Winter, page 62
In the moments of silence that followed there was the sound of the lift motor. Outside on the landing the metal grille slammed, and then the voices got louder until Inge came into the room, and Fritz Esser followed her. He made some sort of joke and they both laughed.
‘General Horner?’ said Inge in the stagy voice that she often adopted after a few drinks. ‘What are you doing here?’ She was dressed up: they both were.
‘Alex called in for a drink, darling,’ said Pauli. ‘But I thought you were going to have a late dinner and go dancing.’
‘We were,’ said Inge, ‘but some tiresome man brought Fritz a message.’ She looked in the mirror and touched her hair. She was forty-seven and had begun to tint the greying places. They’d been to see Romanze in Moll. Inge loved it and identified with the doomed heroine, the unfaithful wife of a civil servant. But her lover – a musical genius writing a ‘romance’ – could hardly be compared to Fritz Esser. Inge was annoyed at missing the rejected wife’s suicide, even if she had already seen the film three times. She smiled wanly at her reflection.
‘To the cinema,’ said Fritz after he’d greeted Horner. ‘They stopped the film and put a slide on the screen asking me to contact the manager.’
‘What is it?’ said Pauli.
Fritz Esser looked from General Horner to Pauli and back to Horner. He guessed what had brought Horner here, but he went through the motions, since that was the way they wanted it. ‘An attempt on the Führer’s life. It’s not being announced officially. An army captain with a bomb. A staff officer, but an ex-front-line soldier: the usual Knight’s Cross and all that ironware. The poor little swine got his arm blown off. The Führer was inside having a shit at the time. He must have wondered what he’d eaten when he heard that one go off, eh?’ The Führer’s diet of salads, and the chronic flatulence that resulted, was well known to those in his immediate circle, and Fritz laughed loudly, exposing his teeth. He’d had a great deal of expensive dental work done lately. At Inge’s urging, his old bad, crooked, broken tombstones were now being systematically replaced with even, regular ones. Many of them were gold.
‘How do you know all the details?’ Pauli asked.
‘I phoned Bormann. Bormann’s the only one who knows what he’s doing down there in the Berghof. It’s a circus! Those Bavarians couldn’t run a candy store, but the Führer doesn’t seem to mind the way they screw everything up. And they’re the only ones who can understand the Führer’s accent,’ said Fritz, and laughed again. ‘Give me a drink, Pauli, will you? I’ll be up half the night. They have the poor bastard in custody, but we’ll have to send someone down there to investigate, just for the look of the thing. Do you think our pal Koch could handle it?’ He looked at his watch and then poured the drink himself. He knew where everything was kept. ‘I must go.’
‘Koch’s not a very good investigator,’ said Pauli. ‘And he sometimes upsets people. Don’t send him to the Berghof. I’ve put him behind a desk and let him shuffle paper. Leave him there.’
‘I’ll find someone,’ said Fritz, drinking his large measure of schnapps.
‘I’ve got to go out with Alex,’ Pauli announced.
‘Where to?’ asked Inge petulantly. She would be left alone, and she hated to be alone. That was why she stayed with Pauli and put up with this absurd pretence of marriage.
‘Out,’ said Pauli.
‘You don’t have to be so damned rude,’ said Inge shrilly. Any sort of rejection hurt her deeply.
‘Now, now, now,’ said Fritz Esser, who often found himself keeping the peace between them. ‘Pauli never asks us where we’re going, Inge, my love. You must let him live his own life.’
‘We should have been divorced ages ago,’ she said.
Alex Horner had picked up his cap. He stood in the hall, staring at an engraving of Vienna – a present from Inge for Pauli’s birthday long ago – his face blank, as if he were not hearing the conversation.
‘Forget about divorces,’ Fritz Esser told her. ‘The Führer doesn’t approve of divorces: it would affect your husband’s career, and maybe mine, too.’ He grinned. This might have been a joke – it was not always possible to know with Fritz – but at least she could be sure that his injunction was sincere, and she didn’t pursue the topic.
