Into Darkness

by Anton Gill

'I doubt if she'll have anything to do with him,' said Adamov, brushing cigar-ash from his lapel. He was wearing a check suit, shiny with wear, almost the only man not in formal dress. Tilli, who, Hoffmann knew, generally invited a sprinkling of bohemians to shake up her stiffer-lipped guests, would have accepted this as part of her plan. And Adamov seldom drank enough to lose control. In the past, he'd faced the consequences when he had.

  'Who is he?'

  'Man called Hagen. Wolf Hagen. Quite close to Hitler, they say.'

  The name rang a bell. A colleague in the Excise Department had mentioned it the other day in a general briefing - something to do with importing Swedish steel and pig iron on an unofficial level. Hagen was a businessman, good at under-the-counter deals; there were dozens like him.

  'Got an honorary rank. Wears the old brown uniform sometimes. Doesn't suit him.'

  'You should be working for us,' said Hoffmann.

  'He's a Standartenführer. Likes to go out the streets too, and beat up a few of us wicked Lefties.'

  'Sounds pleasant.'

  'You don't believe me. I've seen him. Does it because he enjoys it. Bloody southerner.'

  'Then what's he doing here?'

  Adamov tapped his nose. 'Lip-service. He's also a snob, and these days you need to be in with the snobs who are in with the Nazis. Unfortunately. Not that he's a bigwig yet, but you never know.' The woman was beginning to look around a little desperately. 'Shall we go and rescue her?'

  Before Hoffmann could react, Adamov was crossing the floor, his arms spread wide. 'Kara! Kara von Wildenbruch! My dear, it's been so long! And you mustn't monopolise poor Freiherr von Hagen - ' he threw in the aristocrat tag with a generous wave of one arm, scooping her by the waist with the other, and guiding her towards Hoffmann. 'Besides, there's someone else I'd like you to meet: Frau Doktor von Wildenstein, Herr Professor Doktor von Hoffmann!'

  Hagen, almost drunk, made a poor attempt to hide his irritation, but his attention was diverted by his hostess, who'd also been watching. Adamov steered his two charges away to a table, covered with a white linen cloth, which served as the bar. It was laden with a battery of bottles, from humble beer to majestic champagne. Ignoring the disapproving steward, Adamov helped himself to a large glass, into which he poured a liberal amount of Cristal, topping it up, to the steward's horror, with an equal amount of Asbach-Uralt. With this he toasted Hoffmann and the girl, and disappeared in the direction of the buffet.

  'Dr von Wildenstein?' Hoffmann smiled slightly.

  'Professor von Hoffmann?' She wasn't at ease.

  'I'm afraid my von is a figment of Veit's imagination. As is the professorship.'

  'Mine's only inherited. I haven't done anything to deserve it.' She spread her hands, unbending fractionally. 'Thank you for saving me. I was beginning to think I'd have to faint, or something.'

  'You should thank Veit.'

  'Veit always has an ulterior motive.'

  They both smiled at that, and talked of other things, finding out why they were both there, and how they knew the Cassirers. Kara's mother was a friend of Hartmut - 'But then the Cassirers know everybody.'

  Tilli's guests were lawyers, actors, journalists, doctors and academics. Hoffmann remembered looking round the ballroom. Almost every man was wearing at least one gong, even if only campaign medals. A year ago, only professional soldiers, or those with the highest decorations, would have bothered to trot them out for Tilli's party. Across the room, Ernst Udet wore his Blue Max at his neck, but he was one of the few with anything serious to show off.

  Kara had followed his gaze. 'You seem to be the only man here without some tin on his chest,' she said drily, and he wondered if she'd been able to sense his thoughts. His hand went up to his own throat. He'd considered wearing his medal, an Iron Cross Second Class, earned by getting a wounded captain back to the safety of the trenches, about two days before the Armistice. At the time he hadn't thought he had done anything particularly brave, and now only wore the decoration with his formal uniform. But for Tilli's party he'd seen no reason for it, and the space just below his white tie was empty.

  'Did you miss the war?' she continued.

