Solitaire

by Jane Thynne

  ‘I’m not late, am I?’

  The frost in the air turned to ice.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve just dealt,’ said Magda.

  ‘What are we playing? Not Führer Quartett, I hope,’ quipped Irene, in reference to the wildly popular schoolchild’s game. It was based on Snap and the cards were decorated with the faces of Nazi leaders, including the husbands of all of those present, as well as army generals, playwrights, musicians and other important Third Reich figures. One of them was Hitler’s dog.

  ‘I hardly think that would be appropriate,’ said Frau Speer, quietly.

  ‘Well, I’m absolutely parched so if you don’t mind, I’ll just wait out this round while you get on with your game.’ Irene clicked her fingers at the maid hovering at the far reaches of the room, who hurried off to secure a coffee cup.

  ‘In that case,’ said Clara, jumping up, ‘why don’t I keep you company?’

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I didn’t want to come. Here of all places.’

  Although they were out of earshot, at the far end of the drawing room, Irene had an intimate way of speaking, at once hushed and secretive, as though through the curtains of a confessional. She flung herself on the watered silk sofa and Clara followed suit.

  ‘Walter had to use every bit of persuasion to make me.’

  The types of persuasion open to Sturmbannführer Schellenberg ran like a shudder through Clara’s imagination.

  ‘He said he wants me to keep in with these wives. It reflects well on him. I’m supposed to help him in his career. Nothing about me and how I’m going to feel with all these women bitching about me.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  Irene gave Clara a frank look.

  ‘You have no idea. Frau von Ribbentrop has already been asking about my origins.’

  That Clara could well believe. The Foreign Minister’s wife had made the same apparently innocuous enquiries about her own background the previous year. In Nazi Germany, a question was as good as an accusation and an official inquiry was nine tenths of a denunciation.

  ‘Himmler had a team put on my mother back in Poland and they discovered my aunt’s married to a Jew. Walter says sit tight, but that kind of thing could be enough to stop our marriage. Added to which, Lina Heydrich over there has some absurd idea that Walter carries a torch for her. I mean my God, look at her.’

  Clara didn’t. It was well known that the Heydrich marriage, like so many in the senior Nazi circles, was in trouble. She recalled Hans Reuber’s comment about Heydrich and his frequent appearances at Salon Kitty.

  ‘All that velvet. She looks like a cushion. And she spends all her time feuding with Marga Himmler. Frau Himmler told me that when she began a coffee circle, Lina deliberately scheduled group callisthenics here instead and invited all the ladies to attend. Not that it’s had much effect.’

  She smoothed her own chiffon dress down over her slim hips, then sprang up and crossed to the photograph of Heydrich glowering into the camera like a wolf.

  ‘Even if she was attractive I can’t think she’d dare with this husband of hers. Walter says Heydrich’s like an animal of prey. He’s utterly ruthless. You’ve heard what Hitler calls him, haven’t you? The Man with the Iron Heart. That’s why Heydrich admires Walter. He sees him as a kindred spirit.’

  Clara was struck by the accuracy of Heydrich’s nickname. ‘You don’t think that, though, do you? I mean, you don’t see Walter as heartless?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Irene’s eyes clouded with hesitation in a way that Clara had noticed a lot recently. A refusal to see clearly what was staring you in the face was a common complaint in Berlin, and there was no obvious cure.

  ‘He’s brilliant, I know that . . .’

  She sighed, and fiddled with a bracelet of chunky yellow gold.

  ‘Trouble is, being brilliant brings its own problems. Walter’s been given a new operation now and he’s under tremendous stress. He’s not sleeping a wink.’

  ‘What’s this new job then? No . . .’ Clara laid a light hand on her arm. ‘Forget I asked that. You shouldn’t say. You’ve told me enough already.’

  This approach was generally successful. No one wanted to be reminded that they were speaking out of turn, so they tended to compensate by filling in more detail. Irene, however, looked forlorn.

