A War of Flowers (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  ‘I’m sure your diaries would be of interest to a lot of people.’

  ‘Exactly. It takes a certain skill to write a diary. I treat mine as a work of literary art – I like to include observations, detail and colour. It gives texture to history, I think.’

  Sometimes, his ambition still amazed her. Not content with directing the thoughts of an entire nation through their newspapers and radio programmes and horoscopes, Goebbels wanted to direct posterity too. His unseen editorial hand would live on through his diary, editing history the way he wanted it.

  ‘Some people see their diaries as a kind of snivelling receptacle for every little woe, but that never reads well. Posterity doesn’t want to know about that. I always think there are some diaries that should be preserved in a vault and others that should never see the light of day.’ He nodded briefly.

  ‘I’ll say goodnight.’

  Clara was longing to find Rupert, but as she threaded back through the crowd there was no sign of him. He had definitely been there earlier, talking to the American journalists, but he must have gone. As she left herself, the band struck up a familiar tune, the hit song that she had heard in Paris.

  ‘J’attendrai, le jour et la nuit, j’attendrai toujours ton retour.’

  I shall wait for your return. Sometimes, Clara felt as though she had been waiting for something for years, yet she was still not quite sure what it was.

  Rupert plucked another glass from a passing tray and leant against the bar. He had already been there for an hour and the initial effects of the alcohol were wearing off, leaving only a light nausea and the habitual sense of doom. His brain was foggier than the Spree in November and the usual brass band was marching through his head. He wished he had never come. He has missed the chance of talking to Clara. He had seen the limping figure of the Propaganda Minister approach her, and knew better than to draw attention to himself, and then he saw the two of them disappear from the room before he had had the opportunity to say what he wanted to tell her.

  The news from London, that Chamberlain had capitulated to Hitler’s demands over the Sudetenland, made him feel sick. He laughed to himself as he remembered Lord Halifax’s faux pas on meeting Hitler at the Berghof last year – how he had taken the diminutive man in the black coat for a servant and almost handed him his coat, before realizing in the nick of time that he was the Führer of Germany. Yet now Chamberlain had mistaken the Führer in a far more fatal fashion. People in London were saying that war had been averted. Reginald Winstanley had no interest at all in Hitler’s designs on eastern Europe, though it was clear to Rupert that war was more certain than ever.

  He thought of his daily frustrations, the distance between what he had hoped for and what he had achieved. The things he believed in – a certain kind of Englishness, a resilience, a tendency to laugh at authority, a quiet determination of the sort that Leo possessed – what was it worth? He wished he had not asked Clara to intercede with her father now because his days in Berlin were numbered, anyone could see that.

  His friend Melcher approached, accompanied by a pink-faced Obersturmbannführer with a poker up his arse.

  ‘Hello, Rupert. Herr Freiburg here has been explaining to me how the Jews are secretly running the world.’

  ‘I wish they would.’

  The Obersturmbannführer frowned at Rupert for a moment, then stubbed out his cigarette as though grinding it into bare flesh, and turned on his immaculately polished heel.

  ‘They’d make a better job of it than the National Socialists,’ added Rupert, to his retreating back.

  Melcher was regarding him with wry admiration.

  ‘Sometimes, Allingham, I think you actually want to be on the next train out of here.’

  ‘I have that in common with much of the population of Berlin.’

  ‘I can’t understand you. You’re in on the biggest story in Europe and you give them every excuse to get rid of you.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m just making up for our Mr Chamberlain.’

  ‘You mean the peace-maker? Our office is full of admiration for the way Chamberlain handled those negotiations. It’s just been decided that Adolf Hitler will be Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1938.’

  ‘Would that be for tearing up the Treaty of Versailles, rearming Germany to the teeth or persecuting the Jews?’

  ‘Mostly for his handling of the Anschluss. A war of flowers, they’re calling it.’

  ‘Ah yes. Herr Hitler, the patron saint of florists,’ Rupert observed. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t interest them to know that he also recently referred to the United States as a Jewish rubbish heap?’

