Mister Wolf

by Chris Petit

  In the baking white heat the city took on an air of stunned surprise, indistinguishable from indifference. On one level, it had always looked like it couldn’t care less. There were friendlier places. Schlegel supposed those they were carting off would end up in camps.

  They dealt with only one case of histrionics. The rest came as meek as you like, as though what they dreaded most had come to pass.

  They were polite taking them away.

  *

  Schlegel rang his stepfather a couple of times and got no reply, which was unusual because a housekeeper was there when he was out. After the last twenty-four hours, he grew worried that the man’s habitual secrecy might be for a reason.

  His list of potential arrests grew. Schlegel felt grubby and godlike peering down at ant-like lives.

  He was ambushed by Dunkelwert while waiting in the canteen to be served, and had no choice but to sit with her.

  Dunkelwert ate with gusto. Schlegel wondered if it excited her to watch men being tortured.

  He stiffly recited, ‘The Führer must be like a cat with nine lives, the luck he has. Imagine surviving a bomb in the room.’

  Dunkelwert gave him a dead stare and asked, ‘Why did you go to Budapest?’

  He rocked back. Denial seemed pointless.

  ‘Because I was asked.’

  ‘On what business?’

  ‘To get papers signed and returned. For the SS.’

  ‘You didn’t inform us.’

  ‘I was asked not to.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘I am not at liberty to say, other than a senior officer.’

  ‘Liberty is beside the point. You travelled under your own name.’

  Schlegel said he had no reason not to and added with weak flippancy that he had only the one passport. While the work might have been confidential it hadn’t been secret, as far as he knew.

  ‘Why did you agree to go?’

  He tried to make light of it. ‘Wouldn’t you? Forty-eight hours out of Berlin, expenses paid.’

  The joke fell flat.

  Dunkelwert said, ‘Given the current emergency, a list of everyone flying in and out of Berlin over the past week was obtained from passport control. Your name was on it.’

  Another bloody list, thought Schlegel.

  He hoped she was guessing his meeting with Gestapo Müller was about that trip. At least he hadn’t panicked when she raised the matter.

  As he made to go, she said, ‘One other thing.’

  ‘What now?’ He sounded as brusque as he could.

  She produced a file card and showed it.

  ‘Does the name mean anything?’

  Schlegel hoped his reaction didn’t betray him. How did Dunkelwert know about Christoph?

  He admitted they were old childhood friends. ‘But we lost touch.’ True.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  He sensed Dunkelwert knew already, again making denial pointless.

  ‘On Wednesday, as a matter of fact, quite by chance and before that not for years.’

  ‘Quite by chance?’ Dunkelwert echoed.

  Schlegel did his best to look casual. ‘The papers I had to take to Budapest were a contract of sale for signing. I had no idea the address I was asked to collect them from belonged to Christoph – I told you, we weren’t in touch, but it really isn’t so much of a surprise. There aren’t that many art dealers in Berlin. Even so, it never crossed my mind I would be fetching the papers from him.’ Too long-winded, Schlegel thought; trying too hard. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Dunkelwert said Schlegel’s name had come up on the flight list and a man of his description had also been noted entering and leaving Christoph’s building.

  ‘Noted how?’

  ‘Your friend’s apartment is being watched.’

  ‘What for?’ This was staring to sound bad.

  ‘Are you aware your friend is homosexual?

  Of course he was, instead of which, he said, ‘I find that hard to believe,’ thinking it sounded like the cold kiss of betrayal.

  ‘Pansies aren’t always easy to spot,’ said Dunkelwert, with a treacly smile, then added, ‘It’s not pretty what happens downstairs.’

  Schlegel got up and walked out on shaky legs, the crockery rattling on the tray as he stacked it with trembling hands.

  *

  He had been found out because of a passport check. Schlegel sensed Dunkelwert gave him the benefit of the doubt but her interest raised awkward questions. For authority the gap between the actual and the perceived turned everything into interpretation, the danger being what others could read into it.

