Flight from Berlin

by David John

  He wound a bell handle next to the fireplace, and they heard a distant chime. On the coffee table before them was a year-old copy of Life magazine, with Hannah on the cover, holding her foil. The photograph was a soft monochrome in which a makeup artist had given her the femme fatale treatment, with lips and hair dark and ravishing.

  ‘Please understand I do not normally drink at this hour, but after the meeting that just took place here, I have given myself permission.’

  ‘Unwelcome visitors?’ Denham ventured.

  ‘They had no appointment, and I was compelled to receive them, so, yes, you may say that.’

  ‘Who were they?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘Men from the Reich Chamber of the Visual Arts,’ said Herr Liebermann, ‘come to assess the value of my collection.’ He gazed gloomily at a wall behind their heads.

  Lore entered, pulling a trolley clinking with china cups and a teapot. ‘Please see where Hannah and Roland are,’ Herr Liebermann said to her, ‘and ask Frau Liebermann to join us, if she’s feeling well enough.’

  ‘Those men want your art?’ Denham said, surprised. The Nazis had strong views on ‘degenerate art’—or rather, anything that challenged their parochial, reactionary tastes.

  ‘Not for its own sake,’ said the resonating, slow voice. Herr Liebermann rubbed the bridge of his nose and his eyes, exhausted from whatever exchange had taken place. ‘Otto Dix, Paul Klee, Max Ernst . . .’ He gestured vaguely to the walls. ‘Their work is now Verfallskunst—the art of decay. Art to be liquidated.’ He raised his eyebrows in an expression of beleaguered aloofness. ‘That word—so much in vogue today. Those two men will sell this collection at auction in Lucerne and New York . . . to raise foreign currency for the Reich.’

  Denham noticed an embossed business card on the coffee table for a GALLERIE HABERSTOCK, GERMAN DEALERSHIP. He’d seen that a lot recently—adding ‘German’ before ‘lawyer’ or ‘doctor’ to signify that the card bearer was of good Aryan coin.

  ‘That man,’ said Herr Liebermann, nodding to the card, ‘specialises in these disposals. He’s an art dealer, a businessman like me. Him I could talk to. But the oaf in the uniform told me my collection amounts to “Jewish artistic violence against the German spirit.” ’ He sat down on a divan, shaking his head, seeming to shrink into the folds of his suit.

  ‘You’re giving them the collection in return for an exit visa?’ Denham asked.

  ‘Partly. They want a great deal more from me than the art.’

  ‘But it’s your collection,’ Eleanor said suddenly. ‘Why should . . .’ Herr Liebermann silenced her with a raised hand and a melancholy smile.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Acceptance is the quicker route to wholeness, though I confess that today even I feel unequal to the complexities of our times.’

  ‘If there’s something we can do—’ Denham said.

  ‘Thank you, Herr Denham, but I take comfort from the fact that I am a difficult man to rob. By law my banking interests in Berlin will soon be Aryanised, but elsewhere—in Basel, in London, in Amsterdam—my wealth is held by trustees from whom deeds of transfer are required, and for those they need my cooperation. So we’re talking about a deal . . .’

  ‘And you think they’ll keep their side of the bargain?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘That,’ said Herr Liebermann, ‘is a question I cannot answer or know the answer to.’

  Denham gazed at the walls again and his eyes fell upon one small picture that seemed not to fit at all. It had a grotesquely ornate, gilded frame and appeared to be a watercolour of some Baroque church.

  ‘The painting you’re looking at,’ Herr Liebermann said, noticing Denham’s interest, ‘is my little joke. It is by our Chancellor Hitler.’

  Denham looked at him in astonishment.

  Hitler the failed artist, twice rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. The entire Nazi movement was founded on disappointment. Goebbels the thwarted journalist. Heydrich the cashiered sailor. The salvation these misfits sought in racial revolution.

  Footsteps echoed from the hall, the door opened, and Hannah entered, followed by Roland.

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ Herr Liebermann said.

  Hannah greeted them dressed in knee breeches and a cotton jerkin, her hair tied up as if she’d come straight from training. Eleanor was introduced, and Denham thought he discerned a cool reserve as they shook hands, the two Olympians gauging each other, eyes locked. The fencer did not possess Eleanor’s voluptuous beauty. She was trim, sharp, and pretty, but her real attraction lay in her formidable self-assurance and her poise—with a habit of turning her head so that it was in alignment with her shoulders, like an ancient Egyptian profile.

  ‘I’m sorry you got into trouble on my account,’ she began. ‘That man Greiser warned me never to speak to you again, but I told him he’s used all his arrows. Short of killing Roland, there really isn’t anything else he can try. His quiver is empty.’ Her voice was bright and crisp, as though she were addressing a town hall meeting.

  Roland said nothing. He was in an open-necked shirt and a pair of Oxford bags—the relaxed garb of any upper-class young man at home, yet he was still the hunted creature they’d seen by lamplight. His leg slouched over the arm of a chair, and one arm lay around his sister’s shoulders, his fingers stroking her hair. The mutilated right hand he had concealed in a kid leather glove, which rested on his knee. Something inside him had broken. Denham could see it in his eyes. Behind the fearful face was an intelligent boy, who, in any normal time and place, would be off travelling or thinking of a career. When Denham was Roland’s age his own hopes for the future had been smashed by events no less extreme.

