There Is No Going Home

by Madalyn Morgan

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’m only here to cover the Games. I’ll be at the stadium all day and writing my reports for the paper at night, I shall hardly be here.’

  ‘You are very welcome,’ Walter said.

  I looked up at the ceiling, as if I was giving the Voights’ offer some thought, and then said, ‘Thank you, it is a very tempting offer, and one that I’ll take you up on when I’m not being paid to report on an event as important as the Olympic Games.’

  ‘You could stay on when your assignment is finished,’ Walter said, ‘and we will paint Berlin red.’

  Frieda leaned against me. ‘Please… come and stay now,’ she said, pouting. God that perfume was strong.

  ‘Frieda, this is my biggest overseas assignment to date. Reporting on the Games will give my career a real boost. There’s another chap from The Times staying here. He’s a seasoned journalist. I don’t want him reporting back that I went AWOL the minute I arrived.’

  ‘Of course you must stay here,’ Walter said. ‘Now, change your shirt and let us get out on the town.’

  Frieda crossed to the window and looked out onto Potsdamer Platz long enough for me to splash water onto my face and change my shirt.

  I had no intention of having a late night, or drinking too much. I would hang up my clothes and set up my writing station on the small table beneath the window later.

  Talking animatedly, as you do, not listening because there was so much to tell each other - and gossiping like old friends, which we were - the three of us set off for the bright lights of Berlin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  FIRST NIGHT. OUT ON THE TOWN

  ‘Riesling, Frieda?’ Walter said as the barman approached. His sister nodded, ‘and beer for you and I, eh, Sidney?’

  I started to laugh. ‘The first time I tasted beer was at your parents’ house. Do you remember?’

  Frieda wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes. You were sick.’

  ‘Hundeelend,’ I said, ‘as a dog.’

  ‘Your German is still good, Sidney, but you do not sound like a Berliner anymore. You sound like a German farmer speaking the equivalent of pigeon English,’ Walter said, as the barman placed a glass of cold beer in front of me. ‘Has it been so long that you have forgotten the years you lived here?’

  ‘There wasn’t much call for me to speak German with a Berlin accent when I went back to England. When I knew I was coming over this time, I bought a German dictionary, but it didn’t give any information on accents.’ Frieda laughed. ‘All right, you two, give a chap a break. I’ll get the accent back now I’m here,’ I said, ‘I’ll be speaking like a Berliner in no time, pronouncing “Ich” as “ik” and changing “au” to “oo.”’

  Walter burst out laughing and slid a glass of schnapps along the bar towards me.

  ‘No schnapps for me,’ I said.

  Frieda sidled up to me and, taking Walter’s glass of schnapps from the bar she drank it down in one. Still looking at me she picked up my glass and offered it to me.

  ‘Oh, all right then, one can’t hurt.’ I tipped the glass upside down and choked. I had forgotten how lethal the stuff was.

  Walter slapped me on the back. ‘Are you all right, my friend? That was wicked of you, Frieda,’ he said, and slapped me again.

  Shaking my head as if to shake the spirit out of me, I said, ‘I must go, I need to eat something.’

  ‘We will come with you. There’s a little place nearby. Wurst und Kartoffeln. You used to love Berlin sausage and thick-sliced fried potatoes, Sidney.’

  ‘I did. But when we’ve eaten I will have to go back to the hotel. I need to set up my typewriter in preparation for the start of the Games, and I need to make notes on Berlin. Background stuff, you know?’

  ‘Then come on. What do we wait for?’

  With their arms around me, Walter on one side and Frieda on the other the Voights’ marched me out of the bar.

  The restaurant was a bit Oom-pah-pah for the Voights, I thought. Loud music and raucous laughter. But I soon realised it was a meeting place for patriots. Each time someone entered the restaurant a group of men at a table near the bar stood up and gave the straight arm salute. “Heil Hitler!” The more they drank the louder they became. One of the men heaved himself up onto the table and began to sing the Olympic Anthem, while the others marched round the table. After the first verse the man on the table’s friends joined in. By the end of the song everyone, including Walter, was on their feet singing and raising their glasses to Chancellor Hitler.

