Winter, page 48
‘You remember your uncle Glenn,’ Mrs Danziger prompted.
Helena was almost fourteen years old, a shy little girl with Peter’s pale-blue Rensselaer eyes and her mother’s wavy jet-black hair. ‘Of course I do,’ said Helena confidently. She came to him and kissed him sedately.
‘I brought you a doll. Do you still play with dolls?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I hear you’ve been sick.’
‘I’m going to school again now,’ she said. She had the careful almost accentless voice of the language student, and her phrases seemed to have been adopted whole from the speech of the grownups around her.
‘Well, that’s great,’ said Glenn.
‘Just three mornings a week,’ said Nita Danziger. ‘Next month maybe she’ll start dancing class.’
‘Do you like dancing?’ said Glenn.
‘I want to be a dancer,’ said Helena.
Glenn smiled. Nita Danziger had been a dancer in her younger days. He suspected that the motivation came from her. He gave Helena the doll. It wasn’t much of a present: a blank-faced ballerina he’d bought hurriedly in a downtown department store. And it was obvious that she considered herself too old for such things.
‘It’s perfectly lovely,’ she said politely and cuddled the doll.
‘Your English is wonderful,’ said Glenn.
‘My accent is swell, but my grammar needs working on.’
‘She studies very hard at it,’ said Mrs Danziger approvingly.
‘Have you been to Europe lately?’ Helena asked.
‘Yup!’
‘Did you see my mommy?’
‘Maybe next time,’ said Glenn awkwardly.
‘She’s serving a sentence in prison,’ said Helena.
‘That’s a kind of misunderstanding,’ said Glenn.
‘She’s a victim of the Nazis,’ said Helena. ‘That’s what I told the girls at school.’
‘What did they say?’ said Glenn.
‘They said she was a spy.’
‘What did you tell them.’
‘I said yes, she was,’ said Helena and in a sophisticated aside added. ‘It was better to say that. The girls at school thought that was exciting.’
‘Well, keep working on the English,’ said Glenn, looking at his watch again. ‘I have to go and see your father now.’
‘Thank you for the doll, Uncle Glenn. It was very thoughtful of you.’ She gave a stately bow.
‘Sure,’ said Glenn.
To anyone who’d not seen a movie studio before it was all quite staggering. Right in the centre of the San Fernando Valley, amid orange groves that seemed to reach as far as the San Gabriel Mountains, there were these three great buildings, each as high as a city block and almost as extensive. These were the sound stages, and each had cost half a million dollars. Behind them were almost a hundred acres of land: ponds, hills, a Western street and the derelict rear half of a gigantic Spanish galleon complete with sails that were now shredded and stained. On the back lot, the filming that had been abandoned because of the rain was now resumed, and a posse of bandits galloped through the street there for the mute camera.
The big red lights on the wall went out, and two men emerged from the building upon which the words ‘Stage Two’ had been painted in huge letters. Despite the arc-lit stage from which they’d come, the two men were blinking in the even brighter sunlight. Glenn Rensselaer had not changed much over the years, but a year in the United States had completely transformed his nephew Peter. He’d spent a couple of weeks with Cy Rensselaer and Dot, but it was when he got to California that he felt reborn. Forty-four years old, he looked at least ten years younger. His hair was short, trimmed close to the skull the way the local college boys liked it these days, with a short-sleeved open-neck white shirt and bright-blue-and-white-striped trousers with white canvas shoes. Peter’s face and arms were tanned, and he no longer seemed so self-conscious about his crippled hand.
‘I certainly am glad you showed me around, Peter. I’ve never seen a movie being shot before.’
‘This will be the studio’s first large-scale Technicolor musical,’ said Peter. ‘It’s a big investment and we don’t want too many people in the industry knowing exactly what we’re doing.’ He looked at his uncle. He’d guessed that Glenn was bringing news about Lottie, but he didn’t press him. Glenn had this strange need to get himself prepared for important conversations, and Peter knew that.
‘You already talk like a movie executive,’ said Glenn.
‘That’s what I am,’ said Peter. ‘Thanks to my father-in-law. I wish I’d known poor Simon Danziger better. He must have had an amazing business brain.’
‘Really?’ said Glenn.
‘He sold these orange groves to the movie company, and kept a large piece of the equity. How many people saw what profits were going to come from movie-making? And that was back in the days of silent films. What foresight! Mrs Danziger is a very rich woman now.’
Glenn looked at his nephew and decided that there was nothing to be gained from telling him how his father-in-law’s fiscal recklessness had led to despair and suicide, that his ownership of the stock in the movie company was due only to the buyer’s lack of liquidity. ‘Yeah,’ said Glenn. ‘It worked out real well for her.’
A small electric tractor went buzzing past them, towing a train containing racks filled with eighteenth-century costumes: crinolines, naval uniforms and other gorgeous garments of doubtful historical accuracy. ‘Some of the studios are switching to war movies,’ said Peter, ‘but we’re sticking to what they call “escapism” here.’ He laughed at the strange word.
