The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  “Oh God, there can’t be a war! Not now, when I’ve just got started!”

  Cathleen was not put out by Melissa’s tiny, selfish outlook. She remembered she had been just like that herself when she had first gone to Hollywood. Hitler had just been made Chancellor of Germany; Zangara, a fanatic, had tried to assassinate Roosevelt and instead had killed Mayor Cermak of Chicago; the Japanese were continuing their advance in Northern China: she had read the headlines but they had been only small print beside that on her M-G-M contract. Astigmatism and a sense of proportion just don’t go together.

  Then a waitress brought their lunch from the commissary, two snacks that Fritz Till probably would have overlooked as crumbs not worth picking up. When they had eaten, Melissa went along to her own dressing-room and Cathleen idly glanced at the mail on the dressing-table. All her personal mail, and there was not much of that, went to her apartment on Uhlandstrasse; fan mail, brought on by articles about her in the film magazines, was addressed to the studio and sent across by the studio’s mail department. Some hate mail arrived, but she had learned to ignore that; even Hollywood had had its share of cranks. There was nothing cranky in today’s dozen letters, except for one with no stamp or postmark: it had been delivered by hand.

  She tore open the plain envelope on which her name had been written in block capitals. The note inside was written in the same block letters: WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE FROM THE ABWEHR? BE CAREFUL.

  Her hand suddenly started shaking; the note fluttered to the floor. She felt a constriction in her chest, as if her heart had contracted; certainly her lungs did something, for she felt the breath hiss out of herself as from a balloon. She picked up the envelope: it was a German hand that had written her name on it. But of course: why should it be anyone else’s? Because, she told herself no one in Germany knew who she really was. No one but her mother, and Mady Hoolahan had been missing for nine months.

  She looked at herself in the big mirror, noticing at once that she had gone pale even under her screen make-up. She looked what she was supposed to be, a girl with an Irish father and an American mother: green eyes, dark red hair and, underneath the make-up, an alabaster complexion with just the faintest hint of freckles. Fan magazines had called her the Brooklyn Irish colleen, though she had set foot in Brooklyn no more than half a dozen times in her life. She had been considered a beauty even amongst the beauties of Hollywood; she had just lacked star quality and that had kept her down amongst the other contract players. She had been given the roles Maureen O’Sullivan had declined; or if Lionel Barrymore or Raymond Massey were to play an Irishman and needed a daughter, she got the part. She had played girls from Connemara, Cork, Boston and Brooklyn.

  No one had ever known that she was half-Jewish, that Mady Hoolahan had been born in Berlin as Miriam Razman.

  II

  Sean Carmody came out of his apartment building on Ludwigstrasse, stood for a moment in the warm afternoon sunshine. This was a far different sun from that under which he had grown up; he had forgotten how that other sun could burn the hide off you if you were not careful. He welcomed any sort of sun; he knew he would never become accustomed to European winters. He had experienced three of them so far and he did not look forward to the prospect of another one. Yet he could not see himself going home to Australia, not while the world was falling apart on this side.

  Over by the church of St. Ludwig’s, the Leierkastenmann, the hurdy-gurdy man, was playing another of his sad tunes. He had started coming by here early in the summer and his tunes then had been gay, the sort of music that brought people to their windows and children out into the street to drop pennies in the cup held out by his monkey. But now his music was sometimes dirge-like and though people still came to their windows it was to shake their heads and the children did not appear at all.

  Carmody crossed the road to him, put some loose change in the monkey’s cup; the monkey looked at him quizzically, as if expecting more. He did not like monkeys, their expressions too often were too human.

  “Why do you not play something livelier?” Like most Australians he was not a good linguist; his German was stiff, almost stilted, and did not go with his easy-going manner. He had done a crash course with a teacher in the language when he had first gone to Vienna eighteen months ago; he could now carry on a conversation, but his drawl and his flat-vowelled accent played havoc with the language’s portmanteau words. He could make Magenschleimhautentzuendung sound like a long low moan of pain. Which was close to onomatopoeia since it was the word for gastritis.

