Dark Star ns-2

by Alan Furst

  To this end he played the part of a man ruined by sorrow, a victim of anti-German hostility. Practiced saying a single sentence in the sort of Volksdeutsch accent common to a man like Kringen: “They took … everything.” He had to use it almost immediately. A burly fellow, standing next to him on the dock, wanted to strike up a conversation and offered a greeting. Szara stared at him, as though he were intruding on a world of private anguish, and delivered his line. It worked. As Szara watched, the man’s expression went from surprise to pained sympathy, then tightened with anger. Szara bit his lip; he could not say any more without losing control. He turned his face away, and the man laid a great paw of a hand on his shoulder, the honest human warmth of the gesture very nearly shaming him into real tears.

  A bright day. A calm sea.

  Life aboard the passenger steamer was tightly organized. There were numerous officials in attendance but they seemed to Szara benign, meant to ease the transition of the emigrants into German life. He was processed-a matter of saying yes and no-given a temporary identity card, and told to report to the proper authorities wherever he settled and permanent residence documents would be provided at that time. Had he any notion of where he wished to live? Family in Germany? Friends? Szara hid behind his catastrophe. “Don’t worry, old fellow, you’re in good hands now,” said one official.

  The public address system was constantly at work: a schnauzer discovered in the crew quarters, an uplifting message of welcome from Dr. Goebbels, the Winterhilfe charity was stationed at a table on the afterdeck, those with last names beginning A through M should report to the dining room for midday dinner promptly at one P.M., N through Z at two-thirty. To promote the appetite, a songfest would begin in fifteen minutes on the foredeck, led by the well-known contralto Irmtrud Von something from the Munich State Opera Company and the well-known countertenor SS Untersturmfuhrer Gerhard something else of the Bavarian Soldiers’ Chorus, two inspirational artists who had volunteered to accompany the voyage and join their fellow Volk in singing some of the grand old songs.

  For one ghastly moment Szara thought he might have to sing, but saw to his relief that a sufficient number of people remained at the perimeter so that he could safely avoid it. He stood for the rousing performance of “Deutschland uber Alles” that began the program, watched the breasts of the contralto swell mightily with patriotism, then moved to the railing and became part of the small audience.

  Almost all the passengers took part, and they were deeply affected by the singing; there were unashamed tears on the cheeks of both the men and the women and a kind of joyous agony on their faces as they raised their voices together. The mass rendition of “Silent Night”-Christmas carols were familiar to all-was extraordinary, sung with great and tender feeling as the ship rumbled through the flat Baltic waters.

  Szara maintained his cover, nodding in time and seeming to mumble the old words to himself, but his internal reaction to the performance was something very nearly approaching terror. It was the instinctive and passionate unity of the singers that frightened him; the sheer depth of it was overwhelming. You couldn’t, he thought, find three Jews in the world who would agree on what it meant to be Jewish, yet there were apparently fifty million of these people who knew exactly what it meant to be German, though many of those on deck had never set foot in Germany.

  Something was wrong, what was it? Obviously they suffered injustice without end-that certain look was plain on their faces. They swayed and sang, seemingly hypnotized, held hands-many wept-and together formed a wall of common emotion, a wall of nostalgia, regret, self-pity, sentimentality, resentment, hatred, ferocity. The words bounced around inside him, none of them right, none of them wrong, none of them mattered. What he did know for certain at that moment was that they were poisoned with themselves. And it was the rest of the world that would suffer for it.

  He avoided lunch, knowing it would be impossible to escape conversation over a table laden with food. A short, fleshy woman, with the tiny eyes of pure malice, sought him out-he could tell she’d been watching him-and silently presented a generous wedge of Bundt cake in a napkin. The group had understood him, accepted him; he was damaged goods, to be left alone yet not neglected. She turned and walked away, leaving him to eat his cake in peace, while he suppressed a violent shiver that seemed to come from the very center of his being.

