by Ben Pastor
“‘And so on’?”
By simply repeating her words, Bora had unexpectedly struck home. Emmy raised her asymmetric glance to him. It was as if two girls were spying from behind a narrow gap; the right eye, the lighter one, was innocent, naive; the darker one sombre, and something very much like desire came from it. “I usually say, ‘and so on’, in order not to add that I was already dating Leo, whom Mother did not approve of. Oh, not politically, Colonel, I must be clear about that. Because he’d been married, and was twice my age. So I left home at seventeen. Seems like a lifetime ago.”
Nina’s age when she became engaged to my father, Bora thought, and censored his thought at once.
Emmy rested her hands on the edge of the table, much as she must do in front of her typewriter, awaiting dictation. Her nails were short. A little wrinkle formed between her straw-coloured eyebrows when she looked down, as you sometimes see in unhappy or pouty children. She moistened her lips, before speaking again.
“Have you noticed how even the things that seem most cohesive start falling apart one day?”
“Yes.”
“I often think about it.”
“I do too.”
Imagine. Suddenly they were in a place separate from everyone else, like the day before in the crowded car. Yet when the coffee was served it seemed the sole reason why Emmy had accepted the invitation – so happy was she to see it.
“Forgive me if I sip it one spoonful at a time, like a beggar or a little old lady.” A sunniness had come over her. When she smiled, her upper lip curled inwards, baring her small regular teeth and her gums, an artless and childish smile Bora didn’t usually like in women but accepted today. In a way, I am imposing myself on her. Would I have done this even just a month ago? No. But things change. Things fall apart.
Well, how had things actually changed? He wasn’t proposing to Emmy Pletsch, nor making her understand that he wanted to take her to bed. He was as reserved as ever. Not insecure, but contrary. Or maybe insecure. I have no more to offer her than she does me. We only met hours ago, but hours is all we have. All I have, at any rate.
She contemplated the painting, on which the shapely nymph sailed with a smile over clouds and sea as if being kidnapped by Zeus in animal form were a welcome change. Carefully, self-consciously, she gathered every fleck of cream from the surface of her coffee, letting it sit in her mouth to savour it.
“It’s even better than I remembered.”
Men, mostly officers, sat at the other tables around the room, sipping wine or beer. Emmy eyed them, but spoke to Bora.
“What will they think of you, sitting here with a woman who acts so gawkily?”
“I usually disregard what people think.”
Bora was surprised at his words. It was more than he wished to reveal, and, put this way, it could also imply a measure of contempt on his part. “Take all the time you need,” he hastened to add. “We’re not on duty.”
He followed Emmy’s glance towards the painting. Europa travelled from east to west, as the darkening sky to the left of the painting indicated. There, amid puffy clouds, a crescent moon and a shooting star or comet matched the bright sun on the right-hand side.
Does she like me? I can’t tell. She can see how seriously injured I am. I’m hiding nothing from her. Being attractive is nothing to brag about when the alternative is a comatose man. If Bruno says she is a good girl, it means that she has given no sign so far that she is looking for someone else. Yet he saw through her, as I do. So what? I have no intention to expose myself emotionally, or even just be told no, to something well beyond an invitation to coffee. Not that emotions would necessarily have a role in it. It all boils down to the question of whether I like her enough to try. I could simply let things run their course.
The sweet, warm drink relaxed her. Emmy told him she moved to Berlin when Leo Franke, promoted to driving school instructor, was assigned to the NSKK office on Graf Spee Strasse. “That’s how I found a job on Bendlerstrasse nearby.” Titbits, small elements of life followed one another, in reply to his first question. It was as if she were talking about strangers, or an existence over and done with, and irrecoverable. “That’s odd,” she interrupted herself at one point. “I can’t find much more to tell about the years we spent together. Yet we did things, we had plans, we grew used to each other. We were supposed to marry on 20 July.”
“Because you’re used to each other?”
