by Jon Cleary
“Herr Doe will contact me. Goodnight, Fräulein. I hope we can get some news for you.”
“I must see your film when it is released,” said Inge Lang, her smile once more unrestrained.
II
Carmody and Cathleen were in bed, their love-making done. It was Monday night and both of them had had a busy day, their minds too occupied by the demands of their trades for them to devote much thought to the meeting with the Langs on Sunday night. Lola und Ludwig had gone badly again; Willy Heffer had, belatedly, begun to realize that the film would do his reputation no good whatsoever; Cathleen, nerves on edge, had had a shouting match with him and Karl Braun. Carmody, for his part, had spent the day running between the Foreign Ministry and the Propaganda Ministry; when he went back to the office there was a query from head office in New York as to why he couldn’t supply more “hard” news. By the time he and Cathleen met for dinner, they were both ready to fall into each other’s arms.
When they had returned to her apartment there had been no argument or even discussion as to whether he should stay the night. She needed sustenance to get her through the night and though it might not be the first choice of nutritionists, sex can sustain. They made love to music, with the radio turned down and the programme, as if designed for lovers about to have their last exercise before settling down for the night, supplied appropriate music, scherzo for the livelier moments, andante for the afterplay. Ready for sleep, Carmody reached across to turn off the radio when the music suddenly stopped in mid-bar,
“We have an important announcement,” said a voice that sounded almost breathless with excitement (or disbelief? Carmody later wondered). “The Reich government and the Soviet government have agreed to conclude a pact of non-aggression with each other. The Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs will arrive in Moscow on Wednesday, 23 August, for the conclusion of the negotiations.”
Carmody lay waiting for further comment, but after a few moments the music resumed where it had been interrupted. Still music for bedtime lovers; was the radio station manager ringing up the Ministry of Propaganda for advice on whether some Russian music should be played? Perhaps the 1812 Overture? But Carmody knew very little Russian music and this was no time for cynical musing. He sat up, turned the radio even lower but kept it going in case there should be a further announcement, and switched on the bedside lamp.
Cathleen had been on the verge of sleep, but now she turned over on her back. “What’s the matter?”
“I think war’s just got that much closer. Didn’t you hear that announcement?” He explained what the non-aggression pact meant, that it would leave Hitler free to pursue his aims towards Danzig or anywhere else in Europe where he had designs to expand. “I’ll call London. Then I’ll have to go to the office.”
He put on his underpants, then dialled the London bureau of World Press. He had never met the London night editor, but the latter had a prissy public school accent that suggested he might work in the daytime as the headmaster of some church school. You did not phone him naked with a naked girl lying in the bed beside you.
Carmody wasted no time once the Berlin operator had connected him. “I know no more than that bare announcement.”
The night editor swore obscenely, dispelling the church school headmaster image. “We’ll put it out as is—it’ll make the Stop Press in the nationals. When can you give us more?”
“Christ knows. I’m on my way to the office now—I’ll see if I can dig up someone at the Foreign Press Office. Give me a couple of hours. At least we should catch the New York morning editions. And the Australian afternoon editions,” he added nationalistically.
“Of course,” said the night editor sarcastically, a true imperialist. “Mustn’t forget the Colonies. Ring me when you have something.”
Carmody hung up, then looked at Cathleen, who was now wide awake. “It looks bad, darl.”
“For me? You mean finding Mother?”
He didn’t blame her for her selfish viewpoint: when war came, most of those caught up in it would be concerned only with their own survival. He had gone into the war in Spain to fight for a cause, but soon had been concerned only for Carmody.
“No, darl, for everyone. I wouldn’t mind betting Hitler is already calling his generals together.”
He stood up, went into the bathroom, had a quick wash, came back into the bedroom and started to dress. After the warm evening and the love-making he felt like a shower, but there was no time for that; feeling clean wasn’t going to make him feel any better. A door was about to be opened, one through which he had entered once before. This time, though, it would open on a wider and more terrible scene. It would be the biggest story he would ever cover, but he felt none of the usual newspaperman’s excitement. All at once he wished he were back home, safe in the sheds or the paddocks, where the only wars were the brawls between drunken shearers on Saturday nights, where the only dictator might be a station boss who could be brought to his senses by the shearing team going on strike. He had covered those sort of stories as a cadet and been proud and excited when one of the Sydney papers would run a couple of column inches of what he had written. Those innocent days, however, were gone forever. He had a sense of foreboding, as if someone had just turned the first sod of his grave.
He kissed Cathleen. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be working all night, probably all tomorrow, too. I’ll ring you when you get home from the studio.”
She held his hand. “Thanks, darling.” He looked puzzled, his mind already elsewhere, chasing contacts in the Foreign Press Office. She explained patiently: “For everything. Getting in touch with the Langs, for being so kind, for this—” She patted the bed. “I think I’m in love with you.”
“What a time to tell me.” He grinned, kissed her again. “If all this turns out to be a false alarm, I’ll be back.”
But he knew it would not be a false alarm. Already in his head he could hear the bombs falling.
