“Answer me,” he said so sternly that Hank straightened up at the authority in his voice. “Did you actually murder this man in cold blood? For money. Or for what? Had he attacked you? Why did you kill?”
And then in incoherent, broken sentences Hank poured out the story of the murder of the old caretaker. He omitted nothing once he had begun. As he talked he found at last some relief from the intolerable strain of the last few days. Joseph was spared nothing. The coshing—the rolling of the body under the table—the luring of the tourist—the heaving of the body into the Rhine—the torturing of Leila—and finally the threat to Krista.
At the mention of Krista Joseph cried out in protest.
“Don’t bring her into this vile business. She’s made of other clay,” he said violently. “Leave her out of it.”
“That’s just what can’t be done,” groaned Hank. “Leo is determined to have her. If I don’t deliver her to him at the agreed time and place he will give immediate information about the murder of the caretaker to the police.”
“He’d never dare. Why, he’s involved too much himself.”
“I tell you he’s clever. Damned clever. He makes circles round me. He’ll give me up, all right, and get off free himself. The others will swear to anything he orders them.”
Thinking of Leo’s face that evening when he had looked at Krista on the tow-path, and remembering his cunning, deliberate eyes, Joseph could not doubt Hank’s words. He sat there without looking at Hank. He could not. He felt such a revulsion for this son of his that it was all he could do to stay next to him on the wooden seat of the summer-house. At last he said, “Why have you told me this?”
“Because you’ve got to help me, Father. If you won’t do it for me, you must do it for Krista. I can’t let Leo have her.”
At something in Hank’s voice Joseph looked at him sharply “Why should you care? You’ve killed and tortured; old men, girls, children. Why should you care about Krista?”
“I don’t know.” Hank’s voice was puzzled. “But I do. I mind so much that I can’t sleep. I can think of nothing else. That’s why I’m telling you this—to save Krista.”
“You can do that yourself. Go to the police. Now,” said Joseph sternly.
Hank recoiled. “No,” he cried violently, “I’d be shut up in a cell for ever. A life-sentence. Leo told me so.”
“Then what do you think I can do?”
“I thought you could think of something. Do. Do. Please, Pa.” He asked it as if he were asking for a sweet, as he had done as a child. As if he were sure his father could do something. Perform a miracle perhaps. It was galling to Joseph, who had endured the contempt of this son for so long, to have to undeceive him.
“There’s no answer except the police,” he said heavily. “You must give yourself up, Hank. God is merciful. He will forgive you if you are repentant.”
“God? D’you think I care about God?” shouted Hank violently. “I care about saving Krista from Leo and saving my own skin, that’s all. If you won’t help me, then help Krista.”
Joseph was appalled. He questioned Hank at length and the more he learned of the activities of his children the more stupefied he became. When Hank finished he was silent. Too stunned to say a word. He simply could not take it all in. That his children went out at night to rob from houses which they had broken into! Went out to decoy and lure tourists to their deaths in order to steal from them! His horror was so great that beside this the infidelity of Moe seemed as nothing.
“The others? Anna, Robert, Karl? Are they all in this?” he said at last.
“Only Katie and the twins.”
“The twins are only sixteen!” groaned Joseph.
“I’ve been doing this since I was fourteen!” Hank’s voice was flat.
“Why? In God’s name why?” shouted his father.
“I was bored in this god-forsaken village. There’s nothing to do. Not a damned thing. One miserable cinema open twice a week. In Cologne there was always life. Shops, cinemas, people, plenty to do and see. What is there here? A row of blasted houses full of miserable smug creatures who look down on us. To get into the town we need money. Plenty of money. You take a lot from us each week for your damned house. Moe takes some for the food—there’s not enough left. So what? There are plenty of people with more than they need. We helped ourselves—to get back what you took from us for the house.”
“But we must have a place of our own. The house is for you—for you all—so that you won’t have to listen to complaints and grumbles about your noise and doings—so that you’ll have a place of your own.”
