The Song Before It Is Sung

by Justin Cartwright

  'Irish whisky. Forty years old. Older than you, I would imagine. They keep a little reserve for me here.'

  They drink and Dungannon says, 'Rather good, don't you think?'

  'I do.'

  Conrad suspects that he is a drunk.

  'You asked me about Elya Mendel. He was my godfather. He and my mother were very close. They wrote letters and telephoned often right up to his death. Of course he must have known I was Axel von Gottberg's son, but it was never mentioned. I had the conventional sort of upbringing, Eton, Oxford in the early sixties, and came back here after a spell in the Guards. Didn't suit me, I am afraid. At Oxford Elya Mendel was always kind and helpful. I probably wouldn't have got in without him anyway. I think I disappointed him a little. In the beginning we used to go for walks at Magdalen, but I wasn't up to the mark. I used to go for lunch on Sundays in Headington quite often in the beginning. I loved Oxford but I was not really an Oxford man. I spent a lot of time out with hounds, the Bullingdon and so on, and left after a year and a term. Balliol. Of course I didn't know then that it was my real father's college. Anyway, after the Guards I came back here, and here I have remained on the estate with some business interests in Dublin and London. I used to hunt, but my back is crumbling and my doctor has warned me off. Probably sounds a dull life to you, but I have been happy. Any more questions?'

  He laughs loudly and unexpectedly, and Conrad remembers that friends spoke of von Gottberg's sudden laughter, rising from geological depths. The laugh has a curious and charming retrospective effect, inviting a certain irony about what has gone before. Conrad realises, as they go into dinner, that Dungannon has decided to give him just enough information to get rid of him.

  Dungannon doesn't eat much: he has chosen grouse which he inspects and prods and then slices a few bits off. But he drinks freely and Conrad keeps up. After dinner they move to another bar for port.

  'To be honest with you, Conrad, I am not very keen to be dragged into this whole business. I would appreciate it if you kept me out of the story or whatever you are proposing. Of course I am aware, very well aware, that my mother and Elya Mendel had, as they say nowadays, an agenda. And of course you will want to be true to Elya's wishes, but can I ask you to leave me out of it? There is no definite proof that I am Axel's son and in a way it was just an accident, a sideshow. I have no claim to any involvement. Do you follow me? No interest in digging up the past?'

  'I haven't decided finally what to do with what I have, but yes, I promise to leave you out.'

  'You're a good chap. How old are you? Thirty-five. You could be my son, just about.'

  He laughs again, that astonishing laugh.

  'Why do you think your mother never told me about you?'

  'She probably thought you would work it out. I don't know. I have the memoir left for you. It's in my room. Remind me to get it before you leave. When are you off, by the way?'

  Back in his hotel, Conrad lies drunkenly on his bed. He has come to see von Gottberg's son, and perhaps to tell him something of his father, but, for Dungannon, the world he knows is enough. He can't even contemplate the prospect of discussing his father. Conrad understands that his mother, who loved von Gottberg, wanted Conrad to know, after all those years of secrecy, that she was still true to his memory and had produced his son. Mendel wanted him to know that, even if it was at a distance, he had done something for his old friend, and helped Dungannon into his father's college, where he and von Gottberg had first met all those years ago. The most poignant detail for Conrad is that Elya Mendel took this gangling doppelganger on a few laps of Addison's Walk, perhaps hoping they could take up where he and the father had left off.

  Conrad sees them. He wonders if anyone notices the resemblance, the tall youth with the startling laugh, the deep eyes, the long Mecklenburg nose, walking briskly with the small, chubby figure of Elya Mendel, who barely draws breath as he explains how the world is organised.

  28

  MY LAST MEETING WITH AXEL VON

  GOTTBERG, A MEMOIR. ELIZABETH PARTRIDGE,

  DUNGANNON HOUSE, 2001

  ELYA MENDEL HELPED arrange my flight to Stockholm. He always knew who to talk to. I was flown out with some Foreign Office people, who did not speak to me. I was supposed to report back on my meetings, although only Elya knew who I was meeting. By this stage of the war, the Luftwaffe was beaten, but it was still a nervous flight, arcing far out over the North Sea and then curving back over Norway. The windows of the plane were blacked out and it was very cold and bumpy inside the plane, but we landed safely somewhere outside Stockholm. The Foreign Office people were met, but I was left to find a taxi to take me into town to the Grand Hotel, where I was to make myself known as the guest of Mr Axel.

