by MARY HOCKING
Mary Hocking
ASK NO
QUESTION
“I vow to thee my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.”
Contents
Prolouge
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Epilouge
To Pauline
Prologue
He had come at night and in too much pain to notice where they were taking him. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ a voice had said, ‘there’s no return journey.’ They had said that at Dachau, too.
It was an old building, not well-maintained and that at least was merciful because in this high stone wall there were chinks and one was wide enough for a glimpse of sky. Sometimes sound penetrated. Wind shrilling in wire, rain falling on stone. Most precious of all, men talking. The human voice, no matter how obscene the words, how rough the tongue, was a link with sanity; he asked for no bird song. As long as they never plugged this tiny breach, he felt he could survive, that the long solitude would not be complete. He believed in God, but he did not think that man, on earth, was meant to live with God alone. If they repaired that breach he would be so much alone with God that his mind would never again be able to establish a link with his fellow men. And there were two people for whose dear sakes he must preserve that link.
In the daytime, when they came to look at him, he lay slack, his face vacuous. They thought that he was very ill. Perhaps they were right, sometimes it was difficult to tell. At night, when they left him alone, he exercised his body as much as his limited strength would allow. He did this because it helped him to go on believing that one day he would leave this place.
They themselves had told him that he could leave. All the time that they played their subtle, infinitely varied games with his body they explained how easy it would be for him to leave. There was always someone, squatting on the floor beside him, telling him in a quiet, reasonable voice that he had only to denounce certain men, men whom he had never met, with whom he had nothing in common except the misfortune of race, and he could be free.
That was a long time ago. Now they had wearied of him and the loneliness was more terrible than their brutality. He had tried to carve his name on the wall so that it would serve as a reminder if his mind began to lose its hold. His only tool had been a rusty nail and the words were scarcely legible. Every night he repeated his name as he tried to sleep, Mikail Kratz, Mikail Kratz, Mikail Kratz . . . He tried not to lose hope. Even at Dachau he had never lost hope. He would go on hoping here, as long as the breach in the wall remained.
Chapter One
The tunnel was closed. The Italian police were performing in comic-opera style; threatening fingers stabbed the air, gaping mouths blared incoherent orders. The delay might have been due to a landslide, a bomb, an earthquake . . . A bored Frenchman was telling a friend that a coach had broken down. He was probably right. Whatever the reason, the tunnel was likely to be out of use for several hours, if not all night.
Towards the end of the queue of cars, a gnome-like creature hunched beside a Fiat threw back his head as though imploring the gods to intervene. The gesture was worthy of the Italians, but the blasphemies that accompanied it were entirely Irish. When he had exhausted himself, he said, ‘Let’s go see the doggies.’
He eased into the seat beside the driver; in this position the ugliness of the body was concealed and one noticed only the surprising beauty of the long, thin face. His companion turned the car. Not an easy manoeuvre, the path being narrow and other drivers disinclined to give way, but he made it seem easy. One of the few good-natured drivers left in Europe, the Irishman reflected. Perhaps one of the few good-natured men left in the twentieth century? Good-natured . . . an odd virtue for a man in his profession.
There was another delay at the frontier. Time was slipping by. As the car headed towards the Great St. Bernard Pass the evening star appeared between the peaks. The breeze had the edge of night. The men spoke only once. The Irishman said:
‘I’ve been wondering all day why we were so suddenly instructed not to take the route through the Pass.’
His companion said, ‘This is where curiosity leads you.’
The Irishman looked ahead to where the rock bellied and the road seemed to swing into space with no barrier save an arc of stones like stumps of teeth in a massive jaw. No margin for error here. He looked at the hands on the wheel, firm, but not taut; he saw that the wrists were flexible, the shoulders relaxed. He looked up at the mountain peaks, glad that he was not driving. There was a lot of snow still; it had been a bad spring. As the car swung out he steeled himself to look down. Lights flickered here and there below. Other cars were following, but that was not important. The danger lay ahead, perhaps at the hospice, perhaps beyond it. He hunched down in his seat. It was not the battleground he would have chosen. His pale, sensitive face composed itself in lines more sardonic than usual; it was not in the least apparent that he was afraid.
It was nearly an hour later that they parked the car outside the hospice. The Fiat had negotiated the last few bends very slowly with the result that several cars were behind them when they arrived. There are times when it is good to have company.
‘Do we go in?’ the driver asked.
‘I wouldn’t relish a surprise encounter on the road down.’
‘And if they are here?’
‘At least we shall know what to expect.’
The two men got out of the car and walked across the yard. They paused for a moment, looking across the frozen lake. The wind was stronger now. The driver took off his gloves and flexed his fingers.
‘I’m sorry Claus won’t be here,’ he said. ‘I was looking forward to seeing him again.’
The Irishman, thinking of Lausanne, its bright lights reflected in a kinder lake, said:
‘Not as much as I’m looking forward to it.’
