A Future Arrived

by Phillip Rock

  THE GIANT BIPLANE, an Armstrong Whitworth Argosy of Imperial Airways, lumbered down the runway at Croydon, gathered speed, and then, all three engines howling, rose smoothly into the still morning air—to the incredulous relief of at least one of its passengers.

  “Oh, I say, sir,” Albert said in a choked voice. “We’re off the ground.”

  Martin, relaxed in the wicker chair beside him, lowered his newspaper. “We’ll be at five thousand feet in a few minutes.”

  “Five thousand? Crikey!” He pressed his face to the window’s cool glass and looked down. The lower wing obscured some of his view, but he could see the Lilliputian roofs and roadways of southeast London and the emerging fields of Surrey. “How fast are we going, sir?”

  “Fast enough. We’ll be in Paris in two and a half hours.”

  “Good Lord.” His breath left a patch of fog on the glass which he wiped away with the palm of his hand. An engine, suspended between the two wings, belched a brown stream of exhaust and occasional spurts of yellow flame. “Safe … I imagine.”

  Martin smiled at him and raised his paper again. “Safe as a London bus. Settle back, Albert. The steward will be serving tea in a few minutes.”

  Settle back! Easy enough for him to say. Probably been up in an aeroplane dozens of times. Old hat. He stared down. A train was a toy so far below, trailing a painted plume of smoke. It was soon lost to view, sliding away behind them. A cathedral underneath now, the soaring spires puny and insignificant from this height. A cloud swept into the whirling blades of the propeller and obscured the window with gray vapor. He had always imagined clouds to be of greater substance.

  Special assistant to Mr. Martin Rilke, CBC Radio (Europe)

  When they arrived in Paris, Albert wrote that heading on the first page of a new notebook he purchased in a shop on the rue St. Lazare. He still could not quite believe it. “Two pounds a week and found,” Martin had said. “And if that be nepotism, make the most of it.”

  His duties were unclear. General errand boy and all around dogsbody. Every morning he picked up Martin’s favorite cigars at the tobacconist across the street from the Opéra … sent messages through the pneumatiques … answered the telephone in their suite at the hotel … and traveled around Paris as Martin worked to hire a staff and find office space for the news bureau. Two hectic, exciting weeks and then, at the beginning of September, they went on to Berlin. Again by air, Le Bourget to Tempelhof in a Junkers trimotor. He was more blasé about it now and no longer awed by the misty fragility of clouds.

  There were squads of police milling about outside the passenger terminal building at Tempelhof. From across the road flanking the airport greasy plumes of smoke rose above the flat roofs of dingy tenements. Albert was wide eyed.

  “What do you think is happening, sir?”

  “Street fighting, probably. Communists and Nazis.” He placed a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder as they walked toward the terminal. “But you won’t find it happening everywhere in Berlin. The street gangs stick close to certain districts, I understand—Neukölln, Wedding, Lichtenberg—places to stay away from. Some things never seem to change in this town.”

  Wolf von Dix, a gray-haired, courtly man, was waiting for them when they cleared customs. A renowned correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung during the war, he had been for the past ten years Berlin bureau chief of Kingsford’s INA.

  “Welcome to the city of brotherly love,” he said with a wry smile. “Herr Goebbels printed an item in Der Angriff yesterday saying that Trotsky was flying in today from Norway to help the reds steal the election. Only an idiot would believe it … and a few hundred did. The Brownshirts went berserk.”

  “Burning the buildings?” Martin asked.

  “No … automobile tires. The clashes always look worse than they are.” He smiled at Albert. “And you, of course, are young Thaxton. Martin wrote me and said you wish to become a journalist. Is that so?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that you speak German quite well—probably with a Chicago accent if he has been helping you. Kindly tell me about yourself … in German.”

  Albert talked as they walked to Dix’s car. The story of his life—dull as it was. He hoped he wasn’t boring the man with tales of Morborne and its long history, of his successes there as captain of the eleven and of winning the Montaigne prize the past term for excellence in French.

