was told. “Who’s in charge here?” he asked. “The police or the SA?”
The policeman gave him a contemptuous look. “Take a guess,” he suggested.
Russell felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. “I want to speak to the British Consulate,” he said.
“No need for that,” the Truppfьhrer said behind him. “Now what’s your hotel name and room number?” Armed with this information, he went back out through the doors. Russell had a glimpse of gray light in the eastern sky.
He tried pleading with the duty officer, and received a shrug for his pains. A younger policeman was summoned to take him downstairs, where two rows of cells lay on either side of a dimly lit corridor. They had brick walls and tiled floors, black up to waist level, white above. Only a splash of blood was needed to exhaust the Nazi palate.
Russell slumped to the floor in his cell, his back against the far wall. No need to feel frightened, he told himself. They wouldn’t do any permanent damage to a foreign journalist.
They would if they thought he was a spy. What had Shchepkin put in the damn envelope? If Russell’s past experience with the NKVD was anything to go by, there was an institutional reluctance to spell anything out which verged on paranoia. And they wouldn’t want to leave him with anything he might conceivably use against them.
All of which was good news.
But what language was the damn letter written in? If it was in Russian, or if rubles were mentioned, that would be enough for goons like the Truppfьhrer.
He told himself to calm down. He had talked himself out of worse situations than this.
His shin was oozing blood, but didn’t look too bad. His stomach felt queasy, though whether from hunger or fear was hard to tell. Both, probably.
It felt like more than an hour had passed when he heard feet on the stairs. Booted feet, and several of them.
The sliding on his door window clanged open and clanged shut again. The boots moved on, another clang, but this time a door swung open. A voice protested-a voice Russell thought he recognized-the Jew who’d tried to protect his wife. The voice rose, and was cut off, leaving echoes inside Russell’s head. What had cut it off? A fist? A knee? A cosh? A door slammed shut.
Silence reigned, a heavy silence which offered no reassurance. Eventually a door scraped open, a remark drew laughter, and the boots were back in the corridor. Russell felt his breath catch as they headed his way, but they clattered on past and up the stairs, leaving him staring at his shaking hands. Pressing his ear to the door he could hear no groans of pain, only the stillness of unconsciousness or death.
Time went by. He’d rushed out of the hotel without his watch, and when a tray of food was eventually shoved through his hatch he wondered if it was lunch or supper. The boots never came back, and with each hour that passed he found himself feeling a little more optimistic. When the door finally opened his stomach lurched, but it was only the policeman who’d brought him down.
“This way, Herr Russell,” the man said, nodding toward the stairs.
They beat people up in the cells, Russell told himself. Upstairs had to be better.
Two corridors and two flights of stairs later, he was ushered through a door labelled KRIMINALINSPEKTOR TESMER. The man himself had greased black hair, blue eyes, thin lips, and a bad case of five o’clock shadow. “Please sit,” he told Russell.
He took one last look at the Englishman’s passport, and then passed it across the desk with the journalist’s accreditation. There was no sign of Shchepkin’s envelope.
“Everything is satisfactory,” Tesmer said with a sudden smile. “And I’m sorry it has taken so long.”
Russell reached for his documents. “I can go?” he asked, trying not to sound too relieved.
“Just one question.”
“Yes?” There was no life behind the eyes, Russell thought. This was a man to be careful with.
“Why did you come to Danzig, Herr Russell? To write a story about the Jewish children?”
“No. I had no idea a kindertransport was leaving from here. I’m staying at the hotel opposite the station, and the noise woke me up. I just walked across to see what was going on.”
“Then why did you come?”
Why indeed. Because he’d felt drawn to the place, the way a good journalist was always drawn to a story that mattered. A city in thrall to thugs and fools, and headed for disaster for precisely that reason. Danzig was Europe writ small. It was a story for everyone.
Almost everyone.
“Stamps,” he said, suddenly remembering a conversation he’d overhead in the Cafй Weitzke. The city’s German and Polish post offices were both putting out stamps to commemorate centuries-old victories over each other. “I do occasional pieces for philately journals, and the two post offices here are bringing out some interesting new issues. I’m hoping to interview the postmasters tomorrow.”
Tesmer looked disappointed, like a fisherman realizing that this catch was too small to eat. “Enjoy your stay,” he said curtly.
Once outside, Russell discovered it was almost ten o’clock. A bar supplied him with a sandwich and a much-needed drink, and he trudged back to his hotel through mostly empty streets. Shchepkin’s envelope was still lying where he’d left it.
It had been opened, though. Russell took out the single sheet and read it. They wanted four articles of between 1,200 and 1,500 words, delivered at fortnightly intervals, beginning in mid-January. The money was more generous than he’d expected-as much as an ordinary Soviet worker earned over a five-year-plan. The thought crossed his mind that a car would transform his Saturdays with Paul.
The letter was in German, the promised fee in Reichsmarks. There was nothing to say where the offer came from or what the articles would be about. “God bless the NKVD,” Russell murmured to himself.
He woke around ten. Thick snow was cascading past his window, almost obscuring the station opposite. He used the lobby phone to call the two post offices, and was granted audiences with their postmasters late that afternoon. By the time he emerged from the Cafй Weitzke on Lange-Gasse, replete with scrambled eggs, Kashubian mushrooms, and a mocha, he still had five hours to kill.
It had almost stopped snowing, but the sky was still heavy with cloud. As he stood there wondering what to do, there was a sudden swell of music from the loudspeakers which peppered the city. Hitler’s New Year speech to the nation, Russell remembered. Danzig wasn’t yet part of Germany, but try telling the Nazis that.
Russell sometimes enjoyed listening to Hitler. The man’s sheer effrontery was entertaining, and knowing that millions were being taken in by his ludicrous bloodlust gave the whole experience a deplorably thrilling edge. If the Fьhrer told them that gravity was a Jewish trick then millions of Germans would be practicing levitation before the sun set.
But Russell wasn’t in the mood. A couple of hours by the sea, he thought. There wouldn’t be any loudspeakers on the beach.
Hitler was just being introduced when a tram with a Brцsen destination board burrowed out of the Lange-Gasse Gate. Russell took a seat on the right and watched through the window as the tram skirted the Holz-Markt, swung right into Elisabeth-Wall, and passed his hotel at the bottom of the Stadt-Graben.
It was about six kilometers to Brцsen. Russell had taken the same ride back in 1935, during his last visit to Danzig. He’d been doing a series of articles on Germans at play, and it had been the middle of summer. The resort had been awash with holiday-makers, and he had gone for a paddle.
Not today. It was as dark as it had been all morning, and as the tram clanged and squealed its way out of the city the sparks from the overhead wires lit up the housefronts on either side of the street. The loudspeakers were still audible, though. As they passed through the outlying suburbs of Langfuhr and Saspe he heard snatches of the familiar voice, and one short passage in which the Fьhrer offered the German people his fulsome congratulations for their “wonderful behavior” in 1938. He was probably talking about Kristallnacht.
By the time they reached Brцsen the sky had visibly lightened. Russell got off outside the closed casino, where a single loudspeaker was manfully trying to distort the Fьhrer’s message. Russell listened to the crackle for a few seconds, struck by the notion that he and Hitler were sharing a private moment together. The latter was promising help with the “general pacification of the world.” Russell wondered how much irony one nation could eat.
He walked down past the boarded-up refreshment stands and pad-locked beach huts to the snow-strewn beach. The previous season’s final water temperature was still legible on the lifeguard hut blackboard, alongside a poster explaining the mysteries of artificial respiration. The men in the poster all wore striped bathing suits and mustaches, like a posse of cartoon Fьhrers.
The sea was gunmetal gray, the sky almost as dark, slate gray with a yellowish tinge. There was no one else in sight.
A couple of kilometers to the east, two beacon lights marked the end of Danzig’s channel to the sea, and Russell started walking in that direction. In the distance the lighthouse at the end of the dredged channel flickered into life with each revolution. To the north, a darker line marked the horizon and the outflung arm of the Hela Peninsula. Between the two a smudge of a freighter was inching out across the bay.
The stamp story was made for him, he thought. A story that amused and didn’t condemn. A story of stupidity, and rather lovable stupidity at that. He could implant a few ironies just beneath the skin of the text for those who wanted to pick at it, leave enough clues about the real situation for those who already understood it. They would congratulate themselves on reading between the lines, and him for writing between them. And he could sit on his necessary fence for a few more months, until Hitler drove something through it.
Too many metaphors, he told himself. And not nearly enough satisfaction.
He thought about the real Danzig story. Ten years ago he’d have written it, and written it well. But not now. Step out of line that far, and the toadies at the Propaganda Ministry would have him deported before he could say “Heil Hitler.” He’d be saying goodbye to his son, probably for the duration of a war. And probably to Effi as well. She’d told him often enough that she’d go to England, or better still America, with him, but he had his doubts whether she meant it, whether she’d ever willingly leave her sister, parents, agent, and vast array of friends for life in a new country where no one knew who she was.
He left the path and walked down to the edge of the water, searching for pebbles to skim. He wanted to take Shchepkin’s offer, he realized. He wasn’t sure why, though. He only half-bought the argument that by helping the Soviets he’d be hurting the Nazis. If he really wanted to take Hitler on there were more effective ways, but most of them depressingly self-sacrificial. The money would be nice, but the risks would be high. The Nazis still beheaded spies.
He skimmed a flat pebble between two waves. Could he trust Shchepkin? Of course he couldn’t. The Soviets might want what they said they wanted-no more, no less-but even if they did, that wouldn’t be the end of it. You didn’t do a few articles for Stalin, bank the checks, and move on. You were now on a list, one of their people, someone to call up when something else was needed. And once you were on the list, they took refusals badly.
And then there was the attitude of his own country to worry about. He didn’t need England now, but the way things were going he soon might, and writing for Stalin would hardly endear him to the Foreign Office. He could end up persona non grata with just about everyone. Why was he even thinking about it?
He knew why. A couple of weeks before Christmas Paul had told him about an exercise that new recruits into the Jungvolk were forced to undergo. They were taken out into the countryside without maps and invited to find their way back home the best they could. It was called a Fahrt ins Blau, a journey into the blue.
The idea had appealed to Paul, as it probably did to most boys of eleven. It appealed to Russell too. If he took this journey into the blue he might, conceivably, find his way home again.
He skimmed his last stone, a large one that took a single bounce and sunk. The sparse daylight was receding. The freighter and the Hela Peninsula had both been sucked into gray, and the beam from the lighthouse was sending shivers of reflection back off the darkening sea. He was in the middle of nowhere, lost in space. With ice for feet.
The two postmasters were both short-sighted men in sober suits with small mustaches. The Polish one could hardly wait for the honor of distributing his new stamps. A minion was sent for samples, and came back with King Jagiello and Queen Hedwig. The Polish queen, the postmaster explained, had spurned a German prince in favour of marrying the Lithuanian Jagiello. Their joint kingdom had forced the Prussians to accept the first Polish Corridor and bi-national status for Danzig. Admittedly this had all happened in the early fif-teenth century but-and here the postmaster leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smile-the contemporary relevance should be obvious. Even to a German.
The German postmaster had his own sample. His stamp featured a beautiful miniature of stout Danzigers routing the Polish forces of King Stefan Batory in 1577. “A German city defended by German arms,” he announced smugly. Russell repeated the question he had put to the Polish postmaster-weren’t these stamps a little provocative? Shouldn’t the civil authorities be trying to reduce the tension between their two countries, rather than using their stamps to stoke up old quarrels?
The German postmaster gave the same reply as his Polish opposite number. How, he asked, could anyone take postage stamps that seriously?
Russell’s train left the Hauptbahnhof at ten o’clock. After paying for a sleeping berth he could barely afford, he sat in the restaurant car for the better part of two hours, nursing a single gold-flecked schnapps, feeling restless and uncertain. The Polish customs officials checked his visa just before Dirschau and the German authorities examined his passport at Flatow, on the far side of the Polish Corridor. He had no trouble with the latter: If the Danzig SA were submitting a report on his visit they must have still been struggling with their spelling.
He thought about the kindertransport, wondered where it was at that moment. Still chugging west across Germany, most likely. The Englishwoman’s cheek would be purple by now-he hoped she would go to the press when she got back and make a real stink. Not that it would do any good. It had taken her five minutes to learn what Nazism was all about, but there was no substitute for first-hand experience. If you told people they didn’t believe you. No one, their eyes always said, could be as bad as that.
He walked back down the train to his sleeping compartment. The two lower berths were empty, one of the upper occupied by a gently snoring German youth. Russell sat on the opposite lower berth, pulled back the edge of the curtain, and stared out at the frozen fields of Pomerania.
He lay back and shut his eyes. Gisela Kluger looked back at him.
He would write Shchepkin’s articles. See where the journey took him. Into the blue. Or into the black.
Ha! Ho! He!
Russell’s train steamed across the bridge over Friedrichstrasse and into the station of the same name just before eight in the morning. An eastbound Stadtbahn train was disgorging its morning load on the other side of the island platform, and he stood behind the stairwell waiting for the crowd to clear. On the other side of the tracks an angry local was shaking a toasted almond machine in the vain hope that his coin would be returned. A railway official intervened and the two men stood there shouting at each other.
Welcome to Berlin, Russell thought.
He took the steps down to the underground concourse, bought a newspaper at the waiting room kiosk, and found himself a seat in the station buffet. The sight of his neighbor, a stout man in an Orpo uniform, cramming his mouth with large slices of blood sausage, did nothing for Russell’s appetite, and he settled for a buttered roll and four-fruit jam with his large milky coffee.
His newspaper shielded him from the blood sausage eater, but not from Nazi reality. He dutifully read Goebbels’s latest speech on the vibrancy of modern German culture, but there was nothing new in it. More anti-Jewish laws had come into force on the first: Driving automobiles, working in retail, and making craft goods had all been added to the verboten list. Russell wondered what was left. Emigration, he supposed. So why make it so hard for the poor bastards to leave?
He skimmed through the rest. More villages judenfrei, more kilometers of autobahn, more indignation about Polish behavior in the Corridor. A new U-boat epic at the cinema, children collecting old tin cans for Winter Relief, a new recipe for the monthly one-pot-stew. A Reich that will last a thousand years. Six down, nine hundred and ninety-four to go.
He thought about taking the U-bahn but decided he needed some exercise. Emerging onto Friedrichstrasse he found the remains of the last snowfall dribbling into the gutters. A ribbon of pale sunlight was inching down the upper walls on the eastern side of the street, but the street itself was still sunk in shadows. Little knots of people were gathered at the doors of about-to-open shops, many of them talking in that loud, insistent manner which non-Berliners found so annoying in the capital’s inhabitants.
It was a three kilometer walk to his rooms near Hallesches Tor. He crossed Unter den Linden by the Cafй Bauer, and strode south through the financial district, toward the bridge which carried the elevated U-bahn over Mohrenstrasse. Berlin was not a beautiful city, but the rows of gray stone buildings had a solidity, a dependability, about them.
On one corner of Leipzigerstrasse a frankfurter stall was gushing steam into the air, on another the astrologer whom Effi sometimes consulted was busy erecting his canvas booth. The man claimed he’d prepared a chart for Hitler in pre-Fьhrer days, but refused to divulge what was in it. Nothing good, Russell suspected.
Another kilometer and he was turning off Friedrichstrasse, cutting through the side streets to Neuenburgerstrasse and his apartment block. Walking south from Leipzigerstrasse was like walking down a ladder of social class, and the area in which he lived was still hoping for a visit from the twentieth century. Most of the apartment blocks were five storeys high, and each pair boasted a high brick archway leading into a dark well of a courtyard. A bedraggled birch tree stood in his, still clinging to its mantle of snow.
The concierge’s door was open, light spilling into the dark lobby. Russell knocked, and Frau Heidegger emerged almost instantly, her frown turning to a smile when she saw who it was. “Herr Russell! You said you would be back yesterday. We were beginning to worry.”
“I tried to telephone,” he lied. “But…”
“Ah, the Poles,” Frau Heidegger said resignedly, as if nothing better could be expected from her neighbors to the east. She wiped her hands on her apron and ushered him in. “Come, you must have a coffee.”
