Zoo Station

by David Downing

  Once Jens and Zarah had said their goodbyes, the four of them walked out across the tarmac to the silver aeroplane. It had a stubby nose, three engines – one at the front, one on either wing – and windows like rectangular portholes. LUFTHANSA was stencilled on the side, a large swastika painted on the tailfin. A short flight of steps took them up to the door, and into a vestibule behind the passenger cabin, where their cases were stowed. In the cabin itself there were ten leather-covered seats, five on each side of the carpeted aisle, each with a high head-rest. Theirs were the four at the rear, Russell sitting behind Paul, Zarah behind Lothar.

  The other passengers came aboard: a youngish English couple whom Russell had never seen before and four single men, all of whom looked like wealthy businessmen of one sort or another. Judging from their clothes one of these was English, the rest German.

  A mail lorry drew up beside the aeroplane. The driver jumped down, opened the rear door and dragged three sacks marked Deutschespost to the bottom of the steps. A man in a Lufthansa uniform carried them aboard.

  ‘We used these against the communists in Spain,’ Paul said, leaning across the gangway to make himself heard above the rising roar of the engines. ‘They were one of the reasons we won.’

  Russell nodded. A discussion with his son about the Spanish Civil War seemed overdue, but this was hardly the place. He wondered if Paul had forgotten that his parents had both been communists, or just assumed that they’d seen the errors of their ways.

  The pilot and co-pilot appeared, introducing themselves with bows and handshakes as they walked down the aisle to their cabin. The stewardess followed in their tracks, making sure that everyone had fastened their leather safety belts. She was a tall, handsome-looking blonde of about nineteen with a marked Bavarian accent. A predictable ambassador for Hitler’s Germany.

  Out on the tarmac a man began waving the plane forward, and the pilot set them in motion, bumping across the concrete surface towards the end of the runway. There was no pause when they reached it, just a surge of the engines and a swift acceleration. Through the gap between seat and wall, Russell could see Paul’s ecstatic face pressed to the window. On the other side of the aisle, Zarah’s eyes were closed in fright.

  Seconds later, Berlin was spreading out below them – the tangle of lines leading south from Anhalter and Potsdamer stations, the suburbs of Schonefeld, Wilmersdorf, Grunewald. ‘There’s my school!’ Paul almost shouted. ‘And there’s the Funkturm, and the Olympic Stadium!’

  Soon the wide sheet of the Havelsee was receding behind them, the villages, fields and forests of the northern plain laid out below. They were about a mile up, Russell reckoned, high enough to make anything look beautiful. From this sort of height a Judenfrei village looked much like one that wasn’t.

  They flew west, over the wide traffic-filled Elbe and the sprawling city of Hannover, crossing into Dutch air space soon after three o’clock. Rotterdam appeared beneath the starboard wing, the channels of the sea-bound Rhine – or whatever the Dutch called it – beneath the other. As they crossed the North Sea coast the plane was rocked by turbulence, causing Zarah to clutch the handrests and Paul to give his father a worried look. Russell gave him a reassuring smile. Lothar, he noticed, seemed unconcerned.

  The turbulence lasted through most of the sea crossing, and the serene sea below them seemed almost an insult. Looking down at one Hook of Holland-bound steamer Russell felt a hint of regret that they’d travelled by air – not for the lack of comfort, but the lack of romance. He remembered his first peacetime trip to Europe – the first few had been on troopships during the war – the train journey through Kent’s greenery, the Ostend ferry with its bright red funnels, the strange train waiting in the foreign station, the sense of striking out into the unknown. He hadn’t been on a plane for the better part of ten years, and he hadn’t missed them.

  But Paul was having the time of his life. ‘Can you see England yet?’ he asked his father.

  ‘Yes,’ Russell realised. The Thanet coast was below him. A large town. Margate probably, or Ramsgate. Places he’d never been. And within minutes, or so it seemed, the south-eastern suburbs of London were stretching beneath them in the afternoon sun, mile upon mile of neat little houses in a random mesh of roads and railways.

