The House of Rumour

by Jake Arnott

  ‘Behold our puppet utopia, Hans,’ he said to me afterwards as we watched a squad of the National Socialist Students Association march out to the playing fields.

  ‘You should be more careful, Kurt,’ I chided him. ‘Talk like that can get you into trouble.’

  ‘Only a god can be equal to inanimate matter,’ he told me. ‘That’s what Kleist was really getting at, that we need to go all the way. We’ve left the Garden and the door is barred behind us, but if we make the journey all the way around the world maybe we will find an entrance at the back of Paradise. We must go on to absolute understanding.’

  ‘You mean that we must eat again from the tree of knowledge to regain our innocence?’

  ‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Kleist says that when that happens it will be the final chapter in the history of the world. And “On the Marionette Theatre” was his last work. A year later he shot himself and his lover on the banks of the Wannsee.’

  ‘Kurt.’ I lowered my voice and with a nod beckoned to my friend to bring his face close to mine. ‘Do you really believe that we live in a puppet’s utopia?’

  He grinned, as if relishing a sense of intimacy and intrigue.

  ‘Oh yes!’ he whispered, his eyes darting to and fro.

  ‘And what if there were people secretly working against it?’

  Kurt giggled.

  ‘Not you, Hans, surely?’

  ‘What if I was?’

  His face froze into a solemn mask.

  ‘Hans,’ he muttered, ‘I hate this wretched state of life. I wish I could find the back door to Paradise.’

  ‘Then join us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll explain tomorrow. I’ll come to your apartment.’

  I left Kurt and made my way to the Mühlbergers for my violin lesson. I brooded on Heinrich von Kleist’s suicide pact. I think I mused on how sweet it would be to find someone whom one loved so much that one could die with them. I certainly feel that now. With somebody else to go with, death might not be such a cold and lonely business.

  Heinz Mühlberger was a teacher and an amateur-theatre director, his wife Elsa a musician. It was my brother Ernst who first got to know them before the war, when he was in their drama group. Ernst served in Poland and came back on leave with terrible stories that he could not tell our parents as they simply would not believe him. So he discussed what he had seen with the Mühlbergers and, as he confided to them his growing sense of anger and disaffection, it soon became clear that the couple were part of a clandestine network of resistance known as the Circle.

  ‘Imagine a pebble dropped in a pond,’ Elsa told him. ‘It might make only a ripple but its circle expands and communicates with others.’

  Ernst joined them and soon recruited me. He arranged violin lessons for me with Elsa Mühlberger as a cover so I could be used as a courier, with a false compartment in my violin case to carry messages, even anti-government leaflets. Ernst was killed in action in France last spring.

  When I arrived at the Mühlbergers they were preparing a surprise for their son Melchior’s sixth birthday the next day. In a corner of the living room they were arranging a collection of tiny painted wooden animals. With green felt they had fashioned fields dotted with little trees of coloured paper. A hand mirror served as a pond for a family of miniature ducks, above which hung a mobile of the moon and stars attached to the ceiling.

  The Circle had been in crisis since last summer. Every new German victory proved us wrong. All of our secret protestations against fascism seemed useless as it marched on in its unending parade of success. We had all but given up producing anti-government leaflets and instead concentrated on developing communications within our own group and with other anti-fascist networks that were supposed to exist. We were also gathering intelligence that we might pass on. Heinz Mühlberger made contact with a man connected to the Russian embassy with the code name Nebula. There were even rumours of approaches to the Circle from the British Secret Service. But the possibility of involvement in espionage only accelerated the sense of fear and desperation among us.

  The Mühlbergers argued in whispers as Heinz painstakingly herded model pigs into a cardboard farmyard. How can we trust the Soviets since Stalin made his devil’s pact with Hitler? What if the British are secretly negotiating a peace with Germany? Heinz looked up at me.

  ‘Hans, we need you to run an errand.’

  ‘We shouldn’t involve him in this,’ Elsa protested. ‘He should be trying to organise the students. They’re the future.’

