He shrugged. ‘After the war, I started to think — maybe some of them would come back. A few. I used enough of the diamonds to restart my shop and the rest I locked away. What did I need it for anyway? There was only me. No wife, no children, no one who mattered.’
‘The girl in the country?’ Miriam murmured.
‘The girl in the — phht! As soon as the Germans came her father beat her, told her what would happen if she didn’t stop going with her stinking Jewboy, so, of course, she did. She’s been dead this past ten years, anyway. Cancer. Married some lump out of the mud and had seven children and now she’s dead.’ And his eyes glinted with sudden malice that chilled Abner. ‘So, like I said, I need little enough. The diamonds are still there — ’ And he made a wide gesture with one arm at the rest of the room and Abner thought, the schnapps has affected him, after all. ‘Or they were.’
‘Were?’ he said.
‘Until they came and started to ask for them. And not only the stuff I had. The stuff Kuyper sent to me after Uwe Heine died. They went to him too, the frightened ones, before they were taken to the camps. All the other stuff I collected.’ He looked dreamy then. ‘It was a lot. If it hadn’t been so long after, if I had been young enough to live with what I’d done, young enough not to care, like in the bad years of the war, I could have started such a business — I could have been bigger than any of them on the Bourse, any of them. But there it is — they came, the men, to get them — ’
‘Brazel came to get the diamonds people had left here in trust?’ Abner was stupefied. ‘Brazel came and you gave him —?’
The old man stared at him, his head up and his mouth a little twisted. ‘No, of course not, you fool. Of course not. The other ones. Your Brazel, he just wanted to know what had happened to the diamonds my father had been guarding for the Jews in the camps, and I told him, they came and got them. They knew who were acting as bankers, here and other places too, and they came with names and addresses of survivors in England, they said, and I had to give them the stuff. They said as long as I kept quiet about it, they wouldn’t say how much I’d taken for myself. That was all I cared. I didn’t care they were taking it for people who — well, they didn’t prove to me they had permission to get the stuff from me, that the people they said had sent them really had, but what did I care? An old man, getting tired now, a silly heart, what did I care? I still don’t care. So that’s it. Now go away. That’s all I care about. That you should go away and leave me quiet. I’m tired. I’m tired of all of it. So go away and leave me to get on with what’s left!’
Thirty-three
He slept little that first night back in his sofa bed in Camden Town. There was so much to think about that he felt that his brain was actually crawling inside his skull, making his eyes feel swollen and hot; he tried hard to get his thinking into some sort of order so that he could find the relaxation he so desperately needed to get to sleep. He ached for sleep, couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so weary.
Miriam first. She had been so quiet all the way back to Heathrow that he had thought she had regressed to the old surly Miriam, and that had depressed him deeply. In Amsterdam she had been short tempered sometimes, inclined to snap sometimes, but she had shown him a whole new aspect of herself that had tied him even closer to her; she had been difficult, yes, but not the almost unapproachable creature she had been in Oxford.
And yet she had sat in the plane beside him staring out of the window at the featureless banks of cloud with an abstraction so deep that she could barely be roused for the breakfast that was served on the flight, and then refused it; and he drank his own orange juice and coffee in a state of deep gloom, trying to ignore Miriam’s silence by going over in his head yet again all that he had discovered from Isaac Coenen.
But again she had surprised him, because suddenly she had turned and said with an air of urgency, ‘Abner, I’ve been wrong, haven’t I?’
‘What?’ he had said, startled.
‘I’ve been wrong. About so many things. About you and about me, lots of things.’
‘I’m not sure,’ he had said carefully. ‘I know you’ve been confused about the way you feel. I know that you’re often angry when you don’t mean to be, but — is that what you mean now?’