He let himself out of the apartment, went quietly down the stairs. As he reached the hallway the front door opened and a man and a woman came in, laughing softly. They said good evening to him, didn’t give him a second glance but went up the stairs with an arm round each other, still laughing. They hadn’t heard the news, they still had the whole night in which to enjoy each other.
He went out into the street, walked up towards the Kurfürstendamm looking for a taxi. As he crossed the road he saw a man step out of a doorway and walk hurriedly away. There was no mistaking who it was: Decker.
III
Helmut, sleeping alone, was sound asleep when his father called him.
“It has just come over the wireless. A non-aggression pact with the Russians, with that monster Stalin. They have done their best over the years to kill off all the communists in Germany and now they make this treaty with the worst of them! Is there no end to our madman’s perfidy?”
Despite the news, Helmut smiled: only his father’s generation and class would say Treulosigkeit, perfidy. But it was a situation that perhaps only operatic words could describe: “It is hard to believe, Father—”
“Is that all you have to say?” Helmut had never heard his father so wrought up; he sounded like a junior officer who had just learned his troops had run away from him. “Hitler can do what he likes now! He will have us at war within a week!”
“Father—” Helmut sounded like a patient parent trying to calm an over-excited son; he could remember reverse situations in his own boyhood. “There is nothing we can do immediately. I have to work tomorrow, but as soon as I’ve finished I’ll come to your hotel. Is Romy still with you?”
“She went back to Stuttgart for the weekend. She’ll be back here tomorrow afternoon.”
“Did she go by car?”
“No, the Horch is still here. But you’ll be bringing your car, won’t you?” The General was once more his calm, cool self: he was making plans, a general’s task. “We’ll go ahead as planned. We must.”
“I’ll be there. Fa
ther.” He no longer thought his father’s plan was mad; dangerous and foolhardy perhaps, but not mad. The more he had thought about the kidnapping or assassination of Hitler, the more he had come to appreciate that it was necessary. His father had told him that the generals, the sensible professionals, not Hitlers sycophants, believed that Germany could not win a war if it was started immediately; such a course would only result in another defeat, a return to a situation as bad as that of the years right after the Great War. Hitler, somehow, had to be removed.
He slept fitfully the rest of the night, rose early and drove out to Neubabelsberg. He was surprised at the amount of troop movement; it seemed that the number of convoys had trebled since last week. It did not surprise him that they were heading west; cynically he assumed that the troops were already in place on the Polish frontier; within twelve hours the west-bound troops would be facing France’s Maginot Line. He drove behind the last truck of a convoy, staring ahead at the glum faces staring back at him from the truck. They did not have the look of heroes eager for war.
He was in the reserves and he knew his call-up might come any day now. Then would come the dilemma: whether to respond to the call-up and stay and fight for Germany or flee to another country, one like Sweden which would remain neutral or to France or England, which would surely go to war. He could not see himself sitting out the war in Sweden, being so close a witness to the destruction of his fatherland; neither could he see himself joining some force in England or France that would fight against his own countrymen. For all his liberalism he was still an Albern, his father’s son. Commoners can forget their past, aristocrats never: or so his father, a man with a sense of the aristocracy’s brittle present, had often told him.
At the studio everyone was talking about the news in this morning’s papers. Helmut picked up one newspaper, Dr. Goebbels’ own Angriff, read only one line—“a long and traditional friendship produced a foundation for a common understanding”—and threw the paper away in disgust. Fritz Till picked it up, looked at it and said, “Is communism now respectable? I must dig up some old friends, tell them they can come back from the grave.”
Helmut’s action in throwing away the paper had been hasty; he was not entirely foolhardy. “Keep it down, Fritz. Don’t let’s start any war here on the lot.”
Till laughed, a ton of mirth. “You think anyone here wants to be in a war? Even our esteemed director, who wears his Party badge to bed, will be looking for a nice comfy job somewhere a long way behind the front.”
“I’d still be careful, Fritz. We don’t want to lose you to the Gestapo. At least not before the film is finished.” He smiled, but he was deadly serious.
Till, too, was serious; he suddenly stopped laughing, looked around the set in which they stood, the dining hall in Ludwig’s palace. When he looked back at Helmut there were tears in his eyes. “Why do we produce so many madmen? This is a wonderful country. What is wrong with us?”
But Helmut had no answer. He turned away, avoiding Till’s next question: “What does your father think?”
Karl Braun came waltzing on to the set: he would fight the war with vivacity: “Let’s forget all that stuff in the newspapers! We have our film to finish. Where’s our darling star?”
“If you mean me,” said Cathleen, coming in with her hairdresser and make-up girl, “I’m right here.”
As Helmut set up his lights he noticed that Cathleen looked wan and tired. He called for the lights to be switched off and moved in beside Cathleen. “Are you all right? You don’t look well.”
“That’s what this scene calls for, isn’t it? Ludwig is kicking me out.”
He was not taken in; her smile was too bright and forced. “Nobody else is going to kick you out.”
