Vienna at Nightfall

by Richard Wake

  It wasn't that she was an outright anti-Semite. It was nothing like that. But when I told her about when we got in the fight to rescue the Jewish kid, there was no disgust for the injustice, or concern for the kid, or disrespect for the police or the Nazis. Instead, what she said was, "I guess boys will always be boys, even when they are men." And then she kissed me on the forehead, and then down lower than that, and we really didn't talk about it anymore.

  I just didn't know. The title her family had, and didn't have. The money her family had, and didn't have. Her father's flick of the nose. There was a little bit of an edge there -- we saw one of the socialist newspapers that still got smuggled in now and then, somebody had left it on our chair in Demel, and Johanna said, "Who would honestly believe these lies?" -- but that's just politics. Henry hates the socialists, too, and I'd trust my children's lives with him if I ever had any. Before they were outlawed, even Leon wasn't a big fan: "They figure they have us Jews in their pocket because we have nowhere else to go, and they take advantage of us. Intellectual shitheads." So what did it mean that Johanna hated them, too? Anything?

  The point was, I didn't know, and I kind of didn't want to know. Someday, but not that day.

  "So is the magnesite king of Central Europe all packed?" I didn't even have to see her face to see the smirk. I loved it.

  The museum had a small canteen next to the gift shop. The place was dead. The only other person in there was grabbing a coffee to take back to her office, it appeared. She came over, Johanna introduced us, and I immediately forgot her name. She barely stopped walking, but did manage to say, "That was quite a proposal."

  "Early days yet. Just an idea."

  After she walked away, I said, "Proposal?"

  "For a new exhibition. It's daring."

  "I didn't think they did daring here."

  "We'll see."

  She offered no other details. We had a cup of coffee and didn't say much. We were getting more comfortable with the silences, which was good -- because I was suddenly conversationally paralyzed, so preoccupied with what was about to happen on the trip, so conscious of not revealing anything to Johanna. It felt good just to say goodbye.

  Walking back home along the Ringstrasse, I was thoroughly preoccupied. My most persistent daydream was of a waiter handing me an envelope containing secret military assessments along with my bill after lunch one day in some clandestine hole-in-the-wall in Frankfurt. The other recurring dream was of a Gestapo agent banging on my hotel room door later the same night. The dreams were like an entry at the racetrack, one following the other. I swear, I had lost 10 pounds since the whole thing started.

  Soon I was walking past the Hotel Bristol. I usually remembered to cross the street, or detour around it, but with the daydreams, I just forgot. The reason for the detours was because the Bristol was home of the German tourist office in Vienna. The had one of the hotel's big display windows, which for years was full of beautiful Aryannesses, skiing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, or demurely taking the waters in Bad Godesberg, or not so demurely busting out of dirndls as they hoisted massive steins of beer for Oktoberfest in Munich. Not anymore, though. The window had become an enormous shrine to Hitler. There was a big framed photo of him, and that was it, and people gathered around it at all times of the day and night, noses pressed against the glass -- men and women, old and young, and not just the teenaged boys who used to gather for a closer inspection of the dirndls. It was worse at night as the portrait was lit by a spotlight, the illumination of evil. People sometimes left small bouquets of flowers -- it had become a shrine. A hotel employee came out to tidy up and clean the smudges off of the glass twice a day.

  This day, it was quiet -- an older couple, holding hands, just staring. The man actually took off his hat like he was in church and didn't put it back on until they walked away.

  How do you defeat that? The question, along with the mental picture of that old couple, stuck with me for hours -- through the taxi ride to the station, and the porter setting me up in my compartment, and a solo dinner that was more about the wine than the food, and the dose of valerian and the Agatha Christie novel to help me sleep. Eventually, I did. The train arrived in Nuremberg at 8 a.m., right on time.