Inge looked at Pauli with a smile that was too sweet. ‘So Peter is here in Berlin?’ she said suddenly.
‘What’s that?’ bellowed Fritz Esser.
Alex Horner continued to study the engraving and Pauli said, ‘Peter? In Berlin? No.’ But Pauli had never been a very good liar, and Fritz’s genuine surprise showed Pauli’s denials for what they were.
‘I heard you talking,’ said Inge. ‘I came up the stairs – I can’t go into that lift any more – and let myself in while Fritz was parking the car. I heard you.’
‘Yes, he’s here.’ Pauli’s voice was devoid of emotion. It was the voice he’d used so often during the rows they’d had.
‘Is that where you’re going?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Pauli. ‘I’m going to see my brother.’
‘Are you going to tell him that Lottie is dead?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Murdered by American bombs: make sure he understands that,’ she said cruelly.
Pauli looked at her. Poor Inge. ‘Do you still love him?’ he asked.
‘Love him? I detest him!’
‘Like you detest me?’ Pauli asked her.
‘Yes, like I detest you.’
Fritz Esser gulped his schnapps, put the glass on the table, grabbed Inge by the arm, and shook her so hard that her teeth snapped together. ‘Now, you listen to me, you silly girl,’ he said. ‘This is state business, not romantic stories from the ladies’ magazines. You keep your mouth shut.’ He shook her roughly. ‘Tight shut! You mention the name of Peter Winter and I’ll beat the daylights out of you. Understand, you little bitch?’
Fritz released his grip on her arm and she backed away from him fearfully, rubbing the arm where he’d hurt her. To Pauli’s surprise, Inge smiled – a bitter smile, but a smile nevertheless. ‘You make everything so clear, Fritz darling,’ she said.
‘She’ll be all right, Pauli,’ Fritz assured him without even looking at her. ‘You get going and do what you have to do. Where is he?’
‘Where is he?’ Pauli in turn asked Alex Horner.
Horner hesitated and then said, ‘Wedding: an apartment block, between Saint Josef’s Church and the subway station.’
‘I need to know, if I’m to keep the bloodhounds away from you,’ explained Fritz Esser without saying how he intended to do it.
‘The officer held in custody – the injured one at the Berghof – has met Peter,’ said Pauli.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Fritz. ‘He’s already taken care of.’ He glanced at General Horner, but Horner remained as stiff as a rod, in that tense and formal military attitude that the Germans call zackig.
Pauli looked at Horner, too, and felt embarrassed. There was no doubt what Fritz meant: plans had been put under way to ensure that the officer died as quickly as possible and so obviate any chance of further complications. General Horner understood, of course – he was not a fool – but he gave no sign of emotion.
‘Go to bed, Inge,’ Fritz Esser said; when she remained in the room fidgeting with the empty glasses, as if trying to decide whether to clear them away, he said, ‘Did you hear me? I said go to bed.’
‘Yes, Fritz. Goodnight, General Horner.’ Horner bowed without a word. ‘Goodnight Pauli.’
‘Goodnight, Inge.’
‘And keep that big mouth of yours shut,’ said Fritz before she could say goodnight to him. To the others he said, ‘Come along. I take it you’ve got a car, Alex?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Good luck to you both,’ said Fritz. ‘It’s going to be a damned long night.’
‘Who was the Swedish fellow?’
The Bodensee is a large gloomy-looking lake that forms the boundary between southwestern Germany and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. Its waters are frequently made dangerous by storms that spring up quickly from the snow-tipped Alps that serrate the southern horizon. From Friedrichshafen – a small town on the German side – a ferryboat goes regularly to the Swiss town of Romanshorn. This June evening the air had turned suddenly cooler, and the water had the curious milky look that local people say is the presage of a storm. The air was full of tiny flying insects, and there were birds swooping low over the smooth lake water preying upon them. The threat of rain had kept everyone indoors except two men. The waterfront was theirs alone.