  ‘I think I’m about to recruit one of my fellows,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘But I’m not scared of carrying out actions for the Circle.’

  ‘Elsa, you know we can’t go ourselves.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘What is this errand, anyway?’ I asked.

  Heinz beckoned me closer and told me of a woman with a message from British Intelligence, who wanted to work with the Circle and its contacts. She had information to prove that this proposition was genuine.

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ Elsa murmured as she carefully placed in position a farmhouse fashioned from a box that had once contained sugar lumps.

  ‘Her name is Astrid Nagengast.’ Heinz gave me an address to memorise for the following evening. ‘Be careful.’ He smiled. ‘She’s a fortune-teller.’

  When I got home my stupid parents were huddled around the wireless, the cheap little ‘people’s radio’ with its dial restricted to approved stations and its big round speaker that every household secretly knows as the ‘Goebbels-snout’. Fanfares preceded the announcement of the German army’s march into Athens. As I crept past, my father stood up and grabbed my arm.

  ‘Hear that?’ he declared, a fat tear rolling down his face. ‘England is finished! We’ll soon have vengeance for our Ernst.’

  Next day when I told Kurt that I had to postpone our meeting until later that evening he became suspicious and provocative.

  ‘Are you on a secret mission?’

  ‘Please, Kurt, don’t make foolish jokes.’

  ‘Maybe you just don’t want to see me.’

  ‘Of course I do. We’ll talk later.’

  Astrid Nagengast had a sharp face and bright eyes, with a mass of silver ringlets scattered across a high, proud forehead. It was hard to tell how old she was. Fifty? Sixty, even? What was certain was the striking elegance and vitality in her looks and demeanour. Age is life, the only real proof of it. Youth always seems closer to death, I thought, recalling the fallen blossom of the day before.

  ‘Do you know what you’ve come to collect?’ she asked me as she showed me into a small study cluttered with books and peculiar objects.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s a simple thing, foolproof. It shouldn’t put you in any danger.’

  There was an African mask on one wall, a chart of the zodiac on another. Above a desk littered with papers and curios hung an etching of some alchemical diagram. I looked around, wide-eyed.

  ‘Esoteric knowledge,’ she said with a smile. ‘Nothing to be afraid of.’

  ‘Are you really a fortune-teller?’

  ‘Well, one has to be careful. There’s been something of a clampdown in the past few years. It’s completely illegal in Berlin. I’m a voice teacher mostly. And a breath therapist, but I still have plenty of psychic consultations. If anything, there’s been a rise in demand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For astrologers, clairvoyants. The future has become a serious business lately. For example, so many people wanted to know when the time was right, you know, to leave.’

  ‘You mean Jews?’

  ‘Jews, yes, and others. Most of us left it too late.’ She sighed. ‘And there are the others who believe in it. I’ve had army officers as clients, worried about upcoming campaigns. It’s been amazing how many secrets they’ve let slip. Plenty of the higher-ups are superstitious too. We can use that against them. And they’ve h
ad fortune on their side for so long, they’re scared that their luck is about to change. Well, it is.’

  She opened a drawer in her desk, took something out and handed it to me. It was some strange kind of playing card. I looked at it. In profile a crowned and bethroned man held a sceptre and at his side was a golden shield emblazoned with an imperial eagle. The face of the figure was slightly smudged. At the top of the card was the number IV, at the bottom the legend: L’EMPEREUR.

  ‘That’s the message you’re to take to the Circle. It proves we’re acting in good faith.’

  ‘It’s a code?’

  ‘Yes. And if your friends are able to understand it, then it will in turn give us proof of the Circle’s operational status. In itself it’s a harmless token. If you get stopped and asked about it just say you found it in the street. Tell your friends that we need to pass something on to a contact in the Deputy Führer’s office.’

  ‘Another card?’

  ‘You’re a clever boy. There’ll be something else, too. But the cards are a good basic cypher. They’re a memory system. You’d better go now, you know far too much already.’

