The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  “You mustn’t try to talk him out of it,” Romy said, as if reading Helmut’s thoughts. “We’re not callous or bloodthirsty or fanatical. It just has to be done, that’s all. We can’t allow Hitler and the stupid men around him to destroy Germany. That’s what they’ll do, you know. Destroy it.”

  “I just wish there were some other way,” he said lamely.

  “There isn’t. How is Melissa?” she said, going on to less important things. “You had better hurry up if you are going to marry her. We’ll want to get her out of Berlin and back to The Pines before they start bombing the city.”

  “The city? Berlin?” Somehow it had never occurred to him that bombs might fall here; they always fell on other cities. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so. We have to find a priest—”

  “I can arrange that. I know Cardinal Count Preysing here—” She would, he thought. There were advantages to belonging to his father’s and her class, his own class. Things could be arranged that were beyond the reach of other, less well-born people. “Saturday?”

  “Yes. Yes, Saturday.” An assassination disposed of, a wedding to follow. “I’ll tell Melissa.”

  His father and Gaffrin came back into the room, his father nodding with pleasure, a commander presented with ideal terrain in which to attack. “The angle is acute, but it can be done. We are fortunate he will be driven up the far side of the street.”

  “You can come back here late Thursday night, you won’t be disturbed. The cleaning woman comes in Thursday morning.”

  The General looked around him. “I’ll leave the gun here—it will be safest.”

  “Put it in here,” said Romy, still housekeeping. She opened the front of a big, heavy sideboard. Inside were a range of crystal glasses and a dozen or more bottles of Scotch, gin and schnapps; Burberry had left a cache in case of his return. Romy moved the bottles and glasses aside. “It will fit in there, at the back.”

  The small case was hidden behind the bottles and glasses, the door of the sideboard closed. Then the four of them stood and looked at each other, suddenly left with nothing to do but wait.

  But then Romy thought of something to do. “Hans, drive Kurt back to the hotel, please. Helmut and I have something to arrange.”

  “What?” said the General.

  “A wedding. We’re going to see the Cardinal.” She looked at her watch. “He would not have gone to bed yet. It’s only the priests, not the bishops, who have to get up early.”

  She knew the nature of men. Or, like most women, thought she did.

  III

  Cathleen had a convenient headache—“Shoot around me this morning, Karl, please. I’ll be in this afternoon and I’ll work through as long as you like. But this morning I just feel dreadful. I’ve got the curse.”

  “All right, darling.” Braun was sympathetic. She had known directors in Hollywood who had thought actresses had no right to biological upsets. “Can you make it by two o’clock?”

  “Thanks, Karl,” she said and felt guilty at having to lie to him.

  She was at her bank in the Uhlandstrasse when its doors opened. Carmody had called her late last night to say he would not be able to come and stay the night, that he had to sleep by his own phone: New York had now taken to calling him every couple of hours, disregarding the time difference between New York and Berlin. He had told her he had contacted someone who would do his best to provide them with forged papers, but the man wanted to be paid in American dollars. So now she had to ask for . . .

  “Six thousand dollars in American currency, Fräulein? That’s impossible.” The bank manager suffered from a surfeit of overhang: his hooked nose overhung his pendulous lips, his jowls overhung his collar, his great belly overhung his spindly legs; he looked like the various stages of a landslide. But he was a ladies’ man, especially if the ladies were beautiful film actresses: “I’d do anything to accommodate you, Fräulein O’Dea, but a branch of this size—” Hands like giant white starfish were spread palms upwards on his desk. “It’s just impossible.”

  “What about your head office?”

  “Ah yes, they may have it. But it would take time to have them transfer it to us—tomorrow morning, perhaps—”

  “Herr Wanger, could you give me a letter? Tell them I am a valued client—I am, aren’t I?”