Accepting was easier than refusing. He took the proffered seat in her living room and gazed about him as she re-heated-for the last of heaven’s know how many times-her eternal pot of coffee. Her Advent wreath was still hanging from the light fixture along with its four gutted candles. On the walnut chest of drawers two packs of cards stood beside her precious People’s Radio. It was Tuesday, Russell realized, the day Frau Heidegger and three of her counterparts from the nearby blocks played skat.
She came back with the coffee and a small pile of post. A postcard from Paul, a probable Christmas card from his mother in the US, a letter from his American agent, and a business letter with a Berlin postmark.
“You had two telephone messages,” the concierge said, looking down through her pince-nez at a small piece of paper. “Your fiancйe”-Frau Heidegger always referred to Effi in that way, despite the fact that no prospective marriage had ever been mentioned-“says she will be back extremely late on Thursday night and will meet you at the Cafй Uhlandeck at noon on Friday. Does that sound right?”
“Yes.”
“And a Herr Conway-yes?-he would like you to call him as soon as possible.”
“I’ll call him after I’ve had my coffee,” Russell said, taking a first exploratory sip. It was burned, but so strong and sweet that you hardly noticed.
Frau Heidegger was telling him how she’d recently caught one of the tenants-the Sudeten German on the first floor who Russell hardly knew-opening a window. This was strictly forbidden when the heating was on, and the tenant had only been forgiven on the grounds that he came “from the mountains” and could hardly be expected to know any better. He didn’t know how lucky he was, Russell thought; his own rooms on the fourth floor sometimes resembled neighboring ovens. During one warm week in December he had regularly set his alarm for 3:00 AM, when the concierge was fairly certain to be asleep and he could throw open his windows for a life-saving blast of cool air.
He took another sip of coffee and wondered whether the war minister would be interested in developing it as a weapon. “Thank you, Frau Heidegger,” he said, carefully replacing the cup in its saucer and getting to his feet. “I already had two cups at the station,” he added in excuse.
“It’s good to have you back,” she said, following him to the door. She didn’t close it, though. She might miss something.
Russell walked over to the telephone at the foot of the stairs. Its installation a couple of years earlier had given Frau Heidegger cause for pride-her block was leading the way on Neuenburgerstrasse. But it had soon turned into something of a mixed blessing. A popular propensity for ringing at all times of the day and night had necessitated the introduction of a curfew, and the phone was now off the hook from ten at night till eight in the morning. It could still be used for outgoing calls during that time, but heaven help anyone who forgot to take it off again.
He unhooked the earpiece and dialed the British embassy’s number. Doug Conway worked in the commercial department, or so he claimed. Russell had met him at the Blau-Weiss club, where English-speaking expatriates played tennis, talked about how beastly their German hosts were, and lamented the lack of reliable domestic help. Russell hated the place, but time spent there was often good for business. As a journalist he had made a lot of useful contacts; as a part-time English tutor he had been pointed in the direction of several clients. He hoped Doug Conway had found him another.
“I’m rushed off my feet today,” Conway told him. “But I can squeeze in an early lunch. Wertheim at 12:30?”
“Fine,” Russell agreed, and started up the four flights of stairs which led to his rooms. At the top he paused for breath before unlocking the door and wondered for the umpteenth time about moving to a block with a lift. His rooms were stuffy and hot, so he left the front door ajar and risked opening a window by a few millimeters.
Stretched out on the threadbare sofa, he went through his mail. Paul’s postcard began “Dear Dad,” but seemed mostly concerned with the Christmas presents he’d received from his stepfather. The boy did say he was looking forward to the football game on Saturday, though, and Russell took another look out of the window to convince himself that the weather was warming up and that the game would be played.
The envelope from America was indeed a Christmas card from his mother. It contained one cryptic line: “This might be a good year to visit me.” She was probably referring to the situation in Europe, although for all Russell knew she might have contracted an incurable disease. She certainly wouldn’t tell him if she had.
He opened the business letters. The one from his American agent contained a check for $53.27, payment for an article on “Strength Through Joy” cruises which a dozen US papers had taken. That was the good news. The Berlin letter was a final, rather abusively written demand for payment on a typewriter repair bill, which would account for more than half the dollar inflow.
Looking round the room at the all-too-familiar furniture and yellowing white walls, at the poster from Effi’s first film, the tired collage of photographs, and the dusty overloaded bookshelves, he felt a wave of depression wash over him.
The city’s largest wertheim department store occupied a site twice the size of the late-lamented Reichstag, and a frontage running to 330 meters. Inside, it boasted 83 lifts, 100,000 light bulbs and 1,000 telephone extensions. Russell knew all this because he had written an article on the store a year or so earlier. More to the point, the restaurant offered good food and service at a very reasonable rate, and it was only a five-minute walk from the British embassy on Wilhelmstrasse.
Doug Conway had already secured a table, and was halfway through a gin and tonic. A tall man of around 35 with sleek blond hair and bright blue eyes, he looked custom-made for Nazi Berlin, but was in fact a fairly decent representative of the human race. State-educated and low-born by embassy standards-his father had been a parks superintendent in Leeds-he had arrived in Berlin just as the Nazis seized power. His pretty young wife Mary was probably brighter than he was, and had once confided in Russell that she intended to torch the Blau-Weiss Club before she left Berlin.
Conway’s taste in food had not traveled far from his roots. He looked pained when Russell ordered the pigs knuckle and sauerkraut, and plumped for the pot roast and mash.
“I’ve got some teaching work for you if you want it,” he told Russell while they waited. “It’s a Jewish family called Wiesner. The father is-was-a doctor. His wife is ill most of the time, though I don’t know what with-worry, most likely. Their son was taken off to Sachsenhausen after Kristallnacht and hasn’t been seen since, though the family have heard that he’s still alive. And there are two daughters, Ruth and Marthe, who are both in their teens-thirteen and fifteen, or something like that. It’s them you’d be teaching.”
Russell must have looked doubtful.
“You’d be doing me a real favor if you took them on,” Conway persisted. “Felix Wiesner probably saved Phyllis’s life-this was back in 1934-there were complications with the birth and we couldn’t have had a better doctor. He wasn’t just efficient; he went out of his way to be helpful. And now he can’t practice, of course. I don’t know what he intends to do-I don’t know what any of them can do-but he’s obviously hoping to get his daughters to England or the States, and he probably thinks they’ll have a better chance if they speak English. I have no idea what his money situation is, I’m afraid. If he can’t earn, and there’s all the new taxes to pay… well… But if he can’t pay your normal rate then I’ll top up whatever he can afford. Just don’t tell him I’m doing it.”
“He might like the idea that somebody cares,” Russell said.
“I don’t know about…”
“I’ll go and see him.”
Conway smiled. “I hoped you’d say that.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his inside pocket and passed it across the table. “Here’s his address.”
It was in Friedrichshain, hardly a normal stomping ground for high-class Jewish doctors.
“He used to live in Lьtzow,” Conway explained. “Now they’re all hunkering down together in the poorest areas. Like medieval ghettos.”
The food arrived and they ate in silence for a couple of minutes, before exchanging news of their children and the German schools they were attending. Conway and his wife had also seen Effi’s musical, and clearly wished they hadn’t, though Conway was much too diplomatic to actually say so.
Over coffee Russell asked how the Embassy saw the next few months.
“Off the record?”
“Off the record.”
“We’re on a knife-edge. If our mustachioed chum is happy with what he’s got, then fine. The appeasers will say ‘I told you so-he may be a nasty little shit, but he can be managed.’ But if he goes after more-Danzig or the Corridor or the rest of Czechoslovakia-then Churchill and his pals will be the ones saying, ‘I told you so.’ And there’ll be a war.”
“Doug, how do you persuade the British people that the Czechs weren’t worth fighting for, but the Poles are? The Czechs have a functioning democracy of sorts. The Poles would be just like this lot if they had any talent for organization.”
Conway grimaced. “That’ll be up to the politicians. But I’ll tell you what London’s really worried about. If Hitler does behave for a few years, and if he keeps building tanks, U-boats and bombers at the current rate, then by Forty-one or Forty-two he’ll be unstoppable. That’s the real nightmare. As far as we’re concerned-from a purely military point of view-the sooner the better.”
There was no telephone at the Wiesners’ but, as Conway had noted, the doctor didn’t have much to go out for. No U-bahn had been built out into the working class wastes of Friedrichshain, so Russell took a 13 tram from the Brandenburg Gate to Spittelmarkt and a 60 from there to Alexanderplatz and up Neue Konigstrasse. The city deteriorated with each passing kilometer, and by the time he reached his destination most of it seemed to be on sale. The sidewalk was lined with makeshift tables, all piled high with belongings that would-be Jewish emigrants were trying to shift. The complete works of Dickens in German were on sale for a few Reichsmarks, a fine-looking violin for only a little more.
The Wiesners’ block made his own seem middle class. The street was cobbled, the walls plastered with advertisements for auctions and lists of items for sale. On the pavement a group of painfully thin young girls were hopping their way through a game of Heaven and Earth on a chalkmarked grid. In the courtyard of the Wiesners’ building the far wall still bore the faintest outline of a large hammer and sickle and the much-faded slogan ERST ESSEN, DANN MIET-first food, then rent.
The Wiesners shared two overcrowded rooms on the second floor. Contrary to Conway’s expectation, the doctor was out. He was only attending to a neighbor, however, and the older of the two daughters was sent to fetch him, leaving Russell, Frau Wiesner, and her younger daughter to exchange small talk. Frau Wiesner, a small woman with tied-back blond hair and tired gray eyes, looked anything but Jewish, while her younger daughter Ruth bore a striking resemblance to Effi, both physically and, Russell judged, temperamentally. Effi had often been mistaken for a Jew, and various employers had insisted she carry the fragebogen, which testified to her Aryan descent, at all times. She of course liked nothing better than shoving the mistake back in people’s faces.
Dr. Wiesner appeared after a few minutes, looking decidedly harassed. His wife and two daughters abruptly withdrew to the next room and closed the door behind them.
He was about fifty, Russell guessed, and aging fast. He ran a hand through his thinning hair and got straight down to business-as Conway had said, he hoped to get his daughters away to relations in England. He was working on getting them visas and exit permits, and in the meantime he wanted them to learn English. “I speak a little,” he said in that language, “and I will try and help them, but they need a proper teacher.”
“I have taught around twenty German children,” Russell said.
Wiesner grunted. “German children,” he repeated. “I’m afraid my children are no longer considered German.”
Russell said nothing.
“You are wondering why we stayed,” Wiesner said. “I ask myself the same thing every day and I have many answers, but none of them is worth anything. My wife is not Jewish,” he added, “so my children are only half-Jewish, or mischlings as the Nazis call them, but I thought perhaps… Well, I was a fool.” He reached behind himself and plucked a piece of paper from a shelf-full of music. It was, of all things, a page of Der Stьrmer. “Listen to this,” the doctor said, adjusting his glasses on his nose and holding the page almost at arm’s length. “‘Even if a Jew slept with an Aryan woman once, the membranes of her vagina would be so impregnated with alien semen that the woman would never again be able to bear pure blooded Aryans.’” He lowered the paper and looked at Russell. “Who could believe such pre-scientific nonsense? It doesn’t even make sense on their own illiterate terms-surely the master race would have the all-powerful blood, not the people they despise.” He saw something in Russell’s face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I am telling you all this. It’s just so hard to accept.”
“I understand,” Russell said.
“So why do you, an Englishman, stay in Germany?” Wiesner asked him.
Russell gave a short account of his situation.
“That is difficult,” the doctor agreed. “But good news for my daughters if you agree to teach them.”
“How many lessons do you have in mind?”
“As many as you can manage. And as often.”
“Three times a week? Monday, Wednesday, Friday? It’ll vary a bit. I can’t do Friday this week, but I could do Thursday.”
“Whatever you say. Now for the difficult part. I have some money, but not very much. And-here I must trust you-I have some valuable stamps. I can show you the valuation in the current catalogue and add another ten percent.”
It was a nice idea, but Russell couldn’t do it. “The catalogue value will suit me fine.”
It was almost dark when he emerged from the Wiesners’ block, and the tram rides home through the evening rush hour seemed endless. By the time he reached Hallesches Tor he was ready for supper, and his favourite beerhouse beneath the elevated U-bahn provided the necessary meatballs and potato pancakes. Over a second beer he decided not to sell any of Wiesner’s stamps unless he really needed to. He would give them to Paul, whose collection could do with some rarities.
That was assuming his son would accept them. Paul was forever worrying about his father’s financial state-an anxiety which Russell occasionally, and without much conviction, tried to blame on his ex-wife Ilse.
He looked at his watch: He didn’t have long to ring Paul before his bedtime. A U-bahn rattled into the station above as he emerged from the beerhouse, and a stream of people were soon pouring down the iron staircase, exhaling thick puffs of breath in the cold evening air. It was one of those Berlin days when the weather seemed uncertain what to do, one minute veering toward a western warmth, the next favoring an eastern chill.
Entering his street, he noticed what looked like an empty car parked across from his apartment block. This was unusual-very few people in the area could afford one. He thought about crossing the street to take a look inside but decided he was being paranoid. He hadn’t done anything to upset the authorities. Not yet, anyway.
A blast of hot air greeted him as he opened the outside doors of the apartment block. Frau Heidegger’s skat evening was in full swing, the volume of laughter suggesting a large consignment of empty bottles for the morning collection. Russell dialed the number of the house in Grunewald, put the earpiece to one ear and a finger in the other. As he half-expected, Ilse picked up. They asked each other the usual questions, gave the usual answers, all with the faint awkwardness which they never seemed able to shake. The family had just gotten back from Hanover, and when Paul came on he was full of the wonders of the autobahn and his stepfather’s new Horch 830 Bl. As far as Saturday was concerned, his usual school lessons had been replaced by Jungvolk meetings, and these ran until one o’clock. “Muti says you can pick me up then.”
“Right.” Effi would be pleased, Russell thought. He wouldn’t have to leave while she was still fast asleep.
“And we’re still going to the Viktoria match?”
“Of course. I expect Uncle Thomas and Joachim will come too.”
They chatted for another couple of minutes, before Ilse’s voice in the background decreed that time was up. Russell said good night and, feeling the usual mixture of elation and frustration, started up the stairs.
He was waylaid on the third floor landing by the other resident journalist in the building, a young American named Tyler McKinley. “I thought I heard your weary tread,” the American said in English. “Come in for a minute. I want to ask you something.”
It seemed simpler to say yes than no. McKinley’s room wasn’t particularly warm-like the other residents he knew that skat night was a chance to freshen the air-but it was full of pipe-smoke from the atrocious Balkan mixture he had adopted during a weekend trip to Trieste.
“How was Danzig?” his host asked, though Russell could see he was bursting with stuff of his own to talk about. There was something lovable about McKinley, but also something profoundly irritating. Russell hoped that this wasn’t just because McKinley, with his quasi-religious belief in crusading journalism, reminded him of himself in long-gone days. That was the trouble with the young-their stupidities brought back one’s own.
“Interesting,” he answered, though it had been anything but in the way that McKinley meant. He considered telling him about the stamp wars, but could imagine the look of incomprehension and vague derision which that would elicit.
The younger man was already back in Berlin. “I’m chasing a really interesting story,” he said. “I don’t want to say anything yet,” he hastened to add, “but… do you know anything about the KdF, the Kanzlei des Fьhrers?”
“It’s the great man’s private chancellery.”
“Is it a government office?”
“No, it’s a Party office, but an independent one. There’s no connection to Bormann’s bunch in Munich.”
McKinley looked excited. “So who is it connected to?”
Russell shrugged. “Nobody. It reports directly to Hitler as far as I know.”
“So if he wanted to do something on the quiet, it would be the ideal instrument.”
“Uh-huh.”
McKinley beamed, as if he’d just awarded himself a gold star.
“You want to tell me what you’re talking about?” Russell asked, interested in spite of himself.
