A youthful warmth changed even the tone of his voice. He stopped, shrugged his shoulders, and added coolly,
“It’s not my business. I shall make myself as comfortable as I can until the crash. It will be the last, too. What a waste! When I think about the end of the world all I see is a manor-house near Salisbury, built in 1668 by a family — they’re still living in it, and there are orchards and an old vine. Well...”
“He meant it ironically,” Arnold said.
“I dare say.”
“I must go.”
Edward was about to speak, began a phrase, then was silent. On the doorstep, he said, “Think better of me.” Arnold smiled warmly at him and said nothing, because he had no sentence ready, and because he was still, without a clear reason for it, confused and disturbed.
He walked home. A warm cloudy night, the clouds torn open in a few places to uncover an abyss deepened beyond sight by the first stars. He wished eagerly that he were flying. Beyond the noise of his engines, and again inside it, nothing, a blessed dumbness. It would clear his head and let him throw overboard a heavy weight of dissatisfaction, mistakes, grief. His friend’s coolness and egoism, his dry comments on Lise, clung like burrs, like a hook working itself into his hand the harder he shook it to loosen it.
Strangely, it was not on the girl’s behalf that he was hurt. Yet Edward had not changed; he was what he had always been, composed, equable, mocking. And as if any of it mattered. The real thing was not what he was, but what he meant — security, freedom, no demands, no hint of a demand. He did not even write letters, or want them.
Arnold stood still. He sighed, and stretched his arms. To be free, not to have to respond to someone’s emotional demands, not to be expected anywhere — his only sharp need; and as far back as he remembered, Edward had been there to satisfy it. His mother approved of “your polite friend, Edward,” of his neatness and pleasant voice. Her approval made it the easier to escape from one of her rages of possessive love and spend the rest of the day — in the room Edward kept jealously to himself in his parents’ dingy house — sunk, not obliged to say a word. Still less to talk what his mother called “seriously”. Blessed, blessed, be silence.
Why, now, find an example of his friend’s coolness — shocking?
He thought for a moment — not so long — of the girl. Surely what vexed him was that she had been caught by the very traits in Edward he used so eagerly to admire? Suddenly tired to death, he dropped her — far more easily than he had taught himself, when someone, Andrew, failed to come back, to keep the door shut on a familiar smiling ghost.
Abruptly, he saw her with Edward. An anguish he did not recognise for one of his pinched him. With an immense effort, he got rid of it and walked on.
Chapter Twenty-three
A little more than a month later — the 6th of October — one of the Kriminalpolizei, applying himself in his own round of informers, at the price of a few cigarettes bought the news that Baron von Rechberg was safely tucked away in the Russian sector. There is a brotherhood of policemen as of informers: it did not cost Renn much effort to get into touch with the Russian whose job most nearly resembled his.
“Sit down, won’t you? I eat at two o’clock, and I eat in my room because if I didn’t — no, I eat in my room because I like it, no reason at all. Have you eaten? No. I’m glad. Isn’t there quite enough here for two? Yes, yes, of course there is, enough for three — enough for an army. I’m starving, I don’t know why it is, but when we’re fighting or on the move I can go without food for days, and as soon as I live like a clerk I’m hungry every two or three hours. It’s ridiculous.”
Renn was charmed by this torrent, and by the Russian’s animal grace and looks — slender short body, black eyes in a narrow face, hair as strong and charged as a cat’s. Charmed and full of mistrust. The friendliness might be as genuine as you please, entirely genuine, and hide depths of trickery. The likelihood that it was so made the man in front of him the more pleasurably interesting — he prepared to enjoy himself.
Smoked salmon, a superb eel salad, nectarines, bread, butter, red and black caviare, cold hard-boiled eggs; the meal alone was worth the trouble: he accepted everything put before him, listened smilingly to another and longer flood of words, then said quietly,
“I came to ask you to let me have back a distinguished German you have here.” He corrected himself. “Who is here, I ought to have said —”
The Russian interrupted.
“Say what you like. Say anything. Or if you like — be silent and let the heart speak, as they say. And why are you eating red caviare when you can have the black? What’s the name of your distinguished friend? If I know where to lay hands on him, if he’s about, I’ll dish him up for you jellied. I’ll send for him. Why not, if you want him?”
Renn looked at him with curiosity.
“Rechberg. The Baron von Rechberg.”
The dark eyebrows flew up, the black eyes danced with amused irony. An octave of expressions followed each other across the smoothly dark skin, mischief, disappointment, regret. . .
“Never heard of the fellow. Or not under his name — if it is his name. Describe him to me.”
Renn pushed across the table the photograph of Rechberg. Holding it at arm’s length, head a little on one side, the Russian examined it, with the most eager attention. Pursing his fine mouth,
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
The Russian shrugged his shoulders.
“He could be living in some drain-pipe. I’ll have them searched. Or —” a restless brilliant smile — “if he only came in yesterday that explains it. Wait. Are you in a hurry? Wait a few days, how could I know anything about an animal who only crept in last night. . .?”
“He’s been here for five weeks,” Renn said drily.