  ‘Probably not. The thing is, there are certain people in the States who would agree with that. Like those Hollywood chaps over there. They’re busy patching up a Nazi-Hollywood pact. They’re happy to see Jewish employees fired in their German studios. They let the German censors dictate cuts to their films in every respect. Well, almost every respect – American audiences do need a happy ending.’

  ‘Not something that’s ever troubled the Nazis.’

  ‘And besides, Herr Hitler has promised to stop at the Sudetenland.’

  ‘Hadn’t you noticed, Melcher? Hitler doesn’t keep his promises. It’s only his threats he keeps.’

  ‘You going to write that?’

  ‘Much good it would do. Hitler could spell out his intentions in giant neon letters and hang it all the way down Friedrichstrasse and my editor would say it’s a matter of debate.’

  Hearing his voice in his own head like a worn-out record he paused.

  ‘By the way, I saw Chuck Lewis earlier. I thought he’d done a bunk?’

  ‘Ah. That was a case of cherchez la femme. Turns out he was due to meet some woman in Lisbon but she never arrived. Same old story.’

  Rupert cocked his head towards Goebbels, who was making a grand tour of the room, bidding farewell to the female guests with hand-kisses as Magda stood by.

  ‘How’s our Minister’s own love story?’

  ‘You heard he tried to get Magda to agree to a ménage à trois?’

  ‘Sounds a little Parisian. I thought we were supposed to be shunning all things French?’

  ‘Hitler thought the same. Magda informed the Führer and now Goebbels is in the doghouse. He’s furious about losing his status with his beloved boss. Apparently he’s determined to do something to regain his popularity.’

  ‘Something nasty, I assume.’

  ‘Another attack on the Jews, probably.’

  ‘So if Joseph unleashes one of his pogroms Magda only has herself to blame.’

  ‘Here’s another thing.’

  Melcher leaned closer.

  ‘Apparently Himmler has been taking full advantage of Goebbels’ predicament. He’s been compiling a list of actresses who have received advances of a sexual nature from the Propaganda Minister. His men are conducting interviews with these ladies at the Lichterfelde Barracks and getting together a dossier.’

  ‘A dossier? The Reichsführer-SS is compiling a dossier against the Propaganda Minister? What for?’

  ‘Bedtime reading for the Führer, presumably, if Goebbels puts another crippled foot wrong. Hitler hates sexual impropriety.’

  ‘It beggars belief.’

  ‘Oh, they’re all at it. Goering hates Goebbels, Himmler despises the pair of them. It’s a miracle they can focus on the international situation considering the number of internal wars they’ve got going on in the Party.’

  ‘Any idea when Himmler plans to present this dossier?’ Rupert asked.

  ‘Not just yet. He’s still assembling the evidence. Keeping his powder dry, and waiting for the right moment to pounce.’

  Rupert shook his head.

  ‘You have to hand it to them.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rupert noticed Obersturmbannführer Freiburg approaching with two guards.

  ‘It is required for you to leave immediately.’

  The guards took him under each arm and Rupert wi
nced as he was hoisted in the air like a tailor’s dummy, and half dragged, half carried into the road outside, where for the entertainment of the assembled celebrity-spotters he was unceremoniously dumped, and given a few sharp kicks in the ribs as a souvenir. He rested on the pavement for a short while until someone helped him to his feet and then he progressed down the street, declining the offers of a charming lady in a shop doorway, until the cold air sobered him up and somehow he made his way home.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  The Sportpalast on Potsdamer Strasse was a great white palace of a place, built in the early years of the century with an ice rink and shops and a stadium capable of holding up to fourteen thousand people. It was a popular venue for boxing matches – the cream of society turned out for fights featuring the celebrated heavyweight Max Schmeling – as well as beer festivals, concerts and cycle races. But in the past five years it had become the venue for an even more popular form of entertainment: Nazi Party rallies. Perhaps because only the Party faithful were invited, the Hitler Youth leaders and the local Party divisions, these tended to be lively affairs, one of which had taken place just a few days ago, according to tattered remains of a flyer on the wall: For one night only: The Führer: A Man of Peace!