  Axel had left a note for me that read: Welcome. I will be back as soon as I can. Love A. He had booked a room for me that overlooked the water across to the Old Town and the vast Royal Palace. There were flowers in the room, ordered, I was sure, by Axel. Down below the ferries were setting out from the quays to the islands as if everything in the world was as it should be, ordered, unruffled and calm. The madness and destruction of the war seemed to me to belong to another world, a world that, now, I could barely imagine. It was suddenly quite literally unreal, as though I had dreamed it and woken up, to discover my confusion. But of course, it was real. All too real. I sat on the terrace of the hotel in the warm sunshine, my heart full of bitterness and shame. How had we allowed our world to be destroyed? How had we got to this? Why had our wonderful, enchanted lives been ruined, our friends killed? All it needed was to get rid of Hitler. That, above all else, was what we should have been striving to achieve to avoid this Armageddon. Here in orderly, sensible, calm Sweden, the folly of war was so overwhelmingly obvious.

  I walked up to a small park near by and ordered a coffee and a lingonberry tart and watched with deep envy ordinary people doing the everyday things, looking after their children, walking in the sunshine, reading the newspapers, chatting, without the sirens warning of V-i rockets, without the rationing and deprivation and without the destruction of my beloved London, which now lay ruined. Utter, utter waste, the product of hundreds of years of human striving, lying in ruins. And Axel's Berlin, I knew, was far worse with more to come and the Russians closing relentlessly from the East. A young woman in the national dress of tight bodice and wide skirt brought me the tart, such a simple, homely pleasure, and this sight made me feel so deeply for Axel, who had spent the last five years trying to get rid of Hitler, travelling God knows at what risk to himself, to ask that the German resistance be given some encouragement. But the blood rage of war demanded unconditional surrender, which meant unlimited destruction.

  When Axel arrived at the hotel in the early afternoon, he noticed immediately my shock although I tried quickly to hide it. He was gaunt and his eyes had retreated deeper into his head; his elegant grey suit hung from him. His hair was thin, too.

  'Is it that bad? I have grown old, but you look just the same, my darling.'

  'Axel, no, you just look very, very tired and thin. But wonderful as always.'

  We embraced and only later did it occur to me how it must have appeared, a German diplomat and an Englishwoman in each other's arms, the Englishwoman in floods of tears.

  'Let's have a drink. We both need it.'

  He was so worn and tired, but as always full of life. We sat on the terrace.

  'Did you have a terrible flight? I worried that our Luftwaffe would shoot you down. And to be honest I wasn't sure you would come. I am overwhelmed that you are here.'

  'I wasn't sure you were going to be here at all. Axel, why did you ask me to come?'

  'You don't need to ask. You know the answer to that question. I love you. And I heard, of course, that Roddy had died. Do you miss him?'

  'I do miss him. I feel guilty, too, that I never loved him. How are your children?'

  'They are divine. That is the worst thing about this whole business, the thing that worries me most; our
chances of success are not high and the price we will pay, and our children will pay, will be terrible.'

  'Axel, for God's sake, you must get away. I have been asked to suggest it to you. Can't you take the family to Switzerland or come here and hide until it's over?'

  Of course I knew that he could never leave Germany. Germany needed him; his fate was bound up with his country's. Whatever happened in Germany, and we could all see that the end was near, he was a part of it. Over the next few days I realised that he had become obsessed with the idea of restoring Germany's honour by killing Hitler. He talked quite freely, although Stockholm was full of Nazis and agents from every power.

  'We have to get rid of him and then it will be my job to ask the Allies to deal with us, who got rid of him.'

  'Is it soon, Axel?'

