The Foreigner
Page 59
“Yes,” Marie interjected. “Almost certainly that’s the letter cook has gone to fetch. Let’s pin all our hopes on Mama’s letter doing the trick, whatever it says.”
Remembering how absent-minded cook could be, Hugo expressed an extra hope: “Dora will find it, won’t she?”
“Beyond question,” Marie told him reassuringly. “You see, as a precaution in case she died before a need for the letter arose, she told me that she keeps it safely between the pages of her Bible at her bedside. We’ll send it with Herr Beck, who’ll deliver it personally to the Reich Chancellery.”
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He lay naked in his urine and faeces on the floor of a room at number nine Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Believing all his bones to be broken he made no attempt to move and in any event lacked sufficient strength. He had reached the point where death would be welcomed.
There was a terrible stench. He had been force-fed with castor oil and then left to float in his own excrement. He seemed at times to be floating and at others to be drowning. Miraculous that he had not drowned, after the tube had been rammed into him …
Ludwig – standing astride him – had rammed it to the back of his throat, forcing it in as far as it would go before ordering a subordinate to turn the tap on. The bastard had laughed as icy water gushed relentlessly in and Otto started swelling. He was still laughing when, with Otto blown up like a balloon, he jumped on to his stomach and continued jumping as if on a spring.
The resulting explosion had had him holding up his hands in apparent disgust as Otto’s guts were distributed to the farthest corners of the room, where they now hung from the sink, the walls and the ceiling. Either they were hanging there or this whole episode was some diabolical dream.
Whether a dream or real, Otto now knew Ludwig as the devil incarnate. He was not a man in any accepted sense and his Schadenfreude surpassed understanding.
What a fool Otto had been, to bait him! He had been foolish to an asinine degree, but his foolishness had been born of ignorance. Oh, to be ignorant again of the degree of evil in Ludwig! Oh, to have stayed in Britain instead of letting financial incentive colour his perceptions!
While breaking his fingers, Ludwig had told him that after Mama’s death he had gone through her private papers and found the Agreement that had brought Otto back to Bohemia. How casually he had done the telling … how brutally he had proceeded then to exact his revenge!
Secrets, Otto had come to see, were a bad thing. There should be no secrecy in families - no favouritism. Nevertheless, Mama could not possibly be blamed for loving Otto more than she ever loved Ludwig.
He groaned. The pain was such that it was a wonder he wasn’t dead yet. Impossible, surely, that the human body could endure such agony – if indeed he was human still. Ludwig’s tortures had dehumanised him to such an extent that he was probably just jetsam, adrift in a river of unwanted odds and ends.
Oh, for someone to turn the light off! He would so welcome darkness but the light was permanently on, its glare merciless. It permeated every fibre of his being, filling him like a grotesque beacon … bursting his head. There was no escape from its insidious invasiveness except death.
Would he ever see Marie again? He would not see her in this life but had confidently expected to spend eternity with her in heaven. Now, having met with the devil and tasted his malevolence, Otto knew for sure that there was a hell, but as for the rest …
Reserving judgment on whether a loving God would permit Ludwig’s atrocities, he cursed his own lifelong tendency to procrastinate. If he had made his decision sooner to leave Bohemia … if he had even refused Marinka’s offer of the meal that delayed his departure from Prague … if … if … if …
In the shadow of the Schneekoppe he had promised Mama to stop underestimating Ludwig. If he had wholly kept his promise, he would have left Bohemia long since and been spared this torment. Yes, yet another ‘if’ …
Mama had also promised him something. Lying there, racked with pain and utterly defenceless, he could suddenly hear her gentle voice promising: “Wherever I am and in whatever form in future, I shall still be your mother … and near you when most needed.” He heard and was strangely comforted, as if in her presence. She was here with him: there was a heaven!
And he would be reunited with Mama upon death. He would not just be sensing her presence: he would actually be seeing her again. Oh, the joy of that reunion – oh, the anguish of being parted from Marie!
Mama had given him life; Marie was his life. So he must somehow live, not die …
Squinting, Otto opened his eyes, shutting one immediately and focusing the other on his intestines. There they were, just as he had thought, plastered over the wall. Or was it his intestines that he saw?
The splodges were surely too uniform to be assorted bits of him – and above them was some writing. In such unrelenting light he doubted he could read the individual words, although he could distinguish that they were written in Cyrillic script.
They floated away and then, gradually, back again. He could see that the first letter of the first word was ‘R’. What was the next letter? He deciphered ‘U’, which preceded ‘S’, then a second ‘S’. ‘RUSSLAND’, he eventually read. Persevering while also giving his eyes frequent rests he finally comprehended the whole heading: ‘RUSSLAND … UND … DIE … NACHBARSTAATEN’. So the splodges were parcels of land … and it was a map of Russia and her neighbours that he had mistaken for his entrails!
While torturing, Ludwig could look at his and Hitler’s future empire on the wall. How very cosy for him: how very sickening!
