by John Lawton
Rod ignored this.
‘What matters, what matters now is that I should be here. My father doesn’t see that. I should be here. So should you.’
‘Quite. Except, of course, that we should both be in Vienna.’
§ 4
15 March
Berggasse, Vienna
Martha showed every courtesy to the SS thugs who had burst into her dining room. Gesturing to the table, where she had piled up her housekeeping money she invited them to ‘help themselves’ as though it were a plate of sandwiches and they guests for afternoon tea. They stuffed their pockets like beggars at a banquet. Then they stared. They had probably never been in an apartment quite like this in their lives.
Could they feel the burden of dreams?
Martha’s daughter, Anna, sensing that they would not be satisfied with the best part of a week’s housekeeping, knowing that they undoubtedly subscribed to the Nazi notion that all Jews were misers and slept on mattresses stuffed with banknotes, went into the other room, beckoned for them to follow and opened the safe for them. ‘Help yourselves, gentlemen’ – to six thousand schillings.
Even this was not enough. They hesitated at the door to her father’s study – she would have little choice but to step between them and block the way with her own body – when the door opened and a diminutive, white-haired, white-bearded man appeared before them, glaring at them silently with the eyes of Moses, the eyes of Isaiah, the eyes of Elijah. Behind him they could see row upon row of books, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, more books than they had ever thought existed. The old man said nothing. He was a good foot shorter than the biggest of the SS men, and still he stared at them. Did they know these eyes saw into the depths of man?
‘We’ll be back,’ they said. And left.
Could they feel the burden of dreams?
§ 5
The next day Professor Nicholas Lockett, of King’s College, London, a lanky Englishman so English his furled umbrella remained furled in the worst of weathers, a man possessed of size 12 and a half feet, a man passionate about his subject, arrived in Berggasse expressly charged by the Psychoanalytic Society of Great Britain to impress upon Sigmund the necessity of leaving. Sigmund needed impressing.
He stretched back on the wide, red chenille-covered couch reserved for his patients, stared at the ceiling and said.
‘My dear Lockett, I am too . . . old.’
‘Nonsense . . . you are . . .’
‘. . . Incapable of kicking my leg high enough to get into bed in a wagon-lit!’
‘You are Psychoanalysis. Where you are . . . it is. The Society is a moveable feast.’
‘Alas, Vienna is not. It is quite securely fixed to the banks of the Danube. I’ve lived here since I was four. If at all possible, I’d like to die here. To leave now would be . . . like a soldier deserting from the ranks.’
Lockett did not hesitate to be blunt. Perhaps it was the prone, patient-like position that Sigmund had adopted.
‘More aptly . . . to remain would be like being the last officer on the Titanic. If you stay, that end may come quicker than you might think.’
‘Quicker than I desire?’
‘I don’t know. How fondly do you desire death?’
‘One does not need to desire what is inevitable. It is a waste of desire. Desire what is possible, desire what is merely likely.’
‘Very neat. Is that original or is it Marcus Aurelius?’
‘Need you ask? I am desire’s biographer.’
‘But you’ll come?’
‘Where? The French will admit me, as long as I agree not to be a burden on the state and starve to death. The English . . .’
‘. . . Will let you in.’
‘The English have closed their gates on Europe.’
‘No we haven’t. It’s not at all like that.’
‘What are you saying, Lockett? That the indifference of the English is an aberration, a temporary aberration?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘Fine. Get me out. Get us all out.’
A dismissive wave of a hand in the air.
Now Lockett had cause to hesitate. It was not simply that the old man’s assertion was unconvincing – he was far from impressed yet – there were the flaws in his own insistence too.
‘It’s not entirely straightforward. It’s possible. It’s most certainly possible. I’d even say it was likely. It’s really a matter of who you know.’
‘Was it not ever thus? When was it not thus?’
‘I mean – who you know in England. Who you know who might be . . . well, who . . . who . . . who might be in Who’s Who?’
‘My dear Lockett, you sound like an owl.’