  He started slightly at such a direct question, but replied, 'I was only in it for the last eighteen months. Acting Lieutenant in the Engineers.'

  'Things are getting very military again,' she said.

  'Is that a bad thing?'

  'People have short memories.'

  43

  They had dinner together three days later. He knew she was wary of him, didn't like the idea of policemen at all, but he persisted. Small confidences emerged. He told her a few snatches of his life, like a kid, spilling out his story, about his father, his mother and sister, who'd gone back to Kiel after his father's death; and the bakery they ran there. She was interested that he had once intended to become a priest, and impressed at his knowledge of Hebrew, some of which he remembered, though it was rusty. Cautiously, with time, he became happy, and she grew more relaxed.

  It hadn't been a profound affair to begin with; rather, one of occasional comfort and friendship. He hadn't slept with anyone since his wife's death two years earlier. Kara herself was a children's specialist at the Charité Hospital. She had graduated between the communist uprising that followed the war, and the financial free-fall of the early Twenties, deciding to become a paediatrician after working as a volunteer at an orphanage in Pankow during the hard summer of 1919. She still dreamed about the children's matchstick arms and legs, their swollen knees and their dark eyes, empty of anything, and old.

  She was unattached, but wouldn't go into details. Hoffmann, resisting his instinct, didn't ask many questions. She didn't like them. It was pleasanter to let Kara tell him things when she was ready to, and so, beyond establishing their basic backgrounds, they didn't talk much about themselves at first. They both knew how important it was to be cautious with strangers, even if you were sleeping with them, and especially, he knew, because of his job, which she referred to with resentment. Hoffmann didn't tell her about his involvement with the Party. Already uneasy about the path the Party had begun to take, he guessed she disapproved of it. But his political beliefs were his own business, and in those days he was still telling himself that, after all, the Party was a vital force, and had a vigorous leader, who was presenting strong policies which would help the economy and reduce unemployment if he came to power, as seemed increasingly likely.

  The sabre-rattling he was used to; but in 1932 he preferred to turn a blind eye to the dark side of the organisation he'd joined. Membership was doing his career no harm. Even when the beatings and the arrests started, when the big boys of the city's organised crime clubs were taking sides in the political skirmishing, and when some people were already starting to pack their bags, he kept his head down.

  They'd met in October 1932. Six months later, in Spring 1933, the world had changed. The Nazis were running the country by then. And it was then she discovered that he belonged to the Party.

  He hadn't so much hidden his membership from her, he told himself, as kept silent about it. He might have been forgiven for assuming she would have guessed. After all, he was a senior policeman. No-one got to positions like that - or retained them - unless they were either very astute, or with the Leader. It was getting close to Easter. People in the capital were making jokes about how the Easter Hare would be turning up in a brown uniform this year, and how the Party would only permit people to colour white eggs. The streets were gunmetal, slick with rain, glinting under the lamps. The traffic was heavier than usual. Over everything hung a greater anticipation than usual of the approaching holidays. You couldn't put your finger on it, but it was as tangible as if it had taken shape in the alleys and boulevards; and in one way it had: Brownshirts were everywhere.

  They had even been accepted as auxiliary police.

  44

  One evening, Hoffmann was late arriving at her apartment. He hadn't seen her for days. He was hurrying. He'd only managed
to find a small silver brooch to give her, and he was rather ashamed of it.

  As soon as she opened the door, he knew something was seriously wrong. Kara barely spoke, didn't kiss him, avoided his eyes.

  'How long have we known each other?'

  'You know how long.'

  'And how long have you been quite so close to them?' She held up a copy of the main Party newspaper. It was opened to a middle page, where an article halfway down reported his promotion to deputy head of the Kripo. There was no photograph, but there was his name, Maximilian Martin Georg Anton Hoffmann, and his Party number.

  His throat dried and his blood pounded. 'Where did you find that?' he asked.

  'In the hospital. Open at this page. By chance. Do you think I'd sift through this filth?'

  He watched her.

  'By chance!' she repeated.