  I called at Kurt’s flat on my way home. He lived in a fifth-storey apartment with a small balcony. Here we could converse freely, away from the anxious family table, far above the fear-haunted streets.

  I talked about what had happened with my brother Ernst: how he had realised that the war was wrong, that everything the party said was a lie. I told him how Ernst had joined the Circle through the Mühlbergers and how I had become involved. Kurt shuddered when I told him about the atrocities Ernst had witnessed in Poland.

  ‘With so much of hell in the world,’ said Kurt, ‘there must be a heaven somewhere.’

  ‘We have to work for it,’ I told him. ‘For peace. For justice. There’s a group of us. Will you work with us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can hardly believe it, Hans. Is this real?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But this evening, for example. You said you had to go somewhere, some secret mission or other. How do I know that it’s not all some sort of made-up story?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could be a trick. Or a trap.’

  ‘Kurt, really.’

  ‘Look, Hans, this is treason you’re asking me to get involved in.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Then trust me. Show me something so that I know this isn’t just a game.’

  I took out the playing card from my violin case and held it up. I explained to him that it contained a message.

  ‘How marvellous,’ said Kurt. ‘A code. Have you worked out what it means?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m simply meant to pass it on.’

  ‘Let me see it.’

  He took it from me.

  ‘It’s some sort of trump card,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a memory system.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kurt squinted at it. ‘Number four, L’Empereur. The clue could be in the number and the arrangement of letters. Or in the image itself. The Holy Roman Emperor.’

  ‘Kurt, I don’t think we should be doing this. I’m just the messenger.’

  ‘See? The face has been marked. There’s a blot of red ink. Maybe that’s been deliberately added. It’s around the chin. The emperor with the bloodstained mouth. The bloodthirsty emperor?’

  ‘I’d better put it back.’

  ‘Of course!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘It’s the beard. See? The beard was white but it’s been coloured in. The emperor with the red beard. It’s Barbarossa!’

  Of course we knew of Barbarossa, Emperor Frederick I who reigned in the second half of the twelfth century. We had often been told by our history teachers that it was Barbarossa who first established the German people as the true heirs of Roman imperial power. And there were many legends about him.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Is it true that he sleeps with his knights beneath Mount Kyffhausen?’

  ‘How can he be there when he drowned in a river in Asia Minor on his way to the Third Crusade?’ Kurt retorted. ‘But it’s said that it was not just a crusade that took him east. He was looking for the land of Prester John.’

  ‘Prester John?’

  ‘Yes, you know, the mythical Christian ruler of a lost kingdom beyond the infidels. There had long been rumours of him, but then Emperor Barbarossa actually received a letter from this Prester John, telling of his enchanted land with many wonders and strange creatures in it. Dog-headed men, boar-tusked women, giants and griffins. A wondrous fantasy world, beyond known space and time!’

  Kurt was becoming quite animated, waving his hands around as if conjuring up a vision.

  ‘It was like a report from another planet. Full of monsters and miraculous devices. Most wonderful of all was the promise that beyond the realm of Prester John lay an earthly paradise. That Eden yet exists as a Garden of Earthly Delights. One legend of Barbarossa has it that Emperor Frederick did not die but found his lost paradise and lived on for many years in a luxurious palace surrounded by beautiful gardens. As in Kleist’s essay, he went around the world and found a way back to Eden.’

  ‘To utopia.’

  ‘Yes!’ His eyes were wide and bright. ‘Wouldn’t that be precious? Oh! What could be better than imagining strange new lands, to forget the dreadful one we live in?’

  ‘Oh Kurt, you’re such a dreamer.’

  ‘So? Isn’t this Circle of yours supposed to be fighting for a dream?’

  ‘Yes, but not a fantasy.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I took the card from him.

  ‘I’d better be getting back.’

  ‘You think I’m silly, don’t you, Hans?’

  ‘No. Why do you say that?’

