The Eye of the Abyss

by Marshall Browne

  ‘This is it, better get a move on, we’re late,’ a disembodied voice said.

  ‘Any wonder?’ the driver grunted.

  Frau Bertha hurried through the apartment bearing a tray of hot rolls and coffee. The household had been astir for half an hour, and she knew the young woman in the guest bedroom was fully dressed, pacing the room. Her mistress, warm-gowned, already was issuing instructions with her early-morning disdain. What a start to the day!

  The doorbell clanged in the hall. Good heavens! What next? Agitatedly, Frau Bertha put down her tray on a side-table and hurried to the door.

  The tramcars had not started up because of the fog. Schmidt set out to walk from his flat to his mother’s. He was aware of occasional blurry figures on the move in the fog, which almost took shape, only to decompose again. He could see a metre or two. He worried about how Herr Dressler would navigate across the city. At any rate, the trains would be delayed. He breathed lightly, trying to avoid taking in the acrid vapour.

  Last night was irradiated in his mind. A marvel. But hopeless, like a corpse on a slab. Now they’d be absorbed with arrangements, racing against time. It must be thus if they were to succeed. As surely as he’d fallen out of his character last night, with this dawn, he’d slotted back into it.

  Footsteps sounded, as if they were from an invisible twin. Ahead or behind? He stopped suddenly, so did the twin. The tapping of a blind person’s stick passed by to his left: no difference to him this morning. He went on; the twin was back. Echoes. Why was he, a man who loved his wife and daughter, engaged in these perilous events? The dripping silence for an answer.

  Black-garbed, severe-faced as priests, the two men inspected Frau Bertha. A pair of crows, she thought. She’d frozen, as if every last nerve-end had iced up. The pavement-walker held his warrant card, casually, over his heart. The official seal: the black eagle rampant, claws sunk into a swastika, glared at her. Another bird! Frau Bertha was closer to the Reich’s streetlife than her mistress. But until now, that menacing world hadn’t physically invaded the enclave which harboured No. 178.

  They stepped into the hall and the smell of leather and a whiff of foggy air came with them. Frau Bertha, grasping for normality, remembered the same odours at early departures in the household’s days of touring motorcars.

  ‘Tell Frau Schmidt we wish to speak to her,’ the pavement-walker said. His eyes left Frau Bertha’s face, and side-slipped to the hall furnishings, and the Great Man’s bust. He sniffed as though testing the upper-middle-class atmosphere. ‘Be quick!’ A Munich accent; the maid recognised it.

  In the corridor which led to the hall, a door opened and Fräulein Dressler appeared. She paused, sizing up the situation, then came forward.

  ‘I am Fräulein Dressler.’

  Both the Gestapo agents nodded, as though nebulous suspicions harboured during a long shift were confirmed. They knew nothing of her background; she was a name on a warrant. ‘You’re under arrest, fräulein,’ the walker said. ‘You’ll come with us, bringing one bag only.’ He inclined his head at her, spoke to his partner. ‘Keep her under observation.’ He turned to Frau Bertha. ‘You’ll take me to Frau Schmidt.’

  The maid led him down the passage to the salon. The driver stepped forward, and selected a hot roll from the side-table. ‘Breakfast!’ he said heartily to his colleague’s departing back.

  In her chair, Frau Schmidt waited for the denouement of the commotion. Without the buttressing of her fine clothes and jewellery she appeared as weightless as thistledown. The strict black ribbon dressing her plaited hair, the alert eyes, belied that.

  So it appeared to the unshaven man in the leather coat, who’d not removed his soft black hat. He examined this effete vision of the bourgeois, categorised it. With equal contempt, Frau Schmidt marked his manners.

  ‘By what authority do you enter my household?’ The walker sighed. Her fine-boned wrists showed from the gown. He’d snapped similar wrists like chicken-bones. As a means to an end. ‘By the authority of the Reich,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone. He held out his identification. ‘We’ve arrested the Jewish fugitive, Dressler. How do you explain her presence here?’

  ‘Explain her presence? She is a guest.’

  ‘She is a colleague of your son’s, is she not?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did he bring her here?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Frau Schmidt was unaccustomed to the slightest prevarication.