  No one spoke for a moment until Herr Liebermann said, ‘Hannah, my love, what was it you were hoping Herr Denham and Fräulein Eleanor could do for us by coming here?’

  ‘I was awake last night thinking about your offer, Mr Denham,’ she said, her brown eyes wide and clear, ‘and I would like to give you the interview you requested. Here. Today. Roland, too. For you to publish in England, the United States, and, really, wherever else you can.’

  Denham hadn’t expected such eagerness and wondered now about the wisdom of it. ‘I’m not so sure . . . ,’ he said.

  ‘But we are sure. We signed away the art, but straightaway they wanted more. They won’t let us go until they’ve taken the clothes off our backs, and even then . . .’ She spread her arms in a gesture of despair.

  ‘I’m sorry to say I think you’re right about that,’ Denham said.

  ‘Then your article must say clearly what they did to Roland. Everything, now, while the Games are still on. The whole world must read about it. Then they wouldn’t dare touch him again.’

  Denham scratched his chin. ‘It might not be expedient for them to arrest him again if they know the foreign press is watching, but don’t think you can shame them or appeal to their nicer qualities.’ And before he could stop himself he said, ‘Shit doesn’t have nicer qualities.’ He put down his teacup and apologised. The faces before him were serious, but then a smile began to play beneath Herr Liebermann’s beard, and the old man began to laugh.

  ‘Shit doesn’t have nicer qualities,’ Herr Liebermann repeated, and with the release of one who’d been under months of unsmiling strain. Eleanor and Roland began laughing, too; only Hannah’s face remained prim and slighted.

  ‘Have I missed a good joke?’ came a woman’s voice from the doorway. They turned to see a
heavy lady with unruly silver hair, a long pearl necklace, and an old-fashioned cameo brooch. Frau Liebermann shook hands with them, offering the tips of her fingers, so that Denham half wondered whether she expected her rings to be kissed. She spoke in a singsong voice as though she were in a dream. He guessed she’d taken a sedative.

  The whole family now sat looking at him and Eleanor, expectant, and not unhappy. Denham removed his notepad and Leica from his case.

  ‘Where shall we start?’

  Hannah’s story was as grim as he’d expected. On the voyage from California she’d been kept under constant supervision, and her telegrams were censored. They’d forbidden her to win the fencing final, because a Jew could not be seen to take the gold, but she could win the silver. She was isolated from the rest of the team and given the world’s worst coach. And on the podium, she was to give the Hitler salute, which they’d even made her practise in front of them.

  Roland, as Denham had guessed, was the bait they’d used to bring her back. He’d been kept for four days in the Gestapo’s basement cells. The young man’s eyes told him everything, and Denham knew better than to ask.

  When she had finished, Denham took several photographs of them together in the sitting room with the blue horses behind them, and many of Hannah by herself posing with her foil. Afterwards Frau Liebermann insisted that he and Eleanor stay for lunch around a table laid in the grounds at the back of the house. Small white yachts in sail circled on the lake, brilliant against the afternoon sun.

  Roland stood to pour wine for them all. Thistledown floated through the warm air and some landed in his black hair. As he poured Eleanor’s glass, his eyes met hers.

  Ah well, Denham thought, and looked away. He’s much nearer her age than I am.

  Herr Liebermann said a brief prayer in Hebrew when the meal of baked carp and potatoes in cream was placed in front of them; then he raised his glass. ‘To America,’ he said, smiling at Eleanor.

  ‘To America,’ they all said, and clinked glasses.

  They left the Liebermann house unseen by a disused door in the wall of the grounds and walked in silence for a while down the leafy avenue, which seemed even stiller in the heat of the late afternoon.

  ‘It’s happening, isn’t it?’ Eleanor said after a while, her head lowered.

  ‘What is?’ But Denham thought he knew what she meant.

  ‘Everything.’ She reached out and held his hand. ‘Us. You and I. Our fight against these bastards.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Denham. ‘It’s happening.’

  At Berlin Zoo Station they made plans to meet that night.

  ‘Look after these,’ Denham said, handing her his shorthand notes and the Leica. ‘They’ll be safer at the ambassador’s house.’

  Back home, he put his head around Frau Stumpf’s door. His landlady was sitting alone at her kitchen table in her long shawl, listening to radio music and staring at the wall, which was how he often found her. She seemed to jump when he entered, and then, unusual for her, avoided his eyes.

  ‘Good afternoon, Herr Denham. Yes, you have another telegram.’

  He tore it open, and felt the niggle of worry finally hatch and spread through his gut.

  NO NEWS STOP POLICE TO ISSUE MISSING PERSONS NOTICE STOP COME SOONEST STOP

  Leaping up the stairs to his apartment, he tried to work out how fast he could get to London. First he would call Anna, then Tempelhof Airport in the hope that there was a seat on the evening flight.