  Later that night, at the hotel, while I waited for the receptionist to finish with an elderly woman asking for directions to somewhere she was visiting early the next day, I heard Walter humming the Olympic Anthem.

  He asked me if I had learned the Olympische Hymne, that Richard Strauss composed?

  I said I hadn’t and Walter looked aghast.

  ‘Then Frieda and I will give you a rendition.’ He cleared his throat.

  ‘No! Please, my friend, not tonight. I shall get kicked out of the hotel before I’ve unpacked my cases.’

  ‘Should I whisper the words to you?’ Frieda purred, her breath hot and sweet in my ear.

  She was so close her hair tickled my nose. She was toying with me. I was enjoying the attention, but I was exhausted. I had drunk too much alcohol. And, although we had specifically gone to the restaurant to eat, no food had materialised. Having been awake for more than twenty hours, I was dropping on my feet. ‘Really, both of you, it has been a wonderful–’

  Freda said, homecoming. I was going to say night, but for the sake of friendship, I agreed with her. Putting on my serious face, I told them I was meeting up with a fellow journalist for breakfast in - I looked at my wristwatch - four hours. I needed to go to bed.

  Walter playfully pushed me away saying we will sing loudly on August the first, and again when Germany wins all the gold medals.

  I left the Voights in the lobby of my hotel and staggered upstairs to my room. My suitcases lay where the bellboy had left them. I groaned. Why had I let Walter and Frieda ply me with so much booze? I drank more beer tonight than I had ever done on a bender at Cambridge and that’s saying something. Whole weekends were a blur in those heady days.

  I forced myself to take my typewriter from its case and set it up on the table by the window, putting two notepads and a selection of pencils and pens next to it. Shirts trousers and jackets I hung on coat hangers and placed in the wardrobe, underwear and socks I left in the case. I took out my tennis shoes and a pair of smart shoes that I had brought to wear with the only decent suit I possessed and dropped them in the bottom of the wardrobe.

  That done, I eased off the shoes I’d worn all day, took off my underpants and, sitting on the side of the bed, peeled off my socks and rubbed my aching feet. The shirt I had travelled in and the one I’d been wearing, I dropped in the case. Tomorrow I’d ask reception about laundry. My trousers and jacket, which I’d also had on all day, I took off and folded over the bottom of the iron bedstead. They would need pressing before I wore them again.

  Exhausted and woozy from too much strong German beer, I fell backwards onto the bed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  DAY TWO IN BERLIN

  I was woken by loud banging. Hardly daring to open both eyes at the same time, I squinted through one and eased myself up on my elbow. I looked around the room. I recognised it, just. I listened for a second. The banging had stopped, thank God. My head was splitting. I lowered it slowly back onto the pillow, rolled over and reached out to pull up the counterpane. I almost leapt out of my skin when the banging started up again. This was a noisy hotel. I groaned. I might give Walter’s offer of a bed serious thought. With my head still pounding I buried my face in the pillow.

  ‘Parfitt?’

  ‘Shit!’ I sat up with a start. The bloody breakfast meeting. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and grabbed my watch from the bedside table. ‘Shit!’ I said again. I’d overslept. ‘Won’t be a second,’ I shout
ed, hauling myself off the bed. As my feet hit the floor waves of pain shot through my body like lightning rods, exploding when they reached my head. With my eyes half shut I stumbled to the door and pulled it open.

  ‘Highsmith?’ I said, unable to hide the surprise in my voice when I saw my contact in Berlin outside my bedroom door.

  ‘Good God, Parfit, you look rough.’

  ‘However I look, I can assure you I feel ten times worse,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm… Good idea, tying one on last night. Fits right in with your new persona,’ Highsmith said laughing.

  I scrunched up my shoulders to help them cope with the weight of my head, and whispered, ‘How do you make that out?’

  He said I would get a reputation for being a soak. And, even better, I’d get myself noticed.

  I thought getting noticed was something I was not supposed to do because of the government thing.

