‘My corset,’ she said.
Unless she sat very upright, the hard edge of the corset protruding between her legs cut sharply into her flesh. Albert started to fumble with the buttons on her blouse and attempted to loosen the undergarments beneath, but Greta flinched, reluctant to reveal the spongy softness of her stomach, the slack, unhealed muscles. The corset had to be pulled so tight nowadays that it left red welts upon her flesh. She supposed it wouldn’t look so ugly in the candlelight. She realised that she was almost as anxious as the very first time Albert and she had attempted the marital act, and far more self-conscious.
She was vaguely aware that Albert was either oblivious or indifferent to her unease as, after unfastening her, he tugged her down to the floor, lying her on her back. He kissed her neck and progressed down towards her bosom. From her vantage point on the rug, she noticed blackened smut lodged up the chimney like hardened mucus in a nostril. She must order the chimneys to be swept again.
‘Are you with me?’ said Albert, pausing to look down at her, his expression hurt and indignant.
‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m out of practice,’ she replied guiltily.
She pulled him towards her and kissed him again, feeling the tickle of his moustache against her lip, and the hardness of the floor beneath her. Deep inside her, she felt the first tingle of desire, and there was something comfortable and satisfying about the heaviness of his weight upon her and, with more enthusiasm, she began to touch him through his trousers. The fire spat and crackled. Albert moved against her, shoving aside her skirts, pressing into her. A moment later she realised that he was trying to push inside her and she wriggled away, whispering, ‘Not that, darling. Not that.’
He swore, but before he could further object, she touched him again, carefully manoeuvring herself beyond his reach. She unpeeled her glove and brushed him with bare fingertips. In a few moments he gave in to her, silently and without delight.
A little later, while she turned away so that he could tidy himself, she regretted the awkwardness of their encounter. Attempting anything of the sort in the drawing room had been a mistake. It was not a room shaped for comfortable enjoyment of such a thing. Before, their acts of intimacy had always brought them closer. They laughed and took pleasure in one another. This interlude had not been an act of intimacy. Instead, it had served to make her feel more alone.
‘We’ll get better at it,’ she said, hoping this to be true.
Albert did not reply. As he climbed the stairs to bed, aware of a damp stain on his trousers, he felt revolted and annoyed. He was married. He loved his wife and wanted her. Yet he had been reduced to grubby fumblings. Away from Greta for months at a time, he had imagined and longed for her. During excursions to the front he glimpsed blackened death everywhere, inhaled its stink. It made him want her even more. He desired sex as an affirmation of life, a declaration of love and his eagerness to cling to the world. He needed to lose himself inside her. That encounter, in the drawing room, whatever it had been, was wholly inadequate. It was not what he had pictured, alone in his narrow bunk.
Unable to sleep, Albert rose before dawn. He dressed without the assistance of his valet, and walked through the gardens as the first light pushed its way through the trees. Crocuses were beginning to shove tiny green snouts through the ground beneath the willows. He wouldn’t return until long after they had flowered. He rambled down to the wilderness, passing beneath a copse of sycamore trees. He stooped and saw buried beneath the leaf litter a seedpod, curved like a wishbone. Perhaps it would bring him luck. He pocketed it. The air was cold and the grass heavy with dew, while mist puffed in from the river like steam. The bees huddled in their hives. Albert found the glass hive that Greta had commissioned for him, and watched as the bees clustered around the queen for warmth, those nearest the centre a blur of wings, those at the edge feasting on honey. They emitted a low thrum, which he felt in his chest, a throb of animal contentment, and felt oddly envious. The sun had nearly risen and, with a pang, he turned for home.
He kissed his children while they slept in their cribs. He could not bear to say goodbye to Greta. He stroked her cheek and slipped from the room and out to the waiting motor car without waking her.
As she heard the door slam, the grind of the gravel, Greta touched her hand to her cheek. It was still warm from his fingers. She kept her eyes tightly shut; so long as she kept them closed, she could pretend he was still there.
P&O’S WENTWORTH, LIVERPOOL DOCKS, FEBRUARY
Albert and Simon Grenville from the War Office observed the stowing of the kegs of gold in the ship’s specie room, concealed at the bottom of the vessel. They stood alongside the Purser in the second-class baggage room above, watching as a team of seamen slung bars of gold into the hold using wire treasure-nets.
