by Clare Clark
‘Get out!’ Dora screamed and when Emmeline did not move she kicked out at her hand, catching the knuckles with her boot. ‘I said, get out!’
13
Frau Schmidt knocked at Emmeline’s door early the next morning. She had a letter of authorisation, carefully signed, instructing her to take possession of the key Emmeline held to Dora’s flat. When Emmeline asked why Dora could not collect it herself, the caretaker frowned. Fräulein Keyserling has been called away early, she said haughtily, urgent newspaper business. Emmeline imagined Dora weeping on Matthias Rachmann’s mother’s doorstep. The bruises on her face would help, Emmeline thought, she had done her a favour. She wanted to laugh at the heart-ripping joke of it, to throw her head back and howl like a dog.
Authority made Frau Schmidt officious. When Emmeline reached out for the letter she stepped back, holding it above her head. Her blouse was stained yellow under the arms and her neck was red and flaky.
‘The key, if you please,’ she said.
Emmeline hesitated. Then, taking her bag from the back of the chair, she rummaged inside. ‘Sorry, I don’t seem to have it.’
‘Let me see.’
‘Be my guest.’ She handed Frau Schmidt the bag, watching as the caretaker dug through it. ‘It may be in my satchel at the studio. Or somewhere in the flat. I’m not sure, it’s a while since I used it. Can I bring it to you when I find it?’
Frau Schmidt glared at Emmeline. Both of them knew that the caretaker could not enter a flat without the tenant’s permission, not if the rent was paid.
‘Six o’clock latest,’ she said, tapping the letter against her hip like a nightstick. ‘Keys is the lawful property of the occupant.’
The cobbler cut the copy while she waited. Emmeline put it on a piece of string and hung it around her neck.
She walked. It was a bleak grey day but she walked fast and little by little the cold key took on the warmth of her. Everywhere the city was being dug up, metal teeth biting through asphalt, pipes poking from the broken earth like tubes from a pig’s liver. She felt stiff and hollow, a mannequin copy of herself. She passed the men with shovels and wheelbarrows, the steam pile-drivers thundering steel posts into the ground, the people hurrying along the planks set up where the pavements should have been, and it was like the old films in the days before the talkies: they jostled and thundered and opened and closed their mouths but there was no sound, nothing but jerking shapes, a roll of light and dust. Even the headache that thrummed against her skull seemed to belong to someone else.
Near the Tiergarten she stopped on a bridge and stared down at the canal. The water was black and still as a photograph. Beside her, on a dirt-streaked plinth, a naked Hercules battled with a lion. His first labour. Dora had told her that. Afterwards, when Hercules had choked the lion to death, he skinned it with its own claws and wore it as armour, his face framed by its huge jaws. Near here Rosa Luxemburg’s waterlogged corpse had been dragged from the canal, months after she had been tortured and shot. Dora told her that too.
A horn blared. Startled, Emmeline turned to see a motor car roaring past a horse-drawn cab. The horse reared, sending the cab skewing across the road. Tyres squealed. The cabby was shouting. There was a scream, a shriek of brakes, then suddenly a rip of air tearing away and a sickening smash that ricocheted through her legs, punching the breath from her chest. Perhaps a foot away, the car’s bonnet was crushed against the bridge’s stone parapet. Shards of silvery glass glittered on the ground. A man in a dark overcoat grabbed her elbow. He was pale, out of breath, his hat askew.
‘You’re not hurt,’ he said. ‘Thank God.’
She looked at him and then at the motor car. Smoke hissed from the crumpled bonnet. There was a smell of engine oil, burned rubber. As the driver’s door swung open a sudden swarm of people crowded around the car, voices raised. In the middle of the hubbub the cab horse hunched in its traces, its head low, its thin withers frothed with sweat. When Emmeline had first come to Berlin half of the city’s cabs had been horse cabs but these days you hardly ever saw them. That was the way with Berlin. Nothing ever stayed the same.
‘You should sit down,’ the man said. ‘The shock—’
‘No shock,’ she said and, touching the lion’s foot with the tips of her fingers, she turned and went back the way she had come.
