The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  This is how we greeted the news of the coming of war, he thought, with the clapping of hands. As if we were applauding a show we hadn’t enjoyed.

  II

  Carmody had received a letter from his mother. It was like a despatch from a never-never land in a never-never time . . . “It has been a mild winter so far, just a few frosts,” Ida wrote. “Your father had a droving job last month, taking a mob of 1200 sheep, mostly wethers, out to Cawndilla. I went along with him. It was just like old times. I kept looking behind me to see if you were straggling along behind us with Cobber and the other dogs. Dad and I went to a hop in Cawndilla and had a good time. He is still light on his feet but I’m not as spry as I used to be. I hope you are having a good time in Berlin. I don’t like the sound of that Hitler . . .”

  The letter was eight weeks old and there was no mention of war. He all at once felt a longing to see his parents again and wondered how much they had changed in the three years since he had left home. It was just like old times . . . He could smell the dust and the sheep, feel the smooth coat of the crossbred dog rubbing against his bare leg, taste the rabbit grilled on the end of a stick over a camp fire, see the mulberry cloud coming up behind a lone tree on a distant hill. The crisp morning bit into him, but gently, like the love-bite of Nature; the afternoon sun warmed him, like the dimly remembered comfort of his mother’s arms when he had been quite small. And the stars at night, identified for him by Rupe Venneker, the English remittance man, the sailor who had roamed the world, the man who had started his education . . .

  He was not a man for tears, but suddenly he wanted to weep.

  He put the letter away with all the others his parents had written and went out to work. Since Monday night it seemed that he had hardly slept. New York and London, where the editors worked in shifts and not round the clock, had been constantly phoning him, asking him for more copy. They were calling for hard news, for background, for profiles: the world had to know all about those who were going to end it.

  He went to an early supper at La Trattoria, the Italian restaurant just off the Potsdamerplatz. It was run by a tall thin Tyrolean from the Brenner Pass and his stout but timid Polish wife; it had become a gathering place for most of the foreign correspondents and some of the senior Berlin newspapermen. Gossip was served as garnish with the pollo alla Romana; malicious comment took the sweetness out of the spumante. He did not go there regularly, because he was not naturally gregarious and he soon grew weary of crowd conversation; but in times of crisis, like the present, it was the place to pick up items that he had missed on his rounds of government offices. Official press handouts were like marriage certificates: they were no guarantee that anything would or ever had been consummated.

  He took a seat at a table opposite Joe Begley. Tinkler, the owner, brought him a plate of spaghetti bolognese. He looked up at the thin dark face, more mournful-looking than ever. “What’s the trouble, Luis?”

  “The wife.” Tinkler had once been an actor; he had a beautiful deep voice. “She’s Polish, as you know. If we go to war over Danzig, where does that put her?”

  “Pack up and take her to the States,” said Begley; then grinned at his own recipe. “America, the answer to everything.”

  He had taken off his trenchcoat and looked naked without it, a turtle without its shell.

  “How long has she lived in Germany?” said Carmody.

  “Twenty years,” said Tinkler. “But you think that will matter? I had Jewish friends who had lived here for two hundred years—or anyway their family had. You think it saved them?”

  “Why don’t you go back to Austria?”

  “The Austrians have worse Nazis there than we have here.”

  “No,” said Begley, pausing to wipe some ravioli from his chin, “the worst one of the lot is here.”

  “He’s an Austrian, isn’t he?” said Tinkler and went away, stooped over as if already grieving.

  It was Frau Tinkler who brought them fruit and cheese. She was almost as tall as her husband and must have outweighed him by at least 30 pounds; but she had a bird-like timidity about her, as if afraid the weight of the world would crush her. Her voice was so soft one felt like burrowing in her stoutness to wrench it out of her. Her eyes were perpetually downcast, which made it difficult for customers signalling for service.

  “Do you have family in Poland, Frau Tinkler?” said Begley.

  She nodded and whispered something neither man caught. “Pardon?”

