The Black Laurel

by Storm Jameson

  Near the Lehrter station they were held up for a moment. It was a sorting-place for refugees coming from the east. The station itself was one of the circles of malevolence — man’s for men. And for the little-prepared bodies of infants. Here were children, waiting, with that terrible patience of very young children, as if they knew already that this, childhood closed against them, was the meaning of their so few years; mothers, holding a larval something to their dry breasts; women and men of all ages, afraid to let go the bundles into which they had rolled their past. Their own odour of dirt, fear, loss, was something they had become used to. Soon, too, they would be used to the indifference and contempt for them of the German nurses.

  Renn spoke to the driver of the car.

  “Get on, get on, Taylor.”

  The car started, and to release his own discomfort, Brett said,

  “Is anything essential except memory? Without it we shouldn’t be able to think our feelings, we shouldn’t suffer, we should die as easily as animals. Perhaps what we call goodness is only a memory so large that it includes everything? To starve people of life, or order them to be beaten, or even to be a success in this world, you must have to forget nearly everything you learned in the first few months of your life.”

  Renn did not answer.

  “How old is this fellow Kalb?” asked Brett.

  “Fifty-eight.”

  “Sound in body and mind?”

  “Wait till you see him.”

  When they came into the cell, Kalb was sitting with folded hands. He jumped up, all smiles, his eyes frisking behind the thickened glass. Yes, very like a friendly insect, Brett thought. At once, too, and against his will, he saw that when Renn spoke of innocence, he was saying something more than that Kalb had not murdered anyone. He reminded himself coldly that the faces even of children are masks: Emil Gerlach, as he had seen him during his trial, had the face of a monk.

  Kalb was babbling like an old woman over-eager to talk during the few minutes when anyone will listen to her.

  “Since you were here on Friday, I’ve realised what I did wrong, and so why I deserve to be punished.”

  “Tell me,” Renn said kindly.

  The colonel felt an impulse to warn Kalb not to talk. He watched. The creature’s hands were older than he was; they came, with their feverish gesture, fingers twisted together and exaggerated joints, from the depths of an exile covering centuries; in his childlike eagerness there was the trace, only a trace, of fears.

  “I was too happy,” he said, with simplicity. “So many of us were dying — nice old ladies, I knew them, taking off their black dresses and all their petticoats, in front of everyone, before they were shot — and my friend Walther. I ought to have remembered them every minute of the day. Instead, I was enjoying myself. I had the gas-fire on for three hours every cold day, once I had a bottle of wine: and then in summer, the warm evenings, and women sitting outside their doors, in the street, resting, not anxious — almost as it used to be at home — and I — I. . .”

  “I don’t think you need reproach yourself,” Renn said, “you were a refugee, you had the moral as well as the physical struggles of an exile. When you met Sieber, as he called himself —”

  Without reflection, Brett interrupted brusquely,

  “You are certain you recognised Sieber when you saw him here?”

  Very brightly, the bright boy of the class,

  “Oh, yes, yes, at once. I remembered him perfectly.”

  “And Baron von Rechberg — how did you come to know him?”

  Head on one side — a look of sly pleasure. He can’t help feeling pleased that he knows so many aristocrats, Brett thought.

  “I met him when I called on Dr Gerlach —” He stopped. His hands quivered in front of him, ashamed.

  “Well?”

  “I did a terrible thing,” he said, agitated. “I told the young man that his father had been hanged. How could I!. . . The baron himself took me away. I was walking in a black sun.”

  He was nearly in tears.

  “The worst thing is to have offended against England and English goodness. I know it.”

  Not able, in spite of the contempt he felt for himself, to refrain from setting the trap,

  “How have you offended?” Brett asked. “If the revolver went off accidentally when you fell, for instance, you should say so. You won’t be punished for that.”

  Looking at him with a sort of reproach, Kalb said softly,

  “But it wasn’t my revolver. I never had one in my life.”

  “It was in your hand.”

