Waiting for them at the top of the beach were their wives, just as they had left them. Vida was reading, the Viennese woman was gazing silently out at the sea. Shortly after their husbands came back, Vida said she would like to take a stroll along the beach. The Austrian offered to accompany her, promising to bring back some ice cream. They left Miloš and the Viennese woman lying next to one another in their canvas deck chairs, mesmerized by the ocean in front of them.
‘Your German is good,’ she said without turning to look at him.
‘My father was an Austro-Hungarian civil servant. I went to German schools and served in the Austrian army,’ Crnjanski briefly explained, but in order to break the silence that followed, he went on. ‘You’ve never spoken to us about your pre-war life in Vienna. What did the two of you do?’
‘He was an officer. He served during the Hitler time as well,’ the lady replied, staring off into the distance.
‘Really?’ said Miloš surprised. ‘Forgive me for being indiscreet but I thought that the two of you had fled because you were being persecuted as Jews?’
‘He has Jewish blood, through a distant relation. I am Jewish on both my mother’s and my father’s side,’ she replied. Again silence. Then suddenly she turned to him and said: ‘Tell me something about yourself.’ For the first time that day she looked at him. There was a darkness to her eyes.
‘Until recently I lived in Rome, near the Vatican, across the way from an impoverished suburb called Borgo. In the summer it stinks of urine and in the winter it is freezing cold. I am a diplomat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. I was the press attaché first in Berlin and then in Rome. That’s how I earned my living and would still be doing it if the country I was representing hadn’t disappeared. I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to live like this. I’m also a poet, but you can’t live off that.’
‘Do you want to go back home?’
‘The April bombing of Belgrade destroyed the house I once lived in and everything in it, including my manuscripts. Let’s not talk about it. Tell me something about yourself. You?’
‘I,’ she said, still without smiling, ‘I am an only child, the heiress of unnecessarily great wealth. In the last few years I have lost the vast majority of my property. We live off the remaining crumbs. But it’s not so bad; we can go on like this for a long time as long as we can endure life. I’m a psychologist. I don’t know if one can live on that; I haven’t tried.’
‘What is the first thing you ask your patients?’ Miloš asked.
‘I ask them what they dream about... What do you dream about?’
‘You’re asking me?’
‘Yes, I’m asking you.’
‘What do I dream about...? Hmm... Since coming here I have been dreaming about all sorts of things. I am quiet, sleepless, dying, cold. Volcanic islands in the polar north visit me in my dreams, my beloved homeland, Paris, my dead friends, cherries in China. Night after night I dream about Belgrade, more beautiful and splendid than it really is. In my dreams I see images of my youth, of the village, the occasional butterfly, field poppies, wheat. Sometimes I hear footsteps; I look only to discover that it is not her, because her voice is full of laughter, it’s not like this. What I hear is some kind of inarticulate screeching. Instead of her I see a bird with wild, black wings.’
She said nothing, waiting for him to continue.
‘And I sleep a lot. I have never spent so much time sleeping since I was a boy. Ill-humour makes me want to dream because it is a better world in dreams, my wishes and plans come true. Nothing troubles me when I fall asleep. I manage to guide my dream rather than let it guide me, to turn it into something real. Then I dream about lovely things. I dream about Belgrade and its sleeping rivers. About the young Venetian women of my youth. About my beloved plains. When I start dreaming about Lisbon and this trip of ours it upsets me and I wake up. Sometimes I’m not sure what is real: the Lisbon of my waking hours or the Belgrade of my dreams. Does that tell you something about me?’
‘It tells me that you are fonder of your dreams than of reality... That you are despondent. That you suffer from nostalgia. But don’t worry. It will pass... May I ask you a slightly harder question now?’
‘Go ahead. I hope I will be able to answer it.’
‘What is your highest ideal?’
‘Freedom,’ said the poet without hesitation.
‘Do you think you will ever achieve complete freedom?’
‘I don’t know. I hope so but I doubt it... Your turn now. What is your highest ideal?’
‘Love.’
‘Do you have it?’
Her answer was silence.
Like a dentist whose drill accidentally touches the soft pulp of a tooth, the poet inadvertently penetrated the sad woman’s inner soul, causing her pain. Again they both stared blankly into the endless distance, their eyes arrested only by the clear blue sky. They stayed like that for a long time. Suddenly Miloš remembered what Dučić had said, and Dučić was a man who understood women: ‘A woman never discusses love with somebody she wouldn’t be able to love or desire...’
She broke the awkward silence. She had decided to tell him a love story.
‘We married for love. And there was love, some kind of love for sure; I could feel it. Now I feel that he would be happier if I weren’t around anymore.’
‘After everything the two of you have been through together, such thoughts still plague you? Do you still love him?’
‘Yes. Of course I love him. I love him so much that I’m thinking of giving him my own suicide for his fiftieth birthday.’