  'Very soon. I have a surprise for you. Tomorrow we are going to go out into the archipelago, to the island of Grinda to stay in an inn.'

  We walked around the town, past the Royal Dramatic Theatre where Greta Garbo started her professional life and down to the Old Town, which in those days still had fishermen and their families living above the nets and herring barrels. We walked hand in hand and perhaps were followed. The worst moment for me was when I saw one of the Foreign Office people in the street looking at a Dala horse. I broke away from Axel and pretended to be deeply interested in the contents of a herring barrel. Axel thought it was funny. He didn't speak about Liselotte, although I felt deeply uneasy about being here in Stockholm with her husband. I think all women believe adultery is a betrayal of themselves as women, while many men, in my experience, think of it as an endorsement of their true natures. But Axel asked me about Rosamund, and I told him that she was happily married with a baby girl and that she was quite well known now after her third book The Wings of the Dawn.

  'Does she speak about me?'

  'No. I think she has tried to put you out of her mind.'

  'And Elya, does he ever mention me?'

  'We always talk about you whenever we meet.'

  'How does he feel about me?'

  'You know we have all been swept up in this awful determination to crush the Nazis and of course Germany, for ever. I think he still believes that you should leave the country.'

  'I can't. I know that you actually understand. I can't because we have to demonstrate that Germany is not the same thing as Hitler. Elya knows that.'

  I saw then that Elya was always on his mind. What would Elya think? What would Elya say? Now I believe, after all these years, that Axel sacrificed himself for Elya. It seems ridiculous to say it, but he was trying to atone for that letter to the Manchester Guardian, which lost him the friendship and trust he most treasured in the world. In the night we became lovers over again but now with a fearful intensity of feeling because we knew that everything was lost. I found him at four in the morning staring out over the harbour.

  'I haven't slept for four years,' he said apologetically when he saw that I was awake. I could see the ribs on his back.

  After breakfast we took a ferry out to the islands. They were so beautiful, the light soft and hazy, each small rocky island with its own jetty and red, deep-red painted cottage, with a boat moored near by; it was a vision of what life could be, what life was supposed to be. So different from the gloom and fear and despair and deprivation of London and the utter desolation of Berlin.

  'Can't we stay here, Axel, until it's over?'

  'I can t.

  'But please, get your family out at least, Axel.'

  'I have to go through to the end. I have friends and colleagues who are risking their lives every day. We have to do it or die trying.'

  We were standing at the prow of the ferry as it eased its sensible, pragmatic way past countless small islands and skerries. Here we were free as we hadn't been for years, not since we were young and blithe. Now, of course, I am immensely old, but then Axel and I already had the feeling that we had lost our youth. The war had taken it. He was obsessed with saving Germany, but I saw that it was almost suicidal. He looked so terribly worn. But for those two days, we were carefree again. It was as if we had been given a blessing from heaven. The strange thing was that I could easily imagine that this landscape, these astonishing islands set in the magical archipelago, were the real world and what we had left behind in Berlin and London was completely unreal, the stuff of nightmares. I had the feeling that we could just step out of our lives. And also, I knew after that first night that I was pregnant. I can't explain how I knew, but now I believe that it was fated.

  The ferry came into the jetty at Grinda, I think after about an hour, and a pushcart from the inn met us to take our bags, which were very few. We walked up a track through woods and meadows that were deep in wild flowers. The Grinda Wardshus turned out to be exactly what we craved, a haven of utter tranquillity, with not a sign of a German or a British agent. In fact there was only one other guest, and he was a botanist, I think, from Uppsala. Probably nowhere in the world did the awful, cruel, relentless war seem further away.

  Axel and I swam at a lovely sandy beach. I hadn't realised until then that the Baltic is more or less a freshwater lake, although I had seen eider ducks paddling by in flotillas. The water itself had only a slightly brackish taste. Our room looked out over a meadow to woods with the gleam of water beyond. We didn't talk that night or the next morning about the war. We seemed to understand that these were our last blessed moments together. Nor did I mention escape again. To tell the truth, I saw a certain stark beauty in Axel's attitude to the war: for him it had become a simple matter of principles and courage. Only by believing in these things could he justify himself and his existence. He did ask me to tell Elya that what his country had done to the Jews could never be forgiven. I didn't tell Elya.