“Not yet,” the American said, but he couldn’t resist one more question. “Does the name Knauer mean anything to you?”
“A fullback with Tennis Borussia a few years back?”
“What? Oh, a soccer player. No, I don’t think so.” He reached for a lighter to re-start his pipe. “But thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome,” Russell said, and resumed his ascent.
His room was sweltering, but mercifully smoke-free. Guessing that the skat game still had a couple of hours to run, he threw one window wide and gazed out across the rooftops. In the far distance the red light atop the Funkturm winked above the roofscape.
He sat down at the typewriter, inserted a sheet of paper, and reminded himself that the letter he was about to write was-as far as the Soviets were concerned-just a long-winded way of saying yes. His real audience was the Gestapo.
Play the innocent, he thought. The Gestapo would think he was trying to fool the Soviets, and assume he was just being cynical.
He began by asserting the happy coincidence that National Socialism and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had one crucial word in common-socialism. That should give them both a laugh, he thought. They might seem like enemies, he continued, but clearly they had something important in common-socialism’s determination to serve all the people. What could serve the people better than peace? And what served peace better than mutual understanding? If the Soviet people were offered, in a series of articles, a clearer idea of how much National Socialism had achieved for ordinary German people, then the chances of peace were bound to be enhanced. As an Englishman with a long experience of Germany he was ideally placed to explain it to foreigners. And he had a strong personal reason for desiring peace-if war came, he added pathetically, he and his German-born son might be separated for years and years. “Here I am,” he murmured to himself, “a propaganda tool for the taking.” The Gestapo would lap it up.
He copied the address from Shchepkin’s note onto an envelope, unearthed a stamp from the table drawer, and perched the completed missive on his typewriter. Hearing the sounds of departing concierges floating up from the courtyard he made a dive for the window and pulled it shut.
Bed, he thought. The bathroom on the floor below which he shared with McKinley and two other men-a stationery rep from Hamburg and a waiter from the Harz Mountains-was empty for once, though the strong smell of McKinley’s pipe smoke suggested a lengthy occupation earlier that evening. There was still light under the American’s door, and Russell could hear the soft clicking of his typewriter-the newer machines were much quieter than his own antique.
Back in bed, he re-read Paul’s postcard and resumed reading the detective novel he had forgotten to take to Danzig. Unable to remember who anyone was, he turned out the light and listened to the muffled hum of the traffic on nearby Lindenstrasse. The Fьhrer was probably allowed to sleep with his windows open.
He spent the next two days looking after business. Wednesday and Thursday morning, he made the long trek out to Friedrichshain for two 90-minute sessions with the Wiesner girls. The elder daughter Marthe was a bit shy at first, but Ruth’s enthusiasm proved infectious enough to bring her out. The two of them knew very little English, but they were a joy to teach, eager to learn and markedly more intelligent than the spoiled daughters of Grunewald and Wilmersdorf whom Russell had taught in the past.
This was on the Wednesday-the following day both girls looked as though they’d seen a ghost, and Russell wondered whether they’d had bad news from Sachsenhausen. When he asked if they were all right, he thought Marthe was going to cry, but she took a visible grip on herself and explained that her brother had come home the previous evening.
“But that’s wonderful…” Russell began.
“He doesn’t seem like Albert,” Ruth broke in, looking over her shoulder at the door through to the other rooms. “He has no hair, and he doesn’t say anything,” she whispered.
“He will,” Marthe told her sister, putting an arm round her. “He’s just seen some terrible things, but he hasn’t been hurt, not really. Now come on, we have to learn English. For everyone’s sake.”
And they did, faster than any pupils Russell could remember. Neither mother nor brother emerged from the other rooms, and Doctor Wiesner was out on both days. On the Thursday he left Russell a small amount of marks and three stamps in an envelope on top of the latest Stanley Gibbons catalogue from England. Russell didn’t bother to check the listings.
Wednesday afternoon, he had typed out the stamp wars article and stuck two copies in the red air mail box by the Hotel Bristol entrance on Unter den Linden. Thursday morning, a telegram arrived from his London agent pointing out the need for exclusive photographs with his piece on Hitler’s new Chancellery, and that afternoon Russell dragged himself out to a photographic studio in the wilds of Neukцlln, only to discover that the photographer in question, a Silesian named Zembski whom he’d used in the past, had just lost his official accreditation after starting a brawl at one of Goering’s hunting parties. Zembski weighed over 200 pounds, and could hardly be smuggled into the Fьhrer’s new insult to architecture, but he did prove willing to rent out one of his better cameras. After a short instruction course Russell carried the Leica back to Hallesches Tor.
Frau Heidegger was waiting for him-or anyone-in the lobby. Her husband had been killed in the last war-“You might have been the one who shot him,” she frequently told Russell-and his brother had just been round to see her, full of useful information about the next one. She had assumed it would take place at some distance from her door, but this illusion had been cruelly shattered. “Cities will be bombed flat,” her brother-in-law had told her, “flat as ironing boards.”
Russell told her that, yes, English or French or Russian bombers could now reach Berlin, but that most of them would be shot down if they tried, because air defenses were improving all the time. She didn’t look convinced, but then neither was he. How many Europeans, he wondered, had any idea what kind of war they were headed for?
Fridaymorning was sunny and cold. After a late breakfast of rolls and coffee at a local cafй, Russell walked west along the Landwehrkanal. He wasn’t due to meet Effi for a couple of hours, so he took his time, stopping to read his morning paper on a bench near the double-decker bridges which carried the U-bahn and Reichsbahn lines over the torpid brown water. Coal-laden barges chugged by, leaving thin trails of oil in their wake.
He walked on for another kilometer or so, leaving the canal where it passed under Potsdamerstrasse. Almost exactly twenty years earlier, the bodies of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht had been fished out of waters close to this spot. The empty site on the other side of the road had been home to a synagogue until the previous November. Rosa, of course, had been everything the Nazis despised-a Jew, a communist, a woman who refused to stay home and rear children. Russell was surprised that no official celebration had been decreed for the anniversary of her death.
Cutting through side streets, he eventually reached the domed Ubahn station at Nollerndorfplatz, and started walking up Kleiststrasse toward the distant spires of the Kaiser Memorial church. As the Ubahn tracks beside him slid slowly underground, the shops grew progressively larger and richer, the awnings of the pavement cafйs more decorative. Despite the cold, most of the outside seats were occupied; men and women sat in their overcoats, or tightly wrapped in large blankets, chewing their cream cakes and sipping at their steaming coffees.
Both sidewalks and road were crowded now. Shoppers streamed in and out of the KaDeWe department store on Wittenbergplatz, cars and trams ran bumper to bumper on the narrower Tauenzienstrasse, jostling each other round the neo-Gothic Memorial Church, with its distressingly secular mosaics celebrating the highly dubious glories of past German emperors. Walking past it, and thinking about his conversation with Frau Heidegger, Russell had a sudden mental picture of jagged spires looming out of a broken roof, a future Berlin pre-figured in his memories of northern France.
He started up the busy Kurfьrstendamm, or the Ku’damm, as everyone called it. The Cafй Uhlandeck, where he was supposed to meet Effi, was a ten minute stroll away, and he still had half an hour to spare. An African parrot in a pet shop caught his attention: It was the sort of birthday present Effi would love, but he doubted her ability to look after it properly. For one thing she was away too often. For another, she was Effi.
A woman in a fur coat emerged from the shop with two pedigree schnauzers in tow. Both had enamel swastikas fastened to their collars, and Russell wondered whether they had pictures of the Fьhrer pinned up inside their kennels. Would that be considered a sign of respect, or the lack of such? Political etiquette in the Third Reich was something of a minefield.
He passed the “aryanized” Grunfeld factory, and the site of another destroyed synagogue. A photographic album of such sites would be a best-seller in Nazi Germany: Judenfrei: The Photographic Record. Page after page of burned synagogues, followed by “then and now” pictures of aryanized firms. A forward by the Fьhrer, which would probably turn out to be longer than the book. The lucky author would probably get invites to Goering’s hunting weekends and Streicher’s whipping orgies.
Russell stopped and watched a tram cross the intersection, bell clanging. Why was he feeling so angry this morning? Was it the kindertransport and the Wiesner girls? Or just six years of accumulated disgust? Whatever it was, it served no purpose.
Reaching the Cafй Uhlandeck he sat at one of the outside tables and stared back down the Ku’damm in search of Effi’s familiar silhouette. He had met her a few days before Christmas 1933, while researching a piece on Leni Riefenstahl for a Hollywood gossip magazine. At a studio party someone had pointed out a slim, black-haired woman in her late twenties, told Russell that her name was Effi Koenen, and that she had appeared alongside Riefenstahl when the latter was still acting in films, rather than directing them.
Effi’s part in that film, as she was only too happy to inform him, had consisted of “five lines, two smiles, one pout, and a dignified exit.” She had thought Riefenstahl a good actress, but had hated Triumph of the Will for its humorlessness. Russell had asked her out to dinner, and rather to his astonishment she had accepted. They had got on like a house on fire-in the restaurant, on the half-drunken walk home to her flat, in her large soft bed. Five years later, they still did.
The flat was a couple of blocks north of the Ku’damm, a three room affair which her wealthy parents had bought in the early 1920s from a victim of the Great Inflation, and given to her as a twenty-fifth birthday present. Her acting career had been reasonably successful-a film here, a play there, a musical if nothing else was on offer-without making her rich or particularly famous. She was occasionally recognized on the street when Russell was with her, and almost always for the part she had played in a 1934 film, the wife of a stormtrooper beaten to death by communists. That had been a “seventeen lines, one smile, one scream, dignified-at-funeral” part.
She was currently appearing in Barbarossa, a musical biography of the twelfth-century Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I. As one of his generals’ wives, she sang part of the joyous send-off when they left for the Crusades, and part of the lament for those who failed to come home. Like most of the cast, she wasn’t much of a singer, but no one had bothered to include musical ability, a decent script, or memorable songs in the production. It was, as one of the early Berlin reviews put it, “a hymn to national consciousness.”
Much to Effi’s disgust it had pulled in large audiences, both in Berlin during the weeks leading up to Christmas and across the Reich during the holiday season itself. A second season in Berlin was beginning that night and Effi expected the seats to be full again: “All those who couldn’t believe how bad it was the first time will be coming back to make sure.”
Russell hadn’t seen her for almost a fortnight, which seemed a long time. They generally spent as much of the weekend together as their-mostly her-work allowed, along with at least one night in midweek and an unpredictable number of lunches and afternoons. She was fond of saying that her three-year marriage to a now-famous actor had left her with a love of living alone, and had never suggested that Russell move in with her. He told himself and everyone else that he was happy, more than happy, with their days and nights together, and happy to spend the other days and nights without her. And most of the time he believed it. Just occasionally he found himself thinking that love was indivisible, and that loving someone was resenting each hour apart. He did love Effi, from her long raven hair to her small brown toes. He loved everything about her, he thought, looking at his watch, except for her complete inability to arrive anywhere on time.
It was 12:25 when she finally appeared. She was wearing the black overcoat which almost reached her ankles, a new crimson scarf wrapped around her neck, chin, and mouth, and the Russian fur hat she had bought in Moscow ten years before, yet even trussed up like a mummy she turned the heads of male passersby. “I’ve got a cold,” was the first thing she said once they’d embraced. “I need soup.”
Russell suggested that they go inside, but she refused. “Fresh air’s the best thing for colds,” she insisted.
He got them both bowls of soup and watched her demolish hers. “We got in at four in the morning,” she said between spoonfuls, “and we’ve got to be in early this evening to discuss some changes the musical director has in mind.”
“A new score?” Russell asked.
“If only. It’ll be nothing. He just has to justify the fact that he’s still being paid.” She started tearing up a roll and dropping it in the soup. “You’ll pick me up after the show?”
“Of course. I’ll come and watch the last half hour if they’ll let me in. It’s the same man on the door?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll make sure they know you’re coming.” She spooned a chunk of sodden bread into her mouth. “This is good. I feel better already. How have you been? How’s Paul?”
“Haven’t seen him yet. But he sounds all right.”
“Danzig?”
“Suitably gloomy,” he said. He told her about the stamp wars, which made her laugh, and the Soviet request for articles, which drew a raised eyebrow. “It’s just work,” he said. There didn’t seem any point in mentioning the oral reports, or in spoiling their reunion with an account of the kindertransport and his day in jail.
She used the last of his roll to soak up the last of her soup. “I feel much better,” she said again. “And I’ve still got three hours before I have to be at the theater.” She reached out a slender hand for his. “Shall we go back to the flat?”
Later that evening, Russell arrived backstage in time to hear the lament for the fallen heroes. It seemed more Wagnerian than ever, and he realized that the musical director had decided to apply the Third Reich’s guiding principle-never speak when you can shout. The military widows now had an entire choir of breast-swelling Valkyries to augment their lamentations. The front rows of the audience looked suitably stunned.
After the show, Russell talked football with the stage-door-keeper while he waited for Effi. She emerged after half an hour or so, still snuffling but full of post-performance energy. It was clear and cold outside, the sidewalks crowded with people. They walked arm in arm past the entrance to the aquarium, and along the southern side of the zoo toward the glowing glasshouse which straddled the elevated lines at Zoo Station. The station buffet was doing a roaring trade, but they managed to find a couple of stools and order a nightcap. This was the last place in Berlin where Jews could still buy a coffee, but there were no obvious Jewish faces in evidence. The city by night was an Aryan preserve.
As they left the buffet an international express steamed out across Hardenbergstrasse, rumbling the girders of the bridge and pumping bursts of white smoke toward the stars. Russell found himself wishing, if only for a moment, that he and Effi were two of the silhouettes in the necklace of illuminated windows, headed for another life in Amsterdam or Paris or New York-anywhere, in fact, beyond Hitler’s rancid realm.
It was almost one when they got back to the flat. Their lovemaking that afternoon had been almost frenzied, but now they took it slowly, luxuriously, taking each other to the brink again and again before finally, joyously, tumbling over it together. Wrapped in each other’s arms, Effi went to sleep almost immediately, but Russell’s brain refused to let him be. He had not been angry with the Nazis that morning, he realized. He had been angry with himself. Angry at his own helplessness. Angry that all he could manage was fantasies of escape.
It suddenly occurred to him that his imaginary book of photographs might make a real impact abroad. Especially in America, where the Jewish organizations had some political clout. He could get pictures of old Jewish businesses from press libraries and shoot the rest himself with Zembski’s camera. Getting it out would be a problem, but he’d worry about that-and ensuring his own anonymity-when the time came. And if anyone noticed him taking pictures of burned-out synagogues he could say he was compiling the record of anti-Semitic triumphs he had originally envisaged. He smiled to himself in the dark.
The next morning they walked to their usual cafй in the Tiergarten for milky coffee and rolls. The winter sun was already riding high in the southeastern sky, and as they strolled back along the northern bank of the Landwehrkanal it seemed as if most of Berlin had had the same idea. Effi had arranged to meet her older sister Zarah for lunch, something she often did when Russell was seeing his son. He had never particularly liked Zarah, who had none of Effi’s fitful ability to look beyond herself, and had married an ambitious Nazi civil servant. Soon after Russell met Effi, she had asked his help in arranging an abortion for Zarah in England, which he had done. Zarah had traveled to London, decided at the last moment she couldn’t go through with it, and had eventually given birth to a boy. Much to everyone’s surprise, she had doted on the child from day one. Much to Russell’s annoyance, she blamed him for the fact that she had nearly had an abortion.
After he and Effi parted, Russell caught a 76 tram outside the zoo for Grunewald, and watched the houses grow bigger as it worked its way through Halensee and into Berlin’s prosperous southwestern suburbs. Paul’s school was a five-minute walk from the tram terminus, and just down the road from the large tree-shrouded villa which his stepfather Matthias Gehrts had inherited from his father. Both school and villa backed onto one of the small lakes which dotted the area, and sitting on a low wall besides the school gates, Russell had occasional glimpses of sailboats between buildings. A couple of women arrived on foot to pick up their sons, but his fellow dads all arrived in cars, and stood around discussing the reliability of their mechanics.
