The Knife-Edge Path

by Patrick T. Leahy

  He looked away from her. There was a trembling around his lips, like words were clawing from inside. The light caught tears pooling in his eyes. She felt she’d gone too far. Rejected him and put on blinders to protect herself. He’d found his way inside and there was nothing but his voice, now, taking her like a weight into a well with no bottom as she held onto his hand and he began to tell her where he was.

  She thought it was the wine at first.

  Then with no preliminaries he began to speak in a sepulchral, unearthly voice; how desolate a place it was to die, he said, but they were made to think they would be put to work, after a nice, warm shower. Whips flailed among them as they spilled out of boxcars, clutching children, searching for the hand of God that came only for their clothes, and then their hair and drove them on, stark naked, toward what they were told would be a nice, warm shower in a gas chamber.

  “I stood there beside the commandant, watching. To wish any hope for them was a ghastly fairy tale. The stench of dead flesh in the air told them what their fate was going to be. The eyes of a beautiful young girl, hugging herself against the cold, found me through the wire. She pointed at her bare chest and said, ‘Nineteen’. The age at which her life would cease. I couldn’t take the others in. There was only room enough for her, because she hated me and I knew why. Now every time I shut my eyes she’s there. I sleep in a coffin I should be in with her and all the others. Too many thousands to remember. I’d thought of breaking through the wire and disappearing with them in the death house. But death struck me as the useless, stupid way out. The easy way. Only by living could I try to stop it, get word to the Allies, anything that stood the ghost of a chance of getting past deaf ears. That’s who I am, Simone. Just as you thought, the man I couldn’t be.”

  She’d lost her breath. She was so deep in hell it felt like she was trying to fly above a snake pit. She reached for his hands clenched in his lap like stumps. “What are you going to do?” she cried. “Why were you there?”

  “I was the officer in charge of delivering the substance meant to kill these people more efficiently than the diesel exhaust system being used until then. Back along the road I’d stopped a convoy carrying the poison, found a dangerous state of instability in more than half of the containers and ordered my men to bury them. Those remaining were safe enough to be used up as disinfectant. The commandant accepted this. The other officer disagreed.”

  “What other officer?”

  “Why?”

  She stared at him for a long moment.

  “Nothing. I don’t know.”

  He looked past her left ear, eyes drifting. “Strangely enough I’d liked that man once. He did me a favor. But for him I would have died in prison. He’d been thinner, then.”

  Helsinki came to her in those hushed tones among the Dutchmen. That gentleman whose cigarette he’d lit… She didn’t think before she said, “That man on the train -”

  “I tried to tell him all I knew. He seemed to care. I don’t know whether he’ll get through.”

  Clothed as if in the rags of death she tried to feel what he felt, fear what he feared.

  All at once he threw his face into his hands. His back began to heave. “Christ, I can’t go on! I can’t go on!”

  She clutched his hands. It fell at her feet like a dead bouquet at the curtain call. Stumpff would let Obermeyer, who liked to play with guns, handle her reward. It was all the fault of Mlle Miroux, who’d played her role too well.

  What was supposed to be, now was.

  “Be quiet, now,” she said, and saw the drowning of his eyes again as she drew near and, kissing him, caught fire inside, and took him by the hand and led him toward the bed and they fell on it together and she could feel him wanting her, and that was all there was, the darkness as she turned the lamp out and brought her lips down onto his and, tasting his tears, kissed him with all the heart she’d left for dead. But for now she’d give it to him with the longing in her body writhing down into those things he could no longer keep from her when darkness let in only light enough for them to feel.

  14

  Major Joachim Fritsch sat forward at his desk, silhouetted by the ashen morning light behind him in the window. A dun brown widow’s peak lowered his hairline to an escarpment on which hoary brows bristled like dead shrubs.

  In the chair across the room, Stumpff sat looking uncomfortable with his short legs crossed. The door behind him swung open. Twisting around and with a merry smile he started to speak when Fritsch said, “Come in, Lieutenant. Have a chair.”

