Was he, or was he not, in control of Wertheims, its destiny?
What stimulation he felt from the danger which lurked in such a fundamental doubt! How revitalised – if not always clear — he felt in his mind!
He switched his gaze to his nephew and smiled. ‘Why not, Otto? Keep me advised.’
Meet me 5.00 pm usual place. D.
The note had been put on Schmidt’s desk, mid-afternoon, during his brief absence. So Dressler had someone inside Wertheims. Schmidt stared at the printed words. How many secret cabals existed in this rabbit-warren of a building? Where was the Nazi cell lurking? They were supposed to be springing up like black fungi in all institutions. Six months ago he’d have found the notion ludicrous; today it merely moved through his mind as another grim current.
The stone embrasure was empty, and freezing. However, on past experience the municipal detective would turn up. But what news would he bring? Fervently, Schmidt hoped that it’d be positive. Above his head, a crowd of carved stone figures, amazingly entwined, struggled ever upwards into the gloom. He stamped his feet, and commenced a solo watch on the café-life as though warmth, illumination – even hope – might be gleaned from there. He’d no expectation it would be found behind him. A few pedestrians passed, ten metres distant. None glanced towards the freezing repository of a myriad sung masses.
The detective came out of the darkness, and his great white hand flashed near his waist, and swallowed Schmidt’s. His breath whistled eerily into the auditor’s face, smelt of cabbage and pickles; a meal and digestion on the run.
The policeman moved into the embrasure. He was still holding the auditor’s hand, as though he’d forgotten to release it. He seemed bereft of words. Schmidt felt the giant frame shaking. ‘Herr Dressler?’
A long, fierce sigh.
‘Yes, Herr Schmidt. Please, allow me a moment.’ He released the auditor’s hand. His shoulders shook in a frightening spasm. Schmidt was alarmed. ’My dear Lilli died on the 16th … Herr Rubinstein found out … pneumonia.’ His voice choked.
Schmidt’s brain and body swooped away as the vertigo gripped him. It lasted for a few seconds. He tried to speak. Tried again. ‘My deepest condolences,’ he heard himself say, then his throat closed up.
The detective’s great head was moving back and forth. His massive shoulders shook violently. He whispered: ‘My dearest only child. I’m to receive her ashes.’
Schmidt put his hand on the giant arm. He still couldn’t speak but his mind was clearing. He stared at the detective’s face. The café lights laid gleams on the tears in the eyes above the moustache. Schmidt thought: It’s over. She was a strong, healthy woman. In his memory he looked into the considering eyes, caught the sad, puzzled defeat of a woman who’d specialised in solving problems, who’d always got things done with her small stabs of humour, saw her walking away in the Wertheim corridor. His heart beat in rythmic thumps, as it walked with her.
‘You did more than I, anyone, could expect,’ Dressler said brokenly.
‘No father could have done more.’ Useless, efforts at consolation – pitiful in the face of such evil, such misfortune. A flurry of wind whirled bits of rubbish across the platz into their hiding hole.
‘I slept too long. Was paralysed. The war dulled me, scrambled my brain. Some days I cannot think at all.’ The detective blinked rapidly, shedding diamond-like gleams.
Schmidt dabbed at his own weeping eye. What could he do, tonight, with the heart-broken man? What was it best to do? He wondered at himself — at the calmness which had settled in him. Feeling seemed to be draining from him day by day, leaving the reasoning core, shadowing that evil, getting on terms with it. Or was he deceiving himself, playing a futile game, his own crash waiting its time?
Dressler brushed at his eyes, said, ‘Rubinstein has offered to return part of the bonds.’
‘Let him keep them,’ Schmidt said.
The detective nodded.
‘Will you come home with me, Herr Dressler?’
‘No. Thank you. I’m on duty.’ The detective had his ready-made solution to hand.
Schmidt thought: Yes, the best place.
In a voice which had become flat, Dressler said, ‘Your Nazi, Dietrich, is no different from most of them … but to me he is a special case.’