  16

  The place was dark. These places were always dark, wherever they were, in whatever country. There was a kind of international language spoken by the designers, understood by all, in the layout of these places: understated entrance off of the street, formally dressed man to greet you inside the door, booths around the perimeter with single lit candles on the tables, red the dominant color of the furnishings, a three-piece combo lit by a small spotlight, a small dance floor marked by dull floor lights around the perimeter, but dark everywhere else, dark in all of the spaces in between. It was part of the illicit ambiance, that and the single corridor off of the main room, the corridor that led to the rest, the entrance invariably marked by a red velvet curtain and guarded by a bricklayer in a monkey suit.

  I was seated in one of the booths. My client, Thomas Scherer, was with me, along with Trudi and Gretl, no last names required. There wasn't a lot of heavy lifting involved on this night. Dinner, drinks, stumble past the man in the tuxedo. Trudi and Gretl appeared at the table within seconds, and Trudi and Gretl's hands found our laps beneath the table a few more seconds after the drinks arrived. This wasn't complicated. It never was, except when I heard Scherer start bragging to Trudi about the steel mill he owned, and about the important work he did in building up the defense industries of the Reich as if she were the type who needed impressing.

  I removed Gretl's hand and slid over in the booth, put my arm around Scherer's neck and yanked him close so that I could whisper something. I caught Trudi's eye as I did it and winked. I looked at Scherer with a conspiratorial smile, as if we were about to begin plotting the time when we would walk toward the red velvet curtain.

  "I'm ready now," Scherer said, almost giggling.

  "You didn't tell her your real name, did you?"

  "No."

  "Or the name of the company?"

  Terror suddenly contorted his face. A couple of years before, he had done the same thing, the same bragging, and he told the girl that night the company's name -- and the girl came looking for him at the office a while later, pestering and then threatening. I had to make a special, unscheduled visit to Cologne, to pay off the girl to keep her quiet, and to pay off the owner of the club to make sure he worked to keep her quiet. On my expense report, I called it an "emergency consultation regarding unexpected demand at Scherer Steel." And, yes, in thanks, my good friend Thomas did agree to increase his magnesite order by 20 percent on the spot.

  "So, did you?"

  "No," Scherer said, and the terror was replaced by the same drunken smile. "No, I didn't mention it. She doesn't know the name. I'm good."

  "Try to keep it that way. Why don't you dance for a while?"

  "Can't dance right now," he said, winking and pointing quickly at his lap.

  "OK, OK. But stick to safe conversation subjects. Compliment her looks. Tell her she has nice tits and see where that goes."

  We both laughed out loud, big guffaws, two aging fraternity brothers drunkenly prowling. And as Gretl and I made our way to the dance floor, I tried to keep up the inane conversation and still began to scan the room, looking one by one into the dimly lit booths, trying to figure who it might be.

  The Nazis closed down a lot of these places. Or, rather, they closed the most conspicuous of these places and made a great show of it. But while Nazis might have been Nazis, they still liked sex as much as anyone. They merely demanded discretion -- and, if you talked to enough of the doormen, payoffs to local police were also a requirement. Whatever, looking around, peering into the dark booths, I could make out at least a few military uniforms.

  I hadn't been approached anywhere on the trip -- not during the stay in Nuremberg or the time in Frankfurt, not in the train station or at the hotel in Cologne the previous day, n
ot in the restaurant or the first cafe tonight. I was leaving for home the next day.

  "You seem distracted. Perhaps I could better get your attention --" Gretl smiled, and her eyes darted quickly toward the red velvet curtain. On many nights, I had made the walk down a dark corridor like the one here, but not tonight. I would wait for Scherer and Trudi to shamble off and make my goodbyes while they were busy -- and by goodbyes, it meant I would leave the money for Trudi and Gretl with the tuxedo at the front door.

  "Maybe in a bit," I told her. As we got back to the booth, we saw that Scherer and Trudi had been joined by a man in a Luftwaffe uniform. He stood to introduce himself but it was awkward in the booth, and I told him to stay seated. He said his name was Major Peiper, and then he and Scherer smiled and winked. Fake names all around, then.