‘It’s really safe here?’ asked Albert, intrigued.
‘As a baby,’ replied the Purser. ‘This specie room is right at the bottom of a trunk hatch and, after all the specie is on board, we’ll fill the hatch with the baggage not wanted on voyage. It’s quite impossible to get at the treasure without hoisting out the entire cargo. Unless there’s a U-boat, of course. Nothing sinks faster than gold,’ he added cheerfully.
They watched in silence, Albert considering that although he spent most of his adult life trading in money backed by gold, and even in gold as a commodity, it was only figures in a column, marks on a page. He had not glimpsed gold like this, in great shining bars, stamped and embossed with the Bank of England coat of arms. He stared at the glittering cargo, aware that he was mesmerised. He knew the adage about the desire for gold driving men mad, but until now he’d considered it a figurative expression about ambition.
Mr Grenville watched in silence, his round eyes rounder still.
‘This is the last of England’s gold?’ asked Albert.
‘More or less,’ said Mr Grenville, rousing himself. ‘The Americans have us now.’
Albert stifled a shiver, conscious of all that was riding on the Zimmermann telegram.
‘What if the Americans haven’t entered the war by the time I arrive? What do I do then? There won’t be any loans to negotiate.’
Mr Grenville snorted. ‘I should stay there. There won’t be any point coming home. We’ll be overrun with Germans.’
They set sail that night, and as the steam liner pushed out into dark waters, her lights shrouded and her engines muffled, Albert thought of the haul far below, stashed beneath the water line, shining in the gloom.
PINSK, FEBRUARY
Otto crouched over a paraffin burner in the makeshift barracks. Behind him in the hut, Gruber attempted to assemble dinner. The wind thundered against the tin walls. Snow had silenced the guns. Men on both sides shivered over guttering fires and cursed their lot. Otto had salvaged a fur coat from the corpse of a dead Russian officer, and instructed Gruber to stitch his Austrian Leutnant’s insignia onto the lapel. From time to time Otto had been forced to go for three days without eating, forced to lick the dew from the grass, and at those times he sensed himself retreat from civility into instinct. He liked the bear coat. It fitted him like his rightful skin and felt better than any of his exquisitely tailored suits had ever done. He liked the wariness with which others eyed him when he wore it, as though he had donned not simply the fur of the bear, but its essence. He supposed that war had driven him slightly mad. He didn’t care. He almost threw away the cheque book.
In his hands he held an order that he surveyed with contempt.
‘Last month it was paranoia over deserters – watch the Czechs, watch the Italians. Don’t let them patrol alone. Shoot without trial. Now it’s the Jews again. What happens if I refuse to answer this?’ he asked, tugging his hat further down his forehead.
He read it once more, with anger and distaste. It had arrived more than a week ago and he had ignored it, shoving it into his pocket, where it seemed to burn a hole.
‘Read it again, sir,’ said Karl.
Otto removed the cre
ased and grease-stained document from his jacket: ‘“The War Ministry is continually receiving complaints from the population that large numbers of men of the Israelite faith who are fit for military service are either exempt from military duties or evading their obligation to serve under every conceivable pretext.”’ Otto coughed in profound annoyance. ‘I ought to burn it.’
Karl shrugged, knowing better than to argue with Otto in one of these moods.
‘I’m required to fill in a questionnaire tallying the precise number of men of Jewish faith stationed at the front,’ said Otto.
‘Well, you can put me down,’ said Karl, cheerfully. ‘And with you, sir, that’s two. Could always add a couple more. I don’t really see them coming down here to check,’ he added, stirring the brown slop that was cooking on the burner.
‘I shan’t prove that we’re not cowards by lying, Soldat.’
Otto scrutinised the paper again, reading, ‘“Jew count. Number of Jewish officers. Number of enlisted Jews killed. How many Jews in your company have been decorated for bravery?”’
He balled it up, shoved it into the paraffin burner. They watched the paper flare and then quickly blacken.
‘Can we do that with all our orders, sir? Save an awful lot of trouble and effort,’ said Karl, wafting away the smoke.
