The Eye of the Abyss - [Franz Schmidt 01]

by Marshall Browne

  Cigarette alight at last, Wagner carelessly tossed the packet on the table, took a deep swallow of beer, and gave Schmidt an annoyed, yet acute, glance.

  ‘Well, my silent friend. I think we can say old Wertheim’s finally lost his marbles. Something’s cracked. My father said our esteemed General-Director was two-faced in his financial philosophy. That he’d dual identities. Those cautionary speeches of his inside the bank: “Dear colleagues, our prime duty to our clients is to maintain the real value of their capital. It’s excellent to increase it, however, never forget the prime duty.’” Schmidt smiled. Wagner had caught the G-D’s precise tenor. ‘In his private finances he’s frequently been reckless, but it’s been well concealed. You must have an idea of this, Franz?’

  ‘What’s your point?’ Schmidt asked, evenly. He was thinking: Yes, I do have. But even with Wagner he wasn’t accustomed to speak of Herr Wertheim with such familiarity.

  ‘The point, my dear, is today he rubbed out that borderline.’ Wagner drew on his cigarette, and stared at his colleague. Sensing an interlude a waiter, knowing his customer, brought more beer.

  Schmidt thought: Yes, but why? What’s behind it? He was uneasy but at a different level from Wagner.

  ‘Well, what does our iced-water-for-blood auditor think?’ Wagner’s wide mouth drooped into a lopsided grin, and the flesh of his face became flaccid. Suddenly he looked aged. He was clearly irritated and worried. Schmidt recalled how his colleague had said to him several times: Jesus Christ! Look at you, never drunk, nails always immaculate - were, even as a junior clerk when the Chief Clerk lined us up for inspection each morning. You’re a bloody cameo of a man, not a gram of frivolity, do you ever open up even to your wife? Now Wagner drew on his cigarette, smiled sceptically, possibly at the fate which had dealt him this anonymous, cipher-like friend.

  ‘Heinrich, I’m not ready to talk,’ said Schmidt. ‘Let’s keep it under observation. As a nation we’ve been brought out of difficult times on to a new course. Obviously there’ve been negative events. Will the progress wash them away? We’ll see. You’re quick, I’m slower, and I’m reserving my position.’

  ‘Jesus, you speak like this while that madman rants away in Berlin! While he hoodwinks the stupid British and French leaders!’

  Schmidt turned his head quickly and put a hand up to his false eye. ‘Take care,’ he said quietly.

  Wagner shrugged, swallowed a draught of beer, lifted his strained face to the church steeple. He said tersely: ‘Why don’t you look up from that damned underworld of green ink, have a look at the real world? Listen, if I take your remarks at face value, I say: Hurry up. Decide where you stand. It shouldn’t be too hard, should it, after what the bastards did to you?’

  Schmidt thought: Why did I make that weak-kneed little speech? Better to have said nothing, as usual. Yet he’d felt impelled to speak along those lines. A kind of camouflage? In aid of what?

  It was chilly, and this would be the last time they’d sit outside. An inner voice told him: ‘Go home to your wife and daughter, forget the auditing life, today’s events - at least for tonight.’

  They finished their beer.

  Wagner said, ‘I’m going to listen to Mozart, my maid’ll have soup ready. Two consolations to end an unnerving day. Going home sober.’ He grinned at his colleague. Schmidt was more the good servant of the bank than he was. Nonetheless, something wasn’t ringing true about him tonight.

  A spindle-legged man in a long black overcoat and a black hat with a whitish face hurried past, dived into the gloom - an impressionistic blur. The Wertheim men were gripped by his tension. Instantly Schmidt recalled the haggard face of the shopkeeper he’d seen that morning.

  Wagner shook his head. ‘Like a rat into a drainpipe.’

