“Herr Reiner, the firemen say the fire’s under control, but it’ll be necessary to demolish the building, as it’s no longer safe. They’ve asked me to tell the tenants that they can take turns to go in and fetch some clothes, as you’ll all have to spend the night elsewhere.”
Like a robot, Paul joined the dozen people who were going to recover some of their things. He stepped over the hoses that were still pumping arcs of water, walked along the sodden corridors and stairways accompanied by a fireman, and finally reached his room, where he picked out clothes at random and put them into a small bag.
“That’s enough,” urged the fireman, who had been waiting uneasily in the doorway. “We have to go.”
Still dazed, Paul followed him. But a few meters later, a faint idea flickered in his brain, like the edge of a gold coin in a bucket of sand. He turned and ran.
“Hey, listen! We’ve got to get out!”
Paul ignored the man. He ran into his room and dove under his bed. In the narrow space he struggled to move aside a pile of books he’d put there to hide what was behind.
“I told you to get out! Look, it isn’t safe here,” said the fireman, pulling on Paul’s legs till his body appeared.
Paul didn’t mind. He had what he’d come to get.
A black mahogany box, smooth and plain.
It was nine thirty at night.
Paul took his small bag and ran across town.
If he hadn’t been in such a state, he would undoubtedly have noticed that something was going on in Munich, something greater even than his own tragedy. There were more people around than usual for that time of night. The bars and taverns were heaving, and angry voices emerged from inside. Anxious men huddled in groups on street corners, and there wasn’t a single policeman in sight.
But Paul paid no attention to what was going on around him; he just wanted to cover the distance that separated him from his goal in as little time as possible. Right now it was the only clue he had. He cursed himself bitterly for not having seen it, for not having worked it out sooner.
Metzger’s pawnshop was closed. The doors were thick and solid, so Paul didn’t waste any time knocking. Nor in calling out, even though he assumed—correctly—that an avaricious old man like the pawnbroker would live on the premises, perhaps in a rickety old bed in the back of the shop.
Paul put his bag down by the door and looked around him for something solid. There were no loose paving stones, but he found a dustbin lid the size of a small tray. He picked it up and threw it at the shop window, which shattered into a thousand pieces. Paul’s heart was jumping out of his chest and pounding in his ears, but he ignored that too. If anyone called the police, they might arrive before he got what he’d come for; but then again, they might not.
I hope not, thought Paul. Otherwise I’ll run off, and the next place I’ll be going for answers will be the Schroeder mansion. Even if my uncle’s friends send me to prison for the rest of my life.
Paul leapt inside. His shoes crunched on the blanket of glass shards, a mixture of the bits of broken window, and a Bohemian crystal dinner service that had also been smashed by his projectile.
It was pitch-black inside the shop. The only light came from the back room, where he could hear loud shouts.
“Who’s there? I’m calling the police!”
“Go ahead!” Paul shouted back.
A rectangle of light appeared on the floor, throwing into relief the ghostly shapes of the pawnshop wares. Paul stood there in the middle of them, waiting for Metzger to emerge.
“Get out of here, damned Nazis!” shouted the pawnbroker, appearing in the doorway, his eyes still half closed from sleep.
“I’m not a Nazi, Herr Metzger.”
“Who the hell are you?” Metzger came into the shop and switched on the light, checking that the intruder was alone. “There’s nothing of any value here!”
“Perhaps not, but there’s something I need.”
The old man’s eyes came into focus at that moment and he recognized Paul.
“What are you . . . Oh.”
“I see you remember me.”
“You were here recently,” said Metzger.
“Do you always remember all your customers?”
“What the devil do you want? You’ll have to pay me for that window!”
“Don’t try to change the subject. I want to know who pawned that pistol I retrieved.”
“I don’t remember.”
Paul didn’t reply. He simply took the weapon from his trouser pocket and pointed it at the old man. Metzger retreated, holding his hands out in front of his body like a shield.
“Don’t shoot! I swear to you, I don’t remember! It’s been almost two decades!”
“Let’s suppose I believe you. What about your records?”
“Put the gun down, please . . . I can’t show you my records: that information is confidential. Please, son, be reasonable . . .”
Paul took six steps toward him and raised the gun to shoulder height. The barrel was now only two centimeters from the forehead of the pawnbroker, who was drenched in sweat.
“Herr Metzger, let me explain. Either you show me the records, or I’ll shoot you. It’s a simple choice.”
“Very well! Very well!”
His hands still raised, the old man led the way to the back room. They crossed a large storeroom that was filled with spiderwebs and was even dustier than the shop itself. Cardboard boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling on rusty metal shelves, and the stink of mold and damp was unbearable. But there was something else to that smell, something indefinable and rotten.
“How can you stand this smell, Metzger?”
“Smell? I can’t smell anything,” said the old man without turning around.
Paul guessed that the pawnbroker had gotten used to the stench, having spent countless years among other people’s things. The man had clearly never enjoyed a life of his own, and Paul couldn’t help feeling some pity for him. He had to banish such thoughts from his head in order to continue gripping his father’s pistol with the same sense of purpose.
