The Black Laurel

by Storm Jameson

  “Is that what you came to say?”

  “I wanted to see you,” Gary said gently.

  “Why do you want my help?”

  This question, this stubbornness of a will which did not even fight but remained uninterested and passive, was no less infuriating that he felt the breath in it of an anguish.

  “I can trust you — and no one else.” He hesitated — “Not another soul. And because, too — much less — of your reputation here and in America.”

  There was something unmeaning and something absent in Gerlach’s smile: it was to be resented, as a fraud, a lapse, almost as if it insulted a dignity he ought to have kept.

  “You have my cousin Hugo.”

  Gary laughed.

  “If I ever talk to you about trusting Rechberg it will mean something entirely different — and calculated. . . I saw him again yesterday for the second time. Do you know that he dislikes you? Why?”

  Lucius did not answer. His smile moved to the back of his eyes, like a shadow.

  “He regards you as a traitor to your class,” Gary went on. “It’s almost true, you know. But why — if you’re against him and his corrupt idea of power — why aren’t you for me?”

  “Neither for you nor against you,” Lucius said. He yawned.

  If I didn’t like him so much how I should resent his arrogance and indifference. . . He did not allow the thought to deflect his purpose. He felt, too, something that was almost humility.

  “Why do you refuse to help me? I offer you a future worth, supremely worth devotion. . . Help me to make men forget there has ever been war.”

  There was still light outside, but a light heavy with the coming darkness: inside the room it was dark. Under his breath Lucius said, with the greatest gentleness, almost without moving his lips,

  “You’re not interested in peace, you’re interested in keeping men in servitude. The worm at the heart of your peace — the resentment of the slaves and their masters’ fear of it. . . Have you a match?”

  He stooped over the lamp, running the match slowly along the wick: the light rushing upward exaggerated the narrowness of his skull. Strongly shadowed pits between the bones gave it an illusion of flesh, more credible than the reality. When he moved the lamp, Gary saw his own shadow, enormous, move across one wall to the other.

  “Even you can’t escape from illusions,” he said. “You have a dream of humble people. Poverty and simplicity. The poverty of our Lord and the rest of it. Nonsense. There are no humble poor: there are newspaper readers, drugging themselves with films, shoddily smart, frivolous, passive, ignorant. You see yourself offering them the bread and wine of poverty. Try. They’ll spit on it. Clever people showed them how to escape from the Church, they won’t return, they’re in my hands completely, and believe me, I shall do better by them than their priests used to. . . Did you read H. G. Wells when you were at school? I did. Nothing of it impresses me now except the cruelty, the frightful cruelty, of offering intersidereal aeroplanes and the limitless powers of science to factory-girls. They don’t even want them — no more than they want freedom. They want peace and a secure life, with a few toys.”

  He hesitated, smiling, only with his eyelids.

  “Envy — to own more toys than your neighbour — will keep them happy.”

  Lucius folded his hands — grotesquely elongated fingers, knotted like worn-out cords. His glance, turned back from the darkness in the corners of the room, held nothing but the arbitrary indulgence of a saint.

  “In case they turn their envy on you — be careful not to set your own standards of comfort too high.”

  “I have simpler tastes than my workers.”

  There was affection as well as mockery in Lucius’s smile.

  “Yes, yes, I know. Your books, a bottle or two of good claret. . . What I can’t understand is what use you have for me. You don’t need me.”

  Need? One man whom I can respect and love. One.

  “You can preach the virtues,” he said slyly.

  Lucius laughed.

  “To your docilely envious ants? Thanks very much.”

  Gary hesitated. He had always known, yes, known, that the only serious difficulty in handling a man, any man, is to guess accurately what price he has put on himself: it may be a seat in the Cabinet, flattery in newspapers, a race-horse, a title for his family. He was atrociously disappointed.

  “What is it you want?” he asked softly.

  “To be let alone.”

  “In this squalor? Come, I’ll give you anything. Your own terms.”

