by Alan Furst
Vainshtok’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re in trouble. That I can tell. My mama always warned me, ‘Darling son, when they put the whipped cream on the Linzer torte, watch out.’ What is it, Andre Aronovich? Have you fallen from favor at last? Got a girlfriend who’s giving you a hard time? Getting older?”
“I can’t stand Berlin, Vainshtok. I can’t think in this place.”
“Oy, he can’t stand Berlin. Last year they sent me to Madagascar. I ate, I believe I actually ate, a lizard. Did you hear the china breaking, Szara, wherever you were? Eleven generations of Vainshtok rabbis were going wild up in heaven, breaking God’s kosher plates, ‘Gott im Himmel! Little Asher Moisevich is eating a lizard!’ Ah, here’s something, how about weather? “
“What about it?”
“It’s happening every day.”
“And?”
“Well, it’s not especially cold, and it’s not especially hot. But more than likely such a story won’t stir up the Reichsministries. On the other hand, it might. ‘What do you mean, normal? Our German weather is clean and pure, like no other weather anywhere!’ “
Szara sighed. He hadn’t the strength to fight back.
“All right, all right,” Vainshtok said as his treat arrived, swimming in cream. “You’re going to make me cry. Take Frau Kummel, up in Lubeck. Actually she’s called Mutter Kummel, Mother Kummel. It’s a story you can write, and it gets you out of Berlin for the day.”
“Mutter Kummel?”
“I’ll write down the address for you. Yesterday she turned a hundred years old. Born the first of November, 1838. Imagine all the exciting things she’s seen-she may even remember some of them. 1838? Schleswig-Holstein still belonged to the Danes, Lubeck was part of the independent state of Mecklenburg. Germany-of course you’ll have to say Germany as we know it today-didn’t exist. You’re to be envied, Szara. What a thrilling time that was, and Mutter Kummel somehow lived through every minute of it.”
He took the train that afternoon, a grim ride up through the flat-lands of the Luneberg Plain, through marshy fields where gusts of wind flattened the reeds under a hard, gray sky. He avoided Hamburg by taking the line that went through Schwerin, and outside a little village not far from the sea he spotted a highway sign by a tight curve in the road: Drive carefully! Sharp curve! Jews yj miles an hour!
Mutter Kummel lived with her eighty-one-year-old daughter in a gingerbread house in the center of Lubeck. “Another reporter, dear mother,” said the daughter when Szara knocked at the door. The house smelled of vinegar, and the heat of the place made him sweat as he scribbled in his notebook. Mutter Kummel remembered quite a bit about Lubeck: where the old butcher shop used to be, the day the rope parted and the tumbling church bell broke through the belfry floor and squashed a deacon. What Nezhenko would make of all this Szara could only imagine, let alone some coal miner in the Donbas, wrapping his lunch potato in the newspaper. But he worked at it and did the job as best he could. Toward the end of the interview the old lady leaned forward, her placid face crowned by a bun of white hair, and told him how die Juden were no longer to be found in Lubeck-yet one more change she’d witnessed in her many years in the town. Polite people when one met them in the street, it had to be admitted, but she wasn’t sorry to see them go. “Those Jews,” she confided, “for too long they’ve stolen our souls.” Szara must have looked inquisitive. “Oh yes, young man. It’s what they did, and we here in Lubeck knew about it,” she said slyly. Szara, for a moment, was tempted to ask her to explain-for he sensed she’d worked it out-the mechanics of such a thing: how it was actually accomplished, where the Jews hid the stolen souls and what they did with them. But he didn’t. He thanked the ladies and took the train back to Berlin and an evening with Marta Haecht, the promise of which had kept him more or less sane for another day.
Later on, he would have reason to remember that afternoon.
Later on, when everything had changed, he would wonder what might have happened if he’d missed the Berlin train, if he’d had to spend the night in Lubeck. But he knew himself, knew that he would have found some way to be with Marta Haecht that night. He considered himself a student of destiny, perhaps even a connoisseur-that obnoxious word-of its tricks and turns: how it hunted, how it fed.
