by Anton Gill
Kara spent the evening in bed, propped up on satin cushions like a dying duchess. She was too hot: when she kicked off the coverlet, she was immediately too cold. She drank cold water and ate dry toast.
'Don't worry. I don't think I am going to die.'
He sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed her hand. She was distracted. 'Go back to the party.'
'They won't miss me.'
'Tilli says Hagen's here.'
Hoffmann didn't like the fear in her voice. 'Along with a load of other bigwigs. He's got a lot of power, now, thanks to me.'
'You got him off my back, and I'll always be grateful.' She paused. 'I wish he could be gone forever.'
Hoffmann wondered if her wish would be granted. Oster's intelligence-gathering showed that the Brownshirts were beginning to lose favour with the Führer. But Hagen was an eel, a survivor. He'd change uniform from brown to black if the wind changed, and he'd do it with more dexterity and a greater chance of success than most, because he had the gift of making himself indispensable, and had the trick of living for himself alone.
The hubbub of the party, coming from far away, was in their ears; in other circumstances it would have been nice.
Another sound then: someone walking down the corridor towards the door. There was a knock. A pause. Then another knock, louder. The person did not go away.
Hoffmann crossed the room, hand on gun, opened the door.
'Hello, my little chicken. Tilli told me where to find you.' Veit Adamov crossed the room, leaned over to kiss her. Hoffmann saw that she rallied, pushing herself to sit up, aware of how she smelt, of the dampness of the sheets. Veit sat down and took her hand. Hoffmann knew what Adamov was up to these days, how he had reinvented himself to survive. So did Tilli. Did Kara also know?
'Tell Uncle Veit all about it.'
Hoffmann watched as they talked, animatedly and intimately. Why was she confiding in him?
'Because I needed to,' she said afterwards. 'Because he's an old friend. Because I trust him.'
'But he's with them, and he drinks too much.'
'He's still one of us. If you'd tried to join in the conversation you'd have understood that.'
'Do you know what he's doing?'
'I've seen harder porn in gynaecology class. He's not hurting anyone. His actors need money. Some of them need it in order to get out of the country.'
'How do you know?'
'I know he'd make good films whatever they were about. And you can be sexy without hurting anyone. And anyway what's wrong with it? Look at us. These days we condemn lovemaking, except as a means of making babies, but a military parade, that's quite another matter. The instruments of life,' she half-quoted, 'have to be covered up, are somehow shameful. But the instruments of death –'
'He's not one of us.'
'You don't know that.'
'And you do?'
'Think.'
She was right. Veit was close to her in a way he couldn't compete with. And was Veit any more compromised than he was? Veit rightly knew nothing of Hoffmann's connection with Oster. If Veit was working for the Resistance too, why should Hoffmann know about it?
'But he knows now,' he said.
'He is my friend and he could be yours. It's best that you have a godfather as well. You might need him. I think you will.'
'A godfather as well?'
'He will be the child's godfather. Emma will be its godmother.'
So, she had made the choice for them.
He wasn't going to argue the case. He was afraid she was dying.
'You'd better go back,' she said again. 'You'll be missed.'
92
Kara did not die. It was a nervous Christmas, and though Tilli's cook was at her best, most of the goose went uneaten. Emma and her aunt joined them at dinner on Christmas Eve. Emma's concern for Kara, and her happy anticipation of the baby, lightened the mood. She'd bought Kara a garnet necklace, and a recording of Furtwängler conducting Beethoven's Ninth. Kara rallied in Emma's company, and the family stumbled through a handful of sonatas and trios together. They didn't listen to the radio.
Kara would return to her bed after three hours, but the greyness left her cheeks, her eyes cleared, began to sparkle again. Emma put a hand on her belly, marvelling.
1934 arrived and the future was to be glorious. Homosexual men found that the freedom of the Weimar days was over. Gay Party members were disappearing. Jewish holidays no longer appeared on official calendars; non-Aryans were forbidden to adopt Aryan children; Marinus van der Lubbe was executed for starting the Reichstag fire. Shortly before that, on Three Kings, Kara gave birth, quickly and with little pain. Everyone was amazed at how well she did. And afterwards she seemed fine. She was very pale, and there was a little darkness under the eyes, but that was hardly surprising.
