A Man Lies Dreaming

by Tidhar, Lavie

  I clenched my fists.

  These were, after all, the premises of Allen & Unwin, the publishers.

  People were spilling out of the open doors of the publishing house. They stood in clumps in the rain, smoking and drinking and laughing, an unruly crowd of artists, writers and painters and their hangers-on. ‘Oh, how exciting!’ Isabella said, weaving her arm through mine. We strolled up to the party; I felt conspicuous in my suit and hat amongst the mob of scruffy bohemians. And yet I was once one of them; I, too, was once a penniless artist, in Vienna, painting bright watercolours of the city’s architecture and scenes, selling them to the tourists for a handful of coins. It had felt to me then an honest way of making a living. But that had been before the war, before the blindness and the hospital, before my fate had been shaped to follow a different path: to lead, to rule!

  At last, to Fall.

  ‘Managed to insult both of us in the same sentence!’ someone said.

  ‘Wolf? Are you with us?’ Isabella said.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Is that Evelyn Waugh talking to Cecil Forester?’

  Isabella shrugged. ‘Are they painters?’

  ‘Writers,’ I said. Isabella went ahead of me, her arm slipping out of mine. She nodded and smiled, greeting people she knew. ‘Who is the Chinese-looking man?’ I said.

  ‘That? That’s Leslie Charteris!’ she sighed as though in ecstasy. ‘Don’t you just love The Saint?’

  ‘Charteris?’ I said. ‘I thought he was working in Hollywood.’

  ‘He is. There’s a company of them arrived in town for filming. But no one’s going to miss this party.’

  We went inside.

  ‘Wolf!’

  I turned to see, without much surprise, the big American, Virgil, bearing down on me, a glass of wine in each hand. He handed me one without asking. I held it without sipping. I abhor drink, always have. To me, a man must always be in supreme command of himself.

  ‘Virgil,’ I said; for a moment I felt like a gunslinger in one of Karl May’s westerns, facing a showdown. The feeling persisted.

  He smiled at me but his eyes were hooded. ‘Have you thought further of my proposition?’ he said.

  ‘I have.’

  He waited, but I said nothing more. He nodded, slowly and inexorably, the way a mountain moves in an earthquake. ‘Don’t think for too long,’ he said, softly. ‘Everyone can be replaced, Wolf. Even you.’

  ‘I have never liked Americans,’ I said, and he laughed. He had the coldest, hardest eyes of any man I’d ever seen. ‘Cheers,’ he said, clinking his glass against mine.

  ‘Are your people still following me?’ I said.

  He sipped from his drink and shrugged. ‘Do they need to?’ he said.

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  He shrugged again. One had the sense of contained physical threat in every gesture he made. ‘I hear you’re having troubles,’ he said, ‘with some prostitute murders.’

  ‘One prostitute murder,’ I said, ‘and I didn’t do it.’

  ‘You’re not a killer,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘You’re a soldier, like I was, like many of us will be again once war breaks out.’

  ‘You believe war will break out?’

  ‘It’s only a matter of time,’ he said. His glass was already empty. He looked at mine. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He took it from me and drank as though he had been deprived of drink for months. ‘Yes,’ he said, after draining my glass. ‘War with Germany will come – war with Russia, I should say, and its proxy, Germany. A European war. Perhaps even another world war.’ He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing. His rank breath blasted into my face, coarse with the fumes of cheap red wine. ‘You can help stop that,’ he said. ‘Do you want to see your country ravaged by war, destroyed by bombs? International socialism must be stopped, Wolf. Stopped before it is too late!’

  The words sent a chill down my spine. Or perhaps it was the draught from the open door. ‘At what price?’ I said. ‘You want me to serve Germany by turning her into a whore, spreading her legs wide for America?’

  He laughed. ‘Everyone needs must be a whore sometimes,’ he said. ‘Would you rather be fucked by the Russians, or us?’

  ‘I would rather my country slit its own throat than prostitute itself,’ I said.

  ‘Listen to me, Wolf.’ He was standing close, now, his hand on my shoulder reaching for my neck, almost choking me. ‘You do not say no to me. No one does. I am America, and America does not take no for an answer. Refuse us, and we will bomb the shit out of your country, kill your women and rape your dogs and burn your houses and piss on the embers. Do you understand me? I said, do you understand me!’

  ‘I understand you perfectly,’ I said. I gathered up phlegm and spat in his face. My aim was perfect. The mucus hit him in the eye and ran down his cheek. His face turned red in fury; his grip on my neck slackened. ‘And the answer is no. Nein. Never!’

  ‘You will regret this, you little shit stain,’ he said.

  ‘Get your fucking hands off me!’

  ‘Wolf? Who is this man?’

  I felt rather than saw Virgil’s hand leave my neck. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. When he turned back his face wore a semblance of charm. ‘Just an old friend,’ he said. ‘I apologise if I was monopolising his time at your expense, Miss …?’

  ‘Rubinstein. Excuse me.’ She led me away, to a corner of the room. I felt Virgil’s glowering presence receding behind us. ‘Who was that ghastly man?’ Isabella said.

