by A. B. Decker
In an effort to focus, he looked down at the landing stage where Achim had appeared to him lost in a white flurry of gulls. That seemed like an age ago. Now the embarkation point was a cold and soulless place. The only sense of life here came from the sandstone wall and the relief of a naked, musclebound wharfman tugging on a ship’s rope.
This figure put him in mind of his one and only trip to Spain in the summer of ’35 and his fascination as he watched the stevedores and other dock workers sweltering in the quayside heat of Malaga. Was that really only eighteen months ago? How they must be suffering now in the cold reality of winter, he muttered to himself, with Franco’s fascists beating down the door. Is there nowhere safe these days? Frank wondered. The whole of Europe seems to be in the grip of dangerous fools.
This chilling thought and the biting wind brought it home to him that he was in desperate need of somewhere to stay. He recalled in his bewilderment that he had passed what looked like a hotel and decided to retrace his steps. As he approached the fountain in the old fish market with its elaborately decorated spire, he saw on the far side of the market square the building he had in mind. The huge sign above its doors read Hotel Storchen. And in front of the entrance stood a handsome, spanking-new Maybach Zeppelin with white-walled tyres. It seemed out of place. Yet at the same time the vehicle appeared vaguely familiar. But he paid it no further attention. He was tired, bruised and in need of rest. Tomorrow promised to be a big day.
Achim was due to arrive.
Frank Eigenmann picked up his key from reception and went straight to the room that was to remain his home over the next few weeks. He pushed open the door. The pale light from the street bled its anaemic pallor through the window and across his bed as he entered. It was a chilling welcome, and he went straight over to draw the curtains across the little balcony that looked out over the fish market. But he was distracted. What it was that compelled him to open the window and peer over the balcony he had no idea; perhaps the sound of a door on the Maybach swinging open onto the anxious night. A solid confident sound. He caught sight of a man wearing a hat and black leather trench coat getting into the car. There was a familiarity about them – the vehicle, the man and the leather trench coat. But he was too exhausted to give it any thought. And went to bed.
The prospect of meeting Achim the next day unleashed an endless stream of thoughts that raced around his head and overwhelmed any sense of fatigue. His mind turned constantly on memories of Achim. He had not seen him since a chilly late-spring day eighteen months earlier on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Achim was still there now. And his letters from Berlin painted a picture of life getting ever more difficult for him and his family. Especially in the last few months since the Olympic Games.
The idea of encouraging him to come south occurred to Frank one evening in November. He had just seen a student performance of Aristophanes’ Frogs in the large restaurant room of the zoological gardens. It seemed to him an odd location for a performance of classical Greek theatre, but the passion of the players and appreciation of the audience were so infectious that the oddness was quickly forgotten. It was not the first event of this kind he had enjoyed since coming to this city, which seemed to be one of the few enclaves of culture left in the German-speaking world. A place where the theatre especially was in full bloom and did not have to suffer the pressures that poor Achim had to face.
Life was difficult enough anyway as a stage designer in Berlin at that time. For any self-respecting artist it must have been intolerable. From the letters Frank received, it was beyond his imagination how Achim was able to stay there. But his friend was so dedicated to his art and so in love with Berlin, he would endure all of these sufferings as long as he had some kind of outlet, however modest, for his creative passion.
Probably the greatest moment in his life came the day when he claimed to have met Gordon Craig, perhaps the only person whose name alone was sufficient to draw an endless litany of accolades and acclaim from Achim. The memory of that night was still quite vivid, how he so rudely dragged Frank from his sleep just after midnight in a bitter-cold January. Achim was utterly elated. He had obviously been drinking and was almost manic in his garrulous urge to talk. He was clearly not going to be leaving in a hurry. So Frank reluctantly accepted his invitation to celebrate the night with a bottle of champagne. It was a luxury he could ill afford. So together they disposed of what turned out to be Sekt rather than the real thing. But at least it did not need chilling. And nor did the second bottle.
By now only half-conscious for other reasons, it was some time before Frank learned what occasion it was they were toasting. In his manic excitement, Achim had omitted to explain that he had become engaged that evening to Gertrude, a girl about whom Frank knew little, except that she was extremely attractive and vivacious. But it was not until the following morning that he learned the true reason for Achim’s elation. He had spent the earlier part of the day at the Flechtheim Gallery visiting an exhibition of Gordon Craig’s designs for Hamlet and had met the master himself. Whether they actually met was uncertain. But Achim came away from the gallery so excited by the event that he could think of no better way to celebrate it than to ask for Gertrude’s hand in marriage.
Perhaps the marriage was intended to serve as a constant reminder of this great day in his life. It was certainly the oddest reason for a proposal that Frank had ever known. But it was so typical of Achim and his obtuse unpredictability.
It struck Frank that Achim should have been with him a few days before. Then he would have witnessed a theatrical event that would have really appealed to him. It was a performance at the Stadttheater in Basel of A Hundred Days by Benito Mussolini and his mate Forzano. The lead was played by Werner Krauss – the man who had portrayed the brutal butcher in The Joyless Street alongside Greta Garbo and who now sat on the Nazi council in Berlin. There was a large contingent of Germans from across the border in the audience. They wore their patriotism on their sleeves. Not least of them was Reichsstatthalter Wagner.