  “Danzig.” Her voice was still little more than a whisper, but she glanced up and about her as if she had involuntarily shouted an obscenity.

  “Do you hear from them?” said Carmody. “What do they think about the situation there?”

  “They are frightened. They are Poles, not Germans.” It was the longest speech either of them had ever heard her make. She ducked her head, folded her face into her chins as if ashamed at being so voluble.

  Then Tinkler, coming away from serving another table, stopped by her. “All her mother’s letters to us have been opened. She never gets ours.”

  “If Herr Carmody or I have to go to Danzig, would you like us to take them a message?”

  Frau Tinkler lifted her head, her big round face lit up.

  “Would you? Perhaps you could take something for my mother—a small gift?”

  “Sure.” Carmody had no plans for going to Danzig, he had been there only two weeks ago; but he could not deflate the woman, she seemed to have ballooned with gratitude. You had better go to Danzig, he silently told Begley, you had no right making such a promise. “We’ll let you know when one of us is going.”

  The Tinklers thanked them and went away, Tinkler saying as he went, “We’d never want to leave Berlin. It is the best city in the world, don’t you think?”

  “Naturally,” said Begley, who came from Chicago, the next best.

  “If you say so,” said Carmody, who had never seen a city till he was eighteen years old and those he had seen since had been under siege of one form or another. “We’re lucky. Being outsiders, I mean.”

  Begley nodded. “You think I don’t know it? When I see what’s going on here, I sometimes have sympathy for the isolationists back home. Who in his right senses wants to get mixed up in all this? But then I have a conscience, something my first city editor told me to get rid of when he sent me out on my first story. I’ve been trying to get rid of it ever since, but it sticks to me like shit to a blanket.”

  That had been a favourite expression of Paddy Carmody’s, though never about his conscience. Carmody suddenly felt nostalgic for the sound of his father’s voice.

  “Are you coming to Goebbels’ press conference this evening?” Begley said.

  “It’ll be worth it to hear how he justifies the pact with the Russians.”

  Outside the restaurant Carmody bumped into the Australian cyclist he had interviewed, getting out of a taxi. In a suit he looked older, a lean bone of a man ready for burying. He and his partner had come second in the six-day event, losing out to a German pair. The Germans seemed to be winning everything this summer.

  “Did you write that piece on me?”

  “Yes,” lied Carmody, who had had too many other pieces to write in the past week. “Where do you go next? Paris? Munich?”

  The cyclist shook his head. “I’m going home, mate. Things are starting to look crook here in Europe. Any message you want me to give Australia?”

  “Just tell it to stay where it is.”

  “Bloody good advice, mate. Well, hooroo. Keep your head down.”

  He went into the restaurant, bandy-legged and bowbacked, and Begley, once more wrapped in his trenchcoat, said, “Who was that?”

  “An Aussie philosopher. We breed ‘em by the hundreds.”

  They took the bike rider’s taxi and rode over to the Propaganda Ministry. Everyone was there, from Tass to the Christian Science Monitor and all beliefs and persuasions in between. Carmody had never seen such a crowded conference; it was a scri
mmage with everyone pushing and shoving for a vantage point. The fountain pens were loaded, ready to fire the first shots of war.

  Oliver Burberry stood leaning against a side wall; Carmody and Begley propped themselves up beside him. “I had hoped for a front seat, out of respect for The Times. But Tass has my chair, as you will notice.”

  “Never mind,” said Carmody. “It’s more decent back here amongst the Colonies.”

  “You better get used to it,” said Begley, wrestling himself out of his trenchcoat again. “We’re in the Jim Crow seats from now on.”

  Then Goebbels made his entrance. This evening, Carmody noticed, he was wearing uniform, complete with gloves; for the past month more and more ministers had been wearing uniform every day. There was no doubt the well-cut tunic lent more authority to the slight figure. “He looks like my old Scouts master,” said Burberry. “Perhaps I should salute.”

