Death in Focus

by Anne Perry

  “Have you learned about the un-German books?” he said at last, directing his question to Zillah.

  “The what?” She looked at him incredulously.

  “The un-German books,” he repeated.

  “For goodness’ sake, what is an un-German book? If it is printed in German, then it’s German, isn’t it? So, you mean something translated from another language? It’s a big world out there, and some of the best literature, the very best, comes from other languages.”

  “Un-German thoughts and ideas,” he explained, intense contempt in his face. “The works of such French barbarians as Gide, Emile Zola, Marcel Proust; American barbarians such as Jack London and Ernest Hemingway; Englishmen like H. G. Wells; and native traitors to German thought like Marx, Freud, and Einstein.”

  “Ridiculous,” Zillah said with a mirthless laugh.

  “Please don’t tell Dr. Goebbels that, Zillah,” Jacob said, his voice suddenly grating. “This is the peak of his achievement, so far. All the works of these people, among hundreds of others—even Helen Keller, for God’s sake—are to be collected up and burned, to protect the German soul from their polluting influence.”

  Zillah stared at him, as if unable to decide now whether he was joking, exaggerating, or just plain wrong. She was not yet prepared to think that he could be right. “Nonsense,” she said at last. “You shouldn’t go around saying things like that, even to me. Not everyone understands your rather twisted sense of humor.”

  Jacob bent his head, elbows on the table, and ran his fingers through his thick hair. For a moment there was complete silence in the kitchen, except for the ticking of the clock on the mantel above the oven. Finally, he looked up.

  “I’m not joking, Zillah. God help us, I’m totally serious. They’re going to do it tonight. Fires in every major city in Germany. Here it will be in the Opernplatz, between the opera house and the university. I’m going to watch from the shadows, the darkness at the edge, which is where I imagine a lot of us will be from now on.” He looked across the table at Elena. “It’ll be midnight, so you could come and watch it, with your camera, if you like. It will be a signal moment in history. You should record it for the future. The suicide of the German intellect. It might be quite a spectacle, or it might not. Odd to think that a sudden shower of rain could save the soul of a nation…for one more night.” His voice was angry and Elena could hear the edge of despair in it.

  Without thinking whether it was appropriate or not, she reached across and touched his hand. “A temporary insanity,” she said quite clearly. “Other people have copies, in probably every country in Europe, or America, at the very least. You can’t kill an idea by burning a book.”

  “You can kill a nation’s ability to read it,” he said, searching her face as he spoke. “And please don’t go out alone, and not at all in the daylight. The neighbors here are pretty good, but your description is all over the place, and it takes only one person to report it to get the Gestapo here.”

  “I know,” she said very quietly. It hurt to say it. The only thing that would help would be to stay here. “I can’t stay here. I’m endangering everybody.”

  “We’ll get you out, but not yet.”

  “Yes, as soon as I can leave without being seen, and making it worse. They’ll be looking for that young man. They mustn’t find me, or they’ll take you all.”

  “I’ll find a way. Just stay here and stay inside!” There was an edge to his voice. Was he angry because he had no idea how to help? Or because she was right, her presence in Eli and Zillah’s house was endangering them all?

  “I can’t stay,” she repeated. “If I get caught, it will be hard, but if you are all caught, it will be far worse. I know that, and so do—”

  It was Zillah who interrupted her. “Do you think we have never sheltered anyone before, or that we won’t have to do it again? We do this for ourselves, because it is right. We each have to fight against the darkness in our own way. You will do it with photographs. Jacob does it with words. Eli and I do it by seeing that you have that chance. You have to stay alive to tell the rest of the world what is happening, and what is going to happen.” She gave just the shadow of a smile. “You are no use to anyone dead in some execution chamber, shot for a crime you did not commit. Empty self-sacrifice may feel like a noble thing, but it is self-indulgent, and we can’t afford it. We need weapons that will work. Go with Jacob after dark and watch the books burning. See what Hitler and Goebbels are trying to do, then go home and show people. Not just the facts; make them feel the pain…and believe it. Don’t let this waste go unseen. Build a fire in the mind that nothing can put out.” As if suddenly exhausted, she stood up and returned to her cutting board, chopping carrots for the pie she was making.

  Elena did not argue. She would do what Zillah said. She would build that fire and make it hot enough so no one could deny it, or she would be killed trying.

  * * *

  —

  Jacob left and took with him the film that Elena had already taken of the assassination. He had it developed by a friend with a dark room, but only the negatives. Prints could come later. She would not carry bulky prints easily, and anyone could look at, and almost certainly confiscate, them. But if left undeveloped, the film could be exposed and the impressions wiped out.

  “You have some good ones,” he told her, handing them back. They were in the sitting room, talking quietly. It was after six, and Eli would be home in minutes. “There are a couple I’d like to buy from you, to go with my article when I send it back to New York. I might even get it in the Times.” He looked at her questioningly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she said in amazement, and saw him blink, as if she had made to strike him. “You can have anything you want!” she added. “You saved my life. You are still saving it. Don’t you think that’s worth something?” She gave a sudden wide smile. “And I’d rather like to get my photographs into the New York Times.”