  “Oh, of course, of course! Most valued.” He was a jelly of adoration; he shook with worship. “But they are so formal at head office—they know nothing of the personal relations we have with our clients—”

  “Write me the letter, please, Herr Wanger.” She crossed her legs, gave him the view of the sensual instep. She had played the scene several times with Wallace Beery, Frank Morgan, Charles Butterworth: life now imitated art as Herr Wanger succumbed as had those actors. “Thank you—you’re a darling.”

  When he gave her the letter five minutes later she wondered if she should kiss him, but decided against it, for fear that he would collapse in a sprawl of adulation on top of her. She hurried out of the office and caught a taxi for the bank’s head office in Jägerstrasse in the Gendarmenmarkt. When she got out of the taxi she was instantly aware of the busy pedestrian traffic. Sober-suited men and uniformed messengers hurried by; six men stood in a tight group as if in a football huddle, then suddenly broke up and disappeared individually into the passing crowd. Cathleen had never been in a financial district before: when she had lived in New York, Wall Street had been too far downtown and, as far as she knew, Los Angeles had never had a financial district. So she was unsure whether this frenetic foot traffic was typical of the Gendarmenmarkt on any day or whether the political crisis had brought it on. As she gazed up at the bank’s headquarters, a Gothic fortress, she wondered if anyone inside it would be interested in an American actress who wanted a packet of her own currency.

  Someone was interested: the youngest of the six assistant managers. He, like Herr Wanger, was a ladies’ man. He was handsome, a fact he obviously knew, and he had an eye for an instep and everything above it. When he gave Cathleen the six thousand dollars in American currency he also gave her his card.

  “At any time you may wish to call, Fräulein O’Dea. Day or night.”

  “I can’t thank you enough, Herr Schrieber.” She gave him her hand to kiss, pursed her lips as if she might offer those at a later date. “If I do need you—”

  “Please call,” said the banker, writing off his wife and three children as bad debts.

  It was too early to go to the Tiergarten to meet the Langs. Raised in New York and lately a resident of Los Angeles, she was not a natural walker; still, this morning she decided she would walk over to Carmody’s office and felt virtuous at the thought of the unaccustomed exercise. The journey to Potsdamerplatz proved to be shorter than she expected, but in getting there she passed Goebbels’ town residence. She paused on the opposite side of the street and looked at the attractive building, something she had not been able to do when the Reichsminister’s car had delivered her there that first night. Well, she would not be going there again: she no longer needed the Reichsminister.

  Carmody was in his office. They kissed, but only after he had closed the door on Fräulein Luxemburg: he wanted to protect her feelings. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come last night—”

  “It was all right. I slept better than I expected. I have the money.” She gave him a thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills. He put it in the office safe. “Will you come with me to meet the Langs?”

  As they went out of the office at a quarter to twelve he said to Fräulein Luxemburg, “I’ll be back at one, Olga. Don’t stay if you have a lunch appointment.”

  “I’ll stay, Herr Carmody. Don’t hurry.”

  As they went downstairs Cathleen said, “Olga?”

  “I finally got round to it,” he said almost sheepishly. “I asked her first if she minded.”

  “Did she?”

  “It was as if I had proposed to her.” He shook his head. “Christ, I wish I could do something for her!”

 
“You can’t, darling. I knew women like her at MGM, in Wardrobe and the Story department. Something always stops them from getting a man—I don’t know what, but something. They’re lonely and I’d give up if I had their life, but somehow they keep going. Some of them last longer than us who think we’re happy.”

  “I hope so.” But he didn’t sound hopeful for Olga Luxemburg.

  They arrived by the goldfish pond in the Tiergarten at the same moment as the Langs. Envelopes were exchanged, money for papers. “There is a German passport in there,” said Lang. “We had some luck—a woman we know died yesterday. How old is your mother?”

  “Forty-seven, forty-eight, I’m not sure.”

  “Frau Dix was sixty-five. You will have to age your mother somehow to have her match the birth date in the passport. Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Unless she’s aged while she’s been in the camp?” Cathleen could face the truth; though she hoped she would not have to.

  Lang hesitated, then nodded. “Treatment in the camps is very harsh.”