‘But he has stayed by your side. He didn’t leave you even when things were at their worst.’
‘That’s true. He didn’t leave me. Do you want to know why?’
Miloš said nothing, so she continued.
‘He didn’t leave me because I am the one with the money. Even now, after having been robbed, I am the one with the jewellery that can allow us to live decently. I am the source of his security and the pillar of his dignity, and he loves himself above all else. His self-love is greater than any other love he might feel, and certainly greater than any love he ever felt for me. It’s always been like that, I’ve known that from the very first day... And it didn’t bother me because he did love me in his way. Now I think that he feels nothing but self-love.’
‘That can’t be true,’ Crnjanski protested.
‘Still, it’s a good thing that I have him,’ she picked up where she had left off. ‘Imagine if I didn’t: a woman alone, without protection, in a foreign country... If he weren’t with me, who knows, somebody might kill me for the jewellery...’
‘I honestly don’t understand you. You have love. It is in your veins. Love is usually one great act of imagination, because we imagine all the virtues of the person we love, we tell ourselves that all kinds of happiness are possible and that all obstacles are small and insignificant...’
‘I’ll tell you something, poet,’ she continued. ‘There is no such thing on this planet as real, true, ever-lasting love. There isn’t,’ she said waving her hand dismissively and crossing her lovely legs. ‘Fortunately, we don’t have children... What are you writing there?’ she asked, seeing that Miloš was penning something in his notebook.
‘I write all sorts of things that I don’t like remembering,’ he replied.
Off in the distance, the sun sank into the sea, leaving the peach-toned sand dunes to the haze of darkness and the scattered, fluffy clouds reflecting the dying red of the day.
* * *
A few days later, the woman with the big, sad eyes started going out with a cane. Walking was becoming more and more difficult for her. The two couples continued to see each other every day; sometimes they were friendlier, sometimes more reserved, depending on her mood, which was erratic.
Around this time, when they had lost almost all hope, Crnjanski finally received good news. They had been granted visas for London so that Miloš could be at the disposal of the
royal Yugoslav government-in-exile.
The night before their departure, his insomnia returned. He lay in the darkness of his hotel room, his eyes wide open, amazed. His wife, with whom he was sharing the room that night, was asleep on his arm, her head resting on his chest. He spent the whole night listening to the wind, the intermittent barking of the dogs and the distant roar of the sea. Shortly after the first roosters announced the dawn, he saw through half-closed eyes the thin light of daybreak. It was time for them to go.
When Miloš and Vida got into the car to go to the pier, the woman with the cane came out of the hotel to see them off. They parted without a smile and without a tear, and she followed them with her eyes for a long time as they drove away.
‘Now I see that after pity there is nothing,’ Miloš whispered to Vida, looking back at the figure of the sad, rich, homeless woman.
When they boarded the craft, the poet, lest he forgot, wrote the following in his notebook:
The transoceanic seaplane rocked in the waters of the Tejo like a small hypermodern aluminium ship.
They go through our luggage and take away the cameras, and on the seaplane we are told not to open the curtains. Soon the craft, which had just arrived with passengers from America, is speeding across the water and I can feel it lifting up into the air. The engines are so loud that we can’t hear each other.
Suddenly, an hour later, I can feel that we are descending and landing. A steward comes onto the plane and tells us that we are back in Lisbon but will be taking off again in half an hour.
Half an hour later we are again lifting off the water. I peek through the curtain and see that Lisbon is down there behind us, like a jewel lost in the dark. Its lights glitter. The chairs on the craft are wide and everybody prepares to catch some sleep. Only the children are playing.
SILK STOCKINGS, THREE PAIRS
Lisbon lies on the slopes of at least seven hills. The Avenida da Liberdade, its central traffic artery, runs from the point of convergence of two major hillsides down to the plain along the river and its Downtown. The avenue is bordered on both sides by rows of trees and the kind of buildings you see only in imperial capitals. The last rays of the autumn sun were reflected off the high west-facing windows stretching above the plane and palm trees.
The hour was between day and night. In the few seconds of incomplete darkness before the streetlights went on, a brief sequence of small, seemingly insignificant events occurred on the tree-lined avenue. First a car with no lights stopped at the corner, as if to let a pedestrian cross the road. Then, a spark flew out of the darkness of the park, and before it hit the cobblestones it was followed by the silhouette of a man. He stamped out the cigarette butt with one foot and entered the waiting car with the other.
The automobile turned on its headlights and headed uphill, along the lateral road on the eastern side of the avenue. It was too dark for Ivan to see the driver’s face or the direction they took after pulling out of the roundabout. He had not been to Lisbon in a long time but he had a strong feeling that he had never seen these streets before.
