The Words I Never Wrote

by Jane Thynne

  How could he be sentimental, when he had witnessed the barbarity handed out to so many humans? When he spent his day coordinating roundups? When the corpses of Berliners lay rotting in the streets? When he knew, or thought he knew, what Heydrich and Eichmann and all those other lawyers had discussed three years ago in the villa along the road?

  “My only regret is that she suffered and I didn’t have the courage to take out my pistol and shoot her.”

  “Surely that would have been worse.”

  “No, it would have been brave,” he said, stonily. “And I’ve never done a brave thing in my life.”

  There was silence between them. Then she murmured, “Perhaps love and loss are two sides of the same coin.”

  “Maybe.” He continued staring at the floor as if the tessellation of the parquet might hold an answer to the complex pattern of life. “All the same, my apartment will seem empty without her. My walks will have no purpose. I may give them up altogether.”

  He got up, went over to the gramophone, and took from its sleeve Rachmaninoff’s second symphony. The haunting notes of the Adagio rose up around them. To Hoffman this piece had always spoken of undying hope and an obsessive desire to live. He closed his eyes and allowed the music to wash over him, melody after melody, the sweet gentleness of the clarinet, followed by two uplifting climaxes and then the melody repeated again in violins and violas, before a final climax so powerful and tremulous it might have been a glimpse of heaven. He knew the composer had been living in a state of fear and professional uncertainty when he wrote it, yet its passion betrayed only a profound faith in beauty and the transcendent power of love.

  Opening his eyes again he said, “I chose Russian music tonight for a reason. I have requested an immediate transfer to an Eastern combat division.”

  “You’re not serious. That’s suicide!”

  “Roman soldiers commit suicide with a sword. This is the way German soldiers die.”

  The words seemed to scratch themselves raw from his throat.

  “You’ve heard of Befehlsnotstand?” he asked her. “It’s a legal defense. Only obeying orders. There are others in the department who are lawyers and I’ve heard them starting to use that term. They’re talking about what motivates us. Why we do what we do. Getting their arguments in order. The idea is that in following procedures, ensuring that laws are not violated, we are acting only as part of a great machine. The Reich is a machine, and everyone from the worker who makes the nuts and screws to keep the planes in the air, to the drivers of the trains, to us, the SS, works together, like an organism.”

  “And you believe that?” She was watching him closely, her face very pale.

  “No. I don’t think that’s our motivation. I think we are motivated by a lack of imagination.”

  “What on earth does that mean?”

  “It’s like…” He kneaded his fists together as he collected his words. “When we first met, years ago, I warned you to be observant, remember? That’s what you had to do. Study the people around you. Notice everything about them. Observe your fellow citizens minutely.”

  “In case of surveillance.”

  “That’s right. But what we have done as a nation, all of us, is the opposite. We have trained ourselves not to see. Do you understand? Not to see. Not to feel. And when we hear music, we feel again. Yet we’ve lost all right to those feelings. If we allow our imagination to return…it’s overwhelming.”

  Impulsively she reached out a hand.

  Hoffman looked at her properly for the first time that evening, and the two of them hesitated, caught in the amber of the moment, before he stepped forward to take her in his arms. As always, her body responded to his instantly. Her face flushed and her blood quickened, the same way the oil lamp glowed when she turned up the flame. He felt her nipples harden at his touch.

  Until then their lovemaking had taken place upstairs, but now, consumed by an urgent hunger, he began to draw her dress from her shoulders, unpeeling the straps of her brassiere and caressing the warm flesh. She pressed herself closer, joined to him by the same flame of desire, her hands running over his body, and murmuring his name, before pausing.

  “No. Not here.”

  Hoffman hesitated, and as he did, an astonishing thing happened.

  A clatter sounded from behind the bookshelf. Louder than the scuffle of a bird or a rat, it was as though a metal cup had dropped onto a wooden floor. Startled, Hoffman turned away from her, frowning, walked over, and tapped the shelf experimentally.

  Down the vertical side of the shelving ran a slice of light, pale as a sliver of bone.

  With a forceful push Hoffman moved the entire unit inward to reveal a man, standing upright in a tiny room, walled in by books.

  He understood at once. It was the kind of thing he had heard about again and again.

  But he had never seen it for himself.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  BERLIN, 2016

  The phone buzzed on the desk and Juno glanced down. Then she glanced again, her heart jolting.

  “Guess where I am?”

  It was Saturday and she was in the library of the Villa Weissmuller, having just set down a jar of roses, peonies, and Sweet William she had picked from the garden. They made a carelessly artistic arrangement, the blowsiness of the roses set off by the jewel-like precision of the peony buds, and a soft frill of green. She had made several attempts to capture their prettiness on camera, the jar standing on the desk in front of the typewriter, and was preparing to post the best one on Instagram. Her mood was relaxed and dreamy, but at the sound of Dan’s voice she panicked, as though the world had been tugged away like the Persian carpet beneath her feet.

  “I have no idea, Dan. Where are you?”

  “Tegel Airport. Tell me where you are and I’ll jump in a cab.”