She slowly put down the spoon, careful not to cause a tinkle when the metal met porcelain. It could seem a subordinate’s awkwardness on her part, yet Bora read it correctly as a form of diligence and self-control – incidentally his own way of being in the world.
“Why, yes.” She stole a glance at him. “I think so. Many people do it, and habit keeps most marriages going. My parents’, my sisters’. Mother says that habit hurts less than love.”
“This is absolutely true,” Bora caught himself saying. Once again, he’d said more than he wanted. As an interrogator, he was trained to befriend prisoners to make them talk, but this situation was completely different. Or, no – different in a way: there were things he wanted to know about her, rather than from her.
“Thank you for facilitating my appointment with Colonel von Stauffenberg, Staff Leader.”
“Yes, sir.”
One small spoonful after the other, Emmy finished her coffee. What little lip rouge she wore left no stain on the edge of the cup, but she stared at the porcelain rim intently, as if something about it were wrong, or worrisome. In thanking her, Bora had meant no more than what he said. Why then that contrite pressing together of lips on her part?
She stared at her empty cup as Dr Olbertz had contemplated his beer mug the night before, a sign of embarrassment, or guilt, or fear. Sotto voce, she said, “I do not know you, but … Allow me to suggest that you cancel it, Colonel. For your own good.”
Bora heard her words as if they’d been shouted at him. She is saying one – no, two enormous things. That, as far as she knows, it’s best if I avoid meeting Stauffenberg, when it is exactly what I want, and that she allows herself to think of my own good when she admits that she doesn’t know me at all.
He thought for an intense handful of seconds before saying carefully, in a similar undertone, “You are informed about what is happening, aren’t you.”
Her reaction startled him. Standing up suddenly, Emmy showed her entire figure, the figure of a healthy, good girl in a panic, who is not attempting to be seductive. “I must go, forgive me.”
“If you go now, it means you really do know.”
She sat down again, with an air of unhappiness. She seemed trapped, as often happened to Bora’s prisoners who betrayed themselves during interrogation.
He did not pressure her. “Don’t worry. I’m responsible, solid and tight-lipped. Especially for a Saxon.” He grinned without any ulterior motive. “However, it will be best if I meet your superior, believe me.”
“But my superior doesn’t care to meet you.”
“This will not keep me from turning up as agreed. I have nothing against being shown the door, but only after I say what I’ve come to say.”
This was how things stood. Scrambling for a reason to leave, she switched to a voluble series of excuses (having to meet a colleague, to catch a train, to bring a change of clothes to Leo Franke on a day other than visiting day) … Prisoners short on arguments rambled similarly under interrogation, tripping over their own words.
“Even though Leo doesn’t even know I’m coming, really, I have the afternoon off, so …” A girl owed it to her man, didn’t she. It so happened that her best friend Marika was good enough to come along for the train journey, which was why she had to get going, and then, and then …
Bora only feigned self-assurance. The dimensions of what was in the air, so frightening to Salomon, must be out of control if even young auxiliaries were involved in it. He uselessly struggled to concentrate on the girl sitting across from him; from her nervou
s wordiness, he only caught the tail end of what must have been a justification on her part.
“… please don’t misunderstand what I said. About me and Leo, and not missing him … He’s there, he hangs on to life, and I will take care of him however long it takes.”
Why is she telling me this, and what else did I miss of what she said? Bora delayed a comment, making her worry that her unrequested disclosure had annoyed him.
“If Franke was a habit for you,” he then said, straightforwardly, “it’s understandable that you don’t miss him. One misses other things.”
“Right.” Her mouth and her innocent eye agreed. “You’re right.” The liquid blue of her sombre eye signified that she wondered what those “other” things were. “… It’s just that I’m so sad for him. So hopelessly sad. Can you understand?”
“I believe I do. I lost my only brother on the Eastern front. My sister-in-law Margaretha would understand.”
For the third time Bora stopped short. Would she? What was he saying? Margaretha was already dating someone else, as Dikta no doubt was. Things change. Well, what about him? Wasn’t he … no, this was not a date. What was it, then? … Having a cup of coffee with a girl in very dangerous times.