Schmidt was silent. Dietrich’s face had loomed up in his mind. The Nazi had entered their lives like a deadly virus. He glanced at the detective. ‘A special case.’There’d been something in that totally flat delivery. Dressler’s breath whistled, and subsided in his throat. He shook his shoulders, forcing his mind to this: ‘I’ve not found out much about von Streck. Except he was in the Ministry of Economics. He’s an office at Party headquarters. I couldn’t find out where he fits into the Party. He’s a man without much of a past, though that’s balls. My contact said he could be one of those who answer only to the top … but guesswork.’
The giant detective sighed heavily, felt for Schmidt’s hand, and squeezed it. As he walked away, the wind attacked his overcoat, flapping its skirts wildly as though even the elements could tell when a man was down, and were moving in on him.
27
HIS MOTHER’S APARTMENT was as ’quiet as a mouse’ — as Trudi had recently learned to say. Little Trudi of his old life. He’d dreamt last night that he’d been on a pier from which a ship was departing with his family; his wife had flung a streamer, he’d grabbed for it, felt it slip through his fingers.
Frau Bertha had left after disposing of his mother’s wardrobe; already the furniture had a coat of dust. He sat in his father’s study, in the surgeon’s chair, in a stand-off with the silence. He pondered its density; saturated with his father’s thousands of hours of brooding on the Order. On its demise. He sensed it moving past him like a draught of air. In 1408 the rebellion in Poland and Lithuania had begun the rot. In 1410, the knights had been defeated at Grunwald. Thereafter their authority and wealth declined. In 1525 their rule in Prussia ended; in 1558 the Livonian territory was lost, and in 1580 the land in the Low Countries. In 1801 they’d been stripped of their German possessions. Napoleon had proclaimed the Order dissolved in 1809.
It’d all been blown away like chaff in a wind. Schmidt raised his eyes and stared down the room at the past. His life had been dominated by his ancestors – on both sides of the family. He nodded to himself.
Seven nights ago he’d been here with Lilli and her father planning her survival! Then he’d hurried with the father through the streets to that Jewish house with his attaché case of the Party’s bonds. It was all the stuff of dreams – no, a ridiculous farce! Lilli had already been bound to her fate. Dietrich had shut all the doors, watertight as a submarine’s compartments. Why? Efficiency? A favourable notation in a dossier? Or some malignant, deep-seated antipathy?
To Lilli it was now immaterial. He and Wagner must deal with the aftermath. If they were to survive in the short term, the missing bonds must be covered up. As for the long term … He started and tensed at a faint sound, back in the depths of the apartment … . A single fact had been hovering above his musing: Dietrich knew of his connection to the Order. He’d been looking into it. But another mysterious fact: the attitude of von Streck to Wagner when they’d met at the beerhall – a kind of knowingness. Perhaps not mysterious to Wagner!
A farce? To this point, perhaps. But as he continued to sit in his father’s chair a vista opened up, becoming wider and wider.What had been maturing in the subconscious stepped forward with a flourish, presented itself like a woman turning, showing the pleasing fall of a skirt. He sat up in the chair. A plan! He nodded wonderingly. Amazing! It went far beyond any protective cover-up. It went like a dagger into Dietrich’s heart. Excitement burned in him. The perfect plan!
It occurred to him that the thoughts now going through his mind were those of a complete stranger.
The deputy foreign manager slouched watchfully through the streets to 178 Frederickstrasse. Though Wagner’s habitual attitude was cavalier a
nd cynical, he wasn’t without some instinct of self-preservation. Last night he’d burned his Social Democratic Party papers. Up in smoke – like the party. The snake had slipped its old skin.
They’d taken to following him in the street – the same pattern as the watch on his flat: occasionally, and inefficiently. To them, his life must seem a ragbag of suspicious ingredients. Fervently he hoped the totality of it was proving confusing; that no man’s intelligence had penetrated to the core. Tonight he’d been especially careful.
‘All quiet?’ he said to Schmidt as he was admitted at the tradesman’s door at 7.00 pm in a whiff of fog and tobacco. He was referring to the stolen bonds. Hatless as usual, his hair was brittle and frosty.
Schmidt said, ‘Come through to the salon.’ He led the way. In the room, keeping his face calm, he turned. ‘Heinrich, I’m afraid – very bad news. Lilli Dressler is dead.’
Wagner staggered.