They went into the small café. A couple were leaving a table near the door. The two men took their places, and the Irishman ordered coffee. The room was crowded, but not so crowded as to reduce its occupants to an indistinguishable mass. The driver, who had observed the recent arrivals getting out of their cars, had little difficulty in picking out the two men who had been waiting. Patient men with the indifferent eyes of the killer, they made little effort to pass as tourists. The Irishman said:
‘I suppose the reason the coffee is so vile is that the water boils at a lower temperature.’ He put his cup down. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Lausanne. The coffee will be better there.’
He was thinking of Claus’s flat, brandy and coffee and reminiscences. He slouched over the table, his dark head bent forward, the mouth slack beneath the dark moustache. It had been a long drive. Now w
as the time to relax tired muscles, rest the weary mind; so he thought of Claus who had been his friend in days more desperate but not so bleak. Opposite him, the Irishman’s thin little body twitched, his face wrinkled with malign gaiety as excitement began to drive out fear.
‘We’d better move before they move.’ He was always at his best when he could act quickly.
A dark, sweaty little waitress passed and the driver caught her eye; it was never difficult for him to catch a woman’s eye. He ordered brandy. When she had gone, he said:
‘Let them make the first move.’ Nothing ever seemed to him to be gained by trying to tackle a situation before it was ripe.
The Irishman bent forward.
‘They know about our meeting here. Otherwise our orders wouldn’t have been countermanded.’
A man and a woman with a little girl were sitting nearby. The woman was saying, ‘It’s too late to see them now, sweetie. They’ll be all snuggled up for the night.’ The driver watched the little girl. The Irishman went on:
‘. . . and if they know about our meeting, they will think we’re waiting for Claus. They won’t expect us to leave yet.’
The driver smiled at the little girl. ‘So?’
‘You push off in the general direction of the herren. It’s near the door. You can slip out without their seeing. They won’t worry for a minute or two while they’ve got me in sight.’ The waitress came with the brandy. He waited impatiently until she had gone and then went on, ‘Drive the car to the far side of the lake. Take the road and go far enough down to be out of sight. I’ll join you when I’ve shaken them off.’
The driver picked up his glass. ‘It’s phoney.’ He sipped the brandy. He was always a slow drinker: some said he was a slow thinker, too. ‘The whole situation is phoney.’
The little girl was crying because she could not see a St. Bernard. One or two people went out. The crowd round the door began to thin. The Irishman said:
‘It’s going to be lonely here by the time you’ve finished that brandy.’
The driver looked at his drink and saw a distorted image reflected in the curved glass. Everything seemed unreal. The altitude, perhaps? Sometimes when you were tired it affected you that way. He didn’t really care. He put the glass down without finishing his drink.
‘We’ll go,’ he said. ‘Both of us.’
The Irishman began to argue; keeping his voice low he repeated his scheme. The driver repeated, ‘We’ll go.’ They had to get to Lausanne and the way lay ahead; it was so simple, it irritated him that the Irishman didn’t understand. He got up and went to the door. Outside it was cold and the lake looked desolate; it was not his kind of landscape, its statements were too uncompromisingly bleak. He walked across to the car, unlocked it and got in. The Irishman thrust a livid face down to him.
‘You must be mad!’
‘I’m tired of this.’ To him, it seemed a sufficient answer. His determination, if nothing else, communicated itself. The Irishman got in beside him; as they drove round the side of the lake the driver could feel his taut little body shaking with rage. On the far side of the lake they looked back. One or two people were getting into cars; they would have company on the way down. Suddenly something cut across their line of vision; a monk had leapt from a nearby mountain path, his habit billowing behind him as he ran. The driver laughed and eased back in his seat.
‘A flying monk! That’s all it needed.’
The hospice and the lake disappeared as the car began to negotiate the first steep curve downwards. For a time it seemed that they had the whole valley to themselves. The scale of it was too vast for the Irishman’s taste and he deliberately limited his awareness to the few yards of road ahead. He saw the arc of stones stand up in the car’s headlamps. From his position, it seemed that the car swung out too far. He waited for the front wheels to grind against the stones. There was one moment when there was nothing beyond the window; then the stones appeared again curving towards the safe shelter of rock. For a few minutes the road descended unadventurously, then swung out again. The arc of stones, the moment of darkness, shelter again. A pattern had emerged, a rhythm was established. The Irishman looked up at the peaks, the snow glimmering in the moonlight; it was always better on the way down, he thought. As the car swung out on the edge of a great buttress of rock, something else glimmered below the snowline.
‘A car behind,’ the Irishman said sharply.
‘Several, surely? There was a comfortable little caravan setting off when we left.’
The road had curved inwards again. The Irishman turned to look back. After a few moments a ring of light moved round the rim of the buttress. He waited. No other light followed.