  Unless, he thought, it'd been left there for her to find. In which case, who could possibly know about them? Of the few that knew, he could think of none that wished them harm. They would not have been let into the secret otherwise. Perhaps this really was a coincidence, little as Hoffmann believed in them. Most lies are exposed; most buried things are dug up.

  She wasn't a Party member, and had no belief in Hitler's values. But why had he skated over something he had nothing, as he still felt, to be ashamed of?

  The answer had been skirting the back of his mind for a long time - since the previous summer at least, he now realised with a shock. He also realised that the reason he'd been unwilling to confront it was because then it would lead him away from a successful career, and into a forest of uncertainty and risk. Simple cowardice? No.

  He knew that things were no longer going the way that he'd hoped. The socialist element of the National Socialist German Workers' Party had gone, and there was plenty to suggest that huge amounts would be invested in rearmament. There remained national pride, freedom, and reconstruction - all these things he believed in. These he clung to, but he knew that questions would remain too.

  'Look, I'm a cop,' he said, on his dignity. 'You know that. I have to jump through certain hoops.'

  'I don't believe it.'

  'Then why did you ever accept me as your lover?'

  He regretted the words even before the look of withering scorn appeared on her face. He looked at her. It hardly seemed possible that only thirty-six hours earlier they had been wrapped around each other, eating and drinking each other. Another shock hit him, and he wondered if it had hit her too. Except at the outset, they hadn't exchanged too many ideas or personal intimacies because their real intimacy was so intensely physical. The time to talk would come later, but until this moment each had believed they'd found their Socratic matching halves, and that was enough. They'd both been lonely and they'd cleaved to each other. Sex rushes you into a closeness you sometimes want to think spiritual as well; but when it isn't you find that you haven't come home after all, but only moved to another hotel, and there's a bill to pay when you leave.

  Did they both feel that now? He didn't want to believe it. Her expression had grown less angry. Perhaps, like him, she wanted this hurdle behind them. But his attempt at an explanation was lame. 'It's simply climbing rungs on a ladder. My work isn't political - '

  'How can it not be, when you're part of this kind of establishment?'

  Hoffmann knew he was lying again, to her, and, worse, to himself. He still believed that Hitler had found a way out of the thick dense maze the country was in, but his manner of doing so was something Hoffmann was finding increasingly difficult to justify. You can't just hack down the hedges, because that leaves simple destruction in its wake. He had opened the gates of his mind and there was no closing them again. He believed in justice, but he didn't believe in absolutism. Political disagreement had been a disaster for the country for years, but look at what else had happened that was good. Now an exodus of people had begun, artists, scientists, teachers, whose departure would make Germany a darker, poorer place. Berlin didn't like Hitler; but Berlin had a lot to lose; elsewhere, most people flocked to him.

  Hoffmann didn't want this to come between them. He wanted to take her in his arms, and cut all this nonsense out. He could sense that she, too, wanted to get inside the safety of an embrace; but she crossed the room away from him. At least it was to pour them both a glass of wine.

  'My work isn't -' he began.

  'Have you looked at what's going on?'

  The room was familiar. He felt at home here, more than he had done in two years or more. The furniture was modern, tubular steel and leather. Breuer, Mies. The rugs were bright, Bauhaus designs. She handed him his wine and put on a record: Solvejg's Song.

  'Sit down,' she said.

  Through the windows, the city shimmered in the darkness. You could see the Pariser Platz and the Victory Arch, with the bulk of the Adlon Hotel in one corner, and, further south, the department stores on Leipziger and Potsdamer Plätze. Unter den Linden drove east under its old limes, and in the other direction he could see the dimmer lights of the Kurfürstendamm. Tall whores there, braving the April chill. He could see them in his mind's eye, he could see their steel-blue eyes.

  Kara sat down opposite him, lit a cigarette and sipped her wine. 'You're not the only one to have secrets.'

  'Are you going to tell me yours?'

  'I don't see why I should. Especially now.'

  'No harm will come to you from me,' he said.

  'Can't know that.'

  'No-one in a better position to help.' He kept his voice light.