  Rosa wished she had never mentioned meeting a man to her mother. Already Katrin Winter was making preparations in her head while Rosa’s father had an edge of worry in his eyes when his daughter explained that she had no idea where the man lived, who his family was, or exactly what he did. But he had faith in his daughter’s good sense, and besides, it was very difficult to tell a twenty-five-year-old woman whom she could and could not meet for a date at the cinema. To disguise her trepidation as she waited, Rosa watched the people around her, thinking that it might make one of her ‘Observations’. There was a couple next to her, obviously married from the tone of their conversation, which was mostly an argument about their chances of ever owning a new Volkswagen car. Two elderly ladies, one large and one thin, walked past, exercising dogs that were the precise mirrors of their owners. Across the forecourt a pair of workmen were attempting to free a swastika banner that had become entangled in a streetlamp. One man held the ladder while the other lunged fruitlessly at the rope, before abandoning the attempt and leaving the banner hanging limply, like a noose. The couple next to her began laughing at the pantomime, but it still wasn’t enough to distract Rosa from the meeting with August Gerlach.

  She saw Gerlach before he saw her, heading across the road with a determined hunch to his shoulders, wearing the same grubby fedora and natty grey suit as before. Lost in thought, the jocular demeanour was nowhere to be seen and instead his narrow blade of a mouth was a grimace and the bristles on his jaw cast a blue shadow on his face. Rosa had a tendency to see the animal characteristics in human beings and she often privately entertained herself by attributing the appropriate creature to each person she met. Everything about August Gerlach, from his purposeful stalk, looking neither left nor right, to his lean frame and sharp nose, had a lupine quality. There was something of the wolf about August Gerlach – he had that beast’s clever eyes and alert, predatory air. Yet even as she thought this, Rosa reprimanded herself for being what Susi would call immature and summoned an enthusiastic smile.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart. Pfennig for your thoughts.’

  ‘I was just thinking of a story.’

  ‘A story you know, or one you made up?’

  ‘Just something I wrote.’

  Gerlach led the way to the bar area where he bought her a cup of hot chocolate and a glass of schnapps for himself. He took off his hat and looked around.

  ‘I was here, actually, the other night. The Führer was on magnificent form. You should have heard him. He went on for hours. He’s very angry about the Czechs.’

  ‘Why are they always so hysterical at the Sportpalast?’

  ‘Hysterical?’ he sounded testy. ‘Why do you say that?’

  It was the word Rosa’s father used. Whenever the speeches came on the radio at home, Anselm Winter would turn them off and put music on the gramophone instead, but sometimes, from another room, she would hear him listening to the Führer’s shriek, when he thought no one else could hear.

  ‘Over-excited, I suppose is what I mean.’

  ‘There’s plenty to get excited about.’

  ‘Is there? I don’t feel excited. But perhaps I don’t read the papers enough.’

  ‘Good thing.’ Gerlach smiled. ‘Pretty ladies shouldn’t discuss politics. Anyway I’m looking forward to this movie. Grethe Weiser’s a real piece of work.’

  A piece of work. What did that mean?

  He gave Rosa’s drab, olive-green suit an appraising look. She had come straight from work, though she was wearing lipstick, and had stuck a pink carnation in her hat in honour of the occasion.

  ‘Ever thought of letting your hair down?’

  Rosa blushed. She was entirely unused to direct comments on her looks or being called a pretty lady or having a man rake his eyes over her with such merciless attention. She wasn’t going to tell him that it had never occurred to her to wear her hair in anything but braids.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘You should. Ditch the glasses too. It would suit you.’

  He rattled the ice round in his glass, like a gambler rolling a dice.

  ‘So you do that then? Think up stories?’

  ‘Just fragments really. Impressions.’

  ‘Clever girl.’

