by Otto de Kat
Lara’s silence was disturbing. She had let go of his wrist, and had put her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown. Hiding the hands in that way is to hide the mind. She wished he would stop talking, wished she had not heard right. She drew herself away from him and drifted, faster and faster, out of the room, out of her house, back into the snow, to the time when there was only a village, a breathtaking view, no future, no past, no time. Away from him as he held forth, piling one excuse on top of the other in his blinding fear for his daughter. Fear corrupts. No-one will know what I know, Lara, no-one sees what I see: my child at the hands of the Gestapo.
Lara’s shoulders said enough. The way she recoiled, between despair and outrage, between anguish and resignation. She knew that talking was not going to help, he had it all worked out, he had the whole chess game in his head, there was no way of getting through to him, not even for her. Or was there?
“Remember the Norwegian house at the Hunnenfluh?”
A voice from the light, an angel from the Berner Oberland. It sounded more like a statement than a question. What was that about, why did she mention that house? They had seen it and talked about it, a dream house, an unattainable Viking fantasy with small dragons guarding the drainpipes and brightly coloured ornaments on turrets and balconies, a work of art for the benefit of lone mountaineers, who would watch in wonder as the elfin occupants flitted from one window to the next. Imagine living there, Lara, with no-one to disturb us – he had said something like that to her once.
“I would have loved to go there every winter of our lives.”
He had heard what she said; I would have loved. No anger, no stridency, no hostility there, only finality. Lara had nothing more to say. He could see their Norwegian house sliding down the hillside. The rapid ebbing of a love that was hardly underway.
Chapter 18
Emma pressed Wapenaar’s doorbell a second time. In her impatience at finding every available wall covered with roses, she had dropped her bicycle on the ground. The wheel was still spinning when Wapenaar opened the door. They recognised each other immediately. He was delighted to see her, an opportunity at last to have a chat with the daughter of his good friend Verschuur. Was there anything he could do for her? Please come in, he would begin by making them a cup of coffee.
She was struck by the silence in the house. Where was his wife? The room he showed her into was a riot of cosiness, with lace doilies on the tables, an upright piano, walls covered in framed watercolours and photographs of gentlefolk in nineteenth-century poses. There were lamps with pastel-coloured shades, flower-filled vases, a fireplace with neatly stacked logs alongside, all of which she remarked without taking it in. She had no time to waste. She was afraid she was too late.
The days had passed in unbearable suspense and vacillation. She had not said anything to Carl. He had likewise avoided the subject. How odd not to breathe a word about what was going through your mind all day and all night. Carl Regendorf, on secondment to an organisation involved in Radio Free India: broadcasts of freedom fighters in folk costumes seeking to undermine the British Raj. Their leader, a dark-skinned Indian who had shaken hands with Ribbentrop during a press conference, was in good cheer and excellent health, loudspeaker at the ready for the rant against the British oppressor. Carl had been present, fascinated by the zealotry, but above all disillusioned by the banal distortions of the truth. Over at the ministry, secret meetings were being held all the time to discuss the impending massacre and how to inveigle a way into international acquiescence. Encroaching on the edges of a redrawn map of Europe was the dawn of a new, everlasting empire. Russia, Africa, India, it would not be long now.
As long as Trott stayed put, so would he, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to stick by his resolve. The hypocrisy had assumed such proportions that he took to dropping in at Trott’s office from time to time, to regale him with a mime show. Using a range of crazed grimaces and gesticulations, he imitated the antics of the regime’s top dogs and ridiculed the insanity of everyday reality. Trott was highly amused by this, and communicated his responses in basic sign language, mindful of any microphones that might be concealed in lamps or ceilings. It was resistance in miniature, a scuffle in a soap bubble. But it allowed them to breathe.
*
In the early morning of that Thursday, as every Thursday, the bells of the nearby church rang out. Practice runs by the carilloneur, who favoured a slow, penetrating rhythm. Emma loved hearing the peals that reminded her so strongly of her schooldays in Leeuwarden.