The Jungvolk appeared soon after one, buttoning their overcoats over their uniforms as they walked to the gate. Paul half-ran to greet him, a big smile on his face.
“So where shall we go today?” Russell asked.
“The Funkturm.”
“Again?” They had visited Berlin’s radio tower at least half a dozen times in 1938.
“I like it there.”
“Okay. Let’s get a tram then. Do you want me to carry that?” he asked, indicating the large book his son was holding.
“We’ll take turns,” Paul decided.
“What is it?’ Russell asked.
“It’s the yearbook,” Paul said, holding it out.
The Hitler Youth Yearbook, Russell realized, as he skimmed through the pages. There were 500 of them. “So what did you do today?”
“The same as usual to begin with. Roll-call and gymnastics and then the history lesson-that was all about Germania and the Romans and how most history people get it wrong about them. They think the Romans were civilized and the Germans were barbarians, but in fact it was the other way round-the Romans got mixed up with other races and got soft and lazy and forgot how to fight but the Germans stayed German and that made them strong.” They reached the tram stop just as a tram squealed to a halt. “And after the history lesson,” Paul went on, once they were in their seats, “we did some work on the map wall-remember?-we’re doing a whole wall of maps of Germany from the beginning to now. It’s beginning to look really good.” He looked out the window. “There’s a shop down here that sells model soldiers, and they’ve got the new set of dead soldiers. Someone at school brought them in. They’re really real.”
They would be, Russell thought. Death and toys, the German specialties.
“If they’d come out before Christmas, I’d have them now,” Paul said wistfully.
They reached Halensee Station and climbed down the steps to the Ringbahn platform. “And then we had a talk from this old man,” Paul said, as they watched an electric train pull away from the opposite platform and accelerate down the cutting. “Quite old, anyway. He was much more than forty. He came to talk about the last war and what it was like. He said there weren’t many aeroplanes or tanks, and there was lots of hand-to-hand fighting. Is that true?”
“There was some. Depends what he meant by lots.”
“I think he meant it was happening all the time.” Paul looked up at Russell. “I didn’t believe a lot of the things he said. I mean, he said that the best thing a soldier could do was to die for his country. And one of the boys in the back asked him if he was sorry that he hadn’t died, and the man didn’t reply. The boy was told to report to the leader’s room after the talk, and he looked pretty sick when he came out.”
“Did they give him a whacking?”
“No, I think they just shouted at him. He wasn’t trying to be clever-he’s just a bit stupid.”
Their train pulled in, and Paul spent the single stop ride staring out of the window at the skeletal Funkturm rising out of the tangle of railways. Finished in 1926, it looked like a smaller version of the Eiffel Tower, which probably galled the Nazis to no end. “The elevator’s going up,” Paul said, and they watched it climb toward the viewing platform 126 meters above the ground.
Fifteen minutes later they were waiting at the bottom for their own ride. One lift carried them to the restaurant level, 55 meters up, another to the circular walkway with its panoramic view of the city. The viewing platform was crowded, children lining up to use the coin-operated binoculars. Russell and his son worked their way slowly round, gazing out beyond the borders of the city at the forests and lakes to the southwest, the plains to the north and east. The Olympic Stadium loomed close by to the west, and Berlin’s two other high buildings-the office tower of the Borsig locomotive works and the futuristic Shellhaus-both seemed closer than usual in the clear air. As tradition demanded, once Paul got his hands on the binoculars he turned them toward the northern suburb of Gesundbrunnen, where Hertha’s flag was fluttering above the roof of the Plumpe’s solitary grandstand. “Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC!” he chanted underneath his breath.
In the restaurant below they both ordered macaroni, ham, and cheese-washed down, in Paul’s case, with a bottle of Coca Cola.
“Would you like to see New York?” Russell asked, following a thread of thought that had begun on the viewing platform.
“Oh yes,” Paul said. “It must be fantastic. The Empire State Building is more than three times as high as this, and it has a viewing platform right near the top.”
“We could stay with your grandmother.”
“When?”
“A few years yet. When you finish school, maybe.”
Paul’s face fell. “There’ll be a war before then.”
“Who says so?”
Paul looked at him with disbelief. “Everybody does.”
“Sometimes everybody’s wrong.”
“Yes, but…” He blew into his straw, making the Coke bubble and fizz. “Dad,” he began, and stopped.
“What?”
“When you were in the war, did you want to die for England?”
“No, I didn’t.” Russell was suddenly conscious of the people at the tables nearby. This was not a conversation to have in public.
“Did you want to fight at all?”
“Let’s go back up top,” Russell suggested.
“Okay,” Paul agreed, but only after he’d given Russell one of those looks which suggested he should try harder at being a normal father.
They took the elevator once more, and found an empty stretch of rail on the less-popular side, looking away from the city. Down to their left an S-bahn train was pulling out of the Olympic Stadium station.
“I didn’t want to fight,” Russell began, after pausing to marshal his thoughts. “I didn’t volunteer-I was conscripted. I could have refused, and probably gone to prison instead, but I wasn’t certain enough about my feelings to do that. I thought maybe I was just afraid, and that I was hiding behind my opinions. But once I got to the trenches it was different. There were a few idiots who still believed in death and glory, but most of us knew that we’d been conned. All the governments were telling their soldiers that they had God and right on their side, and that dying for their country was the least they could do, but… well, think about it-what does it mean, dying for your country? What exactly is your country? The buildings and the grass and the trees? The people? The way of life? People say you should love your country and be proud of it, and there are usually things to love and be proud of. But there are usually things to dislike as well, and every country has things to be ashamed of. So what does dying for your country achieve? Nothing, as far as I could see. Living for your country, you get the chance to make it better.” He looked at his son, whose expression was almost fierce.
“Our leader says that people who don’t want to fight are cowards.”
“I expect some of them are. But… you remember the Boer War in South Africa, between the English and the Boers? Well, the Indian nationalist leader Gandhi, he was a leader of the Indians in South Africa then, and he refused to fight. Instead he organized medical teams which helped the wounded on the battlefield. He and his people were always in the thick of the action, and lots of them were killed. They wouldn’t fight, but they were about as far from cowards as you can get.”
Paul looked thoughtful.
“But I wouldn’t say anything like that at a Jungvolk meeting,” Russell went on, suddenly conscious of the yearbook he was carrying. “You’d just get yourself in trouble. Think about things, and decide what you think is right, but keep it to yourself, or the family at least. These are dangerous times we’re living in, and a lot of people are frightened of people who don’t think like they do. And frightened people tend to lash out.”
“But if you know something’s wrong, isn’t it cowardly to just keep quiet?”
This was what Russell was afraid of. How could you protect children from the general idiocy without putting them at risk? “It can be,” he said carefully. “But there’s not much point picking a fight if you know you’re bound to lose. Better to wait until you have some chance of winning. The important thing is not to lose sight of what is right and what is wrong. You may not be able to do anything about it at the time, but nothing lasts forever. You’ll get a chance eventually.”
Paul gave him a grown-up look, as if he knew full well that Russell was talking as much about himself as his son.
With time to burn, Russell took the long tram ride back down Ku’damm, spent a couple of hours over dinner in a bar, and then went in search of a movie to watch. The new U-boat drama was showing at the Alhambra, a Zara Leander weepie at the Ufa Palast, and an American Western at the Universum. He chose the latter and reached his seat just as the weekly newsreel was getting started. A rather beautiful piece on Christmas markets in the Rhineland was followed by lots of thunderous marching and a German volleyball triumph in Romania. Suitably uplifted, the audience noisily enjoyed the Western, which almost made up in spectacle what it lacked in every other department.
Effi’s audience had gone home by the time he reached the theater on Nurnbergstrasse, and he only had to wait a few minutes for her to emerge from the dressing rooms. She had forgotten to eat anything between the matinee and evening shows, and was starving. They walked to a new bar on the Ku’damm which one of the new Valkyries had told her served the most incredible omelettes.
They were indeed incredible, but the male clientele, most of whom seemed to be in uniform, left a lot to be desired. Four SS men took a neighboring table soon after their food arrived, and grew increasingly vocal with each round of schnapps. Russell could almost feel their need for a target take shape.
Effi was telling him about Zarah’s latest neurosis-her sister was increasingly worried that her infant son was a slow learner-when the first comments were directed at their table. One of the SS men had noticed Effi’s Jewish looks and loudly remarked on the fact to his companions. He was only about twenty, Russell thought, and when he succeeded in catching the young man’s eye, he had the brief satisfaction of seeing a hint of shame in the way the man quickly looked away.
By this time Effi was rifling through her purse. Finding what she was looking for, and ignoring him, she stood up, advanced on the SS table, and held the fragebogen up to them, rather in the manner of a school-teacher lecturing a bunch of particularly obtuse children. “See this, you morons,” she said, loud enough for the whole bar to hear. “Aryan descent, all the way back to Luther’s time. Satisfied?”
The manager was already at her shoulder. “Fraulein, please…” he began.
“I want these drunken pigs thrown out,” she told him.
The oldest of the SS men was also on his feet. “I would advise you to be careful, fraulein,” he said. “You may not be a Jew, but that doesn’t give you the right to insult members of the Fьhrer’s bodyguard.”
Effi ignored him. “Are you going to throw these pigs out?” she asked the manager.
He looked mortified. “I…”
“Very well. You won’t get any more business from me. Or any of my friends. I hope,” she concluded with one last contemptuous glance at the SS, “that you can make a living selling swill to these pigs.”
She headed for the door, as Russell, half-amused and half-fearful, counted out a few marks for their meal and listened to the SS men argue about whether to arrest her. When one of them took a step toward the door he blocked the way. “You did call her a Jew,” he said mildly, looking straight at the oldest man. “Surely you can understand how upsetting that might be. She meant no disrespect.”
The man gave him a slight bow of the head. “She would do well to control her anger a little better,” he said coldly.
“She would,” Russell agreed. “Have a good evening,” he added, and turned toward the door.
Outside he found Effi shaking with laughter, though whether from humor or hysteria he wasn’t quite sure. He put an arm around her shoulder and waited for the shaking to stop. “Let’s go home.”
“Let’s,” she agreed.
They crossed the busy avenue and headed up one of the side streets.
“Sometimes I wish I was a Jew,” she said. “If the Nazis hate them that much, they must be real human beings.”
Russell grunted his acquiescence. “I heard a joke the other day,” he said. “Hitler goes rowing on the Wannsee, but he’s not very good at it, and manages to overturn the boat. A boy in a passing boat manages to haul him out and save him from drowning. Hitler, as you can imagine, is overcome with gratitude and promises the boy whatever he wants. The boy thinks for a moment, and asks for a state funeral. Hitler says, ‘You’re a bit young for that, aren’t you?’ The boy says, ‘Oh, mein Fьhrer, when I tell my dad I’ve saved you from drowning he’s going to kill me!’”
Effi started laughing again, and he did too. For what seemed like minutes they stood on the sidewalk, embracing and shaking with mirth.
Next afternoon Thomas and Joachim were waiting in the usual place, sitting on a low wall with cartons of half-consumed frankfurters and kartoffelsalad between them. Russell bought the same for himself and Paul.
Once inside the Plumpe they headed for their usual spot, opposite the edge of the penalty area, halfway up the terrace on the western side. As their two sons read each other’s magazines, Russell and Thomas sat themselves down on the concrete step and chatted. “How’s business?” Russell asked.
“It’s good,” Thomas said, unbuttoning his overcoat. He’d been running the family paper business since his and Ilse’s father had died a few years earlier. “It’s getting harder to find experienced staff, but other than that…” He shrugged. “There’s no lack of orders. How about you?”
“Not too bad. I’ve got the opening of the new Chancellery tomorrow, and there should be a decent piece in that-the Americans like that sort of thing.”
“Well that’s good. How about Danzig? Did you get anything there?”
“Not really.” Russell explained about the stamp wars.
Thomas rolled his eyes in frustration. “Like children,” he muttered. “Speaking of which, Joachim’s been called up for his arbeitsdienst.”
“When?”
“The beginning of March.”
Russell looked up at Joachim, engrossed in his magazine. “Ah,” he said, glad that Paul was still six years away from the year of drilling, draining swamps, and digging roads which the Nazis imposed on all seventeen-year-old boys. “How does he feel about it?”
“Oh, he can’t wait,” Thomas said, glancing affectionately up at his son. “I suppose it can’t do him any harm. Unlike what’ll probably follow.”
Russell knew what he meant. When they’d first become friends over ten years ago, he and Thomas had talked a lot about their experiences in the war. Both had friends who’d survived the war in body, yet never recovered their peace of mind. And both knew that they themselves had been changed in ways that they would never fully understand. And that they had been the lucky ones.
“Happy days,” Russell murmured, and then laughed. “We had a run-in with the SS last night,” he said, and told Thomas the story.
He wasn’t as amused as Russell expected. “She’ll go too far one of these days. The fragebogen’s just a piece of paper, after all. One day they’ll take her in, tear it up, and the next thing you know her parents will be getting a bill for her burial.” He shook his head. “Being right doesn’t count anymore.”
“I know,” Russell said. “She knows. But she does it so well.”
A chorus of catcalls erupted around them: Viktoria Berlin were on their way out. As the two men got to their feet, Hertha emerged to a more affectionate welcome. Casting his eyes over the towering grandstand and the high crowded terraces behind each goal, Russell felt the usual surge of excitement. Glancing to his left, he saw that Paul’s eyes mirrored his own.
The first half was all Hertha, but Viktoria scored the only goal on a breakaway just before the interval. Joachim seethed with indignation, while Paul yo-yoed between hope and anxiety. Thomas smoked two cigarettes.
The second half followed the same pattern, and there were only ten minutes left when Hertha’s inside-left was tripped in the penalty area. He took the penalty himself. The ball hit both posts before going in, leaving the crowd in hysterics. A minute from time, with evening falling and the light abruptly fading, Hertha’s center-forward raced onto a long bouncing ball and volleyed it home from almost thirty yards. The Viktoria goalkeeper hadn’t moved. As the stadium exploded with joy he just stood there, making angry gestures at his teammates, the referee, the rest of the world.
Paul was ecstatic. Eyes shining, he joined in the chant now echoing round the arena: “Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC! Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC!”
For an eleven-year-old, Russell thought fondly, this was as good as it got.
It was dark by the time he dropped Paul off. He took a 76 back into town, ate supper at a beer restaurant just off the Potsdamerplatz, and walked the last kilometer home. Reaching his street, he noticed what looked like the same empty car parked across from his apartment block. He was on his way to investigate it when he heard the scream.
It was no ordinary scream. It was loud and lingering, and it somehow managed to encompass surprise, terror, and appalling pain. For a brief instant, Russell was back in the trenches, listening to someone who’d just lost a limb to a shell.
It came from further down the street.
He hesitated, but only long enough for his brain to register that hesitation as an essential corollary of living in Nazi Germany. All too often, screams meant officialdom, and experience suggested that officialdom was best avoided at such moments.
Still, investigating one seemed a legitimate practice, even in Nazi Germany. Not all crimes were committed by the state or its supporters. Russell walked resolutely on past the courtyard which his block shared with its neighbor, telling himself that valor was the better part of discretion.
The source of the disturbance was the further of the two blocks off the next courtyard. A couple of men were hovering in the entrance, obviously uncertain what to do. They eyed Russell nervously, and looked at each other when he asked them what was going on. Both were in their forties, and an obvious facial similarity suggested brothers.
In the courtyard beyond, an open-backed truck was parked with its engine running, and a single man in an SA uniform was walking toward them.
“Keep moving,” he told them, without any real conviction. His breath stank of beer.
“But we live here,” one of the two men said.
“Just wait there, then,” the stormtrooper said, looking up at the illuminated windows on the third floor. “You might get some free entertainment,” he added over his shoulder as he walked back toward the truck.
Seconds later, another bloodcurdling scream reverberated round the courtyard.
“What in God’s name…?” Russell began. “Who lives up there?” he asked the two men.
“Two actors,” the older of the two replied.
