Out of Such Darkness

by Robert Ronsson

  Then the war came and I couldn’t go back to Britain. How could I have fought against Germany? If Wolf was still alive, how could I even consider it?

  So I hunkered down in New York for the duration and with Dexter Parnes VC books and movies proliferating I was able to consider moving out towards Connecticut. I had sold my brownstone and was waiting for the movers when Wolf, his wife and her son arrived on my doorstep.

  Wolf never blamed me for deserting him nor for what had happened in Germany after I left. He didn’t like to talk about it but from the snippets he did share, I understood that he had been released into the army in 1937 and had reached the rank of Oberleutnant in a punishment battalion by the time war started and he had to stay in. He fought in Poland, France, Russia and France again. His survival was a miracle.

  At the end of the war Wolf went back to Steinplatz and found Frau Guttchen living a life of total privation in the ruins of West Berlin where she was lucky to be in the British Sector. The Green House had survived largely intact and she had spent most of 1945 and ’46 cowering in the cellar with her neighbours. She was able to pass my letter to Wolf. The passport had expired but a wartime renewal endorsement was forged and it played a part in his escape to England.

  The story of Wolf and his wife’s flight through Europe is essentially the plot for my book The Green House Envelope, which became the biggest grossing Dexter Parnes VC movie of all time, so there’s no need to rehearse it here. Suffice it to say they were able to travel with the boy to the United States using legitimate papers as refugees.

  I owed Wolf. I had never lost the guilt about leaving him in Sachsenhausen. Giving him, his wife and stepson a secure place to live was the least I could do. So Mr and Mrs Willy Keel worked for me until Geraldine died in 1960.

  The son went away to school and Wolf and I stayed together. We were never intimate in this second life. In fact, we never discussed our love. We always had Berlin but the war had damaged him.

  “I have seen so much death,” he once said. “Some deaths in the camp and so many more in the war. I must have held the bodies of hundreds of comrades as they slipped away. I would sit there in the frozen mud of the Eastern Front feeling the displaced air stinging my face as the bullets or shrapnel fragments zinged close to my head, passing me but blowing apart the man next door.”

  “There came a time when my comrades didn’t know whether to try and crowd into my invincible space or keep away because it was always the man next to me who took it. They all died.”

  I asked him why he had married.

  “She was a Jew. Did you know? God knows what she must have done to survive in Berlin.”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “Why? Why would I want to listen to her shame? I have enough of my own. I didn’t need her to tell me how much being a survivor damaged her. It was the same for both of us.”

  Since that conversation with Wolf I often thought about what keeps us together – why we live the way we do. Now, now that I’m dying of the plague that has descended on my kind, it has become clear. The reason Wolf married the Jewess? The reason she married him? The reason I took Wolf, later Willy Keel, back into my life? We all had our guilt. It was the cement that kept us together. It was the guilt.

  © Cameron Mortimer 1984

  Chapter 33

  It’s a cold Saturday evening. New York is expecting snow soon but today’s clear skies encourage the temperature to drop and Jay and Rachel are well-wrapped up as they cross the jewelled tarmac of the High School car park. As they negotiate the narrow spaces between the cars, their windscreens dressed with fingers of frost, they become aware of a rumpus around the entrance to the school theatre.

  The dark silhouetted figures are like Brownshirts.

  It becomes clear that they’re Rabbi Stern’s pickets and Jay estimates that there are around thirty of them. Most carry placards but they’re unreadable at this distance. Each individual is swaddled against the cold. They have thick ski coats and pants with snow boots. Their heads are covered with tight-fitting bobble hats or fur-lined Mountie headgear with earflaps. All have gloves. Their breath clouds around them as they chant in rhythms that make it difficult for Jay to determine the words.

  As an audience member jostles through, some break off the chant to jeer. A feeling of trepidation rises in Jay’s chest. If someone in the group recognises him – Rabbi Stern himself perhaps – it could turn ugly. They may receive special treatment. How will Rachel cope?