  From a crackling radio behind Reinacher’s door the voice of Goebbels resounded in the stairwell. ‘ . . . This day, I believe it is no exaggeration to say . . . that a hundred million people in Germany and beyond her frontiers . . . have been tuned to the broadcast of the eleventh Olympiad from Berlin . . .’

  He put his key in the door to his apartment and pushed, not even noticing that the new lock wasn’t locked. His senses warned him but his brain was too slow on the uptake. He stepped into his sitting room and two men stood up.

  ‘Richard Denham,’ the nearer one said. He opened his jacket to reveal the warrant-disc hanging from an inside pocket. ‘You’re to come with us.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gestapo. Both men wore grey suits and black, snap-brimmed trilbies.

  ‘May I make a telephone call?’ Denham said. He felt a strange calm come over him, as if he’d expected them. Somehow, in his heart, he’d known it would come to this.

  ‘You’ll be back in the morning,’ the man said, stubbing his cigarette out on the rug. ‘You can telephone then.’

  That, Denham knew, was a gross lie, but he wasn’t going to argue.

  They escorted him downstairs, one in front and one behind.

  A storm of applause was breaking across the speech on Reinacher’s radio as the speaker’s voice moved into high gear. ‘As for those seduced by the international Jewish press into doubting the Führer’s desire for peace . . . I say this: . . . let them come to Berlin! . . . Let them come to Berlin! . . .’

  Frau Stumpf’s door was shut.

  Outside, a grey Horch waited. The back door was held open; Denham got in and sat next to one of the Gestapo men while the other drove. How brisk and businesslike they were. No handcuffs, none needed. Such fear did these men inspire that citizens meekly did as they were told.

  The smell of the car’s seat leather mingled with a faint odour of vomit.

  ‘I thought you boys only came at night,’ Denham said.

  Neither answered.

  The roads around Belle-Alliance-Platz were clogged with traffic as the evening rush approached, and the Horch was caught in a crawl behind a line of cars and yellow double-deckers. Neither Gestapo man seemed the least frustrated at their lack of progress. He wondered how long they’d been in his apartment. Both wound down their windows to smoke, but neither offered him a cigarette.

  They turned onto the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, plunged in shadow as the sun moved into the west. Göring’s new Air Ministry passed by on the right, wall after wall of granite, the city’s latest pharaonic monstrosity. The car slowed to a halt, and the gates of the darkened Gestapo building swung inward without a sound.

  The mild-spoken Gallico had to raise his voice to be heard over the laughter, piano music, and clinking glasses in the Adlon’s upstairs bar. Reporters from every newspaper, radio station, and wire service in the world seemed to be drinking there this afternoon. He hadn’t touched his beer.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘You go hiding in a rosebush and overhear a private conversation between—’

  ‘I wasn’t hiding.’ Eleanor was looking over the rail next to their table. She could see right down into the lobby, where a couple of army officers were lounging on wicker chairs near the pagoda fountain, their laughter becoming more boisterous with each toast of schnapps. ‘I went to apologise to Brundage, followed him in there, but lost him in the dark; next thing I knew there were these men’s voices . . .’

  She quickly told him the rest.

  Gallico gave a slow whistle.

  ‘Bad, huh?’ she said.

  ‘Throwing the Jews off the relay team in case they win and embarrass Hitler? Well, it doesn’t cast old Avery in the best light . . .’ He looked down into the lobby with a face that suggested several thoughts playing across his mind at the same time. A hearty laugh came from one of the officers at the fountain.

  ‘You’re not thinking I made this up to get back at that jerk?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘No . . . I’m thinking of the politics. The UP boys have generally supported US participation in these Olympics. Now that
our athletes are here in Berlin and winning medals, it could look, well, unpatriotic if we break this story now. And, sweetheart, I’m just wondering what they’ll say back home. The sour grapes between you and Brundage means you won’t be seen as the most impartial witness . . .’

  ‘Then you break the story.’

  ‘But I’ll need more proof.’

  ‘Confront him with it, Paul, and see how he reacts.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The noise of teleprinter machines filled the corridor from behind closed doors. Beneath the wire-meshed electric lights rows of hunched figures waited on benches and lowered their eyes as the sergeant passed. Pushed along without shoelaces or belt, Denham walked in a rapid shuffle. They’d taken his tie, too. I go to my doom looking a man who sleeps in his clothes. The sergeant stopped outside a door marked HAECKEL, knocked twice, opened it for Denham, and closed it behind him.

  Inspector Haeckel was a heavy man, with a grey moustache, a boxer’s jaw, and thinning hair. He had on the full black uniform: Sam Browne belt, shoulder strap, boots, gun holster, and an array of police decorations.

  A minute passed as he scribbled away at his desk, dotting i’s, crossing t’s, not acknowledging his prisoner. Denham looked around, seeing a chair, which he was not being offered, and dark stains on the floor that made his stomach clench. On a cabinet to the right stood a row of trophies awarded for dog handling, except for one, which displayed two spent bullets suspended like grubs in a block of glass. On its base were engraved the names RÖHM and HEINES.

  After a while the inspector selected a rubber stamp from a small rack, thumped a document, closed the file, and took another from his tray. Denham’s passport was inside, on top of what looked like a hand-filled surveillance sheet.