“How can I help you in your — your personal problem? Is it — forgive me — in any way important?”
A little to his horror, he saw that Rechberg was suffering. His eyelids had closed: they were a darker colour than the rest of his face and rested on it like a bruise, or like the stains in a fungus. His lips were puckered and drawn inward, the lips of a very old woman. Opening his eyes, he said,
“Since my unpleasant experience, with the Russians, I’ve been unwell — feverish insomnia, even a touch of delirium. I’m sometimes not sure that what I think is happening really is. In fact, delusions. One of my delusions has been that this wretched Jew was arrested by mistake. I mean: not guilty.”
It is unpleasant to watch the humiliation even of a man you do not like. Gary said gently,
“Why should you care? ”
“Why? Because I — an accident, an unpleasant accident — the creature is in a position to injure me. As shortly as I can. . . He was here examining the collection of paintings, very large, that Hilfrich — you knew him, or you know his name — yes, the banker — had in his air-raid cellars. They were paintings sent here from several countries, France, Poland, Italy . . .”
His voice had regained a little force, and with it a trace of the charm he had been able to use as Gessler’s “ foreign minister”. It hardened Gary’s heart against him.
“You mean — stolen paintings? ”
“Paintings sent here,” repeated Rechberg. “Certain of the more valuable were sent to me — for Gerdnau. I say simply: for Gerdnau. I had them there, until I moved them to Berlin, into Hilfrich’s cellars — for safety. . . I have some reason for believing that Kalb knew, or almost knew this — if he had not been arrested he would have known...”
He paused, moved his hands, and added,
“In the circumstances, you can’t be surprised that I was relieved to hear he had been sentenced to death for an unpleasant murder.”
“In the disgraceful circumstances,” Gary said urbanely, “you could be thankful.”
A silence.
“They were for Gerdnau,” Rechberg said, under his breath.
With a sudden clarity, Gary saw that a man of decent pious upbringing, a man of character, as they say, can become a thief out of a greed, a concupiscence, which is a passion, a deadly sin, and a mistaken logic. His reason, no doubt, persuaded him that it is only right for the greatest art to be lodged in the greatest country, and also, also, he stole for Gerdnau as a man, any man, might bring himself to steal to give to a lover. He felt no pity for Rechberg. And this moment, when Rechberg was weak with the relief of having confessed, seemed the moment to strike.
“Is it true,” he said sharply, “that you have been playing with the idea of — what shall I say? — rallying yourself to the Russians?”
Rechberg answered mechanically.
“Yes.”
An ambiguous gleam crossed his face:
“It may be necessary. If you are going to hand half my country over to them — and allow your imbecile politicians and the French to ruin what’s left. What did you expect?”
“What I did not expect,” Gary said with contempt, “was an indecent bad faith.”
His contempt was a blunder. Like throwing cold water on an hysteric, it stiffened the other man.
With extreme bitterness, Rechberg said,
“You are fortunate. In perfect good faith you can save your estate, its birches, lakes, rivers, for yourself, under cover — I don’t say under pretence — of saving the world. When I want to save Germany —” his face contracted: he was thinking certainly of a smaller estate — “I’m accused of bad faith. Why? If we’d defeated you, who would have talked of our bad faith? No one.”
Tears — of anger — in his eyes gave them a momentary clearness.
“Who forced us into this false position? There are moments when I, yes, I, even I, fall into a pit of guilt that divides me, myself as I am, from what I do. Yet what I do is right. I do what God sent me, a German, into the world to do.”
His gaze had become cloudy and burning.
“God helping me,” he said quietly, “I shall do it.”
Unable to swallow his irony, Gary said,
“I’m sorry. I can’t follow you on to these heights.”
After a minute, Rechberg said drily,
“If I’m to work for the salvation of the West I must live in the West. Berlin is no longer a western capital. I shall be obliged if you can arrange for me to go to New York and Stockholm. My American colleagues, I say, recognise that, the Nazi error over, they must use, without reserve — I say, without reserve — our uprightness and our skill. I need to confer with them. And first, I must go to Sweden — ” from a movement of the lines below his eyes, Gary realised that he was smiling — “to look at the Swedish son-in-law my elder daughter proposes to give me.”