‘So I see.’
‘When they asked me to become a vice president, I knew it was only because of Mrs Danziger’s holdings,’ said Peter. ‘But since then I’ve saved them from some bad mistakes. They were going to sell the old studio in Culver City, but I persuaded them to lease it to a company that will build offices there. We did very well on the lease. I believe that real-estate values in the Los Angeles region will soar in value one day. And I went into the contract department and found that no one working there speaks any foreign languages. No one! So I sorted out their European distribution contracts. Can you believe that when the war began they were talking about cutting their losses and withdrawing from the European market? In fact, of course, the war has meant more and more people going to the movies. Soldiers, factory workers, refugees and evacuated people – the movies are their only entertainment. And the Rensselaer brothers have been wonderful. Having the support of the bank made me indispensable.’ Peter smiled.
‘And now you’re writing tunes.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Nita Danziger. She showed me the publicity with your name on it.’
Peter smiled modestly. ‘They let me try my hand when they needed music urgently. One or two numbers have been popular.’
They looked up at the sound of aircraft engines. Overhead four brightly painted naval biplanes flew in a wobbly formation. ‘Trainers,’ said Glenn.
‘That’s why the sound stages were built,’ said Peter. ‘Planes didn’t matter in the old days of silent movies.’
‘I’d say you’ve become an American,’ said Glenn.
Peter answered literally, as he always did. ‘I am going to take out papers. Helena is at school. She has private English lessons and she manages the language very well. It has taken her a long time to learn that English has so few rules. One of the Rensselaers has a son born the same year as Helena, and they seem to like each other. When Lottie comes out of Germany we’ll live here. I haven’t said that to anyone but you, Glenn. But I have made up my mind.’ It was fitting that he should confide his secret first to Glenn Rensselaer. During the time they’d spent in Washington they’d become very close. Peter had been touched to discover how hard and how long his uncle had worked trying to get Lottie released.
‘But you’re happy?’
‘If Lottie was with me I’d be in paradise.’ He looked at Glenn. Now surely he would tell him what was happening about getting Lottie released.
‘The reason I’m asking you, Peter, is because I’d like you to come to Washington.’
‘What is the latest news about Lottie?’
‘This isn’t about Lottie exactly. Except that it’s about thousands of Lotties, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You saw the newsreel of the German army’s victory march through Paris. The news agencies say a German invasion fleet is massing along the Channel coast. There are people in Washington, plenty of people, who are convinced that the British are not going to be able to last much longer.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you feel about that, Peter?’
‘Hitler will have to be stopped. He’s a madman.’
‘Stopped or defeated?’
‘What do you mean, Glenn?’
‘We all want to see Hitler stopped, but now it looks like the only way to stop him is to defeat him. That means defeating Germany: shooting bullets, dropping bombs, sinking ships and killing Germans. What I mean is, how far will you go in stopping him?’
‘I have already given your question a great deal of thought. I want Hitler stopped. You tell me that the only way to stop him is to defeat Germany. I think you are right. My poor Fatherland will have to suffer defeat all over again. I cry for them.’
‘There are people in Washington who think that the U.S. will have to fight, too. Soon, perhaps.’ They moved well aside for a truck delivering fully grown trees for the next sequences of the western being shot on the back lot.
‘Against Germany?’
‘Yes, against Germany. Our intelligence-collecting organization is more or less useless. We know nothing about Germany except what the embassy sends us, and that’s not much. The President has now authorized the formation of a secret intelligence outfit. Even Congress doesn’t know about us. Our state of ignorance is such that only by employing people like yourself, who’ve recently come from Germany, can we be ready to train our youngsters.’
‘And you want me to join?’ They’d arrived at Glenn’s car, a big V–8 Cadillac with air conditioning and all the extras that only Cadillacs have.
‘There’s not much money in it. No uniforms, badges, or medals. We’d probably be able to get your citizenship through more quickly – although even that I can’t promise – and I can offer you only the salary of a U.S. army major. But we are a rather informal group of warriors. If you wanted to take the American bar exams, I could get you tuition and time out. I might be able to arrange for you to come back here and dabble in your movie-making every few months. And we’d give you travel expenses: airplane, not that damned train.’
‘You Americans are a strange people, Glenn.’
‘Yeah, so I’ve heard.’ He got in the car and brought down the electric window so they could talk. Now he would tell him about Lottie. This was the way Uncle Glenn always did things.
Peter leaned down to him. ‘And I am very German. The idea of being an officer in an army run in such a fashion that its officers are civilians when they prefer it, is more than I can comprehend.’
‘So what do you say?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Peter.
Glenn let in the clutch so that the car started to move. It was only then that Peter finally realized there was as yet no news of her. He felt physically sick with disappointment.