  It was the first time Carmody had seen Goebbels since Cathleen had had supper with him. He felt jealousy gnawing at him; or rather hatred. He had always had contempt for the Minister: he was a liar, a womanizer and a Jew-hater; he was also an opportunist and Carmody knew that breed could never be trusted.

  “He will now stand on his head,” said Burberry.

  Which the Propaganda Minister proceeded to do, at least verbally and philosophically. “The Fuehrer, ever mindful of the German people’s, indeed the whole world’s, desire for peace has once again shown his remarkable talent for diplomacy and statesmanship . . . Our two great countries, Germany and Russia, have had a long tradition of friendship. More recently we have had the greatest respect for each other’s system. There have been differences, of course, but they were in the nature of different circumstances in our respective countries . . . You have a question, Herr Burberry?”

  “Yes, Herr Reichsminister. Will both countries now allow free elections, with all parties free to participate?”

  “Our elections are free, Herr Burberry. At the moment, however, we are not planning any.” Goebbels smiled and all the correspondents in the front row smiled back at him, even those who were not German or Russian; a smile was cheap admission, if it meant you got a front row seat at future conferences. “Yes, Herr Carmody?”

  “In view of the long tradition of friendship, how does the Minister reconcile that with the fact that Germans and Russians fought on opposite sides in the recent Spanish civil war?”

  “They were all volunteers, Herr Carmody. You must know that—I understand you were there. Germans are free to go anywhere they wish to fight for their beliefs.”

  “Like the German Jews,” said Begley under his breath.

  The conference went on, but the questions now were bland; the more cynical correspondents had given up. Goebbels spread his answers like butter, was always in command, never lost his patience. As he stood up to close the conference there came the sound of church bells through the open windows. It seemed an incongruous sound for the circumstances and the incongruity of it silenced the room for a moment. It was the moment when Burberry chose to say, “There is the death-knell for the British Empire.”

  Everyone turned to look at him, including Goebbels. Carmody, suddenly alert, saw the Minister’s eyes light up and his mouth open in a wide smile.

  “May I quote you, Herr Burberry?”

  Burberry looked ready to bite his tongue off at the root. He sighed, smiled weakly. “A slip of rhetoric, Herr Reichsminister. I’ve been hearing it for years.”

  Goebbels nodded, smiled again and made his exit. But Carmody and Burberry and everyone in the room knew the remark would be quoted to the Fuehrer, if to no one else. A good opportunist would never let an opportunity like that slip by.

  Carmody felt sorry for Burberry. “Bad luck, Oliver.”

  Burberry looked at his umbrella point, as if contemplating stabbing himself with it. “I’ve always hated church bells. They disturb one’s sleep on a Sunday morning. The bell-ringers have just had their revenge.”

  Carmody left him and Begley, went to his office and filed his piece on the press conference. Olga Luxemburg looked at him worriedly. “You should go home and get some sleep, Herr Carmody.”

  He stood at the window looking out on the Potsdamerplatz. Was it imagination or were more customers going into the chemist’s shop on the corner opposite? Were they after headache powders, some anodyne against the future? “What are you going to do, if I have to leave?”

  She came and stood beside him. He glanced at her and saw that she was not looking down at the Platz but straight out across the city. There was still light in the sky, a pale yellow that turned to lemon as he looked at it. The far skyline was etched against it, the domes and steeples of churches dominating the frieze: it was the profile of Berlin of the past, of Bismarck, with all the Nazi banners lost in the shadows. “I shall stay on here, Herr Carmody. There is nowhere else to go—I am a Berliner.”

  “Will you find it hard to get a job, having worked for foreigners for so long?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’ll see that you get a good pension,” he promised rashly, “if we have to close down the office.”

  “How will I be paid? If war comes, how will the money be allowed in?” She was a practical woman, more practical than he: “I don’t think they’ll close the office, at least not till America declares war on us. But you may have to go, you will be thought of as English.”