  Dunkelwert had implied Christoph was under surveillance because of his homosexuality rather than any business to do with Schlegel. But in the hall of mirrors that constituted the secret state, one reason could contain its shadow, so a particular piece of business might not be followed up until it came to the attention of secret watchers concerned with something else, and then it in turn fell under suspicion. Until Budapest, Schlegel had been going about his business, keeping his head down, and now he seemed to be associated with matters he knew nothing about and therefore was bound to fear that he had fallen into that Gestapo category known as guilty by association.

  *

  Christoph’s file was guarded by the sad-faced librarian. It didn’t take long to read. The bones of his career in the art world were traced. Attached to the Art Historical Institute and the Education Ministry, now working for the Linz Project, had written government papers and essays for art magazines, including an appreciation of a Vermeer acquired by the state for the Führer in 1941. It read like a clever fusion of the academic and bureaucratic, with plenty of committees and consultancies. Christoph was an acknowledged expert on ownerless Jewish art properties in occupied Europe. He had obviously come to terms with the regime: offering expertise in exchange for suppressing his sexual inclinations, or practising them so discreetly as to escape notice. No more jazz parties. The extent to which he had successfully reinvented himself was reflected in the report. One early note of homosexuality had an inked margin amendment stating: ‘Not proven; unreliable witness’. Nevertheless, Schlegel supposed Christoph’s guardian angels could fly away at any moment. It must be exhausting and dangerous operating at such a high level with a big secret when once he had been so frank and teasing.

  *

  Before the morning of the eighteenth, the last time Schlegel had seen Christoph was late in 1941. They had known each other since they were seven; what Christoph referred to as the ‘age of knowledge’.

  He had grown into a progressive young man of dark Italianate looks, attractive to all, who hated the gloomy north and its disgusting food. ‘Give me light! Give me olive oil! Berlin is so Protestant!’ ‘So drab, so brown,’ was Christoph’s frequently heard lament. They were the last of a gilded youth, kicking out against cultural strictures in cellar clubs and the large, exclusive houses of the Berlin diplomatic.

  Christoph had, according to him, a ‘good but not exceptional’ collection of Duke Ellington and American blues. However dedicated Schlegel tried to be, he came to find this worshipping at the shrine a little tedious. He wasn’t that obsessive, however hard he tried to be a fan.

  Christoph insisted on greeting him in English with, ‘Hello, old swing boy!’ and bidding farewell with, ‘Swing heil!’ Both jokes came to wear thin, as did Christoph’s treating Schlegel’s sexuality as an open question.

  The occasion that marked the break of their friendship was one of Christoph’s celebrated parties. Life remained expansive, the regime comparatively indulgent, with the fruits of victory being sent home from abroad. Christoph lived in a smaller apartment then and confided he had a sugar daddy – ‘absolutely hands-off, totally platonic’ – who kept him supplied with his favourite gin, which he drank neat. Christoph spent the evening needling Schlegel, his manner affectionate but increasingly irritating. ‘You know you really like boys more.’

  Schlegel protested it wasn’t
true.

  Christoph would not give up. ‘With boys you know what they are about. With women you just can’t tell what they are thinking. Believe me, I’ve tried, and where’s the fun?’

  It was an all-male party, with a lot of young soldiers in attendance, mostly rough boys on leave from abroad, all of similar good looks, who appeared out of place among the understated artwork. ‘Questionable decadence,’ Christoph said of his collection. ‘Rather than full degenerate.’

  The evening was spent playing and trading records brought back from Holland and France. Amsterdam offered first-class jazz clubs and a lively black music scene from Surinam. The black guitarist Mike Hidalgo had a big German following.

  They played records by Hidalgo and Kid Dynamite, clicking their fingers and getting in the groove. They trashed the reputation of what remained of German jazz and argued drunkenly over whether Surinam was in the Dutch East Indies or the Caribbean. Schlegel found it impossible to say whether the young men were there for the jazz or the jazz was a cover, until Christoph, the worse for wear, announced, ‘The question we’re all asking is shall Schlegel be saved for the girls or will he come and play with the boys?’