As still more water poured from him, Otto made a conscious decision. He was not going to die since if he died Ludwig would win. Against all the odds he would stay alive … and find some way out of this prison. Come to think of it, where had Ludwig gone? It was strange that he had not stayed to finish the job off.
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Ludwig was angry at having been interrupted in his slow disposal of Otto. Something most important must have come up, though. Why else would he have been summoned so unexpectedly and urgently to the Chancellery? Perhaps Adolf wanted top-level talks about annexing Czechoslovakia now that Anschluss of Austria was accomplished. Yes, almost certainly … and Ludwig’s collaboration was essential to the Fuehrer’s plans for the east!
As his driver transported him between Gestapo headquarters and the Reich Chancellery, he congratulated himself on his importance to the Party. He was needed as never before … and it was thanks to him that the Berger name would stand for something and be perpetuated. Otto’s lucky star had set now, or was in the process of setting, and it would be Ludwig Berger who would go down in history as the man who helped Hitler expand into Russia. He had waited a long time to get even with his brother and soon he would be more than even with him. The torture was just a small part of it. Oh, there was enormous pleasure in watching Otto suffer and having a hand – and both feet! – in his suffering, but the very best thing was knowing that Otto’s life was almost over whereas Ludwig’s was in a sense just beginning. Helping Hitler was akin to being born again – and freed from the constraints of the past as the Nazis laid the foundations for a Golden Age. The future looked so bright that Ludwig was dazzled by its brightness and by the knowledge that he alone of Mama’s three sons had had the perspicacity to follow where Hitler led. Yes, Otto had amounted to nothing at the end and Rudolf had never amounted to anything, yet the name Ludwig Berger would one day reap paeans of praise!
Were Mama alive today – or, better still, tomorrow – she would see that she had misjudged Hitler and Ludwig totally and that she had been wrong in her bias toward Otto. She would probably ask Ludwig’s forgiveness for showing his brother such favouritism … and would very likely tell him how proud she was of her eldest son. His eyes misted and he found himself missing Mama as much as he had missed her when she first left him.
But his car had drawn to a halt and he had an appointment to keep with Hermann Goering …
Goering was fingering something on the desk in front of him. His eyes glistened as he commented: “You invariably have plenty to say about things. I’m interested to hear what you have to say about this.”
“What is it?”
“A letter that has been hand-delivered.”
“A letter for me?”
“Yes, indeed! The man who delivered it said that it must be given to you personally with the utmost urgency.”
“Who was he?”
“He went, I believe, by the name of Beck.”
“Herr Beck was here, in the Chancellery?”
“Correct.”
Expecting the letter to be an eleventh hour plea from Marie, Ludwig relaxed, holding out his hand and demanding: “Give it to me.”
“Not so fast!” Goering smiled thinly as he said: “The contents, I was given to understand, are a matter of life and death.”
“They would be, if my sister-in-law had anything to do with them. She’s a past master at making a drama … ”
“The letter,” Goering butted in, “is not from your sister-in-law, but from your … mother.”
“Mama?” As Ludwig snatched the envelope from the Director’s hands he began: “It can’t be! She … ” He saw his name written in her familiar handwriting and wondered whether he was going mad. This must be some trick. The missive couldn’t be from Mama and yet there could be no mistaking that distinctive script. What on earth was happening? His knees buckled beneath him and he sat down suddenly.
Goering said: “Don’t mind me. I shall not disturb you as you read.”
Ludwig had no intention of reading the letter there. He needed privacy. But his legs felt so weak …
Turning the envelope over he saw to his horror that the seal had been broken. “Is this your doing?” he demanded.
“It certainly is! I had to establish, didn’t I, that I was right to bring you away from your pressing Gestapo business?”
“You had to establish nothing of the kind.” Ludwig discovered to his utter disgust that he was almost crying. He could not seem to get to grips with the shock of seeing Mama’s writing. “How dare you read a letter that’s clearly addressed to me?”
“Easily!” Goering now smiled broadly, multiplying his chins. “And it made fascinating reading. I’m sure our Fuehrer will be diverted by it. You will, of course, be acquainting him with the information it contains? He’ll be interested – as I shall – to know how you intend resolving any dilemma you might have over Otto.”
Ludwig knew of no dilemma. He only knew that he would kill Goering if he stayed in his presence another minute. A mixture of fury and panic fired him with the necessary impetus to rise from his chair and make for the door. Once there, he turned and threatened the Director: “You haven’t heard the last of this. I’ll see to it that you’re brought to task for your insolence.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?” the fat man asked contemptuously. “Wake up to the fact that Adolf only tolerates your caricature personality because of Berger money. Once your source dries up you’ll see how speedily he dispatches nobodies. Heil Hitler!”
With Goering’s words ringing in his ears and Mama’s letter in his hand, Ludwig ran along the outer corridor little caring who saw. Finding a room free of feverish Anschluss activity he then shut himself in, locking the door behind him. The day that had started so well was suddenly deteriorating beyond all imagining. He neither believed nor trusted Goering, who had always envied him his rapport with Hitler. But there could be no disputing the fact of Mama’s handwriting. What could she possibly have written … and why, when she had obviously written it years since, had her letter only just been delivered?
