News from Berlin

by Otto de Kat

  “Yes indeed, I do have papers. But I am not going to show them to you. And if you don’t leave me alone immediately I shall file a complaint at my husband’s department.”

  Her voice rose as her anger mounted. It was an impulsive, irrational outburst, but no less effective for that. The man stiffened, mumbled an apology and sped away on his bicycle.

  Emma lapsed into nervous laughter as she stood there in a world gone insane, where people demanded to see each other’s papers.

  Chapter 12

  Kate took the bus to Richmond Hospital in the morning as usual, to return in the afternoon. The Richmond was a repository of the sick and wounded from ever farther corners of the earth, a round-the-clock enterprise. She liked her job. The patients followed one another in rapid succession, and she had a knack for putting people at ease and seeing to their wants and needs with discretion. “Head of subtle affairs”, one of the doctors called her, a man who reminded her vaguely of Peter Henning, the surgeon she had worked with for over a year in Berlin, at a time when murder and manslaughter were already the order of the day. He had fallen in love with her, she not with him, but it had lightened the atmosphere in and around the operating theatre. Oscar was unaware of this, and there was no reason to worry him unduly. That was all of five years ago.

  Kate saw the traffic on her bus route increase. It started to rain, and London unfurled its umbrellas. For no particular reason her mind turned to the time she had gone to the stadium with Peter. The Olympic Games had transformed the city, making it brighter and cleaner than ever before. He had invited her to accompany him to the athletics competitions taking place that afternoon. They had finished work early, no further surgery being required for the day.

  They drove through a city on temporary reprieve from the grip of steel. Peter, being a doctor, had a car, enabling them to reach the Olympic stadium without difficulty. Across Tiergarten to Charlottenburg they went, where the flags would have been enough to festoon the Kurfürstendamm from end to end. Kate recalled how Peter always gave his car a pat on the bonnet before he got in: good dog. It was a Mercedes with a canvas hood, one of those wonderful sleek jobs with big headlamps and a running board, the very ones she had, in time, grown to despise. There always seemed to be men in leather coats with wide belts getting out of them. Peter was not someone who associated with those types; he was the last likeable German she had met, aside from Carl, of course.

  He had put his arm around her shoulder when they entered the stadium. She had not objected. To her his warm personality was endearing, and the way he held her had nothing possessive about it, having more of boys on their way to a game of football and out to have a good time. His left hand rested near her neck, with his right he fought to keep the umbrella positioned over her head in the multitude thronging to see the games. He had brought her up to date on the various events: discus, high jump and javelin. The names of the athletes meant nothing to her, but she was carried away by his enthusiasm, wanting to know if there were any Dutch participants and which ones to look out for. She pointed up to his umbrella, saying the rain had stopped. He laughed, and removed his hand from her shoulder, which she thought a pity in a way, as it had given her a sense of togetherness, of being part of the crowd milling around them, where no-one knew her, where they were just another couple queuing up to take their seats on a stadium bench. Her pleasure had nothing to do with the man beside her, charming as he was, glancing at her and gallantly removing his coat so she could sit on it.

  Where would Peter Henning be now? Kate sat by the window of her bus, thinking how odd it was that her memory of that afternoon should be so vivid. Afterwards, they had gone to the bar of Hotel Esplanade, where she thought Oscar might be, and he was. They had spent the evening there, with Peter and Oscar in animated conversation. Athletes and results were hotly debated in the smoke-filled bar, which was crowded with foreigners, Olympic officials, and reporters. Berlin had never felt freer or more exuberant. Peter had insisted on dropping them off at home, Fasanenstrasse being too far away for them to walk. He had lowered the canvas hood of the car; it was a warm evening. Besides, the rain had stopped, he said, flashing her a smile. Upon arrival he held the car door open for her and helped her alight, squeezed her hand briefly, saying he had enjoyed their outing immensely and would never forget it. Oscar had joined them as they stood there, putting one arm around her and the other around Peter. An August evening as never before. She would not forget it either.

