Roots of Evil

by Sarah Rayne

  But what Alice had not known was that there were other ghosts in the world who might destroy far more than a fake identity. Ghosts who were eagle-talon cruel and who stalked nations and haunted entire generations, and ghosts who bore as their device an ancient, once-religious image, which they had arrogantly reversed in the service of an implacable regime…

  It was not until after Alraune became a success (Brigitte Helm was reported to be furious at this impudent annexing of her most-famous role) that Alice began to have the feeling that Viennese society was changing; that the gaiety was a little too hectic to be quite natural, and that the lights were burning a little too brightly. Afterwards she was to wonder if those days had held a touchstone moment – if there had been an hour or a day or a night when those faint scribblings on the air had formed into the patterns of augury, like the tea-leaves in old women’s cups, or the misted surface of a scryer’s glass…

  But surely she was not the only one who had sensed that the dangerous sinister ghosts were regrouping their forces and preparing to enter the world once again? For every major event in the world there were always people ready to nod wisely, and say, Oh, yes, we knew there was something wrong…We said so at the time…We had a feeling…Had those Cassandras sensed that a grisly chapter of history was being revived and mobilized so that it could march forward once more…? Had some of them glanced uneasily over the years to a time when the lights of an entire continent had gone out and when they had stayed out for four long years…?

  But everyone agreed that no government would allow another war to happen, and that after the Great War there would be no more conflict. Alice had only been eight years old on that November day in 1918; at the time she had not really understood the cheering and the celebrations, and the word ‘Armistice’ had meant nothing to her except that people had been shouting it joyfully in the streets. But she understood it now; she understood that the war to end all wars had come and gone, and that since that time the world had become safe.

  So forget this unease. Dress up in something startling, go to an outrageous party – better still, give an outrageous party! Order pink champagne, commission an extravagant gown from Schiaperelli, a flagon of perfume from Chanel…

  And close your ears to the tales of injustice and oppression said to be rife under that ridiculous, vulgar little man in Germany, and remember that Vienna is a self-governing state, self-contained, perfectly safe even if the rest of Europe runs mad. Ignore the stories about the suppression of free speech, about the censorship of letters, about the burning of books thought to preach anti-Nazi propaganda – yes, and ignore the alarmists who warn that people who burn books may end in burning men, and who whisper dreadful things about Göering’s labour camps…Above all, close your ears to the accounts of the spies who prowl the streets, seeking out people with Jewish blood…

  Jewish blood. Conrad. For a moment the two things interlocked grimly in her mind, and as if the interlocking was a yeast ingredient that had been quietly fermenting in wine or bread, the danger and the darkness suddenly felt much closer.

  Conrad had not been faithful to Alice, of course; probably he was congenitally incapable of being faithful to any woman. He was handsome and charismatic, and possessed enough charm and sexual energy to lure an abbess into bed and then take on the rest of the convent afterwards.

  The first time Alice discovered that he had spent a weekend with a little Russian singer, she had hurled herself on to the bed and sobbed all night. This did nothing but give her a pounding headache and a swollen face next morning.

  The second time (a wickedly gamine Parisienne mannequin), she had not hurled herself on to the bed; instead she had hurled crockery, aiming most of it at Conrad, and then stormed out of his rooms. This time he had followed her, and there had been a grand reconciliation. He had put a gramophone record of Wagner’s Tannhäuser on – he adored making love to music – and they had spent a delirious afternoon in bed, staying there until the summer evening sunshine streamed into the bedroom, both of them wine-flown by then, both riotously trying to time orgasms to the swelling crescendos of the music.

  So, Alice thought afterwards, tears and vapours get you nowhere. Tantrums and smashed crockery do. So much for polite behaviour and ladylike restraint.