“Warmer brьder,” the other added, hot brothers, the current slang for homosexuals. “They’ve been brazen as hell. Someone must have denounced them.” He didn’t sound too upset about it.
No other lights were showing in either block, but Russell could almost feel the silent audience watching from behind the tiers of darkened windows. He thought about calling the police, but knew there was no point.
One of the illuminated windows was suddenly flung open, and a man appeared silhouetted against the opening, looking out and down. A crying, whimpering sound was now audible, and just as the man disappeared another scream split the night, even more piercing than the last. There was a flurry of movement inside the lighted room, and suddenly a naked body was flying out through the window, dropping, screaming, hitting the floor of the courtyard with a sickening, silencing thud. The body twitched once and lay still, as desperate, sobbing pleas of “no, please, no” leaked out of the open window. Another flurry, another naked body, this one twisting in flight like an Olympic diver who’d mistaken concrete for water. There was no twitch this time, no last-second adjustment to death.
The two lay a couple of feet apart, in the thin pool of light thrown by the block’s entrance lamp. One man was face down, the other face up, with only a glistening mess where his genitals had been.
With a shock, Russell recognized the man’s face. He’d seen him-talked to him even-at one of Effi’s theatrical gatherings. He had no memory of the man’s name, but he’d been nice enough. With a passion for Hollywood movies, Russell remembered. Katherine Hepburn in particular.
“Show’s over,” the SA man was saying loudly. “You saw it. They must have cut each other’s pricks off before they jumped.” He laughed. “You can go in now,” he added.
Russell’s two companions looked like they were in shock. One started to say something, but no sound emerged, and the other just gave him a gentle push on the shoulder. They walked toward their door, giving a wide birth to the two corpses.
“And you?” the SA man shouted at Russell.
“I was just passing,” he said automatically.
“Then keep moving,” the SA man ordered.
Russell obediently turned and walked away, his eyes still full of the mutilated bodies. The bile in his stomach wouldn’t stay down. Supporting himself against a lamppost he retched his supper into the gutter, then leaned against a wall, brain swirling with the usual useless rage. Another crime that would never be punished, another story that begged to be told.
And would he risk losing his son to tell it? No, he wouldn’t.
And was he ashamed of his silence? Yes, he was.
He levered himself off the wall and walked slowly on toward his own courtyard and block. As he reached the entrance he remembered the empty car. It was gone.
Inside, Frau Heidegger seemed, as usual, to be waiting for him. “What was all that noise about?” she asked, then noticed his face. “Herr Russell, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“The SA came for a couple of homosexuals in the next block,” he said. There seemed no point in giving her the gory details.
“Oh,” she said, shaking her head in involuntary denial. “I know the men you mean. They… well… it’s not our business, is it?” She ducked back inside her door and re-emerged with an unstamped envelope. “This came for you. A plainclothes policeman delivered it this morning.”
He opened it. The Gestapo wished to see him. Within three days.
“They just want a chat,” he reassured her. “Something to do with my accreditation, I expect.”
“Ah,” she said, sounding less than completely convinced.
Russell shared her misgivings. As he climbed the stairs, he told himself there was nothing to worry about. They’d read his letter to the Soviets, and just wanted to clarify his intentions. If it was anything else, they wouldn’t be delivering invitations and letting him pick the day-they’d be throwing him out of the window.
A frisson of fear shot across his chest, and his legs felt strangely unsteady. Suddenly the photographic book seemed like a very bad idea.
“Ha ho bloody he,” he muttered to himself.
The Gestapo’s invitation TO dance was still on Russell’s desk when he got up the following morning. One Sturmbannfьhrer Kleist was expecting to see John Russell in Room 48, 102 Wilhelmstrasse, within the next 72 hours. No explanation was offered.
It wasn’t actually the Gestapo-102 Wilhelmstrasse was the head-quarters of the Party intelligence organization, the Sicherheitsdienst. Though both were run by Reinhard Heydrich with a cheery disregard for legal niceties, the SD had a reputation for more sophisticated thuggery-same pain, cleaner floors.
He read the letter through again, looking for a more sinister message between the lines, and decided there was none. Shchepkin had said they’d want to talk to him, and they did. It was as simple as that. A friendly warning was waiting in Room 48, and nothing more. Sturmbannfьhrer Kleist would turn out to be a Hertha supporter, and they would chat about what had gone wrong this season.
Still, Russell thought as he shaved, there was no reason to hurry down there. He couldn’t afford to miss the new Chancellery opening at noon, and there was no telling how long the various ceremonies would take. Tomorrow would do. Or even Wednesday.
Back in his room, he picked up the Leica and took a few imaginary photos. It had no flash, but Zembski had said the lens was good enough for indoor shooting as long as he held the camera steady. And he could always ask the Fьhrer for the loan of a shoulder.
Cheered by this thought-feeling, in fact, unreasonably buoyant for someone with an appointment at 102 Wilhelmstrasse-he headed downstairs and out into the gray January morning. As if in response to his mood, a tram glided to a halt at the stop on Friedrichstrasse just as he reached it. Ten minutes later he was ensconced in a Cafй Kranzler window seat, enjoying a first sip of his breakfast coffee as he examined the morning papers.
Foreign Minister Ribbentrop had been talking to the visiting Polish leader, Colonel Beck-now there were two men who deserved each other. The new battle cruiser Scharnhorst had been commissioned at Wilhelmshaven, complete with nine eleven-inch guns, two catapults, and three planes. The new captain’s main claim to fame was his shelling of a Spanish seaside town in 1937, while commanding the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer. On the home front, Pastor Martin Niemoller’s brother Wilhelm had delivered a sermon attacking government policy toward the churches. He had read a list from the pulpit of all those churchmen-including his brother-currently enjoying the state’s hospitality. The newspaper was not sure whether this constituted a crime: “It has recently been established in certain cases,” the editor wrote, “that to read the names of persons in custody may itself be an offense.”
On a more positive note, the French were demonstrating their usual sound sense of priorities. Parisian cinemas had been closed for a week in protest against a new tax on receipts, but a compromise had now been agreed: The taxes would remain in force, but would not be collected.
Russell smiled and looked out of the window, just in time to see two young women walk by, their faces shining with pleasure over some shared secret. The sun was struggling to emerge. Hitler had probably ordered it for noon; a few shafts of light would show off the medieval perfection of his new castle. Russell wondered how far Speer and his mentor had gone. Would it be the usual Greco-Roman monstrosity, or something more ambitious? A Parthenon decked out in runes, perhaps.
Another coffee brought the time to 11:45. He walked to the top of Wilhelmstrasse, and headed down past the Hotel Adlon and serried government buildings to the new Chancellery. After showing his journalist’s pass and invitation to a security guard, Russell took a photo of the crowd already gathering behind the cordon. The security guard glared at him, but did nothing else.
Russell joined the knot of privileged journalists and photographers already gathered around the entrance, almost all of whom he recognized. Somewhat to his surprise, Tyler McKinley was among them. “My editor was keen,” the young American said resentfully, as if nothing else could have persuaded him to bless Hitler’s new building with his presence. Russell gave him an “oh yeah?” look and walked over to Jack Slaney, one of the longer-serving American correspondents. Russell had been in Slaney’s office when the latter’s invitation had arrived, complete with an unsolicited-and presumably accidental-extra. Slaney had been good enough to pass it on: He had been a freelance himself in the dim distant past, and knew what this sort of exclusive could be worth.
“A one-man band,” he muttered, looking at Russell’s camera.
“I prefer to think of myself as a Renaissance man,” Russell told him, just as the doors swung open.
The fifty or so journalists surged into the lobby, where a shiny-looking toady from the Propaganda Ministry was waiting for them. There would be a short tour of the new building, he announced, during which photographs could be taken. The ceremonial opening would take place in the Great Hall at precisely 1:00 PM, and would be followed by a worker’s lunch for the thousands of people who had worked on the project.
“There might be some meat, then,” one American journalist muttered.
The toady led them back outside, and around the corner into Vosstrasse. Huge square columns framed the double-gated main entrance, which led into a large court of honor. Russell hung back to take a couple of photos before following his colleagues up a flight of steps to the reception hall. From there, bronze eagles clutching swastikas guarded fifteen-foot doors to a bigger hall clad in gray and gold tiles. The Fьhrer was unavailable, so Russell used Slaney’s shoulder to steady the Leica.
More steps led to a circular chamber, another door into a gallery lined with crimson marble pillars. This, their guide told them, was, at 146 meters, twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. “And my mother told me size didn’t matter,” one journalist lamented in English. “I expect your father had a whopper,” another said, provoking an outburst of laughter. The ministry toady stamped his foot on the marble floor, and then took a quick look down to make sure he hadn’t damaged it.
The next hall was big enough to build aircraft in. Several hundred people were already waiting for the official opening, but the space still seemed relatively empty, as if mere people were incapable of filling it. Though released by their ministry minder, the group of journalists stuck together in one corner, chatting among themselves as they waited for Hitler’s entrance.
“We used to have arms races,” Slaney observed. “Now we have hall races. Hitler had this built because he was so impressed by the size of Mussolini’s office. And the moment Benito sees this he’ll have to have one in Rome that’s even bigger. And they’ll both keep outbidding each other until the world runs out of marble.”
“I have a feeling they’re building arms too,” Dick Normanton said wryly, his Yorkshire accent sounding almost surreal in this setting. He was one of the veteran English correspondents, much pampered by the Propaganda Ministry. This was hardly his fault: Normanton had an acute understanding of where Nazi Germany was headed, and often said as much in his reporting. Unfortunately for him, his London proprietor admired Hitler, and made sure that his editor edited accordingly.
“If you’re interested in a horror show,” he told Russell, “try the University on Wednesday. Streicher’s inaugurating a new Chair of Anti-Jewish Propaganda and giving a speech. There should be some good Mad Hatter material.”
“Sounds suitably gruesome,” Russell agreed.
“What does?” McKinley asked, joining them.
Normanton explained reluctantly: McKinley was not noted for his love of irony.
“Why would anyone want to listen to Streicher?” the American asked after Normanton had drifted away. “It’s not as if he’s going to say anything interesting, is it?”
“I guess not,” Russell agreed diplomatically, and changed the subject. “What do you make of the building?” he asked.
McKinley sighed. “It’s gross. In every meaning of the word,” he added, looking round.
Russell found this hard to disagree with; the new Chancellery was indeed gross. But it was also impressive, in a disturbing sort of way. It might be a monument to Hitler’s lack of aesthetic imagination, but it was also proof of intention. This was not the sort of building you could ignore. It meant business.
It was Russell’s turn to sigh. “How was your weekend?” he asked McKinley.
“Oh, fine. I caught up on some work, saw a movie. And I went dancing at one of those halls off the Alexanderplatz. With one of the secretaries at the Embassy.” He smiled in reminiscence, and looked about sixteen years old. “And I saw a couple of people for that story I told you about,” he added quickly, as if he’d caught himself slacking.
“You didn’t actually tell me anything about it.”
“Ah. I will. In time. In fact I may need your help with…”
He was drowned out by an eruption of applause. Right arms shot toward the ceiling, as if some celestial puppeteer had suddenly flicked a finger. His Nibs had arrived.
Russell dutifully lined up the Leica and squeezed off a couple of shots. The Fьhrer was not in uniform and looked, as usual, like an unlikely candidate for leadership of a master race. One arm was stuck at half-mast to acknowledge the welcome, the mouth set in a selfsatisfied smirk. The eyes slowly worked their way around the room, placid as a lizard’s. This man will kill us all, Russell thought.
A builder’s mate in the traditional top hat of the German artisan- his name, the toady had told them, was Max Hoffman-presented Hitler with the keys to his new home. Flashbulbs popped; hands clapped. The Fьhrer volunteered a few words. He was, he said, the same person he had always been, and wished to be nothing more. “Which means he’s learned absolutely nothing,” Slaney whispered in Russell’s ear.
And that was that. Moving like a formation dancing team, Hitler and his ring of bodyguards began mingling with the guests in the privileged section of the hall, the ring working like a choosy Venus flytrap, admitting chosen ones to the Presence and spitting them out again. Much to the interest of the watching journalists, the Soviet Ambassador was given by far the longest audience.
“Fancy a drink?” Slaney asked Russell. Two of the other Americans, Bill Peyton and Hal Manning, were standing behind him. “We’re headed over to that bar on Behrenstrasse.”
“Suits me,” Russell agreed. He looked around for McKinley, but the youngster had disappeared.
The sun was still shining, but the temperature had dropped. The bar was dark, warm, and blessed with several empty tables. A huge bear’s head loomed over the one they chose, half-hidden in the dense layer of smoke which hung from the ceiling. Slaney went off to buy the first round.
“It’s hard to believe that Hitler got started in places like this,” Manning said, lighting a cigarette and offering them round. He was a tall, thin man in his late forties with greying hair and thick black eyebrows in a cadaverous face. Like Slaney he was a veteran foreign correspondent, having worked his way up through Asian capitals and more obscure European postings to the eminence of 1939 Berlin. Peyton was younger-somewhere in his mid-thirties, Russell guessed-with clipped blond hair and a boyish face. He worked full-time for a national weekly and sold stuff to the business monthlies on the side.
Russell found Peyton irritatingly sure of himself, but he had soft spots for both Manning and Slaney. If Americans remained ignorant about Nazi Germany, it wouldn’t be their fault.
“So how do we tell this one, boys?” Slaney asked once the beers had been passed round. “Just another grand building? Or megalomania run riot?”
“New Lair For Monster,” Manning suggested.
“I like it,” Slaney said, wiping froth off his nose. “Adolf was getting chummy with Astakhov, wasn’t he?”
Manning agreed. “And Astakhov was lapping it up. I think Stalin’s given up on the Brits and the French.”
Russell remembered what Shchepkin had said on the subject. “You can hardly blame him after Munich,” he said mildly.
“True, but you can hardly blame Chamberlain and Daladier for not trusting Stalin,” Peyton said.
“Bastards all,” Slaney summed up. “I see Chamberlain’s on his way to see the Duce”-he pronounced it Dootch-“in Rome. On some train called the Silver Bullet.”
Russell laughed. “It’s the Golden Arrow.”
“Whatever. A week with Mussolini. I hope he likes parades.”
“What’s he going for?” Peyton asked.
“God knows. You’d think that by now someone in London would have noticed that the Duce is a man of moods. If he’s feeling good he’ll promise the world, set their Limey minds at rest. If he isn’t, he’ll try and scare the pants off ’em. Whichever he does, he’ll be doing the opposite before the week’s out.”
“Pity his German chum isn’t a bit more mercurial,” Manning offered. “Once he gets his teeth into something, it stays bitten.”
“Or swallowed, in the Jew’s case,” Russell added. “Why the hell isn’t Roosevelt doing more to help the Jews here?”
“He’s building up the Air Corps,” Peyton said. “There was another announcement over the weekend.”
“Yes, but that won’t help the Jews.”
“He can’t,” Slaney said. “Too much domestic opposition.”
Russell wasn’t convinced. “The British are doing something. Nothing like enough, I know. But something.”
“Two reasons,” Manning said. “One, and most important-they just don’t get it back in Washington. Or out in the boonies. When Americans think about German Jews having a hard time, the first thing they think about is what American Jews have to put up with-restricted golf clubs, stuff like that. When they realize that Hitler doesn’t play golf, they still find it hard to imagine anything worse than the way we treat our negroes. Sure, the negroes are condemned to segregation and poverty, but lynchings are pretty rare these days, and the vast majority get a life that’s just about livable. Americans assume it’s the same for the German Jews.”
“What about the concentration camps?” Russell asked.
“They just think of them as German prisons. A bit harsh, maybe, but lots of Americans think our prisons should be harsher.” He shrugged and took a gulp of beer.
“The second reason?” Russell prompted.
“Oh, that’s easy. A lot of Americans just don’t like Jews. They think they’re getting their comeuppance. If they had any idea just how harsh that comeuppance some of them might, might, have second thoughts, but they don’t.”
“I guess that’s down to us.”
“Us and our editors,” Slaney said. “We’ve told the story often enough. People just don’t want to hear it. And if you keep on and on about it they just turn off.”
