by Rosie Thomas
‘Come now.’
Clio had a vision of the brownshirts in the hall realizing that they had been deprived of their sport and spilling out into the street in search of their Jewish violinist. Heinrich’s story of Herr Keller the lawyer came back to her.
‘Please, Julius. There isn’t going to be any more music tonight. Do what Rafael says.’
Still he did not move. He drew his violin case to him and looked back over his shoulder into the light, as if he could not believe they would not call for him again, that there had not been some administrative mistake that could all be explained away. He had played other concerts in Berlin; sometimes the posters bearing his name were defaced or there were the gaping spaces of empty seats in the prominent front rows, even catcalls when he took his bow, but he had never dreamt of being driven from the stage. Clio and the others saw that he was numb with shock.
It was Grace who broke through to him. She seized the violin case in both hands and wrenched it away from him, and then she took hold of the lapels of his black coat and shook him until he looked down into her face. His expression changed at once. Grace wrapped her arms around him and leant her cheek against his shoulder.
‘Come home,’ she whispered. ‘We can’t stay here, all of us.’
‘I’m coming,’ Julius said.
Pilgrim picked up the violin and they closed around him, with Clio and Grace on either side. The side street was empty, and the wider street beyond. There had been no exodus yet from the Philharmonic Hall.
‘Perhaps they have found another soloist,’ Julius said softly. ‘Perhaps one of those boys can stand up and play the violin as well as the tin whistle.’
‘Where can we go?’ Clio asked Rafael. Her head was filled with images of dark alleyways and bundles of rags left lying in the gutter.
‘He cannot go back to his own place,’ Rafael said. ‘Not for a day or so until they have forgotten him and fixed on someone else.’
‘My studio is nearest,’ Pilgrim offered. ‘Two stops only on the U-Bahn.’
Even Isolde was silent on the short journey. To Clio the divided city seemed to have become universally hostile. Every young man out with his girl looked like SA or SS, ready to pounce on Julius and drag him away out of reach to the terror of some shuttered brown house.
Pilgrim’s studio occupied part of an old warehouse. It was reached by an internal spiral staircase of flaking ironwork rising through a hole in the floorboards into a shadowy space beneath the iron girders that supported the warehouse roof. They climbed the tight spiral and stood in an awkward group at the opening of the stairwell while Pilgrim swore and fumbled at the lights.
When the lights did come on the sudden antiseptic glare threw into prominence all the clutter of canvasses and empty bottles and paint jars jammed with brushes. There was a screen for models to change behind, and a divan heaped with discarded clothes. The roof was pierced with glass skylights, black shiny strips now in the darkness. Even the smell was the same. It was like stepping back into Charlotte Street.
‘Welcome, Janus,’ Pilgrim said slyly.
Grace and Clio did not look at each other.
‘It’s not exactly the Adlon Hotel, Julius, or the Reichskanzler-Palais, but perhaps you won’t mind that for a day or so. May I offer anyone a drink? There’s some schnapps, Isolde, isn’t there? Maybe even a drop or two of Scotch.’
‘I’ll get it,’ Isolde said wearily. She kicked aside a heap of grubby clothes and went to the stone sink in the corner of the studio. The glasses that she distributed were sticky and filmed with dust, but Julius took his and drank the whisky in a grateful gulp. He sat on the divan with his hands hanging loosely between his knees, staring at the floor in front of him.
A silence swelled in the thick air.
At length Rafael put his glass aside. There were grey lines at the corners of his mouth. ‘I am sorry, Julius,’ he said. ‘I am ashamed of Germany and the German people.’
‘No, Rafael, it is not a matter of shame for you …’
Grete moved closer to his side but Julius held up his hand before she could say any more. He seemed dazed, still, but his eyes were fixed on Grace.
‘I was warned. But I was sure that music transcended everything. I thought my playing determined what they thought of me, and that everything else was incidental. A political matter, not my concern.’ Rafael shifted impatiently and Julius glanced at him before his gaze returned to Grace. ‘I misunderstood, that is all. I failed to see what should have been obvious to me. It was my own mistake.