She had laughed then, a high cheerful sound. ‘Abner, I don’t think I know quite what I mean! Just — I’ve been thinking. It’s been the most incredible few days of my life, this trip. It’s not just that I never did it before. It’s more than that. It’s like I found a different person waiting there to get inside my skin when I arrived. I wasn’t the person I thought I’d been all my life. It was a different me. I heard with different ears. Oh, hell, that sounds so pseudish! I’m sorry — or I would be if I hadn’t promised I’d try to stop apologising. Just — well, thanks. Thanks so much for making me go.’ And she had seized his hand so fervently he had spilled his coffee and they had to go into a lather of drying him and dealing with the stain on his jacket.
Which helped. By the time that was done they were back in an easier mode of conversation and although they said nothing at all important to each other, there was enough comfortable banter to make Abner feel very optimistic indeed as he saw her back to London and then in to her taxi to Paddington and the Oxford train. They made a definite arrangement for him to go down to Oxford at the weekend, to take her out to dinner, and she called to him out of the window of the taxi as it moved off, ‘I’ll talk to the estate agent about the house before then, I promise,’ and had waved to him like a cheerful child going home for the holidays.
Where, he asked himself, turning over yet again on the rumpled sofa and getting tangled in his sheets, where do we go from here? Getting involved with a woman here in England had never been on his agenda. He’d found her as part of the work for the film, had become even more enmeshed with her as a result of the research and now — now what? He couldn’t think about it. Somewhere ahead there lay huge and painful decisions about such matters as homes, and sharing and even, oh God, children. And somewhere deep inside he felt almost petulant and the thought drifted to the surface of his exhausted mind; it’s not fair. I’ve got enough to worry about with this film. Why did she have to turn up and complicate everything this way?
And that was so wickedly ungrateful a thought (for wasn’t she now a vital part of the film?) and so unpalatable that he turned instead to think of all that Coenen had told him as he had sat over him, refusing to go away until he had more information, hating himself for pushing the tired, clearly very unhappy, old man the way he had had to; but that was what had to be done if the film was to happen. So, he had done it.
And now he had all the information that he needed to finish the research for his script. He hadn’t pinpointed the boy with the apples yet, but surely he was almost there? And he rolled over to lie on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, staring sightlessly at the pallid square of almost darkness that was his window, and tried to work it out logically.
It was quite clear to him who the ‘they’ were who had come to bully old Coenen out of the diamonds that had been entrusted to his father, who had blackmailed the old man and piled guilt on to his guilt to make him the wretched creature he was. The descriptions had been too clear, the little movements he had made as he described them too vivid for there to be any doubt. Just as a touch to his upper lip had sketched in Brazel, so had the old man sketched in the two men who had come to torment him over three long years. Listening to Coenen, Abner had hated them both. Yes, the old man had behaved appallingly, had been a betrayer of his own kind, a thief, a robber of the dead, all the things he called himself. And yet he was not as bad as the creatures who preyed on him, and God knew he had paid a just rate for what he had done so long ago in his frightened youth. All the years of misery Coenen had lived weighed on Abner as though he’d lived them himself, and he hated the two men who had come to Coenen with a rich hate that filled his chest so full it was tight when he breathed. But that did nothing to help h
im decide which of them was the boy with the apples, or even what he would do about his information now he had it. What, for example, would he do about David Lippner? Because he had to be thought about, too. And thinking of Lippner made him think of old Cyril Etting; again he rolled over in the hot crumpled bed, yearning to sleep, and kept from it by a head that was buzzing with conjecture.
He got up at six, weary and with eyes filled with sand and pulled on a sweater and jeans and went out into the dark empty street to do something he had not tried for years — running. He knew the way into Regent’s Park, and got there before his breath ran out and then found his second wind as he loped between the trees, now blushing green in the early light. The smell of the dew wet grass, the shimmer on the muddy lake and the discordant shrieking of the water birds — disturbed too early by other runners — cleared his head wonderfully.