The men were strolling along under the trees. One was shortish, plump, and in his mid-forties. An untidy-looking fellow, he wore a good suit of the same black worsted as lawyers favour throughout the world. His blond hair was going white, and he moved his hands a lot as he spoke. The other man was slightly older, a thin-faced man with eyeglasses; he was shabbily dressed but tall and slim, and he carried himself more gracefully, the way an actor or a dancer might walk. When they got to the wall, they turned and started coming back towards the big black BMW with the Berlin registration plates that was parked near the church.
‘The immigration officer on this side is named Schanz,’ Pauli told his brother. ‘A tall fellow with a moustache …about sixty years old. He used to work for Papa at the factory here in town. He’s friendly. Tell him you are going to Switzerland for the company. If there’s any trouble I will intercede, but let’s hope it will be all right without me.’
‘I don’t want to get you into trouble,’ Peter said.
‘I can look after myself,’ said Pauli.
‘I wouldn’t have got out of Berlin without you.’
‘Who was the Swedish fellow?’
‘A seaman. He was trying to sell me tins of butter and bacon.’
‘He slipped away very quietly,’ said Pauli.
‘Black market. He was afraid of getting picked up, I suppose.’
‘I thought I knew his face,’ said Pauli.
‘Perhaps he’s sold you butter and bacon.’
Pauli smiled. ‘That must be it.’ He looked across the water again. They were on the strand near the Schlosskirche, at the very spot where Mama had sat in Papa’s wonderful Italian motorcar watching the zeppelins so many years ago. Where was the old car now? Pauli wondered. In a museum, perhaps. Once, during the Berlin fighting in 1919, he’d glimpsed it driving through the Tiergarten with half a dozen soldiers piled in it. ‘You say you’ll be all right on the other side…. If you have any trouble there, ask for a man named Becheler. He’s a police inspector who is always somewhere near the customs office. Tell him you know me. He’s a sullen young bastard, but we pay him.’
‘The Gestapo?’
‘Yes. He helps us from time to time. His parents live in Innsbruck: he won’t do anything that might upset us,’ said Pauli ominously.
Peter looked at his pocket watch – a cheap steel one, but it worked all right, just as London said it would. ‘The boat will be leaving soon. I wish you’d come, too, Pauli.’
‘We’ve been through all that, Peter.’
‘I wish you’d come. I could make it all right for you, whatever you’ve done.’
Good grief! How could Peter be urging his younger brother to flee from his native land and join his country’s enemies? Surely it would make more sense for Peter to stay here and let Pauli protect him. The world was turning upside down. ‘I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of,’ said Pauli.
Peter looked at his brother. He wished he could make Pauli understand what was waiting for the SS and the Gestapo and all Himmler’s minions. ‘They hate us, Pauli.’
‘Who? The Americans?’
‘Everyone hates us. No one respects the Germans any longer. They call us names – Krauts, Huns, Boches, Jerries – and they despise us.’
‘We’ll see about that when we’ve won the war,’ said Pauli defiantly.
Pauli’s childish optimism irritated Peter. He wanted to shake sense into him. ‘The war is lost, Pauli. Surely you must see that by now.’
‘Is it, Peter?’
Poor Pauli. He looked lost. Peter had always taken his brother’s respect, love and loyalty for granted; perhaps he’d not given enough in return. Perhaps none of the family had. Suddenly he felt protective of his younger brother in a way he’d never felt before. He put an arm round Pauli’s shoulder and said gently, ‘God knows what is going to happen to Germany. Come with me! What have you got to stay here for?’
‘Nothing. I’ve lost Inge; I have no children; Father won’t permit me in his house. But I can’t go with you. I’m too old to adapt to another country and another language. Too old and too stupid. I’ll stay with Mama. She’ll need comforting when Father dies. He won’t last another winter; the doctor told Mama that.’
‘The boat is coming now. I wish I could have seen him … and Mama. Perhaps you could find some way of telling her.’
‘The fewer people who know, the better, Peter.’
‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s terrible to think I may never see him again.’
‘I didn’t want to argue with Father, but he blamed me for things that were not my fault. It wasn’t fair.’
‘He’s old, Pauli. And old people become crotchety.’
‘I did what I could.’