  ‘I’d tell you if I knew. But he won’t say a word. I tried to sneak a read of his reports, but frankly, they’re so full of code letters they look like someone’s fallen backwards on a typewriter. They’re totally incomprehensible. When I ask Walter all he’ll say is that it’s a very important mission, something the old man – that’s what he calls von Ribbentrop – has requested, and it’s giving him nightmares.’

  ‘I’d have thought he’d be used to it. Stress, I mean. A man in his position.’

  ‘You’d think. I certainly am.’

  Irene glanced in the mantel mirror, automatically checking powder, lipstick and rouge, then she threw back her shoulders, pushed forward her ample breasts and braced herself, as if the forthcoming card game was a testing military engagement all of its own.

  ‘You want to know a secret? Walter’s having a desk built for his office with two machine guns embedded in it, so if anyone tries to assassinate him he can press a button and spray the room with bullets. That’s how careful he has to be. And he keeps a box of grenades behind a curtain. Whenever he goes abroad he wears a signet ring with a blue stone where he keeps his poison capsule.’

  She drowned her cigarette stub in the coffee cup.

  ‘But he’ll manage. Walter’s at the top of his game. That’s what he told me. He never gets it wrong. He doesn’t even need to hear them talking. He can smell a spy, he says.’

  It was another hour and a half before Clara could excuse herself and head for the S-Bahn back into town. Looking out at the fluorescent glare of the shops and offices through the blurry train windows, she remembered that there was no food in the apartment. Food was a constant preoccupation now, requiring significant planning if one was to get enough to eat, and by this time in the afternoon the shops would be stripped bare, with only a few bones remaining at the butcher’s and the odd crumb at the grocery store. Recent events had wiped her normal routine entirely from her mind and Clara realized she would have to stop on the way if she was to find anything to eat that night or the following morning.

  At Nollendorfplatz she entered a bakery. It was not her usual one and as she queued, she noted the air of tension among the other customers and a furtive jostling for the few remaining loaves of black rye bread with caraway seeds that remained behind the counter. The shoppers were shabbily dressed, their coats giving off a smell of damp wool and body odour, and Clara realized that they must be Jews, using their ration cards at the only time of day they were permitted, when most of the produce was gone. Everyone here must assume that she, too, was a Jew and they were right to assume it, of course, but they were not to know that. No one was.

  When eventually she was served, she found she had no ration tokens and had to offer cash. The baker considered her a moment with a sullen countenance. It was not strictly allowed, but he quoted an exorbitant sum, that Clara, after a moment’s hesitation, found in her purse.

  The baker took the notes and handed her the loaf.

  ‘I’ll keep the change, shall I?’ he said. ‘For charity?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  If playing cards were now the indoor pastime of choice and cinema a regular treat, the Saturday races at Hoppegarten, a short train ride east of Berlin, were everyone’s favourite day out. That included senior members of the regime, especially Goering and Goebbels, who could often be seen in the red-brick grandstand eyeing glamorous equine stars like Nereide, Alchimist and Ticino as eagerly as they would actresses on the red carpet. The only notable absentee was Hitler himself, who had proclaimed on many occasions that horse racing was the last remnant of a feudal society and would, as soon as he got round to it, be outlawed. Perhaps that was why people we
re making the most of it.

  Erich and Clara made their way through the gates towards the viewing paddock. The air was filled with the oniony grease of the Bratwurst stalls and the path resounded to the clatter of wooden-soled shoes and the tinny music of an organ grinder whose wizened monkey surveyed the passing citizens with ancient, liquid eyes. Back in Neukölln Erich’s grandmother was bedridden with emphysema and Clara reckoned it was good for the boy to get a break. Although he was devoted to her, Frau Schmidt had become imperious and demanding in old age and Erich’s life at home was punctuated by her quavering voice, constantly summoning him on some small errand. Rather than be cooped up with an invalid in a stuffy three-room apartment, she decided, the boy needed fresh air.