  Langsdorff took the few steps toward Fritsch’s desk, stopped and raised a slack salute. He moved one leg aside and thrust his hands behind his back. “I’d rather stand, sir, if you don’t mind. You know how long those chairs take to get out of.”

  Fritsch looked up. One eyebrow climbed the escarpment. “As you wish, Lieutenant. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  Stumpff leaned a smile out over his fat knees. “Those bucket seats that Kurt came home in leave something to be desired, Joachim.”

  Fritsch kept his attention riveted on Langsdorff. “You’ve been back from Helsinki now for how many days, Lieutenant?”

  “Two, sir. Not counting today.”

  “I don’t have your report, yet.”

  “Something unavoidable came up as soon as I got home.”

  “Unavoidable?”

  “My housekeeper, Frau Hintz, died while I was away. I was able to come home one day early from Finland, having completed all my duties. I saw the opportunity to attend her funeral.”

  “I see. Opportunity without informing me.”

  “Yes, well -”

  “You took the liberty of regarding this one day as being yours to use as you saw fit.”

  “I may have acted hastily, sir, but I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t come back early from Helsinki.”

  Fritsch sat back, picked up a pencil and jabbed a few dots into his blotter. “Hintz,” he mused. “That name rings a bell.”

  “She worked for us at one time, sir. Janitorial chores, until -”

  “Ah yes, that old woman who caused some friction between you and Lieutenant Baab. I trust the two of you have patched things up.”

  “In a manner of speaking, sir.”

  Fritsch cleared his throat. “About this funeral. Where did it take place, and who went with you?”

  Langsdorff stared at Fritsch, who kept his eyes lazily averted. “Frau Hintz was laid to rest in Bornichen, sir. Her wish was to be buried there, where she was born and grew up. I went alone.”

  “Did you?” Fritsch looked up. “I should think you would have asked your wife to join you there.”

  “No, sir. She wasn’t personally acquainted with Frau Hintz.”

  “But this could have been your chance to see her.”

  “There was no time for her to travel all the way from Tübingen on such short notice. Nor was it for me to take the liberty of asking her.”

  “But you did take the liberty of going.”

  “I may have acted somewhat hastily, sir, under the circumstances.”

  “Yes. But now, how do we justify this extra day of yours, at a time when my impression was that you were still attending to your duties in Helsinki?”

  “I finished up early, sir, unexpectedly.”

  “With no time to leave a word with me.”

  “I didn’t think, since -”

  “Let’s hope you didn’t hurry things along. Your duties, I mean.”

  “No, sir. Nothing was left undone. I didn’t learn about Frau Hintz’s death until my return.”

  Fritsch began to probe his chin with the eraser end of his pencil. “Who else besides your wife can vouch for your presence at this funeral?”

  Langsdorff looked at him, searching for the trick buried in a lapse of memory. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  Fritsch raised his voice. “I don’t like repeating things, Lieutenant.”

  Stumpff’s chair creaked under him as he leaned forw
ard. “What I believe the Colonel wishes to establish, Kurt, is the identity of witnesses to your presence in Bornichen. Anybody would do. Isn’t that right, Joachim?”

  Fritsch shot a sharp glance at Stumpff before his eyes jumped back onto Langsdorff. “Well, Lieutenant? Names?”

  “Other than assorted mourners, sir, there was no one that I really knew, except Frau Hintz’s sister. As I’ve said, my wife was not there with me. In fact, she knew nothing about the funeral.”

  “Yes, yes. Still I find it rather hard to believe that you were the odd man out at your own housekeeper’s funeral.” With a steady smirk Fritsch drummed his pencil against his open hand.

  Langsdorff sucked air through his nose and drew himself up haughtily.

  The hiss brought Fritsch’s eyes up. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “Forgive me, sir. Am I to understand you doubt my word?”

  Fritsch reddened, then looking downward spread aside some papers on his desk, wrinkling the top one. He smacked them with his open hand as if they’d tried to move. “All right, then. Let’s turn a page, here, shall we? Your membership in the Party. The last time you applied for reinstatement was in 1942. Tell me what steps you’ve taken to remedy that neglected situation.”