It was dark by the time she reached home. The wind cut through the cloth of her coat, biting at her ears, her calves. In the shadows near the street door three boys clustered together, passing round a cigarette. One of them whistled as she passed, a two-fingered shriek, and the others laughed. As she pushed her way into the building she held up one finger behind her and let the door slam.
Frau Schmidt sprang from her room like a rat from a trap. The tip of her nose was white, the knuckle of cartilage sharp against the skin. Emmeline handed her the key on its green ribbon. ‘Fräulein Keyserling’s grandmother,’ she said. ‘You’ll take care of her, won’t you?’
‘What I do or don’t do for another tenant is no business of yours,’ the caretaker said primly, fishing in the pocket of her apron. ‘Here, this came for you.’
Emmeline took the telegram without looking at it. She supposed it was from Balz, he had told her the last time they met that he was working with a new client, that there might be something in it for her. The thought of another commission, the exacting emptiness of the work, was strangely consoling. The stairwell smelled of boiled cabbage. She could hear the clatter of pots and dishes, shouts, the squeals of squabbling children. Each cramped flat crammed with lives, the centre of their own stories.
Her own flat was silent and very cold. The cup from her breakfast sat unwashed in the sink. She fumbled open the telegram, then stopped in surprise. Not Balz after all. Julius Köhler-Schultz.
IMPERATIVE WE SPEAK STOP
PLEASE TELEPHONE EARLIEST
Emmeline’s heart sank. She thought of Dora and of Julius, who loved Matthias Rachmann in a way that Emmeline thought she might finally have come to understand, not as a friend or a lover, not even as a son, but as an unimagined and infinitely better piece of himself. But if he wanted it this way, if he wanted Dora, that meant he was lying. Lying or betraying someone else’s secrets. Saving his own skin.
The tears came unbidden. Emmeline rubbed them away and thought of a story she had read as a girl, a letter written in snake venom that killed the recipient as they read it. She could feel it already, the poison on her fingers, burning itself into the tiny cracks in her skin. She would not be a part of it. Tearing up the telegram roughly once and then again, she dropped the pieces of paper on to the floor. Then, hoisting her bag on to her shoulder, she turned and went back down the stairs.
She went to Anton’s gallery on Wilhelmsplatz. He would let her stay, at least for a night or two. She felt a sudden sharp longing for his waspish jokes, the way he took her troubles like a magician’s balloons and twisted them into something amusing and absurd, but he was busy with a client, he could not talk. He gave her the address of a bar on Friedrichstrasse, told her to meet him there at seven o’clock.
He arrived at half past eight. The bar was loud and very busy. He had changed out of his suit into a billowy chiffon shirt that might have been purple or blue, the lights made it impossible to tell. When she hugged him she could feel the stripes of his ribs.
‘I thought you were dead,’ he shouted over the blare of the band. He told her he was happy, that life was good, that he was talking to a gallery about an exhibition of his work, that he had moved out of Schillerstrasse to a place in Dahlem, a first-floor flat with French windows and a balcony.
‘You’re officially grown up,’ Emmeline said and he laughed but he winced when she asked if she could stay with him for a while.
‘I’m not sure . . . Willi—I don’t know. It’s his place.’
‘Willi? What happened to Kurt?’ but Anton shook his head and did not answer.
‘Please?’ she begged him. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t despera
te.’
Anton sighed. ‘Tonight, all right? Tomorrow you find somewhere else.’
She slept on the sofa. When she woke Willi was sitting at the kitchen table in his shirtsleeves, reading the newspaper. He was wide-necked and heavy-jowled, his thick curls touched with grey. He glanced up at Emmeline and then back at his paper. He did not smile. At the stove Anton was making coffee.
‘Police finally got their hands on that van Gogh forger,’ Willi said through a mouthful of buttered roll. ‘Is that coffee nearly done?’
Anton brought the pot to the table and poured. ‘They’ve arrested him?’ he asked.
‘Chap gave himself up. Says here he rang the police from the Netherlands and agreed to help with their enquiries. They must have been on to him. Man’s clearly guilty as sin.’ Gulping his coffee Willi stood up, pulling on his jacket. He put a proprietorial hand on Anton’s backside. ‘I’m late. I’ll see you later. And no more waifs and strays, all right?’
