Out of Such Darkness

by Robert Ronsson

  Her eyebrow is tireless. ‘Is that Cabaret? The one in rehearsal? My Briony is in the chorus. I’m so worried about her costume. Have you seen the film? I do hope that the costumes are going to be a lot less …’ she shakes her head and presses her wriggling lips together ‘… revealing.’

  ‘I saw it back in England. A long time ago.’

  You want see it again, though. You’ll have the opportunity to admire once more my singing and dancing.

  The librarian looks at Jay with her eyes wide. Her head wobbles from side to side and her chin is tucked down towards her neck. Jay decides that it’s a look that wouldn’t be out of place in a comedy routine featuring gossip over a backyard-fence in a Northern town. ‘We have the video, you know. It has been popular since they decided to do the play. But it’s just come back.’

  See? I knew she would have it.

  ‘You have?’ Jay looks round and then back at Prentice. She’s pointing.

  Jay heads in that direction, pauses and looks back at her from the entrance to a second room. She’s nodding and the back of her hand is making a ‘shoo’ motion. The room has shelves of videos sorted by title and Cabaret is under ‘C’, sure enough. He takes it back to the desk.

  The MC is jabbering in Jay’s ear. It’s as if Jay’s a newsreader and the producer is cajoling him through an earpiece. This is so wonderfully exciting, Jay! In my mind already I’m stepping my moves from the opening number. Where’s my cane? Why do I not have my cane?

  Prentice is still holding the book. ‘It’s called The Berlin Novels.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it’s connected to the school production?’

  He feels awkward. Why did he embark on this? Is he showing off? ‘Isherwood wrote the book which gave them the idea for Cabaret – the character Sally Bowles. I thought other parents might be interested as well.’

  ‘But this Isherwood – he’s from England like you, Jay.’

  Jay decides not to explain that the writer character in the book was English whereas he’s American in the musical.

  Prentice is still turning the book in her hand. Jay would like to see her caress the cover and so demonstrate her passion for books.

  She’d show more interest if it were a packet of Dreft flakes.

  ‘So you have someone at the School?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, my son Ben. He has a part in the production.’

  ‘And this is the book?’ She turns it over. ‘All about Berlin.’

  ‘Yes, actually it’s Goodbye to Berlin that Cabaret is based on … loosely. You have it upstairs as a separate novel.’

  ‘We do? I’ll take a look. Perhaps I should suggest it for my book group.’

  That’ll be a middle-aged sorority meeting running on Chardonnay that gossips about a book’s characters as if they’re neighbours.

  ‘Yes.’ He’s holding out his hand for the book. His feet are already turning for the door.

  ‘Are you taking the film?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The book is free – we are a free library – but the video rental is two dollars and fifty cents.’

  The sky has clouded over while Jay has been inside and he zips up his jacket. He decides he will stroll past the rest of the shops before returning home. SUVs swing out of and into the car-parking spaces cut into the ancient green. He watches the drivers, women mostly, climb down from the high driving seats and set off for the cookshop or the deli, the greengrocer or the patisserie. They are there to buy the fripperies that accompany the ‘main shop’ that will have been planned and executed on the appointed day at the temples to consumerism strung along Route 84 farther north in Connecticut.

  The movie house is showing films with titles Jay doesn’t recognise although he has heard of two of the principal actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jennifer Aniston.

  You like Jennifer Aniston? You’re so predictable!

  He’s not ashamed to admit it. She is cute in Friends. Great hair.

  And what about Nancy? Didn’t she have great hair also?

  Jay ignores him.

  Did you fantasise about Nancy? Not just a little bit? Those tits? That ass?

  Maybe a little bit.

  And where are they now? Those tits. That ass. The rest of her. The rest of them. Your colleagues. The thousands of others.

  The tears have started and he sets out for home.

  ‘Is that you, Jay?’ Rachel emerges from the opening into the kitchen. She’s wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘Don’t take off your shoes. Howard came home for lunch not long ago. You’ll catch him if you want to pop down there.’

