‘No one will believe that you could have had such patience.’
‘Do you?’
‘Not on the evidence you have given me. Why did you label your dead?’
‘To protect the villagers.’
‘Did it? You never had time to find out. My sergeant-major has of course reported to me what you said to each other. The Ingelrams came up. Don’t worry! I won’t give your identity away till I have to. I accept your private crusade. But it does not sound like an Ingelram to label his dead. Why did you do it?’
‘Subconscious reasons perhaps.’
‘Subconscious, my backside! You’ve never fussed about your subconscious unless it was failing to warn you of trouble waiting behind the next bush. Why? You know the answer. Out with it!’
‘Have you ever been in love?’
‘Who hasn’t?’
‘I mean, so entirely that to both of you the two bodies and souls were one.’
‘Near enough. We are married now.’
‘And what would you do if the perfection that you loved had been tortured to death by these devils?’
‘Suicide or the bottle.’
‘No vengeance?’
‘Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. And it’s coming to him all right.’
‘Now do you understand?’
‘Understand, no. Believe, yes. At last it all makes sense. But I cannot make Cairo swallow a love story against the facts.’
‘Is there any fact more absolute than love?’
‘All the same I wish the Poles could have helped.’
‘The Voevod?’
‘His band has been wiped out. All they know is that it was infiltrated by the Sicherheitsdienst. I thought it best not to mention your stay with them.’
‘And Moshe Shapir? Any luck?’
‘I’m afraid he won’t impress as a witness. He’s doing ten years in Acre Gaol. He shot at an immigration official.’
I shouted that I couldn’t believe it, that Moshe was so gentle.
‘Then you see our trouble. With you as well. We are not equipped to deal with cases of monomania. Has it ever occurred to you that a fair translation of Herrenvolk is Chosen People?’
Moshe’s crime was serious. He was one of a party of four who had travelled down through Turkey and Syria passing as Greeks from Istanbul on their way to join the Greek forces in Palestine. They tried to ride across the desert frontier but missed the way, ended up at a police post and were detained for questioning. Moshe, sure to have bagged the best horse, jumped the wire and galloped away. He was shot at, turned round in the saddle, shot back with an old Colt .45 and winged an immigration officer. God, what a fluke! And what a fool! He should have galloped on. His people would have spirited him away in no time.
I asked if it would be possible to question him.
‘Yes. I have already got permission. It must be in my presence and that of a warder.’
I have written of several irreversible turning points in my outward and inward life. Memory is not clear enough to say whether I recognized them at the time. But of the effect of this meeting with Moshe I have no doubt. A cold and formidable place was that citadel of Acre. Well, Palestine then was threatened from north and south, but still the criminal was dealt with promptly, efficiently and by due process of law. Moshe was marched in to our presence by a warder who was alarmed when he broke away and threw himself into my arms.
‘Ernesto!’ he cried. ‘Thank God you got through.’
I could only say the same and how distressed I had been by the deplorable story of his arrival in the land for which he had so longed.
‘What does it matter? I am in Israel and I shall be free long before the ten years are up.’
‘Quite likely,’ the major murmured, ‘providing Himmler doesn’t get here first.’
‘But you, Moshe! You who were so repelled by violence!’
‘You taught me not to be.’
Volubly and with excited gestures which I had never before seen him use – stemming from childhood perhaps and long abandoned – he told our story, remembering little incidents which I had ignored or forgotten, his voice breaking with anger and indignation that a British agent could be thought a Nazi. But on all of it there was no conclusive proof. Of my life in Germany of course he knew nothing, nor could he confirm how I had come by the name of Ludwig Weber and why I had been specially flown to Salonica.
‘Swear that you will come to see me and ride with me when Israel is ours,’ he demanded.
I promised, though sure that within ten years he would never have the Israel of his dreams and that my own destiny was incalculable.
We returned to Haifa and he to his cell. All night Moshe’s words haunted my weary brain like a recurring tune that one cannot dismiss: ‘You taught me.’
Yes, by example over and over again. I had also justified unlimited violence. In that I was right when it came to war and the defence of our once sweet Europe. But private war? What sort of character would wade in blood and glory as I had done?
When I made next day my routine report, Major North told me that he had made a note of Moshe Shapir’s evidence and added it to my dossier. We were now ready for Cairo’s final judgement.
‘Before we go,’ he said, ‘and while I am still in charge of your case, isn’t there anything I can do for you?’
‘Yes. Would it be possible for me to see Jerusalem?’
‘A conducted tour or from far off like Richard Coeur de Lion?’
‘From far off. In streets I am distracted by reality.’
‘On collar and chain?’
He had put it well and I agreed. He said that he had to drive up to Jerusalem on a short visit to his colonel and that he would take me with him.
‘I will leave you to yourself – on parole as they used to call it when wars were fought between gentlemen. Give me your word of honour that you will not try to escape!’
I gave it. In any case both of us knew that if I took to the hills it would be a confession of guilt.