  As the sun set, the voice on the public address system grew suddenly whispery with reverence and awe. A fortuitous change of plans: the ship would be met at Hamburg by a train of first-class coaches, all passengers would proceed to Berlin, there to be addressed by the Fuhrer himself. Please do not be concerned for the friends and family who will come to the dock to meet you, there will be plenty of room for everybody. Heil Hitler!

  And if Szara had a passing notion that he could slip away in the confusion of landing and find his way to the Copenhagen ferry, the reality of the arrival, two days later, put a firm lid on such nonsense. A wall of cheering Germans stood to either side of the disembarking passengers, an aisle of welcome, as effective as barbed wire, that lined the way to the railroad station.

  So he went to Berlin.

  To Szara, the city seemed dark and solemn. Stiff. Brooding. Whatever he scented in the streets was worse, much worse, than Kristallnacht in November of ‘38. Now the nation was at risk; this business was no longer some political maneuver of the Nazi party. France and England had declared war-the gall, the presumption of them! — and the people had coalesced in the face of such an astonishing development. That civilized nations-the British at any rate, not the unbathed French-would side with the Poles and the Jews and the other Slavic trash was simply beyond comprehension, but it was a fact of life and it had to be faced. They were equal to it.

  At the Potsdam terminal a fleet of buses waited to transport the returning Volksdeutsch to the Olympic Stadium, where a crowd of seventy-five thousand people awaited their arrival. A special section toward the front was reserved for the Baltic emigrants, and Adolf Hitler would address them later in the evening. Szara had no intention of going anywhere near the place; security measures would be intensive wherever a national leader was expected and in this instance would include the Gestapo, Berlin plainclothes detectives, identity checks-an imposter’s nightmare. Though his thin cover had worked on the docks of Latvia, it would never stand up under that level of scrutiny.

  But there was an accursed absence of confusion as the buses were boarded; the Volksdeutsch were infuriatingly patient and malleable, organizing themselves into neat lines-who, Szara tried to remember, had called the Germans carnivorous sheep? — and when he tried to disappear between two buses a young woman wearing an armband chased him down and courteously headed him back in the proper direction. In desperation he doubled over, his free hand clutching his belly, and ran groaning back into the station. That they understood and they let him go. He found a different exit, now simply a traveler with a valise. He spotted a sign for the number 24 tram, the Dahlem line, that would take him to Lehrter Bahnhof, where he could catch the late train to Hamburg. Things were looking up.

  But it was not to be. He walked about on the streets near the station for a half hour or so, giving the busloads of Volksdeutsch time to depart, then reentered Potsdam station. But he saw a uniformed policeman and a Gestapo functionary checking identification at every gate that led to the tramways and realized that without the protective coloration of the emigrants he was in some difficulty. He stood out, he could sense it. Who was this rather aristocratic looking man in soiled clothing and a soft felt hat worn low over the eyes? Why did he carry a fine leather valise?

  Resisting the urge to panic, he walked away from the station and found himself in even worse trouble. Now he was alone, on deserted streets.

  The Berlin he’d known a year earlier still had its people of the night, those who liked darkness and the pleasures it implied. But no longer. The city was desolate, people stayed home, went to bed early; Hitler had chased decadence indoors. Szara knew he
had to get off the streets. He felt it was a matter of minutes.

  He walked quickly west, to the Leipzigerplatz, where he knew there was a public telephone. He’d memorized several telephone numbers, in case he lost the valise, and the receiver was in his hand before he realized he had no German coins. He’d obtained reichsmarks from Poles who’d fled into Lithuania, enough to buy a ticket on the Copenhagen steamer, but he’d not foreseen the need to use a telephone. Not like this, not for such a stupid miscalculation, he pleaded silently. He saw a taxicab and waved it down. The driver was offended, declared himself “no traveling change purse,” but Szara bought two ten-reichsmark coins for fifty reichsmarks and the driver’s attitude turned instantly to grave decency. “Can you wait?” Szara asked him, thumbing through his remaining bills. The driver nodded politely. Anything for a gentleman.

