Trudi.
So shallow was the breath which bore the word that she was ready to think it was merely the syllabling of her feverish mind.
‘Trudi.’
Only a slight increase of volume, but this time it was undoubtedly the old man who spoke.
‘I’m here,’ she said.
A hand moved on the counterpane. She reached out and took it. It was like a tiny bunch of dry twigs.
She said, ‘Who are you?’
Silence, then the reedy voice echoed, ‘Who are you?’
‘Trudi! I’m Trudi Adamson, Herr Schiller.’
The hand moved, or rather trembled a fraction. But it was a withdrawal. She released it gladly. The contact had not been pleasant.
‘Ah yes. The Jew’s daughter,’ said Schiller, his voice stronger. ‘And yet, Trudi also. Strange.’
‘You mean, my mother?’ said Trudi, taking verbally with slow reluctance the steps her mind had already overleapt.
‘Yes.’
‘You are my grandfather?’
A long pause here.
‘Yes.’
Trudi could not look at him. Her eyes were focused on the photograph before her. The young girl smiled up at her, happy, secure, uncaring. Seventeen. Some time in the thirties. Europe lurching towards war. Hitler peering greedily over the Austrian frontier towards Vienna where some faces smiled welcomingly back at him and others regarded him with the blankness of terror. Her father had spoken to her of these times, though never openly and fully. Always it had been in hints and hesitations which perhaps he imagined were sparing his young daughter the horror of full knowledge, but which in fact had only served to stimulate her fearful imagination.
‘You were a Nazi, Herr Schiller,’ she said.
‘Oh no,’ he denied with an unconcern more convincing than vehemence. ‘Never that. Nazi is political. I was never political.’
‘A Jew-hater then.’
‘That’s so,’ he agreed with an equal insouciance. ‘Some of my best rivals were Jews. Before 1938, I had to deal with them on equal terms. I didn’t like it, but I did it. Business is business, as they say. After 1938, things changed. I cracked the whip then.’
There was a nostalgic satisfaction in his voice which chilled the blood.
‘Good days,’ he sighed. ‘Good days. Perhaps the best. I was legitimate, you understand. A businessman only. It was the war that changed things. Not me. It was crime that changed. When those in charge are willing to pay through the nose for what the law forbids, then crime becomes legitimate! Surely you must understand that, my little Jewess? Hasn’t that been the guiding principle of your race ever since they bribed their way out of Egypt?’
Trudi wanted to leave. Her whole being cried to her to be gone while there was still room to doubt the relationship that was being implied between her and this mummified evil.
But one thing she did know for certain was that there was no longer any warm nest for her to hibernate safely in, and knowing that, she had to know everything.
‘My mother …’ she said.
But the old man was not yet ready for that strand in his life’s coil. He wanted to dwell a little longer on what he saw as his triumphs.
‘After the war, the Americans came. After the pure-blooded Aryans, these mongrels! Latins, Negroes, Anglo-Saxons, Orientals. Jews even. I dealt with them all and you know what, liebchen? They were all the same! The British too. Even the holy, preaching British. My enemies had said, when the Allies come, then we’ll have you, then we’ll see you tried and punished. Fools! All the Allies wanted was to rescue “poor little Austria” from the horrid Hun. A couple of token trials perhaps, but for the rest, an untainted past, a bright future in which all things were possible, wealth, power, respect, even the presidency itself!’
He laughed like the wind in dead leaves.
‘So I made sure I wasn’t a token. I had money. I needed a man. I found him. I’m good at finding men, you should know that, my little Jewess! It was just a precaution, you understand. I’d probably have survived anyway. These new conquerors needed men like me to keep them well fed and comfortable, to pleasure them and make them rich! Normally a job for the Jews, my dear. Only, just then, there weren’t many Jews to do it!’
The door burst open and a nurse came in.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘Herr Schiller must rest!’
Through the indignation Trudi, whose senses seemed to be drug-sharp tonight, felt fear and guessed that this nurse should have been on station in the ante-room but had gone off on her own business.