He showered in a long, leisurely fashion as soon as he got back to the flat, and then went down to the Greek café on the corner for breakfast, and wolfed a massive one, for the cook there had once worked in Chicago and understood pancakes; he ate a stack of them and that helped a lot. Eating pancakes was not just a matter of the calories, he told himself as he came out on to the street again, but was a reaffirmation of American citizenship, and for the first time since he had talked to Isaac Coenen his sense of humour stirred and made him feel better.
The decision about who to talk to first made itself. He went back to the flat to telephone, and started with Mayer. He had made it clear he wanted regular reports on progress, but it was more than that for Abner; the man had, after all, partly financed the trip to Amsterdam. He had a moral right to be told first. But the secretary — and as he heard her thin and precise voice he remembered how incongruously she was named — Rowena told him that Mr Mayer was out of London until the end of the week and would not be available on the phone before then, and could she help?
‘No thanks,’ Abner said. ‘I was just reporting in. Make sure to tell him I did when he gets back with you.’ And a fragment of one of the verses his English teacher in the eighth grade had been so keen he should learn came back to him. ‘“Tell him I came, but no one answered, that I kept my word, he said.”’ And Rowena, her voice as colourless as ever said, ‘I will.’ And hung up the phone sharply. He smiled at the dead phone and thought smugly, I may be an American but I know an English poet better than she does. One up to Abner Wiseman and Walter De La Mare.
So it had to be Monty, and he was puzzled for a moment at how uneasy he felt about telling Monty what he had discovered; and then shrugged at his reflection in the window-panes at which he was staring. So it would be tough telling Monty that people he was connected with might be — the hell with it. He’d have to know sooner or later; for good or ill he was part of Postscripts now. He was Abner’s agent, had a financial interest in it all. He had to know.
He reached for the phone, then changed his mind and went out into the street and down to the Underground to take the tube to Tottenham Court Road. From there he went striding along the people-clotted pavement to Monty’s office. God help any snotty secretaries who tried to keep him away from the people he wanted to talk to, he told himself wrathfully, pushing past racks of jeans, shrieking T-shirts and giggling teenagers going through lewd cards in the stands outside the souvenir shops. God help them.
He need not have worried. It was clear that Monty’s secretary had been trained to treat established clients very differently from mere supplicants for her great man’s attention. She welcomed him warmly and apologised profusely because Monty was late in getting to the office, but definitely on the way because he’d called her on the Rolls’ carphone (and that made Abner’s lips twitch; why be at such pains to point out Nagel’s ownership of such status symbols? Well, maybe they reflected on her). She fussed with coffee.
Abner stood there in the middle of the over-decorated reception room and looked at his reflection in the artificially antiqued mirror that covered the wall facing the door to Monty’s inner sanctum and remembered his first visit here and the way the little wizened man in the corner had made Monty so alarmed that he had made faces at him behind Abner’s back. Well, he’d have to find out, that was all, and he tightened his shoulders as the door to the reception room burst open and Monty came in a flap of cold air and heavy Crombie overcoat.
‘Listen, Tania, get me — oh, Abner! So you’re back! What are you doing here so early? I gotta lot to get through this morning, and I can’t — ’
‘Yes you can,’ Abner said firmly. ‘Ten minutes, maybe. Or longer, once you hear what I’ve got. You can be the judge.’ And without waiting to be invited he opened the door to Monty’s office and held it invitingly so the fat man could go in.
Monty grunted and shook off his coat and, dropping it on to Tania’s desk, and growling, ‘Coffee!’ at her, went into the office.
‘This had better be important,’ he said. ‘I don’t take easy to being pushed around in my own office, know what I mean, Abner? I got more than your project to deal with, you know. This is a major business I got here and — ’
‘Of course, I know,’ Abner said, conciliatory now that he’d got the man where he wanted him. ‘But I’m the impatient type and this’ll interest you. A lot. I know — or almost — who the boy with the apples is.’
The door opened and Tania came in with coffee on a tray that gave Monty something to fuss over, which he did, with saccharin tablets and demands for dry biscuits, before turning back to Abner. But Abner had seen the way his neck had stiffened at his words and was more alert than ever.
