Zoo Stationee

by David Downing

  It sounded as if the Auers had a few in their cellar. “I’ve heard Hermann’s building up his collection,” Russell observed.

  “He has good taste,” Auer conceded with only the faintest hint of sarcasm.

  The conversation moved on to architecture and Speer’s plans for the new Berlin. Russell watched and listened. It was a civilized conversation, he thought. But the civilization concerned was treading water. There was an implied acceptance that things had slipped out of joint, that some sort of correction was needed, and that until that correction came along, and normal service was resumed, they were stuck in a state of suspended animation. The Conways, he saw, were only too glad to be out of it; America would be a paradise after this. The Unsworths didn’t have a clue what they were getting into and, unless they were much more perceptive than they seemed, would draw all the wrong conclusions from gatherings like this one. But the three German couples—he included himself and Effi—were just waiting for the world to move on, waiting at the Führer’s pleasure.

  “What’ll happen to you if there’s a war?” Unsworth was asking him.

  “I’ll be on the same train as you, I expect,” Russell told him. Across the table, Effi made a face.

  “That’ll be hard, after living here for so long.”

  “It will. I have a son here, too.” Russell shrugged. “But it’ll be that or internment.”

  In the way home, sitting in a line of traffic at the eastern end of the Ku’damm, Effi suddenly turned to him and said: “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I don’t want to lose you either.”

  She slipped an arm through his. “How long do you think a war will last?”

  “I’ve no idea. Years, at least.”

  “Maybe we should think about leaving. I know,” she added quickly, “that you don’t want to leave Paul. But if there’s a war and they lock you up you’ll be leaving him anyway. And we . . . oh I don’t know. It’s all so ridiculous.”

  Russell moved the car forward a few meters. “It’s something to think about.” And it was. She was right—he’d lose Paul anyway. And he couldn’t spend the rest of his life clinging to the boy. It wasn’t fair to her. It probably wasn’t fair to Paul.

  “I don’t want to go either, but. . . .”

  “I know. I think we’ve got a few months at least.” He leaned over and kissed her, which drew an angry blow of the horn from the car behind them. “And I can’t let Paul run my whole life,” he said, testing the thought out loud as he released the clutch.

  “Not forever, anyway. Has he seen the car yet?”

  “No. Tomorrow.”

  THERE WAS SUNSHINE ON SATURDAY, the first in a week. He arrived at the Gehrts household soon after two, and felt somewhat deflated by the sight of Matthias’s Horch. How had he expected Paul to get excited by a 1928 Hanomag?

  He needn’t have worried. His son, happily changed out of his Jungvolk uniform, was thrilled by the car, and thrilled by their exhilarating 100kph dash down the new Avus Speedway, which connected the eastern end of the Ku’damm to the first completed stretch of the Berlin orbital outside Potsdam. On their way back they stopped for ice cream at a café overlooking the Wannsee, and Russell allowed his son to work the petrol pump at the adjoining garage. “Father—I mean Matthias—wouldn’t let me do this,” Paul said, anxiously scanning Russell’s face for signs of hurt or anger at his slip.

  “It’s okay. You can call him father,” Russell said. “Short for stepfather.”

  “All right,” Paul agreed.

  During their four hours together, his son showed none of the reticence he’d displayed on the phone. Just a passing something, Russell hoped. He had a wonderful afternoon.

  The evening wasn’t bad either. Effi looked stunning in another new dress—Mother was certainly paying well—and three members of the Philharmonie audience came up and asked for her autograph, which pleased her no end. Unlike Russell she had been brought up on a diet of classical music, and sat in rapt attention while his wandered. Looking round the auditorium, it occurred to him that this was one of the places where nothing much had changed. The music was judenfrei, of course, and Hitler’s picture dominated the lobby, but the same stiff-necked, overdressed people were filling the seats, wafting their fans, and rustling their programs. It could have been 1928. Or even 1908. All across Germany there were people living in time bubbles like this one. That was the way it was, and would be, until Hitler marched across one border too many and burst them all.

  Russell couldn’t complain about the effect the music had on Effi—she insisted on their going straight home to make love. Afterward, lying in an exhausted heap among the tangled sheets, they laughed at the trail of clothes disappearing into the living room. “Like our first time, remember?” Effi said.

  Russell couldn’t remember a better day, and hated to spoil it. “I’ve got something to tell you,” he said, propping himself up against the headboard. “You know I said I’d heard rumors that they were planning to change the Law on the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases?”

  “Yes.” She sat up too.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why. . . ?”

  “Tyler McKinley was working on a story about it. He got me to go with him when he interviewed this woman in Neukölln.” Russell told her about Theresa Jürissen, about Marietta, about the KdF letter to clinic heads and what she had claimed was in it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Effi asked, more surprised than angry.