“That’s not impossible,” Gary answered.
A long silence. He watched something else, as shapeless as the first sign of corruption in a dead animal, coming to life behind Rechberg’s eyes.
Rechberg said softly,
“Is there a serious danger that Kalb may be reprieved?”
So this was behind his confession. He could not wait to see what happened to Kalb; driven by his nerves, he had to find out for certain that the Jew was going to die. Maliciously, Gary said,
“My own belief is that the fellow may be innocent. Perhaps not belief. But strong enough for me to disturb the reviewing authority — whom I happen to know — with my doubts.”
“Have you done so?”
“Not yet.”
He watched the emergence, from the uneasy gentle good face, of another, authoritatively polite, harsh. It was no queerer than those portraits in which the sitter shows two profiles and his full face.
“I must say, I should regard it as an unfriendly act.”
Coldly inquisitive, Gary asked,
“Suppose you knew he was innocent?”
Rechberg shrugged his shoulders.
“After all,” Gary persisted, “one of your own countrymen.”
“Nonsense. The fellow’s a Jew.”
Gary felt a sudden deep shock. A baseness, he thought, worse than fear. Coolly,
“Do I gather that you came here to make two conditions for the future? One, liberty to go abroad; two, that I disinterest myself in the wretched Kalb? ”
Rechberg hesitated briefly and said,
“’Yes.”
He must be mad to imagine he can make conditions, Gary thought. On the edge of reminding the madman that if he were not protected he would be arrested with his colleagues, the other heads of cartels, he checked himself. In Rechberg’s state of tension a threat would only fling him to the knifeedge where German destructiveness turns into a passion for self-ruin or suicide. I can buy or coax him, he thought coolly, but not, beyond a point, drive him.
“Wait a minute,” he said, in a dry voice.
He walked to the window, using his malacca canes as if they were stakes he had to drive into the ground. It had been a brilliant day, and the long shadows of the trees were soft and deep. Beyond them, the lake was a thin closed eyelid under the suave light. Turning his back on the German, he reflected.
In Kalb as a human being he had no interest. Not a shred. The fact that he was probably innocent — incapable of becoming an assassin — was nothing. It would be easy to save his life.
The cost? . . . Rechberg was a door, the one only door, to the friendship of powerful interests now, jealously, compulsively, hostile. Without their friendship, his new Order, his effort to save the world from its barbarians, was born dead. And this, this single moment when Rechberg needed him, must be seized — to turn him into a friend. It could be done. I have only, he thought coldly, to be his friend. We are not unlike. . . What does one man weigh against the salvation of the whole world? Even an innocent man. And perhaps he is not innocent. . .
He knew that he was smiling.
What is innocence?
What if it were Kalb’s reason for being born — to be put to death in the name of peace? His destiny, as men used to say . . . In 1945 destiny is a human word. A man who is able to arrange the destinies of other men has the right to do just that. To such a man everything is permitted. What had to happen is what he does. He is his own fate, he arranges his fate; if he does an ugly thing, such as betraying a Kalb, knowing that it is ugly, he takes responsibility for it. . . Justice is not an idol. There are no idols. There is nothing a man must obey against his will. It is for me to decide what is right and just at a certain moment, he thought coldly. . .
He turned to look at Rechberg. He felt a new contempt. Before he lost this war, he was said to be incorruptible. Even by his enemies. And like the rest he has his price — and what a price! The head of a scruffy little Jew. He said calmly,
“Very well. I’ll get you to Sweden and America. And —” he hesitated very briefly — “I’ll disinterest myself in Kalb.”
The expression of Rechberg’s face became one of amusement and a strange complicity. In a flash, blinding him, Gary realised that he himself had his price; he, too, was willing to pay for what he wanted — with the scruffy little head. He felt a cold rage — rising through it, a spiteful grotesque merriment. The wish to make Rechberg ridiculous seized him like a spasm of his body. Smiling, he said,
“Dance.”