  “Let’s face that when we have Frau Hoolahan here in Berlin,” said Inge Lang. “Because of the German passport you will now have to get an American visa besides the exit permit. Papers, papers . . .”

  “The world would come to a halt without them,” said Lang with a smile: he worked in a government department.

  “Perhaps the world should never have learned to read,” said Carmody.

  “But then how would we have appreciated newspapers, Herr Carmody? Or Goethe or Schiller? There is always a price to pay.” He stuffed the envelope with the money in it into his jacket pocket. “We shall be here with your mother, Fräulein, at noon on Thursday.”

  He lifted his hat, his wife put her arm in his and off they went. Carmody looked after them. “Is that what a hero and a heroine look like? I always thought they looked like Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert.”

  “Or like you and me,” said Cathleen and put her arm in his. “Now I’d like to go somewhere and say a prayer.”

  IV

  She and Willy Heffer put seven minutes of film in the can that Wednesday afternoon. None of the scenes was really good, but Karl Braun announced he was happy with them; it was as if he had decided that the film now was never going to be shown outside Germany and the home audiences could take or leave what was offered them. What the Reichsminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda might say was something he evidently was prepared to risk. If war broke out, enlightenment might come from something more devastating than a musical comedy film.

  At four o’clock a messenger had arrived with a note for Cathleen asking her to have supper with the Reichsminister at ten that evening. Feeling virtuous for the second time that day, but this time to a greater degree, she scrawled a refusal on the bottom of the note, saying she was too busy filming. A little over an hour later the messenger was back with another note; he must have driven like a fury between Neubabelsberg and Berlin and back again. There was certainly fury in Goebbels’ note.

  “You misunderstand, Fräulein O’Dea. I am your employer and I wish to see you. The car will call for you at the studio at 9.30.” It was signed with his full signature this time, not just initials.

  Cathleen debated whether to ring Carmody or not, then decided against it. She did not want to upset him, to make him jealous again. He had enough on his mind; she had already put too much of a burden on him. She would go and see Goebbels, obey his order, for that was what it was, and Sean need know nothing about the visit.

  They finished shooting at 8.30. “Only one more day, darlings,” said Karl Braun, limp all over, “and that will wrap up our picture. I’m just exhausted.”

  “The same here,” said Willy Heffer, showing the strains not only of the strenuous schedule of the last few days but of thirty years of being a matinée idol. Character parts loomed ahead like skeletons in a grave. “Oh, to play in a nice drawing-room comedy again.”

  Cathleen bade them all goodnight, went to her dressing-room, had a bath, sent her dresser to Wardrobe to borrow a gown to wear for the evening. She had come out to the studio this afternoon wearing only slacks and a silk shirt, expecting to go straight back to her apartment again when she had finished work. If the Reichsminister was in the mood that his note suggested, he would not welcome her looking like Marlene Dietrich on her day off.

  The dresser, a motherly woman who had once had non-speaking parts in silent movies, brought back a two-piece outfit in grey silk. “Discreet but sexy, Fräulein.”

  “We’ll play up the discreet bit, Trudi, and forget about being sexy.”

  “Yes, Fräulein,” said Trudi, who had enjoyed and still missed the Berlin of the 1920s and wondered why sex should be forgotten, especially for a Reichsminister.

  Driving in through the warm evening Cathleen noticed the increased military traffic. When she was shown into Goebbels’ presence in the house on Hermann Goeringstrasse the military traffic looked as if it was going to be a jam: he was in uniform. She knew all at once that the evening was going to be a battle.

  He waited till the butler had gone, then he moved forward, took her hand and kissed it. But when he raised his eyes to hers, they were cold and his smile was thin and mocking. “So you were too busy?”

  “That’s what you’re paying me for, Herr Reichsminister,” she said in her best formal voice. “To work.”

  “Indeed I am, and your work has been very good. Herr Braun tells me you are easily the best part of the film. I am glad my choice was not an ill-chosen one.”

  “I’m grateful you chose me.” The conversation sounded as if it were in splints.