  “Because you’d have to tell Zarah, and Zarah would have to tell Jens, and I’d have to explain where I got the information from.” He looked her in the face. “McKinley’s dead, Effi. And he didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”

  She took that in, looking, Russell thought, extraordinarily beautiful.

  “So why are you telling me now?” she asked calmly.

  He sighed. “Because I hate keeping things from you. Because I owe it to Zarah. I don’t know. Could you swear Zarah to secrecy, do you think?”

  “Maybe. But in any case I don’t think Jens would turn you in. Zarah would certainly kill him if he did. For my sake, of course, not yours.”

  “Of course.”

  “But—and I hate to say this—given how Zarah feels about you, she’ll want more than your word. So will he. They’ll want some sort of proof.”

  “I don’t blame them. When’s that appointment you mentioned?”

  “Monday.”

  “She should put it off.”

  “How will that help?”

  He explained about McKinley’s passport and Zembski’s commission. “On Tuesday I can pick up the letter and whatever else McKinley had.”

  “You’re going to claim it using a bogus passport? Isn’t that risky? What if they remember McKinley from when he handed it in?”

  “He wouldn’t have handed it in—he’d have posted it. It’ll be okay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He laughed. “No, of course not.”

  SUNDAY WAS ANOTHER COLD BRIGHT DAY. Russell picked his son up in Grunewald soon after 10:00, and headed for Potsdam on the Avus Speedway. From there they took the Leipzig road, driving southwest through Treuenbrietzen and over the hills to Wittenberg, stopping for an early lunch by the bridge across the Elbe. They reached Leipzig ninety minutes ahead of kickoff and did a quick spin round the town center, with its imposing eighteenth-century residences, myriad publishing houses, and enormous Hauptbahnhof. Paul, though, was eager to reach the field, and seemed somewhat lacking in faith that his father would find it in time.

  He found it with twenty minutes to spare. They followed another father-son couple wearing Hertha colors through the turnstiles, and worked their way around to where the hundred or so others who’d made the trip from Berlin were standing, behind one of the goals. The stadium was bigger than the Plumpe, and seemed almost full for this cup tie. Standing there waiting for the teams to come out, watching the flicker of matches being struck in the shadowed grandstand, Russell felt a sudden surge of sadness. Another time bubble, he thought.

  The home crowd greeted their team with a hearty roar, but that was almost the
last thing they had to cheer. The home team had one of those afternoons, doing everything but score on numerous occasions, before making one fatal mistake at the end. Paul was ecstatic, and quite unwilling to admit there was anything undeserved in Hertha’s victory. “It’s about goals, Dad,” he said trenchantly, before Russell could suggest anything to the contrary. On the way out, Paul scanned the ground for a discarded program and finally found one. “For Joachim,” he said triumphantly.

  Russell had thought about inviting Thomas and Joachim to join them, but had decided he wanted the time alone with his son. If Paul wanted to get something off his chest, he wouldn’t do it with Thomas and Joachim in the car.

  The decision bore fruit, though hardly in the way Russell had expected. It was dark by the time they left Leipzig, the road lit only by their own lights and the occasional passage of a vehicle in the opposite direction. On either side the darkness was only relieved by the dim lights of an occasional farm.

  They had been driving about ten minutes when Paul broke the silence. “Dad, I think you should move to England,” he blurted out, as if he couldn’t hold the thought in any longer.

  “Why?” Russell asked, though he could guess the answer.

  “Well, you can’t help being English, can you?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “But that won’t help. I mean it doesn’t help the Jews, does it?”

  “No,” Russell agreed. “What made you think about this?” he asked. “Has something happened? Has someone said something?” He half-expected to find that Paul had overheard a conversation between his mother and stepfather.

  “Not exactly,” Paul replied. “At the Jungvolk . . . no one has actually said anything, but they know I’m half-English, and when they look at me it’s like they’re not sure whose side I’m on. I’m not saying it’s bad being half-English—it’s not like being half-Jewish or half-Polish or anything like that—and if there’s a war with England I can tell everyone I’m loyal to the Führer, but you won’t be able to do that. I don’t think you’ll be safe in Germany. You’ll be much safer in England.”

  “Maybe,” Russell said, for want of something better.

  “Wouldn’t Effi go with you?”

  “She might.”

  “I really like her, you know.”

  “I know you do. And I’m glad.”

  “I don’t want you to go. I just. . . .”

  “What?”

  “I just don’t want you to stay for my sake. I mean, I’m twelve next month. It’s not like I’ll be a child for much longer.”

  “I think you have a few more years yet.”

  “Okay, but. . . .”

  “I understand what you’re saying. And I appreciate it. But I don’t want you to worry about this. If a war comes I’ll probably have to leave—there won’t be any choice. But until then, well, I can’t leave while we’re still in the Cup, can I?”