  The telephone rang for what seemed like a long time, then, unexpectedly, a man answered. Szara mentioned a name. The man’s voice was terribly languid and world-weary. “Oh, she’s not here,” he said. Then: “I suppose you’ll want the number.” Szara said he did, fumbling in his pocket for a pencil and a matchbox. The man gave him the number and Szara hung up. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the driver scowling at his watch. There was a police car on the other side of the Leipzigerplatz. “Another minute,” he called out. The driver noticed his odd German and stared. Szara dialed the new number and a maid answered. Szara asked for “Madame Nadia Tscherova.” Relief flooded over him when he heard her voice.

  “I find myself in Berlin,” he said. “Would it be terribly inconvenient …?”

  “What? Who is it?”

  “A backstage friend. Remember? The terrible play? I brought you … a present.”

  “My God.”

  “May I come and see you?”

  “Well,” she said.

  “Please.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Perhaps you’ll tell me where.”

  “How can you not know?”

  “The fact is I don’t.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s a villa. Facing the Tiergarten, just at the edge of Charlottenburg, on Schillerstrasse. The third from the end of the street. There’s a … I’ll have the coach lamps put on. When will you come?”

  “I have a taxi waiting for me.”

  “Soon then,” she said and hung up.

  He got into the cab and gave the driver directions. “What part of Germany do you come from? ” asked the driver.

  “From Italy,” Szara said. “From the Tyrol. Actually, we rarely speak German.”

  “So you’re Italian.”

  “Yes.”

  “For an Italian you don’t speak so badly.”

  “Grazie.”

  The driver laughed and pulled away as the police car began to circle slowly around the Leipzigerplatz.

  “Dearest!” She cried out in Russian. This was a different Nadia- affected, brittle. She threw an arm around his shoulders-her other hand held a glass-drew him close, and kissed him full on the lips. The kiss tasted like wine. ” ‘What ingenious devil has cast you on my doorstep?’ ” she said. The maid who’d shown him in curtsied, her starched uniform rustling, and left the room.

  “And go iron yourself,” Tscherova muttered to her back as she drew the tall door closed.

  “What sort of devil?” Szara asked.

  “It’s from Kostennikov. The Merchant’s Bride. Act Three.”

  Szara raised an eyebrow.

  “Come upstairs,” she said.

  He followed her through rooms of oiled walnut furniture and towering emerald draperies, then up a curving marble staircase with gilded banisters. “Well you’ve certainly-”

  “Shut up,” she whispered urgently. “They listen.”

  “The servants?”

  “Yes.”

  Sweeping up the stairs in ice-colored silk shirt and pants, voluminous lounging pajamas, she called out, “Last one up is a monkey!”

  “Aren’t you making it awfully obvious?” he said quietly.

  She snorted and danced up the last few steps. Her gold slippers had pompoms on them and the soles slapped against the marble. She paused for a sip of wine, then took his hand and towed him into a bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them. A fire burned in a marble fireplace, the wallpaper was deep blue with white snowdrops, the cover on the huge bed was the same blue and white, and the carpet was thick, pale blue wool.

  “Oh, Seryozha,” she said, her voice full of woe. A borzoi crept guiltily off a blue and white settee and slunk over to the fireplace, settling down on his side with the mournful sigh of the dispossessed and a single swish of his feathery tail. Then he yawned, opened his long, graceful jaws to the limit, and snapped them shut with a brief whine. What settee?

  “Won’t they suspect I’m your lover?” Szara asked.

  “Let them.”

  Szara looked confused.

  “I can have all the lovers, and generally strange guests, that I want. What I can’t have is spies.”

  “They know Russian? “

  “Who knows what they know? From my emigre friends they expect Russian, shouting and laughter. Anything political or confidential, keep your voice down or play the Victrola.”

  “All this. It’s yours?”

  “I will tell you everything, my dear, but first things first. Forgive me, but I do not know your name. That’s going to become awkward. Would you like me to make something up?”

  “Andre,” he said. “In the French spelling.”