  “What nonsense are you talking, my dear William? I’m happy. For the first time in my life I know what my senses are worth . . cold, warmth, the cracks in my fingers, solitude. . . I know that thyme smells like thyme, and that the first Gerlach found it as pleasant as I do. He was probably a serf.”

  “Why pretend with me?”

  Lucius was scarcely listening.

  “It took two wars to convince me that there is almost no relation between what men profoundly want and the things they arrange their lives to get. I’m indifferent to anything you can offer me. Completely. Unless you’ll leave your matches. . . The only thing that holds me to life — and makes me hesitate, a little, to refuse you — is my nephew, the only trace of Emil left. There’s nothing I regret. If I could live again I’d live the same life, Buchenwald, the hatred, this room. . . Here, I’m outside time. Have you ever reflected how much of the civilisation of Europe is now timeless? The clocks in Vienna stopped in 1914 and never started again, where in Zurich and Stockholm they are still ticking pleasantly on.”

  “For how long?”

  “Ah!”

  “You’re a fool,” Gary said gently. “You could be one of the few men who act directly on events. That is, who act.”

  Lucius glanced at him from the side, with a hauteur marked by the shadow overflowing sunken eyepits.

  “One of your tools. Thanks.”

  Joy and grief ran together in Gary’s body; he felt the shock in an explosion behind his eyes. I’ve got him. . .

  “Oh. You want to be independent. That’s all right. I’ll make you the most powerful man in Germany. Emperor, if you like.”

  From the look of astonishment on Lucius’s face he understood. He had made a grotesque blunder. He did not attempt to put it right.

  “Why not Pope?” Lucius mocked. “You must have ideas on that, too. Or hasn’t it occurred to you that there may be one, just one, person you can’t force or pay?”

  He felt no desire to save his pride: he was too deeply engaged for that.

  “Forgive me, I made a mistake,” he said quietly.

  “My dear William. . .”

  “No! You can’t work with an enemy — is that it?”

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  Baffled, he allowed a sordid suspicion to seize him.

  “Why don’t you tell me the truth?. . .”

  He stopped abruptly. No, he thought, I’m a fool. It’s natural he should try to resist — even plot.

  “There’s no strength left in this country,” he went on. “Not for many years. . . Don’t help the silliest of your countrymen to — to give us a reason to punish you more severely.”

  “I’m not a fool,” Lucius said drily.

  He struggled for a moment with an irrational anger. It was too much for him.

  “No,” he said. “A coward.”

  “As you like.”

  He did not forgive himself for his loss of control.

  “I’m extremely ashamed,” he said painfully, “but, after all, what will become of this country when the men who ought to be ruling it shelter themselves in — in ideals? Heaven help it if there are many of you.”

  A curling wisp of smoke rose from the lamp. Lucius tried turning the wick. In the circle of light, his face, distorted by its smile, hung forward as though behind it were the weight and persistence of a cathedral. In a low voice,

  “Possibly I’m afraid: you may be right about
that.”

  “What could you be afraid of?” A sudden piercing excitement, almost joy. “I understand. But. . . if there must be guilt — there must be, of course; someone must tell the lies and give the orders for disobedient children to be thrashed — I’ll take it all. And I can promise you that none of my executions shall take place in public. No martyrs and no scandals.”

  Silence.

  When he realised that Gerlach was not going to answer, he got up to go.

  “Let me do something for you,” he said, with love. “Oil and matches — there must be something more you want?”

  Lucius smiled. He began a phrase — “Nothing. . .”, hesitated, and said gently,

  “How you distrust me!”

  “Nonsense.”

  He left, closing the door sharply, to wipe Lucius out.

  He was exasperated against himself — nothing humiliated him so much as losing his temper. He walked carefully towards the lights of the car waiting at the other side of this acre of rubble. Reflected on the darkness beyond it, spectral walls. He lost patience and began to hurry. Almost at once, he tripped over a stone. He fell awkwardly, there was a rending pain in his thigh and he imagined he felt the bone break. He had cried out. Arnold, who was alone in the car, jumped out and ran towards him. With an effort he could feel in the muscles of his chest he dragged himself on to one knee and both hands, and began crawling towards the road.