  The pilot brought the plane down on the Croydon runway with only the slightest of jolts. The entry formalities were just that, and the car Jens had ordered was waiting at the terminal doors. They drove up the Brighton Road, slowed by the busy late-afternoon traffic. Paul marvelled at the double-decker buses, but was more astonished by the paucity of buildings reaching above two storeys. It was only after Brixton that third, fourth and fifth floors were grudgingly added.

  Russell asked the driver to take them across Westminster Bridge, and was rewarded by the singular sight of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament aglow in the light of the setting sun. As they drove up Whitehall he pointed out Downing Street and the Horseguards; as they swung round Trafalgar Square, Nelson on his lonely column. The Strand seemed choked with buses, but they finally arrived at the Savoy to find that their fifth floor rooms overlooked the Thames.

  They must have cost a fortune, Russell thought. He and Paul looked out of the window at the barges on the tide-swollen river, the electric trains of the Southern Railway moving in and out of Charing Cross Station. Away to their left the piles of the new Waterloo Bridge stuck out of the water like temple remains. ‘This is good,’ Paul said, with the air of someone truly satisfied.

  Russell got an outside line and phoned his London agent Solly Bernstein, hoping to catch him before he went home. ‘I’m just on my way out of the door,’ Bernstein told him. ‘What the hell are you doing in London?’

  ‘Hoping to see you. Can you squeeze me in tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘Well, all right. Just this once. Four o’clock?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Russell hung up and explained the call to Paul. ‘I’m hungry,’ was the response.

  They ate with Zarah and Lothar in the hotel restaurant. The food was excellent, but Zarah, clearly anxious about the next morning, just picked at it. When she and Lothar wished them goodnight and retired to their room, Russell and his son took a stroll down to the river, and along the Embankment towards the Houses of Parliament. Opposite County Hall they stopped and leant against the parapet, the high tide slurping against the wall below. Pedestrians and buses were still crowding Westminster Bridge, and long chains of lighted carriages rumbled out of Charing Cross. A line of laden coal barges headed downstream, dark silhouettes against the glittering water. Some lines of Eliot slipped across his brain:

  The barges wash

  Drifting logs

  Down Greenwich reach

  Past the Isle of Dogs

  He had hated ‘The Wasteland’ when it came out – its elegant despair had felt like defeatism. But the words had stuck. Or some of them at least.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ he told Paul. ‘Time for bed.’

  Zarah looked exhausted over breakfast next morning, as if she’d hardly slept. Lothar, by contrast, seemed more animated than usual. Paul, asked by his father for an opinion of Zarah’s son, had shrugged and said, ‘He’s just a bit quiet, that’s all.’

  Reception suggested a bank on the Strand which offered currency exchange and probably a safety deposit service, and Russell left Paul examining the huge model of the Queen Mary in the hotel lobby while he swapped his and Zarah’s Reichsmarks for pounds. Safety deposit boxes were available, the cashier informed him proudly. The bank was open until three.

  Their appointment in Harley Street was at eleven, and Zarah had booked a taxi for ten. Trafalgar Square was busy, but the cab then raced round Piccadilly Circus and up Regent Street, delivering them to the doctor’s door with forty-five minutes to spare. A stern-looking receptionist showed them into the waiting room, which was full of highly-polished wooden chairs. Paul found a few children’s comics among the society magazines, and went through one wit
h Lothar, pointing out what was happening in the various pictures.

  ‘How did you find this doctor?’ Russell asked.

  ‘A friend of Jens’ at the Embassy here,’ she replied. ‘He said this man was highly thought of. And he speaks a little German.’

  ‘Little’, as they eventually discovered, was the operative word, and Russell had to function as a full-time interpreter. Doctor Gordon McAllister was a tall ginger-haired man in his forties, with a rather gaunt face, a slight Scottish accent and an almost apologetic smile. He seemed a nice man, and one who clearly liked children. Effi always claimed that doctors who specialised in women’s problems were usually women-haters, but apparently the same logic did not apply to paediatricians.

  His office was a bright, spacious room with windows over-looking the street. In addition to his desk, there were several comfortable chairs and a large wooden box full of children’s toys and books. ‘So tell me about Lothar,’ he asked Zarah through Russell.