  The auditor took the tram out to his suburb, watching the streets, frowning over Wagner. His colleague claimed he was a follower of Calvinist doctrines, but he wasn’t the calm type. From now on he must curb his tongue. Herr Wertheim might or mightn’t have ‘lost his marbles’ but he’d selected this new route and thus Wagner was going to take it - as were they all. In a kind of metallic wardance exaggerated by its emptiness, the tramcar rattled from the shut-down finance district into the city’s heart, which was blazing with electric light. Cafe life unrolled in a procession of animated showcases thronged with patrons. The cinemas were full. A huge billboard advertised the idolised Hans Albers, in Gold. Helga kept up with the latest cinema. They’d agreed they both preferred foreign films, even the B-grade Hollywoods, to the monotonous, propagandist offerings of the Third Reich. Surprising his wife, Schmidt liked the Westerns.

  He brooded on the scene, and a memory of the district in 1934 came: dead-spirited as a strike-bound town. No strikes these days, secure jobs everywhere.

  ‘It’s been an interesting day,’ Schmidt said to his wife. He spoke with a formality he sometimes regretted, but couldn’t break. The maid had cleared the dinner table. He told Helga of the day’s momentous event. He rarely discussed bank business, ran his life in compartments. She listened, blonde hair falling in a loose wave over her face, dark-blue eyes brilliant and intense, her lips making continuous small flexing movements.

  You are beautiful tonight, he wanted to tell her, but the world went on and he said, ‘A Nazi is to come in.’

  ‘Oh? I suppose it’s a great coup for Herr Wertheim?’

  ‘It can be looked at like that.’

  ‘How else?’

  He gave her a look. ‘Wertheims has always kept out of politics. This is a radically new direction. According to Wagner a radically wrong direction.’

  She pondered this. By upbringing she was thoroughly domesticated, thrived in the role, though her parents had sent her to Heidelberg to study the arts. She did read the Berliner Tageblatt, listened to the wireless, knew more than her husband about the reported affairs of the nation, and passed him pieces of information.

  He was feasting his eye on her. The loss of his other eye had shocked her. She’d been embittered, but seemed to have come to terms with it now. Out of the blue, he remembered the women in the crowd as the Fuehrer rode through the city in September: yearning faces. To shock him, Wagner had said: ‘Not a woman there with a dry pussy.’ Had he forgotten Helga was present?

  He sipped his coffee, put down his cup. She’d been watching him as though charting his thoughts. Her eyes were fond, but questioning.

  ‘Politics, Franz? Surely it’s banking business? Where’s the dilemma?’

  ‘You may be right. Though Wagner’s very upset.’

  ‘Oh, not Wagner again.’

  She found Wagner too complex, too volatile for analysis — an irritating subject. She didn’t approve of his bachelorhood. Nor would the Nazis. Schmidt smiled slightly. In contrast, she had this unworldly husband to face up to. He did live too much of an inner life, he knew, without any intention of changing it.

  After the meal he went to his small study, which was mainly furnished with pieces of his father’s, those his mother had so far released from her large apartment in an inner suburb. On the wall above his desk was a very old print of Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil — a wedding gift from his father. He’d felt there’d been a special motive behind the gift. Grimly, watchfully, the knight rode through perilous times, a dangerous landscape. Had his father’s ancestor knight of the Teutonic Order resembled Dürer’s? Engulfed by the silence, he dropped into meditation, and didn’t pick up his Municipal Library research trails on the Teutonic Order, as this afternoon he’d not picked up those of his audits.

  He left the study. He stood in Trudi’s doorway listening for the tiny, efficient breathing. The darkish shapes of an orchestra of toys surrounded her. Could a dream transport her to anywhere more perfect than her everyday dominion?

  All quiet on the Western Front ... he knew his colleagues, even his loyal Helga, considered he’d no sense of humour. He went on to the dressing room, and heard Helga moving in their bedroom. He’d told her of the new painti
ng on Herr Wertheims wall. ‘Possibly Klimt, from Vienna,’ she’d murmured.