The road to Jerusalem reminded me a little of Greece – the same scrub, the same rocks but all on a smaller scale, good enough country for ambush but not for refuge; an Arab would choose the desert for that, a Jew some settlement where he could be hidden and his identity disguised. I was ashamed to find myself thinking of the opportunities for an outlaw. This land was stern and calm as the religions it had fostered. Under the blue bowl of the watching sky one God was enough.
He stopped on the top of Mount Scopus, saying that he would be back in a couple of hours and pick me up by the roadside.
The great, grey block of the city lay below me, the tiles of the Mosque of Omar flaming in the sun. I had the impression of a fortress built and walled to contain the divine. But the unknown purpose cannot be visited through a door. It is in the open air that man and his fellow creatures, though themselves wordless, rejoice in the gift of life and movement and give thanks for the sense of unity which we call beauty.
Was this the view which fierce King Richard saw as he thrust his head and shoulders over the ridge, perhaps with my ancestor by his side, and after crying out that he was unworthy to approach withdrew to cover? It was an excuse. He knew his force could never take Jerusalem. But in excuses there can still be truth. I too could say I was unworthy because my crusade had come to its end.
Moshe’s words were still an obsession: ‘You taught me.’
I stretched out my arms to that enigmatic sky which canopied Jerusalem from hill to hill and swore an oath to myself – for what is self but a receptacle of Purpose – that never again would I fire a shot at man or beast. Emotional and perhaps absurd, since I know as well as anyone that man is the cruellest of all creatures and the bullet can be merciful. But I defend emotion. Even a snail must know emotion – either at the sight of a lettuce leaf or at the ripeness of one ha
lf to mate with the other – for emotion is the link between itself and other life.
When North returned, I thanked him for having chosen such a spot for me and asked him how he knew.
‘I didn’t, I just felt you might need a memory. Lord knows you have courage enough for fifty, but you may need a different kind of courage now.’
‘Yes. I am going to be a different kind of outlaw.’
‘You are ready to be told you are a supporter of National Socialism and a liar?’
‘I have been through all that in Sweden.’
‘Let’s hope you won’t have to again. But I have a reputation for believing fairy tales and they like to forget that once in a while I have been right.’
Early next morning we started down the coast road to Cairo, arriving at sunset when my body was delivered to a fellow security officer. On leaving, Major North presented me with his white coat and a tie, saying that he could not loose an enemy agent into the arena dressed as the shipwrecked Bill Smith. He cut short goodbyes, knowing, I think, as well as I, that no words could add to our strange and warm relationship.
Treatment was more military than at the seamen’s hostel. It was also more comfortable. I was accommodated in a caravan fitted with all that a staff officer could need in the desert, yet there was a sentry outside. The combination revealed my anomalous position as a presumed traitor but also a thoroughbred out of the stud book about whose fate there might be awkward questions. If the authorities had known that no one was likely to ask they might not have been so cautious.
The house to which I was taken swarmed with officers and files. Passing between the ranks of the usual trestle tables and quick glances from the occupants, I was escorted into a private office. My interrogator was a brigadier and had a proper civilian desk; on it was a thick file marked RAYMOND INGELRAM followed by a string of aliases which I could not read. I disliked the brigadier at first sight. He had a dark moustache, more movie star than military, and a straight thin mouth beneath it, which seemed to carry a slight sneer as if I were an incompetent subordinate who thought too highly of himself. I judged him coldly efficient, the right man to deal with facts but, as North had said, not with a love story.
I remember little of that interview. It is not worth remembering. He started straightaway with the report from Sweden. I had claimed to be an escaped prisoner-of-war, but it was discovered that I had been in Germany as a civilian since the outbreak of war pretending to be Nicaraguan and that I had spent two years on propaganda directed at Latin America. I had claimed that my motive was to get near to Hitler in order to kill him. Did I wish to confirm that story? Yes, I did.
We then moved to my Austrian mother and the Austrian friends of my youth. To hell with such foolishness!
My escape. Well, there he had the evidence of the convict Shapir which was quite independent of my own. He was condescending enough to accept our stories.
‘People in England seem to know very little about you. I have been able to obtain some newspaper cuttings which indicate that at one time your travels and your habit of hunting with the nets and weapons of natives caught the attention of the popular press.’
‘They exaggerated.’
‘Are you known to any of the East African governors?’
I gave him names, saying that all they could tell him was that I had been an agreeable dinner guest and had no political opinions whatever. I hoped, however, that if he approached them he would tell them that I was being vetted for possible service in Africa, not as a supporter of Hitler.
‘You are suspected of worse than that, Mr Ingelram. You admit that you willingly allowed yourself to be employed in propaganda. I suggest that you tried to escape from the Reich before it was too late and to clear your name and your conscience by what you call a private war. Just how many of the enemy did you kill?’
I had to stop and think.
‘I make it seventeen,’ I said. ‘That is not counting the Voevod’s battle in the ravine and a truckful of troops drowned.’
It should have been eighteen. I had forgotten the stabbed doorman at Kozani, memory having censored him.