‘I’m sure you did, Pauli. We’d better go along to the pier.’
Pauli stopped strolling. He turned to his brother and said, ‘I loved Lottie. I really loved her.’
‘I’m sure you did, Pauli. No one blames you for anything.’
‘You don’t understand: I loved her!’
‘We must go, Pauli. The ferryboat is almost here.’
‘If she’d stayed at Lial Hennig’s she would have been all right, but she was feeling low, and Lisl’s little boy said he’d take her to the cinema. She never went out, but it was a colour film, a musical. Little Theo said it would cheer her up.’
Peter closed his eyes and tried not to hear Pauli’s words. It was too painful. ‘You told me.’
‘And then the Americans came over. It was a bad raid. They both must have died instantly: the whole cinema got it – a direct hit.’
Peter opened his eyes to look at his brother. ‘No one blames you, Pauli. It’s the war. I understand.’ Peter had forced the news of Lottie’s death into some dark recess of his mind. He’d grieve for her at another time and in another place.
‘I would have done anything, Peter. You know that.’
‘I know, Pauli.’
‘There is a visitor’
The big house in downtown New York City had become something of a curiosity, for all around it were tall apartment blocks and office buildings. In a bedroom on the second floor of the old house, Cyrus Rensselaer was in bed. He was ninety-three years old and in amazing physical shape for a man of his years. Almost every day he got up and, with a little help from a servant, got dressed and came downstairs in the newly installed elevator to have luncheon. But for the last two weeks he’d not managed that feat. He’d remained in bed and had The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal read to him. He’d eaten only soft-boiled eggs and a little chicken soup with dry toast. The doctor visited him every day. At first he’d said that his patient was in fine shape, but on the Tuesday Cyrus Rensselaer grew weaker.
He liked to have the mail brought up to him. Sometimes there was a letter from Glenn. It didn’t say very much, of course – Glenn had never been very good about writing letters, and now that he was engaged in secret work in England, his letters were both short and uninformative. A couple of times he’d said that all the family could be proud of Peter Winter, and once, very recently, he’d written to say that Peter was in England, safe and sound. But since they’d never heard that Peter was out of England, or in danger, this letter of reassurance meant little to anyone.
On Friday morning Cyrus Rensselaer received the sort of letter he liked: a big fat letter from an old friend who’d been on a business trip to Portugal. This long letter, written in a bold, flowing hand on a dozen sheets of bright-blue airmail paper, contained all sorts of information about European people, places and corporations known to Cyrus. The latest doings of his business rivals were catalogued there, and near the end his friend had written: ‘…no one gets to Berlin these days, but I met a fellow who told me that Harald Winter’s funeral was something of an event in that miserable town. Your daughter, Veronica, was there and looking well, I’m delighted to tell you, but you probably know all this already.’
Cyrus put the letter down. So Harald had died. Soon the war would be over and Veronica would come home. Life would be better then. He’d be back on his feet once Veronica was in the house again. He could clearly remember the sounds of her voice from the days when she was a child. Singing and chattering – such a noisy little girl. He smiled at the memory. The house had never been the same since she’d gone off to college. There was so much to talk to her about.
They found Cyrus Rensselaer dead when they took his light lunch to the bedroom. His eyeglasses were still on his nose; he’d died peacefully. The blue sheets of writing paper had fallen to the floor. Some people who read the letter thought that perhaps the news of his son-in-law’s funeral had killed him, but more perceptive people said that he’d died happy knowing that his old enemy Harald had gone before him.
The news of Cyrus Rensselaer’s death reached London more quickly than the news of Harald Winter’s death had crossed the Atlantic Ocean. For Cyrus Rensselaer was a name known to the world of business and beyond. In London an obituary appeared in The Times and in The Financial Times, too. The Economist ran a short article about ‘A Wizard of Wall Street’. But it took much longer for Glenn to find out that the old man’s fortune had been made over to his wife, Dot. For Glenn there was no more than a small annuity, and for Veronica, who, as his will said, had never returned to her homeland, there was nothing at all.