  ‘I’ve always liked writing, you see. I used to want to be a writer, when I was younger, and I read somewhere that the place to start would be to record the details of what you see in everyday life. Even quite ordinary things. They don’t have to be dramatic or important. It makes you notice more, you see, and it trains you to describe—’

  ‘Because . . .’ Gerlach interrupted, shaking his head slowly. ‘It’s beginning to make sense to me now. It was a story, wasn’t it? Your tale about the lady on the Wilhelm Gustloff.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  His odd, sharp smile curled across his thin lips. ‘Tell me. I can take a joke. You were just making up . . . what did you call it? . . . an impression, to impress me.’

  Rosa felt the blood rush to her cheeks again, this time in agitation.

  ‘I promise you. It definitely happened. I wouldn’t lie. I wasn’t trying to impress you. And I don’t know why you keep asking about it.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s not every day a girl sees a murder.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a murder.’

  ‘Sounded that way to me. Have you changed your mind, then?’

  ‘I know what I saw.’

  ‘Told anyone else about it yet?’

  Exasperated, her voice rose.

  ‘Of course I haven’t! I don’t even want to remember it. I don’t want to talk about it at all. Though I’m beginning to think I should.’

  Reaching a hand across her roughly, he grabbed her, his fingernails making sharp scarlet crescents in her forearm.

  ‘Now then, sweetheart. No need to get upset. People are listening. Don’t make a scene.’

  He looked about him, with an explanatory grin, then let her arm go and rubbed the bristles on his jaw.

  ‘Forget I said anything. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. How about a smoke before we go in?’

  He felt in his pocket and freed a box of cigarettes, extracted one and clenched it between his lips and he felt in his other pocket for a light. And that was when Rosa froze. She had always had a good eye for detail, and the detail which caught her eye now, and made her heart race, was his matchbook. A little fold of white card with gold lettering on it.

  Wilhelm Gustloff

  She remembered the matchbooks that rested on the coffee tables on the ship. She had even thought of bringing one home as a memento, until circumstances had provided other, more horrible memories of her trip. But how would August Gerlach have come by those matches unless he had been on the Wilhelm Gustloff himself? And if he ha
d been on the Wilhelm Gustloff, why was he pretending that he hadn’t?

  Rosa knew there might be an innocent explanation, but innocent explanations were increasingly difficult to come by. She focused her eyes on the table and took a deliberate sip of chocolate, hoping that he had not noticed anything amiss, but Gerlach had registered her alarm and was watching her, she knew it, the smoke of his cigarette pulsing like his own breath.

  He leant towards her, bringing with him a pungent gust of lemon and vetiver aftershave. His eyes narrowed, as though he was squinting down the barrel of a gun.

  ‘Anything wrong, sweetheart?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ll just pop into the ladies’ before the film starts.’

  ‘Don’t be long.’

  She left the café, but instead of turning left, down the steps leading to the Kino, she slipped through the foyer into a narrow tunnel and entered the Sportpalast itself. For a second she halted at the entrance and looked around at the sheer scale of it. She had been to the Sportpalast before, she and Susi had come skating here as girls, but in its deserted state the arena appeared impossibly vast. It was silent and semi-dark like some great cathedral, with tiers of balconies rising up to the ceiling and thousands of chairs ranked expectantly before an empty dais. The walls were still decked from Hitler’s speech a couple of days ago, festooned by banners reading We follow our Führer, garlanded with ivy wreaths and the obligatory giant eagle with outstretched wings poised above the lectern.

  After a second’s hesitation, she moved quickly. Even though it would be several minutes before Gerlach came to look for her, she threaded her way urgently along the stalls, making for the far end where, she guessed, there would be a side exit leading onto Pallasstrasse through which she could slip away. As she hurried she calculated what to do. She had no idea who August Gerlach was but she knew that he could find her – he would find her – if she didn’t act fast. He might not know where she lived, but he had discovered where she worked – she was sure she had never told him – and he would seek her out. In her fright she felt curiously liberated. She realized that Gerlach had answered a question for her, a question she had not even asked herself.