‘I shall not make the mistake now of pretending that it is not going to grow worse every day. Jewish violinists will not be allowed to play Mozart any longer, any more than Jewish doctors will be allowed to look after the sick or Jewish lawyers to practise the law.’
The bewilderment in him was so evident that Clio felt a rush of anger clotted with tears burning at the base of her throat. She jumped up and sent a bottle of linseed oil skidding across the floorboards.
‘You have to go home. You have to leave this place, while you are still able to go.’ Her voice sounded sharp and hollow. There was a slight echo in the high-roofed studio. ‘Can you hear, Julius?’
Julius did not take his eyes off Grace’s profile. ‘Go home? Are you going to go home, Clio, because of what has happened tonight?’
Rafael did not move. He sat with his big hands cupped, as if they still held the whisky glass.
‘No,’ Clio answered. The certainty came to her as she spoke. Her voice was clearer now, more like her own. ‘I don’t want to leave Berlin. But it isn’t the same for me, is it? I’m not Julius Hirsh, the violinist. Nobody knows who I am.’
‘They will do,’ Rafael shouted. ‘They will know us all, by the end. We shall have to creep, and dissemble, and lie about who we are and where we come from, or else we will have to run away.’
There was no contradiction. No one tried to say anything to soften or deflect the words.
After the echo of Rafael’s prediction the silence deepened around them. The rattle of raindrops on the skylight over their heads sounded unnaturally loud. Clio was reminded of the afternoons in Charlotte Street when Pilgrim had invited her to sit alone, and she had listened greedily to the disquisitions on art and spouts of Fitzrovian gossip while he dabbed at The Janus Face.
And of course there had been the other afternoons, opposite but not equal, when he would have made love to Grace on the sleazy divan. Then there had been Cressida, and Anthony for convenience.
Clio’s anger burned up like a clear, bright flame. She could see Grace, dancing in her débutante dress, a little figure at the very heart of the flame. She turned deliberately, to see where Grace sat beside Julius. Grace held her back very straight, with her knees and ankles together, the folds of her silk skirt falling elegantly to the dirty floor. She seemed to claim Julius for her own just by sitting at his side. She absorbed all his devotion, as a bolt of perfect black velvet absorbed the light, and reflected nothing back for him.
Clio whispered, ‘Do you see what they have done, your Nazis? Do you see what they are going to do, to Julius and Rafael and Grete and all of us, with their uniforms and their whistles and their violence and hatred?’
Grace never flinched. Her manner was at its most coldly patrician. ‘They are not my Nazis. It would be presumptuous to claim them for myself. I expressed my admiration of the Führer, and sympathy with their economic and cultural ideals.’
‘With anti-Semitism, with murder and the pogrom as cultural ideals?’
‘I am not anti-Semitic, Clio. How could I be?’ Grace’s fingers, still wearing Anthony’s rings, made a small, disdainful movement. ‘This evening’s display was ugly and disturbing. If the Führer were to hear of it, I am sure there would be an investigation and proper punishment. But it is the sad truth that at the tail end of any great political movement there are always thugs. Left or right. Communist or National Socialist. Is that not true, Rafael?’
Julius made a sudd
en movement. He leant over to Grace and put his arm around her shoulders. Then he kissed the side of her head, where the dark hair waved over her temple.
‘Don’t, Grace. Don’t talk about this any more. I said that it was my own mistake, and I would rather it was forgotten.’
Grace closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them again they looked very deep and brilliant. She smiled at Julius.
‘Of course, if that is what you want. But I think you will see that I am right, just the same.’
Clio waited for him to contradict her, but Julius said nothing. She would have shouted herself, refining the flame of her anger towards Grace like a gas jet turning from smoky yellow to blue, But Rafael warningly touched the back of her hand.
Pilgrim was slouched against his screen, watching them all in sour amusement.
‘There’s no more whisky,’ Isolde announced. ‘You can have the schnapps, if you want.’
‘Is Julius safe here?’ Grace demanded of Rafael.
‘Yes, safe enough. If he’s willing to stay for a few days, until the Nazis find themselves another target.’
