Twilight of Gutenberg

by Hitoshi Goto

  “Not South America?”

  “This is Bormann. In the last moment before the fall of the empire, he might set sail in a submarine for South America, but that’s just a diversion. Remember, South America is Catholic. He wouldn’t stand for that. We have to somehow communicate this to the Allies. As far as Bormann’s concerned, Time is not a very bankrupt.”

  “But it’s not possible—our every movement is under surveillance.”

  Canaris thought hard for a moment. “That Japanese painter. According to Schmidt, he is reliable. And what’s more, he owes us for his lover having fled to England. I’m sure he would understand the significance of Romulus and deliver the message for us.”

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  “Either way, it seems they’ve come for us,” Oster said, shaking his head sadly.

  †

  “I’ve arrested them at last. Heil Hitler!” Sonnenberger said, bringing his right hand up in a Nazi salute.

  “Both Canaris and Oster, together?” asked Kaltenbrunner, indicating he should take a seat.

  “Jawohl,” he replied lightly, sitting down.

  “So this means that the Abwehr has disappeared both in name and in reality. His lordship Bormann will be happy.”

  Kaltenbrunner was in high spirits.

  “There’s just one thing that bothers me,” Sonnenberger said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just before we arrested Canaris, a phone call was made from Oster’s house.”

  “To where?”

  “To a bookshop in Paris, in Rue de Rivoli. It’s a purveyor to our government. That’s where the call was made to.”

  “A direct call?”

  “Yes. It was made in the brief moment before the Gestapo burst in. Canaris requested delivery of a book.”

  “What sort of book?”

  “Shakespeare’s Henry V,” came the curt answer.

  “What?” Kaltenbrunner asked back, puzzled.

  “Of course it’s a German edition, but he requested it delivered to a Japanese artist who lives in Paris.”

  “Perhaps it was a coded message?”

  “No. As soon as we received the wiretap contact, the Gestapo immediately went to the bookshop and painstakingly searched the book, but there was no trace of it having been tampered with in any way. After checking all the military stamps, they granted permission to send it. They’ll be keeping an eye on what the artist does upon receiving it, so they should find out what was behind it.”

  “A Japanese artist? Would that be Hoshino, by any chance?”

  “Yes. I met him on a train last year, and then he went to Guernsey after that. And one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He was also there when we liquidated the Manteuffels.”

  “What sort of man is he? A spy for the Allies?”

  “No, I can’t say that for sure. When he went to Guernsey it was to investigate the death of a Japanese officer, and he had been invited to a Japanese function at the Guesthouse near Potsdam where the Manteuffels died.”

  “But there are too many coincidences. It appears he was also connected to Canaris. Of course you’re tracking that package, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. We confirmed that Hoshino received the package, opened it and checked the contents. We watched him from a building on the other side of the street.”

  “And?”

  “He flicked through all the pages looking rather puzzled, then closed the book and put it on his bookshelf without further ado.”

  “Any signs of him having read it after that?”

  “We entered his apartment while he was out and thoroughly search the place, but we didn’t find anything suspicious. We placed a hair on the book and checked again three days later, but there was no sign at all that it had been moved.”

  “How strange. This was Canaris’ last move, and he sent a Shakespeare play to a Japanese artist? What the hell did he mean by that?

  Memorandum

  When Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to Paris a hundred and thirty years ago, the newspapers famously changed their reporting. Upon his escape from Elba he was a “monster,” but the closer he came to Paris the reports gradually changed to “the Tyrant has landed at Cannes,” and finally “His imperial and royal majesty” was “joyfully acclaimed” by his “devoted and loyal subjects” upon his arrival.

  During WW2 the newspapers were under strict censorship by the German military and of course didn’t report any bad news about the progress of the war, so the gossip going around in the cafés became the main source of information.

  In July 1944 a Wehrmacht officer attempted to assassinate Hitler in his military headquarters. It failed, but the attempt fuelled widespread rumours amongst Parisians of internal conflict in the Abwehr and SS. There was unrest even amongst the Germans.

  The Allied forces had still been contained to the Normandy peninsula and around Calais, but General Patton broke through the Avranches corridor and advanced rapidly towards Germany. The Germans rallied and concentrated their tanks and forces on closing that narrow breach. Their counter offensive, however, was blocked by the overwhelmingly superior Allied Airforce, and they instead found themselves surrounded at the Falaise pocket. On 21 August they managed to break out and fled for their lives.

  Paris was left defenceless against the advance of the Allied forces.

  With every step closer the Allies came to Paris, the locals grew daily more excited. The Resistance had been acting in the shadows, but now they confidently came out into the open.

  To cut a long story short, from around 18 August many workers, including railroad workers and police officers, began walking out of their jobs. And on the nineteenth, the Resistance rose up in rebellion.

  The Orientals who had continued living in Paris under the German occupation were mostly Japanese, and if the German military now retreated they would instantly find themselves cast as the enemy. I was really undecided whether I should leave with the Germans or stay. I could go to stay with Kenichi in Berlin, and if I moved with the diplomatic corps my life would probably be saved.