  The bus pulled up, she had to get off.

  Peter had left the hospital a few months later. Kate had received a letter from him explaining his motives in the vaguest of terms. She had found it very strange, they had made such a good team in the operating theatre. Had he fled, was he Jewish by any chance? Was it something to do with her? That was the last she had heard of him. Shortly after that she had resigned as well.

  In the hall of the Richmond she found herself in a crush of people. Not far away a bomb had exploded, one of those that went off by accident, days or weeks after being dropped. By accident indeed, for today there were dozens of wounded and several dead. A frequent occurrence, but no less harrowing for that. There were dormant bombs all over the city.

  Kate took the stairs to her wing. She paused a moment before entering the ward, listening to the moans of the wounded down in the hall. It was not for her to offer first aid as she was no longer a nurse, and would not even be permitted to help. Nobody knew that she had worked as a theatre assistant in Berlin, and she had preferred to keep things that way. In a few days’ time some of those wounded would turn up in her ward anyway: more cases for the subtle affairs department. Kate wanted to deny it, but failed: now that Matteous had been discharged, the hospital seemed to have lost its spirit. She had a sense of vacancy, in a ward brimming with need. The cubicle she had visited daily for so many months had a new occupant, equally injured and equally in need of assistance. So yes, she would step in, but she was already looking forward to the afternoon, when she would teach Matteous to write.

  *

  He would be arriving in a hour, armed with the tools for the letter he would write one day: copybook, pen, and primer. They had been practising every afternoon for a whole week. The alphabet had been recited and painstakingly written out. Kate had pronounced each letter in a clear, slow voice, over and over again. Matteous wanted to write in English, the language he had first heard in the mines of Élisabethville. She had no idea how to teach somebody to read and write. She could not remember how she had been taught herself. You had a picture alphabet, you had Jack and Jill going up the hill – how on earth did these things go? You were a sponge absorbing words which you then squeezed out onto the page; five or six years old, the magical age of seeing letters turn into words. Had there been any particular method to it? She did not know, she would simply go about teaching Matteous the basics of English as best she could.

  The small table by the window was their practice field. They sat side by side for many a long hour, with Matteous hunched over a word taking shape under his pen, even as it fell apart again. They repeated the sounds countless times, looking to see how they fluttered down onto the paper. Kate gave the example and Matteous followed suit with ink-stained fingers. He became agitated, repeatedly getting stalled halfway through what he wanted to say, the simplest of statements coming out garbled. Coherence was what was lacking. There were all those letters strung into words, which, taken together, did not make sense. It drove Matteous to distraction. He would rather be trudging through the forest, going down the mines, even marching through the savannah with a gun over his shoulder – anything was better than this blind grappling with script. Kate understood. She too found it hard to stay the course. But she had given him her word, and would not go back on it now.

  She also understood how stifled he must feel at Barkston Gardens, confined as he was to a classroom of a few square metres overlooking a garden with a fence around it. He had travelled thousands of kilometres only to end up here, in the ho
me of a white woman who made him acutely aware of the loss of his mother. Too bad then, forget about writing a letter, he would simply go back to Élisabethville, where else was there to go? Living in a bedsit on a busy London street would be the end of him. It was a week since he had moved in, and already his head was bursting. The dreams he had at night were wearing him out, he could hardly get out of bed in the morning. It was only the thought of seeing Miss Kate that kept him going, he had told her in a roundabout way.

  This afternoon he was early. Kate saw him from the window. The rain had stopped. He was wearing an old army shirt, no jacket or jumper. A Negro. People noticed him, some stared. The gardener paused in his labours to call out to Matteous, she could not make out what. The bell rang, two short bursts in rapid succession, and she flew to the door. But at the third word he tried to write he put his pen down and slumped forward, head down on the table. His eyes were closed: this was no act of protest, it was defeat. He was stumped, the thoughts arising in his head were impossible to cram into words on paper. Miss Kate should let him go, he wanted to go home, not that he knew where that was, because Élisabethville was an empty place and his village had been razed to the ground. It was true that the Belgian officer had saved his life, but if it hadn’t been for Miss Kate he would have been found with a rope round his neck long ago. Would she please let him go, please, Miss Kate, s’il vous plaît.