  He smiled: that would kill his father, the Pommy-hater. “I’ll cultivate an American accent.”

  “I don’t think that will help. I was not going to tell you—I didn’t want you to worry—” She turned and looked at him and he saw something in her eyes that he had never noticed before. It shocked him, because he was a modest man: he recognized it as love. “Those two men, the Gestapo, came back again this morning. They interrogated me, wanted me to tell them all about you, what you wrote, whom you knew in the Ministries . . .”

  “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be drawn into this—” He wanted to put a hand on her arm, but now he was afraid. “What did you tell them?”

  “As little as possible. I was polite—” She would always be that, even to her executioner, should she meet him. She was as plain as a woman could be, but now he saw the beauty in her, something that had nothing to do with her features. He had the blinkered look of most men, especially the young: he had always looked for the more obvious attributes of a woman. Courage, devotion, would never win beauty contests; but now they began to win him. He felt suddenly humble and still afraid. Because he would never be able to repay what she was offering him. “So were they. Or at least Inspector Lutze was. Not that other one, that Decker.”

  “Were they satisfied with what you told them?”

  “I don’t think so, but how can one tell? At least they didn’t take me away. But you must be careful—” There was anguish in her pale blue eyes and it hurt him to see it.

  “I’ll try. You be careful, too. They probably have our phones tapped.”

  She tried to smile, but it was difficult for her. “Only my mother calls me. I don’t think even the Gestapo would consider her subversive. She does not like the Fuehrer, but Reichsmarschall Goering is her pin-up. She likes him even more than the film stars.”

  Everyone to their taste. “Well, still be careful. You don’t have to shove your neck out for World Press.”

  “I have never before shoved my neck out—” She had a little difficulty with the phrase. “Perhaps it would be a change.”

  No, he thought, it’s too late now for the revolution. You and all the Germans like you should have shoved your necks out when you realized the truth about Hitler. But then, fair-minded as ever, a weakness the Nazis would have despised, he wondered if his own countrymen or the British or the French or the Americans, given the same circumstances, would have rebelled. In the past, yes; but now? Revolutions now were led by generals, as in Spain. There were no generals in Australia or any of the Allied countries who could fire the citizens into rebellion. There were Ger
man generals who would have led a rising against Hitler, but the German people no longer trusted their military leaders.

  He said goodnight to her, told her to lock up the office and go home (to her mother, the admirer of Goering) and went out into the Potsdamerplatz and began the long walk home to his own apartment. Occasionally he looked over his shoulder to see if he could catch sight of Lutze or Decker or anyone else who might be following him, but all he saw was the sauntering crowd, carefree and unthreatening. Or so the crowd seemed on the surface: but behind those smiling faces, beneath those sober suits, he saw the grim-faced, uniformed soldiers of tomorrow. He walked on, utterly depressed.

  His spirits lifted for a moment when Cathleen got out of a waiting taxi as he came to his front door. “I’ve been waiting half an hour. I didn’t want to come to your office—” She paid off the driver, giving him a tip that sent him away humming, put her arm in Carmody’s and pushed him inside the building and up the stairs to his apartment, “I had a phone call from Frau Schmidt. Lang.”

  “Where? At your flat?”

  “No, at the studio. Don’t worry, we were both so discreet. She probably thought it safer to call me there—the phones to the dressing-rooms aren’t tapped.”

  “How do you know?” He offered her a drink, but she shook her head. He poured himself a beer, sat down beside her on the big leather couch. “What did she have to say?”

  “They have a lead, but she wouldn’t say what. I think she was only ringing to encourage me. I haven’t been able to sleep—I’m excited one minute, depressed the next . . . She probably understands how I feel. A woman would.”

  “Some men would, too,” he said, feeling wiser by the hour.

  She pressed his hand. “You would, I know. Can I sleep here tonight?”

  “Sleep or make love?”

  “Both. I have no call tomorrow. Willy Heffer has the ‘flu, so they are shooting around us tomorrow. I’ll be glad of the rest.”