  It was a gratifying discovery, but what was even more gratifying was finding that it was perfectly possible to embark on the occasional bedroom adventure on one’s own account, and to return to Conrad afterwards. These escapades were fun, but what was even more fun was that they always made Conrad violently jealous. Alice took care to make sure he always knew where she had been on those occasions, although not who she had been with, not after the time he had challenged the other man to a duel. (‘I will meet you in the village of Klosterneuberg overlooking the city,’ hissed Conrad, with gleeful relish at such drama. ‘Be there at the break of dawn, and I will kill you and throw your body into the Vienna Woods for the bears to eat.’)

  I believe, thought Alice, stepping in to prevent the duel, that I’ve turned into a vamp. Imagine that. One day my children – if I have any – might hear about all this, and perhaps they will enjoy the drama of it, as Conrad does, or perhaps they will sigh and say that Mamma was really too outrageous for words when she was young.

  Children…

  She had not intended that there should be any children at all, but a daughter was born just over six years after that amazing night at the State Opera House. Conrad’s, of course, people said, smiling a little slyly, and the baroness had smiled back, apparently unruffled.

  One or two people wondered whether the outrageous couple might now marry – a child ought to have a proper father, after all – and one or two of them asked the question openly. Lucretia simply laughed at such a preposterous idea – boringly conventional! – and did so loudly enough to cover the fact that she would have dearly liked to be married to Conrad.

  But marriage or not, Conrad was completely charmed with his small daughter. He had been immersed in ancient music at the time, and he had suggested naming the child Deborah after the Old Testament prophetess who had stirred up Barak to march against Sisera. Alice liked the name, and she liked Conrad’s description of Deborah’s song, which had been sung on the occasion of Israel’s victory, and which he said was one of the oldest Hebrew compositions. ‘But one day I shall compose a new variation of it,’ he announced, with that blend of arrogance and naïve enthusiasm that was attractive and infuriating by turns. ‘When I have finished writing music for films, I shall compose a piece of music that will be called Deborah’s Song, and everyone will know it is for my beautiful daughter. And a little,’ he added, ‘for her even more beautiful mamma.’

  Alice wondered if Deborah would grow up hearing the stories about her wanton mother and be shocked. She supposed her grandchildren – if ever she had any – would hear the stories of their grandmother’s wild and tempestuous youth, and regard her with disbelieving fascination.

  Grandchildren. I shall never be old enough to have grandchildren! I shall stay like this, caught in this marvellous world of films and music and lovers – of money and good clothes and jewellery and adulation – and if I do grow old, I shall not let the world see it.

  But if one day I do have to be old, I shall make sure it is a dazzling oldness, and I shall make sure it is a disgraceful and scandalous oldness as well!

  By the time Deborah was born, Alice had made three films, and she had seen the acting of the real stars of the screen – people such as John Barrymore and Erich von Stroheim, Conrad Veidt and Marlene Dietrich. She knew perfectly well that despite the adulation she received she was not in their league, and she was certainly not in the same league as Dietrich, with her smouldering eyes and her remarkable ice-over-fire quality. But Alice thought that Lucretia looked all right on the screen and she thought she could convey most of the emotions, although she knew, deep down, that she was relying on personality and on her own legend rather than on acting ability.

  She always ga
ve of her best on film sets; that was her early training, of course, the training that had instilled into her that if you were paid for a service – whether it was sewing a torn hem or scrubbing a sink, or playing a part in a film – you gave your employer what he had paid for. For being ravished by a sheikh, for dying bravely and aristocratically on the scaffold, for heading armies and sacking cities and defying tyrants. For being a King in Babylon, and making profane and forbidden love to a Christian slave…

  And really, thought Alice, for a jumped-up parlourmaid with a false name, I’m doing rather well.

  Conrad, who adored his small daughter, had written the promised music for her, but it was not until an early summer night in 1938, with Deborah three years old, that the first public performance took place. It would be a glittering occasion, said Conrad happily. People from several continents would flock to hear his music, and he would have a spectacular success, and it would all be because of his enchanting daughter. Lucretia would occupy the stage-box for the occasion, and she would be wearing something dazzlingly beautiful.

  ‘I shall be dazzlingly bankrupt at this rate,’ said Alice, but made expeditions to the couture houses of Lanvin and Worth.