Sitting on a chair by the window and staring out for a moment across the rooftops of Berlin, Ludwig subsequently took his courage in both hands and extracted three sheets of paper from the envelope. Examining these shakily, he saw to his astonishment that the third was his birth certificate which he had never seen before. Ignoring it for the time being, he gave his full attention to Mama’s lengthy letter, reading:
Schloss Berger, August 1934
‘My dearest Ludwig
I write knowing that my time on earth is limited ...and hoping that you will never need to read what I have written. If this seems odd to you, read on as I try to offer an explanation.
The very fact that you are reading these words is significant. You see, my instructions will be that the letter will only be delivered if you do something that puts Otto’s life seriously at risk. So I can conclude in advance that what was once rivalry between you two has now exploded into full-blown enmity. How sad that is … and how saddened I am by it! No mother wants her children to be enemies … and I have always tried to treat you as my child.
You will be wondering about my meaning. The fact is, my dearest, that you have been my son in name only. Unlike Rudolf and Otto, you were not the fruit of my womb but of another woman’s. You do, however, share their father – Antonin Leopold Berger. So you are, as it were, half a Berger by birth … but your true mother was my servant.
I must take you back now to the beginning. When I arrived in Schloss Berger as a bride I doubt there was a happier wife in the world. I loved my husband with my whole heart and soul and became his so completely that it was no surprise to me when I fell for a baby almost immediately. It was some months later that I saw one of my maids swelling even as I was swelling and – knowing that Gerda was unmarried – I asked her the name of her lover. I intended, you see, to advocate marriage – and to intercede on her behalf if it would help her. Imagine, therefore, my shock when she answered rather boldly that she had been ‘laid by the Master’! Yes, my Antonin (as I had thought of him) was already faithless to me – and so brutally! If he had had to be unfaithful could he not have confined his attentions to our own kind - and strayed farther than our castle? I later learned from his own lips that he had bedded Gerda in our marriage bed. That knowledge led directly to the miscarriage of my baby.
Gerda, who was alone in the world, died three days after giving birth to hers. By the time of her death your birth had already been registered, with Antonin – being Antonin and in certain respects a moral man – naming himself as the baby’s father. He told me that he had to assume responsibility for your welfare, being obligated to see that his son had certain advantages. He could not seem to grasp my feelings in the matter. He certainly had not shared my grief after I miscarried. Perhaps that was because although we had lost our baby he still had Gerda’s. Whatever his reasoning, after your mother’s death we were in a sense both left as protectors of her son – hers and Antonin’s. I cannot, as you know, resist young things – and there you were, so young and so helpless. So I took you in, bringing you up as my own, Ludwig, and coming to love you as you grew almost as much as if you had been my flesh and blood.
But you were not, which might explain why I didn’t quite succeed in treating you as Rudolf’s and Otto’s equal … and why I am calling on you now to spare Otto. If I have been a good mother to you then please be a good son to me. It should surely not be too much to ask of you that you let Otto live. I ask it now with all my heart. Do your brotherly duty, sparing him just as I spared you long ago from a very different kind of life to the one you led as a full-blooded Berger son in Herrlichbach. My beloved son Otto’s fate rests with you and your conscience.
I who have
nurtured you well take my leave of you now.
Remember that I loved you as my own … and that, if the good Lord permits, I shall be looking over your shoulder as you read this.
Bless you, my dearest.
Ever lovingly – Mama’
She was not his mother! He was not – and never had been, never could have been – her beloved son. No wonder she had treated Otto and Rudolf differently from how she had treated him. It was astonishing that she had taken him in.
Shocked almost beyond reasoning Ludwig sat very still, trying to think. How Mama must have hated him in the beginning! Most women in the same situation would have hated him to such a degree that they would have wanted him out of their sight, outside their memory. But not Mama, who had had the softest heart in Christendom – no, having lost her own baby and been faced with a motherless infant, she could not bring herself to turn him away. She was a saint … but oh, the shame!
Far from being the man he had always thought himself to be, he was a nothing: a nobody. Papa did a wicked thing and the thing he did resulted in Ludwig. He had not even done it with a woman of his own class. How could he have bedded a servant and then expected his young bride to accept the resulting child, bringing it up as a Berger? There could be no comprehending such insensitivity, no forgiving it. Terrible to think of poor, darling Mama being saddled with such a man as him!
She was, though, not Ludwig’s mother …
His entire life had been a lie based on the belief that he was Mama’s son. It was beyond imagining that he was not, whereas Otto was. It was beyond endurance.
Did Otto know that Ludwig was not his true brother? No, he could not know. Knowing, there was no question but that he would have gloated openly. Mama had taken Ludwig’s shameful secret to the grave with her.
So only he knew that she was not his mother. And he need tell no-one, so life could continue as before.