Opposite him, Emmy Pletsch was the very picture of discomfort. Perhaps she knew that Bora meant love, a word neither of them would pronounce.
“My friend Marika will be waiting for me. I really must go.”
“Understood.” Bora sprang up from his chair before she rose from hers. “I’ll be in town only a little while longer. Will we see each other again?”
Not “may we”, but “will we”. It was a question – well below a request to meet her again.
“I don’t believe so, Colonel von Bora.”
Stretching her hand out to shake his across the table, she thanked him for the treat. Composure was coming back to her, now that she was free to go. Her light eye, the reserved and naive right eye, gave him a last look while she turned away. Clutching her handbag – it was the same straw pouch she’d carried in the tram – she left quickly, so that he would not attempt to see her out.
Bora remained at the table a little longer, thinking of what he would like to write in his diary but could not.
If, as Emmy Pletsch says, Stauffenberg is reluctant to see me, there can be at least two reasons. In any case, I’m on the razor’s edge. Officially, everything is as always, the army is faithfully united under its Führer. In fact, there appears to be no circle in Berlin where schemes and secret plans are not being whispered about. Perhaps some hearsay is being circulated intentionally, according to the principle that a true plot is not so foolish as to show its hand. But I started to believe that Salomon had heard right, even before I found Niemeyer’s letter. And I think Staff Leader Pletsch finds herself in the same predicament, in and out at the same time, probably very frightened. She mentioned my “own good”. What should I make of it? She doesn’t know me, so she isn’t speaking out of affection or self-interest. Her advice suggests that there’s a potential risk in meeting the deputy commander of the Reserve Army.
Driving back to the hotel, he kept thinking, with no solution in sight.
Everything seems to turn like a wheel around the fixed point of Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, who hears about me from Stauffenberg. Why then is Stauffenberg unenthusiastic about meeting me now? Either Schulenburg, as son of the former German ambassador to Moscow and, like him, already under Abwehr scrutiny in 1941, told him not to trust me; or he learned from other sources – not excluding that foolish Salomon – that I have more trouble with the Party than most. Not that it makes much difference at this point, but I have to know. And I must decide what to do with Salomon, whose nerves could break down any day. If he weren’t a German officer, and my former commander, I’d know exactly how to deal with him.
And Staff Leader Pletsch? The way she conversed and looked at me with that ambivalent sky-blue and dark-blue glance of hers … Has Bruno spoken to her about me? She could not seriously think that she could change my mind about meeting her commander. Not even if he sent her to me with that in mind. No, it’s the other, much more basic thing. I’ve been around. I can tell she’s interested every bit as much as I am, yet she holds back.
Too bad. I never had trouble denying myself to girls, but can’t abide rejection – not even now. Especially not now.
It was the type of personal reflection Bora might later note in his diary, except that what was at stake in Berlin today, more and more past the stage of idle rumour, dominated everything else. He was balanced on a tightrope between resolve and utter panic. Hadn’t he felt a storm coming? The storm was circling overhead.
What he resolved about Staff Leader Pletsch, while eating a spartan and unimaginative lunch at his corner table, was typical of him: so, early on in the process I’m giving up on a possible little story with Emmy. She likes me, but not enough to go to bed with me. I’m not attracted to her beyond my ability to resist, but more than enough to take her to bed. That’s the difference between men and women, and it doesn’t say much for us males.
Damn, though: women do this to you. Uncle was right, it’s that little pot on the fire, spilling over once in a while. You deem yourself superior, put your trust in intellect, in discipline, and then it’s enough for any one of them to sit across from you – no, not any one of them. If a woman has this effect on you, there is a reason, and it’s not just hormones.
When I joined the army, for all my book learning I was little more than a lad. Our training sergeant, who loved to spread pearls of wisdom regarding women, used to tell us, “Some of ’em, lay them just to make ’em happy, and maybe you’ll end up having fun yourself.” The concept was crude, but in the end … Who knows if, as my godmother told me in Rome some weeks ago, I am forever looking for more than just a lover? I am not so special. At times, I see myself as a frisky hound: following a trail, but not above going off after a new scent that distracts me.