  If I stayed in Paris, however, I was sure to be arrested by the French authorities after it was liberated. That would be preferable to being lynched by the townspeople. If it were only my life, in a way I’d be quite satisfied to die in Paris. However, now I was a father. I couldn’t make up my mind, and in the meantime stayed holed up in my apartment.

  For better or for worse, I didn’t have to worry about it for long. The Allies liberated Paris surprisingly fast.

  By a curious coincidence I ended up witnessing both the Germans’ triumphant entrance into the city four years earlier and its liberation by the Allies.

  The American and French forces finally stormed the city on 25 August, and the radio reported that they were advancing along several routes from the south up towards the centre.

  Soon after midday, the news came that the tricolour was flying from the top of the Eiffel Tower. The announcer’s voice was overcome with emotion and tearful.

  That night the news came that German commanding officers had signed documents of surrender. I could hear the festive atmosphere on the street even from my apartment.

  However, the liberation from the tyrannical rule of the Germans would certainly double the hatred for German soldiers, French collaborators, and German allies.

  Fortunately I had enough bread and water to last several days, and stayed in bed covered head to toe with a blanket.

  It must have been two days later that someone knocked sharply on my apartment door.

  I made up my mind and got out of bed. Hastily smoothing down my tousled hair, I went to the door, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

  I opened the door to see two officers in British uniforms standing there.

  “Mr. Hoshin
o?” one of them asked. I nodded. “May I ask you to accompany me?”

  So I was under arrest.

  “What about my things?”

  “The British army will take responsibility for your belongings until you come back, so please don’t worry.”

  “Until I come back? Aren’t you arresting me?”

  “Arrest?” The taller of the two officers gave an amused smile. “Please don’t misunderstand us. You are our honoured guest, Mr. Hoshino.”

  “Guest?”

  “Yes. After all, you’re an anti-fascist fighter, aren’t you? Your mistress, too, was active under General de Gaulle.”

  I was thoroughly bewildered.

  †

  We took off from an airfield on the outskirts of Paris, flew over the English Channel, and landed in an airfield on the outskirts of London, probably to the South East. A car was waiting for me there, driven by a tall and skinny Englishman. As I got in, he introduced himself as Simon Walker from foreign intelligence, although he didn’t say exactly who he worked for. He was completely poker-faced, and gave away nothing of his thoughts. His treatment of me was mechanical and cold, as if he was carrying out orders against his will. After all, Britain was still at war with Japan.

  For me, London was the place I had spent my earliest years. Unfortunately, however, no memories of that time resurfaced even when I saw Big Ben. Even now that the Allies had liberated Paris and were overpowering the Germans, there were still air raid shelters and bunkers all over the city. I’d heard that unmanned German rocket bombs had been dropped on London night after night that summer.

  Simon drove through the city centre and carried on towards the suburbs. After passing through pastoral fields and woods, it stopped outside a small cottage that I would never have noticed had it not been for the two soldiers standing guard outside. It was there that I again met Catherine. And I met our daughter for the first time.

  I carefully took the baby from Catherine’s arms, feeling the vitality of this small life. Her eyes were quite blue, and she clearly resembled Catherine. But I was satisfied. Catherine was blonde, but I must have passed my genes to our daughter for her hair was as black as that of Marie Dubas in the Bobino.

  I called our daughter Erika. Catherine wasn’t keen because it made her sound like a German, but when I told her it was a name that could work in Japanese, too, she accepted it.

  For a while we could spend time alone, the three of us as a family.

  That was when I learned the details of her arrest on Guernsey for the first time. The Germans had forced their way into the ice cream parlour just as she was passing the letter from Commander Yagyu to the English spy. They had both been arrested and held one night in detention, then early the next morning they were taken to the airfield. The one in charge of her arrest was none other than Lieutenant Schmidt. “It’s my duty,” he’d told her.

  Their car stopped outside a German plane stopped on the runway. They were taken into the plane, their handcuffs removed, and the propellers started turning. Other than them there was an officer wearing a Luftwaffe uniform. The sound of the engine and propellers grew louder and the plane began to move. It was still dark outside.

  In no time at all they were airborne, and after barely an hour’s flight the plane began to descend and eventually landed at a small airfield. From the scenery she knew they were still in France. The Luftwaffe officer took them out of the plane and into a small building, where they waited for nightfall. As it grew dark, another plane landed and loomed up in the airfield lights as it drew close to them. It was painted black, and didn’t bear any markings, not even the Iron Cross of the German military. Once the three of them had boarded, it immediately took off.

  It was pitch black outside. She was just wondering whether they had arrived in Berlin, when suddenly the Luftwaffe officer, who until then had said nothing, turned to them and asked, in English, “Have you ever used a parachute?”

  The English spy had received training, but Catherine of course had no experience whatsoever.