“What did you say? ” Rechberg asked.
Suppressing his laughter with an effort,
“I said: Dance. You want me to have the Baptist’s head served to you. All right, dance for me.”
“You are mad,” Rechberg said, with a forced smile.
The curious thing was that Gary was really enjoying himself: his demon, after all, was merry as well as spiteful. As he walked back across the large room, one of his canes slipped on the polished floor; he let it drop, and it rolled away under a couch.
Rechberg stood up to get it for him. Stooping down, he offered a small plump buttock to Gary’s toe. The sharpness of the temptation sobered him. Holding his laughter down — it lifted the surface like an adder moving under warm dry earth — he thanked Rechberg for the stick.
He walked with him to the door and across the landing to the head of the stairs.
“Forgive me if I don’t come down with you. . . And, too, if I don’t speak about Gerdnau — don’t think I can’t feel what it means to you to have lost it to the Russians. To the barbarians. You must feel you’ve lost a great part of the future. It’s not true. You and I, my dear fellow, are stronger than the barbarians, you’ll get Gerdnau back.”
He held his hand out. As if it were a gift, Rechberg laid his hand, small, inert, cold, in it.
When he went back to the library, the laughter he had been suppressing was no longer there. He felt bored: he was on the point of sending for Arnold — and remembered in time that the young man was in London still. The telephone rang. When he heard Patterson’s voice, he said,
“Ah, my dear fellow, I wanted to talk to you about yourself. Unless you ask me not to, I’m going to press for you to be released at once. Do you mind? . . . Good. That’s settled. . .”
He went downstairs, and out on to the terrace. The trees had a side full of yellow-dark light and rustling with starlings, and another black as Acheron, pouring a sluggish shadow towards the east. He felt a familiar grief — that they would outlive him — followed by a poignant happiness and energy. Before I die, he thought, I shall have started men out on a journey towards a new affirmation — this time, of the mind. Mine.
A young birch reminded him in a modest voice of Glen Avie. He stretched himself. By God, it’s time I went home, he thought lightly: if I don’t go soon, I shall miss the autumn.
Chapter Thirty-two
When he reached Prague, Renn had the sense that here, if anywhere, the roots of Europe were still living. Under an enormous sky, the Vltava ran below undamaged bridges, as strong and lively as the seventeenth century springing from old walls to affront, without shock, the new. A life shrewd, patient, lucid, thrust aside by the invader, had waited with a light irony for its release. Here, if anywhere, the resurrection of the body — of Europe — was happening as if birth were the rule.
Or so he felt.
He waited for Father Joseph the next morning in the dining-room of the Alcron. He had invited the priest to breakfast. That is, to a cup of coffee substitute, slightly bitter, without milk, and two slices of black hard bread. At the next table, an American sergeant unwrapped packages containing everything he needed to endure life; two eggs, slices of white bread, real coffee, butter, ham: the Czechs drinking a thin bitter liquid and chewing their dry bread at the other tables glanced at him without surprise, even with mockery.
When the priest came, he was followed almost at once by the official of the Ministry from which Renn had asked permission to visit the internment camp — a woman. Slight, still young, profile of a startling purity — an extreme fineness, with the energy of a stretched cord. She had brought the permit. The priest greeted her as a friend, and with the indulgence of an old peasant for what is certain in the end to submit to being used.
She accepted a cup of the mock coffee and asked Renn,
“Why have you come? Yes, yes, I know you’re looking for someone; we are all looking, except those of us who know it’s no use — he is dead, they killed him. But that’s not all you came for.”
Renn hesitated. Sitting huddled in his chair, clumsy muddy boots thrust out below his cassock, the priest said with a childlike malice,
“Of course not. He’s like the others, he wants to find out if there is any hope. Have we done ourselves in this time, or not?” He glanced, absently, as if in the same moment he were seeing something else, at the American. “That man is sure of it . . . Na, na, don’t look round, Hana, it’s not polite. We must try to be polite.”