  Highsmith said I didn’t want to be noticed asking too many questions, but when a chap has had one over the eight and he’s a bit out of it, people ignore him and say things that they wouldn’t ordinarily say in front of him: things they definitely would not say in front of a foreigner.

  I tried to nod that I understood, but it hurt too much.

  ‘So, tell me about last night?’ Highsmith said, suddenly.

  I told him how I had met an old friend and his sister from my school days here in Berlin and, although I said I needed to prepare for reporting on the Olympics, they wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Walter Voight is a strong personality.’

  ‘He is– How did you know I was with Walter Voight?’

  ‘I saw you in the lobby of the hotel with him and his sister late last night. But never mind that. Shake a leg and put some clothes on, old chap. Looking at your tackle is putting me off my breakfast.’

  I covered my genitals with cupped hands as best I could, and went to the sink. I watched Rupert Highsmith out of the corner of my eye as he wandered over to the window and looked down at my makeshift desk. He tapped several keys on my typewriter with his middle finger, and then flicked through the empty notepads while I washed and dressed.

  To distract the nosy blighter I told him I didn’t know whether I’d be able to eat anything as I felt queasy. He said, with authority, that a cooked breakfast was what I needed. He also said I wouldn’t get one in the hotel and suggested we go to the Frühstücksbar.

  Bleary eyed I followed him to the Breakfast Bar. We had no sooner sat down than a waiter came to our table with a pot of coffee. The strong roasted smell made me heave. My head began to pound again. I asked for a glass of water. The waiter nodded, poured Highsmith’s coffee, and then moved deftly through the tables, returning a few minutes later with a pitcher of water and two glasses.

  I gulped down a pint of water straight off. I was dehydrated, the reason for my headache.

  The waiter returned with a shallow bowl with half a dozen chunks of bread in it. I took one before he had placed it on the table and waved away the dish of pale oily looking butter that he held out to me.

  ‘How well do you know Walter and Frieda Voight?’ Highsmith asked, apropos of nothing.

  ‘I was at boarding school with Walter in 1926 - 27 and I spent a few half-terms and a summer holiday at the Voight family home.’

  ‘And that is when you met Frieda?’

  ‘Yes. Is that a problem?’

  ‘On the contrary, it could be a real help.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t know do you?’

  ‘What is this, Highsmith, Twenty Questions? For God’s sake, man, what don’t I know?’

  ‘That Walter Voight was a fully paid up and very enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth movement.’

  I waved the suggestion away with my hand as if I was swatting a dozing fly. ‘That’s old hat!’ I told him. ‘It was nothing serious. He was a boy playing at being a man. He wanted to impress his sister. He wanted to impress me. That business was a long time ago. He’ll have grown out of it now.’

  ‘He was a member until he was eighteen,’ Highsmith said, nonchalantly, ‘Frieda was in the BDM - the girls’ wing of the Nazi Party.’

  I hadn’t considered that possibility. As for Walter, I’d assumed Nazism had been a flash in the pan thing.

  Highsmith laughed. ‘Walter Voight has definitely not grown out of it. He has embraced everything about Nazi ideology; expansionism, fascism and Nationalism. But that’s beside the point, or rather it is very much to the point where you’re concerned.’

  I had no idea what Highsmith was on about and gave him a quizzical look.

  ‘You, my dear fellow, are going to enjoy every minute you spend with Herr Voight.’

  ‘If Frieda is with him that won’t be difficult.’

  ‘I’m being serious, Parfitt!’

  ‘All right, old man, keep your shirt on. What about my Olympic itinerary?’

  ‘Leave that to me. The thing is, Parfitt, you understand the lingo, so you’ll do more good getting in with the Voights again and keeping your ears open.’

  ‘Am I no longer reporting on the Olympics?’

  ‘Of course you are, but Baldwin is keen to appease Hitler. The man’s a ticking timebomb. Baldwin is doing his best to accede to his demands. As far as the Games are concerned, you write your reports, I’ll read them and if there’s anything I think would provoke Hitler I’ll amend it before I wire it to London.’

  I didn’t think much of that, and told him so. He said that is how it had to be, because I was answerable to military intelligence, he was answerable to the PM.