  And Clara needed Erich. Their tradition of Saturday outings, to the cinemas or the lakes or the swimming baths, was one that she guarded jealously. Erich was the single reason she had stayed in Berlin and her greatest respite from the anxieties that war brought. He had grown appreciably in the last year and now, at almost seventeen, he towered over her, his features sharpened, brows thicker and shoulders broader. His good looks attracted glances from the girls they passed and they were glances he returned. Erich was barely recognizable as the slight, nervous child Clara had met in her first month in Berlin, except that he remained the sole person for whom she would do anything.

  ‘How’s school?’ she asked, cursing herself for uttering the dullest possible question.

  Strolling along with his hands in the pockets of his Hitler Youth uniform, Erich shrugged.

  ‘I know you don’t like me saying this, Clara, but I’ve had enough of it. I like it, you know, but all my friends are the same. What’s the point of studying maths and logic and Kant when we could be doing something useful?’

  ‘Kant teaches you something useful. The moral law within you. Isn’t that one of his?’

  ‘Sure, I suppose. But the Categorical Imperative is pretty meaningless when your country’s at war.’

  ‘I would have thought it was more important than ever.’

  Erich sighed and resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. Instead he focused on the betting boards that were tipping Schwarzgold as the favourite in the next race.

  ‘Anyway,’ Clara coaxed, ‘you do your bit in the Hitler Jugend, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose. But HJ work is pretty childish. It’s just collecting scrap metal and delivering ration coupons and draft letters for other people, when actually it’s us who should be joining up. It’s crazy to be wasting time at school when my country needs me. You know how much I want to join the Luftwaffe. I’ve done pilot training and I can fly a glider. You’re pleased about that, aren’t you?’

  Clara was, but only because the alternative was worse. The previous year Erich had been offered a position in the Hitler Youth Streifendienst – a corps of hand-picked boys charged with enforcing internal discipline in the organization. The position was pretty much a spying job, investigating misconduct and subversion, inspecting uniforms, and informing the police of unsuitable elements, but it was an honour to be approached and promised a short cut to SS officer training. Yet Erich had turned it down, preferring to focus all his dreams on the Luftwaffe.

  ‘I hate thinking I won’t get a chance to fly for at least another year.’

  Clara hated to think of him flying at all, but if he did she prayed it would not be in the skies above England.

  ‘You’ll get your chance soon enough.’

  For a while they ambled along, people-watching. It was a blisteringly hot day and all shades of Berlin society were out in force, from factory workers relaxing with picnics on blankets to elegantly dressed ladies perched in cane chairs with china cups of tea, all watching the jockeys parading round the paddock, their mounts stamping the turf and tossing shiny heads. Only close observers would have noticed that there were more and finer horses than usual. In the past few weeks hundreds of thoroughbreds had been seized from the stables of the top Paris racing families – the Rothschilds, Sterns, Wertheimers and Wildensteins – and transported to the Reich. It was probably for the best, Clara thought. Cropping alien grass was a small price to pay to avoid being bombed or eaten.

  It was not until they reached the course barrier and secured themselves a good viewpoint, that Erich leaned on the railing and said, ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Better not be about joining up.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or philosophy. I’m afraid I’d be no help there.’

  ‘No. It’s not that.’

  From his top pocket he fished out a square of newspaper, folded and refolded so often that its creases were wearing thin, and angled his shoulder to shield it from prying eyes.

  ‘The fact is, with Oma being ill, I have to go in her room sometimes. Anyhow, when I was there the other day she asked me to look for medicine in her drawer and although I wasn’t searching for anything else, I found this.’

  Even before he had uncreased it, the image lifted from the ancient BZ am Mittag like the sepia glimpse of a ghost. For a moment it appeared to float before Clara’s vision, the teasing smile and complexion Pan-Caked to perfection, the pert nose and high brows above sceptical dark eyes. It was a face freighted with memory and pain. The official Ufa studio portrait of Helga Schmidt.

  Helga. The name ached within Clara like a cut that would never heal. Yet again she saw the blood on that Prenzlauer Berg pavement, and the beautiful leaking body that was broken but not quite dead. She saw the inquisitive crowd gathered around, and the open window five floors up from which Helga had fallen like a bird fledged too soon. Above the picture was a headline.