  She started off nervously but grew more confident as she went on, thanks in large part to the doctor’s obvious involvement. She said that Lothar sometimes seemed uninterested in everything, that he didn’t respond when people talked to him, that at other times he would suddenly seem to lose interest in whatever it was he was doing, and just stop. ‘He’ll be in the middle of eating,’ she said, ‘and just leave the table and go and do something else. And he doesn’t always seem to understand what I’m telling him to do,’ she added.

  ‘He’s four, yes?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘And three months.’

  ‘Can he recognise different animals?’ He walked over to the box and took out a tiger and a rabbit. ‘Lothar, what’s this?’ he asked holding out the tiger.

  ‘A tiger.’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘A rabbit.’

  ‘No problems there, then. How about colours? Can he recognise then?’

  He could. A red balloon, a blue sky, a yellow canary. Having done so, without warning he walked across to the window and looked out.

  The doctor asked Zarah about the birth, about Lothar’s eating habits, whether there was any history of problems in her or her husband’s family. She answered each question, and, in a halting voice, volunteered the information that she had considered aborting Lothar before he was born. ‘I can’t help thinking there’s a connection,’ she said, clearly close to tears.

  ‘You’re completely wrong about that,’ the doctor insisted, the moment Russell had translated her words. ‘There is no possible connection.’

  ‘Then what is it?’ she asked, wiping a tear away.

  ‘Does he get tired easily? Does he seem weak – physically weak, I mean? Can he lift things?’

  She thought about that. ‘Jens – my husband – he sometimes says that Lothar lacks strength in his fingers. He doesn’t like carrying things. And yes, he does get tired.’

  The doctor leaned forward on his desk, fingers intertwined beneath his chin. ‘I don’t think there is anything seriously wrong with Lothar,’ he said. ‘Or at least, nothing that cannot be corrected. There is no name for this, but it isn’t uncommon. Essentially, he has a weaker link with the rest of the world than most people do, but everyone is different in this respect – he’s just a bit more different than the norm. And his link can be strengthened. What Lothar needs,’ – he ticked them off on his fingers – ‘is fresh air and exercise, really good, nutrient-rich, food – fresh eggs, fresh fruit, fresh everything – and physical stimulation. Regular massage would help. Give and take games – the sort that involve instant physical reactions. And music. All these things stimulate the body, make it more responsive.’

  ‘But there’s nothing seriously wrong?’ Zarah asked.

  ‘Not in my judgement. No.’

  ‘And he doesn’t need any tests?’

  ‘No.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Thank you, doctor.’ She reached inside her handbag for the neat package of pound notes.

  ‘You pay the receptionist,’ he said with a smile.

  But not usually with cash, Russell thought, as they waited for the taxi which the receptionist had ordered. Zarah, who looked as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, was eager to get back to the Savoy, where she could telephone Jens. ‘It’s wonderful news,’ Russell told her, and received the warmest of smiles in return.

  Once back at the hotel, they agreed to meet for lunch in an hour. Leaving Paul exploring the lobby, Russell retrieved Achievements of the Third Reich from their room, and came back down.

  ‘Here’s the room key,’ he told Paul. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour or so.’

  Paul was looking at the book. ‘Where are you taking that?’ he wanted to know. ‘I didn’t know you had a nephew in England,’ he added suspiciously.

  ‘I don’t,’ Russell admitted. ‘I’ll explain it all this afternoon.’

  He walked down to the Continental Bank, paid a year’s rent in cash for the safety deposit box, and was shown into a small room with a single upright chair and table. A clerk brought him a rectangular metal box and two keys, and told him to press the buzzer when he was finished. ‘I already am,’ Russell said, placing Achievements of the Third Reich inside and locking the box shut. If the clerk was surprised by the nature of the deposit he didn’t show it.

  ‘There’s more to the Nazis than meets the eye,’ Russell said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ the clerk replied gloomily.