  Kate stared at the curls on Matteous’s dark nape as she listened to his lament. She heard his sorrow and his homesickness and his confusion. Nobody could learn to write in a single week; it might be a year before that letter of his was ready to be sent, the letter that would restore his life to him; it was too soon to give up, and why go back now, not knowing who or what awaited him there? He could come and live with her until the war was over. And they would go on practising until he couldn’t get it wrong, he would master the skill, that much was certain.

  She laid her hand on his shoulder as a promise. Kate’s eyes, too, were closed. And so they shared a moment of darkness as they sat at the table.

  Chapter 13

  Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard footsteps in the stairwell, then the sound of a key turning in a lock. Was that her front door? Matteous had just left, promising to return the following day. Hardly had she relinquished her musings than she saw him. Oscar. She was thrown into confusion to find him standing in her room, then fear struck as she thought of Emma. She grabbed him by the arms. What was the matter, why hadn’t he said he was coming to London?

  “Emma is fine. It’s Operation Barbarossa, they’re going to invade Russia, Kate, in just over a fortnight from now.” Oscar’s tone was brusque. Her bewilderment grew by the second, what was he talking about, how did he know, what was he doing in London anyway? A curious anger overcame her. She should have been glad to see him, but his sudden appearance had the opposite effect. Invade? It was he who had invaded her home – Operation Barkston Gardens.

  She found herself resenting the fact that Oscar had let himself in with his own key. For the past eighteen months she had been living there on her own, and his arrival had broken the magic circle she had drawn around herself, shattering her hard-won equilibrium.

  The doors to the balcony were open. Oscar could smell the warm, damp weather that had been forecast on the radio. He was leaning in the doorway to the balcony. That she should be annoyed by his surprise visit was the last thing he expected. She had gone to her bedroom, saying she needed to change out of her hospital clothes. An excuse, he thought: she wanted to compose herself, did not wish him to see her upset.

  What he had failed to tell Morton or anyone else, he had told her without a moment’s hesitation. The information which had obsessed him for the past week, which he had agonised over day and night without reaching any conclusion, was safe with Kate. Her reaction would be the same as his, she would do the same, she would accept his judgement and understand and tell him it was alright and to stop tormenting himself.

  Kate’s face was pale. She did not look at Oscar when she joined him by the door to the balcony. She strove to control her emotions; he saw her pursed lips.

  “You must inform the English, Oscar, or our government, or the people who need to know such things. You know who they are.”

  She spoke in measured tones, plainly, with utter conviction that it would be the simplest, most obvious action to take.

  “But they will make the connection with Emma. We were seen together in Geneva, I can’t tell anybody, it’s impossible. This morning I had a meeting with the only Englishman I could conceivably take into my confidence, because I trust him. But I discovered that he and all his friends in high places will not believe me, whatever I say. News from a German source is by definition a lie, dismissed as rubbish. Anything coming from Berlin is regarded as disinformation. They’re suspicious in the extreme. You can be sure that they’d go and check what I heard from Carl, just in case, which will not escape the notice of the Gestapo. Next thing, they’d be on to Emma.”

  Kate nodded. “I understand what you’re saying and I’m thinking about it, but to me it sounds rather far-fetched. If Emma is at all at risk, then it’s because she’s your daughter, Oscar. I’m sure they suspect you of all sorts of things, they’re not having you followed for nothing. Do you suppose they know about the refugees?”

