When for the second time that morning the door opened, and he was led out, he wondered only how they would punish him.
For a moment when he was standing in front of a man seated at the other side of a desk, a perfectly ordinary desk, he did not look up. Then he looked, shrinking, at the man’s face. Colourless, with features of such fineness that he thought at once of a Chinese wash-drawing. So this is my Judge, he said to himself. In front of his Judge, on the desk, lay a stained handkerchief, his, stained with his blood, a revolver, and Leist’s gold coin. There were other things they had emptied out of his pockets, but these three struck him as in some way ominous. Sunlight fell on his face from a dusty window behind the Judge, and he remembered fleetingly just such a radiant morning when he was called in front of the head-master’s desk to explain why he was late (it was because his mother was ill, and he had so much to do before school, but that was no excuse and he felt guilty for having a useless mother).
He must please his Judge by answering quickly and smartly — an obedient pupil. Holding himself upright, he stared eagerly at the colourless delicate face, trying to guess the next question. His name. His address. Why was he in Berlin? And the rest. He began to feel a little confident. Then:
“How did you hurt your hand?”
“In the street. I fell.”
“What were you doing at that time, in the Russian sector?” I shall have to tell him about the Mantegna, he thought. With a pang of dismay he saw that the way he had acted was only incredibly foolish: how had he come to accept Leist’s idea? How ever? I am a fool, a bungler, he thought despairingly. He began, awkwardly, to tell the story. His despair became anguish when he felt that the Judge did not believe him: he stammered. Suddenly he noticed Leist’s map lying on the desk with the dirty woollen rags taken off his shoes. He was silent.
“Why did you take the trouble to tie this stuff round your shoes?”
“I — it was foolish.”
“Is this your revolver?”
“No. No, no.”
“You had it in your hand.”
He did not answer. This quiet voice, asking terrible questions, confused him; they were a contradiction. He was so ashamed of the way he had behaved that he had to fight against shameful tears: he noticed a stain on the wall shaped like a camel and fixed his eyes on it, desperately. There was something, just a little, to be said for him, if there were only someone — not my disgraced self, he thought — to say it.
“Where did you pick up this coin? It’s valuable, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” he said eagerly, “very very valuable.”
“Where did you get it?”
Feeling confusedly that he ought not to involve Leist,
“Someone gave it to me.”
“Who?”
He was silent. He saw the Judge make a slight movement of his head; one of the two men who brought him here opened a door on the left of the desk and beckoned. A young man walked out calmly. It was Rudolf Gerlach — or Sieber. His head reeled. Who was he?
“What have you told them about me?” he cried.
The shock was too much. With a terrible clearness he saw that Sieber was an enemy, and in an instinctive recoil flung himself towards the man he had been thinking of as his Judge, who now seemed almost a friend. One of the guards gripped him roughly, pulling him back.
“Let him sit down.”
Stumbling into the chair, he covered his face with both hands. There was such a crackling and confusion inside his head that he did not hear what they were saying until, abruptly, he heard,
“You are quite certain this is the man you knew in London.”
“I didn’t know his name,” Sieber answered quietly. “I knew him as a number — 361 — and I had his address, of course —”
The terror of his nightmare came back. He started up. In his excitement he waved his arms.
“It’s a mistake, a mistake. I didn’t know him, I don’t know now if he’s Sieber or Gerlach. It was only because it was Christmas, and I happened to have some food in my room and invited him.” He turned to Sieber, and suddenly the thought of Sieber’s unkindness hurt him. “And you told me you knew Walther,” he murmured.
His friend’s name choked him. We are all going to die, he thought. A feeling of guilt, because he had been happy in London, seized him. His grief for his friend slipped into the tide of grief mounting in him, to his throat: he saw his father’s stern face bent over him in the moment of punishment. He hung his head. I have sinned terribly, he thought. He forced himself to look at his Judge.
“What have I done?” he said in a low voice: “it was a mistake.”
There was a moment’s silence; then the Judge told him to sit down, and sent not only Sieber but both the guards out of the room. He was glad to sit down. Keeping very still, he sent quick furtive glances about the room. He felt a spring of courage, like a feather tickling him. Busy over some papers laid on a shelf at the side of his desk, the Judge took no notice of him, but he still felt he was being watched. He turned his head and met the Judge’s glance fixed on his in a mirror. He was being watched that way. I look repulsive, he thought, with dismay. Unshaven, his face covered with marks from his own dirty fingers, anxious eyes magnified by the terribly thick lenses — yes, he thought, I look like an insect. He could not help a smile. To his relief and joy, his Judge, too, smiled, and turned back to face him. He clasped his hands together nervously. What next?
“Begin where you like and tell me anything,” the Judge said.
Oh, how good you are, I will, indeed I will, he thought. He started off eagerly,
“Sir, I. . .”
*
A story crazy enough to be true, Renn thought. He had the fellow taken away, and brought back again three hours later to be confronted by one of the two people he had talked about, When Leist came in Renn was struck by his bearing. Was he really an art historian? With his gleamingly rosy cheeks, his rigid body (did he wear a corset?) his large very clean hands, he had the look of a successful and rather stupid general. The glance he turned on Kalb was at once benevolent and severe.