  We walked across the island through the meadows of flowers. Memory, famously, plays tricks, but there in that season I remember the fields full of marguerites, orchids, primroses and wild gentian. At the edge of the meadows, on fences or scrambling up trees, were pink and white wild roses, what we would call dog roses. We spent all that day walking, swimming and picnicking, happy, but also, as the day wore on, oppressed by the knowledge that this was just a reprieve, release on parole, as Axel put it. Still Axel's talent for wild enjoyment had not diminished, even under immense duress. I loved him so deeply that even as I write these words I feel this love surging through me.

  Late that evening as the sky dimmed in summer twilight, we took the ferry back to Stockholm. We clung together watching this world separate from us. We could have stayed. In Stockholm at midnight the sky was an inky blue; I mean the colour of my Parker's Quink at school, a deep royal blue. We glided in past the Royal Dramatic Theatre and round to our berth outside the Grand Hotel.

  In the morning, Axel had to leave early, before breakfast.

  He woke me and said, 'Goodbye, my only love.'

  I never saw him again and I have missed him every day, although as our son grew I saw his likeness and it has been some consolation to me.

  Although Elya remained a true friend, in my heart I believed that he was in some degree responsible for the fact that Axel courted death. As Axel said to me in Stockholm, even if we fail to kill Hitler, we will be doing Germany a service by demonstrating to our friends that there is a more noble Germany. He died a hero.

  29

  CONRAD IS WRITING every day. By assembling this story on paper - he writes in wire-bound notebooks in the Bodleian Library — he finds a strange calmness. He has heard it said by a writer that he doesn't know what he thinks until he has written it down, and this seems to be true also for him. He was gratified to find that his name was still on the library's roll as a member of the university, and his reader's ticket, which bears a picture of him looking like a Moonie, allows him access to Duke Humfrey's Library, where he sits late into the winter gloom. Sometimes he brings a pile of papers with him; sometimes he delves into the library's collections. At the end of the day he cycles seven miles back to Emily
's cottage. After six months or so, she more or less gave up her plan to be a good rural mother, but she and the children come from London most weekends and she is happy for him to look after the place in return for his room.

  He likes the children, a boy of six called Jamie, and a little girl of four whose name is Lamoxie, a name that apparently came in a vision, but which Emily now believes may have to be changed to something more sensible as she is already being teased. They have taken to kissing him when they arrive on a Saturday morning. He wonders if this kissing is a form of anxiety caused by the fact that they are not sure who their fathers are, or whether kissing is so commonplace in expensive little private schools that they kiss anything animate.

  When he leaves the library, the gas lights are lit and they are suffused gently by the damp air, so that if you didn't know better you might think this light contained particles of minute, Cheddar-cheese-coloured matter hovering around the lamps. Cyclists go by, past the Radcliffe Camera, up the Broad or down Holywell. They call happily to each other above the sound of the bikes on the road; his youth is going by. Sometimes he cycles home via Holywell, in the hope of hearing music escaping from the Music Rooms, and then he goes on past New College, with its glimpses of silhouetted figures in the quads beyond, and then he swings up Longwall Street and Magdalen in honour of Elya Mendel and Axel von Gottberg, whose lives, as he labours in the library, he is trying to shape. He struggles sometimes with the fear that in the process of writing about them he is trivialising their story or introducing new falsehoods into it. As he progresses he has to decide what material to ignore and what to include. But he sees that there is no objective truth possible. To the one overwhelming fact, as far as he knows, he and Ernst Fritsch are the only living witnesses.

  When he finally reaches the house down a long, bumpy farm road, he lights a fire and heats some soup and reads or watches television. One night he sees with a shock that his friend Osric has been kidnapped in Baghdad. Two nights later he is out, after a miracle escape through a tiny window. He is selling his story. A happy, contemporary, ending. Conrad wonders if he was encouraged to escape because the Iraqis couldn't stand another night at close quarters with him.