‘Only one,’ he said.
The road dived steeply with high rock on one side and a shelf of scrub on the other. Now was the time to make ground before the next shoulder of rock loomed up and the path swung out again.
‘You’ll need to go faster,’ the Irishman said.
‘Not on this path.’ Staid as a bloody coach driver!
‘They’re gaining on us.’
‘Let them! It’s probably Mama and Papa and little Baby Bear.’
‘If it is, he’ll put his fist on the horn and blast like hell any minute now.’
He could feel the pull on the body of the car as the road curved outwards. This time he did not watch for the stones; he looked back and caught the full glare of headlamps as the other car thrust forward, eager to nudge them off the path. The driver wrenched at the wheel and the Fiat was clear, turning into the long slope downwards again.
‘So now we know!’ the Irishman said, and his body tensed, poised for the blind, ecstatic moment, for the wild plunge down released from fear and reason. But beside him the driver, steady eyes on the road, steady hands on the wheel, kept the car at a steady pace. Imbecile, this relaxed indifference! Now was the chance, now while the road ran straight and there was no room to overtake. The Irishman wanted to grab the wheel, to press his foot down on the accelerator . . . But already it was too late; the pattern was repeating itself. Another bend ahead, the other car drawing nearer as the familiar arc of stones appeared. It tried to ram them again and failed again, though metal grated ominously against metal as the Fiat rounded the bend and pulled in towards the shelter of rock. The driver said, ‘That’s given them a taste of blood.’
The road dived again, rock on one side, the shelf of scrub on the other. Far below, the road was a thin grey ribbon threading through the valley; if the tunnel had not been closed, the Irishman thought, they would be on that ambling road now. The valley disappeared as a great jaw thrust out ahead. The Irishman began to swear quietly. The driver glanced in his mirror, undismayed as the other car began to gain ground. Then, at the one moment when the maximum care was needed, he put his foot down on the accelerator and the car wheeled on the fringe of darkness throwing the Irishman hard against the door. As the little man clawed at the seat to pull himself up, he saw the other car coming on at a reckless angle. The headlamps blinded him. He heard the harsh conflict of wheel on stone but felt no impact, no sense of falling. The Fiat had stopped and the driver was saying, ‘Too fast this time.’ The Irishman looked round and saw the other car with its back wheels over the stones. It had a faintly foolish appearance. One of the men inside opened a door; weight shifted and the car tilted leisurely over the edge.
The driver got out of the car and walked back along the road. The Irishman came and stood beside him. A little avalanche of stones rattled down into the valley. Then it was quiet and very cold. The Irishman shivered as sweat chilled his body. They went back to the car. The driver sat hunched over the wheel. The eyes were bloodshot, the face lined with fatigue; but no tell-tale nerve twitched at temple or cheek. His was the tiredness of a man who has been driving a long time on a hard road. The Irishman, exhausted by exhilaration and despair, thought bitterly that, whatever doubts one might have about Mitchell, it was at moments like this that one had to recognize the quality of th
e man. Steadiness, patience, control, useful attributes in a bank clerk, but add to them this ability to reach one’s peak at the moment of crisis, fearless, utterly relaxed, and you had something formidable. He said spitefully, ‘Are we going to wait here for another car to hit us?’
Wearily, the driver pressed the starter. ‘Strange, no other cars . . .’ The Irishman did not answer. After a while, the driver said, ‘And why should they ever have suggested our meeting Claus in that God-forsaken spot when we can meet him in Lausanne, anyway?’
The Irishman said, ‘Curiosity will get you nowhere.’
Not that one could accuse Mitchell of having an enquiring mind, he thought. He was beginning to feel ashamed of his own performance and this made him malicious. He wanted to find the weakness in the other man.
The road eased into the valley and soon they were driving across the plain where the glacial waters of the Rhône looked chalky in the moonlight. They came into Villeneuve before midnight and saw the lake and the great bank of distant lights that was Montreux. The driver said, ‘Not long now.’ They were coming along that part of the lake where the Castle of Chillon stands solitary, evoking memories of a darker age, when the driver said, ‘I hope Claus is in good form.’ The Irishman caught the slight inflection of anxiety in the voice, something of which the speaker himself was probably unaware. He smiled to himself triumphantly as he said:
‘People mean too much to you. It’s not a weakness you can afford.’
Chapter Two
It was warm in Lausanne, even at two o’clock in the morning; windows were open on to balconies of flats, curtains moved in the warm night wind. As the car drove up the steep road from the lake towards the town’s center, the Irishman said, ‘Eliot can’t be expecting us now.’ They came to a crossroad where there were blocks of flats lofted high against the sky. Here and there lights shone. Mitchell looked at the nearest block, his eyes travelling along the fifth floor.
‘We shan’t need to wake Claus,’ he said, noticing the lamp glowing behind drawn curtains.