  Now for it. He took a glass and a bottle to the bathroom and mixed a salt solution. He bent his head, and expelled the glass eye into his palm. It shot out like a musket ball, he caught it adroitly. Better at this now. Carefully, holding his head back, he dribbled the solution into the socket, dabbed it with cotton-wool. In a fresh glass of solution he washed the prosthesis. ‘A perfect match,’ Professor Hesse had said. He did this each week, and hadn’t let Trudi into the secret. He concentrated on the tricky bit of getting it back in straight.

  Changed into pyjamas, he stood at the bedroom window hearing Helga now in the bathroom. The window was open onto the tiny, iron-railed balcony. The full-grown chestnut trees whispered in the breeze. In a month there’d be only a restless dry scraping. Through a gap in the foliage he could see the street corner. A motor car drifted past, its headlights reflected on the canopy of dying leaves. The corner was deserted.

  He must have blinked; now several uniformed men stood there. It was as though a film image had been thrown on the stone wall. Others came around the corner, and heel-clicking and heiling broke out — low-key, like a kind of sinister shadow-play.

  They were gone.

  He got into bed and lay staring at the ceiling. Yes, the filter of distance was going to be removed at work as swiftly as when they’d whipped his eye out. Fräulein Dressler stepped into his mind, the finest details of her face, her figure, her aura of total control and efficiency; the penetrative, gold-flecked eyes. The last, strange look as he’d left Herr Wertheim’s room.

  ~ * ~

  3

  O

  N OCTOBER 13 on the 7.30 am express, Director Schloss, Otto Wertheim, the general-director’s nephew, and two senior clerks from the trust department travelled to Berlin. A pair of the bank’s uniformed messengers, carrying revolvers, were in attendance — as was Schmidt. The express sped across a black and white checked landscape emitting urgent wails, and the auditor felt that the solemn party, the whole enterprise, had a tone of melodrama; it seemed unreal that these ordinary people with whom he was so familiar were engaged in a mission of national importance.

  From the station, they went in two taxis to the famous commercial bank on the Unter den Linden. They gathered beneath a high stone portal encrusted with an ornate clock. Schloss consulted his pocket-watch: ten o’clock precisely. He nodded, and they filed through the revolving door. Uniformed officials with scrutinising eyes were waiting. The visitors were conducted across an expanse of marble suddenly resonant with their footsteps, then by a lift down to a subterranean forest of gleaming steel. Another silent group, sober-suited, stony-faced, with tight white lips, stood guard around a long table upon which were ranked stacks of Reich bonds. Director Schloss inclined his massive, silvered head in a formal bow, shook hands with his opposite number, and presented his credentials.

  The reception was frosty yet correct. The Berliners were still in shock. Schmidt imagined the bitter recriminations flying back and forth in the famous bank. However, they’d retained the clearing accounts and probably management had told the board that these provincials would botch it, and they’d have the lot back. Even so, it was humiliating. And unnerving — to the extent that no-one knew what the NSDAP was up to.

  The Wertheim men began ticking off the bonds against their lists. Even Otto Wertheim kept quiet, taking on himself the verification of the payment warrants for the investment cash accounts. Schmidt had noted the bulge under the young director’s right arm, the same as the messengers’. He smiled to himself. It would’ve drawn Wagner’s caustic wit: he loathed Otto.

  In less than an hour the procedures were completed, and leather satchels packed with the bonds were chained to the messengers’ wrists. The Wertheim party route-marched back across the marble. To Schmidt’s ears, their footfalls had a triumphant ring.

  They returned to the station. In their reserved compartment, Schloss, whose manner was normally as frozen as his Baltic homeland in winter, cracked a joke. This unprecedented event caused an outburst of hilarity; even Schmidt smiled at the witticism. It had crystallised their relief. Schloss went up a notch in his opinion.

  Otto sneered, ‘We’ve cooked their goose!’

  ‘Quite,’ Schloss said drily. He consulted his watch. ‘I will go to telephone the General-Director before we depart.’