RESERVE ARMY HEADQUARTERS, BENDLERSTRASSE, 1:54 P.M.
The Reserve Army headquarters occupied the same building where Bora worked while serving in the Abwehr, although the bombs had since damaged part of its structure.
Once inside, Bora went to the room of the day officer, who like most of his contemporaries on similar duty had an expressionless face and avoided any personal comment. He checked his register and neutrally observed that there was no appointment in Bora’s name slated with the deputy commander at that time. Bora was about to insist, when a fair-haired young man – he introduced himself as Lieutenant von Haeften, Stauffenberg’s adjutant – joined them from upstairs.
“Please, Colonel,” he said, preceding Bora upstairs and towards a long waiting room, where in better days a row of five intact windows had created the luminosity of a country residence. Bora was aware that the door ahead, closed now, led into a smaller corner office, where Stauffenberg had his desk. But Haeften faced him, giving no sign he’d open the door. “Colonel von Stauffenberg is awaiting you on Tirpitzufer.” A street number followed. “May I ask you to be so kind as to retrace your steps as you leave?”
“Of course.”
Bora did not show how irritated he was. They don’t want me to wander down the hallway because I’d potentially be seen by the various colonels and lieutenant colonels who work here, who may or may not know what’s going on. God forbid I might turn left and find myself face to face with General Fromm, who runs this outfit and whose office is only a sliding door away from Stauffenberg’s.
He patiently retraced the short distance to the entrance and left the building. Following the left bank of the Landwehrkanal eastwards, he walked past the navy headquarters, formerly the seat of Shell Oil, with its overly futuristic, wavy façade. He was bound for the spot once occupied by a double bridge. Removed already five years ago, in its place lay a wide platform resulting from the massive work involved in creating the North–South Axis road. Willy Osterloh might have thought it up. A meeting away from Stauffenberg�
�s office, in what promised to be a private house, heightened its unofficial nature.
Under a perpendicular, unbearably bright sun (he was glad to have met Emmy just after showering), Bora felt the heat rise from the pavement, creating a closed circuit of sultriness. Strangely, however, he was not perspiring. He grazed his neck as he straightened his uniform, and realized that his hand was ice-cold.
During the walk, an idea – midway between an impression and a conjecture – began to clarify in his mind, much like a mirror image caused by heat on a summer’s day changes, as you draw closer, into the solid object of which it is a mere ghost.
Stauffenberg is one of a reduced minority that has direct access to the Führer. If there is a plan afoot, he must be the protagonist. If, as I believe, there’s an explosive device involved, given the way the war is going the deed will happen not in Berlin but in one of the Führer’s field headquarters. Christ, I had trouble filling a fountain pen with a single hand. How much more complicated would it be to prime a bomb with only three fingers left, and only one eye? Unless he plans to make damn sure by blowing himself up with the rest, it’s sheer folly to hope to succeed. Unless all the heads of the dragon are lopped off, and I don’t see how that’s possible, a bloodbath is certain to follow a failed attempt. Then it won’t be just neurotics like Salomon who’ll confess the names of those who conspired under torture – and even those of many who did not.
2:07 P.M.
Stauffenberg himself came to the door. The flat was a traditional one, in which the so-called “Berlin room” at the centre opened on to the other rooms. Light and shadow would chequer those interior spaces according to how much or how little of the daylight’s glare the doors and windows let in.
The occasion, and the fact that they had much in common, made pleasantries unnecessary, beyond a greeting and a superficial smile. After nine years, Stauffenberg was at the same time different and wholly himself. Aside from the obvious injuries suffered on the African front, it was his cautious attitude that rendered unfamiliar the handsome, excellent rider Bora had beaten – by a hair – at the Heiligenhaus horse trial of 1935. He declared (or simply pretended) that he did not remember him, but Bora was prepared for this. His self-esteem needed no external validation, and too much had happened since those careless days.