Bored and impatient,
“That means he’s not here. It’s impossible, I assure you. . . Who is he? If you’d come to Berlin the way I came, you’d know that barons can be picked on any wretched bush. I came across an old fellow of ours cutting a civilian’s throat — and why? Because his mother used to tell him when she thrashed him that the devil would pinch him and that the devil was a baron. When he caught the devil, naturally he cut his throat. . . Rechberg? Rechberg? What is he?”
“An industrialist, a steel general to add to your collection in Moscow.” He was not — it was too obvious — going to get anywhere. “Your Free Germans,” he said, smiling.
The Russian laughed like a girl, with an uncontrolled provoking malice.
“The Germans are afraid of us, all of them. And they need be — a million of our dead peasants are after them with flails, the women especially. That’s what it is, they need us to protect them against their other victims, and they hope — since we may be victims ourselves — that we shall do it, bless their simple minds.”
“Why should you be victims?”
Delighted, cramming into his mouth eel and bread,
“Why not? Why the devil not? You detest our beliefs, but you fear, yes, fear, our millions of young men and our energy: you’ll make your holy detestation the excuse for your plots. One of your fears, the blackest, is that we shall resurrect Germany against you — a million German scientists, soldiers, and the rest. . . Your very own nightmare, isn’t it, you — you soul of prudence, you? Why don’t you admit it?”
“If you like,” Renn said. “You’re afraid of us, too. And at the same time — we have certain graces. . . civilised. . . you can’t feel them, and you despise them.”
Kalitin flung up his hands — very small hands.
“Lovely lovely graces. Worth — are you sure?— everything they add up to in death and ruin. . .”
Jumping up, he walked across the room to a cupboard. The room was untouched, as it had been left by its last occupant, who must have had antiquarian tastes; he had brought to his office two handsome painted chests and the cupboard — old walnut inlaid with ivory — very strong, very delicate.
/>
“I have other graces in this cupboard. Wait.”
He turned a key in the door; something had happened to it, it turned and turned, uselessly, in the lock: suddenly losing patience, he stepped back and drove his heel through the nearest panel, felt about inside, and brought out a large bottle. Rye vodka, almost the colour of the cheap Anjou workmen drink in Paris. The one glass Renn drank gave him a pleasant sense of freedom and distance: the only effect, on the Russian, of his third and fourth glasses, was a redoubled energy; he moved restlessly about the room; when he was walking behind Renn, it cost Renn an effort not to keep an eye on him.
Abruptly, planting one foot on a chair, hand on his raised thigh, he asked, with the insolence of a schoolboy,
“Are you anything else except a policeman?”
“I once imagined I was a writer.”
Sparkling,
“A writer. Ah, that’s really something. But do you want my opinion? In fifty years, less, there will be no writers. That’s to say, there will be story-tellers for the children, and a few poets we shall praise for their style — like any other craftsman. But the respected writers will be the scientists and philosophers. Why? Because their first task, their purpose, is to tell the truth. And they’re the true internationalists, they belong to everyone, to humanity. The others, novelists, poets, what not, are particularisers. The search for style divides, seeking the truth unites.”
He waved his hand from its slender wrist.
“But of course — if scientists also write well, that’s all to the good.”
Renn’s head — the rye vodka — was bursting from the pressure against his skull. Surprised, amused, he began drowsily,
“And in your country —”
“Country? My dear soul, I live in a world, not a country! Don’t you know anything about Russia? We have all races, all metals, all fruits, all climates, all time and all space. All seeds. Why, you can feel it — like a hot day, like an apricot breaking in your mouth.”
In a changed voice, grave, sober,
“Nothing new will come out of you. The next years will prove it. You are sterile; and what this planet needs is a birth.”
Nothing else could have startled Renn except this sincerity — the passion of this belief. Was the future really a rough beast with the head of an intelligent young man? He felt an extreme bitterness.
“Even a birth can miscarry,” he said.
“I should hate to be English,” Kalitin said simply. “You’re a brave people. Good soldiers. We should know about good soldiers, God knows we’ve buried plenty. . . What a pity you let yourselves be led by the nose by scoundrels. You fight for them, you die for them in the dust of your vile streets. And they have always betrayed you, always used you as if you were things. . . Who is this Rechberg anyway? What do you want him for?”
With an effort, Renn said,
“Among other reasons, because I may be able to make use of him to save an innocent man.”
“Innocent? No one is innocent. Is he any use?”
The pressure inside Renn’s skull had disappeared, in a moment. He was sober and tired.
“What has that to do with it?”
Kalitin’s eyes gleamed. He laughed.
“Why, everything. I’m not interested in men in the abstract. Or in justice or innocence in the abstract. Listen. I do something you don’t like — I cut a German peasant’s throat, or I take his horse or his wheat, so that he starves. You are horrified, you write a book, you put on priest’s robes to write to the newspapers, you howl, you appeal to the conscience of the world.”
He rocked on his feet, head thrown back, smiling.
“Let me tell you. It doesn’t exist. Where was it when a German captain led six little girls from my village to the edge of a quarry and cut their throats as if they were puppies? One of them said: Don’t, sir, I’m afraid. . . The — conscience — of — the — world. My toothless old grandmother — heaven rest her — a hare, a baby hare, have more bite in them. Believe me. You do.”