  “Wait, I’ll fetch Dr Gerlach,” Arnold said quickly.

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort.”

  His anger gave him the energy to reach the car. He endured Arnold’s desperate struggle to help him into it, and when he was in, fought off the blackness rising behind his eyes; he was determined to stay conscious until there was no danger of Lucius being called to help him.

  He saw that Arnold was very anxious. “I’m all right,” he said quietly. “Get on. Did we hurt your wrist again?”

  “No. . . You can’t stand being driven.”

  “Don’t be silly. Get on.”

  The outlines of ruined buildings rose and fell in front of him like the darkness of the night sea rising vertically from the shore. His body stiffened itself against the jolts of the car; he held himself upright less by the grip of his hands on the seat than by an effort of his nerves. Another and less bearable pain rose in him through the other; the thought of the moment when he would be exposed to the curiosity of nurses and doctors, he and his defect.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Should he turn back and feel his way down the very narrow street (a cul-de-sac?) he had just passed? Should he follow this wall risen in front of him, suddenly, at the point where he expected open space? The joyous excitement with which he set out, after dark, had long since faded, squeezed out by a growing anxiety. It was too dark to look again at Leist’s map, but his memory for any plan or design was excellent, impossible that he had mistaken a turning, yet, ever since leaving the Friedrichstrasse he had had a sense of something wrong; a street had twisted to the left when, by the map, it should turn right, and in a place where he had expected to find only ruins the block of offices was still standing. Instead of going straight, he had circled. He was bewildered: his footsteps, in the shoes muffled (again an idea of Leist’s) in the pieces of a woollen scarf, sounded in his ears as heavily as the beating of his heart. He scolded himself. “Come, come, Heinrich, pull yourself together, my dear boy.” He stood still. This wall. He pressed his hands against it. If they had passed clean through he could not have been more disconcerted than he was by its unyielding cold. The smell, too, nauseated him: the smell of dust, the smell of murdered houses, or was it only the pervasive smell here of death? Abruptly, he decided to turn back. A few steps, and he felt on his left the gap between the houses. He hesitated. Should he plunge into it? The silence oppressed him. He fingered in his pocket the handkerchief in which he had wrapped the very fine Greek coin, gold, Leist had given him — to be handed to the man who would meet him at a point marked on the plan and take him to the house where the Mantegna, if it was a Mantegna, was lying in its huddle of rags and newspaper.

  Springing with extreme distinctness in his mind, the image of the Dresden Mantegna stiffened him. He walked boldly forward into the blackness of this slit between the walls. As if he had stepped on one end of a see-saw a flagstone gave way under him and flung him off. He fell on hands and knees. A sharp fragment ran itself into the palm of his hand. The pain brought him to his feet.

  He stumbled on. Keeping his uninjured hand against the wall, he felt the ground carefully with a foot before daring to set it down. I must give it up, he thought, trembling. The thought of Leist’s contempt when he explained his failure delivered him from the pain in his hand. No, no, he thought, I can’t. Coward, coward, Heinrich.

  His body gave a start. Before he could see it, his eyes behind their thick glasses felt the gleam of light, distant a few yards — very low, a line drawn on the ground. Light showing under a door, he thought. He walked more quickly. After a moment he felt — there was nothing to be seen — that a man or men were somewhere in front of him in the darkness.

  “Who is it? Is someone there?”

