by Alan Furst
He had, and showed it.
“That he’s gone. That he left for work one morning, a month ago, and was never seen again. Even though some of us, the ones who could, made telephone calls, talked to people, former friends, who might be able to find out, for the sake of old friendship, but even they were unsuccessful. Too deep, even for them, in the Nacht und Nebel, night and fog, Hitler’s very own invention-that people should simply vanish from the face of the earth, a practice dear to him for its effect on friends and family.”
“When are you leaving, Christa? What date, what day?”
“And, worse, much worse, in its way, is that when he disappeared, nothing happened to the rest of us. You wait for a knock on the door, for weeks, but it doesn’t come. And then you know that, whatever happened to him, he didn’t tell them anything.”
The taxi stopped a block from her house, in a neighborhood at the edge of the city, a curving street of grand homes with lawns and gardens. “Come with me for a moment,” she said. Then, to the driver: “You’ll wait, please.”
Weisz got out of the taxi and followed her to an ivy-covered brick wall. In the house, a dog knew they were there and began to bark. “There’s one last thing I must tell you,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I didn’t want to say it in the apartment.”
He waited.
“Two weeks ago, we went to a dinner party at the house of von Schirren’s uncle. He’s a general in the army, a gruff old Prussian, but a good soul, at heart. At one point in the evening, I remembered I had to call home, to remind the maid that Magda, one of my dogs, was to be given her medicine, for her heart. So I went into the general’s study, to use the telephone, and on his desk, I couldn’t help seeing it, was an open book, with a sheet of paper he’d used to make notes. The book was called Sprachfuhrer Polnisch fur Geschaftsreisende, a guide to Polish for the business traveler. And he’d copied out phrases to memorize, ‘How far is it to,’ put in the name, ‘Where is the railway station?’ You know the sort of thing I mean, questions for the local population.”
Weisz glanced back at the idling taxi and the driver, who’d been watching them, turned away. “It seems he’s going to Poland,” Weisz said. “And so?”
“So the Wehrmacht is going with him.”
“Maybe, it’s possible,” Weisz said. “Or maybe not, he could be going as a military attache, or for some kind of negotiation. Who knows?”
“Not him. He’s not the attache type. A general of infantry, pure and simple.”
Weisz thought about it. “Then it will be before winter, in the early summer, after spring planting, because half the army works on farms.”
“That’s what I think.”
“You know what this means, Christa, for you. In two months, at the latest. And, once it starts, it will spread, and it will go on for a long time-the Poles have a big army, and they’ll fight.”
“I will leave before that happens, before they close the borders.”
“Why not tomorrow? On the plane? You don’t know the future-tonight you can still go, but, the day after tomorrow…”
“No, not yet, I can’t. But soon. We have one more thing we must do here, it’s in progress, please don’t ask me to tell you more than that.”
“They’ll arrest you, Christa. You’ve done enough.”
“Kiss me, and say goodby. Please. The driver is watching us.”
He embraced her, and they kissed. Then he watched her walk away until, at the corner, she waved to him, and disappeared.
Forever.
On the twelve-thirty flight to Paris, as the plane taxied down the runway, Weisz stared out the window at the fields bordering the tarmac. His spirits were very low. He’d worked his way around to the belief that Christa’s passionate lovemaking had been her way of saying farewell. Remember me as I am tonight. She was certainly capable of that. Just as she was capable of pursuing whatever clandestine business had hold of her until the operation collapsed and she, like her friend at the carnival, vanished into the Nacht und Nebel. He would never know what happened. Could he have said something that would have persuaded her to leave? No, he knew better than that, there were no words in the world that would change her mind. It was her life to live, her life to lose, she would stay in Berlin, she would fight her enemies, and she would not run away. The more Weisz thought about it, the worse he felt.
What helped, in the end, was that Alfred Millman, a New York Times correspondent, was seated next to him. He and Weisz had met before, and had exchanged nods and mumbled greetings when they’d taken their seats. Tall and stocky, with thinning gray hair, Millman had the presence of a man swimming always upstream, who, accepting that as his natural element, had early in life become a strong swimmer. Not a star of his newspaper, he was, like Weisz, a tireless worker, assigned to this or that crisis, filing his stories, then going on to the next war, or fallen government, wherever the fires broke out. Now, done with his Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, he flipped it closed and said to Weisz, “Okay, that’s enough horse manure for today. Care to have a look?”