Otto shifted and flicked the ash-dust from the burnt paper. He blew and it fluttered like grey snow.
‘It wasn’t an Austrian command. I’m only being told to fill in their wretched questionnaire as the battalion is now mostly Germans.’
‘Two surviving Austrians. Can’t be many of us left. They should pull us all out and put us in a museum,’ said Karl, spooning the hash into a mess-tin and handing it to Otto, who swallowed each spoonful with a shudder. Karl wasn’t permitted to eat in the presence of an officer; his role was to linger in case something was needed – a napkin, some more pepper. For the first few months Otto had ignored him, or rather hadn’t noticed he was there, but now when they were alone in the hut with no other officers present, he was tolerant of Karl, permitting him to ask the odd question.
‘Leutnant Goldbaum – all the men are talking about how the Russkis have had enough. Apparently, the Tsar’s had it.’
Otto shook his head. ‘We’re a long way from St Petersburg, Gruber. We fight until they surrender.’ He sighed. ‘The Russians will charge when the snow clears, but the ground is still hard enough for their horses.’
‘What is it with the Russians and their bloody horses? Apparently they’re using metal tanks on the Western Front,’ said Karl, taking Otto’s empty tin.
‘I’d rather have horses coming at me,’ said Otto.
‘It’s afterwards I can’t stand. The horses take so long to die. I can hear them there all night, screaming in the marshes.’
Otto checked his watch. ‘It’s nearly nine. It’s time to send out a patrol.’
Karl saluted. ‘Yes, sir. I’ll find Muller.’
Otto shook his head. ‘It’s all right. I need the air.’
Unthinkingly Karl reached for his own helmet. It did not occur to him that Otto could go alone.
They ambled down a dirt track leading to the open ground. It had been a village once, filled mostly with Jews, but the Russians had driven them out – they hadn’t wanted Jews so close to enemy territory, convinced of their treachery. All that remained of the huts was rubble. Otto picked out a mezuzah, forgotten, half-crushed, so that the paper Hebrew prayer hidden inside like a golden egg yolk had spilled out and spoiled. The tiny synagogue had been shelled, while the army used the remains of the women’s mikvah bath as a useful coop for the balding chickens they found pecking disconsolately amongst the wreckage. As they picked their way across the ruins, Otto felt he couldn’t move for ghosts. They clung to his coat and skin like cleavers and burrs. Dislike of the Jews was something both sides shared, he thought miserably. Peace comes out of common ground – perhaps they could begin with that. Otto wondered if he was sickening for something. His thoughts were restless, his heart beat light and fast, and beneath his coat he began to sweat. It wasn’t as bitterly cold as it had been, but the ground was still hard and, as they approached the sentry points, he knew that the corpses in the marsh beyond lay suspended in the ice, set like pieces of salmon in aspic.
He inspected the soldiers stationed at the sentry posts along the marsh. Everyone was waiting for the start of the thaw.
‘Nothing much happening,’ said one.
Otto glanced down and saw that the soldier’s feet were wrapped in layers of sackcloth.
‘Where are your boots?’
The soldier opened his jacket to reveal them strung around his neck. ‘Won’t fit. Feet too swollen from frostbite.’
Otto grimaced. ‘Go to army medical when you come off watch, Soldier. That’s an order.’
The soldier shrugged. ‘If you say so, sir. But won’t do any good. It was them what gave me the brown paper and sacks.’
It was futile. The medical corps would have nothing with which to treat him. Otto dismissed the soldiers, and by midnight he and Gruber had nearly finished their rounds. They turned back towards the weather station. Frost glinted like gun metal. The night was clear and the sky bursting with stars. Otto couldn’t help pausing to look. Even surrounded by cruelty and ugliness, there was beauty above. As long as he could see the stars, he enjoyed both companionship and occupation. He was like a rabbi who had memorised the Torah and the commentaries and held them cheerfully in his breast, always busy in his own mind. He took a breath of clean, damp air and held it deep in his lungs, before letting it out with a sigh. This was a moment of pleasure, however fleeting. He picked out the constellations like the faces of loved ones from a photograph. The jewels on Orion’s Belt. The coiled tail of Scorpio. As a child, he’d been told that this was the curving Goldbaum sycamore branch, and the five stars forming the pincers of the scorpion were instead the five Goldbaum brothers. He’d been awed and frightened that the fortune of his family was pre-ordained in the heavens, and whenever he looked at the night sky they were the first constellation he searched for, like a soldier looking for his name on the list of those being sent up to the line. Now, his family’s recasting of the myth of the stars both amused him with its audacity and alarmed him with its hubris. As he watched, a star sailed across Pisces, a shuttlecock of light.