“Maybe, but we won’t be there by the time it’s built. See? We want lives of our own, homes of our own, we resent your taking our wages for your house. We went into the gang at first to put back all that money you took from us. Later it got bigger, and bigger. We all wanted more and more.”
“And so you murdered!”
“That was an accident—the old man shouldn’t have resisted. He’d no right to be there.” Hank’s voice was resentful.
Joseph looked at him in an agonized dismay. This large lump of evil—for evil he was; what else could one call him?—was his son. God! Oh God! What to do, what to say?
“The tourist, the second one. Was that an accident?” he managed to get out.
“No, that was planned. He had plenty of dough. We were all short of cash after the bargees went away.”
Joseph groaned. The world was crashing. If only it were all a nightmare. He’d been having terrible ones lately, but none so appalling as this which Hank, his son, was creating for him now.
“Father.” The word which Hank never used was dragged from him now. “Father, you must help. For God’s sake help to do something about Krista.”
“God! I wonder you can mention His name—or Krista’s either,” cried Joseph.
“I love Krista.” Hank heard the words come from his own lips with astonishment. They were true. He knew it now. He loved her. That was the reason for his agonizing fear for her. She was the one thing he loved and cared about. Why hadn’t he realized it before? Before he’d got too involved with the gang? He knew suddenly why her face was forever before his eyes. Why he dreamed about her. Felt queer when she smiled at him, when she praised his music. He, Hank, who never cared about anything, loved a girl. The girl who’d been brought up with him as his sister. But she wasn’t his sister. That was just it. She was no relation. And he did not love her as a sister.
“You’ve got to help me, Pa. You must. For her,” he almost screamed in his excitement.
“Hank,” Joseph was hesitant. “Answer me one thing. Are you sorry for what you’ve done?”
“Yes. I’d give anything to have it all wiped out.”
“Then come with me to the police. I’ll help you all I can, Hank. We’ll go to Father Lange first.”
“No! No! Leave him out of it. Father, I can’t. I can’t. Don’t you see? They’ll shut me up, for the rest of my life. Think of it—to be behind bars!”
“I have been,” said Joseph quietly.
“Then you know! And I’m young! Only eighteen. I can’t, I can’t,” His voice was rising in hysteria now.
Behind bars . . . in a cage. That lion; the lion with the unhappy tortured eyes. Joseph’s mind flashed back at the word “cage” to that free day when he’d visited the circus. The whole of his life now seemed to have been entangled on that day. Moe. Krista. Hank. All hopelessly involved. And he had been blind. Absolutely blind to what had been going on here in his own home. His mind had been revolving round himself and the wrong that Moe had done him, and on this new business of the Rearmament and the Peace Treaty. Every night when he’d come home he’d tried to switch his thoughts off all that excited argument and chatter of his workmates on the burning topics of the day. And while he was watching with amazement the blindness of his comrades in approving what could only mean a recurrence of that last disaster, he had been completely unaware of the appalling things whi
ch had been taking place in his own family.
He looked at the huddled form of Hank. “There is no other way,” he said harshly. “Face it.” He felt suddenly an overwhelming pity for this wretched son of his. The anger, disgust and revulsion were swept away for a moment in pity. In the white scared face of the once arrogant, insolent youth he saw the little boy with whom he had once had such a loving understanding.
And then it was dissolved again in horror as Hank burst out, “I could kill Leo. Why not? I’m stronger than he is. But he has the gun. I could get a gun too.” His voice rose excitedly. “Why didn’t I think of it before? I could kill Leo.”
Hank was sorry now that he had confessed to his father. What a fool he was not to have thought of killing Leo. He would make the twins help him.
Joseph sat very still looking at his son. Then he said slowly, “So you would kill again? You’re not satisfied with what you’ve already done? And you dare to drag Krista into this? More killing, more murders. You wretched boy! Think of your soul. Think of that!”