At the back of the storeroom there was a metal door. Metzger removed some keys from his pocket and opened it. He gestured for Paul to pass.
“You first,” Paul replied.
The old man looked at him curiously, his pupils steady. In his mind Paul imagined him as a dragon protecting his cave of treasure, and he told himself to be more alert than ever. The miser was as dangerous as a cornered rat, and at any moment he could turn and bite.
“Swear you won’t steal anything from me.”
“What would be the point of that? Remember, I’m the one holding the weapon.”
“Swear it,” the man insisted.
“I swear I won’t steal anything from you, Metzger. Tell me what I need to know and I’ll leave you in peace.”
To the right was a wooden bookcase filled with books in black bindings; to the left, an enormous safe. The pawnbroker immediately positioned himself in front of it, protecting it with his body.
“There you have it,” he said, gesturing Paul toward the bookcase.
“You find it for me.”
“No,” the old man replied, his voice tense. He wasn’t prepared to move from his corner.
He’s getting bolder. If I push him too much, he might jump on me. Damn it, why didn’t I load the gun? I would have used it to overpower him.
“At least tell me which volume to look in.”
“It’s on the shelf, level with your head, the fourth from the left.”
Without taking his eyes off Metzger, Paul found the book. He removed it carefully and held it out to the pawnbroker.
“Find the reference.”
“I don’t remember the number.”
“Nine one two three one. Be quick.”
Reluctantly, the old man took the book and gently turned the pages. Paul glanced around the storeroom, afraid that at any moment a group of policemen would turn up to arrest him. He’
d already stayed too long.
“Here it is,” said the old man, handing back the book, open at one of the early pages.
There was no record of the date, only a curt 1905 / Week 16. Paul found the number at the bottom of the page.
“There’s just a name. Clovis Nagel. The address isn’t there.”
“The customer preferred not to give any more details.”
“Is that legal, Metzger?”
“The law on the matter is confused.”
It wasn’t the only entry on which Nagel’s name appeared. He was listed in the “Depositing Customer” column for another ten items.
“I want to see the other items he pawned.”
Relieved to be getting the intruder away from his safe, the pawnbroker led Paul to one of the bookshelves in the outer storeroom. He took down a cardboard box and showed the contents to Paul.
“Here they are.”
A couple of cheap watches, a gold ring, a silver bracelet . . . Paul examined the trinkets but could not understand what linked Nagel’s objects. He was beginning to despair; after all the efforts he had made, he now had even more questions than before.
Why would one man pawn so many objects on the same day? He must have been running away from someone—probably from my father. But if I want to find out any more, I’ll have to find this man, and a name alone doesn’t help much.
“I want to know where to find Nagel.”
“You’ve already seen, son. I don’t have an address . . .”
Paul raised his right hand and struck the old man. Metzger fell to the floor and brought his hands to his face. A trickle of blood appeared between his fingers.
“No, please, no—don’t hit me again!”
Paul had to stop himself from striking the man once more. His whole body was filled with a foul energy, an indistinct hatred, that had built up over many years and had suddenly found a target in the pathetic bleeding figure at his feet.
What am I doing?
Suddenly he felt sick at what he’d done. This had to be brought to an end as soon as possible.
“Talk, Metzger. I know you’re hiding something from me.”
“I don’t remember him too well. He was a soldier, I could tell from the way he talked. Perhaps a sailor. He said he was going back to SouthWest Africa and that he wouldn’t be needing any of those things there.”
“What was he like?”
“Rather short, fine features. I don’t remember much . . . Please, don’t hit me again!”
Short, fine-featured . . . Eduard described the man who was in the room with my father and my uncle as short, with delicate features like a girl’s. It could have been Clovis Nagel. And if my father discovered him stealing things on the boat? Perhaps he was a spy. Or had my father asked him to pawn the gun in his name? He knew, of course, that he was in danger.
Feeling as though his head were about to explode, Paul walked out of the storeroom leaving Metzger sniveling on the floor. He jumped up onto the front window ledge but suddenly remembered that he’d left his bag beside the door. Fortunately it was still there.
But everything else around him had changed.
Dozens of people filled the streets, in spite of the lateness of the hour. They huddled on the pavement, some moving from one huddle to another, conveying information like bees pollinating flowers. Paul approached the closest group.
“They say the Nazis set fire to a building in Schwabing . . .”
“No, it was the Communists . . .”
“They’re setting up checkpoints . . .”
Troubled, Paul took one of the men by the arm and drew him aside.
“What’s going on?”
The man took a cigarette from his mouth and gave him a crooked smile. He was delighted to find willing ears for the bad news he wanted to pass on.
“Haven’t you heard? Hitler and his Nazis are staging a coup d’état. It’s time for the revolution. At last there will be some changes.”
“You say it’s a coup d’état?”
“They’ve forced their way into the Bürgerbräukeller with hundreds of men and they’re keeping everyone locked inside, starting with the state commissioner of Bavaria.”
Paul’s heart gave a somersault.
“Alys!”
41
Until the shooting started, Alys had thought the night belonged to her.
The argument with Paul had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She understood that she was madly in love with him, she could see that clearly now. Which was precisely why she was more scared than ever.