  Where Schlegel once would have laughed it off, he left quietly and didn’t go back.

  *

  Schlegel decided not to telephone his stepfather from the office again, in case of eavesdropping. Perhaps he was at home after all, and not answering.

  He took the train round to Westend. It was still crowded and he could not tell if he was being followed. The size of the political sweep was evidence of the extent of the Gestapo’s suspicions, which excluded no one. He stood next to the exit of the carriage and twice stepped onto the platform as the doors were closing, feeling a little foolish as on both occasions no one got off after him.

  The walk from the station took him through dead suburban streets, out towards the stadium. He was followed some of the way by a woman with a shopping basket and after that had the place to himself. The area was sedate, quietly prosperous and self-contained. It had been dull growing up there. He walked past the house, turned and walked back. No pedestrians, no suspiciously parked cars.

  Schlegel walked up the drive through the soft dusk. The house was shut. No one answered the bell. The spare key for the back door was in its usual hiding place. As he let himself in and called out the house felt wrong. His stepfather stayed at home most of the time, and the housekeeper lived in. He supposed the most innocent explanation was she was on holiday and his stepfather was with friends.

  Nothing was disturbed. When they came for his mother they had smashed stuff. Someone had scrawled ‘Jew lover’ on the garden wall. His stepfather had painted it over himself.

  The clock in the hall had stopped. His stepfather was always meticulous about it being wound.

  As Schlegel drew the blackout curtains he thought it extraordinary that his suspicion now extended to him wondering whether his stepfather was guilty of treason.

  He searched cupboards, desks and drawers for some trace of his actual father, of whom he remembered nothing. He had been two at the time. Any later curiosity shown about his father had been blocked by his mother. There were no photographs or relatives or points of reference. The man may as well not have existed. Schlegel grew up supposing his father must somehow have hurt his mother terribly so he stopped asking.

  All he knew was she was English, his father was German and they had lived in Shanghai where Schlegel was born in 1919. He wasn’t even sure when they had come to Berlin, or why.

  Apart from jewelry and an extensive wardrobe, carefully bagged and smelling of camphor, his mother had kept nothing in the way of mementos or the usual markers of time, apart from photographs of social occasions where the camera invariably favoured her.

  At the back of a cupboard he found an album he had never seen before with milky images of what he supposed was Shanghai: a huge suburban house with stepped lawns. The photographs were always taken from too far away, giving everything the wrong perspective. What he presumed was a grand house was reduced to looking toylike. He supposed the blob in a pram on the lawn was him.

  Significant gaps occurred where photographs had been carefully removed, leaving only the mounting corners and pale outline of the vanished picture, these spaces marking the removal of his father.

  His own childhood was summed up in a dozen or so images, including a formal portrait with his mother radiant and he, aged six or so, chubby and unappealing. Her society photographs went on and on. She’d had her own parties photographed. In one Schlegel saw the back of himself, standing on the edge of frame. His hair was white, so it must have been in the last three years. Most men wore Party uniforms, their frumpy wives smartly turned out.

  Through this endless parade his stepfather made a point of being unobtrusive, always peripheral, with the wariness of a man who disliked having his picture taken but as his wife’s escort found it captured more than he would have wished.

  His mother had entertained at the highest level, until her fall. Even their espousal of the new regime seemed normal, in that social climbers – of which there were plenty – came flocking. Schlegel hadn’t been paying much attention, just as he hadn’t thought about his real father in years.

  There were no old diaries; not that Schlegel could imagine someone as purposefully superficial as his mother keeping a written record. She had never expressed an interest in anything inner, only the relentless projection of herself as a social creature. His stepfather by contrast was a distant man who spent time in his study on the telephone and travelled, often abroad. Schlegel supposed stocks and shares played their part.

