The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  She heard hurrying footsteps; the door was flung open and a slim but wide-hipped woman with long dark hair that swept her shoulders, was smiling at Anna - the affectionate smile the younger woman had known since her sixteenth year. ‘My dear girl! How marvellous you’re here.’ The grey eyes sparkled in the oval face; a complexion to die for, her girls had enthused; it had become a piece of the school’s lore.

  They embraced — a whiff of the old-fashioned eau de cologne. In a flash, Anna was reminded of her returns to the boarding school after holidays.

  Elisabeth von Bose stepped back, drew Anna into the hall and shut the door. ‘It’s lovely you’re early. You can help me finish getting ready.’ She tilted her chin back, suddenly serious, and looked into her former student’s eyes. ‘Is there something wrong, Anna?’

  Anna had frozen; she hadn’t begun to remove her hat, gloves or overcoat. The words came in a rush. ’Elisabeth, our tea parties and our opinions have reached the ears of one of the intelligence agencies. Thank God, not one of the terrible ones. But my informant says that’s only a matter of time.’

  She swallowed her breath, and patted her breast. Remembering Eugene’s caution about microphones, she’d lowered her voice. It seemed ridiculous but suddenly she was cautious also about speaking Eugene and Martin Hoffmann’s names. To this beloved woman!

  Elisabeth, calm-faced, watched her as though coaching her through a recitation.

  ‘Elisabeth, he says we should stop meeting, even put aside our friendship, until times are better.’ Her hands were meshed together. Eugene had said nothing about the times becoming better.

  Elisabeth studied Anna. ‘Dearest, these little gatherings . . . All of us intimate friends, all of us like-minded.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s true, some of us have attempted to help unfortunates with shelter and money. But quietly, with no fuss . . . We’ve been outspoken only among ourselves.’

  She took the younger woman’s gloved hands in her own and gazed down at them, frowning. In the past six months she and the countess had arranged shelter in Berlin for several Jews — old friends from what now seemed like another life. Right now, they had an artist and a concert musician hidden away. Both could have migrated years ago but, immersed in their cultural lives, they hadn’t. Now they needed passports and exit papers. She was talking with a Jewish gentleman, an ex-judge, a friend of her brother’s, about that.

  Watching her former teacher’s face, Anna thought desperately: What don’t I know?

  Elisabeth s frown vanished. ‘Here, take off your things and come in and help me. I haven’t set out the cakes and sandwiches yet.’

  Anna blanched. Is that all the response she would have? The tall woman already striding into the house glanced back at her. ‘Later,’ she said.

  ~ * ~

  The chinking of porcelain cups and saucers, of silver teaspoons and cake forks, laughter and chatter, filled Elisabeth’s salon. From one wall portraits of her parents looked down on the convivial gathering, on another, a venerable tapestry of a forest scene covered most of the space.

  Six women and one man sat in the room. The women were all from well-to-do backgrounds, late thirties to early fifties, and were dressed well. Anna glanced at each familiar face in turn. They could be bright and playful, but also serious-minded. They were domesticated women with husbands and children, with the exception of the countess, who was childless. Only Elisabeth and she were unmarried.

  Anna dropped her eyes, thinking: In this room, the essence of civilised life, outside, fear and persecution. With her Reichsbank perspective she realised that she was closer to the dark currents running beneath daily life than most of these women.

  She sipped tea. Doubts about these parties had been in her subconscious. Eugene had shot them to the surface.

  Surprising them all, the countess had brought a youngish Swiss man, the son of a dear friend. It was rare that guests came, especially men. He was a doctor who worked at a private hospital, about forty, a beanpole with thin blond hair that revealed a pink scalp. His face had a scrubbed pinkish look too. His manner was earnest and charming.

  The countess, a handsome dark-headed woman dressed in slightly old-fashioned clothes, had put a hand on the doctor’s arm as she’d introduced him in her loud confident voice. He’d sat down amid the women, obviously enjoying being the centre of attention. He was given tea and cake, and assessing looks.

  ‘What do you think of our Fuehrer, herr doctor?’ Frau Huber, a small woman with sparkling green eyes and a perfect petite figure, asked. She wasn’t one to hold back.

  The doctor, whose name was Lobe, nodded and looked around shrewdly at their faces. ‘I don’t wish to give offence — but I think I can speak frankly. You may be surprised to hear that not all we Swiss are taken in by him. Some are, but many of us are more level-headed.’

  He regarded the plate of pastries on his lap. ‘The Fuehrer doesn’t really care about the German people. Have you read his book?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘At the hospital I see some of their handiwork.’ He shook his head in disgust.

  ‘We’ve all seen things happening in the street,’ said Frau Maria Beck quietly. She was a dark, intense young woman who’d been one of Elisabeth’s star students, and was now married to the editor of a literary magazine.

  The countess said, ‘No doubt you’ve found kindred spirits among Berliners.’ In her early fifties, she was the oldest person there. Her diplomat husband was one of those in the Foreign Ministry who’d not joined the Party. She beamed her approval, thought: His mother really is one of my oldest and dearest friends.

  He nodded.