‘God Almighty!’ he whispered. He was stricken. His face sagged. Sympathetically, Schmidt watched this sequence of emotions. A human response. His own shock and grief were sunk deep by the pressure of events.
He cleared his throat. ‘Herr Dressler told me an hour ago — had it from Rubinstein, who found it out when he tried to open up negotiations.’
‘How?’
‘Pneumonia.’
Wagner sank down in a chair, his hands spreading bitter gestures. ‘And they think that’ll be believed?’
‘To their minds it’s like the bureaucratic filling-in of a space on a form. I’ve some experience.’ With abject weariness Wagner shook his head. He understood that Schmidt was referring, obliquely, to the incident of his eye … Things had been bad, now were much worse. Schmidt continued to observe the emotion in his colleague. He said, ‘I feel deeply for Herr Dressler. But there’s nothing more to be done. We tried, we failed.’
‘We fooled ourselves – him – that there was a chance!’ Wagner sneered.
The auditor accepted this, and kept silent. Wagner hunted for, found cigarettes, and savagely scratched a match alight.
Schmidt said, ‘Tragically, it’s all over for her. For him. For us, another matter. We’re dangerously exposed. Until the next stage is put in place.’
Wagner exhaled a gust of smoke. ‘Ah yes, the next stage.’ He looked at the auditor as though seeing him anew. Suddenly he sensed the excitement in him. ‘You know, Franz, you’re surprising me more each day. I always knew you were cautious – and, with respect, cold-minded. Now, obviously more cold-minded than cautious. It’s a wonder …’
Schmidt shrugged. It was his friend’s character that interested him. Despite his familiarity with Wagner’s opinions concerning the Nazis, and his bouts of recklessness, he’d been surprised himself at his colleague’s prompt consent to step into the zone of extreme danger. Wagner was a complicated individual, and Schmidt now feared that his past political affiliation might be ticking away like a time bomb. Maybe not an ideal accomplice. But he must press on.
‘For the second time, Dietrich has warned me against you.’
Wagner shrugged helplessly. ‘What can I do? As I’ve said, it’s to do with my old political life.’
‘I think they’d pull you in if they had solid grounds. They’re watching so many on speculation. That reassures me.’
But Schmidt wasn’t reassured.
Wagner blew smoke into the room where Schmidt’s mother had forbidden smoking. ‘Could you get the bonds back, return them to the safe?’
‘I don’t intend to do that. Anyway, some have been sold. I hope you agree.’
‘Of course. Foolish to ask.’
‘The next stage … Heinrich, could you go to Zurich tomorrow night?’
The foreign manager’s expression didn’t change. Clinically, he inspected Frau Schmidt’s antique furniture – as though he’d come there for that express purpose. ‘The answer’s yes. I’m overdue to see our Swiss correspondents, a visit’s been set up. I can leave at a moment’s notice. If the Gestapo permits.’
Schmidt studied him acutely. ‘Excellent. When I asked you about Zurich before, I was examining ideas, searching for the way to cover up our little operation. Now, I’ve a plan.’
Wagner watched the auditor, thinking: insert ‘theft’ for ‘operation’. It must’ve really gone against the grain. But his upright colleague had changed dramatically. Perhaps here was the real man. A plan …
‘A plan which goes further than I originally intended. A long way further.’
‘You’re sounding very mysterious, my friend.’
Schmidt looked away, apparently changing the subject. ‘It’s distressing to see what’s happening to Wertheims.’
Wagner laughed bitterly. ‘Distressing? I told you from the beginning, old Wertheim’s sailing the ship into dangerous waters. What’s he really up to? I await his next act of senility with bated breath. It’s worse even than I imagined. I think he’s developed a taste for danger. Not for greed — just danger.’
‘Hardly logical.’
‘His mind’s no longer logical. Witness those damned paintings. And the reek of Nazism in our venerable edifice. Dietrich’s spreading the infection. But it’s invading us through every crack in the damned place. I suggest to you none of our colleagues can be trusted.’
Schmidt brooded on a handsome silver chalice that had belonged to his mother’s father; safe in his grave.
‘Dietrich …’
‘Yes,’ Wagner said. ‘Didn’t our famous Goethe say: “For all guilt is punished on earth.” What do you think, Franz?’