“No thanks.”
“I saw you at the signing ceremony. Must’ve been hard for you, as an Italian, to watch that.”
“Yes, it was. They think they’re going to rule the world.”
Millman shook his head. “They’re living in a dream. Pact of Steel my foot, they don’t have any steel-they have to import. And they don’t have much coal, not a drop of oil, and their chief of military procurement is eighty-seven years old. How the hell are they going to fight a war?”
“They’re going to get what they need from Germany, that’s what they’ve always done. Now they’ll trade soldiers’ lives for coal.”
“Yeah sure, until Hitler gets pissed off at ‘em. And he always does, you know, sooner or later.”
“They won’t win,” Weisz said, “because the people don’t want to fight. What war will do is ruin the country, but the government believes in conquest, and so they signed.”
“Yes, I saw it happen, yesterday. Pomp and circumstance.” Millman’s sudden smile was ironic. “Do you know the old Karl Kraus line? ‘How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.’”
“I know the line,” Weisz said. “Actually, Kraus was a friend of my father.”
“You don’t say.”
“They were colleagues, for a time, at the university in Vienna.”
“He’s supposed to be the smartest guy in the world, you ever meet him?”
“When I was young, a few times. My father took me up to Vienna, and we went to Kraus’s personal coffeehouse.”
“Ah yes, the coffeehouses of Vienna, feuilletons and feuds. Kraus surely had his share-the only man ever beaten up by Felix Salten, though I forget why. Not so good for one’s public image, getting knocked around by the author of Bambi.”
They both laughed. Salten had become rich and famous with his fawn, and Kraus had famously hated him.
“Still,” Millman said, “it’s troublesome, this Pact of Steel. Between Germany and Italy, a population of a hundred and fifty million, which makes, by the rule of ten percent, a fighting force of fifteen million. Somebody’s going to have to deal with that, because Hitler’s looking for a brawl.”
“He’ll have his brawl with Russia,” Weisz said. “Once he’s done with the Poles. Britain and France are counting on that.”
“I hope they’re right,” Millman said. “‘Let’s you and him fight,’ as they say, but I have my doubts. Hitler is the worst bastard in the world, but one thing he isn’t is dumb. And he isn’t crazy either, never mind all that screaming. What he is, if you watch him carefully, is a very shrewd man.”
“So is Mussolini. Former journalist, former novelist. The Cardinal’s Mistress, ever read it?”
“No, I haven’t had the pleasure. Actually a pretty good title, I’d say, makes you want to find out what happens.” He thought for a moment, then said, “It�
�s a damn shame, really, this whole business. I liked Italy. My wife and I were there, a few years ago. In Tuscany, her sister took a villa for the summer. It was old, falling apart, nothing worked, but it had a courtyard with a fountain, and I’d sit out there in the afternoon, the cicadas going a mile a minute, and read. Then we’d have drinks, and it would cool down as night came on, there was always a little breeze, about seven in the evening. Always.”
The Dewoitine’s wings tilted as the airplane turned toward Le Bourget, and Paris lay suddenly below them, a gray city in its twilit sky, strangely isolated, an island amid the wheat fields of the Ile-de-France. Alfred Millman leaned over so he could see the view. “Glad to be home?” he said.
Weisz nodded. It was his home, now, but not so welcoming. As they’d neared Paris, he’d begun to wonder if he shouldn’t maybe find some other hotel-for that night, anyhow. Because his thoughts were occupied by the new tenant, with his hat and raincoat, up on the fourth floor. Who, perhaps, was waiting for him. Was this simply foolish anxiety? He tried to tell himself it was, but his intuition would not be stilled.
When they rolled to a stop-“Let’s have a drink, next time I’m in town,” Millman said as they walked down the aisle-Weisz had still not come to a decision. That was left for the moment when he was seated in the back of a taxi and the driver turned around, one eyebrow aloft. “Monsieur?” You have to go somewhere.