  ‘I … am not sure,’ I said. I had a bad feeling about Virgil: about the possible fallout from my refusal. Could the Americans be better allies than the Russians, in the long run? Could I still somehow use them to my advantage? And his mention of the prostitute murder – if they were following me, could they have inadvertently come across the real killer’s identity?

  But I had no time to dwell, for at that moment I saw a figure I recognised, and all thoughts of such things fled from my mind. ‘Albert!’ I yelled. ‘Albert! It’s Wolf!’

  I abandoned Isabella to her own devices and hared across the room. He turned slowly, with a smile of polite inquiry on his face, which disappeared when he saw me. ‘Ah, Wolf,’ he said, awkwardly.

  Albert Curtis Brown was my literary agent. He was originally an American journalist who had then settled and made his home in Britain. He was in his seventies, but still wiry and strong. ‘I wanted to discuss with you a sequel to My Struggle,’ I said.

  ‘Quite, quite. Mr Wolf. A sequel.’ Was it my imagination or did a fleeting look of distaste pass across his face like a cloud? But I did not care for Mr Curtis Brown’s approval; I cared for what remained of my literary career. ‘I have written to you repeatedly,’ I said, ‘repeatedly, in the past few months, regarding the manuscript I am in the process of preparing—’

  ‘Let me stop you there, Mr Wolf,’ he said. ‘I am no longer actively involved with the agency. My son is taking care of all outstanding contracts and the like. Now, if you’ll excuse me—’

  ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Mr Curtis Brown, I really must insist that the agency treat me with more respect. I have never even received payment of royalties due to me!’

  ‘Mr Wolf, there are no royalties.’ He sighed, looking suddenly old. ‘The manuscript was taken on, from the German publishers, in the good faith that it would be of general interest to contemporary readers as a view of the situation in Germany.’

  ‘Yes? Yes?’

  ‘Well, Mr Wolf, the belief was that National Socialism would win the elections of 1933, therefore catapulting Nazism into the international spotlight. This has failed to happen, and interest in the manuscript, accordingly, waned. I’m afraid there’s little to add, really. Interest currently is in material by or about Stalin, or Ernst Thälmann, the current German Chancellor. Your advance never earned out, Mr Wolf. In fact, I believe unsold copies of My Struggle will soon be pulped, and the title allowed to go out of print.’

  ‘Out
of print!’ I said; deeply shocked.

  He nodded sadly. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said.

  ‘But that is an outrage! You must do something!’

  ‘I’m afraid there is little I can do, Mr Wolf.’ He patted me on the shoulder, awkwardly. ‘History has passed you by, old chap,’ he said. ‘But look on the bright side. You’re only – what? Fifty or so? – you’re young enough to start again. Write something new. Not another diatribe against the Jews. That stuff is out of fashion now. Of specialist interest, certainly, but not of a mass market appeal. Why not try your hand at a proper novel, Mr Wolf?’ He regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘detective tales are always popular.’

  ‘Detective tales?’ I said. I was so dumbfounded I could only echo him. ‘A work of fiction? Mr Curtis Brown, my book is a treatise on politics, on race; it draws from the most distinguished sources, not to mention my own autobiography – do you have any idea how many copies it has sold in Germany alone?’

  ‘Like I said, I am no longer involved in the day to day running of the agency,’ Curtis Brown said. ‘I wish you all the best, Mr Wolf. But a word of advice – don’t give up your day job just yet.’ And with that, and chuckling to himself, he walked off abruptly, joining a circle in which I could only identify Alan Milne, the author of a popular children’s book about a talking bear.

  The outrage! The provocation!

  For a few moments, I must confess, I wandered the party in a daze, seeing faces familiar to me only from their dustjackets’ photograph, yet paying them no attention. My book was to be pulped? My book? My book?

  It was inconceivable!

  Across the large room a makeshift bar had been set over cartons of books, and there I saw Isabella chatting to Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail.

  I needed fresh air.

  Instead, as I turned, I caught a hint of perfume, the flash of gold, a breathy voice saying my name, over and over. I turned and there she was, the most real woman I had ever seen, as bright as the star that she was.

  ‘Leni?’ I said, in total disbelief. ‘Leni, is that you?’

  The watcher in the dark was aware of the other watchers in the dark. There were so many eyes in the night. London was a city of watchers, all watching each other watching each other. It made him giddy just to think about it.

  He knew so many secrets! He knew, for instance, that the detective was seeing the Jewish woman, and the shame of it was almost more than the watcher could bear. The detective, with a Jewess! The horror and the disgust it evoked in him were visceral, physical; he almost retched. He thought more and more of the woman, these days. She was a whore, as all Jewesses were. He thought of the knife, safe and hidden in his pocket, and how it might sing as it touched her flesh. He’d seen them, earlier, in her white car, together as they left. The whores on Berwick Street were more careful now. Some had moved away entirely, but not all. Business had to continue and this dark street was a foil for desire and a shelter for the men who frequented such creatures. Evil creatures, succubae. In ridding the world of them he was only easing their pain. And yet he could not lie, not to himself. He was not easing their pain. He was using them, if for a noble cause – using them to try and awaken the detective. Still: the whores were merely a means to an end.