  His stare lifted from her face, and went around the room, taking in the rich collection. Still appraising he said, ‘Then, you and your son have committed a crime. The penalty is severe. Get dressed, please.’

  Frau Schmidt did not move, continued her unblinking stare at this example of the new Germany.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  The imperious head lifted. ‘Do you know who I am? I am the direct descendant of the most famous German in our cultural history.’

  The pronouncement, never before uttered by Frau Schmidt, except to herself, wafted in the salon. The agent’s face was empty — waiting for more information. She whispered the name, parting with it with extreme reluctance to such a recipient. ‘Even your Herr Hitler pays my ancestor the most profound respect.’

  The man of secret orders, of subterranean cells, of the calculated dawn visitation, returned her gaze. Was she mad? Senile? Instructions for cases like this had evolved, but behind the scenes frequently lurked special influence – and purchasing power. Traps for the unwary. Now her body shook for a moment and she was staring at him fixedly. He’d be cautious. Nonetheless …

  ‘Nonetheless, please do as I say.’

  She sat there, immutable. He waited almost a minute, by turn uncertain and impatient. She did not blink.

  ‘Frau!’

  But it was too late. Frau Schmidt had died.

  Her body remained fixed in its last position, the derisory eyes uplifted to his face.

  He took a step forward, looked into those eyes, and lifted a porcelain wrist. ‘Shit!’ he swore under his breath, and let it drop. He turned, and went out to where Frau Bertha waited. He gestured impatiently to her to go to her mistress.

  Fräulein Dressler waited in the hall with the driver who, watching her but not seeing her, was munching a second roll. The stress, agitation, and fear of past weeks had come to a dead-stop. She was dazed. ‘Oh Papa, what can I do?’ she breathed desperately.

  The other man entered the hall. ‘Come on,’ he said, ’let’s move.’

  ‘What about …?’ the driver said, wiping his fingers, nodding to the interior.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ his colleague growled. He took Fräulein Dressler by the arm, and they went out. She’d picked up her suitcase. The driver followed, closing the door precisely. The apartment was deeply silent; then the maid shrieked. He wondered what mistake his colleague had made.

  Schmidt and Senior Detective Dressler met at Number 178 at 7.10 am, and shook hands in the icy lobby. A minute later, they were confronted by Frau Bertha’s tear-stained face.

  ‘Too late,’ Dressler whispered, heart-sick in an instant.

  A moment later Schmidt stared at his mother. She appeared to be still in command of her salon, almost on the verge of speaking to him. He felt he’d gone out of the world himself — had ducked out a side door, and was looking down on the scene from a high vantage-point.

  Dressler, filling the salon doorway, his hat gripped in big fingers, took in the scene, jotting down facts in his mental notebook. It was a side-show to the shock, the deep foreboding for his daughter. His head was throbbing badly.

  Schmidt turned to him, more obviously shocked. The detective, intimate with sudden death, squinting his eyes against the pain, framed an interim conclusion: heart attack. The fear for his daughter was ringing in his own heart like an unanswered alarm. Somehow he switched it off. He regarded Schmidt with sympathy. This bank man must feel like he’d entered hell. Welcome.

  ‘Come,’ he said. They left the room and he quest
ioned the distraught Frau Bertha, gently but persistently. He said to Schmidt, ‘Phone your mother’s doctor. He must examine her. He will tell you what to do. The maid – she should sit down, have some coffee.’

  ‘Your daughter?’ Schmidt turned slowly towards the detective. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The Gestapo. The clock was running too fast … we were too slow.’

  They walked out to the hall. The detective’s voice had trailed away. He halted, frowning, trying to reorganise his thoughts. Droplets of moisture glistened on his brow. He stared grimly at the composer’s bust.

  ‘What can we do?’ Schmidt said.

  Dressler dragged his hand across his jaw. ‘I will go to the Gestapo office. Try to … if you wish, I’ll contact you later.You ought to find a good lawyer. Familiar with matters like this.’

  Schmidt nodded vaguely. His thoughts had done a circuit, and settled on the main fact: Fräulein Dressler. Here last night … gone now … into the abyss. They’d failed. Failed … His mind seemed to be slipping badly.

  ‘Herr Schmidt!’