Finally, Weisz said, “The Hotel Dauphine, please. It’s in the rue Dauphine, in the Sixth.” The driver jammed his taxi into gear and sped away from the airfield, driving nobly, with swerving panache, in expectation of a juicy tip from a customer so grand as to descend from the heavens. And, in the event, he wasn’t wrong.
Madame Rigaud was behind the hotel desk, writing tiny numbers on a pad as she scanned the reservation book. Counting her money? She looked up when Weisz came through the door. No secret smile for him now, only lingering curiosity-what goes on with you, my friend? Weisz countered with an extremely polite greeting. This tactic never failed, jarred the preoccupied French soul from its reverie and forced it into equal, if not greater, courtesy.
“I was wondering,” Weisz said. “About the new tenant, up on my floor. Is he still there?”
Such questions were not polite, and Madame’s face let him know it, but she was in a good mood at that moment, perhaps inspired by the numbers on her pad. “He’s moved out.” If you must know. “And his friend as well,” she said, waiting for an explanation.
Two of them. “I was curious about him, Madame Rigaud, that’s all. He knocked on my door, and I never did find out why, because Bertrand arrived with my ticket.”
She shrugged. Who could say, about guests in hotels, what they did, or why, twenty years of it.
He thanked her, politely, and climbed the stairs, valise bumping against his leg, heart flooded with relief.
30 May. It was Elena who telephoned and told Weisz that Salamone was in the hospital. “They’ve got him in the Broussais,” she said. “The charity hospital up in the Fourteenth. It’s his heart, maybe not a heart attack, technically, but he couldn’t catch his breath, at the warehouse, so they sent him home, and his wife took him up there.”
Weisz left work early, for the five o’clock visitors’ hour, stopping on the way for a box of candy. Could Salamone have candy? He wasn’t sure. Flowers? No, that didn’t seem right, so, candy. At the Broussais, he joined a crowd of visitors led by a nursing nun to Men’s Ward G, a long white room with rows of iron beds, inches apart, and the strong smell of disinfectant. Midway down the row, he found G58, a metal sign, much of the paint flecked off, hanging on the rail at the foot of the bed. Salamone was dozing, one finger keeping his place in a book.
“Arturo?”
Salamone opened his eyes, then struggled to sit upright. “Ah, Carlo, you came to see me,” he said. “What a fucking nightmare, eh?”
“I thought I better come before they kicked you out.” Weisz handed him the candy.
“Grazie. I’ll give it to Sister Angelique. Or maybe you want some.”
Weisz shook his head. “Arturo, what happened to you?”
“Not much. I was at work, all of a sudden I couldn’t catch my breath. A warning, the doctor calls it. I’m fine, I should be out in a few days. Still, like my mother used to say, ‘Don’t ever get sick.’”
“My mother too,” Weisz said. He paused for a moment, amid the ceaseless coughing, and the low murmur of visitors’ hour.
“Elena told me you were away, on assignment.”
“I was. In Berlin.”
“For the pact?”
“Yes, the formalities. In the grand hall of the Reich Chancellery. Strutting generals, starched shirts, and little Hitler, grinning like a wolf. The whole filthy business.”
Salamone looked glum. “We would have had a thing or two to say about that. In the paper.”
Weisz spread his hands; some things were lost, life went on. “Bad as it is, this pact, it’s hard to take them seriously, when you see who they are. You keep waiting for Groucho to show up.”
“Do you think the French will stand up to them, now that it’s official?”
“They might. But, the way I feel lately, they can all go to hell. What we have to do now is take care of ourselves, you and me, Arturo. Which means we have to find you another job. At a desk, this time.”
“I’ll find something. I’ll have to, they tell me I can’t go back to what I was doing.”
“Making check marks on a tally sheet?”
“Well, maybe I had to push a few boxes around.”
“Just a few,” Weisz said. “Now and then.”
“But, you know, Carlo, I’m not so sure it was that. I think it was everything else; what happened to me at the insurance company, what happened to the cafe, what happened to all of us.”