  “Your German is excellent, too,” Dix said as they drove from the airport. “It’s obvious you have an ear for languages. I recall Morborne. Several of my students had gone there. I was a teacher of German at the University of London before the war … nineteen ten to nineteen fourteen. Ah, those were lovely years. I had a flat in Regent Square and I would sit in the garden on Sunday mornings and write my weekly articles for the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt. I was a stringer for those papers. Do you know what a stringer is, young man?”

  “A person who writes for a paper without actually being on salary?”

  “That is correct. They paid enough for my articles to keep me in good English beer and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding!”

  They drove toward the center of the city, through Neukölln and Kreuzberg, past endless rows of ugly brick tenement houses that had been designed, Dix explained to Albert, not by an architect but by Berlin’s police chief in the middle of the nineteenth century. Dark, gloomy, fetid warrens. From windows overlooking the alleyways and sunless courtyards hung flags, red banners with hammer-and-sickle emblems or red flags with a white circle containing a black swastika.

  “Enemies to the death,” Dix said, “but companions in misery.”

  No misery was apparent on Wilhelmstrasse or Unter den Linden. The trees shimmered in the afternoon sun and the crowded cafés with their outdoor terraces were in dappled shadows. Dix pulled up his Benz touring car to the Adlon Hotel and a uniformed attendant hurried to open the doors.

  “I’ll just check in, Dix, and then we can go on to the office and have a talk. Would you like to come with us, Albert, or stay here? I won’t be too long.”

  “The INA office, sir?”

  “Yes.” Martin smiled. “Your answer is in your face.”

  THE INA OFFICES occupied the entire second floor of a modern building in Neu Königstrasse. It was everything that Albert had imagined a newspaper office to be—not that INA was a newspaper, but it did supply news to papers all over the world. And not just from Germany. Outside of London, the Berlin bureau was the largest in Europe and drew its sources from Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans, and Russia through its desk in Moscow. Banks of teletype machines chattered constantly, keeping two copyboys busy tearing off the sheets and rushing them to editors, reporters, and rewrite men. A dozen typewriters hammered away; men yelled over telephones or across the room at each other. Noise … a haze of tobacco smoke … shouts for a messenger to deliver copy to “Auntie Voss”—the Vossische Zeitung—the Berliner Morgenpost, or Tageblatt as the local deadline crept closer. Teletype operators tapped out the day’s news onto the wires, sending it on to London, New York, Rio de Janeiro. It was a heady atmosphere to Albert. He stood out of the way as the chaos swirled around him. He wondered what momentous event had taken place in the world for there to be such frenzied activity. He could see Wolf von Dix through the glass walls of his office slouched in a chair, feet on desk, talking to Martin. No sense of excitement or urgency there. He took a deep breath for courage and tried out his German on a copyboy of about his own age who paused for a moment at a nearby water cooler.

  “Did something important take place today?”

  The lanky, red-haired boy shrugged. “Not that I know of. Just the usual stuff.”

  “You mean it’s always like this? Everyone in such a rush?”

  “Sure … most of the time.” He was eyeing Albert curiously. “You talk funny. Do you come from East Prussia or some place like that?”

  “I’m English.” He could feel his cheeks starting to burn. “I …
I’ve only been studying German for a year.”

  “A year! You have the gift then. I’m trying to learn English. I go to the English flicks once a month. How about this … Tip top, old sport! Time for tea! Oh, rawther!”

  A man in shirtsleeves glanced up from his desk. “Get your thumb out of your butt, Kessler!”

  “I’m Rudy,” he whispered before hurrying back to work.

  Martin lit one of Dix’s cigars, blew a stream of smoke, and scowled at the ceiling. “I was hoping you’d be my top man, Dix.”

  “Sorry, Martin … old dogs and new tricks. Emil Zeitzler is the one for you. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Of course. Helped me cover the Beer Hall Putsch. A damn good reporter. Is he still with INA?”

  “He joined the Stuttgart Tageblatt a couple of years ago. He also does a news-and-interview show over Radio Stuttgart once a week that’s become quite influential.”

  “Influential in what way?”