He spoke just loudly enough for Emmeline to hear. Anton smiled awkwardly.
‘Have a good day,’ he said. He did not look at Emmeline. They listened in silence to Willi’s footsteps tapping down the hall, the click of the front door closing behind him.
‘I should go,’ Emmeline said and Anton nodded.
‘So they got Rachmann,’ he said as she put on her coat. ‘Dora must be beside herself.’
Emmeline did not answer. She hugged him tightly. ‘Thank you for letting me stay.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘I’m sorry if I got you into trouble.’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘No. Well, see you soon, then.’
‘Right. So long. Good luck.’
Emmeline hesitated, biting her lip. ‘Be happy, Anton Dumier.’
‘I’m doing my best.’
14
They were selling the Merkur at the station. When the vendor waved a copy at her Emmeline pretended not to see. At the Zoo station she got off the train and went to the bank. Once she had money she could find lodgings, somewhere to stay while she decided what to do. She waited at the counter as the bank clerk examined her cheque and paged through the ledger to find her account. His finger ran down the columns, then stopped, tapping something she could not see.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, frowning. ‘There are insufficient funds in your account to cover this withdrawal.’
‘Then there’s been a mistake. What about the monthly deposit from Jacob Visler, surely that’s cleared by now—’
‘According to our records the last deposit to this account was in November.’
‘Then you must have made a mistake. The money is wired on the first of every month. Always. My stepfather does it personally. He wouldn’t have forgotten.’
‘As I say, the last deposit was made in November. I’m sorry.’ He held out the cheque. Emmeline stared at it dizzily. She could not believe Jacob would do that, just stop the payments without a word. Had her mother found out and stopped him? But he could have written to her, surely, had the decency to let her know. How did he think she would live?
She had to wait almost ten minutes to use the public telephone on Prenzlauer Allee. The booth smelled of hair oil and other people’s breath. She heard the operator speaking to someone on the other end, asking if they would accept the charges, then the click as the line connected.
‘Fräulein Eberhardt, is that you?’ It was Streicher, Jacob’s habitually unruffled private secretary. He sounded strained.
‘Yes, it’s me. I need to speak to Jacob, it’s urgent.’
‘He’s not here, he’s at the hospital. I—I’m so sorry.’
‘The hospital, why? What’s happened?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
It was a terrible connection. She could hardly hear what Streicher was saying. They had been trying to reach her, no one seemed to know her address or how they might find her, not until Julius Köhler-Schultz telephoned, and then when he offered to break the news—
‘I’m so terribly, terribly sorry,’ Streicher said. The line crackled as he said something about a weekend with the Metzes, bad weather, ice, loss of control, a tree, the words like pebbles on a frozen pond, skittering out of reach. Emmeline thought of Elvira, who only liked to ski on the flat, her legs scissoring backwards and forwards like a wooden puppet.
‘Skiing,’ she said stupidly.
‘A motor toboggan,’ Streicher said. The driver had broken his leg but Frau Visler—Emmeline heard only some of the words. Thrown. Impact. Skull. Seizure.
‘She’s dead,’ she whispered.
‘No, God, no, absolutely not—unconscious, but the severity of her injuries, they can’t, that is, they don’t know yet if—I’m so sorry. May I tell Herr Visler you’ll come immediately?’
Emmeline’s legs were shaking. A motor truck rumbled past and it echoed in her head, the sickening smash as the car hit the parapet of the Hercules bridge. She leaned against the side of the booth.
‘Fräulein, are you still there?’
‘I—I don’t have any money.’
Streicher seemed relieved to have something practical to do. She was to leave everything to him, he would arrange a train ticket, a place in the dining car, an automobile to collect her in Munich. There was a train leaving Berlin in two hours, all she had to do was go to the station. When the call ended, Emmeline stood where she was for a long time, listening to the soft disconnected hum of the empty line. At least if her mother died she would not have to worry about money, a voice in her head whispered, and she closed her eyes, her throat burning as if she had swallowed tiny shards of glass.