‘Get out!’ she snarled. ‘I have permission.’
The nurse hesitated, then left. But she would probably check up.
Trudi said urgently, ‘Tell me about my mother!’
‘Your mother?’ said the old man vaguely.
‘My mother. Your daughter. Trudi!’
She thrust the photograph before his dulling eyes. Slowly the gleam of understanding, or something close to it, returned.
‘Trudi! The Jew had her. His oily skin, his greasy lips, his skinned thing … oh, they have charms and drugs, they have ceremonies … when I found out I thought … but too late … already he had infected her with child!’
He struggled into an upright position.
‘But what’s a child? A Jewish child? A life like a candle flame. Snuff! – and it’s out! And I knew experts … I told her I forgave her. I told her to send him to meet me. And I told my friends too, friends who would receive him like a gift of meat to tigers! But she didn’t trust me! That too he had done. He had entered her mind and taught her not to trust me! He came early and when he saw I had brought my friends, he fled, and she fled with him. Switzerland first, but I could reach them in Switzerland, they were cunning enough to know that. So on they went to England. And there she littered, and there she died, but none of this did I know till later when the new peace gave us leisure to take up old wars. Then I sent out searchers, then I took up the trail …’
The door swung open again.
Klarsfeld’s voice cried, ‘Frau Adamson, what’s going on? Please, you shouldn’t be here. You must leave immediately.’
Ignoring him, Trudi cried, ‘And then? What did you do then?’
But the interruption had done more than interrupt the flow of the old man’s speech, it had broken some vital thread, for once more all animation left his skinny frame and he slid back down beneath the bedclothes like a line of seaweed washed off a harbour wall.
Trudi rose to her feet, not in obedience to the doctor’s repeated command, but because she recognized there was nothing more to be learned here for the time being; perhaps for ever.
Pushing past the nurse, who regarded her with the complacency of one whose own dereliction of duty has been subsumed by another’s greater guilt, she set off back to her room. Halfway down the walkway to the old lodge, she encountered Werner. He halted and looked set to address her reprimandingly, but without breaking her stride she said, ‘I’ve been talking to Schiller’ and left him staring after her with an expression of alarm on his face.
Back in her room, she locked the door and sat at the window, staring out at the pleated snow.
It was strange. A week ago, she would not have claimed to be happy. But looking back now at that time before she knew about Astrid Fischer’s death, and Trent’s betrayal of her with Jan, and her own descent from Herr Schiller, it seemed a golden age.
After a while there was a knock at the door.
Werner’s voice called, ‘Frau Adamson, may I come in please?’
‘No,’ she said flatly.
There was a moment’s silence, then footsteps moved slowly away.
Trudi was still sitting by the window at first light when the distant roar of an engine, then a long plume of regurgitated snow, told her the road from the village was being re-opened.
When she left her room it was still early, but she had screwed up her will to such a point that she was determined to leave the clin
ic, even if it meant walking back to Vienna.
It proved unnecessary. What she had started to think of as a prison, or at best a trap, became simply a place of work as she made her way downstairs. In the staff room, there was hot coffee, and white-coated acquaintances from the previous night’s meal greeted her with friendly remarks about the weather.
Elvira came forward and said, ‘Would you like some breakfast before you leave, Frau Adamson?’
A smell of fresh baked rolls from the dining room nearly tempted her, but she said, ‘No.’
‘In that case, the car is waiting. Dr Werner sends his apologies, but he is working. He hopes he may see you again before you leave Vienna.’
‘Thank him for his hospitality,’ said Trudi thinly. ‘Tell him, I certainly hope I shall have the chance to pay another visit. I should like in particular to resume my conversation with Herr Schiller.’
Her Parthian shot misfired pathetically. The young woman’s face lengthened with the solemnity of condolence.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but of course, you cannot know. I regret to say that Herr Schiller passed away last night. Quietly. In his sleep. A sad loss; a blessed relief. Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Adamson, Auf Wiedersehen.’