  'At what cost?' She looked at him. 'You kept silent. Why? Were you ashamed?'

  'I haven't lied to you.'

  'You kept silent.'

  'It's not important.'

  'It is.'

  He spread his hands. 'What do you want me to do?'

  Her eyes flared. 'Resign!'

  'Impossible.'

  'Why?'

  'I'd lose everything.'

  'You wouldn't lose me.'

  He watched her as she refilled their glasses and sat on the sofa. A Moroccan rug hung over its cream back. She collected African art, and shelves along one wall held rows of wooden masks.

  She could have been North African herself. She looked exotic in the room, in her black dress, high at the neck, and long-sleeved; unlike the efficient, neutral image she presented at the hospital. He wondered sadly if he'd ever know her better than he did now.

  'We are living in strange times,' she said.

  'That's been true since 1914.'

  'They are getting worse.'

  'No.'

  'So you agree with what's coming?'

  He shrugged.

  'You know perfectly well what will happen. With your contacts, you probably know better than anyone.' She paused. 'What are you going to do?'

  'I'll carry on. There'll always be crooks.'

  She looked at him coolly. He didn't even know exactly how old she was, though he guessed she was about four years younger than he, which made her somewhere at the end of her twenties.

  'What will you do?' he asked.

  'I don't know.'

  'Will you leave?' That was the last thing he wanted her to do.

  'I have my work too.' But she didn't sound convinced.

  45

  Hoffmann drove on. Fields and forests. Once he passed a convoy of army lorries going the other way, five of them, lumbering east. They were covered in field-grey tarpaulins. He caught the eye of the officer in the staff car which led them, a tired colonel with grey hair, whose look was expressionless. Hoffmann slowed down, just in case he'd be challenged, but nothing happened. The convoy drove on. He couldn't see what or whom they were carrying. The drivers' faces were haggard.

  He reckoned he would have this one last day before they picked up his trail, unless he was extraordinarily lucky. It was still unpleasantly warm. How he hated summer, that clammy, overblown season. He flexed his hands on the steering-wheel. They were red, and ached from driving. His thoughts turned bac
k again.

  He had joined Kara on the sofa. He took her hand and she had let him hold it. He wanted to kiss her. She pulled away slightly, but without withdrawing her hand.

  'Are you going to tell me your secrets?' she asked.

  'I don't know.'

  He felt like an intruder. He had been complacent. He didn't like the unexpected. He liked things to be orderly; but he had also been too quick to take for granted the happiness he thought had fallen into his lap. He certainly hadn't questioned it.

  It had grown dark in the apartment and Kara rose to turn the lights on, shutting out the night as she drew the pale curtains. She always managed to have fresh flowers in a vase. He was reluctant to leave, but he doubted if they would be spending this night together, if they ever did again. She switched on the lamps, and he watched as the light caressed her skin, making soft shadows on her neck, and across the backs of her hands.

  They sat in silence, finishing the bottle and smoking. He knew he would have to go, but he couldn't bring himself to get up. He didn't want to leave this unresolved.

  'When I read that, I was appalled. The paper is two weeks old.'

  'How long have you had it?' he asked.

  She glared at him. 'Since a few days ago. I couldn't call you. I didn't want to believe it. You've been promoted by the Party. Tell me you don't believe in them.'

  'I still think I can do some good,' he said.

  'And how much freedom will they give you for that?'

  He wondered if he should tell her about the case he was working on, a fourteen-year-old prostitute, full of heroin, fished out of the Spree. Starving, but that wasn't what had killed her. It was really nothing unusual; and trying to catch the dealers was like trying to catch flies with your hands. They were too quick. You just had to go on trying. Sometimes there was a betrayal, sometimes a lucky stroke - then they got the bastards.

  He caught the expression on Kara's face, saw that she was looking into herself, and desisted. This was something he recognised: it happened when a confession was about to break. It was just a question of waiting for it. His mind switched to its professional habit. He hoped to find brief refuge in the detachment that brought him. He fumbled with the little silver brooch, still in its gift wrapping in his pocket.