She had decided, therefore, to focus on the task at hand. She entered the main room of the beer hall, which was more than three-quarters full. More than a thousand people were crowding around the tables, and soon there’d be at least another five hundred. German flags hung from the wall, barely visible through the tobacco smoke. The room was humid and stifling, which was why the attendees kept harassing the waitresses, who jostled through the crowds carrying trays with half a dozen beer glasses above their heads, never spilling a drop.
Now, that’s tough work, thought Alys, grateful again for all that today’s opportunity put within her reach.
Elbowing her way through, she managed to find a place at the foot of the speakers’ podium. Three or four other photographers had already taken up their position. One looked at Alys in surprise and nudged his companions.
“Be careful, gorgeous. Don’t forget to take your finger away from the lens.”
“And you remember to take yours out of your ass. Your nails are filthy.”
The photographer inspected his fingertips and turned red. The others cheered.
“Serves you right, Fritz!”
Smiling to herself, Alys found a position where she would have a good view. She tested the light and did a few quick calculations. With a bit of luck she could get a good shot. She began to get excited. Putting that idiot in his place had done her good. Besides, from that day on, things were going to change for the better. She’d talk to Paul; they’d face their problems together. And with a new, stable job, she would truly feel fulfilled.
She was still immersed in her daydream when Gustav Ritter von Kahr, state commissioner of Bavaria, climbed onto the stage. She took a number of photos, including one she thought might be rather interesting, in which Kahr was gesticulating widely.
All of a sudden a commotion broke out at the back of the room. Alys craned her neck to see what was going on, but between the bright lights that surrounded the podium and the wall of people behind her, she couldn’t see a thing. The roar of the crowd, together with the thunder of falling tables and chairs and the smashing of dozens of glasses, was deafening.
Someone emerged from the crowd close to Alys, a sweaty little man wearing a creased raincoat. He pushed aside a man sitting at the table closest to the podium, then climbed onto his chair and from there onto the table.
Alys turned her camera toward him, in a single instant capturing the wild stare, the slight trembling of his left hand, the cheap clothes, the pimp’s haircut plastered across his forehead, the cruel little moustache, the raised arm, and the gun aimed at the ceiling.
She wasn’t afraid, and she didn’t hesitate. All that went through her head were the words August Muntz had told her years before:
There are moments in the life of a photographer when a photograph passes in front of you, just a single photograph, that could change your life and the lives of those around you. That’s the decisive moment, Alys. You’ll see it before it happens. And when it happens, shoot. Don’t think, shoot.
She pressed the button just as the man pulled the trigger.
“The national revolution has begun!” the little man shouted in a powerful, grating voice. “This place is surrounded by six hundred armed men! No one leaves. And if there isn’t immediate silence, I’ll order my men to stick a machine gun up in the gallery.”
The crowd fell silent, but Alys didn’t notice, nor was she alarmed by the storm troopers who
had appeared from all sides.
“I declare the Bavarian government deposed! The police and the army have joined our flag, the swastika: May they hang from every barracks and police station!”
Another feverish cry erupted in the room. There was applause punctuated with boos and shouts of “Mexico! Mexico!” and “South America!” Alys was oblivious. The shot was still ringing in her ears, the image of the little man firing was still engraved on her retina, and her mind was stuck on three words.
The decisive moment.
I’ve done it, she thought.
Squeezing the camera to her chest, Alys dove into the crowd. Right now her only priority was to make it out of there and get to a darkroom. She couldn’t exactly remember the name of the man who’d fired the gun, though his face was very familiar; he was one of the many fanatical anti-Semites who shouted their opinions in the town’s taverns.
Ziegler. No . . . Hitler. That’s it—Hitler. The mad Austrian.
Alys didn’t believe this coup stood any chance at all. Who would follow a madman who had declared that he would wipe the Jews from the face of the earth? In the synagogues people were joking about idiots like Hitler. And the image she’d captured with sweat dripping down his forehead and the wild expression in his eyes would put that man in his place.
By which she meant a lunatic asylum.
Alys could barely make any headway through the sea of bodies. People had started shouting again, and some of them were fighting. One man smashed a beer glass on another’s head, and the dregs soaked Alys’s jacket. It took her almost twenty minutes to reach the other end of the hall, but there she found a wall of brownshirts armed with rifles and pistols blocking the exit. She tried to talk to them, but the storm troopers refused to let her through.
Hitler and the dignitaries he’d interrupted had disappeared through a side door. A new speaker had taken his place, and the temperature in the room continued to rise.
With a grim expression, Alys found a spot where she’d be as protected as possible and tried to think of a way to escape.
Three hours later her mood was bordering on desperation. Hitler and his acolytes had given a number of speeches, and the band in the gallery had played Deutschlandlied more than a dozen times. Alys had tried to move discreetly back into the main hall, in search of a window through which she could climb, but the storm troopers blocked her path there too. They weren’t even allowing people to go to the bathroom, which in such a crowded place, and with the waitresses still serving beer after beer, would soon be a problem. She’d already seen more than one person relieving himself against the back wall.
The Traitor's Emblem Page 18