7
Back at the Hotel Regina, Trudi was luxuriating in a hot bath when the telephone rang. Her first thought was that it would be James Dacre checking to see if she had returned but when she answered it, the voice was the receptionist’s telling her that Herr Jünger’s car had come to collect her.
‘Tell him to wait,’ she said. ‘And would you have some coffee and rolls sent up to my room?’
The receptionist started to say she would transfer the call to room service but Trudi replaced the phone. Ten minutes later as she was dressing there was a tap at the door. She opened it and saw the tray of coffee and rolls before she saw that it was Dacre carrying it.
‘Welcome back,’ he said. ‘I intercepted a waiter.’
‘I thought you’d got a new job,’ said Trudi. ‘Come in.’
She poured herself some coffee and buttered a roll. Dacre reclined on the bed, watching her. His silence, she guessed, was aimed at making her give an account of all her adventures since last they met. In fact, she had been looking forward to an audience as a mirror in which to reexamine her experiences, but now the opportunity was here, she felt strangely reluctant. There are intimacies far beyond sex, and she was even less used to admitting strangers to her mind than she was to her body.
A longing for Jan came over her and though, as on every other occasion she had found herself missing her friend, it was immediately drowned by bitter anger, the echo of the longing still reverberated deep down.
‘Well?’ said Dacre.
It felt like a triumph that her silence had provoked him to break his. Immediately she was ashamed. This was no way to treat a man who was her lover and who had been as assiduous in her protection as Dacre had.
The telephone rang.
It was Jünger.
‘My driver has just contacted me to say that he is still waiting to collect you,’ he said. ‘The thing is, I have to leave town at noon. Something’s come up unexpectedly and I shall be away for a few days. I don’t think there is a great deal left for us to do together, but if there is a hold-up on your side, perhaps it would be best if I let one of my assistants deal with you. In fact, he could come to your hotel and save you the bother of coming here if you are not feeling well …’
‘I’m feeling fine, Herr Jünger,’ interrupted Trudi. ‘I shall be with you in five minutes. Good morning.’
She replaced the receiver firmly. Had she been manipulated? she was already thinking. Yesterday, the thought of not having to go to that sinister building again would have seemed delightful, and she would not have been much bothered at the prospect of missing Jünger himself.
Now, however, she was determined to see the man, come what may.
James Dacre said, ‘Trudi, what’s going on?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘All I know about what’s been happening to you since you went into that block house yesterday morning is a couple of messages, one saying you’d got out early and would see me later, the other saying you were snowed in out in the woods somewhere and would see me when you could!’
‘That’s about the strength of it, James,’ she said, finishing her coffee and putting her coat on. ‘Look, I’ve got to dash now. Jünger’s leaving at noon, so that should be me finished. We can have lunch and the afternoon together and then head for home as soon as we like. I’ll see you here at, say, one o’clock. Be here, James, and then I shan’t have to leave a message, shall I?’
It all sounded more cumbersome than she intended. She was still learning the art of the light touch. She went over to him and kissed him and that did not quite work either. But she had no time to sort out these deficiencies at the moment, and she had already stopped thinking about them by the time she got into the car.
Prepared to do battle with Fräulein Weigel, she was almost disappointed to be dropped not in the gloomy courtyard but at the entrance she had left by in the elegant street off Kärntner Strasse. The uniformed commissionaire ushered her through the tall doors, put her in the lift, pressed a button, and when the lift halted and the door slid back, Jünger himself was standing there.
In his comfortable office, he offered her coffee.
Trudi refused and said, ‘Herr Jünger, I spent last night snow-bound in the Kahlenberg Klinik, or perhaps you know that already?’
He made a gesture which could have meant anything and she did not press the point.
‘While I was there, I had the chance to talk with Herr Schiller,’ she said. ‘Herr Manfred Schiller, head of Schiller-Reise, remember?’