  ‘Do you return to Switzerland very often, doctor?’ The question came from Frau Kapp. Her blonde hair, set in permed waves, gave her plump, dead-white, unlined face a strict appearance. Her impressive diamond earrings added to the effect.

  ‘Quite often.’ He paused. ‘Could I offer my services in any way?’

  Frau Kapp hesitated.

  No, Anna thought. Don’t do it. You hardly know this man. She stared at his slender fingers, as easily holding the delicate plate as they would a stethoscope, willing Frau Kapp to be silent. Why did this man think it was safe to speak to them about the Fuehrer as he had? What did he know about them? As a Swiss national, did he feel immune from the consequences? She had gone cold inside.

  Frau Kapp decided. ‘Perhaps a letter or two to friends in Zurich?’

  The doctor bowed over his plate. ’It would be a great pleasure. I’ll be going home in a few days to visit my mother.’

  Elisabeth glanced at Anna, gave Frau Kapp a searching look and changed the subject.

  Anna found the doctor’s pink-rimmed eyes on her. He looked away. The others had begun talking about the difficulty in getting in coal for the winter.

  It was nearly 3.30 pm and the daylight was being stolen away. Elisabeth hurried around switching on electric lamps. To Anna, the thick trunks of the trees on the huge tapestry had stepped forward, were casting invasive shadows into the room. Even instilling the odour of damp, fallen leaves. Anna didn’t like this feeling of claustrophobia. She got up and began to put cups and saucers on a tray. The unease in the city had infiltrated the room, and the voices of these confident women had become thoughtful and hesitant.

  The party broke up at 4 pm. In the hall, Elisabeth touched Anna’s hand and whispered, ‘I will think carefully about what you’ve said. We should meet for lunch.’

  Lunch? Anna thought dully.

  But she didn’t know that Elisabeth had decided that there would be no more tea parties. It was a decision the teacher had been weighing for several weeks. The question asked of the doctor by Frau Kapp had decided her. He was safe enough, but it had been reckless. These good-hearted women were too naive; she probably was herself. Yet she’d always known how a careless remark like Frau Kapp’s would sound in certain quarters. She had her own bitter experience at her beloved school.

  She and the countess would continue to do what they must do, but she would separate th
e others from that. She cast an intense look after the young woman as she left the house. Anna was quite right, events had been moving far too fast for them to keep abreast of. How was dear Eugene? There’d been no time to talk about him. She shook her head sadly at the thought that Anna had withheld his name as her informant.

  ~ * ~

  Walking to the tram stop, Anna felt that the cold shadows from the trees in the old wall-hanging had penetrated her heart and her sense of foreboding became stronger.

  ~ * ~

  12

  F

  RAU SINGER, as she did every Sunday, travelled to Kreuzberg to see Helene Dortmund. Fritz stayed at home on these trips. Frau Singer was seventy-eight, and she worried that when the snow fell these visits would be beyond her as well. On her lap, she carried two small boxes of delicacies and the pharmacy-wrapped lotion for Else.

  The Dortmund twins had money. Even so, nursing home places were difficult and, despite Frau Singer’s best efforts, they’d finished up in institutions two kilometres apart. The twins had no family at all left in Germany.

  Frau Singer arrived at her first destination. Everything was as usual. Elegant in her fur coat and stylish fur hat, she walked into the familiar building. How would Helene be today? She no longer talked much, unlike her chattering sister . . .

  ‘Frau, I’m afraid Fräulein Dortmund is no longer here.’

  Thunderstruck, Frau Singer gazed at the senior nurse who’d intercepted her in the hall. ‘No longer here?’Almost a whisper.

  ‘She’s been taken to a sanatorium near Bremen where she can be better looked after. Her condition’s been getting worse, you know.’ The woman shot a distracted look down a corridor.

  Bremen! Frau Singer now absorbed the nurse’s unease.

  ‘Is there an address I can write to?’

  Reluctantly, the nurse entered a glassed-in room and consulted a book. She wrote something on a scrap of paper, came out and handed it to Frau Singer. The elderly Jewess gazed at it. When she looked up, the nurse was hurrying away.

  With a rising sense of dread, Frau Singer went out to catch another tram.

  Now the afternoon, steeped in fog-grey tones and a chilly silence, seemed pregnant with unspoken dangers; the suburb was as still as a graveyard; as deadly quiet as her thoughts.

  This isn’t right. She gazed at the Sunday street as if it might yield an explanation. She was shivering in her luxurious coat.

  Thirty minutes later she entered the other nursing home and went to Else’s room. Her knees sagged when she saw a stranger sitting in her friend’s chair.

  Frau Singer had faced many difficulties in the past three years. Quickly she recovered her composure and went to find the lovely nurse who cared for Else. But the nurse found Frau Singer first. ’I heard you’d come,’ she said. ’Fräulein Else has been sent away.’

  A deeper mystification came over Frau Singer’s lovely face, marked so sympathetically by the years. ‘But why, my dear fräulein? No-one said anything to me last Sunday.’

  The middle-aged nurse looked at the old lady with profound sympathy. Every year Frau Singer brought her a Christmas present, and gifts of thanks at other times. ’The authorities decided a few days ago.’