The baby was a boy. Someone joked that they should call him Balthasar Caspar Melchior. The godfathers were Ernst Udet and Veit Adamov. They didn't get on. Emma and Tilli were the godmothers.
They called him Stefan Alexander, after their fathers. But he was little, he didn't weigh two kilos, and they had to encourage him to cry after he'd emerged.
'We must leave soon.'
'Not until he's strong enough.'
Hoffmann paced the room. He couldn't bring himself to tell her they had to take the risk. Stefan had a Jewish grandmother - that was enough to condemn him. The Ancestry Document had been introduced. You didn't have to carry one, but if you didn't, you had to have a good reason not to. What might you be hiding? There was no way in which Hoffmann could depend on his falsification of Kara's documents being enough to protect them. They would have copies somewhere, his relationship with her would have been documented.
Stefan stayed small. The doctor pursed his lips, talked of jaundice out of Kara's hearing. Kara breast-fed him, he put on weight slowly. At a month, there was no more talk of jaundice, but he was still small.
'We must go.'
'Not until he's stronger.' She looked at him. 'He mustn't die.'
'We must go.'
'No.'
He consoled himself with the thought that Berlin was hosting the Olympic Games in two years. The Party would behave itself on the world stage until then. Werner March was planning his stadium. They would have to leave before then. Every moment they delayed increased their danger. His son's health worried him. There were moments when he wished Stefan had never been born. Without him, they would be in America by now. He kept his options for sailing tickets warm, but he dared not appear insistent until he could make a positive move, in case he drew unwelcome attention to himself; and Kara remained obdurate.
By the beginning of March, Stefan was making better progress. By then the Party had published a new version of the Psalms which cut out all references to Jews. By then the Jewish War Veterans Association had declared its loyalty to Germany, reminding the Party that 12,000 Jews had died fighting for their country in the last war. By then Paul Czinner's film Catherine the Great had been banned because its star was a Jew.
93
'We must go.'
'Have you talked to Oster?'
Hoffmann would make a clean break with it all. With his experience and contacts, he'd get a job in the States, somehow. He wasn't 36 years old. He'd like to continue in regular police work, but if that didn't happen, he might really consider becoming a private detective. Somehow.
First things first.
Tickets for the liners weren't easy to organise. There weren't many sailings, and those with money, influence, and intelligence were beginning to queue at the embassies, to get visas, to get out. They were being encouraged to do so. They were allowed to keep whatever they planned to take with them. Some thought they'd be able to return before long, and pick up where they'd left off.
Hoffmann couldn't rest until his family was safe. 'We must go,' he said again.
This time there was compliance in her eyes. But only the ghost. Stefan was smaller than he should have been. No-one knew better than Kara
that he was a sickly baby, that until he was stronger, until she was confident of that, he should stay put, despite the risks. Another thought struck her: was the nature of her husband's work making him start at shadows? Surely another couple of months would make no difference?
Hoffmann had to talk to Oster, but there were things to do first.
He'd made up his mind that they'd leave at the end of the month. If loose ends were left behind, too bad. He felt greater relief than he'd felt in months.
He spent a morning in Oranienburg, walking from café to café in the spring air, the pale sunlight barely warming him through his heavy black overcoat. He found the man he was looking for in the third place, drinking his early Rummer of white wine. The man wasn't particularly happy to see him, but, after a few words had been exchanged, he relaxed, then became intrigued, then faintly amused.
'I won't pretend we'll be sorry to see you go.'
'I can imagine.'
'You're a pain in the arse.'
'Yes.'
'The man grinned. 'You can't imagine how good it makes me feel just to be able to tell you that.'
'I'll be back.'
'Will you?' The man looked thoughtful. 'Well, you won't find me here. Never mind, I'm sure our paths will cross again - maybe in New York - who knows?'
'It'll be a pleasure.'