  A group reaches the crowd and the chanting increases in volume. The pickets thrust their placards aggressively. Jay sees that Rabbi Stern is standing to one side. He isn’t shouting. Nor does he have a placard. Somehow, this infuriates Jay. It’s worse that the rabbi, having instigated the demonstration, sees himself as above it.

  A taxi draws up and inches forward into the crowd. The demonstrators turn on it and the placards jostle with each other to gain the driver’s attention. The window slides down and releases a cloud of blue cigarette smoke. The chanting breaks up and Jay is now close enough to hear a voice emerge from the car. ‘Getaddadeway! I gotta disabled man here. How he gonna geddin wid you inda way?’

  With the car as the centre of attention, Jay is able to lead Rachel round behind it to the passenger side. As he hoped, it’s Willy Keel. ‘You slip in and wait for me,’ he tells Rachel. ‘I’m going to help Willy.’

  She leaves him and is inside even before the demonstrators recognise she’s there and now Jay is merely a man helping the disabled person out of the taxi; he has no identity in his own right. The demonstrators turn away and re-form between the taxi and the car park. Jay smiles. He’s made it inside their cordon without a mishap.

  Don’t think it’s over.

  He opens the passenger door. ‘Hi, Willy. Welcome. What good timing. Rachel and I have only just arrived.’

  Willy swings his feet out. ‘I can walk in.’

  The driver has left his seat and stands by the open boot. He points at the chair accusingly. ‘You gonna take dis ting?’

  Jay nods, leans in and grabs the chair by the stays securing the side panel and, as he swings it round, it opens to provide the seat.

  Willy waves a shaky hand. ‘Lock it, lock it.’

  Jay wants to tell him that it’s the first time he’s done this but sees a locking clip on the top bar and presses it into place. He wheels it so that the chair is parallel to Willy. ‘Can you manage?’

  ‘Check the brake – make sure it’s locked down.’ Willy’s tremulous hand points to the brake lever by the chair’s push handle.

  Jay follows the instruction and tests that the chair doesn’t move. He helps Willy transfer from one seat to the other. All the time the driver is standing by his door snatching glances at his watch.

  ‘Have you arranged for the cab to come back?’ Jay says.

  ‘It’s all arranged.’ Willy is now in the seat and has lifted his feet onto the rests. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You’ve paid the driver?’

  ‘Yeah. C’mon, it’s cold out here.’

  A man steps forward to hold the door while Jay pushes Willy through. Rachel is there waiting. One of the students, a young woman in a black cocktail dress, steps up to them. She has a badge, Amber Tressage – Enabling Companion.

  She leans down to Willy. ‘Hello. How are you today?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Are you Mr Keel?’ She speaks with unnatural enunciation.

  He’s not deaf.

  Willy nods.

  ‘Okay.’ Amber says, ‘I’m your designated companion. I’ll be looking after you today.’ She turns to Jay. ‘Thank you but I’ll take over now.’

  Jay shakes his head. ‘Did you know about this, Willy?’

  Willy shrugs. ‘They called to ask me about my chair and whether I would have a companion. I said no.’ He spreads his hands palms upward. ‘What’m I gonna do? You go. Let this young lady look after me.’ He’s smiling broadly as Amber wheels him away.

  Jay takes Rachel by the arm. ‘
Come on. Let’s take our seats.’

  Only minutes after they settle, the orchestra strikes up and Jay feels his spine tingle. He’s nervous for Ben but prepares by reminding himself that it’s only a High School show. Ever since he knew the school had chosen to perform Cabaret, he’s been concerned about how they would deal with the explicit nature of the sex. He hadn’t dared say anything, in case Rachel thought it was inappropriate even to consider it, but as the MC appears for the opening number with the ‘girls’ behind him Jay is reassured.

  You may be reassured. I am not so sure. This boy playing my part is not subtle at all. All this camping it up. Ambiguity. We’re looking for ambiguity.

  Yes, the boy playing the MC is overdoing his mannerisms but it’s not enough to shock a New York audience. The senior girls who play the chorus line are dressed in what could be defined as lingerie, but their camisole tops and silk shorts, while exposing the straps and gussets of robust underwear, give more coverage than what they’d wear for a pool party. He need not have worried.