  “Yes, yes,” Kalb cried, “in my hand, but not mine.” He held his hands up. “Never, never.”

  He could not help patting the poor little devil’s shoulder — gently — if he put any pressure on the frail bones they would crack.

  “That’s all right,” he said, “I didn’t think you were Al Capone, but you know how it is — nowadays you can’t trust your own grandmother with a gun.”

  Kalb looked at him, and went off into a fit of laughter.

  They left him. Brett was surprised by the intensity of his anxiety. He turned it back, to say coolly,

  “It’s not likely he shot anyone, he’s too small and feeble. He might have had a stronger chap with him, though.”

  The pinched look of vexation on Renn’s face amused him, and he said slyly,

  “No reason, either, why he shouldn’t have been a spy, an unwilling one perhaps, in England. But about this business — I think you’re right. I should say he was dotty but innocent. The appearance of Rechberg in his story is obviously pure accident. Yet why the devil did Rechberg bolt at this particular moment?”

  Renn was silent, and it was impossible, from the pallid emptiness of his face, to guess whether he were satisfied. Why trouble to find out? Brett felt extraordinarily disturbed — something, in the spectacle of Kalb sitting with folded hands, had revived his sense of discomfort and guilt during the camp trial. Was it the gap, hideously deep and cold, between the idea of justice and the living bodies it tears open, like a bayonet? Kalb strapped under the knife, every cell in his skinny body convulsed by the shock it expected — even if he were a murderer, what a crime! And if in fact he were innocent. . . He shook himself. Obviously, I need a drink.

  He asked brusquely,

  “How are you getting on with the re-education of your young man?” He saw from Renn’s smile that he had stumbled on a mortifiying question. “Oh, it’s like that, is it? You worry yourself far too much, you should drink more. Look at me, I turn all my worries into flesh — grief made flesh, eh?”

  Before he left, Renn had sent a message to Dr Lucius Gerlach that he wanted to see him. He had arrived, and was waiting. When Renn came in, he stood up, immensely tall, rigid, except that his head hung forward a little. Eyelids, drooping at the outer corner, and arched nostrils, formed the base of a triangle with its apex in the sockets of his eyes, deep enough to reduce the eyes to a point of light. He made on Renn a disagreeable impression of pride.

  “Please sit down.”

  Moving papers on his desk, he realised that the figure seated, on a small wooden chair, and given elegance by its length and narrowness, was the absence of Gerlach. He had placed it there, in the posture of listening, and abstracted himself. Renn stifled the anger he felt.

  “Did this fellow Kalb tell you what he remembered on Friday? He remembered that, just before the war, he was called in — by an English expert who has been killed since — to give an opinion on the authenticity of two paintings belonging to Mr William Gary.”

  Without moving, Gerlach said,

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “He forgets everything,” Renn said, vexed.

  Gerlach looked at him with the beginnings of curiosity.

  “What importance has it?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad thing —” he was conscious of the falsity, even risks, of his move — “to interest Mr Gary in him.”

  No sign that Gerlac
h was surprised to find himself being helped by a man he must regard as one of the prosecutors. He said slowly,

  “No, you are right.”

  “Your nephew’s story is one of the black marks against him,” Renn said, with malice.

  “Yes.”

  “So you believe it!” Renn was startled.

  “My nephew isn’t a liar,” Gerlach said calmly. “It’s moreover quite likely that — for a variety of reasons — a Jewish refugee would agree to become an agent.” His smile sunk his eyes still deeper: its mockery was impersonal.

  “Luckily, I’m not asked to defend him on a charge of spying.”

  Exasperated, Renn said,

  “What made you offer to defend him?”

  “I believe him to be innocent,” Gerlach said coldly.

  “But you don’t like him?”

  “Is it necessary I should like him?”

  His curiosity to know what was going on in the tortuous recesses of the other’s mind, jerked Renn into an imprudence.

  “You dislike him. Why?”

  A brief silence. Gerlach said tranquilly,

  “I dislike Jews.”