He would see himself on the train to Berlin, a man who’d beaten his way across a lifeless afternoon by banking thoughts of the evening. And though the browns and grays of the German November flowed past the train window he was not there to see them; he was lost in anticipation, lost in lover’s greed. In fact, he would ask himself, what didn’t he want? He certainly wanted her, wanted her in the ways of a Victorian novel kept in a night table drawer-what magnificent fantasies he made for himself on that train! But that wasn’t all. He wanted affection; kindness, refuge. He wanted to spend the night with his lover. He wanted to play. The game of temptations and surrenders, cunning noes and yesses. And then he wanted to talk-to talk in the darkness where he could say anything he liked, then he wanted to sleep, all wrapped and twined around her in a well-warmed bed. He even wanted breakfast. Something delicious.
And what he wanted, he got.
In its very own diabolical way, destiny delivered every last wish. Only it added a little something extra, a little something he didn’t expect, buried it right in the midst of all his pleasures where he’d be sure to find it.
The Iron Exchange Building was even stranger at night: the long tile hallways in shadow, the frosted glass doors opaque and secretive, the silence broken only by an agonizing piano lesson in progress on the floor below and the echo of his footsteps.
But in low light the studio of the painter Benno Ault was agreeably softened. The shrieks and torments pinned to the wall faded to sighs, and Marta Haecht, at center stage, appeared in short silk robe and Parisian scent, slid gracefully into his arms, and gave him every reason to hope that his thoughts on the train had not been idle fantasies.
They had their Victorian novel-in feeling if not in form-and wound up sprawled together across the sofa, for a moment stunned senseless. Then Marta turned the lamp off and they lay peacefully in the darkness for a time, sticky, sore, thoroughly pleased with themselves and the very best of friends. “What was that you said? ” she asked idly. “Was it Russian?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t sure, perhaps it was Polish.”
“No, Russian. Very much so.”
“Was it a sweet thing to say? “
“No, a rough thing. Common. A command.”
“Ah, a command. And I obeyed? ” She was smiling in the darkness.
“You did. Somehow you understood.”
“And that you liked.”
“Couldn’t you tell?”
“Yes. Of course.” She thought for a time. “We are so different,” she mused.
“Not really.”
“You mustn’t say that. Such a difference is a, a pleasure for me.”
“Oh. Day and night, then.”
She put a hand on his chest. “Don’t,” she said.
They were still for a while. He looked up at the large window, illuminated by the pale night sky of a city. A few snowflakes drifted against the glass and melted into droplets. “It’s snowing,” he said.
She turned halfway around to look. “It’s a sign,” she said.
“You mean the night we met, back again.”
“Yes, just so. I can still see you in Dr. Baumann’s kitchen, making small talk. You hadn’t even noticed me. But I knew everything that would happen.”
“Did you truly? “
She nodded yes. “I knew you would take me off somewhere, a hotel, a room. I thought, a man like you can always have a woman like me. It struck me, that thought, I was so surprised at myself. Because I was so good. I’d always known boys who wanted me, at the university and so forth, but I was such a little Madchen, I wouldn’t. I’d blush and push them away-they were so earnest! And then- this thing always happens when you aren’t expecting it-the Baumanns, the st
uffy old Baumanns, invited me to their house.” She laughed. “I didn’t want to go. My father made me.”
“But you said you knew who I was, that you wanted to meet me.”
“I know I said that. I lied. I meant to flatter you.”
“Ach!” He pretended to be wounded.
“But no, you should be flattered by such a lie, because the moment I saw you I wanted everything, to be made to do everything. Your dark shirt, your dark hair, the way you looked into me-it was so … Russian-I can’t describe it. Something about you, not polite, not at all polite the way Germans are, but strong, intense.” She smoothed his hair back above his ear; the gesture seemed to last a long time and he could feel the heat of her hand.
“Isn’t that what Germans always think of Russians, when they don’t hate them? “
“It’s true. Some hate, and are hateful. But for the rest of us it’s complicated. We are all tied up inside ourselves, almost embarrassed at being in the world. It’s our German culture I think, and we see Russians-Jews, Slavs, all the people in the East-as passionate and romantic, their feelings out for all to see, and deep in our hearts we’re envious of them because we sense that they feel, whereas we just think about everything, think and think and think.”