Grace’s expression softened when she looked at Julius. Some of the stiffness seemed to melt out of her rigid back. ‘Will you do what they say? If you won’t leave Berlin? Pilgrim and Isolde will look after you.’
‘I shall be here,’ Clio said coldly, but Grace ignored her.
‘I have to go back to London tomorrow, Julius. I want to know that you are not in any danger.’
‘From Hitler and Streicher and the Jew-hating bully-boys,’ Clio hissed. Rafael took her hand and drew it towards him, restraining her.
‘Will you do what Rafael tells you?’ Grace insisted.
Wearily, Julius nodded his head. ‘Yes.’
It was agreed that Pilgrim and Isolde would bring him food, and books and newspapers, and whatever else he might need. There was no more discussion.
When the others were preparing to leave Grace said, ‘I am going to stay here for a while with Julius.’
Clio saw his face. It was as if the evening’s humiliation had never happened.
After they had gone, Grace half knelt in front of Julius. He was still sitting in the same position, with his head bent. Grace put her hands on his shoulders, then leant slowly forwards until their foreheads touched. Their profiles seemed to reflect one another, like the Victorian paper silhouettes Grace had cut out as a girl.
‘I’m sorry for this evening,’ Grace whispered. She could not have borne for all the rest of them to know how much it had disgusted her, but it was important to make the confession to Julius.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Julius answered. At that moment it was the truth.
He put his fingers under her chin, and tilted her face upwards. Then he kissed her on the mouth, but so lightly that his lips only brushed against hers.
Grete and Rafael took Clio back to the Adlon Hotel. She was crying as they crossed the Pariser Platz, and the tears left icy trails on her cheeks in the cold wind. The three of them kissed goodnight, clinging together for an instant, before the Wolfs melted away into the darkness. The concierge in his buttons and braid handed Clio in through the heavy doors. As she crossed the ornate foyer under the chandelier she told herself, This is the last time. Tomorrow I will find lodgings.
The decision seemed to commit her to Berlin.
On the evening of February 27, 1933, Clio prepared dinner for Rafael in her new room. Behind a curtain in the deepest recess of the room there was a tiny kitchen cubicle with a cold-water sink. Frau Kleber, the landlady, had drawn back the curtain with a flourish when she showed off the bedsitter to Clio.
‘See! Your own cooking place. You will not have to prepare your food with Kleber and me in the kitchen downstairs, and you will be able to entertain just who you like in fine style.’
Clio had ignored the broad wink, but she had taken the room. It was expensive, eighteen marks a week without board, but it was in a tranquil street in Wilmersdorf not far from Rafael’s apartment. She had arranged her clothes in the creaking wardrobe and placed a few books on the shelf over the narrow bed. It was an odd place to call home, she thought, but after three days she felt more comfortable in the room than she had ever done in Gower Street with Miles.
This was the first time she had entertained Rafael. She had enjoyed an afternoon trip to the local street market to buy food and flowers, and she had spent an hour chopping vegetables and braising meat in the blistered aluminium pan provided by Frau Kleber.
When Rafael arrived they had made love and then, laughing at his protests, Clio had climbed out of bed to heat up the dinner and set knives and forks on her rickety table. For a little while Rafael lay and watched her, but then he grew restless and turned on the new wireless that stood on the table beside the bed.
The wireless had been his house-warming present to her.
‘So you will always know what is happening,’ he had said. ‘Or at least, what is happening that they want you to know about.’
Clio remembered that she was polishing chipped plates when she heard the wireless announcer’s report.
‘The Reichstag building is on fire.’
They listened to the bulletin in silence. Clio put the plates down, very carefully, in their respective places.
‘We should go and look,’ Rafael said, when the announcement was over.
‘What about the dinner?’ The disruption of their evening dismayed her. She felt as if huge outside events were thrusting clumsy fingers into their small world.
‘We can come back and eat dinner later,’ he told her.
They took the U-bahn together to Potsdamer Platz, and then walked down Friedrich Ebert Strasse in the direction of the Reichstag. The street would normally have been almost deserted, but now it was crowded with people, all moving in the same direction, with their faces turned up to the night sky.