  “You can go,” Renn said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  General Lowerby had chosen his Personal Assistant in the strict certainty of being able to rely on him for more than competence. He judged this intelligent and very brave young man to be ambitious and — what is much rarer — not deceived about himself. He would work, because he needed an uncompromisingly good mark, extremely hard, and with complete loyalty, because he was sensible enough to know that loyalty pays. Also because he was after all scrupulous and decent, and not only professionally decent.

  Knowing this, he had nevertheless begun to trust the young man in a more personal way. His own self-sufficiency was perhaps less than it had been. Talking to Captain West was a little like talking to himself as a young officer. Though, then, his own ambitions had had a religious singlemindedness and intensity. Once or twice he had suspected the young man of being socially ambitious — an extraordinary weakness. Lamentable. I may be wrong, he said to himself. Almost without admitting it, he preferred to be wrong. His loneliness — made only sharper by Ricky’s casually loving scribbles — must be relaxed somewhere, if only for a minute, if only with a young man he trusted without warmth.

  He had called West to his room to ask him whether he had arranged to do anything this evening.

  “No, sir,” said West, “nothing I can’t get out of.”

  “Then I’d be glad if you’d dine with me. A very important gentleman — my son’s housemaster, in fact — has written asking me to look kindly at a Polish officer here, a Lieutenant Gierymski. And since he seems to be a young man he may not be amused to dine with an elderly general —”

  “I’ve met him, sir.”

  “All the better. And no doubt he can drink. Ring through to Colonel Brett, and invite him.”

  The young officer smiled.

  “I will, sir. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s booked. He’s very much the house friend at Mr Gary’s. Whenever I’m there — Mr Gary’s pilot is an old friend of mine — he seems to be coming or leaving. Still, I’ll ring him at once.”

  “Wait,” Lowerby said.

  He had said it without thinking, and in the same instant he did not know why. What the devil, he thought coldly. He had been startled: he was annoyed — and the whole thing was very foolish. There was no reason why Humphrey should not be on friendly terms with a man whose house he had been billeted in, and no reason to suppose he would gain anything by it. And if he did, why not? His pension, Brett’s friend thought, will be nothing much — for his taste in claret — and an extravagant wife who doesn’t seem to be either living with him or divorced. . . It struck him curiously that his P. A. knew what he was thinking. He opened his mouth to dismiss him. The telephone rang, and West took it up.

  “Mr Gary, sir.”

  Reluctantly and quickly, he took the receiver. He disliked telephoning except to give orders to subordinates. In talking to an important man he preferred — so that he could give the right answers — to watch the interlocutor’s face. Deliberately, now, he listened to the tone of Gary’s voice more than to his words.

  “It’s an entirely personal thing I want to say to you. Would you like me to ring up again at a more seemly time?”

  “No, no. I have plenty of time,” he answered.

  “Thanks. Tell me — have you had any complaints about my friend Rechberg?”

  “Complaints? No.”

  Gary’s voice became lively and amused.

  “Our good friend Brett seems to have taken a scunner against him, for some reason.”

  He felt an extraordinary relief.

  “I know nothing about it,” he said calmly. “Brett hasn’t discussed him with me.”

  “Ah, I’m glad to know that. One’s never sure with Humphrey whether his violent prejudices or his zeal is in charge. And since Rechberg is irreproachable, a very close friend of mine. . . My personal belief is that he is at this moment at Gerdnau — an extremely risky thing for him to do, but in any human view natural. You may be able to convince our friend. I hope so.”

  He caught the inflection of an intense irritation under the urbanity.

  “You can leave Brett to me,” he said.

  “My dear chap, forgive me for inflicting myself. And since I am doing it, I’ll waste your time for another half-minute. Will you have dinner here on Thursday? Do.”

  “Yes, delighted.”