  On the night of the concert it felt wrong to leave the sturdy, bright-eyed toddler in the care of the nurse. Alice, who had returned to filming when Deborah was six months old, and who was perfectly accustomed to long absences from the baby and had not considered herself particularly maternal anyway, found herself snatching the child up in her arms and covering the small flower-like face with kisses.

  ‘This ought to be your night, Deborah,’ said Alice to the child. ‘It’s your very own piece of music that’s going to be played, and you should be there, listening to it, dressed up in a silk frock with ribbons in your hair. One day your papa will play for you in a concert hall, though, I promise you he will.’

  ‘She’ll be perfectly all right with me, madame,’ said the nurse, a rather stolid Dutchwoman.

  ‘Yes, I know she will.’

  Alice had commissioned a backless evening gown of jade green for the concert, and over it she draped a huge black-and-jade-striped silk shawl, which enveloped her almost to the ankles. Her hair was threaded with strands of jet studded with tiny glowing emeralds, and on her feet were green satin shoes with delicate four-inch heels. They were impossibly impractical, but she would not need to walk far in them. Cab to theatre foyer, foyer to stage-box, perhaps a sip or two of champagne in the crush bar at the interval, supper somewhere afterwards with Conrad and a dozen or so guests. And then a cab home. It did not, therefore, much matter if she was wearing four-inch heels, or five-inch heels, or shoes made of paper, or if she was wearing no shoes at all. She had enamelled her toenails silver to match her fingernails, and fastened a silk chain around one ankle.

  At a time when most women were starting to wear their hair in rolls and elaborate swirls, and gilt hairnets for the evening, Alice had retained her smooth sleek blackbird-wing style. It was cut for her by a glossily fashionable French hairdresser on the Ringstrasse, but she dealt with the colouring of it by herself and in private – imagine if a story got out that Lucretia von Wolff, the infamous sable-haired temptress, actually dyed her hair! And it was rather amusing to don a drab disguise – to become a ladies’ maid again – and go into the small anonymous shops on Vienna’s outskirts to buy the hair-dye.

  The concert hall was filled with glitteringly dressed people, and there was a pleasant buzz of expectation in the air. The baroness was escorted to the stage-box, which was sufficiently near to the platform for most of the audience to see her, and which faced the gleaming Bechstein. (‘I shall not look up at you during the performance,’ Conrad had explained seriously. ‘Because once I begin to play, I shall not know about my surroundings at all.’)

  But he blew her a kiss when he came on to the platform, and Lucretia gave him the now-famous cat-smile and watched him sit down at the piano, flinging the tails of his evening coat impatiently behind him. He removed the heavy gold cufflinks he wore and the onyx signet ring, and laid them on the side of the keyboard. He looked handsome and patrician, and the sharp formality of the white tie and tails suited him.

  The audience were silent now, waiting. Some of them would be here purely because it was an Occasion and one must be seen at such things, but a good number would have come because they were genuinely interested in music and because they admired Conrad Kline and wanted to hear his new piano concerto.

  Conrad was allowing the anticipation to stretch out, adjusting the music stand which did not need adjusting, flexing his fingers which were more supple than saplings anyway, frowning at an imagined speck of dust on the Bechstein’s gleaming surface. He would judge the moment absolutely precisely, of course, because he would know the exact second to signal to the conductor that he was ready, and then he would bring his hands down on the keys, and his marvellous music would flood the auditorium. Alice, who had shared a very small part of Conrad’s agonies throughout the composing of Deborah’s Song, and who found it beautiful and moving, prayed that the audience would find it so. Conrad would be like a hurt child if they were less than wildly enthusiastic.

  He lifted his eyes from the keyboard, and met the waiting eyes of the conductor. And then into the charged silence, into the thrumming expectant atmosphere, explosively and frighteningly came the sounds of the outer doors being flung open, and of booted feet marching across the foyer.