  ‘The authorities?’

  ‘The government.’ The nurse laid a hand on Frau Singer s arm. ‘It’s been happening with the incurable ... It will be no use trying to contact her, Frau Singer. Do you understand what I’m saying?’ Her voice was low, and she glanced around to see if they were overheard.

  Frau Singer nodded slowly, dully recording the wary ‘German glance’ — now a commonplace of life. Her vision was blurring with tears, her shoulders drooped.

  ‘Try to remember only the happy days in the past.’

  Frau Singer looked into the woman’s eyes and saw tears. ‘I will, my dear. Thank you, and may God be with you.’ She handed the two little boxes of delicacies to the nurse, then turned away and, for the last time, walked down the familiar corridor and out through the familiar lounge where Else had sat looking at the trees, listening to birdsong, and dreaming of her young life.

  An ambulance waited in the street. Two white-coated men and two black-uniformed SS stood beside it, smoking cigarettes. They watched Frau Singer cross the street and one made a remark in a low voice.

  She waited for a tramcar in the shelter at the stop across the road, clutching the wrapped bottle of lotion. But her mind was working quite clearly now. The time had arrived to start putting her plan into action. She needed to see Judge Rubinstein without delay.

  ~ * ~

  Sturmbannfuehrer Sack had been on duty for twelve hours. As he’d told Freda Brandt, he was well accustomed to long and irregular hours. State security didn’t align itself with any time-clocks. Nonetheless, on this Sunday afternoon, in his heated room in the building on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, he was beginning to feel weary.

  Very few of his colleagues were on duty, and the distant closing of doors, the occasional ringing of a telephone, the rare footfalls in the corridors, gave up mausoleum-like echoes. Several of the agents on duty were slumped on their desks sleeping.

  Over the weekend his Section 4 had been investigating several matters; following up leads which had so far not borne fruit. He’d nearly got the Jewish ex-judge, though. The fellow had slipped away only minutes ahead of the arresting agents. He’d been in hiding with a lawyer and his family in Wedding. The lawyer and his wife were in the cells downstairs. They weren’t Jewish; nonetheless, they had no future.

  They’d wept for their children but it was too late for that. The danger of old friendships. Time after time it was putting people into the hands of the state agencies. Their two children, a boy and a girl aged eight and six, were already in an orphanage. The Reich would take care of them. Everything was for the greater good. You had to see it that way. Some of the colleagues he worked with were scoundrels and sadists. That was unfortunate. He would’ve wished for their elimination from the service but it would never happen; you worked with the tools supplied.

  Such as the man whom he’d called in first thing this morning. The fellow had stepped into Sack’s office so silently that the agent had been startled to look up and find him there. Most colleagues crashed and banged around the place. Not this one. He’d smiled at Sack’s discomfort.

  He belonged to a specialist section; one that eliminated enemies of the state without going through formalities; a dark man no taller than Sack but much broader. Compact and erect, he sat motionless on a hard-backed chair. They’d only needed to confer for ten minutes. Sack had supplied the necessary details; the man had asked one or two questions, thought over the answers, and then risen to his feet.

  ‘The timing is the crucial part,’ Sack said.

  The man nodded, and left as silently as he’d arrived.

  At twelve, Sack went out to a café on Friedrichstrasse, ate sausage and mashed potato and drank a stein of beer. At 12.40 he hurried back to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.

  Now he was waiting for a man who’d telephoned him two hours ago. A part-time agent being run by one of Sack’s colleagues who was away in Munich. The fellow had said it was urgent.

  It was 4.15 pm when the man entered Sack’s room. The Gestapo agent stood up. ‘Heil Hitler.’

  ‘Heil Hitler!’Very correctly, Dr Lobe gave the salute.

  ‘Please sit down, Herr Doctor. What have you to report?’

  The Swiss removed his hat and overcoat. Already he was perspiring in the overheated room. ‘Yesterday, I attended a salon at the house of Fräulein Elisabeth von Bose, a former schoolteacher. Quite well known, I understand. Five other women were present. I believe the group meets from time to time . . .’ Face expressionless, Sack looked at the man’s thin-fingered hands resting on the desk-edge. ‘Yes?’

  The Swiss frowned, resentful at having been directed to this sallow, undersized individual. Still, he was a major. He cleared his throat. ‘From the general atmosphere, and a few snippets of conversation I overheard, there’
s no doubt in my mind that they’re against the Reich. Against the Fuehrer!’The thin fingers moved and laced together on his lap.

  Sack’s dark eyes studied the other’s pinkish face, the almost albinistic eyes. ’So?’

  At the careless tone, the Swiss flushed a deeper colour. ‘Mein herr, one woman took up my invitation to deliver letters to Zurich. I’m to receive one tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sack’s attention sharpened. ‘We must examine those letters before they’re delivered.’

  The Swiss sat back in his chair and nodded.

  Sack smiled, a fleeting grimace. ‘Mein herr, how did you find your way into this nest of traitors?’

  ‘Through a friend of my mother’s — Countess von Dreisler — who was also present.’