  “Good. Now I must ask you, Andre in the French spelling, if you have any idea what you smell like.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve been through hard times in Russia: little rooms, long winters, everybody terrified, and no privacy. I’m no shrinking violet, believe me, but …”

  She opened a door with a full mirror on it and gestured toward the clawfoot tub within. “I lack nothing. You will find a sponge, bath salts, lavender soap or almond, washcloth, backbrush, shampoo from Paris. You may give yourself a facial, if you like, or powder yourself like a cruller from the Viennese bakery. Yes? You’re not insulted? “

  “A long journey,” he said, walking into the bathroom.

  He undressed, horrified at the condition of his clothing. In the scented air of the bathroom his own condition became, by contrast, all too evident. Still, when he looked in the mirror, he could see that he’d survived. A day’s growth of beard-was one side of his face still slightly swollen from the dive-bombing? — hair quite long, newly gray here, and here, and here, eyes yellowish with fatigue. Not old. Yet. And very lean and sharp, determined.

  He ran the steaming water into the tub and climbed in. The heat woke up various nicks and scrapes and bruises he’d acquired in his travels and he grimaced. It felt as though he had a hundred places that hurt, each in a different way. He watched the water darken, added a handful of crystals from a jar and stirred them about. “That’s the spirit!” she called through the open door, smelling the bath salts. She hummed to herself, opened a bottle of wine-he heard the squeak of the cork being drawn-and put a record on the Victrola. Italian opera, sunny and sweet: on market day, peasants gather in the village square.

  “I like this for a bath, don’t you?” she said from the bedroom.

  “Yes. Just right.”

  She sang along for a few bars, her voice, lightly hoarse, hunting shamelessly for the proper notes.

  “May I have a cigarette? “

  A moment later her hand snaked around the door with a lit cigarette. He took it gratefully. “Smoking in the bath,” she said. “You are truly Russian.”

  The borzoi came padding in and lapped enthusiastically at the bathwater.

  “Seryozha!” she said.

  With his index finger Szara rubbed the dog between the eyes. The borzoi raised its head and stared at him, soapy water running from its wet muzzle. “Go away, Seryozha,” he said. Surprisingly, the dog actually turned and left.

  “Yes, good dog,” he heard her s
ay.

  “When I’m done … I don’t have anything clean, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll get you one of the general’s bathrobes. Not the old rag he actually wears. His daughter gave him one for his birthday-it’s still in the box. Red satin. You’ll look like Cary Grant.”

  “Is he your lover?”

  “Cary Grant? I thought we’d been discreet.”

  He waited.

  “No. Not really. Nobody is my lover. When the general and I are together the world thinks otherwise, but we don’t fool ourselves or each other. It takes some explaining, but I can’t imagine you’re going anywhere else tonight, so there’s time. But for one thing I can’t wait. You really have to tell me why you came here. If you are going to ask me to do all sorts of wretched things, I might as well hear about it and have it done with.” She turned the record over. There was a certain resignation in her voice, he thought, like a woman who dreads a squabble with the butcher but knows it can’t be avoided.

  “The truth?”

  “Yes. Why not?”

  “I’ve … Well, what have I done? I haven’t defected. I guess I’ve run away.”

  “Not really. You have?”

  “Yes.”

  She was silent for a moment, thinking it over. “Run away to Berlin? Is, uh, that where one generally goes?”

  “It was a rat’s maze. I ran down the open passage.”

  “Well, if you say so.” She sounded dubious.

  He put his cigarette out in the bathwater, rested the butt on the edge of the tub, then pulled the plug and watched the gray water swirl above the drain. “I’m going to have to fill up the tub again,” he said.

  “I’ll bring you a glass of wine if you like. And you can tell me about your travels. If it’s allowed, that is.”

  “Anything’s allowed now,” he said. He burst out laughing.

  “What?”

  “Really nothing.” He laughed again. It was as though a genie had escaped.

  It was well past midnight when they tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen, a narrow room with a lofty ceiling and porcelain worn dark on its curves by years of scrubbing. They made absurdly tall sandwiches of cheese and pickles and butter and stole back across the Baluchi carpets like thieves. Szara caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror: shaved, hair combed, wearing a red satin bathrobe with a shawl collar, a giant sandwich teetering on a plate-it was as though in headlong flight he’d stumbled through a secret door and landed in heaven.