'You haven't nailed me here. There's no reason why you should do any better there.'
'Maybe you were just more useful to me on the loose.'
'Don't hurt my feelings.'
'Can you get the tickets?'
'Queue-jumping's expensive.' The man shifted his weight on his stool, drained his wine. 'I'll see what I can do.' He drew a notebook from his pocket, wrote a number on a page, tore it out and gave it to Hoffmann. 'Call me in a couple of days.'
'Thank you.' Hoffmann rose to leave.
The man drained his glass. 'Schnapps before you go?'
'With you?'
'We've got a common enemy now. Makes us friends. We should drink to that. Or did you come to me because you already knew I was a Jew?'
'Do you have any idea of a date for me? I need to do some housekeeping before I leave.'
'End of the month, you said.' The man considered. 'There's a sailing on 24th. Might get you on that.'
Later, Hoffmann sent a note to Oster.
94
The rhythm of the truck had changed. It was slowing. Jolted back to the present, and immediately alert, Hoffmann looked ahead. They had turned off the country road and were bumping down a track at the end of which he could see, half-hidden by the curve of the hill on which its was built, a low farmhouse. It was very old. Its walls were a metre thick, its small windows sunk deep within them.
The truck drew to a halt and the driver got out, waving to him to climb down as he opened the passenger door and heaved out the chickens. The chickens squawked as he dumped the crate on the ground. A black dog chained to a post had begun to bark and strain at the end of its tether. The inside of its mouth was deep red, its teeth yellow. Hoffmann looked away from it to where a door was opening.
A woman in a headscarf, print dress, apron and gumboots came out. She might have been any age between thirty and fifty, her black eyes glittering in her tanned face. She had a strong jaw, large, ivory-coloured teeth, like the dog's. There was something animal about her. When she came close, Hoffmann could smell the soil on her. Two small children stumbled in her wake.
'Uncle Ludo!'
The driver squatted down and held his arms out to hug them, then rose and introduced Hoffmann to the woman as his workmate.
'You can wash under the pump here, get a bit of that stink off of you,' she said to him with a smile that made her pretty. She handed him a sack to use as a towel. The driver followed her into the house. The children stayed to watch. Hoffmann couldn't tell whether the younger one was a boy or a girl. The dog, realising the uselessness of its endeavour, subsided.
He stripped, and sluiced the freezing water over him - it must have come from deep underground. It felt like the best wash he'd had in years, and he enjoyed the rough texture of the sack as he rubbed his skin with it. He stood in the sunshine, smelling the earth and looking at the trees and the sky, and felt free, and even that he might win. But the moment passed as he dressed, and his clothes seemed dirtier than they had before. He made his way towards the house.
He was unsurprised to hear – through an open window – the sound of the driver making love to the woman. A short time later they came out, smiling, the driver with a jug of beer in one hand and in the other two pairs of Knackwurst. The woman brought bread, wooden plates and mustard.
'Forgot the mugs, Branka,' the driver said.
She returned to get them, swinging strong hips.
'Why did you tell her I was your workmate?' Hoffmann rolled them both cigarettes, less skilfully than he'd have liked.
'You know,' said the driver, 'I've always found explanations get people into trouble.' He looked at him evenly. 'Don't worry, I'll see you right in Coburg. And I'm sure you've got a little money stashed away, so you'll give me something in return for the lift.'
Two sacks of cabbages replaced the chickens. Hoffmann continued to ride in the back. He wasn't sorry. He needed his solitude. They wouldn't stop again until they reached Coburg. He'd used up the last of his snow. He hadn't drunk or eaten much, and he was tired. The sun began to weary him. He tried to stop thinking of what might have happened if they had only sailed for New York on that 24 March, a decade ago now.
95
Kara had been furious when he'd told her. Why hadn't he consulted her? Stefan wouldn't be ready to travel by then, did he want to risk the child's life for no reason? What if he caught pneumonia, or influenza, or scarlet fever, or whooping cough? Each was a distinct possibility if he was taken out of the safe environment of Tilli's flat. That it was still safe, Hoffmann was sure; but he didn't want Tilli too closely involved, for her own sake. The sooner they left the better.