“Europe’s far away,” Manning said.
“And getting farther,” Slaney added. “Jesus, let’s think about something pleasant for a change.” He turned to Russell. “John, I’m organizing a poker night for next Tuesday. How about it?”
The foursome emerged into the daylight soon after 3:00, and went their separate ways-Peyton to his mistress, Slaney and Manning to write their copy for the morning editions. Russell, walking south down Wilhelmstrasse, made the impulsive decision to drop in on Sturmbannfьhrer Kleist while he was still in the neighborhood. A small voice in his head protested that the Sicherheitsdienst was best encountered stone-cold sober, but it was promptly drowned out by a louder one insisting that there was nothing to be afraid of. The meeting was just a formality. So why not get it over with?
The fresh-faced blond receptionist seemed pleased enough to see him, gesturing him through to an anteroom with the sort of friendly smile that could soften up any man. Sunk into one of the leather chairs, Russell found himself staring at the latest product of the Propaganda Ministry’s poster artists: Hitler complete with visionary stare and catchy slogan-EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN FUHRER. On the opposite wall a more colorful poster showed apple-cheeked youth frolicking in the Alps. That was the thing about these people, he thought: They never surprised you.
The minutes dragged by; the later pints of beer pressed ever-harder for release. He went back out to the receptionist, who pointed him in the direction of a toilet with the same sunny smile. The toilet was spotless and smelled as if it had just been hosed down with Alpine flowers. One of the cubicles was occupied, and Russell imagined Heydrich sitting with his breeches round his ankles, reading something Jewish.
Back in the ante-room he found company. A man in his sixties, smartly dressed. They exchanged nods, but nothing more. The man shifted nervously in his seat, causing the leather to squeak. Hitler stared at them both.
After about twenty minutes the sound of clicking heels seeped into the silence, and another young blonde appeared in the doorway. “Herr John Russell?” she enquired. “Follow me, please.”
They went down one long corridor, up some steps, down another corridor. All Russell could hear was the rhythmic click of the blonde’s shoes. No sounds escaped through the numerous doors they passed, no talk, no laughter, no typewriters. There was no sense that the building was empty, though, more a feeling of intense concentration, as if everyone was thinking fit to burst. Which, Russell realized, was absurd. Maybe the SD had a half-term break, like British schools.
Through the window on a second flight of stairs he caught a glimpse of a large lawn and the huge swastika flying over Hitler’s new home. At the end of the next corridor the heels swung right through an open doorway.
Room 48 was not so much a room as a suite. The secretary led him through her high-ceilinged anteroom, opened the inner door, and ushered him in.
Sturmbannfuhrer Gottfried Kleist-as the nameboard on the desk announced-looked up, gestured him to the leather-bound seat on the near side of his leather-bound desk, and carried on writing. He was a stout man in denial, his black uniform just a little too tight for what it had to contain. He had a florid face, thinning hair and rather prominent red lips. He did have blue eyes, though, and his handwriting was exquisite. Russell watched the fountain pen scrape across the page, forming elegant whorls and loops from the dark green ink.
After what seemed like several minutes, Kleist carefully replaced the pen in its holder, almost daintily blotted his work and, after one last admiring look, moved it to the right hand side of his desk. From the left he picked up a folder, opened it, and raised his eyes to Russell’s. “John Russell,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“You asked to see me,” Russell said, with as much bonhomie as he could muster.
The Sturmbannfьhrer ran a hand through his hair, straightening a few rebellious wisps with his fingers. “You are an English national.”
“With resident status in the Reich.”
“Yes, yes. I know. And a current journalistic accreditation.”
“Yes.”
“Could I see it please?”
Russell removed it from his inside jacket pocket and passed it over.
Kleist noticed the invitation card. “Ah, the opening,” he said. “A success, I assume. Were you impressed?”
“Very much so. The building is a credit to the Fьhrer.”
Kleist looked sharply at Russell, as if doubtful of his sincerity.
“So much modern architecture seems insubstantial,” Russell added.
“Indeed,” Kleist agreed, handing back the press pass. Apparently satisfied, he sat back in his seat, both hands grasping the edge of his desk. “Now, it has come to our attention that the Soviet newspaper Pravda has commissioned you to write a series of articles about the Fatherland.” He paused for a moment, as if daring Russell to ask how it had come to their attention. “This was at your suggestion, I believe.”
“It was.”
“Why did you suggest these articles, Mr. Russell?”
Russell shrugged. “Several reasons. All freelance journalists are always looking to place stories with whoever will buy them. And it occurred to me that the Soviets might be interested in a fresh look at National Socialist Germany, one that concentrates on what the two societies have in common, rather than what divides them. What I-”
Kleist stopped him with a raised hand. “Why did you think this would interest the Soviets?”
Russell took his time. “Soviet propaganda has generally been very hostile toward the Reich,” he began. “And by taking this course, they have backed themselves into a corner. There’s no doubt that Germany is the rising power in Europe, and the Soviets-like everyone else-will sooner or later have to deal with that reality. But as things stand at the moment, their own people would not understand a more… a more accommodating attitude toward the Reich. The articles I propose would prepare the ground, so to speak. They would help in restoring the Soviet government’s freedom of movement, allow them to act in concert with the Reich if and when the two states’ interests coincide.”
Kleist looked thoughtful.
“And I see such articles as a contribution to peace,” Russell went on, hoping he wasn’t over-egging the pudding. “I fought in the last war, and I have no desire to see another. If nations and governments understand each other, there’s less chance we’ll all blunder into one.”
Kleist smiled. “I don’t think there’s much chance of the Fьhrer blundering into anything,” he said. “But I take your point. And we have no objection to your articles, subject to certain conditions. These are sensitive subjects-I’m sure you’d agree. And while you are English, you are also living in the Reich under our protection. Your views would not be seen as official views, but they would be seen as views we are prepared to tolerate. You understand me? Whatever you write could be construed as having our blessing.”
Russell felt anxious for the first time. “Yes…” he said hesitantly.
“So, you see, it follows that we cannot permit you to write anything that we violently disagree with. Your articles will have to be pre-submitted for our approval. I am sure,” he added, “that this will only be a formality.”
Russell thought quickly. Should he at least recognize the implied dismissal of his journalistic integrity, or just play the cynic? He opted for the practical approach. “This is unusual, but I see your point,” he said. “And I have no objection, provided that your office can approve-or disapprove-the articles quickly. The first one is due in a couple of weeks, and at fortnightly intervals after that-so, a couple of days…”
“That will not be a problem. Nothing gathers dust here.”
Kleist looked pleased, and Russell had the sudden realization that the SD were as eager to see these articles as Shchepkin and his people. He decided to go for broke. “Sturmbannfьhrer, could I make a request? In order to write these articles I shall need to travel a great deal around the Reich, and talk to a lot of people. I shall be asking them questions which they may find suspicious, coming, as they will, from a foreigner. A letter from this office confirming my credentials, and stating that I have permission to ask such questions, would be very useful. It would save a lot of time talking to local officials, and might help me avoid all sorts of time-consuming difficulties.”
Kleist looked momentarily off-balance-this was not in his script-but he soon recovered. He scratched his cheek and rearranged his hair again before answering. “That seems a reasonable request,” he said, “but I’ll have to consult with my superiors before issuing such a letter.” He looked down at his pen, as if imagining the pleasure of writing it out.
“Is there anything else?” Russell asked.
“Just one thing. Your business with the Soviets-you are conducting it by post, I presume?”
“So far,” Russell agreed, hoping to God that Kleist knew nothing of his meeting with Shchepkin. “Though of course I may have to use the phone or the wire service at some point.”
“Mm. Let me be frank with you, Mr. Russell. If, in the course of your dealings with the Soviets, you learn anything of their intentions, their capabilities, we would expect you to pass such information on.”
“You’re asking me to spy for you?”
“No, not as such. Mr. Russell, you’ve lived in Germany for many years…”
“Almost fourteen.”
“Exactly. Your son is a German boy, a proud member of the Hitler Youth, I believe.”
“He is.”
“So presumably you feel a certain loyalty to the Reich.”
“I feel affection, and gratitude. I am not a great believer in loyalty to countries or governments.”
“Ah, you were a communist once, I believe.”
“Yes, but so was Mussolini. A lot of people were in the early Nineteen-twenties. Like Mussolini, I got over it. My loyalty or lack of it… Sturmbannfьhrer, what would you think of a German who, after a decade spent in England, proclaimed his loyalty to the English King? I suspect you would consider him a traitor to the Fatherland.”
“I…”
“I have a German son,” Russell ploughed on. “I have an American mother, and I had an English father. I was brought up in England. Insofar as I am able, I am loyal to all three countries.”
“But not to the Soviets?”
“No.”
“So if a Soviet contact told you of a threat to the Reich, you would not keep it to yourself.”
“I would not.”
“Very well. Then I think our business is concluded.” Kleist stood up and offered his hand across the desk. “If you get the articles to me, either by hand or post, I will guarantee to return them within twenty-four hours. Will that suffice?”
“It will.”
“Then good day to you. Fraulein Lange will see you back to the entrance.”
She did. Russell followed the clicking heels once more, picked up his coat from the smiling receptionist, and found himself out on the Wilhelmstrasse pavement. It was dark. In more ways than one.
Tuesday was clear and cold. Walking down to the U-bahn at Hallesches Tor, Russell was more conscious of the icy wind from the east than any theoretical warmth from the sun. At the studio in Neukцlln he waited while Zembski shouted at someone through the phone, and then persuaded the Silesian to develop his film that day. Back at the U-bahn station he bought the Tageblatt and Allgemeine Zeitung at a kiosk and skimmed through their accounts of the Chancellery opening as he waited for a train. As far as he could tell, he’d seen all there was to see.
The only other items of interest were the imminent departure of Reichsbank President Schacht, the Danzig stamp row-which had finally reached the German nationals-and the unsurprising news that US government spokesmen were less than impressed by the Nazis’ latest idea of sending all the Jews to either Manchuria or Alaska.
Back at Neuenburgerstrasse Russell settled down to work. If you had a green light from the SD, he noted cynically, it probably paid to get moving. First off, he needed a list of topics for Pravda. What was so great about Nazi Germany if you didn’t like flags and blood in the gutter? Full employment, for one. A national sense of well-being. Worker’s benefits, up to a point. Cheap organized leisure activities-sport, culture, travel. All these came at a cost, and only, needless to say, to Aryans, but there was something there. As an English advertising man had once told him, there had to be something in the product that was worth having.
What else? Health care was pretty good for the curable. And transport-the rocket trains, the autobahns and the people’s car, the new flying-boats and aeroplanes. The Nazis loved modernity when it speeded things up or made them simpler, hated it when it complicated things, or made it harder for them to live in their medieval mind-set. Einstein being Jewish was most convenient.
He could write something perceptive about Nazi Germany if he had the mind to, Russell thought. Unfortunately…
He could write these articles in his sleep. Or almost. The Soviets liked lots of statistics-something they shared with the Nazis-and that would involve a little work. But not much. Shchepkin’s oral reports on the other hand…
He’d been trying not to think about them. Kleist’s question about other contacts had also been intended as a warning-he was sure of that. And the Soviets expected him to meet one of their agents outside Germany once a month. Which would no doubt make things safer for the agent, but how was he supposed to explain this new and oddly regular penchant for foreign travel? Could he refuse this part of the Soviet job? He suspected not. He wasn’t sure how the Soviets would make any hard feelings felt, but he was sure they’d manage it somehow.
Nor did he feel that happy about wandering round Germany asking questions, even if Kleist did come up with some sort of protective letter. He supposed he could invent any number of imaginary responses-how, after all, could the Soviets check up on him? Then again, who knew what was left of the communist network in Germany? And in any case, part of him liked the idea of finding out what ordinary Germans were feeling in Year Six of Hitler’s thousand.
That was it, he thought. “Ordinary Germans.” The British and American tabloids liked series: The Daily Mail was currently doing one on “European Troublespots”-he’d read No. 4 (“Memel-Europe’s Nagging Tooth”) the previous week. He could do something similar about ordinary Germans. The Worker. The Housewife. The Sailor, the Doctor, the Schoolboy. Whatever, as Slaney would say. Interviewing them would provide the ideal cover for gathering the information Shchepkin wanted.
And the trips abroad? It was obvious-“Germany’s Neighbours.” Another series, this one looking at how people in the neighboring countries viewed Germany. He could travel all he wanted, talk to all the foreigners he wanted, without arousing suspicion. In Poland, Denmark, Holland, France, and what was left of Czechoslovakia. He could take Effi to Paris, visit his cousin Rainer in Budapest. He leaned back in his chair feeling pleased with himself. These two series would make him safer and richer. Things were looking up.
The feeling of well-being lasted until the next day. After posting off his text and photos of the Chancellery opening he traveled across town to the University, where Julius Streicher was inaugurating the new chair. It wasn’t, as Normanton had mischievously claimed, actually called the Chair of Anti-Jewish Propaganda, but it might have been. There was no sign of Streicher’s famous bullwhip, but his veins bulged just the way Russell remembered. The Nazi angrily denied the claim that National Socialism had put fetters on science or research. Restrictions, he insisted, had only been placed on the unruly. In fact, decency and sincerity had only obtained their freedom under National Socialism.
He had been ranting for an hour and a half when Russell left, and looked set for many hours more. Coming away, Russell knew what Normanton had meant about Mad Hatter material but, for once in his life, he felt more emotionally in tune with McKinley’s simple disgust. Perhaps it was the fact that his next port of call was the Wiesners.
He picked up a Daily Mail while changing trams in Alexanderplatz and went through it with the two girls. They pored over the fashion pictures and ads, puzzled over the headline MAN WHO SLAPPED WOMAN MAYOR SAYS ‘I’M ASTOUNDED,’ and objected to the one which claimed ALL WOMEN ARE MAGPIES. A photograph of the King of Egypt out duck-shooting reduced Ruth to such a fit of giggles that her mother came out to see what was happening.
After the lesson she brought out the best coffee and cake Russell had tasted for months, and thanked him profusely for all he was doing. Her husband was well, she said, but her face clouded over when he asked about Albert. He was “finding things difficult.” He had the feeling she thought about saying more but decided against it.
He’d planned a few more hours of work before picking up Effi from the theater, but after Streicher and the Wiesners he felt more like punching someone. He found another Western on the Ku’damm and sank into a world of huge skies, lofty canyons, and simple justice. Chewing gum for the heart.
Effi was tired and seemed as subdued as he felt. They walked slowly back to her flat, went to bed, and lay quietly in each other’s arms until she fell asleep. Her face grew younger in sleep, and she looked even more like Ruth Wiesner.
Wednesday evening, Russell was listening to dance band music on the BBC when McKinley knocked on his door and suggested a drink. While he collected his shoes from the bedroom the young American scanned his bookshelves. “Half of these are banned,” he said admiringly when Russell returned.
“I haven’t got round to burning them yet,” he replied, reaching for his coat.
Outside it was warmer than it had been, but there were specks of rain in the air. As they turned the corner onto Lindenstrasse McKinley took a sudden look over his shoulder, as if he’d heard something.
“What?” Russell asked, seeing nothing.
McKinley shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.
They walked under the elevated U-bahn tracks at Hallesches Tor, and across Blьcherplatz to the bar they used for their infrequent drinks together. It was almost empty. The barman yawned on his stool; two old men in the corner stared morosely at each other. McKinley bought them beers-dark for Russell, light for himself-while Russell commandeered the only bowl with any nuts and carried it across to the table with the fewest standing pools. As he lowered himself into the seat it groaned alarmingly but held together. “We have to find a new bar,” he murmured.
McKinley tried his beer and smiled in satisfaction. “Okay,” he said. “Now tell me about Schacht.”
“He’s dead in the water.”
“Okay, but why? I never understood economics.”
“Schacht does. That’s why.”
“What do you mean?”