  As he put the receiver back, he realised with a light annoyance that he had committed himself over Rechberg in a way he had not meant and didn’t like. He dismissed it. He had the sense that Gary talked to him on another level than when he was talking to Brett. Against his will, the distinction did not displease him.

  “I’m told that it will be impossible to give the Oberam-mergau play, next year or for many years — our Lord, the Virgin Mary, and St. John, were all members of the party. The only one who has a clean record is Judas Iscariot.”

  Only the young Pole smiled at West’s mockery. Lowerby thought it in poor taste; but he was mischievously pleased when his guests, drinking too much, betrayed the least prudent side of themselves. He drank nothing himself, and few things amused him more than to give people a great deal to drink, and to listen to the indiscretions that came out. It was rarely he made use of one. But he liked a man better for having been at his mercy, even in little ways.

  The servants had placed the brandy and the other liqueurs on the table with the coffee, and gone. Through the open windows you saw trees, and a corner of the lake, dissolving in the ambiguous light, neither dusk nor darkness. It was very warm, and there was a scent of water.

  He watched his friend’s broad hand stretched over the cigars, hesitating. You could still see, clean across the back, the mark left by the knife Lowerby had driven into it at Marlborough — an accident he disliked recalling. Something in the movement of Brett’s hand stirred in him a warm sympathy, half tenderness. He had not been happy at Marlborough, yet — if we were back there, he thought.

  Abruptly, when he had lit his cigar, Brett spoke to the young Polish officer.

  “You were asking me about Dr Gerlach, and why a man with his reputation is defending a miserable little thug. Damned if I know why. Worse — I’m not sure that the fellow is a thug. I’m not happy about it.”

  Lowerby looked at him with affection and mockery.

  “My dear old boy, a perfectly clear and simple case of looting with violence is being made political by Gerlach’s interference. I don’t trust Gerlach. He’s too intelligent to be making trouble for the sake of trouble or notoriety. He has some motive. I believe he’s a Jesuit.”

  Looking pleasantly at the colonel, West said,

  “You have a weakness for unfortunates, sir. I’m not sure it’s not a moral weakness.”

  Brett fixed the young officer with his bold stare.

  “Ah, my boy, you’r
e very clever,” he said amiably. “But I’m a simple man, I believe in justice.”

  Gierymski was listening with a smile of extreme delicacy and extreme bitterness. Politely,

  “I’m interested because you are at this moment trying four of my fellow-countrymen; they have been slave-workers in Germany for six years, and they have robbed and killed a German family. Terrible. They have become beasts. I know it, and I only ask who made them beasts? And now, after six years of the tortures that changed them from human beings into wild animals, you are going to execute them — because they struck down one or two Germans. I must tell you that in Poland, the German civilians did things as evil as the S. S. I don’t understand you English. You have hearts, yes, but do you think with them?”

  Brave, but mad, Lowerby thought. He had noticed that the young man was drinking kirsch, and he pushed the bottle towards him.

  “We can’t allow violence,” he said kindly. “This fellow Kalb is just such a case. Less forgivable than your Poles.”

  Brett leaned forward, supporting himself on the hand he pressed flatly on the table.

  “If ever I saw a man who couldn’t murder a kitten, it is this poor bloody little Jew.”

  “Why all this fuss about a Boche Jew?” Gierymski said lightly.

  He smiled, with the same fine bitterness:

  “Since the last six years I ceased to be interested in abstract justice. I can’t accept as justice a verdict that kills Poles for killing Germans. That’s all.”

  A silence. Unimpressed, and more than a little bored, Lowerby said drily,

  “If we can’t keep order in this country. . . but we can. What you feel is perfectly natural; but we’re not, you know, in a state of nature. As for Kalb — there was an attempted robbery, a man was killed, he and his revolver were both there, hand in hand: and whether he is guilty of murder or only of looting is less important than the need to be publicly and ruthlessly severe. At this stage, executing a few looters is a matter of economy.”

  “If you like,” Brett said. “But don’t call it justice.”

  “What shall I call it then?” Lowerby said amiably.