And it continues. But Weisz wasn’t going to tell the story of the new tenant to a friend in a hospital bed. Instead, he turned the conversation to emigre talk-politics, gossip, how life would get better. Then a nun appeared and told them that Madame Salamone was in the waiting room, since the patient could have only one visitor. As Weisz turned to go, he said, “Forget all that other business, Arturo, just think about getting better. We did a good job, with Liberazione, but now it’s in the past. And those people know it. So, they got what they wanted, and now it’s done with, over.”
31 May. At the Galeries Lafayette, a big spring sale. What a mob! They’d descended on the department store from every Arrondissement in Paris-bargains galore, buy it today, every price reduced. In the office at the back of the ground floor, an assistant manager, “the Dragon,” nicknamed for her fire-breathing temper, tried to cope with the onslaught. Poor little Mimi, from the millinery counter, had fainted. Now she was sitting in the reception area, white as a sheet, as a floorwalker fanned her with a magazine. Nearby, two children, both in tears, had lost their mothers. The toilet in the ladies’ WC on the second floor had overflowed, the plumber had been called, where was he? Lilliane, from cosmetics, had called in sick, and an old woman had tried to leave the store wearing three dresses. In her office, the Dragon closed her door, the tumult in the reception area was more than she could bear. So she would take a minute, sit quietly, by the telephone that would not stop ringing, and regain her composure. All sales ended, eventually. And everything that could possibly go wrong, had.
But not quite. What foolish soul was knocking on her door? The Dragon rose from her desk and wrenched the door open. To reveal a terrified secretary, old Madame Gros, her brow damp with perspiration. “Yes?” the Dragon said. “What now?”
“Pardon, madame, but the police are here. A man from the Surete Nationale.”
“Here?”
“Yes, madame. In the reception.”
“Why?”
“He’s here about Elena, in ladies’ hosiery.”
The Dragon shut her eyes, took yet one more deep breath. “Very well, one must respect the Surete Nationale. So go to the hosiery counter and b
ring Elena here.”
“But madame…”
“Now.”
“Yes, madame.”
She fled. The Dragon looked out into the reception area, a vision of hell. Now, which one was-over there? The man in the hat with a little green feather in the band? Nasty mustache, restless eyes, hands in pockets? Well, who knew what they looked like, she certainly didn’t. She walked over to him and said, “Monsieur l’inspecteur?”
“Yes. Are you the manager, madame?”
“An assistant manager. The manager is up on the top floor.”
“Oh, I see, then…”
“You’re here to see Elena Casale?”
“No, I don’t wish to see her. But to speak with you about her, she is the subject of an investigation.”
“Will this take long? I don’t mean to be rude, monsieur, but you can see what’s going on here today. And now I’ve sent for Elena, she’s on her way to the office. Shall I send her back?”
This news did not please the inspector. “Perhaps I should return, say, tomorrow?”
“It would be much better, tomorrow, for our discussion.”
The inspector tipped his hat, said goodby, and hurried off. Strange sort of man, the Dragon thought. And, even stranger, Elena the subject of an investigation. Something of an aristocrat, this Italian woman, with her sharp face, long, graying hair worn back in a clip, ironic smile-not a criminal type, not at all. What could she have done? But, who had time to wonder about such things, for here, at last, was the plumber.
Elena and Madame Gros forced their way down the center aisle. “Did he say what he wanted?” Elena asked.
“Only that he wished to speak with the manager. About you.”
“And he said he was from the Surete Nationale?”
“Yes, that’s what he said.”
Elena was growing angrier by the minute. She remembered Weisz’s story about the interrogation of his girlfriend, who owned an art gallery, she remembered how Salamone had been defamed, and discharged from his job. Was it now her turn? Oh, this was infuriating. It had not been easy, as a woman in Italy, to take a degree in chemistry; finding work, even in industrial Milan, had not been any easier, having to give up her position and emigrate had been harder still, and working as a sales clerk in a department store hardest of all. But she was staunch, she did what had to be done, and now these fascist bastards were going to try and take even that meager prize away from her. What would she do for money? How would she live?