Frank found the atmosphere both fascinating and deeply disturbing. He wondered how this city with a social-democratic government could tolerate such a festival of fascist thuggery. And it was at this moment – as the curtain finally went down, and Krauss came out on stage with the director – that a solitary brave voice from the audience shouted out: “Raus!” That single word made his evening. Restored his faith in humanity. If only Achim could be here, he thought, to enjoy these little freedoms with him.
It was around this time that he decided to write to Achim. His friend needed to know what opportunities there were here. The place not only vibrated with ideas and conversation that could give him new inspiration. There were also so many people from the Berlin scene already in the country. If not here, then in Zurich. He could not help but feel at home and, with all his experience, find work in a local theatre. He put all these arguments to Achim in a long letter, without truly expecting him to be quite so enthusiastic in his reply.
So he was surprised to get a very positive letter back. Only the day before, a bunch of Nazi thugs had thoroughly trashed the Jewish newsagent’s next door, given the owner a severe beating and dragged him away with his wife. This was the final straw for Achim and Gertrude, who by now had twin baby boys to feed as well. It became clear to them that night that, if they did not leave soon, they would all perish in the very near future. And so it was that Achim’s letter of reply came by return, announcing that he and his family would follow very soon. Frank was both surprised and relieved.
When sleep finally overcame him, the dawn light was already beginning to break in over the balcony to his room. And it was not long before his headiness and anticipation of their reunion had brought him back to an exhausted form of life. Frank felt terrible. His head ached. His mouth was drier and rougher than pumice stone. And the bed seemed as hard as a rock. He cautiously opened his eyes. Squinted. And came face to face with a pair of black boots.
Chapter 5
&
nbsp; Frank’s disappearance from the clinic presented Professor Abegg and Dr Zellweger with a problem. Having dragged Ellen all the way from London only to lose her husband before she even had a chance to see him, they now felt an obligation to look after her while the search for Frank continued. The two men exchanged uncomfortable glances, before the doctor turned to Ellen with an awkward hesitation.
“Perhaps you would you care to stay with me and my wife for the time being?” Dr Zellweger asked, with more than a hint of coercion from his professor. “She would enjoy the company.”
“That’s very kind,” said Ellen.
“But I should warn you,” the professor said with a smile on his lips that seemed closer to a smirk, “Dr Zellweger’s wife is feeling quite excitable now that she has the right to vote. Quite irrepressible.”
His secretary Maria Frey, he added, would drive her to the Zellwegers’ place up on Bruderholz. Professor Abegg was clearly keen to banish Ellen from his embarrassment over the loss of Frank as soon as possible.
In Maria’s Austin Healey it took little more than ten minutes from the clinic, a drive that culminated in a steep, winding road. This is the smart side of town, Ellen thought, as they climbed past the rows of rather cold and menacing Bauhaus mansions with touches of Jugendstil that looked proudly out over the city. A view dominated by the twin spires of the cathedral. After countless twists and turns that eventually took them away from this view over the city, Maria swung into a drive and stopped the car.
“Here we are.”
This was a cosier-looking house than the mansions they had passed on the way up. Still grand enough, but comfortingly modest with its green window shutters, white-washed walls and terracotta roof tiles growing dark with age. Ellen felt relieved.
As she and Maria Frey climbed out of the Austin Healey, the door of the house opened. In the doorway stood a slim woman in her forties, with dark shoulder-length hair and eyes the colour of sapphire that sparkled with a deep emotional intelligence. She wore a navy cardigan and light grey slacks. Casual, but elegant.
“Salü Marthe,” said Maria as they approached. “This is Mrs Goss.”
“Please call me Ellen.”
She held out a hand as Marthe Zellweger came down the steps from the house. The doctor’s wife took her hand with a limp indecisiveness that bothered Ellen.
“Zellweger, Marthe,” she said with an uncertain smile, and looked from Ellen to Maria Frey.
“We’re not so free with first names in this country,” Maria Frey explained.
“No really, that’s perfectly fine,” the doctor’s wife insisted, instantly abandoning her Swiss formality. “I spent some time in America with my husband when he worked at a clinic in Chicago. I’m quite used to it. Please come in, Ellen.”
Once Maria Frey had left to return to the clinic and Ellen had been shown her room, Marthe invited her guest to sit in the lounge that looked out onto the garden, while she made a pot of tea. Ellen was struck by how spotlessly clean and uncluttered the lounge was. The minimalism of the furnishing gave the impression that the room was barely lived in. On the coffee table lay an unopened packet of cigarettes, a magazine with the name Annabelle emblazoned across the top, resting on a newspaper, the National-Zeitung. Otherwise there was no sign of life here at all. The walls a pristine white were equally uncluttered but for a single painting, hung like a counterpart to the magazine and newspaper.
Ellen moved closer to examine it. There was a sombreness to the scene that was in stark contrast to the theme. The browns and greys of the watercolour depicted a dreary, dingy room furnished only with a chair and a bed. A setting of bleak cheerlessness. Yet on the floor beside the bed lay the forms of two naked women flushed with the pinkish-red passion of an embrace so joyful that it was hard to reconcile with their surroundings.