  “For moderation and political sanity. Emil hasn’t changed. A good Social Democrat. He’s the man you need to put a staff together. No doubt of it.”

  “I’ll go and see him.”

  “Yes, do that. I have his address.” He turned his head and glanced at Albert standing beyond the glass partition. “Your brother-in-law is a fine boy. Is he serious about his choice of career?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Is he learning much with you?”

  “At the moment, no. How to buy cigars and answer the phone.”

  “Well, that’s something. When does he go back to school?”

  “End of the month. Why?”

  “Because I could use him. Copyboy, general flunky. A few weeks in this office might alter his view of journalism.”

  “No, Dix. Working for you would set it forever.”

  EMIL ZEITZLER HAD changed little since Martin had last seen him in 1923. He was a thin, intense man of thirty and he peered thoughtfully at him through his thick glasses. “A most interesting proposal, but I must decline.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Dix may not have told you, but I am managing the reelection campaign of Otto Haushofer. Both the Communists and the Nazis would like his seat in the Reichstag so we are, as you Americans say, in a dogfight at the moment. I think he’ll win, but it will be close. If it came out, only two weeks before the election, that I had taken a job with an American company … well, you know they would make hay out of it. Especially the Nazis. Goebbels would say that American money was pouring into the Haushofer campaign, that he was a tool of the Wall Street Jews.”

  Martin laughed and poured himself another small glass of schnapps from the bottle on the table. “That’s crazy.”

  “Many things are crazy today, Martin. Ominous times.”

  There was nothing ominous about where they were; a bright, sunny apartment in Stuttgart overlooking the Schillerplatz with a fine view of the castle. Emil’s pretty wife, heavy with pregnancy, sat knitting in the parlor, keeping one eye on their two-year-old son who was playing with a wooden train on the carpet.

  Martin sipped at his drink. “I’m a bit out of touch, I’m afraid. How do you view the election?”

  “With dread. Bruening was foolish to talk the president into dissolving the Reichstag. He opened the door to the Nazis and reds. The Nazis only had twelve seats. The reds fifty-four. They’re both bound to gain at the expense of the center.”

  “How many do you think?”

  “Oh, twenty or so from the Communists … perhaps as much as fifty from the Nazis. Goebbels and Hitler have pulled out all stops this time. Posters and pamphlets blanketing the country, mass meetings and speeches every night … in the cities, the small towns … everywhere. God knows where they get the money. And then all this Horst Wessel nonsense of Goebbels … the first Nazi saint!”

  “Horst Wessel?”

  “A young storm trooper thug in Berlin who was living with a prostitute. He got into an argument one night with the girl’s ex-pimp who just happened to be a communist. They both drew guns and Wessel wasn’t quick enough. He died a few weeks later and Goebbels sent him to heaven with a roll of drums, calling him a National Socialist Christ! That was in February. The fellow had written a poem about the glory of being a Brownshirt street fighter and Goebbels had it set to music. You hear it everywhere these days. They have all the trappings now; flag, armbands, song, and a martyr. A perverse sort of genius, Herr Goebbels. Did you know that he once worked for INA as a stringer? Dix told me—back in nineteen twenty-one—but he had to let him go for grossly embellishing his stories. The novelist manqué. He’s never forgiven Dix for that … or INA for that matter.”

  The schnapps was mellow. Pigeons cooed on the window sill. “My problem, Emil. Can you help me at all?”

  “Oh, yes. I can give you the names of half a dozen men, good reporters and broadcast people. After the elections … well, we shall see. I might be able to join your group.” His eyes looked troubled. He stared out across the rooftops. “It all depends how the wind is blowing.”

  A column of young Nazis marched across the Schillerplatz, none of them much older than boy scouts and just as courteous. They toted bulging knapsacks and a few carried the flag of the Hitler Jugend on long poles. One boy played a guitar as they marched toward the Swabian hills. The boys began singing …

  Comrades shot dead by Red Front and Reaction

  march in spirit within our ranks!

  Raise high the flag!

  “ ‘The Horst Wessel Song,’ ” Emil said in a flat voice. “One hears it everywhere now.”