The fact that they were on the territory of a neutral country meant nothing to Ivan other than a false sense of security. Terrible stories were circulating in Lisbon, and they were too similar to be taken lightly: people, in particular foreigners, were disappearing. The Gestapo, it was rumoured, was kidnapping enemies of the Third Reich, sedating and tying them up, putting them in trunks and car boots and smuggling them across the border. Needless to say, there were no witnesses to confirm any of these stories. This was a country where news of such incidents was never made public, even if they were the subject of police reports. The host country’s official stance was that peace and security were guaranteed to everyone, including foreigners. The famous case of Austria’s Habsburg archdukes, whose extradition Berlin had sought numerous times but to no avail, was cited in support of the claims. It was also an open secret that in 1940 the Germans had planned to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and move them secretly to Berlin, but it all fell through. This was little consolation for Ivan, however. Kings and emperors were big fish, too big for even the Gestapo. Those rules did not apply to ordinary people. But if nobody touched the Portuguese, if the job was done cleanly, swiftly and professionally, without disturbing law and order, and if nobody reported it, then the Portuguese authorities would not react. In other words, little could save him from a concentration camp if the Germans discovered anything they did not like about him and he fell into their trap.
Ivan finally caught the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror. His first impression had been right; he did not know the man and could not read anything in his eyes.
‘Excuse me, where are we going?’ Ivan asked in German. He did not sound worried, just curious.
‘To a new address,’ said the young man at the wheel.
The information given was too spare to satisfy a double agent who suspected he was being kidnapped. The dilemma remained, however: stay in the car or jump out in the dark as soon as the vehicle stopped or slowed down? If he escaped, the game was over. He would have to go into hiding until the end of the war. They would probably take it out on his family. If he stayed in the vehicle and the worst came to the worst, could the pistol chafing him under his left arm be of any help? Was it smart to rely on the half-dozen bullets in his charger? If push came to shove, there was always the honourable death offered by the cross he wore on the chain around his neck. Concealed behind the oval crystal glass was something that could instantly spare him any agony: cyanide. All he had to do was kiss the crucifix – it was unlikely that anybody would try to stop him – then bite down on the ampoule embedded in the gold and it would all be over.
He did not jump out of the car. He did what he was told and lay down on the back seat. When ordered to step out of the car into the semi-darkness of the garage he did so.
The ‘new address’ was in an elegant part of town, near the Praça de Espanha. He was taken through a side entrance to an apartment on the second floor. He took the fact that they did not put a sack over his head as a sign that he would at least be given a chance to explain himself.
The first to come running out when the door opened were the dachshunds. They were happy to see him so he spoke to them first.
‘Where’ve you been, boys?!’ he said, scratching their backs as they sniffed his legs. ‘Are you happy to see me or do I smell like a female? There’s a knock-out of a seductress at my hotel named Fennec.’
His attempt to worm a smile out of his hosts failed. They greeted him with unusual coldness so Ivan switched to a more serious tone.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t report as soon as I arrived. I met some American government employees on the seaplane and thought I’d add them to my report,’ said Ivan, trying to explain why it took him more than twelve hours to report to his handler since landing. ‘I spent the whole day with them; it wasn’t until the evening that I managed to get away for a minute and call you from a phone box—’
‘We know that,’ von Karstoff broke in. ‘Did you manage to at least learn something from them?’
‘Nothing. Nothing specific. And I really did try my best. I entertained them the entire trip, helped them settle in, took them around... but nothing to show for it. The only thing that occurs to me is that their arrival may have something to do with the military base...’
‘Where did you get that idea from?’
‘Well... when we were flying over the Azores, I thought they were looking out the window a little too intently... It’s just an impression, maybe I’m wrong...’ And as he had nothing more to say, he changed the subject.
‘Here, I brought you a few things,’ Ivan said, holding out little presents from his trip.
Elizabeth found a lipstick and three pairs of silk stockings wrapped in fine tissue paper.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she blushed.
But even a box of the finest Cuban cigars could not mollify Ludwig. The situation was extremely serious.
Ivan had counted on there being problems. After his previous meeting with them he had gone to America, which was still neutral at the time, on an extremely serious, ambitious assignment: to find out as much as he could about the Americans, especially about their naval fleet and Pacific port in Pearl Harbor, and, over time, to organize a network of agents in the field who would collect information for the Germans. This was the purpose of the thirty-eight thousand dollars in cash they had given him.
Returning fourteen months later, the only thing he had for them, apart from the mementos, were his debts. Huge debts. Debts he would not be able to repay even by Judgement Day. And not only had he failed to establish a network of informers, he could not even boast of a single agent. Even the radio set he used in the States occasionally to contact the Abwehr had inexplicably fallen silent. So he had spent a stack of money and gone into debt without anything to show for it. But Ivan knew all the things they could accuse him of and had a ready defence.
‘Believe me, I find this very awkward,’ von Karstoff began.
It did not bode well. But judging by Karstoff’s demeanour and the fact that he was avoiding looking him in the eye, Ivan figured that Ludwig was simply the bearer of bad news. He felt no personal animosity.
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