  Lunch was an altogether more cheerful affair than breakfast or the previous night’s dinner, but twenty-four largely sleepless hours had taken their toll on Zarah. ‘I’m going to take a nap,’ she said. ‘We’ll see you this evening.’

  Asked if there was anything he wanted to do, Paul suggested a walk down to Big Ben. ‘I didn’t see it properly in the dark,’ he explained.

  They set off down the Strand, stopping in at Charing Cross to see the Southern trains and admire the cross itself. After circling the Trafalgar Square ponds and climbing on a lion they marched down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace. ‘The King’s out,’ Russell said, pointing out the lowered flag. ‘Kings are out-dated,’ Paul told him.

  They cut through to Parliament Square and walked out onto Westminster Bridge, stopping in the middle to turn and admire Big Ben. ‘You were going to tell me about that book,’ Paul said rather hesitantly, as if unsure how much he wanted to know.

  A small voice in Russell’s head reminded him how many children had already denounced their parents to the authorities in Germany, and a whole host of other voices laughed out loud. And if he was so wrong about his own son, he told himself, then he probably deserved to be denounced.

  He told Paul about the Wiesners. The family’s need to emigrate, the father’s arrest, the certain confiscation of their savings – the savings they would need to start a new life somewhere else.

  ‘The savings are in that book?’ Paul asked incredulously.

  ‘Valuable stamps,’ Russell told him. ‘Hidden behind the stickers.’

  Paul looked surprised, impressed, and finally dubious. ‘They collected the stamps? Like ordinary Germans?’

  ‘They are ordinary Germans, Paul. Or they were. How else do you imagine they would get hold of them?’

  Paul opened his mouth, then obviously thought better of whatever it was he was going to say. ‘They paid you to bring them?’ he asked, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

  ‘No. I did it because I like them. They’re nice people.’

  ‘I see,’ Paul said, though clearly he didn’t.

  It was almost 3.30. Back in Parliament Square they joined the queue for a 24 bus, and managed to find seats upstairs for the short ride up Whitehall and Charing Cross Road. Solly Bernstein’s office was two storeys above a steam laundry in Shaftesbury Avenue and its owner was accustomed, as he frequently observed, to hot air. A bulky, middle-aged man with gold-rimmed glasses, a notable nose and longish black hair, Russell’s agent seemed unchanged by the last three years.

 
‘This is my son, Solly,’ Russell said.

  ‘My, he’s bigger than I imagined. Welcome to England, young man.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Paul said in English.

  ‘Ah, a linguist. I have just the book for him.’ He searched through the piles on the floor and extracted a large picture book of world aeroplanes. ‘Have a look at that and tell me what you think,’ he said, handing it over. ‘Throw those books on the floor,’ he added, indicating a loaded seat in the corner.

  He turned back to Russell’s grinning face. ‘It’s good to see you in the flesh. Three years, isn’t it? A long time in today’s world.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Russell agreed, taking a seat.

  ‘You haven’t come to tell me you’ve found a better agent?’

  ‘Good God, no.’

  ‘Well then, I can tell you we’ve sold the “Germany’s Neighbours” series in both Canada and Australia. And here’ – he rummaged in a drawer – ‘is a cheque to prove it.’

  Russell took it, and passed a sheaf of papers in the opposite direction. ‘One for each series,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d save the postage.’

  ‘An expensive way to do it. You came by train, I take it?’

  ‘Nope. We flew.’

  Bernstein’s eyebrows rose. ‘Even more expensive. My percentage is obviously too low.’

  ‘I came for another reason. Two, actually. And one was to ask you a favour.’ Russell outlined the Wiesners’ circumstances, his hope that at least some members of the family would be given exit visas before a war broke out. Paul, he noticed, was listening with great interest to his recital. ‘I’ve just put the family wealth in a safety deposit box,’ he told the unusually sober Bernstein. ‘There are two keys, and I was hoping you’d hang on to one of them. They’ll have the other, but there’s a good chance it would be confiscated at the border.’

  ‘Why, in heaven’s name?’

  ‘Simple spite. If Jews are caught carrying a key out, the Nazis will guess it’s for something like this.’

  ‘I’d be happy to keep one of them.’