‘A few names I could approach on your behalf, perhaps?’
‘Do you know Alexei Troy?’
‘You mean Sir Alex Troy – the newspaper chap?’
‘The same.’
‘Where on earth did you –’
‘A patient. You will understand, Lockett, that this is strictly between ourselves. You have read my ‘The Case of the Immaculate Thief’?’
‘Naturally.’
‘That was Alex Troy.’
Lockett was silent – all he could think was ‘Good Bloody Grief!’
‘The Alex Troy of 1907–8. He had not been long in Vienna. He had landed up here after his flight from Russia. Or, to be exact, from the 1907 Anarchist Conference in The Hague. He turned up on my doorstep the day after it finished. I treated him all that winter. Indeed, he lay on this very couch. Shortly afterwards he moved to Paris, and I believe from Paris to London, where, as they say at the end of tuppenny novellettes, he prospered.’
Prospered, Lockett thought, was hardly precise. Troy was, and there was no other phrase for it, filthy rich. But then he had begun as a thief, as Freud would have it, an immaculate and far from filthy thief. One to whom not a speck of dirt could stick, either to the clothing or the conscience, it would seem.
‘We did not keep in touch. Merely the odd letter from time to time – more often than not when an English translation of something or other of mine came out. His German was never good, after all. But I think I can safely say he is unlikely to have forgotten me.’
‘Quite,’ said Lockett.
‘Will he do?’
‘Well, he knows everyone. That’s undeniable. I doubt there’s a politician in England that would not take a telephone call from Alex Troy.’
§ 6
19 March
Leopoldstadt, Vienna
Krugstrasse was a street of tailors. Beckermann’s shop stood next to Bemmelmann’s, Bemmelmann’s stood next to Hirschel’s, Hirschel’s next to Hummel’s. The shop beyond Hummel’s had stood empty for nearly a year now. Ever since old Schuster had packed his bag and caught a train to Paris. He’d tried to sell the shop, but the offers were derisory. From Paris he wrote to Hummel: ‘Take the stock, Joe, take all you want. Take the shop, it’s yours. I’d rather see it burn than sell it to some Jew-hating usurer for a pittance.’
Not that he knew it but Schuster would almost have his way. It would be Hummel who watched the shop burn.
The following week Schuster wrote, ‘Forget the shop, Joe. Leave Leopoldstadt. Leave Vienna. Leave Austria. How long can it be safe for any Jew?’
The day before the German annexation the local Austrian SA had rampaged carelessly down the street of tailors, smashed Hirschel’s windows and beaten up Beckermann’s grandson, who was unfortunate enough or stupid enough to be out in the street at the time. Most people had more sense. Had the SA been less than careless they could have taken out every window in the street and looted what they wished. No one would have stopped them, but the rampage had its own momentum and, once it had gathered speed, roared on from one target to the next, glancing off whatever was in the way. Hummel and Beckermann’s grandson helped Hirschel board up his window.
‘Is there any point?’ Hirschel had said. ‘They’ll be back.’
B
ut a week had passed, a week in which many Jews had been robbed of all they possessed, some Jews had fled the city and some Jews had taken their own lives, but the mob had not returned.
At first light on the morning of the 19th, a German infantryman banged on the doors all along the street with his rifle butt.
Bemmelmann was first to answer.
‘You want a suit?’ he said blearily.
‘Don’t get comical with me grandad! How many people live here?’
‘Just me and my wife.’
‘Then get a bucket and a scrubbing brush and follow me.’
Then he came up to Hummel, shadowed in the doorway of his shop. Hummel had not been able to sleep and was already dressed in his best black suit.
‘Going somewhere, were we?’
Hummel said, ‘It’s the Sabbath.’
‘No – it’s just another Saturday. Get a bucket, follow me!’
By the time he got back from the scullery every tailor in the street was standing with a bucket of water in his hand. Old men, and most of them were; not-so-young men, and Hummel was most certainly the youngest at thirty-one; men in their best suits, pressed and pristine; men in their working suits, waistcoats shiny with pinheads, smeared with chalk; men with their trousers hastily pulled on, and their nightshirts tucked into the waistband.