  Like Oscar, she never discussed his work, but one day he had let slip that he was involved in helping victims of persecution. She had given her blessing at once. Despite his secretive nature, she was aware of his ideals and his strongly developed sense of justice. She suspected that what he was doing meant taking considerable risks, which he would have dismissed as nothing compared to the risk of living in London. She had never really known what went through his mind, perhaps she had not made enough effort to work it out. It seldom gave her pause, nowadays. Under the same roof or a couple of countries away, it amounted to much the same thing, there was the same distance between them. She had the idea that his brother was probably the only person Oscar had ever opened up to. But his brother was absent. Vanished, in other words, he had emigrated to escape the Depression and the war, which he had seen coming. They had heard from him sporadically over the years, but lately not at all. Oscar had given up trying to track him down. Since then he too seemed to have absented himself.

  “Emma is constantly on my mind. I’m terrified each time the English attack Berlin. Did they fly over Dahlem, was she in the city by any chance, will she reach a bomb shelter in time – not a night goes by without me imagining all the things that could go wrong. No-one is more concerned about her than I am. But I honestly can’t imagine that she’ll be put in danger if you go to the English with your news about that invasion. For heaven’s sake, Oscar, do something, while there’s still time.”

  She had misunderstood, he would start afresh, explain all over again what would happen if he sounded the alarm. How easy it would be to single him out as the source. The whole circus of diplomats and secret agents was built on gossip and hearsay, not to mention the intentional leaking of snippets of information. He was certain that his name would crop up sooner or later. There would be Russians making enquiries among German diplomats, asking about an operation code-named Barbarossa. Never heard of it, of course, whatever gave them that idea? Oh, someone in the circuit, some Dutch specialist in Berne. The Gestapo would do the rest.

  The film had played countless times in his head, and with each replay the riddle of the source became easier to solve, as in a game of simultaneous chess where you knew all your opponent’s moves beforehand. This was how it would go, that was where it would go wrong. Morton had been the only possibility. And Morton would not believe him, he had now discovered. Pointless, all of it.

  Her concluding words had been spoken softly, but sounded almost threatening. Pathos on a balmy June evening, irrational, unthinking. She pressed on, in the same even, concentrated voice, and perhaps with the same pathos, but with trenchant effect. He had never heard her speak in that manner be
fore. How little he had seen of her since their days in Berlin! Theirs was marriage at a distance, in every sense. Not too many questions, no arguments, no ups and downs, and yet their loyalty to one another was never at issue. Things could be a lot worse.

  She told him about her life in London, the Blitz, the ever-present threat of annihilation. But at least they were prepared. They had dug themselves in, the English defences were ready, and however scared they were, they were prepared. No-one would be caught unawares. Did he realise that there were hundreds of thousands of people out there who would be caught unawares, and what that would mean? Women of Emma’s age, with children, husbands, parents, they would burn to ashes. For once, Kate spoke in capital letters. She kept bringing Emma into it, she was sure that Emma knew what she was doing when she confided in her father. Emma had counted on Oscar to know what to do about the terrible secret. She was safe, she had the protection of Carl’s boss and of the ministry. That was true, wasn’t it? Emma would be alright. He had to do something, immediately, there was no time to lose. Her voice as she said these things was oddly quiet. Oscar did not interrupt, much as he wished to. The numbness that had come over him seemed to increase during her appeal. Because that was what it was: an appeal, on the brink of an accusation – the way she looked at him and did not see, the way she clung to his arm and did not feel. There was no judge, but there was a verdict.

  “We don’t trust him, Verschuur” – anything of that provenance would be brushed aside. It was wasted on Morton.

  Every fibre of his being rebelled against agreeing with Kate. Clearly, she needed to put things in perspective, he was sufficiently familiar with the Gestapo to know how they inflated the flimsiest evidence into a crime.

  Yet he admired her for her outright rejection of violence and her ability to empathise with nameless Russians. For her strength of character in putting her daughter in the balance. She was discounting Emma, yet she could not abide the thought of other people’s daughters losing their lives. She did not know what she was saying.