  Impassive-faced men, wearing the sharply efficient uniform of Göering’s Staatspolizei, erupted into the auditorium and ranged themselves along the walls. As the audience rose bewilderedly to its feet, and as women began to cry out in fear and clutch their escorts’ arms, four of the men mounted the platform and surrounded Conrad. He leapt to his feet at once, and Alice heard him say, ‘This is an outrage! How dare you—’ and then one of the uniformed men who seemed to be the leader said, in machine-gun German, ‘We dare anything we wish, Herr Kline. The soldiers of the Schutzstaffeln have today marched into your city. Vienna is no longer a congress, and from today, you are all part of Germany.’ A gasp stirred the audience, and Alice felt, as if it was a solid thing, the fear start to fill up the auditorium.

  The conductor was staring at the soldiers, and even from here Alice could see the horror in his face. He said, ‘Vienna part of Germany—’

  Alice did not wait to hear the reply. She was already out of the stage box, running along the corridors that would bring her to the ground floor and the main part of the theatre, cursing the ridiculous shoes that had been so elegantly flattering but that now felt like stilts. She reached the head of the stairs and paused, impatiently tearing the shoes off, and then running on in her stockinged feet, heedless of the uncarpeted floors, because even if she tore her feet to shreds she must get to Conrad.

  She had just started down the last curve of the stair, and she could see the deserted foyer below. But as she hesitated, the auditorium doors were pushed open and the SS soldiers appeared with Conrad, forcing him towards the street. The auditorium doors closed again, and Alice understood that the other officers were still guarding the audience and the orchestra. Until Conrad was out of the way?

  The soldiers were holding Conrad firmly, but he was fighting them every inch of the way. His eyes were blazing and his black hair had become dishevelled in the struggle so that it fell over his forehead in the way it did when he was working. He automatically tried to put up a hand to brush it back in the familiar impatient gesture, but the soldiers snatched his arms and pinioned them to his sides. The pettiness of this sent rage slicing through Alice’s entire body and her hands clenched involuntarily into fists. She would have liked to tear out the men’s throats with her enamelled nails, but she stayed where she was, listening intently, but pressing back against the wall so as not to be seen.

  Conrad said angrily, ‘Where are you taking me? What is this about?’

  ‘You are listed as an enemy of Germany, Herr Kline.’ This time Alice caught a faint note of
contempt under the steely voice.

  ‘That is ridiculous! I have no interest in your politics!’

  The man who Alice had thought was the leader regarded Conrad for a moment. ‘You are half Russian,’ he said, at last. ‘You do not deny that?’

  ‘Certainly I do not deny it. My father was Russian,’ said Conrad haughtily, and even at such a confused and desperate moment he managed to conjure up old imperialism. ‘And my mother was from Salzburg.’

  ‘Your father was a Russian Jew,’ said the man coldly. ‘Therefore you are half a Jew. And you write and perform the music of the Jewish people.’

  A cold fear began to close around Alice. The music of the Jewish people. Deborah’s Song! That’s what he means. But surely music isn’t something that the Nazi Party would care about? Surely they would not arrest a man for writing music? Yes, but they burn books believed to spread anti-German sentiments, said her mind. They confiscate property and listen in to telephone calls.

  ‘We are pledged to the Führer’s vow that the security of Germany will be guaranteed,’ the man was saying. ‘And we are pledged, as well, to ensure that never again will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans be kindled from the interior or through emissaries from outside.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Conrad angrily. ‘I’m not a revolutionary. This is the most fantastical nonsense I have ever heard.’

  ‘We are not mad. We obey orders, and we are sworn to be a merciless sword of justice to all those forces who threaten the heart of Europe and who threaten Germany,’ said the man, and Alice had the impression that he was repeating something learned by rote. ‘Jew,’ he said, and this time he made the word an insult. Alice saw him lean forward and spit in Conrad’s face.

  Conrad flinched, but he glared at the man in fury. ‘You are all madmen,’ he said. ‘And your Führer is a postulating, prancing lunatic!’