The German lined them up like soldiers on parade. He strutted up and down in mock-inspection, smirking and grinning and then laughing irrepressibly.
‘What a shower, what a fuckin’ shower. The long and the short and the tall. The fat, the ugly and the kike! Left turn!’
Most of the older men had seen service in one war or another and knew how to drill. Beckermann had even pinned his 1914–18 campaign medals to his coat as though trying to make a point. Those that knew turned methodically. Those that didn’t bumped into one another, dropped buckets, spilt water and reduced the German to hysterics. Well, Hummel thought, at least he’s laughing. Not punching, not kicking. Laughing.
He led them to the end of the street, to a five-point crossroads, where the side streets met the main thoroughfare, Wilhelminastrasse. In the middle of the star was a long-parched water fountain, topped by a statue of a long-forgotten eighteenth-century burgomaster. Someone had painted a toothbrush moustache on the statue – it was unfortunate that the burgomaster had been represented in the first place with his right arm upraised – and around the base in red paint were the words ‘Hitler has a dinky dick!’
‘Right, you Jew-boys. Start scrubbin’!’
They scrubbed.
When they had finished the message was still more than faintly visible. Gloss paint did not scrub so well. And they’d none of them been able to reach the moustache.
The tailors stood up, their knees wet, their trousers soggy.
‘We can scrub no more off,’ Hummel said as politely as he could.
‘Who said anything about any more scrubbin’?’ said the German.
He took a dozen paces back and raised his rifle. Bemmelmann sagged against Hummel’s chest in a dead faint. Hummel heard the gentle hiss as Beckermann pissed himself. Heard Hirschel muttering a prayer.
But the rifle carried on upwards, drawing a bead on the statue’s head, then the crack as it fired and chips of stone showered down on Hummel. The second crack and the stone head split open and two chunks of rock heavy enough to stove in a man’s skull bounced off the cobbles behind him and rolled away.
‘Right,’ said the German. ‘Pick your feet up Jew-boys. And follow me.’
Hummel roused Bemmelmann.
‘Where am I?’ the old man said.
‘In hell,’ Hummel replied.
§ 7
Hummel had no difficulty seeing himself and his neighbours as Vienna saw them from the early-morning doors and windows, in the eyes of women shaking tablecloths and in the eyes of unshaven men still munching on their breakfast roll, clutching their first cup of coffee. A raggle-taggle bunch of damp and dusty Jewish tailors led by a bantam-cock of a soldier, strutting while they straggled – a recognisably barmy army. Every so often the German would try to kick a little higher, but, clearly, the goose step was not as easy as it looked and needed more practice than the man had given it, and was all but impossible whilst turning around every couple of minutes to urge on his charges. It might have been better to herd them like pigs or cattle, but Hummel could see the thrill of leadership in the way the man stuck out his chest and kicked out his legs. He’d probably never led anything in his life before. He shouted, they shuffled. Down to the river, across the Aspern Bridge, along Franz Josef’s Kai and into the ancient heart of Vienna.
The German yelled ‘Halt’.
Hummel was wondering why he could not just yell ‘stop’ – as though there was any particular military relevance to a word like ‘halt’ – when he realised where they were. Outside the Ruprechtskirche. Probably the oldest church in the city – some said it had stood twelve hundred years already. It was a small church. A simple, almost plain exterior. Not a touch of grandiosity in its conception or its accretions. What desecration now? Of course, the final desecration would be if this idiot, this tinpot Boney at the front, were to marshal them inside. Hummel had never been in this or any other Christian church.