“Well,” Renn said, “do you know him?”
“I know him by sight,” Leist said calmly. “I saw him once or twice before the war, in the university. I haven’t seen him since.”
Renn looked quickly at Kalb. He was staring at Leist from bright round eyes, his mouth open. He made a fluttering gesture with his unbandaged hand.
“B-but it was only the other day — in the café — the Mantegna. You...”
He broke down completely, crushed.
“Take him back,” Renn said.
Alone with Leist, he questioned him urbanely about Kalb’s story. He had taken a dislike to the man, but he knew why. It was because Leist looked so disgustingly and healthily the caricature of a staff officer, and he was prejudiced against them. Very likely, he thought wryly, this fellow will turn out to be a maiden aunt of delicacy and scruples. He decided to give the interview an air of complete frankness. Leaning back,
“It’s a case of theft with violence,” he said amiably. “A couple living in the basement of an empty because unsafe house were attacked, the woman was knocked out and the man very badly wounded. They had been working a black market of some sort and were worth robbing. Their basement was in our sector, but only just, and the Russian police were there very soon after the shots. They found this chap and were making off with him when our people arrived and claimed him. Frankly, he doesn’t strike me as a dangerous character.”
Leist smiled, showing immense teeth, perhaps false.
“Nor me,” he said, still smiling. “But, you know, he’s a preposterous liar. This fantasy about a Mantegna — it’s really too much.”
“Please look at this coin,” Renn said.
Leist handled it with an ingenuous look of greed. “Greek, of the late fifth century, a decadrachm of Syracuse.”
“It was in his pocket. At first he said someone had given it to him. Later he s
aid you had given it to him.”
Leist shrugged his shoulders.
“Why should he think of involving you at all?” Renn smiled.
Leist considered this a moment.
“He would remember my name,” he said quietly. “And he would know my reputation as an expert. He may not have known I was alive, and could be called in to deny his story. Or — more likely — he may simply have been frightened, too frightened to think his invention out very clearly. . . Poor fellow.”
“Your poor fellow had a revolver. His left hand is cut open. The woman is certain that before she was knocked out she struck one of the looters with a knife she had in her hand.”
“Yes,” Leist said, in a good-natured voice, “yes, it looks black.”
And you, Renn thought wearily, you look honest. But you can be lying, anyone can be; everyone no doubt is. He felt a sudden nausea. The position of the conqueror in an occupied territory is always false. Why expect a prostitute to behave honestly? Abruptly, he asked,
“Do you know a young man called Gerlach — a nephew of Dr Lucius Gerlach?”
“I’ve spoken to him.”
He had the impression that Leist was taken aback. This made him feel almost indulgent towards him. In a friendlier voice,
“He says he recognised this fellow Kalb as an agent he was ordered to get in touch with, in 1938, when he was going to England on holiday.”
Leist was listening with a polite interest. He said nothing.
“He was eighteen, a cadet at a military school — it sounds an absurd story.”
Leist smiled imperceptibly. If he had been disconcerted he was already controlling himself again.
“I hardly like to give an opinion.” he said. “A boy of eighteen alone in London might easily make up some fantasy about spies, or pretend to be a spy, only to amuse himself. It could even be true. But do you think it is?”
Nothing in this country is too fantastic to be the truth, Renn thought. He felt an extreme lassitude.
“You can go,” he said.
He watched Leist’s back, rigid. Everything about him was in order, even too much in order, as if he had expected to have to guard himself. . . This place is getting on top of me, he thought. . . One of his men came into the room and said that Rechberg had not been found. He had been away from his rooms for two nights. His sister, who lived with him, had no idea where he was... “And what’s more, sir, she’s mad.”
“Who?”
“The sister. I don’t mean queer, sir, I mean out of her mind.”
“I don’t know where you draw the line,” Renn said. “I must see the fellow — Rechberg. He must be found.”
He decided to look at the only persons who were living near the scene of the looting: an elderly workman and his wife. There was no need for him to go — the man had been questioned already. He wanted to get out of his room with its back-stairs smell he breathed every day. On his way through the outer room he crossed, coming in, the only one of his subordinates he liked, a young Etonian, politely and unashamedly intelligent, and modest — or having the grace to seem modest. In his quietly slow voice Vinden said,
“That man has died, sir.”
“What man —” He checked himself. What the devil is the matter with me? He knew perfectly well what man.
“The no doubt very unpleasant fellow who was shot by the little grasshopper.”
Renn was startled by his impulse of anger.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said sharply.
The appalling stench choked him when he pushed the door — it opened into a narrow cell under the rubble of a collapsed house. A little light from a papered-over window showed all at one blow: the table, the cracked walls, the chairs, the pail, and, fastened to a wall, the shelf of books. Part of the room was curtained off.