  He relaxed into a smile as well, then held out his hand.

  She shook it, quite solemnly.

  “And I’ll come with you to the book burning tonight,” she added.

  * * *

  —

  Elena and Jacob set out a little before eleven. She wore the dress Zillah had provided, and her few other clothes and personal belongings were in a bag over Jacob’s shoulder; she was carrying her camera case. There was no need to cover her hair now that it was blond and short. And she had used Zillah’s dark brown mascara to color and increase her eyebrows. Before leaving the house, both Jacob and Zillah agreed that the change made her almost unrecognizable.

  They walked most of the way, stopping now and then as if merely strolling. The evening was fine and the streets were still busy. There was a kind of excitement in the air, the anticipation of some event not to be missed.

  Elena looked at the people they passed and wondered what they were thinking. Was this blind excitement or fear of what the future held? Could she not tell the difference in herself? Could any of these young people? Walking arm in arm, as she was doing with Jacob, whom she had met only yesterday, and yet with whom she felt so comfortable already.

  As they walked, he described his home in Chicago, and then the very small apartment he shared with another journalist in New York. He and Elena spoke in German, so as not to stand out if anyone was close enough to catch a word here or there.

  “It works quite well,” he said ruefully. “We’re seldom home at the same time. And when we are, he cooks, so that’s an advantage. He enjoys it, and I express my appreciation. I’m not sure if I offer any service in return, other than emptying the garbage and doing the occasional errand. Hardly skilled.” It was self-deprecatory, but he said it with such amusement that it felt entirely natural.

  She told him about her own small flat in London, taken simply in order to be independent of her parents. “I don’t know that I
want to be untidy,” she said. “But I want to have the freedom to be, if I feel like it. My mother is a perfect housekeeper. Or that’s the way it looks to me.”

  They talked a little about family. It was easy and seemed a natural thing to do. It kept them from thinking of why they were here, how they had met, and the danger all around them. Above all, it stopped them from remembering last night, and the young man whose name they were safer not knowing. They laughed at memories, and in sharing them suddenly realized how precious were family holidays, minor triumphs and disasters, jokes that were only funny because they had all laughed.

  They passed Brownshirts in twos and threes, and they tried to look as if they barely noticed them. They spoke to no one else, except the occasional “good evening.” There were already a number of people gathered around the open space, paved in granite and covered with sand, where the books were to be burned. It was dark, and the buildings were huge shapes blocking the sky. People were almost indistinguishable.

  Elena looked around as inconspicuously as she could. When the fire was lit, she would be able to see faces. It was still too early. But from what she could make out of clothes, angles of bodies, casual attitudes, most of them seemed to be young.

  “Students,” she said quietly to Jacob. “Burning books? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. They’re going to destroy the old world of ideas and create a new one.” He was staring straight ahead, and it was too dark for her to read his expression. He kept hold of her, his hand on her arm, as well as linked through hers.

  Would this be a solemn occasion? Or a celebration, like the English remembrance of Guy Fawkes and the saving of Parliament from being blown up?

  Who would bring all the books? Or would it really turn out to be only symbolic? Perhaps half a dozen books, or one edition of each book they disapproved of?

  There was a growing tension in the air. Nervous laughter. The odd shout of something lost in the darkness.

  Jacob looked around him uneasily. “I think this isn’t such a good idea…” he started.

  She gripped his arm more tightly. “We’ve come this far…”

  “I mean it. It could get nasty. Let’s go back.” He pulled her very slightly.

  “No. Nothing’s happened yet. I want to see if it really does, or if it’s all just talk. I want pictures.”

  “Of what? Burning papers and books?”

  “No, of people, their faces, what it means to them,” she said quickly. “They’re symbolically getting rid of the past, with its good and bad; starting something again.”

  He gripped her arm more tightly. “Elena, I mean it. It was a mistake to have come. We should leave before it gets nasty…”

  “It’s not nasty, just stupid,” she argued, refusing to be pulled away.

  He hesitated. “Well, if it turns ugly, you’ll come…”

  “Yes, I will. I promise,” she agreed quickly, not looking at him but still watching the thickening crowd.

  They did not have long to wait. The book-burners arrived in a cavalcade of cars and trucks laden with boxes and piles of loose books, and more thrown on top haphazardly.

  In the car headlights, Elena saw several trucks with rostrums, each one hung with swastikas, with speakers to immortalize the event in words that would reach every newspaper by the morning. Who would it be? Hitler himself? Is that why there were so many people? And there were more now than even two or three minutes ago, more all the time, still coming.

  Elena moved even closer to Jacob. The scene was vivid, like a nightmare in primary colors, almost obscene. Squads of students marched beside the slow-moving vehicles. There must have been hundreds of them, with more flooding in to join them. They waved banners and sang Nazi songs, full-throated, almost as if they had been hymns.