  The film, Jay. I thought we were going to watch the film.

  ‘Later.’ Jay catches himself speaking the thought as he places the video on the side-table. He turns back down the steps. Howard’s SUV is parked in front of their double garage. Jay’s feet shush through the first fallen leaves that litter Ponds Lane. As he approaches the Edler house, he thinks about what he’ll say. He wants to rehearse the opening line but struggles to find the right words. Before he can resolve this, he has swung back the screen door and pressed the doorbell. There’s an ornamental plaque alongside the bell push and he wonders what it signifies. He recalls that his childhood home had one.

  Howard opens the front door and stands two steps above. He peers at Jay over the top of his reading glasses and this positions his bison-like head as if he’s about to charge. ‘It’s Jay! Why, come in.’ He flaps his arms as if he’s shooing a flock of poultry across the threshold.

  Howard touches a finger to the Mezuzah and puts the same finger to his lips. He removes his glasses and composes his face – grave and concerned. He has the manner of an undertaker persuading a client to choose his catalogue’s most expensive casket. ‘How are you, Jay? I don’t suppose you’ve gotten used to it yet?’

  Being alive, he means. Alive when every other poor bastard in the company is so much dust.

  ‘That’s why I’m here, Howard. I don’t know what I feel.’ His eyes film over with tears. He swallows down the lump in his throat.

  ‘Come in. Sit down.’

  ‘Do you have time? Don’t you have to get back to work?’

  Howard shakes his head and makes a tutting noise while pursing his lips into a grotesque kissing shape.

  ‘I can come back later,’ Jay says.

  ‘No. Sit. Drink?’

  As he lowers himself into one of the leather armchairs, Jay rolls his tongue across the back of his teeth. ‘I’d be happy with water, please.’

  ‘Gas or no gas?’

  ‘Still is fine.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  The walls of the room are magnolia interrupted by framed prints set at regular intervals. The furniture is dark and European in appearance. Jay examines one of the pictures. It’s a mediaeval street scene where the upper storeys of the buildings lean over at shoulder level like aunts and uncles embracing while children scuttle around their feet.

  ‘Prague!’

  Jays spins round guiltily.

  ‘The series is eighteenth century. Scenes in Prague. They’ve been in our family … a hundred years.’ He hands over a glass which clinks with the sound of ice. ‘Please, sit.’

  Jay goes back to the chair says, ‘Thanks!’ and raises his glass. ‘Cheers!’

  ‘You British and your “Cheers!”’ Howard shakes his enormous head.

  ‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ Jay says.

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Remember at your party you asked me which temple I go to?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry about that–’

  Jay raises his hand. ‘Don’t be. Since what’s happened I’ve felt the need … I don’t know … I’ve wondered whether it would help me …’

  ‘You’d like to try us out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you are Jewish?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Jay explains about his mother who had the family name Becker an
d how they ate only kosher food when he was young. When his father died, they became less observant until the only remaining obligation was to attend the family dinner on a Friday evening. ‘There were no candles or prayers,’ he says. ‘But, for that one meal, it felt like we were religious.’

  ‘Did you have a bar mitzvah?’

  ‘No. But I was circumcised.’ He blushes.

  Did you really say that?

  Howard merely nods. ‘Any schooling of a religious nature?’

  ‘No, I went to a state school. I joined in the Christian stuff, such as it was.’

  ‘So you have nothing to say you’re Jewish except what happened in childhood.’

  ‘Nothing.’ He’s close to tears.

  Howard sticks out his lower lip. It shows a bulbous bolster of tissue. ‘I don’t think it will trouble Rabbi Zwyck. Ours is a reform temple as I explained. Would you like me to talk to the rabbi on your behalf and see what she says?’

  ‘I would, yes.’