A crowd had their backs to them. The German parted a way with his rifle and Hummel found himself on his knees once more, his bucket and brush set down before him, facing a large bright blue letter ‘H’. Beckermann plumped down next to him, the bucket obscuring the letter. Hummel looked to his left wanting, for reasons that were inaccessible to him, to know what word he was obliterating now. The man next to him was hunched over, scrubbing vigorously, the letter already half-erased. Hummel knew him. He could not see his face, but he knew him. He looked at the blue wide-pinstripe of the man’s back, and he knew the suit. He had made it himself not two months ago for a young violinist named Turli Cantor.
Cantor did not turn. Hummel dunked the brush, gazed outward at the mob and bent his head to scrub. They had an audience – a crowd of onlookers who seemed to Hummel to be neither gloating nor commiserating. He had heard that the mobs could be as vicious as the SA, jeering and kicking as rabbis were dragged from their homes to clean public lavatories. This lot showed no inclination. They were watching with the casual half-attention of a crowd watching a street entertainer who they found just distracting enough to pause for, but who would be off the minute the hat was passed. So that was what they were? Street entertainment. The Famous Scrubbing Jews of Vienna. Roll up, roll up and watch the kikes on their knees on the steps of a Christian church. He looked again. They were blank, expressionless faces. Perhaps they had no more wish to be there than he had himself. The troops standing between the Jews and the mob weren’t ordinary soldiers like the one who had led him here. They were black-uniformed, jackbooted German SS.
Hummel was making good progress with his ‘H’ when he felt a change in the mood of the mob. He risked an upward glance. The SS were all standing stiffly upright – perhaps this was what was meant by ‘at attention’? – and the crowd had parted to let through an officer in black and silver.
From his left he heard Cantor whisper, ‘My God. Wolfgang Stahl!’
For the first time his eyes met Cantor’s. ‘I have known Wolf all my life,’ Cantor said, his voice beginning to rise above a whisper, ‘Surely he will save us?’
Cantor stood, clumsily, one foot all but slipping from under him on the wet stone flag and uttered the single syllable, ‘Wolf.’
An SS trooper shot him through the forehead.
The crowd scattered, screaming. This was not what they had paid to see. Hummel rose – afterwards he assigned the word ‘instinctively’ to his action – only to feel the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, forcing him back down, and the sound of the German soldier’s voice saying, ‘Don’t be a fool. You can’t help him. You can only get yourself killed. You and all your mates.’
Hummel saw a boot push Cantor’s body over, saw the black hole between C
antor’s eyes, saw the click of the heels as the same boot came together with its mate and saluted the officer. Then he twisted his head slightly, enough to make the German tighten his grip, and saw the black leather of the officer’s gloves drawn tight across his knuckles. Then one hand rose – the salute returned. The man turned and all Hummel saw was his retreating back and the movement of SS troopers across the steps, and then a voice was shouting ‘Show’s over’, and someone he could not see at all was dragging Cantor’s body away.
They scrubbed until the graffiti was washed away. They scrubbed until the blood was washed away.
Slouching home Hummel asked Hirschel what the word had been.
‘Schuschnigg,’ Hirschel replied. ‘And it may be the only memorial our chancellor ever gets.’
§ 8
Death notwithstanding, it felt a little like a kindergarten outing. The German saw them all the way back to Krugstrasse. It was a curiously paternal attention. He’d even slowed the pace of the march to the weary shuffle of old tailors wholly unaccustomed to walking four or five miles in the course of a day. When Beckermann had dropped his bucket and declared that he could not go on – ‘Shoot me now. It would be a blessing’ – the German had picked up the bucket and urged him on with ‘Don’t make me waste my bullets, Grandad.’ Now, he stood in the alley as Hummel unlatched his door, waiting.
‘Yes,’ said Hummel. ‘There was something else?’
‘Too bleedin’ right there is. I saved your life today. You damn near got yourself shot.’
‘You are surely not standing there waiting for me to say “thank you”?’
‘I ain’t waitin’ for nothin’.’
And he turned and walked off, and Hummel could not help the feeling that the slouch of his shoulders, the bantam-strut of morning long since worn out, was partly of his own making, that his ingratitude had caused it. But he could not find it in him to feel blame.