“I have none. There’s no such thing,” said Hank flatly.
Joseph recoiled violently. These last words of Hank’s horrified him more than his confession to the murders. Hank was beyond all help if he believed that he had no soul.
“May God forgive you,” he cried hoarsely. “For I find it hard to believe that you’re my son.”
“I’m very like you. A chip off the old block, in fact.” There was no flippancy in Hank’s voice. He was merely stating a fact. “Look at our hands.” Hank spread out his large squarish hands. “They are exactly alike. Ask Moe!”
Joseph looked down at his hands, just as he had on that day in the factory when he had wanted to smash them in his comrades’ faces. Had he passed on to this son his own blinding fits of temper? Had Hank killed in one of those red rages?
“No, no,” he said furiously. “We’re not alike. Not at all.” The idea nauseated him. Revolted him. And yet? Was it true?
“Father.” Hank’s voice was pleading now, something Joseph had not heard in it for years. Not since he had been a small boy wanting some special treat. “I could run away. If I can’t kill Leo, I could run away. You could wait until I’d got away and then tell the police to save Krista from Leo.”
“Where would you go?” asked Joseph remorselessly. “Everywhere you go you’ll need identity papers. You’d be found soon enough. With radio and telephones you wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“With money I could buy new papers.”
“Don’t be a fool. There’s no escape. You should have thought of the consequences of all this before. God! My son to be in such a fix!”
“You won’t help me then?” Hank got up and faced his father. “You don’t care what happens to Krista? You minded enough when that American wanted her.”
“Stop it,” cried Joseph, goaded beyond endurance. “I’ll see that no harm comes to Krista. Go to bed now. You’re shivering. Leave me here. I want to think.”
“You’ll find a way out?”
“There is only one way out.”
“I won’t go to the police. They’ll put me in prison. All my life.” Hank was hysterical again. “I won’t. I won’t.”
“Leave me now, Hank.” Joseph’s voice was rough but not unkind.
The boy stood there staring at his father. Both wanted to make some gesture, some approach. Both felt that this terrible few minutes could have been the beginning of some new vital contact between them. Hank for the first time since his father’s return from the war felt the stirring of something approaching respect and even affection. Joseph felt little now but an overwhelming horror. All his pity had given way again to revulsion. A revulsion so great that he could not bring himself to put out his hand and touch his son. Across the way, from the lighted windows of the Frenchman’s house, came the soft strains of his favourite record, “La Vie en Rose.” Suddenly the music stopped. The lights went out. Nothing could be heard except a nightjar and in the distance the continuous clanging of the bridge-repairers. Hank turned, his shoulders hunched, and went back to the house.
Joseph sat on. The hours of the night were boomed out in the distance by the great clock. The night-shift worked ceaselessly under the great flares. The bridge was almost finished. It would be ready by Christmas. The moonlight caught the fine delicate threads of a spider’s web in a corner of the summer-house and turned it to filigree silver. For a long time he watched a spider ensnare and devour a small moth. The process was like human life, he thought. One was swallowed up, devoured in an inhuman machine of a relentless turn of events. What to do about Hank? What? His instinct was to go straight to the police. But Hank was his son. His own son. Krista was not his daughter, though he loved her above everything. She was good, inherently good. And Hank was bad.