  Later that afternoon Jay is sitting on the azurro-blue sofa watching Cabaret. The MC provides a running commentary: Can you see how my eyes light up and my grin widens so much it hurts my face? It’s so good to see my beautiful girls again. They have not grown in age at all! This makes me sehr melancholisch.How naughty was I with those beautiful girls? You know I was having the bumsen with all of them? Yes, every one – all the ‘wurgins’: Heidi, Christina, Mausi, Helga, Inga and Betty.

  In the film Sally is making prairie oysters for Michael when the house telephone rings. Automatically Jay hits the video’s pause button and picks up the handset. ‘Hello?’

  I was watching! Such interruptions!

  ‘Is this Mr Halprin?’ It’s a woman’s voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Lesley Jacob Halprin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of Straub, DuCheyne?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Is she ever going to get to the point?’

  ‘I have Mr Fothergill for you. Nathan Fothergill of Baxter, Fothergill and Fauset.’

  Jay resists the urge to throw the phone at the back door only because there’s something familiar about the name Nathan Fothergill. He recalls a meeting in a mahogany-lined office in mid-town Manhattan at the beginning of his relationship with Francois DuCheyne and Glen Straub. It involved the diminutive Mr Fothergill producing contract after contract and each of them signing in turn. With jet-lag and the whirl of what was happening, he only understood a tenth of what he was signing but was reassured by Nathan Fothergill’s Canadian stolidity, his dwarfish stature and his constant reference to the fact that Jay could have his own attorney present and check through things if he wanted.

  A chill presentiment sweeps through Jay’s mind like an incoming tide. Had he been naive?

  Should you have been so bloody English?

  Should he have had a lawyer with him?

  The woman on the other end of the line was evidently waiting for the answer. ‘Mr Halprin?’

  ‘Yes. Put him on.’

  There’s a hiatus, a few clicks and then the woman’s voice again. ‘I have Mr Fothergill for you.’

  This had better be worth stopping my movie for.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Jay.’

  Jay thinks: don’t say anything.

  ‘I called Mrs DuCheyne today. I had to be careful. Timing with these things …’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘As soon as I heard what happened, about the firm –’ his pronunciation ‘aboot’ betrays Fothergill’s Canadian nationality ‘– I had to decide who to call and how soon. I was working on the basis of no survivors.’

  ‘I think it’s only me … who survived.’

  ‘Mrs DuCheyne told me about you – about your call to her. So suddenly I have somebody to talk to.’

  ‘Yes. But, I’m sorry, Nathan. What’s there to talk about?’

  ‘The firm still exists, Jay. When it’s decided in law that the victims have perished, the ownership of the firm is transferred as in the terms of your partnership agreement.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘For the present, you are Straub, DuCheyne, Jay. You are the firm.’

  ‘But without Francois and Glen – there’s nothing.’

  ‘This is what Mrs DuCheyne says and I have subsequently spoken to Mrs Straub about the same subject.’

  ‘Then what’s there to talk about?’

  ‘Winding up the firm in the most equitable manner. Being guided by the partnership agreements. I think we should meet.’

  ‘When?’ There’s too much to take in. ‘Where?’ he ventures.

  ‘The firm’s disaster recovery set-up is in Stamford – just along the road from you. We’ll have an associate working from there in a few days. Can we set something up for the end of next week?’

  ‘Yes. Tell me when and I’ll be there.’

  Chapter 12

  In the run-off election on the Sunday after our attendance at the Nazi rally, Hindenburg won with a slightly increased vote, enough to take him over the 50% winning line. However, the National Socialists gained a further two million supporters and it was their Brownshirts who were in evidence the following week, strutting three abreast along the Kurfurstendamm so that ordinary pedestrians had to step into the road to let them pass.

  For me life changed slowly. I started to give morning English lessons to a succession of young people introduced to me by Frau Guttchen, who still had connections with rich Berlin families. At the end of the lessons, during which I took every opportunity to absorb German, I would wander down to the coffee shop. Then back to the room and Dexter Parnes VC.