  ‘Oh, everybody does. And I can see it in your face, too. I’m sorry if you think that I’m silly. I want to be serious. I want to get involved.’

  ‘That’s good. But, you know, we mustn’t draw attention to ourselves.’

  ‘I know. I wish it was just our secret, Hans.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be much good.’

  ‘Our own private conspiracy. We could become blood brothers. We could do it now. I’ll get a knife and we can swear an oath to each other.’

  ‘That’s enough, Kurt!’

  I snapped my violin case shut and stood up.

  ‘Please don’t be angry with me, Hans.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I protested, even though I was. ‘It’s just that what we are doing is so dangerous. If any of us get caught it means the People’s Court. The guillotine.’

  I noted the look of fear in Kurt’s eyes at this, and at that moment I was glad. I felt then he needed to be shocked into reality. I wish I hadn’t done that now.

  I left his apartment and made my way back home. As I crept upstairs the radio howled in the living room. A broadcast of a party rally, waves of applause like the drone of a swarm. I felt that I really didn’t understand people at all. I felt a lonely desire to get away, to be on my own on some wide and desolate plain.

  The following day I looked for Kurt at the university but I couldn’t find him. I wanted to talk with him, to apologise for losing my temper. Elsa Mühlberger was right: it was essential to find a way of making contact with more students willing to be part of a resistance network. I was thinking of the future, though I had grim forebodings about it.

  When I arrived at the Mühlbergers’ to deliver the message, I knew something was wrong. Their front door was open and I could hear strange voices coming from their apartment. I turned on my heel and headed back to the staircase but a man in a leather coat blocked my path.

  ‘Not so fast, son,’ he told me as he grabbed me by the arm. ‘I think you’d better come with me.’

  He pulled me along into the Mühlbergers’. Their flat was being ransacked, books pulled off the shelves, papers scattered everywhere. A tall, sad-eyed man stood in the corner watching. I was dragged over to him.

  ‘What do we have he
re, Krebs?’ the man asked in a soft voice.

  ‘Found him outside, sir.’

  ‘Inspector Glockner, Geheime Staatspolizei,’ he announced, showing his identity badge with a flourish. ‘Let me see your papers, young man.’

  I handed them to him.

  ‘And what is your relationship to Heinz and Elsa Mühlberger?’

  I explained about the violin lessons, holding up my case for him to see.

  ‘Open it. Ah, yes! What a beautiful instrument. Frau Mühlberger taught you, yes? You know that the Mühlbergers have been taken into protective custody? Hmm, why not play us something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A little demonstration. Something you’ve been learning.’

  I took the violin out and put it under my chin. I tightened the bow, tuned the strings. I felt sick.

  ‘Please,’ Inspector Glockner entreated with a smile.

  I played ‘Song of the Morning Star’ from Tannhaüser, an appropriate piece that I had up my sleeve for such an eventuality. I scraped the first notes badly. Then I tried to relax, remembering what Elsa Mühlberger had told me about not exerting too much control, of letting go of the bow action. As if any of it mattered. But fear had this strange effect, giving me just the right balance between concentration and surrender. I was in a trance, as the words of the aria whispered in my ear: like a portent of death, twilight shrouds the earth. The soul, which yearns for those heights, dreads to take its dark and awful flight. A star points the way out from the valley.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Glockner, when I finished. ‘Don’t you think that was wonderful, Krebs?’

  His henchman grunted. Glockner had gone to stand in the corner where the Mühlbergers had made the model farm for little Melchior. He beckoned me over.

  ‘Rather pretty, isn’t it?’ he said, picking up a model cow and holding it up to a mournful eye.

  The Gestapo had by now turned the Mühlbergers’ place upside down. Order remained only in the toyland they had lovingly constructed for their son. Perhaps they had made it for themselves, too. Knowing that they were doomed, they had regained a moment’s paradise, a tiny world hidden in the vast and cruel universe.

  ‘Did you know that the Mühlbergers were communists?’ Inspector Glockner demanded, his voice at once harsh and official.