‘What do you know?’ Monty said with an air of studied carelessness that did nothing to convince Abner. When he’d set out to come to Monty’s office he hadn’t really given much thought to his possible involvement in the complicated scenario Abner had uncovered. But now every sense he had was up and alert, because the memory jogged by the sight of that bronzed mirror in the outer room had unloosed a flood of doubt. Monty could be — Jesus, had to be — involved in some way. Didn’t he?
‘There’s a scam,’ Abner said baldly, watching him over the rim of his own coffee cup. And waited.
‘So? The world’s full of scams.’
‘Not like this one. Robbing the dead, this one.’
Monty didn’t look at him, concentrating on a list of appointments on his desk, trying to sound abstracted. ‘That doesn’t sound as bad as robbing living people.’
‘No? When the dead are the ones who died in gas ovens? Of typhus, of starvation, of beatings, of — ’
‘All right, already!’ Monty lifted his chin and stared at him. ‘You’re not filming now, you know. I see no cameras, no sound booms. This is just a conversation, for God’s sake — no need to come on like a — ’ And he shook his head irritably, unable to find the word.
‘I’m having a conversation,’ Abner said. ‘I’m trying to tell you. Were you listening, or are you more interested in that piece of lousy paper?’
‘All right, I’m listening.’ And Monty folded his hands on the list. ‘So get on with it. I ain’t got all day.’
‘The scam involves diamonds. I found out that in the Thirties when Jews in Germany and Poland and Czechoslovakia — everywhere — began to realise they might be in trouble, some of them went to Amsterdam to convert their cash into diamonds and left them to be looked after by people they trusted.’ He made a face then, letting the disgust he felt show. ‘For some of them the trust was misplaced. The original trustee of their diamonds was taken to Treblinka and died there. His son turned into a Gestapo collaborator, and used some of the diamonds for his own needs. But he wasn’t a greedy man — there was a good deal left at the end of the war.’
‘So?’
‘So, he thought maybe some of the people who’d left the diamonds with his father would come to claim. I gather one or two did in the very early days, but still there were a lot who didn’t. So the stuff just sat there. And then, not long ago, just over five years or so as I understand it, some
one turned up — two someones — with tales about how they had relations in England who were survivors of the camps, and who had left diamonds in trust to this man — Joseph Coenen. They wanted them. The son — his name is Isaac — tried to argue. He wanted better evidence than just their word for it that they were entitled to take the stones. But they were tougher than he was. Told him they knew he’d used some of the stones for himself and they’d make sure the whole world knew if he didn’t co-operate.’
Monty was staring at him with his face impassive but his eyes were wide and dark, and he stirred as Abner stopped speaking.
‘So what do you want me to say?’
‘Do you know what’s coming?’ Abner said bluntly.
‘How do you mean, do I know?’ Monty put on an air of bluster but now Abner was overtaken with sudden rage, and he snapped at him.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Monty, you must know! I saw one of ’em here in your office the first day I came here! You made a face at him behind my back — I saw it in the mirror — and it meant nothing at the time. I just thought it was odd. But now I want to know your tie-in with all this. Because the two men who went to Isaac Coenen — and have had Christ knows how much out of him in diamonds — were Victor Heller and Eugene Garten. And I repeat: I first saw Heller here, and Garten told me he’d been put on to me by Heller. So you have to be involved.’
‘Why do I have to be involved? Don’t I get the world and his stinkin’ wife through that office out there? Don’t they all come creepin’ round me? I’m a top agent, for God’s sake. Why should I be expected to know every crawler who comes in to — ’
‘This one you knew,’ Abner said implacably. ‘You made a face at him behind my back, which I saw in the mirror. You indicated me as someone he had to keep quiet in front of — and he did. So don’t come the it’s-nothing-to-do-with-me bit. You don’t have to insult my intelligence or your own that way.’
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