He was plainly shocked. I could see that he thought it close to murder. To him casualties were statistics. I doubt if he had ever been in action.
‘Have you never ordered that a man be quietly shot?’ I asked.
‘That is entirely different.’
‘Perhaps. But to kill a man face to face is not assassination. It only differs from bombing a town or wiping out fifty men with a machine-gun because you see his eyes.’
This was outside his experience and bad taste coming from a traitor. He quickly changed to politics and asked what mine were.
I replied that as a soldier – even in my private army – I was not supposed to have any.
‘What are they anyway? I take it you have no use for democracy?’
‘None whatever. It subjects us to government by a rabble of ambitious, self-important crooks. But even more, I detest dictatorship which adds fiendish cruelty to the same dishonesty.’
I had shocked him again, though he had probably said much the same about politicians in the mess. I meant to shock. Since I could see already that there was no hope of acquittal, nothing was to be lost if I disconcerted him by answering contempt with contempt.
He took refuge in a judicial air, saying that I would realize it was quite impossible to leave me at liberty. In Egypt, however, the only internment camps were for Italian civilians. So he would send me home to be confined or publicly disgraced with the rest of my aristocratic Nazi friends.
‘What is your financial position? Major North tells me that you distributed all your possessions before leaving for Germany.’
‘I did.’
‘In order to tuck your assets away in Switzerland or Latin America, I presume.’
‘No. But you may presume it.’
‘In that case I will make a recommendation that you be repatriated at a minimum cost to public funds by any ship returning round the Cape. Do you agree?’
‘I must, if your service insists on considering me a traitor.’
The following day he called me in again to tell me that I would be moved to Suez and very shortly embarked on a freighter leaving for England. No British passport would be issued but the master would carry in a sealed envelope the documentation enabling me to pass through immigration control into the hands of the police.
‘And as you have no money, I shall provide you with a small sum for your expenses on the voyage.’
I thanked him and refused it, saying that Hitler’s Ministry of Propaganda had paid me very well and placed funds at my disposal in London upon which I could draw.
A childish revenge. I had no doubt that Security and Censorship would waste a lot of time and energy trying to trace through what neutral country money had been transferred to London, how I intended to get at it and why in the end the traitor had confessed. North could have told them why. If an outlaw wishes to preserve his pride, he can only depend on himself.
I did not offer to shake hands on leaving, nor very properly did the brigadier.
I was decently treated when I went on board at Suez. Evidently the master had been told that he should keep a careful eye on me but not that I had been an enemy agent. He spared me questions, believing – so far as I could guess – that I was a person of some distinction who had committed some unforgivable folly such as seducing the King of Egypt’s daughter or dancing a drunkard’s jig in the cathedral.
The ship was to call at Mombasa, a port which I knew well, and there I proposed to leave it. I had never any intention of going home. My future did not matter. I had renounced the future and lived only in a past which contained, co-existing with me, the spectral vision of my love.
Somehow I could exist. Poland and Greece had proved that I could endure privation. But there could be no living of
f the rifle. ‘You taught me,’ poor Moshe had said. That lesson and my oath under the conscience-searching skies of Palestine were reinforced when the brigadier asked me how many of the enemy I had killed. Seventeen, I answered, omitting the uncounted. By what right had I killed? Was my justification self-defence or was it sheer anger and a savage eagerness to return blood for blood? But blood would not resurrect my beloved nor fetch from the void the children we might have had.
The captain did not object to me going ashore at Mombasa. He had no reason to suspect that I might disappear since I was on my way home and had no money. I had at first conceived the preposterous idea of walking to Nairobi. By now I was so used to using my feet that I hardly considered road or rail transport. How a white beggar would be treated I could guess: by the blacks with kindness, by the whites with an insistence on peremptory action to explain my poverty, which, if I were still close to Mombasa, must result in official inquiries and my return to the ship.
It was only when I had walked out of town along the railway track that it seriously occurred to me to take a train without a ticket. In a friendly, free and easy colonial society it should not be necessary to resort to the desperate tricks of American bums on the move. A freight train was halted hissing impatiently alongside a banana grove. I climbed into a truck half full of gravel and for the next three hours no one disturbed me. I was then discovered and rebuked, but merely advised that I should not be seen when getting off in the Nairobi yards.
It was early morning when I slid to the ground and walked away from my truck with, I hoped, the confident air of Hauptmann Haase at Auschwitz, though now my uniform was only three stained garments. I had to avoid the centre of the town in case some old acquaintance recognized Raymond Ingelram. I wondered what he would do: assume that this disreputable figure could not be me, or decide that it was and should be passed without a greeting. It was unlikely that in the yards I should meet anyone but merchants, white, black and Indian, all busy loading lorries or cursing because expected goods had not arrived, so I sat down on a crate to watch them and speculate on their destinations. I did not care where I went, so long as it was not back to Mombasa and far enough into the interior for search for me to be abandoned.
Rogue Justice Page 18