Russell thought about it. “Schacht wants to see the economy run according to the laws of economics. He did when he was Finance Minister, and as long as he’s in charge of the Reichsbank he’ll keep beating the same drum. The trade deficit is soaring, the Reichsbank’s holdings of foreign exchange are dwindling, and there’s a real possibility of another runaway inflation. The economy’s running out of control. Schacht would like to raise taxes and switch production from armaments to something that can be sold abroad. Some hope, eh? If Hitler and Goering have to choose between their armament program and the laws of economics, which do you think they’ll choose?”
“But if the economy is in real trouble?”
“Nothing a war won’t fix.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, indeed. Schacht, shall we say, has the narrow view. He’s assuming several years of peace, at the very least. Hitler, on the other hand, sees a choice. He can either do what Schacht wants-rein in the war machine, raise taxes, and get the real economy moving again-or he can go for broke, and use the army to put things right. He sees all that wealth beyond his borders, just begging to be collected. That’s why Schacht has to go. Hitler’s not going to risk higher taxes in Germany when he can steal the same money from conquered foreigners.”
McKinley looked at him. “I never know how serious you are. If this is such a big story-Schacht going, I mean-then why isn’t it on the front pages back home? If war’s so absolutely certain, how come you’re the only one who knows it?”
Russell smiled. “Just gifted, I guess. Another beer?”
When he got back from the bar, McKinley was making notes in his little black book. “Was your dance night a one-off, or are you going out with that girl from the embassy?” Russell asked him.
McKinley blushed. “We’ve only been out twice. Merle, her name is-you know, like Merle Oberon. Her father’s just a storekeeper in Philadelphia but she’s determined to really see life. She wants to see Europe while she’s working here, and then the rest of the world if she can.”
“Good for her.”
“You’ve traveled a lot, haven’t you?”
“Once upon a time.”
“Have you been to Russia?”
“Yes. I met my wife there-my ex-wife, I should say. At a Comintern youth conference in 1924. Lenin had just died and Trotsky hadn’t noticed that the rug was gone from under his feet. It was a strange time, a sort of revolutionary cusp-not the moment it all went wrong, but the moment a lot of Party people realized that it already had. Does that make sense?”
“I suppose. I’m hoping to go in March. The nineteenth Congress is being held in Moscow and I’m trying to persuade the paper to send me.”
“That’ll be interesting,” Russell said, though he doubted it would be.
Neither of them wanted another drink, and the nuts were all gone. It was raining outside, and they stood for a moment in the doorway, watching the neon shimmers in the puddles. As they passed under the elevated tracks a Warschauer Brucke train rumbled across, its sides streaming with water.
At the bottom of Lindenstrasse McKinley took a look back across the Belle Alliance Platz. “I think I’m being followed,” he said, almost guiltily, in response to Russell’s inquiring look.
“I can’t see anyone,” said Russell, staring into the rain.
“No, neither can I,” McKinley said, as they started up Lindenstrasse. “It’s more of a feeling… I don’t know. If they are following me, they’re really good.”
Too many Thin Man movies, Russell thought. “Who’s they?” he asked.
“Oh, the Gestapo, I suppose.”
“Moving like wraiths isn’t exactly the Gestapo style.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Why would they be following you?”
McKinley grunted. “That story I told you about. That story I was going to tell you about,” he corrected himself.
“I’m not sure I want to know anymore,” Russell said. “I don’t want them following me.”
It was meant as a joke, but McKinley didn’t take it that way. “Well, okay…”
Russell was thinking about the car he’d seen outside their block. He couldn’t imagine the Gestapo being that patient, but there were other sharks in the Nazi sea. “Look, Tyler. Whatever it is, if you really are being stalked by the authorities I should just drop it. No story’s worth that sort of grief.”
McKinley bristled. “Would you have said that ten years ago?”
“I don’t know. Ten years ago I didn’t have the responsibilities I have now.”
“Maybe you should ask yourself whether you can still be an honest journalist with those sorts of responsibilities.”
That made Russell angry. “You haven’t cornered the market in honest journalism, for God’s sake.”
“Of course not. But I know what matters. That once mattered to you.”
“Truth has a habit of seeping out.” Russell wasn’t even convincing himself, which made him angrier still. “Look, there are seventy-five million people out there keeping their heads down. I’m just one of them.”
“Fine. If you want to keep your head down, wait until it all blows over-well… fine. But I can’t do that.”
“Okay.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
The conversation with McKinley-or, more precisely, the sense of letting himself down that it engendered-lurked with annoying persistence at the back of Russell’s mind over the next few days. He finished his first article for Pravda-a paean to organized leisure activities-and delivered it himself to the smiling blonde at 102 Wilhelmstrasse. He received a wire from his US agent bubbling with enthusiasm for the two series. And, by special delivery, he received the letter he had asked Sturmbannfьhrer Kleist for. It was typed rather than written, which was something of a disappointment, but the content left little to be desired: John Russell, it seemed, had full authority from the Propaganda Ministry and Ministry of the Interior to ask such questions “as would widen the foreign understanding of National Socialism and its achievements.” Those shown the letter were “asked and expected to offer him all the assistance they could.” All of which would have felt much better if he hadn’t seen the disappointment in McKinley’s eyes.
The weekend gave him a welcome break from worrying about his journalistic integrity. On Saturday afternoon he and Paul went to the zoo. They had been there so many times that they had a routine-first the parrot house, then the elephant walk and the snakes, a break for ice cream, the big cats and, finally, the piиce de rйsistance, the gorilla who spat, with often devastating accuracy, at passersby. After the zoo, they strolled back down the Ku’damm, looking in shop windows and eventually stopping for cake. Russell still found the Hitler Youth uniform slightly offputting, but he was gradually getting used to it.
Sunday, a rare treat-an outing to the fair at the end of Potsdamerstrasse with both Paul and Effi. Getting them together was always harder than the actual experience of their being together: Both worried overmuch that they’d be in the other’s way. It was obvious that Paul liked Effi, and equally obvious why. She was willing to try anything at least once, was able to act any age she thought appropriate, and assumed that he could, too. She was, in fact, most of the things his mother wasn’t and never had been.
After two hours of circling, sliding, dropping, and whirling they took a cab to Effi’s theater, where she showed Paul around the stage and backstage areas. He was particularly impressed by the elevator and trapdoor in mid-stage which brought the Valkyries up to heaven each evening. When Russell suggested that they should build one for Goebbels at the Sportspalast, Effi gave him a warning look, but Paul, he noticed, was mercifully unable to suppress his amusement.
The only sad note of the weekend was Paul’s news that he would be away for the next weekend at a Hitler Youth adventure camp in the Harz Mountains. He expressed regret at not seeing his dad, and particularly at missing Hertha’s next home game, but Russell could see he was really looking forward to the camp. Russell was particularly upset because he would be away himself on the following weekend, delivering his first oral report to Shchepkin. And on that weekend he would also be missing Effi’s end-of-run party-Barbarossa had apparently raised all the national consciousness it was going to raise.
Early on monday morning, he took the train to Dresden for a one-night stay. It was only a two-hour journey, and he had several contacts there: a couple of journalists on the city paper; an old friend of Thomas’s, also in the paper business; an old friend of his and Ilse’s, once a union activist, now a teacher. Ordinary Germans-if such people existed.
He saw them all over the two days, and talked to several others they recommended. He also spent a few hours in cafйs and bars, joining or instigating conversations when he could, just listening when that seemed more appropriate. As his train rattled northward on Tuesday evening he sat in the buffet car with a schnapps and tried to make sense of what he had heard. Nothing surprising. “Ordinary Germans” felt utterly powerless, and resigned to feeling so for the foreseeable future. The government would doubtless translate that resignation as passive support, and to some extent they were right. There was certainly no sense that anyone had a practical alternative to offer.
When it came to Germany’s relations with the rest of the world, most people seemed pleasantly surprised that they still had any. The Rhineland, the Anschluss, the Sudetenland-it was as if Hitler had deliberately driven his train across a series of broken points, but-thanks be to God-the train was still on the track. Surely, soon, he would pull the damn thing to a halt. Once Memel and Danzig were back in the fold, once the Poles had given Germany an extra-territorial corridor across their own corridor, then that would be that. Hitler, having expanded the Reich to fit the Volk, would rest on his laurels, a German hero for centuries to come.
They all said it, and some of them even believed it.
Their own daily lives were getting harder. Not dramatically, but relentlessly. The economic squeeze was on. Most people were working longer hours for the same pay; many ordinary goods were growing slightly harder to find. The relief which had followed the return of full employment had dissipated.
Children seemed to be looming ever-larger in their parent’s minds: the demands in time and loyalty of the Hitler Youth and BDM, the year’s exile of the arbeitsdienst, the prospect of seeing them marched off to war. If Ordinary Germans wanted anything, it was peace. Years of the stuff, years in which they could drive their people’s cars down their new autobahns.
Only one man mentioned the Jews, and then only in a dismissive preamble-“now that the Jewish question is nearing solution.” What did he mean? Russell asked. “Well,” the man replied, “they’ll all be gone soon, won’t they? I have nothing against them personally, but a lot of people have, and they’ll be happier elsewhere, that’s obvious.”
The Wiesners would have agreed with him. The girls seemed subdued when he saw them on Wednesday morning, polite and willing as ever, but less perky, as if more bad news had just descended on the household. One reason became clear when Frau Wiesner asked for a word with him after the lesson.
She wanted to ask him a favor, she said. She didn’t want her husband to know but, could he, Russell, have a word with Albert. He was behaving recklessly, just saying whatever came into his mind, associating with… well, she didn’t know who, but… he wouldn’t listen to his father, she knew that, and he wouldn’t listen to her, but Russell, well, he was outside it all: He wasn’t a Jew, wasn’t a Nazi, wasn’t even a German. He knew what was happening, how dangerous things were. They were working on getting visas, but it took so long. Albert said they were dreaming, they’d never get them, but he didn’t know that, and he was putting the girls’ future at risk as well as his own…
She ran out of words, just looked at him helplessly.
Russell’s heart sunk at the prospect, but he agreed to try.
“I’ll make sure he’s here on Friday, after the lesson,” she said.
That evening, he was getting his Dresden notes in order when Tyler McKinley knocked on his door. “I’ve come to apologize,” the American said.
“What for?” Russell asked.
“You know. The other night.”
“Oh that. Forget it.”
“Okay. How about a drink?”
Russell rubbed his eyes. “Why not?”
They went to their usual bar, sat at the same table. Russell thought he recognized the stains from the previous week. His companion seemed relieved that he wasn’t holding a grudge, and was drinking dark beer for a change. The bar was more crowded than usual, with a population reaching toward double figures.
McKinley got out his pipe and tin of Balkan mixture. “What got you started in journalism?” Russell asked.
“Oh, I always wanted to be one. Long as I can remember.” The American smiled reminiscently. “When I was a kid I used to spend the summers with my mother’s folks in Nugget City-you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s a small town in California. Grew up in the Gold Rush days, been shrinking ever since. My granddad ran the local paper in his spare time. Just a weekly. Two pages. Four if something had actually happened. I used to help him with stuff. On print day we’d both come home covered in ink. I loved it.” He picked up the tobacco tin, and put it down again. “Granddad and Grandma both died when I was twelve, so all that stopped. I tried offering my services to the San Francisco papers, but they didn’t want kids hanging around in their print rooms. Not surprising, really. Anyway, I got involved with my high school paper, and then the college paper, and eventually got a job at the Examiner. Three years in sports, three on the city desk, and I finally got myself sent to Europe.” He grinned. “I still love it.”
“What did your family think?” Russell asked. He meant about coming to Europe, but McKinley, busy loading his pipe, answered a different question.
“My father was furious. He has his own law firm, and I was supposed to sign up, start at the bottom and eventually take over. He thinks journalists are grubby little hacks, you know, like The Front Page.” His eyes lit up. “Did you know they’re remaking that, with a woman reporter? Rosalind Russell, I think. And Cary Grant’s her editor. I read about it in one of Merle’s Hollywood magazines.”
“Your Dad still furious?”
“Not so much. I mean, they’re happy enough to see me when I come home.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “It’s funny,” he added, “my sister seems angrier than my father.”
“What does she do?”
“Nothing much, as far as I can tell. She’d make a much better lawyer than I would, but… well, you know… Dad would never take a woman into the firm.” He struck a match, applied it to the bowl, and sucked in. The bowl glowed, and a noxious plume of smoke escaped from his lips.
“That’s enough to make anyone resentful,” Russell said. “Not being offered something you want is bad enough; someone else turning it down just adds salt to the wound.”
McKinley looked at him as if he were a magician. “You know, that never occurred to me.”
“When did you last go home?” Russell asked.
“Oh, the Thanksgiving before last. But I write quite often.”
Russell thought about his own family. His mother in America, his half-brother in Leeds. Bernard was well over fifty now, the single offspring of his father’s brief liaison with the army nurse who treated him-in more ways than one-after the Gordon campaign in Sudan. Russell hadn’t seen him in years, and had no particular desire to do so. There were a couple of uncles in England, one aunt in America, cousins dotted here and there. He hadn’t seen any of them either. It was time he took Paul to England, he thought.
He looked at McKinley, happily puffing away at his pipe. “Do you never get homesick?” he asked.
“Sure, sometimes. Days like today I miss the sunshine. I know everyone thinks San Francisco is always shrouded in fog, but it isn’t. It’s still the loveliest city I’ve ever seen.” He smiled. “But this is where the story is.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Well, yes. I was wondering… I’m arranging this interview next week-I don’t know which evening yet-and I wondered if you’d be willing to come along. My German is pretty good, but yours is obviously a lot better, and the only time I met this woman I could hardly understand anything she said. And I really can’t afford to misunderstand anything she tells me.”
“Who is she?”
McKinley hesitated. “She used to work for the Health Ministry.”
“This is the big story?”
McKinley grinned briefly. “You could say that. You remember that story I did on asylums last year?”
Russell did. It hadn’t been at all bad. The American had managed to raise quite a few awkward questions, and it was hardly his fault that no one else had demanded any answers. “I remember,” he said.
“Well, this woman was one of the people I interviewed. She told me a pack of lies, as far as I could tell. And then last week she contacted me out of the blue, said she was willing to give me some information about some of the other stuff I’ve heard.”
“About the asylums?”
“Yes and no. Look,” he said, looking around. “I don’t want to talk about it here. Let’s go back to the house.”
“Okay,” Russell agreed. He was beginning to feel intrigued, despite himself.
As they walked back to Neuenburgerstrasse he kept an eye open for possible shadows, and noticed that McKinley was doing the same. None crept into view, and the street outside their block was empty of cars.
“The Knauer boy,” McKinley said, once they were ensconced in Russell’s two armchairs. “I don’t think his parents gave him a Christian name. He was blind, had only one arm, and part of one leg was missing. He was also, supposedly, an idiot. A medical idiot, I mean. Mentally retarded. Anyway, his father wrote to Hitler asking him to have the boy killed. Hitler got one of the doctors employed by the KdF to confirm the facts, which they did. He then gave the child’s own doctors permission to carry out a mercy-killing. The boy was put to sleep.” He paused to re-stoke his pipe.
“That’s a sad story,” Russell said cautiously.
“There’s two things,” McKinley said. “Hitler has never made any secret of his plan to purify the race by sterilizing the mentally handicapped and all the other so-called incurables. And the Nazis are always going on about how much it costs to keep all these people in asylums. They actually use it as an example in one of their school textbooks-you know, how many people’s cars you could build with what it costs to feed and clothe ten incurables for a year. Put the two things together and you get one easy answer: Kill them. It purifies the race and saves money.”
“Yes, but…”
“I know. But if the Knauer boy is expendable, why not the others? About one hundred thousand of them, according to the latest figures. Tell the parents they’re doing it to cut short the child’s suffering, give them an excuse not to have the problem anymore. In fact, don’t even tell the parents. Spare their suffering by saying that the child died of natural causes.”
“One hundred thousand of them?”
“Perhaps not, but…”
“Okay, it sounds feasible. It sounds like the Nazis, for Christ’s sake. But are they actually doing it? And if they are, do you have any proof that they’re doing it?”
“There are all sorts of indications…”
“Not good enough.”
“Plans, then.”
“On paper?”