  In less than an hour he was striding into the house, grabbing her in a tight hug, and taking a quick glance around before swinging down his bag and settling at the kitchen table, one long leg crossed over the other. Juno poured him a glass of pilsner cold from the fridge, and he accepted it with his thousand-watt smile.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked.

  “I asked Ari. He said you were working in Berlin.”

  Ari. Their neighbor on East Ninety-first Street.

  “Ah. Yes, I mentioned it to him.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I’m doing a piece for American Traveler. Words and pictures. About Berlin.”

  “Couldn’t they put you up in a hotel?”

  “I prefer this place. Besides, I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying.”

  “For a magazine piece? Surely that won’t take more than a couple of days.”

  “Maybe longer.”

  “Is it worth your time? Financially I mean. It seems a lot of hassle for some pictures and a coupla thousand words.”

  As ever, when she wanted to deflect a line of criticism, Juno reached for a fail-safe solution. “Never mind about that. How are things with you?”

  Dan grinned and extracted his e-cigarette.

  “Great. In fact more than great. The TV pilot got the green light. It means the whole series has the go-ahead.”

  He ran a hand through his gleaming blond hair. Although his chinos were creased and there was a line of stubble along his jaw, the stresses of traveling had otherwise left no imprint on Dan. In fact, Juno thought, she should do a piece for American Traveler on that. How to cross the Atlantic and still look film-star fresh.

  “Best thing is, the director wants the script rejigged to give my part more prominence. Remember me telling you how I always thought my character was the moral heart of the drama? They didn’t get it at first, but when they’d seen the first screening they called in the writer and told him to reshape the story completely. I’m glad—not because it
makes me the star or anything—though I mean it’s good for me, but because it really does credit to the work. And the writer’s a great young guy who should go far.”

  “That’s wonderful, Dan.” She crossed her arms defensively. “But you didn’t come all the way from L.A. to tell me that.”

  He frowned. “Well, yes and no. It’s not just that.”

  He got to his feet and pulled her close. The effect was electric. Their bodies fitted in the old familiar places, and the scent of his aftershave, Armani Code, was powerful enough to ricochet her all the way back to Manhattan and its tangle of longing and misery.

  “Can’t you guess?” he demanded.

  “Not really.”

  “I miss you, babe.”

  When she didn’t reply, he went on.

  “None of this means anything if you don’t have someone to share it with, Juno. I was wrong to try to hurry you into a decision. It’s a big thing—moving to L.A.—I get that now, so soon after your mom dying and everything.”

  “It was.”

  “But you’ve been so good for me. All my career, you’ve been a stabilizing influence. You’ve always been so encouraging, always there for me.”

  That was true.

  “No one else could do what you do.”

  Not the girl in the photograph, long hair scraped back from a Botox gleaming face?

  “And I could help you too. Engineer some introductions so you could get started in Hollywood. There’s a bunch of actors who need interviewing, and a ton of film magazines to work for. You’re a real talent, honey. They must be crying out for someone like you.”

  Juno tried to imagine what her life might be there—photographing celebrities, making a small name for herself, hanging out with Dan’s entourage. Cheering him up if the series tanked, or his agent stopped calling.

  Sensing her conflict, he let her go and turned back to his beer.

  “Anyhow. I’m not asking you to decide now. Just to think about it.”

  “In that case why don’t you come and see the garden?”

  * * *

  —

  WHAT MATTHIAS HAD SAID about having neglected Irene’s garden was true—the grass was overgrown and the beds a wild tumble of herbs and weeds—but Nature was persistent and here and there old roses reached out from a leggy tangle of thorns and a splash of scarlet blazed where oriental poppies had self-seeded. High-tensile spiderwebs were strung between stems, and thick-veined giant rhubarb sheltered its own swollen stalks. Writhing up their hazel poles, Matthias’s green beans bristled with tiny flowers like beads of blood.

  Juno led them down toward the lake.

  “When I told you I was here to do a feature about Berlin, Dan, that was only half true. In fact, it’s a bit of an excuse. What I’m really trying to do is to track the story of a journalist, Cordelia Capel. She was pretty well known between the fifties and the eighties. She was a foreign correspondent and she worked for Life. Have you heard of her?”

  Dan spread his hands in apology. “Journalism’s not my thing, you know that. Plus, so much of it’s fake now, it’s like…like a kind of pollution? I try to keep away from it.”

  “Sure. Well, I came across a novel Cordelia wrote—and I was intrigued. In the novel she describes how her elder sister, Irene, lived here. So I had to come. I badly wanted to know what happened to them. They were estranged, you see. Politically divided by the war.”

  “Would I have heard of this novel?”

  “Oh, it’s not published. It wasn’t even finished.”

  “Okaay.”

  “That’s what got me hooked, I think. The fact that Cordelia never completed it. I think, if I can find out what happened between them, I can write about it.”

  “You mean a screenplay?” His interest was piqued.

  “An article at least. Maybe even a book.”