“That belongs to Urs,” said Marthe. Ellen sensed a disapproving smile on her face as she set a tea tray down on the table. “It was painted by a local artist who went to school with my husband. He likes it.”
Then after a prolonged silence as she poured the tea: “Urs told me your story. I can imagine it must be very difficult for you right now.”
Ellen could hear traces of an American accent she must have picked up when she was in Chicago. But it was softened by another accent Ellen was unable to identify. It was unlike the harsh Swiss accents she had heard in the clinic.
“I hope the tea is all right for you,” she said, placing the cup on the table in front of Ellen. “It’s Darjeeling. We have a very fine tea house in Basel, where we buy our tea. I’ll take you there one day while you’re here. I know the English have a special relationship to their tea.”
Ellen looked down at the cup and smiled.
“You might be surprised to learn that our relationship with tea is not quite as refined as all that. PG Tips would have been fine.” She looked around the tray on the table. “Do you have any milk?”
Her hostess apologised and went back out to the kitchen.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Ellen, as Marthe returned with a small jug of milk. “But I hope I won’t be here long enough for visiting tea houses in Basel.”
“Of course. I’m sorry,” Marthe replied. “I didn’t mean to sound like a tourist brochure. But at the same time, this is quite a small city. And your husband knows no one here. So if you spend some time walking around the place, it’s quite possible you might see each other.”
“Your own husband and the professor seem to think he’s quite at home here. So maybe he knows people I’m not aware of. But I’m not even sure they’re talking about my Frank.”
“If it was not your husband in the clinic, then the question of your husband’s whereabouts is as urgent as ever,” Marthe said. And then asked: “What is he doing in Switzerland?”
“He came to report on the referendum.”
Marthe’s eyes briefly lit up, then darkened again. “It’s a shame he will not have had a chance to file his report. But perhaps it’s more to our shame that we had to wait this long before any such report could be written.”
“The professor said you were quite excited about the result,” said Ellen, happy for the chance to change the subject. “Irrepressible, he said you were.”
“The professor’s a fool. Like both my parents, he thinks it a completely stupid idea. So his answer is now to patronise us.”
“Even your mother?”
“She doesn’t patronise. But yes, even she thinks it stupid. And many other women too. They seem to think that women are not intelligent enough for politics. That they should keep to looking after the household.
“When I met Urs, I wanted to understand something about his field of work, so I started to devour a lot of books about psychoanalysis, especially Lou Salomé’s work. And it really worried my mother that I should be reading a woman she saw simply as a temptress to so many great men of her time. I think she thought I would be led astray in some way. She can’t seem to understand that women are no longer defined by the men in their lives, that we have views of our own.
“But she’s nothing like as bad as my mother-in-law, who said she would refuse to let Urs marry me when I entered her house one day carrying a book called Women in Playpens by Iris von Roten. Such a brilliant writer. So inspiring. Even now my husband’s mother attacks me for wearing trousers – ‘Why do you insist on walking around looking like that awful von Roten woman?’ she says.”
Marthe’s eyes were alight. They sparked with more than a hint of rage. Ellen again recalled the professor’s word for Marthe Zellweger: irrepressible.
“It’s not as if any of this is really new here. Do you speak French?” she asked.
Ellen shook her head.
“Then you’ve probably never read Louis Aragon. He wrote a novel called Les cloches de Bâle set against the Peace Congress that was held here before the First World War. Everyone was there. Even your own Mr Hardie. And the book closes with Clara Zetkin’s rousing speech in the cathedral. ‘This is wh
ere the romance of chivalry ends’, she said. ‘Here for the first time in the world, room is made for true love’.
“She was German of course. But that speech inspired a lot of Swiss people here. Can you imagine? A political speech by a Communist woman in the cathedral of this bourgeois city? Nothing like that had ever happened before. And perhaps because of that day, this city has produced so many strong women of its own. In fact, women already won a vote in local elections here a long time before last week’s referendum.
“Oh dear, I’m sorry to bore you Ellen,” Marthe said, pausing for breath when she noticed Ellen’s expression glaze over with this flood of information. “It’s a passion of mine. I majored in history. With sociology and psychology.”
Aware though she was of how daunted Ellen seemed to be by the monologue, Marthe was not ready to let up just yet.
“You know, when I read in the newspaper what is happening in your country, or even just across the border in Germany or France, I realise we’re still a good half century behind the times. It’s mostly just a fear of change. If you’re here long enough, Ellen, you will find this is a country driven by angst. Let me show you something.”
Marthe rose from her chair and beckoned Ellen to follow her out of the lounge. Opening a door on the other side of the hallway, she flicked a light switch and led Ellen down a staircase into the cellar. At the bottom of the steps was a door to the left and a door to the right. But it was the door which greeted Ellen when she turned to follow Marthe back around the bottom of the steps that took her breath away. It stood open. A massive concrete door that must have been a good foot or more thick. And on the other side of this twelve-inch threshold lay another door. Marthe opened this and beckoned Ellen inside.