  Helga Schmidt plunges to her death. Actress was suicidal, say friends.

  For seven years Frau Schmidt had preserved this cutting of her only daughter, whose death, ‘when the balance of her mind was disturbed’, was the last newspaper write-up she was ever going to receive.

  ‘When I was young,’ Erich said sombrely as if such a time was irretrievably long ago, ‘my friends used to laugh about her. At school I knocked a boy out for what he said about my Mutti.’

  ‘I remember.’

  Clara had been contacted by her godson’s headmaster and was obliged to conjure all her charm – not to mention a school outing to the Ufa studios – to allay the man’s suggestion that Erich was a violent and ungovernable pupil who deserved to be expelled.

  ‘They said all sorts of things about her. And me.’

  ‘I know.’

  Mother’s boy. Son of a whore. No better than a Jew.

  ‘I didn’t care what they said about me, but I’d fight them for insulting my mother. But the worst thing, Clara, they said about her was that she was an Enemy of National Socialism.’

  So this was the heart of the matter. The ache that would not go away. Erich uttered the phrase like an obscenity, his eyes clouded with pain.

  ‘It’s a disgusting thing to say, but I have to know, Clara. Was it true? I can’t ask Oma. But was she?’

  What was Helga? A free spirit. By turns mordant, merry and vivacious. A girl who had taken plenty of hard knocks in pursuit of her acting dream but was not prepared to abandon it. A woman who looked National Socialism in the eye, understood it, and chose to laugh at it.

  ‘She was a wonderful woman.’

  ‘So why do people say bad things about her?’

  ‘She made jokes. That was her only crime. To make fun of the Führer. And not much fun at that.’

  Even as she said it, Clara could see how her words hurt Erich; loyalty to his mother and worship of the Führer colliding and cleaving inside him like some dreadful axe.

  ‘What kind of jokes?’

  Inappropriately a flood of jokes tumbled into her head. What does WHW stand for? Wir Hungern Weiter. We’re Still Hungry. Hitler and Goering are on the top of the Funkturm surveying the Reich. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on the sad faces of Berliners. Goering thinks for a moment then says, ‘Why don’t you jump of
f?’

  ‘Just silly things that made people laugh.’

  He frowned and corrected her automatically. ‘Laughing at Hitler isn’t silly.’

  ‘It can be. As you say, I knew her. All your mother wanted was for people to see the lighter side of life. Not to take things too seriously. And she was right.’

  For a second a maturity she had never witnessed in Erich seemed to pierce the boyish façade. Reality surfaced, like rocks revealed at low tide. He saw the awkward, jagged complexity of life that could not be labelled, categorized, or locked away. His face was sharp with love for a mother who had refused to fit someone else’s idea of what a woman should be. Then the water returned, his shook his head, and the world was once more black and white.

  ‘She wasn’t right.’ An angry flush had risen on his cheeks. ‘If she was alive I would have told her. We’re all lucky to live under the Führer. If you don’t take things seriously, you get a decadent society. Everyone knows that. Only a weak nation disrespects its leaders.’

  ‘And only a bad son disrespects his mother.’ Clara’s voice had an edge of steel. ‘All that matters, Erich, is that Helga adored you. She thought the world of you. She wasn’t some dangerous asocial, she just had a good sense of humour. Laughter was part of her. No one was going to get the better of her.’

  ‘They did though, didn’t they?’

  This was the nearest they had ever come to discussing how his mother had died. Clara had always thought that Erich had no idea of his mother’s liaison with a brutal stormtrooper capable of volcanic violence. Or that the regime had considered Helga Schmidt better off dead. Yet now, it seemed, he knew more than she could have guessed.

  ‘Whatever happened, you should be proud of her.’

  He clenched his jaw. ‘I am. But not that part of her.’

  At that moment the ground trembled and a blur of glistening chestnut pelts thundered by, spittle flying from the bits in their mouths, and churned clods of turf bouncing into the air. Ragged cheers arose, making conversation impossible. Once the horses had passed Clara began to speak, but Erich interrupted.