  I asked him whose name would be on the by-line and he said, fifty-fifty, give or take. According to Highsmith I didn’t have to be at the games all the time. When he was at the stadium, I was to be drinking in local bars and cafés listening to what the Berliners were saying about Adolph Hitler. When I was at the Games, he would be in the cafés and bars. Because I was fluent in the language it was important that I should spend time being sociable.

  ‘So the next time Walter and Frieda Voight invite you to go out with them, you go. Is that clear?’

  ‘Crystal. They’re picking me up tonight. We’re going to a cabaret club.’

  ‘Lucky sod! You get to watch totty dancing, while I write up your Games’ itinerary.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As Highsmith was writing up my itinerary, I bought a copy of the Berliner Zeitung from the newsagent next to the hotel and found a café. I felt better after I’d eaten, but I daren’t risk drinking anything stronger than coffee. I like black coffee, I drink rather too much of it at home, but German coffee is extremely strong and my stomach, although much better, wasn’t up to the thick strong stuff Berliners enjoy. I asked the waiter for milk in broken German. And as I’d hoped he asked me if I was English. I told him I was - loudly, as foreigners do - saying I was here for the Olympic Games.

  I took my English German dictionary from my pocket, for show, followed by my press card and decided I’d practice my German on the waiter, ‘Journalist,’ I said, ‘Hier - zu - Olympischen - Spielen.’

  ‘Gute. Ja, gute.’ The waiter went off laughing at what I thought was my poor attempt to speak his language, which apart from a Berlin accent was grammatically correct. ‘Englischer Kaffee,’ he said, wrinkling his nose when he returned with my milk.

  I drank my coffee in the busy little café, ordered a second cup and listened in on the various conversations around me, some funny, some serious, some quiet and secretive, others loud and proud. A man and woman on the table next to me argued about the woman’s mother who had come for a weekend some months before and was staying until after the Olympics because she wanted to see the beloved Chancellor. The man said his mother-in-law had already cost him a fortune and now he had to buy her a ticket for the Olympic Games just so she could see Hitler.

  His wife told him he was wrong. She said he didn’t have to buy one ticket, he had to buy two, because she intended to go to the Games with her moth
er.

  Their table was pounced on the minute they vacated it by two young men who looked to be in their early twenties. The more flamboyant looking of the two wore a shirt with a design similar to Scottish paisley-tab in pink and gold. He took a handkerchief from his trousers pocket and blew his nose. His face was blotchy and his eyes red and swollen from crying. The soberly dressed man, in a dark grey suit and white shirt, advised his friend to be more careful approaching men in the future. He said he had got away with it this time, but with so many Nazis in the city, he may not be so lucky next time.

  Be careful? Got away with what? I reached for my newspaper with the intention of hiding behind it to hear their conversation better. The suited man saw me looking at them, glared at me, and proceeded to speak in a hushed voice.

  The rest of the morning I spent retracing the steps of my childhood. The blocks of concrete apartments where I had lived as a child were as boring now as they had been in the Twenties. In contrast, The Brandenburg Gate, was as impressive as ever. And the newly built government buildings and modern structures in the city of Berlin were nothing less than cosmopolitan. With the city full of foreigners, there to watch the Games, it gave Hitler the perfect opportunity to demonstrate to the world, how efficient Nazi Germany was.

  I curtailed my sightseeing when I found a pleasant little café-come-bar in a side street off Potsdamer Platz and had lunch. I ordered a ham sandwich and a small beer. My newspaper was dog-eared. I straightened it out as best I could, read a couple of lines and consulted my dictionary.

  The waiter arrived and topped up my coffee. ‘Excuse me, sir, there is a student,’ he pointed to a young man sitting on his own a couple of tables along. ‘He is the son of a friend of mine. He is studying English at university, I’m sure he would be more than happy to help you read your newspaper.’

  I looked across and smiled. I had a thousand political opinions when I was a student of his age. He could be just the sort of young chap to give me the information I needed. I thanked the waiter, saying someone to interpret for me would be a great help.