  Stumpff cleared his throat, sat forward noisily. “Allow me to shed some light on that for you, Joachim. Kurt’s status in the Party, while never to be taken lightly, has had no effect whatsoever on his exemplary performance here since he began with you in 1941 - of which of course you needn’t be reminded of.”

  Fritsch raised his head slightly, aiming a scowl at Stumpff. “Why don’t you let Lieutenant Langsdorff do his own bragging?”

  “I’m merely trying to point out, sir, that Party membership, while desirable, need have but little bearing on the performance of a man’s duties.”

  “I see. You may be forgetting that such membership is mandatory. Not to be taken lightly. How is your memory, Lieutenant?” Fritsch hung wide eyes from the ledge of his bushy brows.

  “I’ve always kept in mind the great pains my father took to get me reinstated, with no success. After that I thought -”

  “You thought why bother, as long as you became too busy to get back into the Party like the rest of us.”

  Langsdorff brought his hands back around from behind him, clasped them across his belt. “I can’t deny, sir, there’ve been times when I allowed my duties to take precedence over my standing in the Party.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Lieutenant. I’m well aware that your father is a magistrate at Neuruppin. Be that as it may, we have this matter of your report from Finland. It’s overdue. Have it on my desk by no later than tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir. Will that be all?”

  Fritsch glanced up at him skeptically before he began to muss through some papers on his desk, then pushed the stack aside. “There is one other thing. Simply out of curiosity, how did you enjoy your stay at the Savoy this time around?” Fritsch stretched the rictus of a smile across his beaming face.

  “I could have done with humbler billets, sir.”

  Fritsch began to shake his head, ruefully. “Modesty was not the better part of my stay there in ’41, before the Winter War. I remember once in the dining room a waiter introduced me to Marshall Mannerheim’s favorite dish: Vorschmack. The old soldier knew his food, all right. You didn’t happen to catch sight of that illustrious old swine while you were there?”

  “Mannerheim? Oh no, sir. I’d certainly know it if I had.”

  “Yes, I wonder if that dining room is still the same. Such a hubbub you could plot somebody’s murder like you were discussing what’s on the menu.”

  “There’s still quite a din in there, sir, with all the - well, we’ve got so many of our people in Helsinki, now, you could say there’s no better watering hole for us in all of Finland.”

  Fritsch doodled on his blotter, connecting two squares with lines to make a box. “Yes. I don’t suppose you heard what happened while you were there.” Fritsch turned aside, dropped a torn-open envelope and watched it float into his wastebasket.

  “Happened, sir?”

  “Yes. Any rumors floating around? Furtive whisperings, that sort of thing?”

  “No, sir, I can’t say that I did.”

  Fritsch propped his elbows on the desk, squashed a woebegone grin into his hands. “It wasn’t splashed all over the newspapers. Nobody heard it on the radio. But did you know, Lieutenant, that at the very moment you were sitting down to enjoy your meal in the dining room - or how do I know? Maybe you were strolling along the Esplanade or driving past Parliament House or the National Museum. People right there under your nose might have been cupping their hands over it - Marshall Mannerheim’s refusal to turn over his Jews to us. Hardly able to contain their glee when they couldn’t wait to run out and start dancing in the streets.”

  Langsdorff heard again the babel of voices, a clank of silverware on plates. The fat German officer at the next table laughed. His cause for delight pouted on the pretty red lips of the busty blonde who sat across from him, sipping her champagne. Feverish eyes broke through a blind with the rustle of a wounded animal. Fritsch was saying, “Imagine what you would have thought if you had known what was going on right there under your nose while all those people were laughing it up, stuffing their faces and snickering up their asses at us Germans. Just think. Mannerheim put one over on us. But you might just as well go on ahead and finish your champagne. Right?”