“There is no hope, and it doesn’t matter,” Hana said, with energy. She looked at Renn. The irony of her glance was softened by a smiling serenity, strangely fixed. “You English defeated the Germans because you are brave, stubborn, and not soft. But the next time is the last, yes, the last.”
She still smiled.
“What has happened to Europe is so terrible that no one believes it. In any case it’s too late. Europe is finished. It’s all our faults, not only the Germans’, and especially your English fault — you wouldn’t believe that a horror was being born in Germany. . . I was two years in prison, in Pancrac. Father Joseph was in Terezin. If he told you what went on there, you’d see why there is no hope. We are in history to our necks, my sir. The stream runs from crime to punishment, and from punishment to vengeance for it. Yet there must be punishment for Terezin. There must be justice. The wounds made by justice are frightful. I know it, and I consent to them. And they will be avenged. I know that, too, and I know that next time, the next war, is the end. It doesn’t matter, I tell you. We shall smile at it in its face. Until the last minute — until we are all dying of remorse for being ourselves — we can live!”
The priest looked at her with a slow smile, as if he loved her and were amused by her.
“Suppose, just suppose, that forgiveness were to break into history at some moment?”
“Impossible!” she cried. “Absolutely impossible. My darling, you are a saint, you threw yourself away years ago, you have no pride, there’s nothing you want. You don’t even want justice! The rest of us are ridiculous, lazy, sinful. For one of us who forgives — one Czech or one Russian, Pole, Frenchman, one, just one victim learning in his own language the word for anguish — a million, millions, refuse.”
She lifted small worn-out hands, and said softly,
“And I, I refuse.”
Then kissed Father Joseph’s hand, the hand of a peasant, hard, knotted, to reassure him that she was gentle.
“And so the world we live in,” said he, smiling, “will die of its justice. What a pity! Such a beautiful world.”
Hana shook her head slowly. Watching her with
curiosity, Renn saw that her ironically serene smile was drawn over her eyes like a bandage.
“Really, it doesn’t matter,” she said in the same voice. “We can begin again. Europe will die, perhaps all civilisation will die, and men will go on living.”
“Why do you think that?” said Renn, drily.
“Why will men survive the end of the world? Because they can endure the worst they do to each other. . . If you’d been in Pancrac with me, you would know that.”
With a shrewd, almost crafty smile, the priest said,
“There are other reasons. It occurs to them sometimes that they’re not gods; and very occasionally, once in a millennium or so, they decide to forgive themselves for their ridiculous crimes and humiliations — and to make another effort to look themselves in the face.”
When she closed her eyes for a minute, Hana’s face had the immobility and absence of death.
“Excuse me, my darling, I’m very tired.”
“You work too hard,” the priest said, frowning.
She glanced at Renn, smiled finely, and said,
“This morning I’m not working. I’m going to Pancrac. Would you like to come with me? The camp will still be there this afternoon.”
She would, he saw, be disappointed if he refused. How they like to show off their martyrdom, he thought ironically. He asked,
“Why are you going?”
Opening her handbag, she showed him furtively a small parcel.
“I go every week and take a little bread — only a little, because it’s forbidden — to a prisoner, a German woman. One of our guards, who was rather kind to us. Now she is a prisoner and hungry, as we were.” She smiled again, but this time as if she were mocking herself. “You are talking to the Czech who will have the least difficulty in getting used to herself as a skeleton. When our men broke into Pancrac and set us free, I weighed 32 kilos.”
In the broad corridors of the prison, the prisoners, all political — that is to say, guilty of crimes of every sort except those committed from necessity — stood with their faces to the wall until the visitors had passed: you could imagine that they were being punished for having watched their victims. The Czech guard, walking with Renn and Hana, had none of the habits of a warder; he smiled, swung his arms, talked. They waited at the foot of a staircase for the German woman; she came padding down the stairs, blowsy, untidy, her hair in poor grey wisps over her cheeks. As soon as she saw Hana, she began crying; she cried, wrung her hands, groaned.
The Black Laurel Page 35