  Meanwhile, I am being most troubled. The boy is murdering my song – and with such a bad accent.

  Sally Bowles makes her first appearance for Don’t Tell Mama. The girl playing her has the voice to rival Liza Minnelli’s but she’s at least three dress sizes bigger. Her version of the famous ‘bowler’ outfit is more like a skirted swimming costume. But none of this detracts from the enthusiasm of the young performers and Jay is soon lost in the love stories of Bradshaw and Bowles and Schultz and Schneider.

  We’re nearly there, Jay. Sit up.

  His blood slows when the boy playing the MC brings a gramophone onto the stage. The air is bloated with anticipation. Jay clenches one fist inside the other. He resists the urge to lower his head between his knees.

  It’s as clear as a crystal bell when Ben’s voice, without accompaniment, comes in from the wings: ‘The sun on the meadow is summery warm …’ A pause, and the quiet is so intense it hurts Jay’s ears. The voice comes in again, melancholy, keening: ‘The stag in the forest runs free …’ And so it goes for the first two verses. It’s masterly direction to have the disembodied voice sing at the pace of a funeral march. The audience is willing him to speed it along but he stubbornly refuses.

  At the end, when the boy playing the MC leers the words ‘To me … ’, the house is plunged into darkness and the audience explodes into a cacophony of whoops and screams. Jay thinks that a British audience would have maintained a silence suited to the mood.

  No. This is better. We need the high emotion. Imagine what they’ll be like when Ben sings the song to close the first half.

  Further scenes play through until two students, stooped and with their smooth skin lined haphazardly in black pencil, act out the awkwardness of Herr Schultz’s proposal and Fraulein Schneider’s acceptance. Then on to the engagement party where the American writer Bradshaw discovers he’s been an unwitting courier for the Fascists. Herr Ludwig, a Nazi who is at the party, learns that Schultz is a Jew. He tells Fraulein Schneider not to marry Schultz – ‘he is not a German,’ Herr Ludwig declaims.

  Even I lose myself in this moment. But soon it will be Ben on stage.

  Seeing that Frau Schneider is not going to be warned off, Herr Ludwig grabs his coat and is about to leave. Jay tenses. The song is close. It’s usually sung by the Fraulein Kost character as an act of revenge against her landlady and to ingratiate herself with Her Ludwig. But in Mark Costidy’s version, Ben, as Fraulein Kost’s younger brother, arrives at the party and stands in Herr Ludwig’s way as he tries to leave.

  Fraulein Kost takes Ben’s hand: ‘Herr Ludwig, wait! You’re not leaving the party so early.’

  Ludwig: ‘I do not find the party amusing.’

  Kost: ‘But it’s only just beginning.’

  She pulls Ben centre stage. ‘Come, my brother is here, we will make it amusing, ja? The three of us, Herr Ludwig, ja?’ Her eyes wander contemptuously over the assembled cast. She nods to Ben and he unbuttons his coat. She turns to the Nazi. ‘Herr Ludwig? This is for you.’

  This is it.

  Jay feels the tension build around him. As his tongue passes across his lip, he tastes electricity in the air. He reaches out and grips Rachel’s hand.

  The first descending chords of the song mimic the movement of Ben’s coat as it slips from his shoulders. The boy is in the uniform of the Hitlerjugend. The notes drift downward as if responding to gravity. Ben stands straight-backed and stiffens. The lights on the rest of the stage dim, leaving only the spotlight illuminating Jay’s son.

  His voice is strong and sharp. It cuts through the silence. Behind it, the notes of the accompaniment are like the burbling of a brook underscoring the evening trill of a blackbird. Jay feels the hairs on the back of his neck prick into life. It sends chills down to his backside. His legs tremble. There is an almost overwhelming urge to stand. Jay controls it, knowing that the buzzing in his head, the rush of electricity along his limbs is the effect of a massive adrenalin dose.

  Tears well up in his eyes. His throat is constricted. He never knew his son’s voice could carry such emotion.