The man who turned slowly to face him was a proper city rat, thin-hipped, hollow-chested, with the limp arms of an anœmic girl. The workers’ quarter of any city in the world throws up these faces hardened into a grimace of resignation and terrible gentleness. But hunger had so worked on this man that the yellow skin of his face was like a chicken’s claw. He had wound rags round his feet and over his trousers to his knees, and their tightness gave him the look of a crumbling harlequin. Corruption had begun in his nearly fleshless neck.
Renn questioned him. He answered with a confused patience, almost with indulgence.
“I heard the shooting. Yes. But it wasn’t anything to do with me.”
“What did you think it was?”
Slowly, reflectively,
“If you want to know — I thought it was beginning again.”
“What?”
“The same dirty business.”
“You didn’t like the Nazis?”
“They were a bad lot. I kept out.”
Renn turned to go.
“You say your wife is ill?”
Without a word, the man pulled aside the curtain. The face of the woman lying in the bed was grey; only her eyelids moved in a smile, almost ironical, running from them to her temples. Her husband stroked her cheek lightly. He dropped the curtain. Passing a dirty deformed hand along the backs of his books, he said under his breath,
“One of these days science will conquer hunger and death, but when?”
Chapter Nineteen
Colonel Brett came into his wife’s sitting-room in the hotel, and surprised her standing before the mirror. Sunk in her image, she did not hear him. Leaning forward slightly, she stared into her face as if she were studying the face of an enemy. Yet she was triumphantly in possession of her beauty, as a woman is for a few years. Perhaps it was that — and she was trying to see below the surface, to the first nearly imperceptible shadow. Her husband saw none: he admitted readily that she was better-looking than the young girl he had married, infinitely more charming, and with an elegance he did not care for.
He moved into the part of the room reflected in the mirror. She turned round, and without glancing at him, seated herself in an arm-chair: he noticed the restless movement of her fingers. He asked gently,
“Are you tired? You’ve been overdoing it with these concerts.”
“Tired? No, of course not,” she said in a clear calm voice. He sat down.
“Tell me, Mary — what do you do in London now? Do you realise that if I want news of you, the most likely way I can get it is by reading the Tatler?” He smiled. “You’ve written twice in the last three years.”
“I detest writing letters. You know that.”
“Yes, I know, but —”
Turning her head, she glanced at him with indifference and friendliness.
“We agreed to remain on good terms, Humphrey. Don’t worry me.”
Did he feel anything? He was less sure of his complete disinterest than he had been, six days ago, when he went to meet her at Gatow — and saw her for the first time since the beginning of the war, and coolly.
“Very well. . . How has Lise settled in London?”
His wife stood up and walked, with her deliberately lazy steps, to the window. Before answering, she stood there for a moment, looking out.
“I want to talk to you about Lise. She’ll be eighteen in — let me see — four months. I don’t think she ought to go on with Ensa. It’s quite useless as war work — and in any case the war’s over, she’s not likely to be called up. I feel that she should begin seriously to learn something. I don’t mean a career. She hasn’t any ambition — I’m thankful. She ought to live in the country, London is the wrong place for her. I thought of writing to your sister about her.”
She had a beautiful voice, deep, with a light roughness that hooked itself in the listener’s senses. Brett had listened carefully: he was so familiar with it that he caught a suppressed impatience and resentment. What was she resenting?
“Why to my sister?”
“Your sister is a farmer — I’m told she’s an excellent farmer. Lise could be useful to her.”
“No, I don’t un
derstand you, Mary.” He hesitated, knowing how his obstinately good memory irritated her. “You made a great deal of fuss about wanting her with you again. You said you’d lost something in the six years she’s been away — something irrecoverable —”
His wife turned round sharply.
“Why remind me of such nonsense? Lise is bored in London, let me tell you. And she bores me.”
The words had sprung in her from a woman she would disown if they met face to face. He knew it. But he was not ready to forgive her.
“Since when?” he asked coldly.
She had controlled herself again, and she spoke gently.
“The child needs discipline. First Nannie in the holidays, and then you, have let her live like a schoolboy, she’s untidy, she neglects her clothes and her nails. I can’t be always scolding her. Oh, I don’t blame you, Humphrey. I oughtn’t to have left her about all these years. In any case — parents who don’t live together —”
She looked at him with a friendly mockery.
“You weren’t the easiest of husbands, after all. You were kind — oh, yes, you were extremely kind; you went short of things to let me buy all the dresses I wanted. But it was easy for you — what would really have cost you something was to spend time on me, and you took care never to do that.”
“My dear girl,” he said, stung, “you knew what you were doing when you married a professional soldier.”
“I thought I knew. I was seventeen — Lise’s age. What does one know, yes, know, at seventeen? Nothing, nothing.”
He did not answer. Between her accusations — they were true enough — and the restless indifferent way she threw them at him, as if they were unimportant, or as if really she were thinking of something else, there was a gap so wide that he wondered if she even knew what she was saying. Abruptly, he understood. She was longing for him to go: his being here was not simply a bore, it angered and embarrassed her. He felt humiliated.
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