“Not exactly. Look, will you come and see this woman with me?”
Russell knew what the sensible answer was, but McKinley had him hooked. “Okay,” he said, checking his watch and realizing that he’d be late for meeting Effi.
Once out on Lindenstrasse he decided to spend some of his anticipated earnings on a cab. As it swung around the Belle Alliance Platz and headed up Kцniggrдtzerstrasse toward Potsdamer Bahnhofplatz, he watched the people on the sidewalks and wondered how many of them would protest the mercy killing of 100,000 children. Would that be one step too far, or just another milestone in the shedding of a nation’s scruples?
Russell didn’t expect to find many similarities between Tyler McKinley and Albert Wiesner. On the one hand, a boy from a rich family and country with a rewarding job and instant access to a ticket out of Nazi Germany. On the other, a boy without work or prospects of any kind, whose next forwarding address was likely to be Sachsenhausen. Russell, however, soon found himself comparing the two young men. The characters and personalities of both of them had been formed in successful families and, it seemed, in reaction to powerful fathers. Both seemed blessed with enough youthful naivete to render them irritating and likable in turn.
Frau Wiesner produced her son at the end of Friday’s lesson. For his mother’s and sisters’ sake the boy made a token effort to mask his sullen resentment at this unnecessary intrusion on his time, but once out of the door he swiftly abandoned any pretence of amiability.
“Let’s get some coffee,” Russell said.
“No cafйs will serve us,” was Albert’s reply.
“Well, then, let’s go for a walk in the park.”
Albert said nothing, but kept pace at Russell’s side as they strolled down Greifswaldstrasse toward the northern entrance of the Friedrichshain, the park which gave the whole district its name. Once inside the main gates Russell led them past the Mдrchenbrunnen, a series of artificial waterfalls surrounded by sculptured characters from fairytales. He had brought Paul to see it several years ago, when Hansel and Gretel-the figures in the foreground-could still conjure up nighttime terrors of wicked witches, as Ilse had bitterly complained on the following day.
Albert had a more topical agenda in mind. “The witch must have been Jewish,” he said.
“If she wasn’t then, she will be now,” Russell agreed.
They walked on into the park, down a wide path beneath the leafless trees. Albert seemed unconcerned by the silence between them, and made a point of catching the eyes of those walking in the opposite direction.
Russell had mentally rehearsed a few lines of adult wisdom on the U-bahn, but they’d all sounded ridiculous. “Your mother wanted me to talk to you,” he said at last. “But I have no idea what to say. You and your family are in a terrible situation. And, well, I guess she’s frightened that you’ll just make things worse for yourself.”
“And them.”
“Yes, and them.”
“I do realize that.”
“Yes…” This is a waste of time, Russell thought. They were approaching one of the park’s outdoor cafйs. “Let’s have a coffee here,” he said.
“They won’t serve me.”
“Just take a seat. I’ll get them.” He walked up to the kiosk window and looked at the cakes. They had mohrenkopfen, balls of sponge with custard centers, chocolate coats, and whipped cream hats. “Two of them and two coffees,” he told the middle-aged man behind the counter.
The man was staring at Albert. “He’s a Jew,” he said finally, as if reaching the end of an exhaustive mental process. “We don’t serve Jews.”
“He’s English,” Russell said. “As am I.” He showed the man his Ministry of Propaganda accreditation.
“He looks Jewish,” the man said, still staring at Albert, who was now staring back. Why don’t you just take out your circumcised prick and wave it at him, Russell thought sourly. “He may be Jewish for all I know,” Russell told the man, “but there’s no law against serving English Jews.”
“There isn’t?”
“No, there isn’t.”
The man just stared at him.
“Do you need to hear it from a policeman?”
“Not if you say so.” He gave Albert one final glare and concentrated on pouring out the coffee.
God help us, Russell thought. He could understand Albert’s reaction, no matter how counterproductive it was. But this man-what was he so annoyed about? There were no SS men lounging at his tables, no ordinary citizens on the brink of racial apoplexy. Why did he care so much that a Jew was sitting at one of his rusty tables? Did he really think Jewish germs would rub off on his cups and saucers?
The coffee was spilled in the saucers, but it didn’t seem worth complaining. He carried them back to the table, where Albert was now slouched in his chair, legs splayed out in defiance. Russell resisted the temptation to say “sit up in your chair” and handed him a mohrenkopf. His eyes lit up.
They concentrated on eating for a few minutes.
“Do you really think there’s any chance we’ll get visas?” Albert asked eventually, allowing the merest hint of hope to mar his cynicism.
“Yes,” Russell said, with more conviction than he felt. “It may take a while, but why not? The Nazis don’t want you, so why shouldn’t they let you go?”
“Because they’re even more interested in hurting us?”
Russell considered that. It had, unfortunately, the ring of truth. “The way I see it,” he said, “you don’t have many options. You can fight back and most likely end up in a camp. Or dead. Or you can try and work their system.”
Albert gave him a pitying look. “There are half a million of us,” he said. “At the current rate it’ll take seven years for us all to get visas.”
Russell had no answer.
“And how long before we’re at war?” Albert persisted.
“Who knows…”
“A year at most. And that’ll put a stop to emigration. What do you think they’ll do with us then? They won’t let us work for a living now, and that won’t change. They’ll either leave us to starve or put us in work camps-slave labor. Some of my friends think they’ll just kill us. And they may be right. Who’s going to stop them?”
He could add Albert to the list of people he’d underestimated, Russell thought.
“My father’s Iron Cross was First Class,” Albert said. “Unlike our beloved Fьhrer’s.”
Russell stared out at the winter trees, and the roof of the old Krankenhaus Hospital rising above them to the south. “If you’re right-if your friends are right-then all the more reason not to jeopardize your chances-your family’s chances-of getting out.”
“I know that,” Albert said. “But what about the others? One family’s success is another family’s failure.”
Russell had no answer to that either.
“But thanks for the coffee and cake,” Albert said.
Lying in bed unable to sleep, Russell thought about Papa Wiesner’s Iron Cross First Class. It wasn’t a medal given to many-he must have done something pretty special. He supposed he should have realized that a Jew of Wiesner’s age would have fought in the war, but it hadn’t occurred to him. Goebbels’s propaganda was obviously working.
He wondered which front Wiesner had served on. He wondered, as he often did with Germans of his own age, whether they’d been facing him across those hundred yards of churned-up meadow near Merville. He sometimes wondered whether Frau Heidegger’s repeated accusation that he might have shot her husband was simply her way of warding off the possibility that he really had.
He had once thought that he was over the war, that time and circumstance had turned the horror into anger, the anger into politics, and the politics into cynicism, leaving only the abiding belief that people in authority tended, by and large, to be incompetent, uncaring liars. The war, by this accounting, had been the latest demonstration of a depressingly eternal truth. Nothing more.
He’d been fooling himself. All those who’d been in that particular place at that particular time had been indelibly marked by the experience, and he was no exception. You never shook it off completely-whatever it was it had left you with, whether nerves in tatters, an endless rage, or a joy-sapping cynicism. And the memories never seemed to fade. That sudden waft of decomposing flesh, the rats’ eyes reflected in the shell-burst, the sight of one’s own rotting feet. The unnerving beauty of a flare cracking the night sky open. Being splashed with someone else’s brain, slapped in the face by death.
Jimmy Sewell was his name. After helping carry what was left of him back to the medical station, Russell had somehow ended up with the letter he had just written to his girlfriend. Things were looking up, Sewell had told her, now that the Yanks were arriving in force. It had been late June or early July, 1918. One of a string of sunny days in northern France.
He and Razor Wilkinson had hitched a ride to Hazebrouck that evening, and gotten pissed out of their minds in a dingy back street bar. The more he drank, the more his brain-spattered face seemed to itch, and he had ended up wading into the River Lys and frantically trying to wash himself clean. Razor had stood on the bank laughing at him, until he realized that Russell was crying, and then he’d started crying too.
Twenty-one years ago, but Russell could still feel the current tugging at his legs. He levered himself out of bed and went to the window. Berlin was sleeping, but he could imagine Albert Wiesner lying in bed on his back, hands clenched around the blankets, staring angrily at the ceiling.
With Paul off on his Jungvolk adventure weekend, Russell and Effi spent most of Saturday morning in bed. Russell slipped on some clothes to bring back pastries and coffee from the shop around the corner, and slipped them off again when making love seemed more urgent than eating. Half an hour later Effi re-warmed the coffee on her tiny stove, and brought it back to the bedroom.
“Tell me about the film part,” Russell said, once they were propped up against the headboard. Effi had told him about the offer the night before, but had been too tired to go into details.
“They start shooting on the thirteenth,” she said. “Two weeks on Monday. Marianne Immel had the part, but she’s sick-pregnant, probably, though no one’s said so. They want me to audition on Tuesday morning, but I’ll have to be pretty bad to miss out-they won’t have time to find anyone else.”
“What’s it called?”
“Mother. And that’s me. It’s a big part.”
“Can I see the script?”
“Of course, but let me tell you the story first.” She licked a pastry crumb from her upper lip and pushed her hair back behind her ears. “I am Gerta,” she said. “I have a job in a factory, an important administrative job. I almost run the place for the owner. I like my work and I’m good at it.”
“But only a woman,” Russell murmured.
“Indeed. My husband Hans has a good job on the railways. And needless to say he’s active in the SA, very active in fact. Hans earns more than enough money to support the family-we have two children by the way, a sixteen-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old boy-and he rather thinks that I should give up work and look after them. But he’s too kind-hearted to insist, and I keep on working.”
“I sense tragedy in the offing.”
“Ah, I should add that my boss fancies me no end. I don’t fancy him-he looks decidedly Jewish by the way-but Hans is always away on Party business-you know, organizing parades, running youth camps and generally saving the nation-and the boss is kind enough and smooth enough to be good company, so I flirt with him a little and let him buy me pastries. Like you, in fact,” she added, looking at Russell.
“Do you flaunt your beautiful breasts at him?” Russell asked.
“Certainly not,” she said, pulling her nightdress closed. “Now concentrate.”
“I’ll try.”
“One day she and the boss go to visit a factory he’s thinking of buying, and on the way back they decided to stop off at a guesthouse with a famous view. On the way down the mountain his car gets a flat tire, and she’s late getting home. Meanwhile, son and daughter have arrived home from school, and can’t get in. They wait for a while, but it’s raining-buckets of the stuff-and son already has a cold. Daughter notices that one of the upstairs windows is ajar, and decides to climb up and in.”
“Only she doesn’t make it.”
“How did you guess?”
“Dead or just paralyzed?”
“Oh, dead. Though I suppose having her in a wheelchair would provide a constant reminder of my guilt. Which is, of course, enormous. I give up my job, despite the pleas of my boss. But the guilt is still too much, so I try and kill myself. And guess who saves me?”
“Son?”
“Exactly. He comes home with a couple of Jungvolk buddies to find me head down on the kitchen table with an empty bottle of pills. They rush me to the hospital on the cart they’ve been using to collect old clothes for Winter Relief.”
“And when you come round you realize that you can only atone for your daughter’s death by becoming the perfect stay-at-home mother.”
“Hans comes to collect me, takes me home, and tells me he can’t bear me being so unhappy and that I can go back to work if I want to. Whereupon I give the speech of my life, castigating him for letting me have my own way in the past, and saying that all I really want to be is a wife and mother. He weeps with joy. In fact we both do. The end.”
“It does bring a tear to the eye,” Russell said. “Is it going to make you famous?”
“Shouldn’t think so. But the money’s good, and it will involve some acting.”
“But no breast-flaunting.”
“I only do that for you,” she said, pulling the nightdress open.
After he’d walked effi to the theater for the Barbarossa matinee, Russell ate a snack lunch at the Zoo Station buffet, climbed up to the elevated platforms, and sat watching the trains for a while. It was something he and Paul did on occasion, marveling at the long lines of carriages snaking in across the bridge from Cologne or Paris or the wonderfully named Hook of Holland. Today, though, he waited in vain for a continental express. There were only the neat little electric trains of the Stadtbahn, fussing in and out of the local platforms.
He walked around the northern wall of the zoo and, for want of something better to do, headed home along the Landwehrkanal. It had been a long time since he’d spent a Saturday afternoon in Berlin alone, and he felt unexpectedly disoriented by the experience. To make matters worse it was the sort of winter day he hated: gray, damp, and almost insultingly warm. Even the canal smelled worse than usual.
When he reached home Frau Heidegger was lying in wait. Schacht’s long-expected dismissal as President of the Reichsbank had been all over the front pages that morning, and she was worried about how this might affect share prices. “My Jurgen’s family gave me some Farben shares after the war,” she explained, after press-ganging him in for coffee. “Just a few, you understand, but I always thought they might come in handy in my old age.”
Russell reassured her that Schacht’s dismissal was unlikely to have any lasting effect. Unlike the coming war, he added to himself. Or her coffee.
“The Fьhrer’s angry with the Czechs,” she said from the kitchen, as if following his thoughts.
“What about?” Russell asked.
“Does it matter?” she asked, coming in with the familiar pot.
“No,” he agreed. He was often surprised by Frau Heidegger’s perceptiveness, and surprised that he could still be surprised.
“I told my brother-in-law what you said about air defenses,” she went on. “He said he hoped you were right.”
“So do I,” Russell agreed again.
After climbing the stairs to his apartment he wished he hadn’t: The combination of muggy weather and full throttle heating had made it feel like the hot room of a Turkish bath. He tried opening a window, but there was no welcome hint of cooler air. He tried reading, but nothing seemed to stick.
He went out again. It was just after four-he had about six hours to kill. He walked south down Belle-Alliance Strasse to Viktoria Park, climbed to the brow of the Kreuzberg, and found an empty bench with a view across the city. There was even a slight breeze.
The sky darkened, and his mood seemed to darken with it.
He thought about Effi and the film. They’d had fun that morning, but it was a pretty disgusting piece of work. Did she have any qualms about doing it? She hadn’t said so. He couldn’t believe she needed the money, and he’d heard her views on the Nazi attitude toward women often enough. So why was she doing it? Should he ask her? Was it possible to ask someone a question like that without making it an accusation?
He decided it wasn’t, but later that night, halfway down an empty street on their way home from the theater, he asked it anyway.
“To make a living?” she answered sarcastically.
“But you don’t…” he said, and stopped himself. But not soon enough.
“Lots of people think that because my family is rich, I’m rich,” she said coldly. “I took the flat when they offered it. Ten years ago. And I haven’t taken anything since.”
“I know.”
“Then what…”
He sighed. “It’s just so sordid. I hate the idea of you playing in something… in playing a part that goes against everything you believe.”
“That just makes it more of a challenge.”
“Yes, but the better you do it, the more convincing you are, the more women will think they have to accept all this nonsense.”
She stopped in her tracks. “Are we talking about my work or yours?” she asked. “How about your paean to Strength Through Joy cruises? Or your ‘car for every German worker’ piece. You’ve hardly been cutting the ground from under their feet.”
He bit back the surge of anger. She was right.
They both were.
The next afternoon, he went to the Plumpe. Paul had asked him for a program, and with Effi visiting her family that seemed a good enough reason for going. He had Thomas and Joachim for company, but he missed Paul, and the game itself was dire-a dull 1-1 draw with Berliner SV. Thomas was subdued-like Frau Heidegger and 75 million other Germans he’d noticed the telltale flurry of government antagonism toward the Czechs. Sandwiched between SV supporters on the southbound U-bahn they arranged to have lunch on the following Thursday.
Back at the apartment he found a courier delivery waiting for him: a copy of the previous day’s Pravda, complete with his first article. His Russian wasn’t that good, but as far as he could tell they hadn’t altered anything. “Approved by the SD, approved by the NKVD,” he thought out loud. “I should have been a diplomat.” More gratifying still was the accompanying bank draft in Reichsmarks.
There was also the promised list of suggestions for future articles. The last-but-one letters of the opening sentence-who thought up this stuff?-spelled Cracow. Russell groaned. Two 16-hour train journeys, just for a chat with Shchepkin. At least, he hoped it was just for a chat.