  Sternly, the detective was staring at him. For a second it surprised Schmidt, then he found himself coming back. Shakily. Suddenly, he was turning over scenarios in the future involving his family, the bank. The detective was correct and helpful to point him towards the defensive. He’d regained stability, his mind was no longer a conveyor belt missing notches … The policeman had established control over the father, as the situation demanded. A pillar of a man. Have you killed your mother with your good intentions? Or, had her time come by the unknowable clock running for each of us? With your imperfect plan, have you delivered Fräulein Dressler into their hands? He shook his head.

  The detective had watched the auditor reassemble himself. Quite a tough one. Pragmatic, at least. Without a handshake, silent on his thick rubber, Herr Dressler walked out of the flat.

  Schmidt went back in, told Frau Bertha to sit down, and phoned the doctor. Then, while coffee heated, he returned to the door of the salon. Was her spirit greeting her revered forebears? That would have been her expectation, and this morning no kind of strangeness or mystery seemed improbable. He blinked, and broke the spell. How had the Gestapo known to come here? It was one question he believed he knew the answer to.

  It was too early to ring the bank, but not Helga. He’d been due to call this morning anyway.

  ‘Franz?’ The familiar voice, up an octave. ‘The operation was successful. She’s recovering … Is all well with you?’

  He drew in his breath. ‘Helga, I’m very sorry to tell you my mother died this morning.’ He listened to the echo of his voice down the trunk-line, her silence.

  ‘Good God! What happened?’

  ‘The doctor’s not here yet.’ He considered whether to prepare her for what he would need to tell her, what she would hear from Frau Bertha. In the worst case, from the Gestapo. No, not yet. ‘Probably a heart attack …’

  A pause. ‘Franz, my dear, we’ll come home. Will you meet the six o’clock express?’ He hesitated. It would be better if she didn’t return. But immediately he knew there’d be no stopping her. They discussed a few details.

  He hung up. The apprehension which had arisen in her voice saddened him. What had she been thinking these days apart in Dresden? Doubtless, much. In consideration of the path he’d chosen, bills were going to come in from several quarters for payment.

  At this point, in his father’s study his mother dead in her salon, there came into his consciousness – not in a flash of light, rather with a steadily increasing glow – the true nature of his purpose and his situation. He stared fixedly at the room, letting it pour into him.

  19

  AT 8.15 AM Herr Dressler, holder of the Iron Cross First Class, thrice-wounded, gassed in the Great War, strode into the Gestapo office and asked for an officer by name. The black-uniformed, suspicious SS Untersturmfuhrer in a glassed cubicle at the door deliberated on his police identity card, examined a checklist, sized up the giant figure, then brusquely nodded him in. The municipal police fitted into the Reich bureaucracy, albeit at a subordinate level.

  He was told to wait. He sat down on a wooden bench and regarded Gestapo clerks working on files at desks behind a counter. They looked like tired shift-workers anywhere, not administrators of terror and deceit. Their replacements were arriving. The detective sat like a statue, his big fingers interlaced in his lap, regarding a huge poster of the Fuehrer flanked by red and black swastikas. Blood and darkness, he thought.

  Phones began ringing. He observed what was going on, keeping his feelings strictly under control, used to that. She wouldn’t have been brought in through this vestibule; prisoners and suspects for questioning came in at the back. His control slipped. Suddenly he felt sick in his stomach at the fear she must be experiencing. She was a strong, competent person but this would be far too much. Eventually, fear came to all. He gripped his hands together. Deliberately, he turned his head, taking in everything. A vast coir mat emblazoned with a large swastika was spread at the entrance, and the people coming in were conscientiously wiping their shoes on it. The irony of this wasn’t lost on him. In the army they would have judged it bad staff-work. The Gestapo was an immature organisation.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’

  Said quickly as a formality behind him. Dressler stood up. His army comrade’s son had entered through a side door.

  ‘Good morning, Herr Lueger.’They shook hands.

  ‘Please call me Hans, as always. What can I do for you?’

  The sallow, intense youth he remembered stood there, still sallow, no longer youthful, analytically watchful now rather than intense. Nervy, too, the detective noted. The Gestapo might stand in the nation as an instrument of terror, but danger roamed its own hierarchal structure. Towering above the Gestapo man, quietly he told him what had befallen his daughter. Plainly, reasonably, he said that he didn’t expect to change the course of what was in motion – alie: one way or another that was his aim, but he asked could he see her, could he have an idea of what lay ahead, could Herr Leuber advise whether there was any process of intercession which might ameliorate their difficulty.