The auditor had no comment. He’d turned over the Nazi’s black-edged page in his mind. It was spattered with blood. Dietrich’s reckoning was going to come – if he had the wit and the nerve to implement this plan. Wagner was going to get another shock.
Schmidt said, ‘Otto’s working on Aryanisation projects, he’s targeted the Dortmunds. He’ll strip their wealth and the authorities will kick them out, or worse. They’ll be paid about twenty per cent of what their company’s worth, and after the twenty-five per cent Flight Capital Tax on that amount, they’ll have only peanuts left. Isn’t that how Dietrich puts it?’
Wagner shrugged elaborately. ‘That farting, fornicating bastard, Otto. Finally, he’s found his true metier. I thought he’d peaked as the rapist of the archives’ room, the polluter of corridors, but he continues to develop.’
Schmidt scarcely listened. ‘From our point of view, this is quite alarming. They’ll need to sell Reich bonds from the working stock to pay for it. Sooner rather than later.’
After a pause, Wagner almost whispered, ‘And the cupboard is bare.’
Schmidt smiled thinly. ‘Not quite.’
‘Poor Lilli Dressler,’ Wagner murmured, ‘to run into someone like him.’ He held his right hand before his eyes. It was shaking. ‘Look at that,’ he said disgustedly. ‘You know, Franz, the whole of my life’s been littered with errors and omissions. I lie in bed at night, look back and feel deeply embarrassed for my mistakes. That’s my life …’ His face broke into a desperate grin. ‘Why am I confiding this depressing information to you?’
Was Wagner going to crack? Schmidt considered consolations. Better a change of pace. He left his chair and went to a cabinet: third drawer on the left. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked it. Matter-of-factly, he put the manuscripts he’d retrieved from the cabinet into Wagner’s hands. His colleague glanced at him in puzzlement, then began to turn over the sheets of music.
Another facial spasm. He straightened in his chair, and quickly began to flick through them. ‘My God!’ he breathed, then looked further, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. ‘My God!’ He came back to the first sheet. His head jerked up to stare at Schmidt. ’J.S. Bach! Unpublished manuscripts — from him! It’s the find of the century!’
‘My mother, her forebears, wouldn’t publish them – because the Great Man hadn’t. It’s fortunate they weren’t destroyed – by someone along the line. They’ve been
hidden from the world in a sacred trust. A strange family tradition!’
Wagner was mesmerised. ‘What will you do?’
Schmidt smiled slightly. It was clear that in the past weeks the leadership relationship between them had been reversed. Again in a matter-of-fact tone he said, ‘The plan I speak of requires you to take the 9,500,000 of bonds still in my safe to the Swiss Bank, Zurich. You might take these along, too.’
Rubinstein, overcoated, hatted, apparently a visitor in his own house, stood at the top of his cellar steps and meditated on the ruinous scene. Herr Dressler stood beside him.
‘In a world of shortages, such a waste,’ the Jew said.
‘The act of criminals – and fools.’ Herr Dressler wasn’t present in his official capacity. The floor of the cellar was a glutinous, multi-coloured morass of preserved fruits and pickles, several centimetres deep, impregnated with the glass of smashed containers. A sweet odour laced the air. Upstairs, the faces of family portraits had been slashed. The canvases hung in ribbons between the ornate frames. Turkish rugs were despoiled.
‘Thank God, my family were away. I’ll have it cleaned up before they return … I am sorry about your daughter. Beside that, this is nothing.’
Dressler lowered his head onto his chest in acknowledgement. He’d thanked the the ex-judge, for his efforts, for his courageous intervention. Though he still appeared to meditate on the scene, Rubinstein’s mind had shifted. ‘The auditor, Schmidt – a strange man. In the courts one sees many types passing through. Criminals who’ve the appearance of innocent citizens. Innocent citizens who’ve the appearance of criminals. Of course, you’ve seen this phenomenon, Herr Dressler.’ The detective acknowledged that he had. ‘I don’t mean to infer that Herr Schmidt falls into either type. There are others, of course. However, I admit if I had to make a quick judgement, I’d err on the side of the first.’
The Eye of the Abyss Page 18