“What about Dr. Baumann? Passionate and romantic?”
“Oh, not him.” She laughed at the idea.
“But he’s a Jew.”
“Yes of course he is. But here they’re more like us than anything else, all tight and cold, self-conscious. That’s the problem here in Germany; the Jews have become German, consider themselves German, just as good as any German, and there are many Germans who feel it is a presumption. They don’t like it. Then, after the revolution in 1917 we had here in Berlin the Russian and Polish Jews, and they are really quite different from us-perhaps rude is the word, not cultured. Mostly they stay off by themselves, but when one sees them, for instance when they are on the trolley car and it is crowded, they stare, and one can smell the onions they eat.”
“The Jews from Poland have been sent back.”
“Yes, I know this and it’s sad for them. But there were some who wanted to go back, and Poland would not let them in, and there are people who said why must this be always Germany’s problem? So now they all have to go back, and for them I feel sad.”
“And Dr. Baumann? Where can he go? “
“Why should he go anywhere? For most Jews it’s terrible, a tragedy, they lose everything, but for him it’s not like that. The Dr. Baumanns of the world always find a way to get along.”
“Is this something your father tells you?”
“No. Something I know from my own eyes.”
“You see him?”
“Socially? Of course not. But I work for a man called Herr Hanau, a man from the little town of Wannsee, up on the Baltic. Herr Hanau has a small shipping company, one big ship and three little ones, and to receive consideration for government contracts he has moved his business to Berlin, and here I am his assistant. So, some weeks ago, we were awarded a small shipment of machine tools that goes up to Sweden, a great victory for us, and Herr Hanau invited me to lunch at the Kaiserhof, to celebrate. And there, large as life, is Dr. Baumann, eating a cutlet and drinking Rhine wine. Life cannot be so bad for him after all.”
Puzzled, Szara stared at the window, watched the snowflakes drifting slowly downward on the still air. “How could he do that? ” he asked. “Can a Jew, like Dr. Baumann, walk into one of the better hotels in Berlin and just have lunch? “
“I think not. These waiters have a sense of propriety, alone he would not have been served or there might have been a scene. But he was with his protector, you see, and so everything just went along in the normal way.”
“Protector?”
“Naturally. Though my father stands ready to help him, to take over the ownership of the mill, Dr. Baumann remains in charge. Baumann Milling does defense work, as you may have guessed, and so Dr. Baumann is protected.”
“By whom?”
“It seemed strange to me, these two men having lunch. Dr. Baumann and some very tall, reedy fellow, almost bald, with little wisps of blond hair. An aristocrat, I thought, that’s what they look like: late thirties, no chin, and that hesitant little smile, as though somebody were about to break a priceless vase and they’re afraid they’ll let on that they’re brokenhearted.”
Szara shifted his weight on the couch. “I hope you don’t describe me to anyone,” he said with mock horror.
She clucked. “I don’t tell secrets, Liebchen.”
“Who do you suppose he was?”
“I asked Herr Hanau. ‘Don’t meddle,’ says he. ‘That’s Von Polanyi from the Foreign Office, a clever fellow but not someone for you to know.’ “
“He sounds Hungarian.”
He felt her shrug. “During the Austro-Hungarian time the noble families moved around, we have all sorts in Germany. In any event, don’t be too concerned for Herr Doktor Julius Baumann, for it turns out he’s rather comfortably situated.”
Szara was silent for a long time.
“Are you asleep?”
“No, dreaming.”
“Of me?”
He moved closer to her.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
And in the morning, when the light woke them up, after the Victorian novel, the affection, the honest talk in darkness, and, well, some condition of absence that at least imitated sleep, Marta Haecht tied the little silk robe at her waist and stood before the stove and made blini, thin ones like French crepes, then spread them with strawberry jam from Berlin’s finest store, folded them carefully, and served them on pretty plates and Szara realized, just about then, that had he been able to taste anything at all they would have been, as he’d imagined on the train to Berlin, delicious.