  Gretl, sensing fresher meat, slid in quickly next to the good major. I was suddenly the fifth wheel, but I was okay with that. I hated to admit how much these trips took out of me. I was only 37 and had been doing this for more than a decade, and while the travel seemed to be in my blood, it could sometimes be exhausting, especially the last day or two of the trips. I wouldn't mind getting to bed, alone, with the long train trip home to Vienna still ahead.

  Before the major got himself too entranced in Gretl's handiwork, I managed to find out that he and Scherer knew each other through "business." I assumed that the Luftwaffe was a client of the steel mill.

  After another drink, I was plotting my exit. Every client was different, but Scherer liked to have me stay until he made a decision about the red velvet curtain. But then there was the Gretl question. The money I left at the front door would be different if Gretl took the major down the corridor or if she didn't -- and there was no question that I was now paying for both of them, whatever happened. It was all the cost of doing business. Maybe I would just pay the full rate for both of the girls and let the tuxedo pocket the difference if the major chose not to partake.

  This was all going through my head when the major excused himself to use the restroom. Trudi was fully engaged with Scherer, and Gretl slid over and joined her, two sets of hands now exploring. This had not been Scherer's thing in the past, but he appeared to be considering the notion. All I was thinking about was the four-block walk back to the hotel in the sleet and a nice, warm bed. And when the major returned from his piss, he signaled to Scherer that it was time to head for the red velvet curtain, and what lay behind it.

  They all got up. I shook hands with the men and promised Scherer that I would expedite the updated contracts once I returned to Vienna. Money for the evening was not mentioned, the arrangements understood by all. After they had left, I slugged down my drink, put down the glass and began to grab my coat and hat from the nearby rack when the major returned to retrieve the pack of cigarettes he had left on the table.

  He looked at me and said, "It's an envelope taped to the bottom of the sink in the bathroom."

  17

  Like most people who travel a lot, I had my routines and my preferences -- favorite hotel, favorite restaurant, all of that. In Cologne, the restaurant was the Brauhaus Sion, where the two waitresses -- mother and daughter -- wore dirndls and the sauerbraten was the best I had ever tasted. The hotel was the Dom Hotel, a big place near the cathedral that catered to businessmen and their needs. In my case, that meant a large room with a view of the cathedral, and it also meant the delivery of a typewriter on the last day of my stay.

  After years of experimenting, the last day of a three-city trip was a work day in the hotel for me. The paperwork was excessive and could bury me if I wasn't careful. There also were notes that I made during conversations with the clients, documenting the information for new orders and timetables for delivery and such. The typewriter was my method for making those notes legible so they could be acted upon by Hannah when I got home. I taught himself to type after frustrating her for years with my indecipherable handwriting and haphazard shorthand. It just felt better to sleep in after a night out with the client, and then get the detail work done so I could relax on the night train.

  I had slept in and had a room service breakfast that was actually lunch. I finished typing at 5 and packed everything back into the briefcases -- in the middle of which was shoved a small envelope containing several strips of microfilm.

  I wasn't anxious about it sometimes and paralyzed by the thought of it at other times, which I found a little bit odd. Then again, my contact had warned me, "Half of the time you're going to feel like the almighty sheriff in one of those American westerns, and the other half of the time, you're going to feel like one of the wounded outlaws hiding in the barn." I didn't get it when he said it, but I did when it was happening.

  On the last night, I always ate in the Dom's dining room. The train wasn't until 1:30 in the morning, so it was a leisurely meal, good for a hotel. Then it was to the front desk to order a taxi for 1:00, and then to a chair in the back corner of the lobby, where one or two drinks would get me so far, and then a shower and a change of clothes would get me the rest of the way, and then the taxi and the train would get me home.