‘Look, Gruber. A meteor.’ He laid his arm round his servant’s shoulders and laughed. ‘Dust and ice from the outer cosmos. There are still marvels in this world, Gruber, even now.’
The meteor burned white, a luminous smear of light chalking the sky, and then, before it was quite gone, there was a whine and snap, and Otto fell to his knees in a spurt of blood. He clutched his throat, choking, drowning. Karl stared at him aghast, too surprised for a moment to move. Otto saw the horror on the other man’s face and understood he must be dying. He was drowning in air; when he tried to breathe there was only wetness. He put his hand over his throat and managed to take a squelching gasp of air. The pain was everywhere. It burned in his throat, his lungs, his eyes. He screamed, but no sound came. Then he lost consciousness.
He woke to see a black face staring at him, only it wasn’t black at all; it was Karl Gruber painted with blood, clear paths of skin beneath his eyes cleaned by tears. Otto closed his eyes again.
Karl knelt in the snow, trying to stop the fount of blood with his hand, but it oozed around his fingers, warm and sticky, and splashed his face. He screamed for help, but then realised he was screaming wordlessly. No one came. With every ounce of strength, Karl lifted Otto in his arms. The fur of Otto’s bear coat stuck in his mouth. Otto wasn’t a big man, but Karl was slight and underfed. He buckled under Otto’s weight, sinking to his knees in the snow. With a howl of effort and hurt, he hoisted him onto his shoulders like a babushka lugging firewood.
When Otto came to once more, he was in a church, watching while two aproned priests sliced at a body lying on the altar, fingers glossy and red as they pushed them insi
de its throat, a tray of mirrored instruments spread out before them. An ornate crucifix carved with the Tree of Life hung above, the figure of Jesus seeming to gaze at the body on the altar with shared sympathy. Vaguely Otto realised he was looking down at himself from the ceiling of the church. I don’t want to die in a church, he thought, my mother wouldn’t like it. I’ll die if I must, but not here.
Karl screamed so much that at first they thought he too had been shot. He watched in shock as they sluiced down the makeshift operating table, then hauled Otto onto it and drew across a screen. A nurse hustled him outside, hushing him. ‘You did all that you could, bringing him here. Go back to your company.’
Karl shook his head. He wouldn’t leave. The nurse gave him a little shove. ‘You must go. Fetch his things. Come back in a little while.’
Nodding dumbly, Karl trailed back towards the hut. Hungry birds called overhead. No fresh snow had fallen. With exactitude, he forced himself to pass the spot where Otto had been hit, and saw the disaster sprayed out in red across the snow. Here Otto had been shot. Crimson blood fountained and lay feathered brightly against the white, with callous beauty. Here he had fallen to his knees, and there he had lain, bleeding into that thick, viscous pool. There Karl saw his own footsteps, deeply set and edged with red. Otto might live to reach Vienna, he told himself. They would look after him there – the best doctors, the best care. He knew that their friendship was one born of the oddest circumstance. A Kanaltrotter and a prince of the Jews forced into companionship at the end of the world and, one way or another, Otto was leaving this God-forsaken place. If Otto lived, if Karl survived the war, if the war ever ended and Karl called at the Goldbaum Palace in Vienna, Otto would receive him. He was that sort of fellow. But after a few minutes it would be clear to them both that this was a charade. They were not comrades in the civilised, ordinary world. Karl understood that whether Otto lived or died, their friendship was at an end. And, he realised, friendship was what it had been. Their association went beyond master and servant, the obligation of one and the duty of the other. He looked down again at the snow, and saw the whole sorry tale of himself and Otto transcribed in blood. He wept, whether for his friend or for the friendship, he did not know.
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