She had seen the sun slanting into her garden, she had wished her neighbour good morning when he put his hand up over the hedge, she had refreshed the date on Carl’s desk calendar: June 19. Another three days to go. Then she had shaken herself awake, wheeled out her bicycle. Carl had left for work long since. She would tell Wapenaar, the secret had become too heavy to bear. It seemed less and less likely that her father had done anything, because if he had he would have found some way of letting her know. No, something must have happened to make him decide against passing on the information. Could it be something to do with that girlfriend of his? Emma’s revulsion at her father’s infidelity had barely abated. And it had reopened an old issue. The unforeseen separation from her father and mother, the way she had been left behind at her grandparents’ home. Her father had promised that they would take her with them wherever they went, but it was a lie, he had broken his promise, and the hurt had not healed well. She was the offspring of diplomats, which made her homeless. That was how she was feeling these past days.
But Wapenaar would sound the alarm, she was certain. Telegrams would be sent all over the place via Sweden, the Russians would receive warning. It would be just in the nick of time, it had to be. The race against the clock loomed over her like an unbeatable monster of velocity. She pedalled with suppressed rage and fear, her legs and feet in constant, forceful motion. Emma covered the distance in half the time it had taken her before. The lanes she had lingered over then, fraught with indecision, now flew past. She was blind to them as she cycled past one landmark after another, turning left and right unerringly, and not reducing speed until she swerved into Wapenaar’s driveway, with pounding heart but scarcely out of breath.
He placed the coffee cup in front of her, and looked at her calmly.
“Emma Verschuur, no, I should say Mrs Regendorf, how are you? And your husband? Still at the Foreign Office?”
She nodded, came straight to the point, told him about the operation, the date, the reliability of her source: Carl.
She listened for sounds in the house that were not there. No footfalls, no creaking floorboards, no doors being opened or closed. Midges danced behind the windowpanes. Outside, the neighbours’ dog started barking.
Wapenaar sat facing her. Defendant and judge, in abeyance of the verdict. Surrounding her were Carl, Watse, Trott, her father and mother, all waiting with her. Then came his questions, the most amicable cross-examination you could imagine. At last someone who would do something, take action. But there was no verdict. Wapenaar thanked her, showed her out, raised his hand as she cycled away, followed her with his eyes.
The return journey through Grunewald to Dahlem was the worst. Emma shivered as though she had a fever. The verdict, if any, was hers to reach. The alert would course through the circuit of diplomats and politicians, coded messages would be placed on the desks of ambassadors: Operation Barbarossa, June 22. Who else knew about this in Moscow, or in Berlin, or in Berne, London, Washington and Ankara? Was it true, was it all about to begin, or was it an unexploded bomb, an airman’s signal high in the sky, was it Zero Hour, or perhaps not after all? The Swedes would have picked up the news somewhere, no, the Swiss, it came from a trustworthy source in Berlin. Who said that, let them come forward, we know nothing, is it a trap, a stab in the back, an act of despair?
How long before it reaches Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, how long before her name crops up, and Carl’s name – one week, two, a month perhaps?
A car was speeding along the lanes of Dahlem, with the all too familiar squeal of tyres taking sharp corners. Elbows jutting nonchalantly from the windows, shiny long coats with wide belts. The siren would not be switched off when they blocked the entrance with their squad car. There would be pounding on the door as the violence burst in on their lives, never to leave.
Emma cycled home in a cloud of fantasy and conjecture, and of bitter visions.
Chapter 19
Would you switch the wireless on, Matteous?
She had no idea of the time, could be morning, could be evening. Probably evening, she thought. Kate had been in bed with a high fever for the past three days. Matteous nursed her to the best of his ability, fetching glasses of water, laying damp cloths on her forehead, standing guard by the bedroom door. Everything was turned on its head: she in bed, he beside it. Kate talked in her sleep, sounding delirious. Matteous listened to her nocturnal ramblings, and waited. When she was awake she wanted to get out of bed, but could not. She had lost all power over her arms and legs. She had become the child of Matteous, who watched over her and rocked her cradle. Gone was her will and her courage, her body abided by its own rules. There was no way she could go to a minister, or to the Queen.
Churchill’s voice wafted through the room. In Kate’s head everything sounded as if it came from twice as far away, but the meaning was clear. She knew what he was announcing, she had known for the past fortnight. But she had not heard it said in this way, had never grasped the full portent of it as she did now, in the terse, half-mumbled, half-sung speech by the English prime minister. He was saying the same things she had said to Carl: they would all be wiped out, all those mothers and children, and those poor ragged peasants having to fight with their bare hands against a terrible war machine, it was sheer betrayal, it was the slaughter of a people taken completely by surprise.