The tickets wouldn't be held if they hesitated. What was there to dither about, Kara wanted to know. The fact that getting tickets at all wasn't the easiest job in the world didn't impress her.
It rankled with him that she would not listen to reason, though he knew that concern for Stefan would bear every other consideration before it. Her stubbornness depressed him for other reasons too, which either he could not put his finger on, or would not face.
He let two days go by before ringing the man from the café. During them, he went from resignation to Kara's will, to a bloody-minded decisiveness, determining to take the tickets anyway, drag her onto the ship by force if need be.
He had still not made up his mind when the message came from Oster.
They met at Wannsee. It was a harsh day, a dying day of winter, and a freezing wind ripped at their trousers as they walked along the shore of the lake between the station and the Restaurant Schloss Wannsee, past the ranks of neatly moored yachts and dinghies, their rigging singing and snapping. Oster looked older. The lines between his nose and the corners of his mouth, and across his brow, seemed deeper; but his eyes retained their humour.
'I got your note,' he said.
'It isn't easy.'
Oster spread his hands. 'I understand. You will be missed, but an army cannot depend on one soldier.'
Was there a cutting note there?
'In any case, that isn't the reason I asked you to meet me,' continued the General. He paused and looked out across the lake, his eyes watering in the wind. 'I have a last favour to ask of you. You are free to refuse, but if you accept, you will be giving us a valuable parting gift.'
Hoffmann said nothing, but inclined his head, and they continued their walk.
'We have intelligence that Hitler is planning something against his Party rivals, in particular the Strasser brothers.'
'That doesn't surprise me,' said Hoffmann.
'If he succeeds, nothing will stop him, and it's common knowledge that the position of the Strassers is
weakening.' Oster paused and smiled coldly. 'Good principles they may have, but they lack good showmanship.'
'Take them away and you take the socialism away from National Socialism.'
'They're all servants of the devil,' said Oster soberly. 'But the Strassers are pliable. If we can stop him before he stops them, we still have a chance to sort this mess out.'
They walked in silence for a few minutes before Oster spoke again. 'Hitler is preoccupied with these affairs of his at the moment and the Party is in a state of flux. Our intelligence indicates that about the middle of next month, shortly before our glorious leader's birthday, in fact, he is to speak at an informal rally in Potsdam. A lot of the Old Guard will be there, so he'll be relatively relaxed.' Oster paused again. 'We might get a shot at him. But we'll need to know what the police movements are going to be, liaison with the SS, with his bodyguard, that sort of thing. If you could delay leaving until then, if you could get us that information, then I would consider that you had more than done your duty.'
Hoffmann would look back on the moment for the remainder of his life. At the time, however, he did not hesitate. Here was the opportunity to soothe Kara's anxiety and pacify his conscience at one and the same time. There was no right or wrong about his decision: it was opportunistic and profitable - something that would make everyone happy.
The two men shook hands, hurried back to their cars, both of them relieved. Oster knew that most agents had short useful lives in the field, and though he could have done with Hoffmann for longer, at least he felt he was squeezing another few kilometres out of him. And it was good to get out of the wind and into the relative warmth of their cars. Then the short drive, for them both, by separate routes, to Berlin, their offices, and the continuing tension of life.
Hoffmann, with that sense of euphoria that only comes when a particular stress has been lifted from your shoulders, rang his contact to change the sailing dates, shrugged off the man's irritation and the difficulties he made about arranging another booking. He had spoken to Kara, who had thrown her arms round his neck and cried, tasting her own relief, proud of him, and agreeing that the possible new departure date, 28 April, would be fine, they would go then, Stefan was improving by the day, there seemed to be no reason now to fear that he would relapse. But she would not hear of their leaving without Max. So much could go wrong. They might never meet again if once they separated. What would they do if they encountered difficulties, and he was not there to help them? He knew that he did not want to stay behind. It seemed to him that everything was falling into place – that it must be 'meant', as Kara said.