  He found his mother’s desk so bare that he wondered if his stepfather had removed everything of significance. Its contents amounted to no more than expensive stationery, cheque books, bank statements, a jar of rubber bands and a stapling machine with no staples.

  His stepfather’s downstairs study was all browns and saturated with the smell of old tobacco. Trophies of stuffed animals hung on the walls. A glassed-in library, such as it was, consisted of social registers, books on hunting and fishing, horse racing and breeding, stock markets, business and economics.

  Schlegel had no idea what he was looking for. He was sure his stepfather would have no reference to, or record of, his actual father, just as he doubted he would find an explanation for his stepfather’s current absence.

  The drawers contained pipe-smoking geegaws, envelopes and writing paper, which, unlike his mother’s, was conspicuously not headed, unusual for a man of his class. Sheets of postage stamps suggested a volume of correspondence yet Schlegel found no letters received, bills or tax papers, not even a postcard.

  There were ledgers of marching columns of numbers, with no explanation for where they were marching. His stepfather’s hobby was accounted for by horse-racing news, betting forms and a lucky horseshoe.

  The drawers beneath the book cabinets were used to stack board games, including chess and mahjong, not that he had ever seen his stepfather playing either. The last drawer was full of practical junk – twine, penknives, fuse wire, screwdrivers – and a photograph.

  How different his stepfather looked, staring at the lens with none of his usual diffidence, dressed in bow tie and tails, with Schlegel’s mother nowhere in sight. He looked about ten years younger, thinner, with darker hair in a widow’s peak, since receded. He was flanked by two men: one a porcine youngish man in Party uniform, who contrived to look both servile and superior. His pose said that he deferred to Schlegel’s stepfather. The third man was taller, with a moustache, silver hair, and spectacles. His manner seemed purposefully academic. He held a pipe and looked like he would be more at home in tweeds. He wasn’t German, Schlegel thought, more English or American. Who either of them was he had no idea but his impression was the three knew each other.

  *

  Schlegel remembered the garage, that depository of the abandoned and forgotten which no one ever got around to sorting. Old fishing rod
s, tennis rackets with broken strings, what was left of his childhood toys, including an old wooden fortress. And his father?

  Outside, he paused at the sight of the sky painted a dense, vivid orange, like after an air raid except there had been no warning sirens.

  In the garage, the cars were covered in dust sheets. Growing up, Schlegel hadn’t thought of the family as rich. His mother usually complained of not having enough.

  At first, he found no more than what his mother called ‘stuff’, those odds and ends which one day might prove of further use. Old paintings and prints fallen out of fashion. Gumboots with perished rubber. Bald tennis balls. Cupboards revealed more of the same. He paused when he came across a guidebook for Munich, 1925. He doubted if it had belonged to his actual father, but Gestapo Müller had suggested Munich. Flicking through its pages, Schlegel found an old bus ticket in the restaurant section. Further on he sensed resistance between the pages and something fell out.

  It lay on the floor face down. The crinkled edges told him it was a snapshot. Or more accurately, half of one because it had been torn. Schlegel picked it up and turned it over, half hoping he would be rewarded with an image of his father, not that he had a clue what the man looked like.

  He saw a young woman instead. His father’s lover?

  More complicated than that, Schlegel realised, when he saw who else was in the picture.

  The emulsion had gone silvery brown with age. An old photograph then, Schlegel thought, as he tried to make sense of it.

  The centre of attention was a vivacious young woman, with bright eyes and flashing teeth, smartly dressed, and no older than her early twenties. The location was a restaurant. The quality of the photograph wasn’t good, having been taken in insufficient light. The features of the young woman weren’t sharp or clear, beyond an impression of liveliness. It was a long time since Schlegel had seen anyone enjoying themselves like that. His mother had a version of the same look, saved for the camera – the one that said, ‘Aren’t we having fun, darling?’ – but hers was rehearsed. This young woman came over as spontaneous, despite the coiffed hair and being dolled up.