  “I see,” the officer said, then took out two folded parachutes and explained how to use them. “In other words, you can just think of it like jumping out of an upstairs window.”

  “But why are you telling us this?” Catherine asked in astonishment.

  To her surprise, the officer responded by beginning to fit the two of them with the parachutes.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is that you are going to jump. You’re lucky, aren’t you? You’ll be able to catch the archbishop’s sermon,” he told her in heavily accented English.

  “What? You want us to jump?” Catherine and the spy both exclaimed, one in French, the other in English.

  “It’s an order.”

  “Where the hell are we? Where are we going to land?”

  The officer grinned. “We’re now over Canterbury, England.”

  I could have listened to her tell the story of her parachute jump adventure over and over again. As luck would have it, they landed right in front of the cathedral, and the caretaker just happened to be outside and noticed the white canopies appearing out of the dark sky. After they landed he cautiously approached them, and was astonished to find one of them was a Frenchwoman.

  “Saint Thomas O’Beckett is enshrined there, isn’t he? God was protecting us,” Catherine said, convinced.

  But why had she been taken to England, not Germany? I couldn’t understand. Lieutenant Schmidt was in the Special Operations Division of the Abwehr, so had he been following his boss’s orders?

  “Come to think of it,” Catherine said. “There was an assassination attempt on Hitler in July this year, wasn’t there?”

  “Oh yes, I read about that in the newspaper.”

  “It appears that it was masterminded by officers in the Abwehr, and a lot of senior officers were arrested for having been involved. I don’t know the details, but not all the German military is bad. There seems dissent within the German army, and also between the SS and Abwehr. Maybe what happened to me has something to do with that?”

  I was astonished at her insight, but then the image of Sonnenberger, the SS officer in a black uniform who I’d met on the train to Berlin, rose up in the back of my mind.

  Catherine continued with her story. After landing in England, she contacted General de Gaulle’s Free France, and went to work for the logistics office for the Free French Forces who were fighting for liberation, continuing even after realising she was pregnant right up until she gave birth.

  Having just arrived from an area that the Germans were fortifying, she was also questioned closely by the British authorities for information about the scale of the fortifications.

  Finally, she was questioned minutely by the Navy’s information department about Commander Yagyu and myself.

  “I wanted to be with you, Yasuo, so I told them that you were anti-war and that since your brother-in-law was in Berlin, it would benefit them to bring you to England,” she said with a mischievous wink.

  In fact, she almost certainly hadn’t said anti-war but what the officer called an “anti-fascist fighter.”

  So that was why I had been able to meet her now…

  To be honest, the biggest shock was hearing the details from Catherine of what had happened on Guernsey.

  Cradling Erika gently in her arms as she spoke, she told me, “Monsieur Yagyu had said that ‘something unexpected happened’ and ‘If the Gestapo hadn’t disturbed us, it would have been mission accomplished,’ and besides, ‘two people wouldn’t have been killed.’”

  “What?”

  “And what’s more, the truth was even more complicated.”

  “But how come you…” I said doubtfully.

  “Because I was arrested with the ice cream parlour owner, remember? He told me about what happened while we were in the plane. Althoug
h I haven’t heard all of it, since I haven’t seen him since we parachuted down and he was taken under the protection of the British army.”

  Of course! That was thoughtless of me. Since I was so impatient, she explained it to me.

  Commander Yagyu had said that the first time they crash-landed, the pilot had survived and had contacted a local collaborator in Guernsey, who arranged for a Lysander to be sent from the English mainland to rescue them. That collaborator had been a British spy disguised as an ice cream vendor.

  In order to avoid being spotted by the Germans, they chose a night when the weather was not good. It hadn’t yet started raining, and there was some faint moonlight, but with the wind picking up and clouds racing, the weather was expected to take a turn for the worse.

  Under such circumstances, however nimble a plane might be, it wasn’t easy to find a place to land. And so the people at the ice cream parlour said they would help by preparing guide lights for the Lysander. It wasn’t as grand as it sounded, though.

  “They just got some oil drums and put some kindling and petrol in them, which they would light when the appointed time came,” Catherine told me.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “And they put one right on the sea front, didn’t they? By that watchtower.” I explained how I’d seen the marks left by an oil drum at the top of the cliff.

  “Yes, I think that must be it. Monsieur Yagyu lit the second oil drum 50 metres further along, and the ice cream parlour owner lit yet another one 50 metres beyond that. Beyond them the pilot was waiting for the plane to land.”

  “Who lit the oil drum closest to the beach?”

  She looked down sadly. “It was Jayne, the English maid. She was also in the Resistance, apparently.”

  “I see. Well, I suppose they must have taken the oil drums there.”

  “Yes, the ice cream parlour owner brought a handcart to carry them from the hiding place. The three drums were placed in a straight line, and once they heard the faint sound of an aircraft engine, at the appointed time they lit them. The plane approached the island slowly from the south, and safely landed in the grass. By the way, at that point the unexpected was already beginning to happen…”