  Fraulein Kost and Herr Ludwig join in for the second verse and when, in the third, the words, ‘The Blossom embraces the bee …’ sound out, the cast and orchestra join in. The sound of it nearly lifts the scalp from Jay’s head.

  On stage, only the Jew, his new fiancée, the American and the Brit are silent. They stand, confused and aghast at this display of fanatical, patriotic aggression.

  In the final verse, ‘Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign …’ the crescendo and the descant combine to take the volume and intensity to even higher levels. And as the last ‘Tomorrow belongs to me …’ fills the hall, the boy playing the MC, now in full SS uniform, goose-steps to centre stage, stands alongside Ben, Fraulein Kost and Herr Ludwig. They start with their right arms straight by their sides but then raise them slowly, palms facing down, in what is clearly going to be a Nazi salute. When their arms are at waist-height the lights go off and the black void of the stage is lost behind the fast-dropping curtain. The house lights come on.

  Yes! This is everything I expected and more.

  The silence lasts for less than a second before the audience is standing and roaring its approval. The applause is loud and the whooping and hollering continues even as those keen for refreshment or a cigarette start to leave their places. It’s as if the show is over.

  Chapter 34

  Hello, Jay. It’s me, Willy. I’m typing this on the same Remington that Cameron used to record the story of our lives together. I’ve posted it to you so you’ll read it after your son’s show. It will explain.

  Cameron writes at the end of his story about the guilt – the guilt because he left me to my fate in Berlin. But what could he have done? If he had come back from London one day earlier – who knows? He would have died less tormented, yes. But when would he have died?

  Is it not more likely that his crazy scheme to smuggle me out as his brother would have failed? That we would have both been caught? We might have died together in a concentration camp. What a waste it would have been.

  After the war started it was enough to survive. I’ve thought about this so much since you started coming to see me. It’s all been about survival. Frau Guttchen survived Berlin’s destruction and so did the Green House. Miraculously, the English passport was still there when I returned.

  A British passport with my picture, my name as Cameron’s brother – it had expired. If it had been valid and I had money, who knows, I could have got out in the chaos of 1946. But I had to wait until another survivor, Bernie Gunther, found me. It was Gunther arranged for a wartime renewal stamp on my charmed passport and he introduced me to his old flame – the rich widow Gerda Hardt – my Geraldine. Her survival – another miracle.

  So many individual stories of survival against the odds. Without them there would have been no flight through Europe – no marriage – no stepson to bear his mother’s maide
n name.

  And this is the thing, Jay. Out of such darkness that enveloped Europe, out of the shadows of so many broken lives, someone darker emerges. This man who talks of his destiny. Fifty years ago Cameron gave him a home and, like a father, I gave him unconditional love. Yet, after his mother died, he spat insults in our faces and made false accusations that, if the authorities had listened, would have seen me imprisoned again.

  He claims he is religious but his message is one of hatred. He preaches the subjugation of a race. He lectures the town about the dangers of symbolism but he won’t sleep until the Star of David flies on every rooftop from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. He has to be stopped or where will it lead?

  If Hitler had been killed during the Bierkellerputsch in 1923 there would have been no war, no Holocaust. Sometimes a man has to die in order to deflect history from its path.

  I hope, Jay, this helps you understand.

  Willy Keel

  (Wolfgang Koehler)

  December 2001

  Chapter 35

  They’re in the lobby outside the auditorium where ‘Friends of Jefferson High’ sell refreshments on trestle tables. The Gagliano family, which owns the White Plains restaurant, has donated the pastries. Rachel and Jay stand accepting the congratulations. ‘You must be so proud of your son.’

  It’s a triumph, Jay.

  ‘It’s something of a triumph, Rache. Isn’t it?’ he whispers.

  There’s a crashing sound and Jay turns to see that a man stands inside the double-doors.

  Here he is – Rabbi Stern. Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!

  He’s alongside one of the parents who’s prostrate on the floor. The rabbi stoops and helps him up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, as he flicks at the man’s jacket to remove some dust. ‘But you shouldn’t have tried to stop me.’