  I was into the second schnapps and had not thought about the microfilm in a half-hour, I realized, when I saw a man in a black trench coat walk into the lobby. He removed his hat, spoke briefly with the bell captain, and then began walking in my direction, passing one table, two tables, three tables, and not stopping. It was soon quite clear that he was coming to speak to me.

  18

  Put it this way: if UFA was looking for someone to play a Gestapo captain in its next widescreen blockbuster -- "The Knock at 3 a.m." -- then this was their man. No screen test necessary.

  "Captain Werner Vogl. May I join you?"

  As if I had a choice. Had anyone failed to answer any question in the affirmative since he had put on that uniform? It was a question I wished I had the guts to ask him out loud.

  "And how was your dinner, Herr Kovacs? I've always been partial to the medallions of pork in a black cherry sauce here."

  So he knew my name. He smiled when that dawned on me. So much for my poker face. The waiter arrived.

  "I was about to order a drink. Can I tempt you?"

  "Sorry. Still on duty for a few more hours. I try to limit myself to once a week when I play chess at Bischoffshausen on Wednesdays. It's a nice place -- do you know it? It's right around here, maybe a 30-second walk from the back of the hotel. In by 7:30, home by 10. Anyway, you go ahead. Your train isn't for, what, five hours?"

  So he knew my name, and he knew when I was leaving. I felt my hand beginning to shake. I ordered another large schnapps.

  "Yes, the Orient Express. It's my favorite train, even if I spend most of the journey asleep. It arrives in Cologne at 1:28 a.m., departs at 1:38 -- but you already seem to know that. There are always a few passengers having a last drink in the dining car before bed. So many interesting people."

  I was regaining my conversational sea legs. I could talk travel all day, to anyone -- hotels, restaurants, trains. I loved trains. I could compare the quality of berths and dining cars depending on point or origination -- food was best on trains starting in France, but berths were cleaner and more comfortable in Germany and Austria, for instance. Most of all, I loved talking about the mysterious luxury of the Orient Express.

  "I once met a professor from London who was headed to Bucharest to meet up with a former student who was involved in a plot to take a shot at King Carol. I read the newspapers for weeks afterward but never saw a word about it. I always wonder if he was kidding me."

  Vogl listened, but not all that attentively. But that was OK. Bored was more than all right with me. Part of me thought I was going to be able to talk my way through this because that is what I do for a living, talk my way into and out of things -- late deliveries, price increases, whatever. So why couldn't I handle a pleasant few minutes with this guy, just because he was wearing a black uniform? But then it dawned on me -- maybe the reason he wasn't really listening to me was that his job
was just to keep me busy while his partner -- they all have partners, don't they? -- was searching my room.

  I was downing the schnapps and thinking about catching the waiter's eye. Then Vogl suddenly leaned in conspiratorially and said, "Are there ever opportunities for female companionship on the Orient Express?"

  I have been taking that train twice a year for the last dozen years, and I have one story. Truth be told, it wasn't even on the Orient Express but an overnighter from Berlin. But it is a great story, one of my go-to stories with the right audience, a story about a mother, a daughter, separate visits to my compartment, all under the unsuspecting nose of their husband/father. Or, as I always ended the story, "Or maybe he knew and just didn't give a shit."

  It always got a laugh. It got a laugh from the good captain. But then it was on to business.

  "So what brings you to Cologne?"

  I caught the waiter's eye and then dove into the great and glorious story of the Kovacs family magnesite mine. I actually had three different versions of the story that explained my professional existence. I used the 20-second version when I was talking to an attractive woman, always ending with, "But enough about mines. How about yours?" It was stupid, but most of them at least giggled. Then there was the two-minute version for men who seemed genuinely interested. Then there was the five-minute version, with explanations of mining depths and maximum temperatures and the latest research on proposed new uses, that I unfurled when I was trying to get rid of somebody in a social situation by boring them into submission. Vogl was getting the full five-minute recital. The problem was, after three minutes, he was still nodding along with every point I made.