  They reached the jetty at the end of the garden and leaned on the blistered wood. The air was thick with birch pollen, and wild lilac offered up its blossom to the breeze. A yellow butterfly had become trapped in a patch of sticky tar and was struggling to escape. Juno looked away.

  “Irene’s dead now, but I guess I was hoping that I might find someone who knew her and they could tell me a little more.”

  “Thought you said these sisters were estranged?”

  “They were. But I want to know if it stayed that way.”

  “Families fall out. Oldest story in the world. Especially over politics. Plenty of examples of that today.”

  Juno’s eyes were fixed on the opposite shore, where a stretch of sand, the Strandbad Wannsee, was dotted with sunbathers. Still more people splashed in the clear waters of the lake. She watched one, limbs pulling balletically, water shearing off his skin like silk. It was just the kind of scene Irene must have painted, day after day, in the early years of her marriage.

  “The thing is, why would Cordelia write about it—this place, her sister, their two lives—and then not finish the story? What was it she found so hard to say?”

  Dan didn’t answer. His eyes were glazing over. “Actually, mind if we go back to the house? I have to make some calls.”

  “You only just got here.”

  He shrugged. “Look, I’m really sorry about this, but the fact is, I do have another reason to be in Berlin. There’s a director who wanted to meet with me—”

  “I thought you came here to see me.”

  “I did. That was my main reason. But this guy, Gert, heard about our series. And he’s thinking I might be the right fit for a movie he’s planning on the Battle of Berlin—that’s, like, the final conflict in 1945, when the Russian army arrived? He’s filming at the Babelsberg studios near Potsdam, so I figured I’d combine two important missions in one. Only he’s messing me around on timing. We were supposed to have lunch but now he wants to make it dinner.”

  Juno stared at Dan. Wherever he was, even in a foreign city he had never previously visited, she realized, he brought his own world with him, his personal microclimate of deadlines, appointments, and priorities. The baggage of his life was stacked far too high for him to see anything else. This house, the lake, the swimmers on the opposite shore—all might have been a thousand miles away.

  They walked back up the garden into the cool of the house, and Dan pulled out his phone and began texting.

  “How long are you staying?” she asked.

  “Till tomorrow.”

  “One day?”

  “You have no idea of my schedules, sweetheart. It was hard enough getting the break to come out here. They had to rearrange shooting. I can’t stay any longer.”

  “Yes, of course. I understand. I’m sorry.”

  “Look.” He put down the phone and seized her hand. “Why don’t you fly back with me? It makes total sense.”

  His hand was tight around hers, as if he might physically pull her all the way across a continent, and in that moment she felt the powerful tug of shared memories, friends, and pleasures as all their fifteen years rose up before her. Why throw away everything they had built? It wasn’t as if any relationship was perfect. She could end her hurt by simply stepping back into his arms. Perhaps their break had been a wake-up call, the reckoning every couple needed to force a relationship out of a rut.

  “I thought you weren’t asking me to decide now?”

  The ice-blue Scandinavian eyes crinkled in exasperation. “Exactly what is keeping you here?”

  “I told you. I want to find out what happened to Irene.”

  “But she died, didn’t she? So how are you going to do that?”

  Dan was right. She had reached a dead end, and he was only, with characteristic bluntness, pointing it out. He cupped her face in his hands.

  “So what do you say, sweetheart?”

  Tiredly, Juno leaned her head on his shoulder. What had Dan
done that she should find so unforgivable? Who wouldn’t relocate to L.A. for the career chance of a lifetime? And hadn’t he cared enough to come all this way to Berlin in an effort to win her back? Surely it was her own issues that broke up this relationship, not his.

  The peal of a bell pierced the silence, immediately followed by the sound of the front door opening and a call as Matthias appeared. When he saw Dan, his smile faded and he held up a hand in apology.

  “Oh, forgive me. I hope I am not interrupting—”

  Juno moved away from Dan. “No. Not at all. This is…Daniel Ryan.”

  Dan produced his film-star grin. “Great to meet you.”

  Matthias shook hands and looked from one to the other. “It is nothing important. It can wait. It is just a detail about the rental. I can come back.”

  “Please do,” said Juno.

  “Later perhaps?”

  “Yes. I’ll be here all day.”

  They followed him into the hall and watched him drive off, but when she closed the door behind him, she turned to find Dan studying her, eyes narrowed.

  “So that’s what this is about then. That guy?”

  “No!” Juno’s hot denial came before she had time to consider. After all, she was free to do as she liked. She and Dan led separate lives. Besides, she hardly knew Matthias. “He’s just a man who helps out in the garden.”

  “A gardener who drives a BMW?”

  “He has another job. He’s an architect.”

  “Sure. An architect who happens to double with a lawnmower.”

  “He has a sentimental attachment to this place. He used to come here as a child.”

  “You seem to know a lot about him.”

  “That’s all I know about him.”

  “Have you been seeing him?”

  “We only just met, Dan! He was here when I arrived the other day. He arranged the rental for me.”

  Dan scrutinized her, trying to assess the situation, then reached for his bag.

  “Well, think about what I said. Gert Ziegler wants me in town, so I’m going to need to go now.”