  By now, the plot of his third adventure was falling into place. Our brave English spy was tasked with creating a formal connection between the British Secret Service and the Nazi Party in order to thwart a pan-European Communist conspiracy. Like the fictional Dexter and others of my class I was enthralled by the trappings of Nazism but I never believed that what they were doing was good for wider Europe. Even in those early drafts, I knew that Parnes would end up having to deal with Nazi betrayal as well as the more obvious Communist threat.

  Within a week or so of Hindenburg’s hollow victory I had been back to the canal side. This was my way of dealing with a work problem. I would try to empty my head of it while strolling from the part of the canal by the Zoo – ‘Rosa’s Bridge’ – towards the city until I came to the new administrative building on the canal side called the Bendler Block. After walking in the sunshine sheltered from any north wind by its massive stone edifice, I would cross the Bendlerstrasse bridge and return along the other side of the canal.

  I was making my way up the stairs to my room after one such foray when I heard hurrying feet behind me. It was Leo. “I’m glad I caught you, Cam.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Are you ready for our trip to the Nolli?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No, it’ll be fun. What are you doing tonight?”

  I had no plans, of course.

  This anonymous dive beneath a building facing the church on Winterfeldtplatz could easily have been Isherwood’s Cosy Corner. There were steps down to a basement doorway. It was open but the entrance was blocked by a sheet of thick hide nailed to the inside of the doorjamb. It smelt as if the tanning process of the animal’s skin had been halted midway to completion. Or perhaps the scent was the musk of heated men coming at me out of the darkened room.

  My heart was booming as I stepped inside. I felt Leo stumble into my back. The buzz of conversation was loud, drowning out the American jazz music that played in the background. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I was first able to make out the shapes of white singlets, some with short sleeves, most sleeveless. I immediately felt out of place in my suit and tie and I swiftly removed my hat and held it down by my groin. My hands were shaking.

  I could now make out more. There were alcoves with men kissing and stroking each other’s faces. There were othe
r men dressed more soberly like me, many of them engaged in earnest one-to-one conversations with the younger men in white tops. I searched out a bar and led the way across. I saw that each young male in a singlet, younger than me, watched me with hungry eyes. Raw sexual tension simmered everywhere. When my gaze crossed with another’s it was like duelling sabres clashing and sparking.

  I felt a face touch against my ear and flinched. I turned and realised it was Leo trying to get my attention. I leaned back to hear him.

  “This is the only one I know. Once you’re settled in they’ll tell you about others.”

  I nodded.

  “Shall we have a drink?”

  We ordered beers and took them to a side table.

  “The guy who brought me here explained what goes on.” Leo had to place his mouth close to my ear so I could hear him. “The young ones in the white singlets – they’re for sale. Don’t worry, the exchange rate is so good they’ll be very cheap, I’m sure. They’ll do anything for you if you have the money. There are more private rooms at the back, he told me.”

  “There are so many boys.”

  “And this is one of many more establishments.”

  “So many homos…” I was wide-eyed, shaking my head. It was a paradise, open and guilt-free. My sort of men.

  Leo snorted. “They’re not queer! They prefer women. They do this for the money.”

  A pair of young men, both in the shop-window uniform, sauntered to the table. One of them made a show of adjusting his cock as if being in our presence had excited him. The more restrained one said something in German.

  I stood up and immediately cursed my public school manners, “Wie bitte? Sprechen sie Englisch?”

  His face split open in a broad smile. He had good teeth. “A little. Have you long in Berlin?”

  I smiled back and signalled to the empty chair. “A few months but my German is not good yet. You speak English very well.”

  He frowned, cocking his head to one side as he slid into the chair. “Yes, it is very well. We can be friends, Ja?”

  I laughed. “Yes, of course.”

  The cock-shifter made to join us but Leo leapt out of his seat. He leaned on the table. “Are you happy for me to leave you now? I’m sure …” He turned to my young man, “Wie heisst du?”