  THE ENGLISH TEAM that Karl Voegler, the sports editor, wanted interviewed at the Sportpalast before the start of the six-day bike races turned out to be two Scots; short, sandy-haired men from Aberdeen with burrs so thick Albert could barely make out half of what they said. It was his first lesson in creative journalism and he made the most of it, typing up the story from shorthand notes and his imagination.

  HIGHLANDERS VOW SIX-DAY FLING AT RACES

  “Catchy,” Voegler murmured. His eyes flicked over the copy, his blue pencil slashing here and there. “Not bad. Give it to Kerner … and then go down to Peli’s and bring me back an apple strudel and coffee. Quick now!”

  From a reporter to an office boy with the flick of a hand. He complained bitterly to Rudy Kessler when they left the office that evening.

  Rudy laughed and retrieved the cigarette he had been keeping behind his ear most of the day. “What did you expect? A Pulitzer prize or something?” He grinned and lapsed into his terrible English. “Bad sport, old chap! Not cricket! You’ll never get a pat on the back from Voegler, or any of the old-timers. It’s the sad lot of the flunky, let me tell you.” He snapped a match with a fingernail and lit his smoke. “Tradition, my man, tradition. Treat the copyboys like dog droppings. We underlings also have our traditions … first one to get a writing assignment must buy the beer and sausages. How much money do you have?”

  “Ten or twelve marks,” Albert muttered.

  “A fortune! I’m walking with a Rothschild! We’ll go to the Kurfürstendamm and watch the girls.” He gave Albert a hearty poke in the ribs. “Maybe even latch on to a couple. Sixteen is too old to be a virgin.”

  The ten days that he had worked for INA—six days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day—seemed more like ten weeks to Albert. He had become immersed totally in both job and city. A true journalist—Karl Voegler’s attitude notwithstanding—and a real Berliner. He lived in a large boardinghouse for men, where Rudy stayed, a place popular with young men who worked in the newspaper and publishing business and the nearby stock exchange. A substantial dinner came with the price of a room, but neither he nor Rudy ate there often, preferring the small, smoky cafés frequented by actors, writers, painters, and all the polyglot intelligentsia of this teeming, restless city.

  They squeezed their way into the Romanische Café on the Tauentzienstrasse. Two blond girls in tight dresses who might have been actresses, or young who
res, or both, sat at a table with two empty chairs.

  “Mind if we sit down?” Rudy asked with almost Prussian correctness.

  One of the girls gave him a hard stare. “Piss off, sonny.”

  Rudy, not at all abashed, moved on through the crowd. “I didn’t like their looks anyway. Too skinny. I like girls with lots of moving parts on them.”

  “A good country girl who milks the cows.”

  “Exactly! I should have stayed in Regensburg.”

  They managed to grab a small table, to the annoyance of a waiter who grudgingly took their order for two small beers and a plate of bratwurst.

  “This is the life,” Rudy said, looking around the café. “Rubbing shoulders with celebrities and then on to more exciting things. What shall we do tonight? Piscator’s theater? Another stab at some girls?”

  “How about a flick? All Quiet on the Western Front opens at the cinema on Nollendorfplatz.”

  “We’ll never get a seat. Sold out completely, I hear.”

  “We could try. No harm in that.”

  HE WENT UP the stairs to his room on the top floor after making sure Rudy was all right. The side of his face throbbed and he wondered if his jaw was broken. The top-floor bathroom was unoccupied and he went in, turned on the light, and locked the door behind him. He studied his face in the glass above the sink. A purple bruise flowed like a wine stain from his right ear to the point of his chin. He moved his jaws from side to side and then opened and closed his mouth. There was no increase in the pain when he did so. He remembered the agony Tim Pakenham had felt when his jaw had been broken playing football … Morborne versus Winchester. No, he decided, not broken, thank God. He ran water into the sink up to the brim and then bent low, turning his head, and immersed the side of his face. He winced at the pain, especially from his ear, but after a few minutes of ducking in and out of the icy water his face felt better. He patted himself dry with a towel and went to his room.