She knew she should take clothes but when she looked into her wardrobe nothing made sense, so she took what she could see, yanking blouses from hangers, balling up sweaters and slacks. At the back of the wardrobe she found a clot of scarlet wool, creased and musty. Irina’s scarf. She pressed it to her face, inhaling, but all she could smell was dust and raw wood. She dropped it, then picked it up and wrapped it round her neck.
They were talking to the caretaker as she came downstairs, two of them in helmets and greatcoats with gleaming gold buttons.
‘That’s her,’ Frau Schmidt exclaimed and they turned. The older one wore wire-rimmed round spectacles and a sorrowful expression. He looked more like a professor than a policeman. The younger one was lanky, with bulging blue eyes. He jerked his head at the bag on her shoulder.
‘Leaving, are we?’ he asked.
She told them her mother had been in an accident, that she was needed urgently in Munich, but the older man only tutted regretfully. There was no need to be alarmed, he told her, she was not under arrest, but Munich would have to wait. They had some questions, that was all, they hoped she might assist them with their enquiries.
The police car smelled of something rotten, it made Emmeline feel sick. She stared out of the window, her stomach coiling up into her throat. They would not tell her where they were taking her. She wanted to ask what they knew, what Dora had told them, but she was afraid to speak, afraid of incriminating herself, so she sat in silence, her hands pressed against her stomach to keep it steady. They drove her to the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz. She had not noticed before how like a prison it was. It hulked over the square, its walls studded with tiny windows. When they took her out of the car she was sick in the gutter. They waited until she had finished, then they took her to a room with two chairs and a table and a barred window too high to see out of. The clang of the iron door made her teeth sing.
She wanted to call Streicher, Streicher would know what to do, who to call, but though she hammered on the door no one came. She sat on one chair and then the other. Her mouth tasted sour. She spoke Dora’s name under her breath, she cursed her in Russian, she wanted to be angry, but all she could think of was her mother’s smashed-up body, all the poems and the songs inside her leaking out. She thought of the rose-and-jasmine scent of her in the lamplight of her childhood bedroom, the gleam of s
ilk and diamonds, the untouchable going-out otherness of her. The knot in Emmeline’s heart as she blew her a kiss, the same smile, the same words, always on her lips. ‘Darling, you won’t even know that I’m gone.’
The light turned duller, grittier. When she stood on the chair she could see a triangle of leaden sky, snowflakes, grey on grey. Once, when she was about seven, she had poured flour-and-water paste into her mother’s evening shoes so that she could not leave the house. No one had ever said anything about it. No one had ever said anything about anything. Somewhere, a long way off, she could hear the muffled bleat of a telephone.
The darkness ran into the room, grain by grain. Emmeline put her head down on the table and closed her eyes. She did not know what time it was. In her mind she laid her mother on a bed, held her hand, dropped it, held it again, and there were either too many words or none at all. On her pillow her mother’s face stiffened and cracked like drying clay. Again and again it played, like a reel of film, and each time she wanted the ending to be different and the ending was always the same.
It was very late when they came for her. A policeman took her to another room with another table. This time there was no window, only a mirror along one wall. An unshaded bulb threw a thin, stark light. Two men sat on one side of the table. They rose as she entered. The taller of the two men introduced himself as Kriminalkommissar Gans, his colleague as Leutnant Kufalt. Unlike Kufalt, Gans wore civilian clothes. He was smooth, placatory. There had been a misunderstanding, he said. He had not meant to keep her waiting, he hoped she had not been too uncomfortable. He offered her a glass of water, asked if she would prefer tea. His kindness was too much for Emmeline. She began to cry.
‘You have to let me go,’ she pleaded. ‘Please, Herr Kommissar. My mother has been in a terrible accident. They don’t know if she’ll—I have to go to Munich.’
Gans smiled at her and shook his head. He was sorry, he said, but that would not be possible. There were matters that had to be cleared up, he was sure she understood. Until his questions were answered she would not be going anywhere at all. There was a folder, fat with paper, on the table in front of him but he did not open it. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled at his lips. Beside him the uniformed Kufalt sat like a chaperone at a dance, a notebook and pencil in his hands, a large portfolio propped against the wall behind him.