  AFTER DROPPING PAUL OFF, Russell found a bar off Hochmeisterplatz and sat for almost an hour nursing an expensive double whisky. His life seemed to be breaking up in slow motion, with no clear indication of where any of the pieces might land. Moving to England might seem like a sensible move, but it was sensible moves which had landed him in his current predicament. The peculiarity of his situation, he thought, might be a double-edged sword. It could be the death of him, or at least the death of those relationships which had made his life worth living for the last few years. There was no doubt about that. But was there also a chance that he could exploit that situation to save himself, and those relationships? Shchepkin, Kleist, and Trelawney-Smythe had no compunction about making use of him, and he felt none about making use of them. But could he pull it off? Was he still quick enough on his feet? And was he brave enough to find out?

  Driving east along the Ku’damm toward Effi’s, he realized he didn’t know. But that, he told himself, the Wiesners uppermost in his mind, was another sign of the times. When the time bubbles burst, you got to find out all sorts of things about yourself that you probably didn’t want to know. And maybe, if you were lucky, a few things that you did.

  Arriving at Effi’s flat, he was almost bundled into the kitchen by Effi herself. “Zarah’s here,” she whispered. “I’ve told her about the letter to the asylum directors, but nothing about you knowing where it is now. Or the passport. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Russell agreed.

  Lothar was there too, sitting on the sofa with his mother and a picture book.

  “You remember Uncle John?” Effi asked him.

  “No,” he said authoritatively, looking up briefly and deciding that Russell was less interesting than his book. If there was anything wrong with him, it wasn’t the same thing that afflicted Marietta.

  Russell leaned down to kiss Zarah’s upturned cheek. Effi’s older sister was an attractive woman of 35, taller and bigger-boned than Effi, with larger breasts and wider hips. Her wavy chestnut hair, which usually fell to her shoulders, was tonight constrained in a tight bun, and there were dark circles of either tiredness or sadness around her brown eyes. Russell had never disliked Zarah, but he had never felt any real connection either. She had none of her younger sister’s fearless appetite for life: Zarah was the careful, responsible one, the one who had always sought safety in conventionality, whether of ideas or husbands. Her only redeeming feature, as far as Russell was concerned, was her obvious devotion to Effi.

  “Effi told me what you told her,” she said, “but I want to hear it from you.”

  Russell retold the story of his and McKinley’s visit to Theresa Jürissen, omitting her name.

  “She stole this letter?” Zarah asked, as if she couldn’t believe people did things like that.

  “She was desperate.”

  “That I can understand,” Zarah said, glancing sideways at the happily engaged Lothar. “But are you sure she was telling the truth?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “But you don’t know any of the details of this new law those doctors were talking about? What it will say. Who it will affect.”

  “No. But whatever it says, the first thing they’ll need is a register of all those suffering from the various conditions. All the institutions and doctors will be asked to submit lists, so that they know exactly what they’re dealing with. And any child on that list will be subject to the new law, whatever it is. That’s why I think you should cancel your appointment. Wait until I can tell you more.”

  “But when will that be?”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  “But what if it isn’t?” She was, Russell realized, on the verge of tears. “I have to talk to someone about him.”

  Russell had an idea. “How about abroad? Go to Holland or France. Or England even. See a specialist there. No one here will know.”

  He watched her eyes harden as she remembered the aborted abortion, then soften again as the idea impressed itself. “I could, couldn’t I?” she said, half to herself, half to Effi. “Thank you, John,” she said to him.

  “Will Jens agree to that?” Effi asked.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “You do understand how dangerous this will be for John if anyone finds out he knows about this law?” Effi insisted.

  “Oh yes.”

  “And you’ll make sure Jens understands it too.”

  “Yes, yes. I know you disagree about politics,” she told Russell, “but Jens is as crazy about Lothar as I am. Believe me, even the Führer comes a long way second. Jens will do anything for his son.”

  Russell hoped she was right. After driving Zarah and Lothar home to Grunewald he watched Jens in the lighted doorway, picking up his son with every sign of fatherly devotion, and felt somewhat reassured. In the seat next to him, Effi sighed. “Did you see anything wrong with Lothar?” she asked.

  “No,” Russell said, “but Zarah sees more of him than anyone else.”

  “I hope she’s wrong.”

  “Of course.”

  “How was your day with Paul?”

  “Good. He’s away again next weekend.”

  “Then let’s go away,” Effi said. “I start filming on the Monday after, and I’ll hardly see yo
u for two weeks after that. Let’s go somewhere.”

  “How about Rügen Island?”

  “That’d be lovely.”

  “We can drive up on Friday afternoon, come back Sunday. I’ll teach you to drive.”

  RUSSELL WOKE EARLY, with an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach which toast and coffee did nothing to dispel. “Are you going to get the passport today?” Effi asked, brushing hair out of her eyes to receive the coffee he’d brought her in bed.