  A stranger waited in Herr Wertheim’s anteroom with an air of impatience and nerves, a tall, wide-shouldered, handsome man with penetrative yet restless eyes. He ignored the pristine newspapers on a side table as he paced up and down. The Wertheim case clock showed a few minutes to noon. Frowning, he consulted his watch. He was in his mid-thirties, and wore an expensive suit shaped modishly at the waist, with the Nazi badge in the high-cut lapel. He exuded physical power plus the authoritative, brash confidence of the Party — a heady mix in the evolving Third Reich. Yet in part it was a façade; like many of his colleagues he was less confident, more subtle than he appeared.

  When Fräulein Dressler informed the Nazi the general-director would be only a few minutes more, he stopped his pacing, and turned his eyes on her, as if his thoughts, his air of impatience, had been suspended. He appeared to recognise something in her which surprised him. His gaze intensified, taking in her every centimetre.

  Fräulein Dressler didn’t blush easily, but under this iron-hard appraisal her face reddened. A buzzer sounded, breaking the spell. Thank God! she thought. The Nazi nodded to himself, turned about and entered the inner sanctum.

  ‘Welcome to Wertheims, Herr Dietrich.’ The general-director smiled urbanely as they shook hands. ‘I’ve heard from Berlin. Our party is on its way back. Everything is in order.’ Dietrich also smiled, revealing large, yellow teeth. ‘Very good, Herr General-Director.’ He regarded Wertheim with polite curiosity. Here was the doyen of bankers in this city, but he’d never heard of him until his briefing in Berlin yesterday. He added, ‘May it be a fruitful partnership.’

  Wertheim nodded pleasantly. He perfectly understood the young Party functionary’s situation: he was vested with power and authority, but needed to fit it into this unique situation with some delicacy. Quite difficult for a Nazi. He thought: curious, the way his eyes move.

  ‘A room is ready for you. I hope it’s satisfactory’ - said with a flutter of bluish fingers.

  The Nazi bowed cautiously. A few moments in Herr Wertheims presence and he’d begun to wonder what he was getting into; he’d had a brief experience of directors in the commercial bank in Berlin, but this refined man seemed out of another mould entirely.

  The Nazi was to be an ex-officio director of the bank; the Party required one of their own on the scene to oversee its interests. This was an unprecedented arrangement for Wertheims. Interlopers of any kind were not welcome here, and Wertheim had drawn deeply on his pragmatism to accept it. He said, ‘Doubtless, you have your instructions. I won’t detain you. Please join me here at five to meet our directors and receive a more formal welcome.’

  Dietrich left, passing Fräulein Dressler without a glance.

  Herr Wertheim sat quite still, savouring the occasion.

  A few minutes after 3.00 pm, Schmidt’s first meeting with the Nazi director took place. He returned from Berlin somewhat chilled, and entered his warm office. A messenger appeared to warn him that a Herr Dietrich was on his way to see him. Fortunately, the auditor had just read the memorandum waiting on his desk notifying senior staff of Dietrich’s existence.

  Moments later the Nazi functionary arrived in the doorway, filling it. He shot a glance into the room, then concentrated on Schmidt, who’d stood up. The Nazi inspected the respectful auditor’s face — seemingly every pore and blemish — as he had Fräulein Dressler’s.

  Schmidt calmly met the interrogative eyes, though a feeling akin to vertigo had come upon him.

  ‘I am Dietrich.’

  The Nazi stepped forward and a big hand shot out, and gripped the auditor’s.

&nb
sp; ‘Sir, I’m Herr Schmidt, chief auditor.’

  ‘Well, Schmidt, we’re to work together. The Party requires everything to run smoothly, I’m here to make sure it does.’ Abruptly he hoisted his haunch on to the edge of the desk, and casually commenced swinging a heavy leg back and forth. Schmidt was startled; it was as though the man had staked a claim. However, he looked at the functionary as though such behaviour was quite normal at Wertheims.