In a friendly voice,
“Come again. We understand each other. Have you had enough food?”
He walked in front of Renn to the door and across the landing to the stairs. There he halted. Even standing still, he gave off a gaiety and energy more attractive than alarming. It was also alarming.
On his way back to Charlottenburg he recalled that he had invited Arnold to come at two o’clock, and they would drive out together to a village where he had business. It was now three, too late to go.
Arnold was waiting. He looked strained and sulky. Apologising for being late, Renn said,
“I’ve been failing to get your landlord out of the Russians. Out of a charming Russian, beautiful creature, and the most skilful liar I ever met.”
Arnold looked at him with an almost aggressive smile.
“Are you sure he was lying? How do you know?”
“They don’t really lie. Truth is what they can use. That’s all.”
“Why are you so anxious to see Rechberg?”
“Oh, at first I wanted him simply to check Kalb’s story. He says Rechberg walked with him as far as the Kurfürstendamm and left him with a Dr Leist — who says it’s a Jewish lie. But now I want to know what the brute is doing in the Russian nursery: he’s not allowed to play there; we told him to stay in ours.”
Arnold burst into loud laughter.
“How you hate him!”
The moment was ill-judged, but he said,
“We’re accumulating such a file round him. . . that even Mr William Gary won’t be able to protect him.”
He saw Arnold frown irritably.
“In the meantime, he’s a link in Kalb’s story. Which I believe, but I’m damned if anyone else would. . . The oddest thing about Kalb is that no one seems to know why he’s in Germany at all: he’s perfectly in order and there seems to have been no point in sending him. No one asked for him, and no one wanted him. The man in London finally responsible for sending him has since died; his successor, of course, washes his hands of it. Someone here had the bright idea of letting him loose on a collection of stolen paintings — since the English expert who was coming out to look at them had been delayed. . . Would you like to see him?”
Bored, humouring him, Arnold got up.
“If you’d like to take me.”
They found Kalb sitting, idly, as if intending to wait forever, so absorbed was he in doing nothing. He greeted them with his friendly eagerness: he was thinner and more than ever like a grasshopper in jacket and spectacles. Arnold gave him a warm brilliant smile, but said nothing.
A book lay, unopened, on the folded blanket.
“Did it bore you?” asked Renn. “Shall I lend you something else?”
A sly bright smile.
“No, I began to read it, then my own thoughts became more exciting and important. Important, naturally —” the smile had become gaily deprecating — “only to me.”
Renn looked at him with lifted eyebrows.
“You know, your eyebrows are extraordinary,” Kalb murmured. “Almost unnoticeable, a line, and yet everything is there.” He was overcome by confusion. “What nonsense. . . I was thinking that people like me are de trop.”
Renn smiled.
“Really?”
“Yes, yes, it’s true. We harmless liberals are out of place in the world. We’re not obedient, we’re not even very useful! In a world so clever, so efficient, so full of machines, we can be replaced — easily. We must be got rid of. And we shall be. Mark my word, we shall be pushed right out of sight, and buried —” his strangely magnified pupils gleamed joyously. “Don’t think I’m apologising for us. Not for a moment. I’m very proud. It’s because it is so afraid of us obscuri viri that the world is merciless to us.”
In a lower voice, he said gravely,
“I think the time will come when people like you, my dear sir, are also de trop. And it will be much worse than it is about me.”
Renn was conscious o
f Arnold’s tense silence. In its attentiveness, his face had slipped into the blurred outline of its youth before the war; even his silence was a young silence.
“Why?”
“Why?” Kalb repeated softly. “Because you are not like me, you won’t live to be old, you still have your strength, you won’t submit when they humiliate you, and to kill you thev will have to roll up their sleeves.”
Lightly, almost merrily,
“My skinny old neck scarcely needs a knife!”
Arnold made an uneasy gesture: embarrassed, turning very red, he mumbled,
“I hope it’s not as bad as that. Is there any reason why it should? It’s a damned rotten business, though. I’m very sorry.”
Kalb looked at him with a polite grateful smile: he said comfortingly,
“Please don’t feel sorry. I’m rather content.”
Turning unhurriedly to Renn,
“When shall I be tried again?”
“On Monday.”
“Four days,” Kalb said thoughtfully.
He was silent a minute, then looked brightly at Renn.
“Can I have some writing paper?” He laughed. “You see, I have no time to read books, but I shall write one.”
Outside, Arnold said urgently,
“Can’t anything be done?”
“What can be?” Renn shrugged his shoulders.
The young man looked at him, with an unexpectedly sharp smile.
“You have something in your locker. What is it?”
“An obscure Jewish refugee, of no interest to anyone,” Renn said, in his driest voice, “apparently caught red-handed — a phrase as exact as the first time it was used; he had cut his hand and was bleeding — in a normally filthy bit of looting. Someone, a German, even turns up to say that he worked for their secret service...”
“Well?”
“He used to be a professor of art; and an expert on sixteenth-century paintings. It would do him no harm if our friend Gary were willing to say that he was quite a reputable expert.”
The Black Laurel Page 25