1941
‘It was on the radio’
Lottie had fought the system. She’d not been insolent or disobedient: she’d fought the prison routine by not submitting to it. She went out of her way to be friendly and helpful to the other prisoners. She laughed and joked and kept smiling in the way her father had said you keep smiling in the face of rudeness or hostility. But she’d been in prison a long time now and she was getting tired. And today it was hot; damned hot. The sort of day to go sailing, swimming or sunbathing on Berlin’s wonderful lakes.
‘You get used to it. That’s the trouble,’ said the plump woman.
‘No talking!’ The loud voice of the prison guard echoed across the cobbled yard as the four prisoners walked smartly and quickly, as regulations prescribed, towards the kitchen. It was hot and humid; the women felt sticky in their clothes. Everything was tiring.
Once they were delivered to the warder in the kitchen, and the door was locked behind them, discipline relaxed. The big kitchen was like nowhere else in the whole prison. Only here was there daylight in abundance; sunlight streamed down through the skylight and made all the spotlessly clean wooden tables and the steaming pots gleam and shine. But even with the skylights wide open, the air was hotter and wetter here than anywhere else in the whole prison.
‘What do you mean?’ said Lottie to the buxom woman who’d been reprimanded in the yard.
‘Prison. You get to depend on it. You never have to think for yourself: just obey orders.’
‘But that’s just what it’s like outside,’ said Lottie.
The woman did not smile. She was an enthusiastic Nazi and did not hold against them her imprisonment for being an abortionist. The fact that her last patient had died from infection was bad luck. It was something to be blamed on fate or God or the careless young soldier – nothing to do with the police, the court, or the Nazis.
‘Which of you two made the goulash yesterday?’ This woman was a Female Police Auxiliary, a neurotic, fidgety individual who took great pride in her smart police-green uniform with the small side cap that she wore perched on her forehead.
‘I did,’ said Lottie.
‘Come with me.’ She was a stern-faced woman of about forty but she was not unfriendly. She’d told Lottie the previous day that her husband was a tank gunner with a division stationed in occupied Poland, far away from the war against England, and she thanked God for that.
She took off her uniform jacket and arranged it on a hanger before putting on her white apron. Then she led Lottie into the bread store and started her weighing up the ingredients for 1,220 Leberknödel. ‘Half these girls in here can’t read or write,’ she complained.
Lottie smiled and said nothing. The woman’s eyes were reddened, as if she’d been crying.
‘I can’t trust them to weigh ingredients.’ She watched Lottie putting breadcrumbs into a box to weight them on the scales. There would not be much liver in the ‘Bavarian liver dumplings’, they’d be bread and garlic with some chopped fat, the way they’d been since the war began in 1939.
‘Is everything all right for you at home?’ said Lottie in her fluent but imperfect German.
The woman corrected Lottie’s grammar, in a flat, fast automatic way, without seeming to notice she was doing so. ‘Yes, everything is in order,’ she added.
Lottie continued the weighing in silence. Then the woman looked round the storeroom furtively and said, ‘We’ve invaded Russia!’
‘What?’ said Lottie.
‘They told us not to tell the prisoners.’ The woman picked up a measure and started shovelling the crumbs.
‘Are you sure?’ Lottie wondered if she’d misunderstood the German. She did sometimes.
‘It was on the radio. Fanfares every few minutes. Dr Goebbels read the Führer’s proclamation over all stations this morning. It’s the biggest offensive in the history of the world.’ The woman had been dying to tell someone; you could tell that by the way she said it.
‘Russia!’ said Lottie, trying to understand what it meant.
‘At dawn this morning. My Karl will be in the thick of it. The tanks always are.’ Her fears were tinged with pride. The propaganda service had singled out the Panzer divisions for special praise since the victories in France the previous year.
‘I’m sure he’ll be safe,’ said Lottie.
‘We have four children,’ said the woman. There was sweat on her brow. ‘Four, seven, ten and thirteen. I couldn’t manage without Karl.’ She kept on shovelling the crumbs, working fast, as if trying to set Lottie a good example.
‘You mustn’t worry,’ said Lottie.
‘Army Group Centre,’ said the woman mechanically. ‘Second Armoured Group. By Christmas they say they’ll be in Moscow.’
Lottie looked down and saw that the distraught woman had been tipping the breadcrumbs onto the floor.
‘Yes, Heil Hitler, Colonel Weizsäcker’
It was December. The isolated little farm was half buried under deep drifts of snow, and yet still more snow came. Inside the dark farmhouse a small group of staff officers stood round a kitchen table, stamping their feet and slapping themselves to keep warm while they awaited the arrival of their Divisional commander. It was daylight outside, but the windows had been boarded up in an attempt to keep out the cruel Russian winds. The talk was about the 258th Infantry Division, which had got a reconnaissance battalion as far as the Moscow suburb of Khimki.
‘One of the soldiers went to the streetcar stop and picked up a ticket. He’s been showing it to everyone.’ The signals captain spoke loudly because of the noise of the wind.
‘There’ll be plenty of streetcar tickets for everyone when we get there,’ growled Colonel Weizsäcker, who after the recent casualties had become the senior officer of this detached ‘battle group’.