The German armies were massed along a line stretching from the White Sea to the Black Sea, and their armoured divisions had attacked Russia. Bombs rained down upon the towns and villages, harvests were laid waste. The Nazis were after Russia’s oil.
Churchill’s words hammered in her head. He predicted that after Russia it would be the turn of China and India, where the lives and happiness of a thousand million human beings were now under threat. And then Kate heard him say: “I gave him warnings, I gave clear and precise warnings to Stalin of what was coming.” Kate glanced at Matteous, whose face remained impassive throughout.
I gave him warnings. So Oscar had gone to the English after all. He had listened to her – thank God for that. She smiled faintly and fell asleep again.
She had fallen violently ill from one day to the next, almost as if this was her last chance to make him stay just a little longer. An alibi for Matteous to put his plans on hold until she recovered. And of course he would do that for her, he would stay until further notice. Notice from the heartlands of Africa, from a nameless rubber plantation. A call from nobody in particular, but one that was heard and understood by Matteous.
The folded note he had given her bore his plan, set out in hieroglyphics. The words had come out in an instinctive, erratic scrawl, English and French sounds buried in a script resembling barbed wire, which Kate had difficulty reading. It must have taken him days to write. His farewell letter. The sadness welling up in her became conflated with her soaring temperature. She had already been shivering, her hand already shaking, when he had slipped her the note.
He had said that he would take care of her until she was well again. Then he would leave.
*
The summer began splendidly on Sunday, 22 June. Emma went into the garden, in answer to her private rollcall. It was eight o’clock, not a sound, only birdsong. Carl was asleep. He had not come home until dawn, having worked all night at the ministry. Emma had listened quietly when he told her of the attack, a sabre thrust deep in the flank of Russia. 3.8 million men had crossed the border, 150 divisions, Germans, Romanians and Finns, 2,000 aircraft, 600,000 motor vehicles, over 600,000 horses, 7,100 artillery guns, 3,350 tanks, over a distance of 2,900 kilometres, and all this at 03.15 hours sharp. He had read it out to her from a slip of paper.
“The gangsters.”
She stood in her garden, thinking of nothing in particular. There were no bombs exploding around her, no shots being fired. No tanks, no artillery. No grenades being tossed. Where was everybody? Just then the church bells began to ring, calling the village to worship as they did every Sunday, rain or shine, war or no war. Emma waited for the noise of a car speeding up the road. Better to be prepared.
But silence prevailed, and the sun shone as never before.
*
Oscar looked at his watch, as he had done throughout the night, hour after hour, until it was light enough for him to go outside. Not a soul about. Ensingerstrasse was a channel of emptiness, with more emptiness around the corner. At home he had heard the long-dreaded and long-avoided news on the German radio from Goebbels, speaking on behalf of the Idiot: “German people! National Socialists! Weighed down with heavy cares, condemned to months-long silence, the hour has now come when at last I can speak frankly.”
He had sat staring at the radio, and then tuned in to the B.B.C., where it was claimed that repeated warnings had been given to Stalin and the Russians. He did not believe it. Of course they hadn’t given out warnings, it was the last thing they would do. What better than to have Germany fighting on two fronts? It was to Britain’s advantage that Russia was now involved, and he had no doubt that Churchill was rejoicing. Would he come on the radio, Oscar wondered, and would Morton be with him?
He had not spoken again with Lara, but she was imprinted on his every movement. Returning from Fribourg he had even stood for a while across the street from the home of his Swedish colleague Henderson, thinking: if I ring the doorbell now I can give a last-minute warning, and who knows, throw a tiny spanner in the works of the Wehrmacht. He had not acted upon the thought.
Oscar wandered aimlessly on, away from the radio broadcast. The first early hikers, sturdily shod and bearing rucksacks, crossed his path.
OTTO DE KAT is the pen name of Dutch publisher, poet, novelist and critic Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. His highly acclaimed novels have been widely published in Europe, and Man on the Move was the winner of the Netherlands’ Halewijn Literature Prize.
INA RILKE is the prize-winning translator of books by Cees Nooteboom, W. F. Hermans, Erwin Mortier, Louis Couperus, Hella Haasse and Adriaan Van Dis.