It was a dismal, rainy evening. They should have been walking in near darkness, but instead of the dark there was an ugly red glow licking the undersides of the clouds and reflecting back from the puddles. When they came closer they saw that the whole sky above the Tiergarten was like a curtain of flames.
Clio and Rafael stopped in front of the Brandenburg Gate. The crowds were very dense, held back by cordons of police. Clio’s first, startled impression was of how quiet the mass of people was. They whispered to one another, but no one shouted or waved or drew attention to himself.
She looked up at the burning building.
The great, heavy dome stood out against the dull red sky, a powerful two-dimensional black silhouette in a veil of coquettish sparks. From the windows in the square towers on the eastern side columns of flame suddenly leapt upwards, and clouds of smoke poured upwards into the pall that hung over the old trees of the Tiergarten. The Reichstag on fire was beautiful, and monstrous.
Firemen had run ladders up against the wings of the building. Their tiny black figures danced among the intricate ornaments of the roofline. In the crimson light even the jets of water from their fire hoses looked like spurts of liquid fire.
Rafael began to shoulder his way through the crowd. Clio wormed her way behind him until they reached the ropes of the cordon. There was a man standing at the very front, staring impassively at the flames as they reached higher. Rafael shook his arm, and when the man turned Clio recognized one of the habitués of the Café Josef.
‘How did it start?’ Rafael asked.
The man grinned sardonically, his eyebrows reaching into reddish peaks. ‘Arson. Marvellously well prepared, so I hear. Dozens of bottles of petrol and bundles of rags soaked in it, all stowed in strategic places, everywhere in the building. And then the man responsible ran right round and set light to them all.’
‘One man?’
‘How could one man have done it?’ Clio asked, bewildered.
The man’s demonic smile faded. ‘Ask Goering how,’ he snapped. Then he elbowed his way past them and was swallowed up in the crowd.
Clio a
nd Rafael stood pressed together, shifted from side to side by the movements of the mass like stones rolled by the tide. The roar of the fire was like a deep voice, and the whispers of the people sounded puny and inconsequential against it. Clio strained to hear what they were saying.
‘A man has been arrested. A communist. He has confessed everything.’
‘They will pay for this. They must be made to pay.’
Clio looked up at Rafael. She saw that his eyes glittered, reflecting the red light like everything around them.
They stood at the cordon for a long time. They were too far away to hear what he promised, or even see him inside the protection of the cordon and the ranks of his SA, but Goering had come to look at the fire. His words were, ‘We will show no mercy. Every communist must be shot on the spot.’
At last, the fire burnt lower. The ribs of the building still glowed crimson, but there were no more jets of fire.
Rafael and Clio turned away with the other onlookers and their whispers, and made their way back to Wilmersdorf.
Neither of them wanted the food that Clio had prepared. They drank the bottle of wine that she had bought and listened to the account of the burning of the Reichstag as it was broadcast.
The fire was reported as having been started by a Dutch communist named Van Der Lubbe. He had been arrested in one of the corridors of the Reichstag with a lighted torch in his hand. Although he had lost his coat and shirt he was carrying his Party membership card in the pocket of his trousers.
Rafael leant across and twisted the brown knob. Silence flooded back into Clio’s room.
‘What did your friend mean when he said, “Ask Goering”?’
‘He meant Goering is the man who will know how and why it was done.’
It was very late when Rafael went home to his own apartment, but Clio knew that she would not sleep. She took a cheap exercise book out of the drawer of her table and began to write a description of what she had seen and heard.
Sixteen
Elizabeth enjoyed working in the library. From her student days onwards she had always felt at home in libraries, but the London Library was her favourite. She liked the book stacks with their iron grille floors that gave unsettling views of the tiers above and below, and the smell of old bindings, and the clank of readers’ feet on the stairs linking the floors. She found the monotonous hum of the overhead strip lights a soothing accompaniment to her dipping and browsing along the packed shelves. Sometimes she sat down at one of the little tables at the end of an aisle, partly to read whichever book she had most recently winkled out of its order but also to enjoy the absence of daylight, the solitude, the sense of enclosure within a humming shell of concentration.