  The night was full of eyes and they made the watcher in the dark apprehensive. There were the American shadows, for instance. They were good; he had missed them entirely at first, and he suspected they may have seen him, the way shadows can see the other shadows in the night. He was worried about that. No one should have been able to see him. He watched one now, young but hard-faced, the way he melted into the night; the way he, too, was watching the detective’s office. Earlier the watcher saw him break in, with far more ease than the watcher himself had mustered. The American had slipped in as easily as a ghost. Now that he knew they were there the watcher found it easy enough to avoid them, but he had the feeling they had been there when … at the time of that unfortunate incident with the fat whore, and when he ran. He was reasonably sure he had shaken off any pursuers, overt or covert, by the time he changed his clothes in Soho Square, but he couldn’t be positive. They might still come for him. Or maybe they didn’t care. Or they even thought they could use him, now or later; but in that they were sorely wrong.

  The detective was away with his Jew whore but sooner or later he would return and when he did the watcher would be ready. But not tonight. Tonight he only watched, and touched the knife, and he thought, suddenly and inexplicably, of the Alps, in winter, which he had never seen; and of the snow, falling and falling down on the slopes, until the whole world was white and pure.

  * * *

  In another time and place Shomer lies on the bunk bed as the snow falls outside; it falls and falls, as if, by its mere presence, it could silence the world. There is no work to be done in the infirmary, no hard labour, only time. And time is dangerous. It is a space in which to think. All is silent, until the doctor comes, walking past each patient, marking in his little black book. The doctor is a tall skeleton, with no face. He is dressed in a long black leather coat that rustles by his ankles as he walks. His pen is black and he examines each man with a cursory glance, checking each man against his number, in his little black book. A cross, a cross. And the men with the crosses rise without a murmur, without a murmur they walk to the gas chambers. The doctor like Death walks the rows of beds until at last he finds Shomer, and he gives him with a cursory glance and his diagnosis, what of his diagnosis? And he nods, once, and says, ‘You’re fit to leave,’ and so with these words Shomer is once again saved; for a little while longer he’s saved.

  10

  ‘Wolf!’ She leaned in to the shorter man, kissing him on both cheeks. She smelled intoxicating to him. ‘Darling, where have you been? Have you simply dropped off the face of the Earth?’

  ‘Leni? Leni Riefenstahl? My God!’ Wolf said. He could not take his eyes off her, she was radiant, a star. ‘I thought you had been caught behind, in the Fall!’

  ‘You silly man,’ she said, laughing, ‘do you not read Photoplay? I’m in Hollywood now!’

  ‘Leni, but that is incredible! Let me look at you!’

  He held her at arm’s length, admiring her cool Germanic glamour; she was the most perfectly Aryan woman he had ever known.

  ‘I remember seeing you speak in ’32,’ Riefenstahl said. ‘You were incredible, amazing. The most magnetic man I’d ever met.’

  ‘You’re too kind.’

  ‘And My Struggle! The book made a tremendous impression on me, Wolf.’

  ‘You were always faithful to me, Leni. To the cause. Remember Nuremberg?’

  ‘But of course.’ Her face clouded. ‘But what a terrible time it’s been. I was all set up, mein kleiner Wolf. Ready to film the glorious victory of National Socialism, its inexorable rise to power!’ For a moment she almost looked like she would cry. ‘I would have called my documentary film Sieg des Glaubens, the Victory of Faith. But it was der Verlust des Glaubens, the loss of faith, instead. How could Germany do this, Wolf? How could history turn out so different than it should have?’

  Wolf shook his head. ‘Let us not speak of these things, meine liebe. I had thought many things impossible, yet here you are, and here I am—’

  ‘Isn’t London wonderful?’ Riefenstahl said. Wolf said, ‘I would not say it is wonderful, exactly.’

  ‘But Wolf, what do you do here?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator, Leni.’

  For a moment she looked stunned; then she exploded in laughter. ‘A private eye? A shamus? A dick? You, Wolf?’

  ‘I believe in law, in order. There must always be order, Leni. There must always be an account.’

  ‘Then you may as well become an accountant,’ she said, dismissively. ‘Oh, Wolf! You were meant for better things. You were meant to shape the future in your hands, to mould it like clay! You break my heart.’

  She was crying. Wolf put his arms round her. People lo
oked their way, then looked away. ‘Come, meine liebe, come. Tell me of yourself. Tell me of Hollywood!’

  ‘Oh, Wolf.’ She pulled away, dried her tears with the tips of her fingers, began to tentatively smile. ‘I went to America shortly before immigration out of Germany became impossible. I had friends, a director who wanted to work with me. I’d been offered a job with the studios in the past, but had turned them down. This time I accepted. I work for the Warner brothers now, in California.’

  ‘Warner?’ Wolf said.

  ‘Jews,’ Leni said. She shrugged apologetically. ‘It is an industry dominated by Jews, Wolf. But it is what I do. We must all make a living.’

  Wolf briefly thought of Isabella, on the other side of the room; pushed her out of his mind. ‘I do not blame you, Leni,’ he said. ‘It is as you said: we must all make a living.’