They were in the centre of everything, but too much was going on for any notice to be taken of them. Electricians were calling for lamps to be moved; carpenters were making last-minute repairs to a wall of the set; an argument was brewing between Braun and the film’s supervisor, Leander, who had just come down from the front office; the assistant director was running about looking for a target for his authority. It was the sort of chaos that everyone cherished, since it made them look important to any spectators wandering in from outside. It was the only way to combat the importance of the stars.
For a moment she looked less wan; she looked interested, curious, “What do you mean by that?”
He hedged. “You’re worried there might be war, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course, but not with America.” Perhaps he could go there, join all the others who had gone, Lubitsch, Sternberg, Lang. Hollywood suddenly looked far enough away to be Heaven, of a sort. “As soon as the film is finished, you can leave.”
“Have you seen Colonel von Gaffrin?” Her face suddenly looked pinched, driving in behind her blunt remark.
“No. Why?”
“Ask him why the Abwehr is interested in me.”
The lamps had come on again; they moved out of range while Cathleen’s stand-in stepped forward to take the discomfort of the lights; every trade has its slaves. Helmut stood beside a lamp, his face partly shadowed. He owed her more than evasions now; everything was coming to a head. “He hasn’t told me—”
“Did you leave me the note telling me to be careful?”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. Now was not the time to be linked to a minor conspiracy, not with the huge conspiracy right on the family doorstep.
“Then find out why they’re interested in me. Please!”
Then Braun, face flushed from his argument with the supervisor, appeared beside them. “The things they expect! Two weeks from finishing and suddenly they want everything more pointed! They want to turn it into a propaganda film!”
“I thought that was what we were making,” said Helmut and walked away, escaping from both of them.
He avoided Cathleen for the rest of the day. In the afternoon Melissa came out to the studio for a late call; her part in the film was almost done. The call this afternoon was for retakes of reaction shots, close-ups that had not satisfied Braun. As he set the lamps to light her face, Helmut could feel her eyes following him. When he looked at her through the view-finder she stared back at him almost accusingly. There was pain in her face and, for the first time, with the eye of a professional, he saw beauty there and not mere prettiness.
“That’s what we want, darling!” Braun gasped; he was at the end of his tether. It had been a dreadful day. “If only you’d given me that last time!”
Melissa said nothing, didn’t alter her expression; sometimes the best acting is no acting at all, though she had arrived at it by accident. Helmut gave the signal to the camera operator, looked at Braun and nodded. The camera began to roll and Melissa began to look like a star, just as her contract was about to end. It was too late, Helmut knew: she had done nothing in this film that would get her a contract back in England. Or rather she had done something that would assure her of not getting a contract in England: she had appeared in one of Dr. Goebbels’ German propaganda films.
“Cut!” said Braun and sat back, fanning himself with another of his crêpe-de-chine handkerchiefs. “Darling, you were marvellous! What a pity you will be leaving us!”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Even her voice seemed to have changed, there was no longer that light girlish note, that false voice she had learned in the theatre; there was some of the roughness of where she had come from, the outskirts of Bradford. She had never been in danger of having to work in the woollen mills, but her father was an accountant in the woollen trade and nobody in that trade talked “naice.” Something had happened to her and she had reverted to her true self, the self that had been born and raised in Bradford, the self she had tried to deny with her dreams even as a child. “A bloody pity!”
Braun raised his eyebrows, looked at Helmut, shrugged and waddled off. The operator and his assistant wheeled the camera away, the gaffers picked up their lamps and went lookin
g for another face to light, more corners to illuminate, and Helmut and Melissa were left alone.
“What’s the matter?” He was surrounded by disturbed women today. “Are you worried there might be war?”
“No. Yes!” She was twisting a handkerchief round and round her hand, a theatrical trick to portray anguish. He was tired of actresses, one never knew when their emotion was genuine. But he could see that she was truly upset and all at once he felt very protective towards her. “I’m pregnant!”
“Oh God.” He said it wearily, though he didn’t mean to; it is a way men have of sounding when confronted by a woman’s problem over which they have no control.
“Don’t sound like that!” She had never been in this situation before, but she had a woman’s instinctive ear. Men are selfish, her mother had warned her; and driven her father back to his profit and loss columns. “I didn’t want it to happen any more than you did!”
“Are you sure?” It was a man’s question, as if a woman’s biological functions was something a woman wouldn’t understand.
“Of course I’m bloody sure!” It came out rough and coarse, Bradford thick on her tongue. “I’ve just come from the doctor. I’ve missed two of my periods. I’ve missed before, I tend to be that way, so I wasn’t too worried when I missed the first time.”
He said nothing, because he could think of nothing to say. He had been fortunate in all his previous affairs; none of his girls had missed their periods, or if they had they had not told him so. His first reaction was selfish: why hadn’t Melissa been more careful? He did not want to be a father, not yet; not while he had the responsibility of his own father, who had to be protected as much as a young mother-to-be. She said, “Haven’t you anything to say?”
“What do you want me to say?” It was the sort of dialogue he had heard in bad scripts, where the writers had not known how to get over a weak spot in the story. Padding, it was called. But padding was the last thing Melissa would want now.
“Take your time.” She got up from the stool on which she had been sitting for the close-ups. “But we’ll have to talk. Soon.”