  The Nazi listened, eyes downcast. Dressler absorbed his reluctance to become involved, his resentment of the old family connection. Had his eyes glazed over at the recital of yet another awkward case? Watching the man’s reaction, at the end Dressler slightly increased the energy of his speech.

  ‘Wait here, please, while I make inquiries. It may take some time.’

  The giant detective didn’t immediately return to the bench. He stood, legs apart, easily balanced on his rubber soles as though on a stake-out. In the yellowish, unnatural light the black figures flitted by, perhaps on hellish errands, perhaps going to the lavatories. The smell of damp clothes moved through the vestibule. Guttural voices faded down corridors. He didn’t expect good news, but implacably willed that the son of the man whose life he’d saved might return with news not wholly disastrous.

  ‘What have you been up to, Franz?’ Helga said, half insistently, half reluctantly, when they were alone at last. Grimly, she wondered what answers she’d get.

  Schmidt thought: Yes, I should be asked that. Trust Helga. He’d met the train at 6.00 pm, and now it was 7.00. Throughout the day the city had been covered with fog. In his head, one of the Great Man’s requiems had been playing its monumental cadences.

  They’d given Trudi her supper. He’d made the funeral arrangements, and notified by phone or telegram the few relatives and friends of his mother’s generation who survived. The doctor, who’d been treating her for a heart condition unbeknown to Schmidt, had no problem with the death certificate. He’d received several callers. Wagner, sounding subdued, had phoned his condolences; otherwise it’d been resoundingly all quiet from Wertheim & Co, and grimly Schmidt pictured the confusion and concern in the bank, over the Fräulein Dressler/ Herr Schmidt imbroglio.

  And, what had been in the mind of Dietrich this day? He’d not hea
rd yet from Herr Dressler. And the Gestapo were ominously silent. Trouble must be waiting there. He’d obtained the name of a lawyer, but had decided not to speak to him at this stage.

  He opened wine and poured two glasses. He wished he’d some of Wagner’s schnapps. Schnapps and beer. ‘Stimulation, and satisfaction’ — Wagner’s phrase. Carrying the Dressler suitcases had done something to his back: high in his spinal column a single vertebrae felt like a hot coal.

  Obviously, Helga had been delaying this, agonising over the question just asked; but it could be postponed no longer. He’d exposed his family to danger. He’d told himself, he’d told her, that he would never do that. But events had swept him up. He wondered if his face looked as drawn as it felt. His heart seemed to be heavy with so much, and deeply worried at the situation he’d brought upon his loved ones. Deadly sad about Lilli Dressler …

  ‘Fräulein Dressler,’ he began at last. Step by step, in his meticulous way, he told her of what had overtaken the general-director’s secretary; of his own part. His ineffectual part. He’d the sensation of being a mourner driving in a funeral motorcade, headlights on. As tomorrow he would be. He did not tell her everything.

  His wife listened, tight as a violin string, but with a neutral expression. He kept looking into her eyes, trying to track any flickers of reaction. She was silent when he’d finished, her wine untouched. Her tension, her dead-white complexion, sickened him with regret: in Dresden the golden tan of summer had been lost.

  ‘Did you do it consciously, Franz? Put yourself, our little Trudi, me, into danger?’ But she answered herself. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve feared this. Oh don’t worry, I share your doubts about our new Germany, of those in power. But what of the family? Can there be anything more important? Your mother? God knows, where do you stand there? Do you take the responsibility for that, Franz? Where do you stand on any of it?’ she cried. He gazed at the pale wine as though its colour fascinated him.Yes. He took that responsibility. Would say so, when she’d finished. ‘I’ve never really spoken of that other world of yours. But I can guess the path your mind might be following. Am I right? Are you trying to mould that code to your life – our lives? In these times?’ He thought: Not as simple or as stark as that. Events are pulling on me like a tidal race. She’s slicing ideas out of the air. It’s wonderfully close. ‘You’ll never tell me! But if you are – of course you are! Oh, Franz, first your eye – now this unfortunate woman – and your mother! That time can’t ever translate to these modern times! What danger are you bringing down on us?’