  Langsdorff shifted his weight onto the other foot. “I’m afraid, if anything like that -”

  Fritsch sprang to his feet, sending his chair back with a wobbly crash into the wall. “We had them in the bag, you know! Then suddenly that pompous bastard Mannerheim says no! If it were up to me, I’d have that whole frozen little postage stamp bombed right off the face of the globe! I’d turn Helsinki into a rock pile! I’d go in there and take hostages until they coughed up every last kike! Somebody warned them! I’ve long suspected those goddamn Swedes. The Finns and the Swedes! For how many years have they been scratching each other’s backs?” Fritsch flung his chair aside and stomped over to the window. He stood there breathing hard as he squinted out at the bleak, grey light in which barren trees were cheerlessly assembled out across the dead snow-speckled grass to the deserted street.

  Langsdorff stood still.

  Behind him Stumpff made choking noises in his throat.

  He sat alone in the soft glow from the chandeliers, the candles on the tables lit under the breath and drafts that made them flutter. The pretty girl passed him a furtive smile, turned toward her date.

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ she said gaily. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Pure heaven.’

  The girl raised her eyebrows. ‘Heaven’s none too good for me.’

  The fat officer clapped his menu shut. The gaunt man in a pinstripe suit pulled out a chair saying, ‘I hear the Vorschmack here is highly recommended.’

  Ubbink had said he was a Jew himself, the Finance Minister. Don’t say his name until you’re sure. Pay attention to the sequence. First, the Vorschmack, then he’ll be Eliel Aalto.

  The fat German officer leaned a grave expression toward his date as if suffering from too much light on the pleasure he took in her, saying, ‘Everybody should have a hobby. Mine is working for the Third Reich.’ They both roared laughing.

  A voice blared inches from his face. “What do you think of that, Lieutenant?”

  Langsdorff looked at Fritsch’s blazing eyes. Spittle clung to the corners of his twisted mouth. A rough hand smeared it off. A face he could feel sorry for.

  A voice inside him prompted him to say, “Why that’s unheard of, sir! Absolutely deplorable!”

  “Deplorable? Too bad you didn’t hear it on the radio. You could have grabbed the nearest Jew and thrown him out the window, head first.”

  Langsdorff shook his head woefully. The man they knew him for was him. The lie in his mind was the only truth there was. “I can’t
imagine, sir. I’m sure something will be done about it.”

  Walking stiff-legged, Fritsch was on the way back to his desk. “You’re goddamned right. If Mannerheim doesn’t get stripped down to a private, there’s no justice. We’ll hear about it when the Führer puts his foot down!”

  “Hear! Hear!” Stumpff bleated, clapping patacakes with his plump hands.

  Fritsch glared at him. “All right, then. That’s all, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed. Stumpff, I’ll want a word.”

  “Of course, sir,” Stumpff said with a little bow.

  Langsdorff saluted smartly, turned and strode toward the door. The door shut with a faint clunk and his shadow in the pebbled glass moved off.

  Outside in the pale light and the cool blustery air he slumped back against the wall and lit a cigarette. The pose which bore him always, without feeling, toward the hardness that upheld his reputation was no longer just a mantle but a growth, and he felt the tentacles winding round and round, protecting him as he tried to shake it off. When danger squeezed, he almost even loved the pain that stood him back beyond the tears of others, and he could strike at a man like Baab as if at Hadamar he’d killed Bertha with his own hands.

  “Ah, there you are!” Stumpff was pushing on the door against the wind. A gust slapped his cheek with his coat-collar. He rubbed his hands together, took out his platinum cigarette case, fumbled out a cigarette and turned his back to the wind to light it.

  Langsdorff said, “Is everything all right, sir?”

  “Ah, he didn’t appreciate my interruptions. I couldn’t help it. I had to set him straight. Sorry he was so rough on you in there. It’s not you, you know. He takes it all too personally. That business with the Finnish Jews.”

  “Thanks for sticking up for me, sir.”

  “Not a bit of it, my boy! You’re not the only one. I got on his bad side, too.” Scissoring his cigarette between two fingers, Stumpff puffed on it. “I suppose he dug into the files to refresh his memory on my role in getting you signed up right out of a seminary, as it were. Pardon me, a jail cell.”