His foot which had been tapping restlessly caught the loose board in the floor. He bent down and pulled it up. Underneath there was a deep hollow. He put his arm down and drew up two long black heavy things which looked like sausages. They were old black stockings filled with sand in which a bicycle chain was embedded. At first it did not dawn on him what they were. Then Hank’s words about coshing the old man came back to him. Here were the terrible weapons with which they had rendered their victims senseless! And made by children! For to him they were but children. Black hooded capes and black jerseys were there in a bundle, and wrapped in one of these which had a faint scent of perfume he found a large packet of bank-notes. They were tied with a blue ribbon. Almost a thousand marks there. Joseph’s hair prickled with horror as he touched them. He looked at the things carefully, touching them gingerly as if they were stained by blood. Then he put them all back again, pressed the board back into place and removed the marks he had made in prising it up. He had not really taken in all that Hank had told him. Now he was forced with a violent shock to realize the enormity of it. Here were the visible tools of the gang. Their death weapons! Their loathsome garments in which they hoped to conceal their identities! Katie, too, he had said. And the twins. Yes. There were four sets of these vile things here. Katie had got Hank into the gang. And the twins? Joseph groaned. They were decent boys, or so it had seemed to him, not cruel and bullying like Hank. Just full of animal spirits. At least that was all he had seen. But he had seen so little, so pathetically little. They were strangers. Living in the house. Like lodgers. They paid their way. They harped on that whenever he reproved them. They paid their way . . . they were entitled to a say in everything.
And Krista? Her Botticelli face with its startling purity came to his mind. She must not be allowed to have the slightest contact with this vile gang. The very thought of it maddened him. Why hadn’t he allowed that young American to have her? At least she would have been safely cared for and protected from this threat. Moe? Should he tell her? What would be the use? She would protect and excuse Hank and his brothers. She would plan to outwit Leo in some way. No! This was his problem. He sat on, turning it over and over in his mind. When the first streaks of red light lit the sky and the sudden lull from the bridge told him that the night-shift was changing for the early morning one, he got up at last from the hard wooden seat in the summer house. It had taken him hours of torment. But he had made up his mind. Hank. Krista. Hank. Krista. The two had revolved through his head ceaselessly with each clang from the bridge. He felt like a blindfold justice weighing out the scales. And the issue? Flesh and blood against a stranger. Good against evil. Justice against wrong-doing. When he staggered out of the summer-house, back to his unslept-in bed, Joseph looked and felt an old man.
XXIX
AT half past five Moe burst into his room. He was lying on the bed, fully clothed, and she saw at once that he was wide awake.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened? Hank’s just come to me in a terrible state saying something about your going to the police, and refusing to help him.”
Her eyes in the pale morning light were black pools, her face tense. “You’ve seen him? When?”
&
nbsp; “I’ve just bumped into him wandering about in the hall. What’s it all about? No one seems to sleep in this house.” Her eyes went from the unused bed to his unshaven face and crumpled clothes. Fear made her voice sharp. “Joseph, what is it?”
He had a strange seared look, like a tree that has been blasted by lightning. Something about his whole stricken posture alarmed her. She resisted an impulse to put her arms round him, furious at this sudden flood of pity. He got off the bed slowly and said mechanically, “Come out to the summer-house. I’ve something to show you.”
“But what is it?” she asked impatiently.
“Come,” he said roughly and shutting the hall door quietly behind them, she followed him across the dew-covered grass to the summer-house. The birds were noisy, the sun already making golden threads in the grey veils of mist from the river. She stood at the entrance to the summer-house, watched him stoop down and prise up a board, and from the hollow under it draw out the black clothes, the home-made coshes and bundle of banknotes. He turned from the heap and said harshly, “Our children. That’s what’s the matter. They belong to some vile gang. They wear these! They use them to carry out their crimes. And for these!” He thrust out the banknotes. “Our children. Yours and mine!” His voice rose. “And we knew nothing of it. Nothing.”
The sight of the black garments and coshes shook her. “I knew,” she said as calmly as she could. She was apprehensive. He had found out about Hank’s coffee racket. It was just like him to go poking about and find their things hidden under the floor.
“You knew? And you never told me? You knew. And you lied when the police came here that night?”
“Lied? I’ve never lied. What d’you mean?”
“When the police questioned the children about that belt you said they had all been in bed.”
“The belt? What’s that got to do with this?”
“But you said you knew! Robert was right. It was Katie’s belt. They murdered the old man.”
A House on the Rhine Page 28