  People beside Jacob and Elena surged forward, shouting as well, carrying them against their will. Jacob tightened his arm around her and she clung to him, buffeted and even bruised. He was right, this was growing nasty. She clung to her camera as well, adjusting the lens by feel, taking picture after picture, with little time to focus before it moved and was lost. She went through the whole roll of twenty-four, rewound the film into the canister, and threaded a new roll.

  Many in the crowd wore caps of different colors—red, blue, green, purple—flashing brightly in the headlights for a moment, and then lost again. They were accompanied by a band of officers from the dueling corps wearing immaculate white breeches and blue tunics and looking absurd in the light of the flames. Their high boots had spurs on them! It was nothing like she had imagined, and yet there was undeniably an exhilaration about the event. Elena could not take her eyes away, except once or twice to steady her camera and make sure of the focus.

  Someone tipped a pile of books onto the sand and immediately another person poured liquid over them and they caught fire in a quick, hungry blaze. Other people put more books on, and more. The pyre mounted until the glare of it lit more faces than she could count. There was no end to this. Thousands of people were gathered here, all around her, shouting, cheering, cursing the traitors to the nation who had written such filth, such blasphemy against the great German mind and soul.

  It was an ecstasy of destruction. The power of it caught her up, the beauty and the brightness of the flames. She was barely aware of the rising heat. She found herself shaking, dry-mouthed, wanting to be part of it, swept up in spite of herself.

  What was happening to her? This was madness! She continued to take pictures, although she wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself, as if holding on, in case she should fragment into pieces.

  The burning continued. The supply of books seemed endless. The flames never died down. They must have come from shops, libraries, schools, even private houses, perhaps handed down as treasures from the first printing. Some would be silk bound, some leather bound, many gold- or deckle-edged. They contained the beauty and ideas that had lit the minds of men and women for centuries, civilization’s communication from the past, across the present, and into the future, all burned to ashes.

  Elena could not pull herself away from the destruction. A few yards distant from her, to her right, she saw people. She saw movement. She could not tell whether they were men or women, but she photographed them as they were capering almost like puppets being jerked by their strings. Their faces were pale, gibbering mouths misshapen as they gaped open, eyes in the reflected flames mere black holes in their heads, red-socketed. They were filled with an insane ecstasy as they watched the leather, parchment, and paper burn, the passion, intellect, and hope of generations destroyed in one single night.

  A man let out a squeal of joy, his face bright with the lust for destruction. Another whirled around like a dervish, his pale coattails flying. She caught what could be a perfect picture of the movement, frenzied, hysterical. They seemed, in the red light, to be a distortion of humanity, not insane, but demonic.

  They were young: students of thought and belief, of philosophy. How could they have come to this? Was the distance really so short, the divide between sanity and madness so fragile? Is there anything in the imagination so terrible as that which once had been beautiful and, even while you watched, had slipped beyond all reach into ugliness? She could see it through the viewfinder. But had she caught it?

  She had finally had enough. She lowered her camera and turned and buried her head on Jacob’s shoulder. She wanted to run, but she had no strength and the crowds hemmed her in on every side.

  Hatred and jubilation throbbed in the air, like the pulse of music.

  She felt Jacob’s other arm close around her and for minutes that she could not count they stood in the bedlam of sound and heat and held each other, as if they would drown alone.

  This, then, was hell, not physical pain—although that might come—but the knowledge of something that had once been human having lost itself.

  And yet s
he must acknowledge it. This was the face of the future, and she must photograph it now, while it was naked and unmistakable. She pulled away from Jacob and raised her camera again. She frowned, held it steady, and went on taking portrait after portrait of unreason.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Early in the morning following the book burning, Cordell received an unexpected invitation to take lunch with the Führer. It was not a public function, but apparently a private audience. He held the card in his hand and felt a sudden chill. His first reaction was the certain knowledge that he could not escape it. He had been sent for. However bad it was, to avoid it would make it worse.

  The May sunlight filling his room seemed suddenly harsh, almost cutting. He told his secretary to accept, and to express the usual flattering comments that Cordell would be delighted to come. The message should be delivered by hand.

  The secretary said of course he would deliver it personally, and then hesitated a moment or two, as if awaiting something further. When Cordell added nothing, but remained frozen in the center of the room, the secretary left, closing the door without a sound.

  What did Hitler want? They knew Elena’s name. Her father had been British ambassador in Berlin years ago, when Cordell had been new to the embassy. Were they going to ask him if he had seen her? Instinct said to lie; intelligence said that to do so was incredibly stupid, almost suicidal.

  And Margot? Did Hitler know she was here, too? Almost certainly, but Cordell had not told anyone except his own immediate staff. Did he employ anyone careless, loose-lipped? Or worse than that, a deliberate betrayer, a double agent? There was always that possibility. He knew that, but perhaps it had retreated to the back of his mind? It was at the front now, sharp, a tightening worry not only of personal danger, but of failure as well. He realized his job was the one area in his life in which he succeeded. It defined him, at least in any part that others saw.