  They sat down at the small supper table. The menu was the same as last time; the procedure was the same, she eating hungrily, he ignoring his food. But he poured them both some champagne, raised his glass to her.

  “Here’s to Frau Hoolahan.” He wasted no time, coming straight to the dagger point.

  The smoked salmon stuck in her chest as if, remembering something it had done when alive, it had decided to jump upstream. She played for time: “You aren’t playing any music this evening. No Mozart?”

  “No. Nor Gershwin or any of those Jewish composers. Did you know Frau Hoolahan was a Jewess?”

  “It’s a joke!” She managed a disbelieving laugh, a good effort. “With a name like that?”

  “It is no joke.” He put down his glass; his movements were careful, as if he were trying to restrain himself from breaking out in a burst of temper. “I do not like being made a fool of. She is Jewish, born here in Berlin—”

  “But she had lived in America for so long—”

  “How do you know how long she lived there? She is still a German citizen. I demand to know—did you know she was Jewish?”

  “No.” The word was like scalding salt in her mouth.

  He stared at her, then he relaxed, but only a little. “It is just as well. It would have been a dangerous game for you to play.”

  “Where is Frau Hoolahan?”

  “In one of our rehabilitation camps. Where she will stay.”

  “What had she done, to be sent there?”

  “How would I know such a detail? I’m a Reichsminister, not some prosecutor or clerk.” He wondered sometimes at the intelligence of this American actress. Some actresses he had had affairs with were intelligent but, even if they were not, they had at least appreciated his rank and position. Perhaps things were different in the so-called democracies and Cabinet ministers were considered only equal to every Tom, Dick and Harry, whoever they were. “The subject is closed, if you say you did not know she was a Jew.”

  “What am I going to tell my friend when I get back to California?”

  “Tell her she should have told you that Frau Hoolahan was a Jewess.”

  Her mouth had been effectively shut. If she persisted in the subject she would only expose herself as being a Jewish sympathizer, at best; at worst, she might reveal that she knew more
about Frau Hoolahan than she had so far confessed. Her mother was halfway to safety and his help, even if it had been forthcoming, was no longer necessary. Better not to wreck what the Langs had put in train.

  “I’ll do that.” Her throat was dry and her mouth, it seemed, still scalded; lies had been part of her life in Hollywood, part of the survival there, but she had never had to deny her own mother. She drank some of the champagne. “This is beautiful. What is it?”

  He looked at the bottle, noticing it for the first time. “Krug 1934.”

  “My favourite. But isn’t it French?”

  Ribbentrop, the ex-champagne salesman, had recommended it to his butler. “Food and drink, I’m told, are international.” His mood was improving; he turned on the charm in his smile. “Like films.”

  “Are you going to show a picture tonight?” She hoped not; she was ready to fall asleep. The butler came in, put schnitzel in front of her and served her some vegetables.

  He nodded. “One I think you’ll like.”

  “Joseph, I’m very tired—really—we’ve been working so hard this week trying to finish the picture in time—”

  “In time for what?” He knew, but he acted innocent. “Don’t worry yourself, Cathleen. This film will relax you. Now finish your supper.”

  Like a good girl. She wanted to throw the schnitzel at him, to get up and storm out of the room and the house, telling him to go to hell and shove his films up his can. Instead, she did as she was told, gave her attention to her plate.

  After coffee they went downstairs to the small drawing-room-cum-theatre. The lights went down as soon as they were seated and Leo the Lion came up on the screen at once, roaring at her like Louis B. Mayer. The film was Anna Karenina, with Garbo.

  “My favourite film,” said Goebbels. “The greatest actress there is on the screen.”

  But his attention was not so rapt that he ignored Cathleen. The film had been running no more than twenty minutes when she felt his hand feeling for hers. She moved her hand, but, since a hand is attached to an arm on one side of the body, its area of escape is limited. She would have laughed in other circumstances; his hand chased hers all over her lap like a ferret after a timid rabbit. Finally he nailed her, literally: she felt his nails bite into her palm.