  No answer. His breath turned back in his throat, choking him. He dragged himself forward. The thread of light, as he drew nearer, vanished into the earth. There really was a door, but now that he was standing against it only a smoky tinge of bronze gave away its outline in the blackness. I must find out, he thought, desperately, where I am. As if the movement of his arm lifted to knock had beckoned them, figures came out of the obscurity, pressed on him, drove him in front of them against the door, all in silence. It gave way and he fell down two or three steps into a basement. He had the impression of two people standing up in the room, a woman and a man, the man seen brokenly, cheek and forked eyebrow, the face of the woman, young, fixed in a grimace of terror. He was pushed violently aside. Men sprang past him, and he saw the lamp fall sideways with the crackling of broken glass. In the dark, he received a terrible blow in the back. He fell, throwing his arms out. A shot. A shot. On top of the second a scream he felt in the centre of his body. In the same instant a foot crushed his wounded hand, and almost before he felt the pain he lost consciousness. He came to himself knowing that the door had at that moment shut. There was no other sound. Feeling round, his hand closed over a long hard object lying on the floor near it. He stood up. An insect ran over his fingers; he was terrified. Nothing, it was nothing. His own blood. As he stumbled towards the door it opened. A jet of light in his eyes blinded him, the room filled with men; he saw in a confused eddy uniformed arms and heads. He was seized, struck on the head, dragged up the steps into the street.

  Almost at once other figures came running. There was now a great deal of light, the rays of torches passing through him and over him so that he felt dazed. He was in the hands of police of some sort. With a piercing relief he saw that the newcomers were English. He tried to rush to them, and the man holding his arm shook him with such violence that he was near fainting again.

  He stood still. Some sort of argument was going on, in a baffling lingua franca, between his captors and the English police — or were they soldiers? It was very good-tempered — broad smiles, gestures. With horror, he realised that the man gripping him was a Russian. I’m done for, he thought. Another of the Russians said something in a mixture of German and English he was too bewildered to take in, but the gesture spoke plainly enough — Yours, we think. A rough jerk flung him into the middle of the English group. He clutched at an arm, a wave of blackness rolled over him, and sighing as though he had dropped a burden he let himself sink.

  *

  Renn looked closely at the young German he had been examining. He was attractive. He must, Renn thought, have been a good soldier — but bravery is the commonest of the virtues and tells you nothing or little about its possessor. The charm of this young man sprang from the impression he made of candour and a taut self-control. His name, too, commended him to Renn; he had not met D
r Gerlach, but he respected what he knew of him. In a friendlier voice than he had been using he said,

  “When he was being questioned — not by me — last night, Kalb said that he had visited Dr Gerlach —”

  He hesitated deliberately. With his fine smile, the young man said,

  “He did — yes. I recognised him then. Yesterday my uncle went away into the country for two days — as I told your police when they came. I suspect the fellow of wanting to harm my uncle in some way. That is why I offered to come here. I’m not an informer.”

  “Oh, quite.” It occurred to him that because of his wounds the young man probably found it difficult to stand for any length of time. He did not ask him to sit — if he were lying, fatigue might shake him. He leaned forward. “Tell me — how did you come to see him in London?”

  “I went there on holiday. But I was asked to make use of my holiday to get in touch with one of our agents.” He looked directly at Renn. “I was proud to do it. It’s not the kind of thing I like doing. I prefer fighting.” He smiled.

  “What did you know about Kalb? What had you been told?”

  “He was a Jewish refugee. But he had agreed quite willingly to become an agent — because he was afraid. Also because he thought, if he worked for us, that he would be given an official Aryanism.” He burst out laughing. “It was an illusion, of course. But he couldn’t know that, and he worked zealously as a spy.”

  Probably true, Renn thought. He had known of refugees who were blackmailed into some petty sort of treachery. Even Jews.

  “It’s a curious story,” he said drily.

  The young German looked at him without a trace of resentment.

  “I know,” he said in a grave voice, “but I assure you you can believe it.”

  Renn’s hesitation this time was real. He felt a strong sympathy for the young man.

  “Wait in the next room,” he said.

  *

  Kalb had not slept all night. Except for a minute during which he dreamed that he was a child; in his dream he was lost and looking timidly among a crowd of malicious youths for his mother. He woke — feeling not only the terror but the crushing anxiety and guilt of the child. What is it, what have I done? he thought. He was helplessly bewildered. He had committed some crime — or why had he been cast out like this from his friendly safe English life? He knew now that all the time since he came back he had been thinking of himself as English — that is, safe.