‘Of course. I told you he was in a nursing home, I seem to recollect.’
‘But you didn’t mention the Kahlenberg Klinik.’
‘There was no reason.’
‘Not even when you cross-questioned me about my last visit to Vienna and I told you that I’d been there to talk with Dr Werner?’
‘I noted the coincidence, did not think it worth mentioning,’ murmured Jünger.
‘No? And perhaps you didn’t think it was worth mentioning either that Schiller was my grandfather!’ she shouted.
To his credit – or perhaps not – he didn’t affect surprise but merely sighed deeply and said, ‘Well, either you knew it or you didn’t.’
She took this in and said in bewilderment, ‘But if I had known, then of course …’
‘… of course, you would have mentioned it,’ he completed the sentence, smiling. ‘Perhaps. But can I be sure you always mention everything you know to me, Frau Adamson? Is there nothing you have held back? About Schiller-Reise for instance? Or about what has happened since your husband’s death?’
Avoiding this unattractive diversion, Trudi said, ‘But I didn’t know about my ancestry, Herr Jünger. And now I only know part of it and I can’t find out more, not from Schiller. He’s dead, you see.’
‘So I understand,’ said Jünger, unsurprised once more.
‘You know already?’ She digested this. ‘Is this anything to do with your change of plan?’
‘In a way.’ He sighed again. ‘You see, Frau Adamson, Schiller-Reise, or at least that level of it with which I’m concerned, is like a kingdom. When the king is dying, the battle for the succession begins. Sometimes, it seems to have been settled beyond all doubt. But there is always room for debate and sometimes the obvious heir might not be approved by the colonial governor if the country is a tributary state. No, it’s not until the king is dead and his successor crowned that you can be really sure.’
‘Schiller’s dead now,’ said Trudi. ‘Who’s the likely heir?’
‘Oddly enough, in strict legal terms, I suppose you are!’ said Jünger. ‘He has no other family.’
‘He had no family!’ she exploded. Then, calming down, she said, ‘Tell me what you know about him.’
‘What do you know already?’
‘Only what he told me last night,’ she said, and outlined what had been said.
Jünger nodded and said gently, ‘Then you know just about everything. He was a rabid anti-semite. The Anschluss was for him a heaven-sent opportunity to pay off old scores and make a lot of money while he was at it. When he discovered his daughter was seeing your father, he must have been enraged. He probably ordered her to break off the liaison and then learned that she was pregnant and proposed marrying her lover. The best that can be said for Schiller was that he was probably genuinely afraid of what this might mean for his daughter’s safety. But, even without the Nazis, I don’t doubt he would have used every device, legal and illegal, to stop his daughter marrying a Jew. Now he had the simple solution of turning Schumacher over to the Gestapo. But the plan went wrong, your father got away and your mother went with him. Schiller probably chased them as far as Switzerland, but they put themselves temporarily out of reach by moving to England, and now the war was close to breaking out. After the war, he had other things to occupy him for a while. He came close to being put on trial, but some documents mysteriously disappeared and he was downgraded from Category 3, militarists, activists and profiteers, to the fifth and lowest category of Nazi, non-offenders. I suspect the first bit of hard information he got out of England was that his daughter was dead. That would be a matter of record. When he became aware of your existence, I don’t know, but you must have presented him with what in his own terms was a moral problem. His own flesh and blood, yet …’
‘I know,’ said Trudi dully. ‘The Jew’s daughter. The cause of his own daughter’s death.’
‘Just so. Well, there you have it. I’m sorry you had to find all this out in this way, always assuming …’
‘Yes?’
‘… that you have just found it out.’
Trudi said, ‘What other assumption is there?’
‘Ask yourself, Frau Adamson.’
She asked herself, nodded and said, ‘Of course. It seems too much of a coincidence, doesn’t it? Schiller’s granddaughter not knowing she is Schiller’s granddaughter, but so clearly connected via her husband with the firm.’
Death of a Dormouse Page 20