5 November.
A telephone message at the Adlon desk requested that he stop by the press office at the embassy. On the Unter den Linden, in a light, dry snowfall that blew about like dust, thousands of black-shirted Nazi party members were marching toward the Brandenburg Gate. They sang in deep voices, roared out their chants, and threw their arms into the air in fascist salutes. Amid the sea of black there were banners denouncing the Comintern and the Soviet Union, and the men marched by slamming their boots against the pavement; Szara could actually feel the rhythm of it trembling beneath his feet. He pulled his raincoat around him and pretended to ignore the marchers. This was what most Berliners did-glanced at the singing men, then hurried on about their business-and Szara followed their example.
The embassy was extremely busy. People were rushing about here and there, clerks ran by with armloads of files, and the tension could be easily felt. Varin, the second secretary, was waiting for him in the press office, rather pointedly not watching the parade below his window. He was a small, serious man, determined, and not inclined toward conversation. He handed over an envelope; Szara could feel the waxy paper of the folded flimsy inside. A radio was playing in the press office and when the news forecast came on at noon, all talk stopped. “They have a big mess over at Zbaszyn,” Varin said when the commentator had finished. “Fifteen thousand Polish Jews penned up in barbed wire at the border. Germany’s thrown them out, but Poland won’t let them in. There’s not enough water, hardly any shelter, and it’s getting colder. Everybody’s waiting to see who gives in first.”
“Maybe I should go up there,” said the journalist Szara.
Varin closed his eyes for an instant and just barely moved his head to indicate that he should do no such thing.
“Is that what the parade is all about?”
Varin shrugged, indifferent. ” They like to march, so let them. It’s the weather-they always feel spirited when the winter comes.”
Szara stood to go.
“Watch yourself,” said Varin quietly.
For just a moment, Szara had been tempted to lay his troubles at Varin’s door, but it was a temptation instantly dismissed. Still, as he wal
ked back to the Adlon, the word Funkspiele drummed relentlessly in his consciousness. Playback, it meant, when a wireless was used. In general, the operation of a doubled agent. There might have been an innocent explanation for Baumann meeting with someone from the Foreign Office, but Szara didn’t think so. The Directorate had been restless with Baumann from the very beginning; now he understood that they’d been right. People like Abramov had spent most of their lives in clandestine work-against the Okhrana before 1917, against the world after that. One developed sharpened instincts; on certain nights the animals are reluctant to approach the waterhole.
Suddenly there wasn’t a choice, he had to be an intelligence officer like it or not. If Baumann was under German control, all the traditional questions bobbed up to the surface: From the beginning? Or caught, then turned? How accomplished? By coercion, clearly. Not money, not ego, and not, God forbid, ideology. A frightened Jew was appropriate to their purposes. Which were? Deceptive. In what way deceptive, toward what end? If the swage wire figures were high, that meant they wanted to scare the USSR into thinking they had more bombers than they did, a tactic of political warfare, the same method that had proven fatal for Czechoslovakia. If they were low, it was an attempt to lull the USSR into false strategic assumptions. And that meant war.
At the Adlon he knocked, harder than he meant to, at Vainshtok’s door. The little man was in shirtsleeves, a cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the air, and a sheet of paper protruded from a typewriter on the desk. “Szara? It better be important. You scared the shit out of my muse.”
“May I come in?”
Vainshtok beckoned him inside and closed the door. “Don’t knock like that, will you? Call from the lobby. These days, a knock on the door …”
“Thank you for the Mutter Kummel story.”
“Don’t mention it. I thought you needed all the excitement you could get.”
“Do you know anything about the Reich Foreign Office?”
Vainshtok sighed. Went over to an open briefcase, dug around inside for a time, and emerged with a thin, mimeographed telephone directory. “Oh the forbidden things we have here in the Adlon. I expect the Gestapo will set fire to it any day now. That’ll be something to see-a hundred firemen, all wearing eyeglasses.” He cackled at the idea. “What do you want to know? “