  Kreisler, the hurdy-gurdy man, a small man with a lined face, grinned; he looked like a bigger brother of his monkey. “Herr Carmody—” Carmody wondered how he knew his name, but didn’t bother to ask. “All our lively music sounds Bavarian and I’m afraid I am no longer a lover of Bavaria. Not that I ever really was. But our beloved leader seems to feel at home there.”

  Since coming to Berlin Carmody had been surprised at the frankness of some of the natives. He knew they had always been considered, and considered themselves, as different from other Germans; with their sense of superiority, they had a liking for ridicule that all politicians, even back to Bismarck’s day, had resented. Though the Nazis now controlled Berlin they had never won a majority in an election in the city. But elections, he had learned in Spain, Austria and Czechoslovakia, were not the only roads to power. Liberation had a new meaning: it was the alternative to democracy.

  “Why don’t you try some American music?” He tried to think of some gay Australian songs, but even Waltzing Matilda was about a suicide.

  The grin widened, the lines increased in his face; even the monkey smiled. “I’ll bring some tomorrow.”

  Now that he was on this side of the street, feeling that the church’s steeple was leaning over him, either invitingly or threateningly, Carmody went into the church and said a prayer. He was only spasmodically religious, though he went to Mass every Sunday; but lately he had been praying regularly, for peace. Unlike most of his generation he had been in a war and had seen enough of it. War had made his name as a foreign correspondent, but he still did not like it.

  He came out of the church, feeling pious if not hopeful, walked up to the Kurfürstendamm and caught a bus over to the Potsdamerplatz. His expense account ran to the luxury of taxis, but the habits of a poor boyhood remained and he did not believe in unnecessary extravagance. World Press, the American wire service that employed him, knew nothing of his concern for their finances and appreciated him less than he deserved.

  He got out of the bus on the Potsdamerplatz and stood once again savouring the sunshine. He had heard Berliners boast that the city had its own quality of light and he had begun to believe them, though in memory’s eye nothing equalled the light he had seen as a boy on the western plains of New South Wales. Here it was as if the energy of the people generated a reflection in the air that hung above the city: there was a glitter to it and the air itself sometimes felt as if it had been sprinkled with pepper. At night the city was the most brilliantly lit in all Europe.

  He walked across the Platz, neatly dodging the traffic though he still had the slow ambling walk of a boy who had grown up in the bush, and stopped by one of the flower-sellers to buy a small bunch of carnations. Then he went on to the building where World Press rented two small rooms as the agency office and took the lift to the second floor. Fräulein Luxemburg was sorting the afternoon mail, but dropped the letters in a flurry as he handed her the flowers. It was a weekly ritual, one he had started after she had once casually remarked that carnations were her favourite blooms, and though it gave them both pleasure it also embarrassed them. Neither the young man nor the plain middle-aged woman were accustomed to such a small social gesture.

  “You are a gentleman, Herr Carmody.” Olga Luxemburg said the same thing every week, but meant it. Her English was good and she always spoke it in the office. She arranged the flowers in the vase that had been waiting for them, then took up the letters again. “New York
wants a thousand words on Count Ciano’s visit to Herr Ribbentrop. They said to phone it through to London this evening on your six o’clock call and London can pass it on.”

  “Is Ciano still down in Salzburg?” Fräulein Luxemburg nodded and Carmody swore under his breath. “Doesn’t New York ever look at the map? Salzburg is in Austria, it’s not a suburb of Berlin.”

  His secretary shook her faded blonde head at the ignorance of Americans. She had worked in this building for thirty years for a number of agencies and she was German enough to marvel at the shortcomings of foreigners. She knew Herr Carmody had many shortcomings, but she would never tell him so. She liked him too much and, in any event, she was sure that he was learning every day.

  “Nothing’s coming out of Salzburg. I’ll go over and see what Dr. Goebbels has to say. He’s having a press conference this afternoon. A thousand words—” he muttered, shook his head just as Fräulein Luxemburg had done and went out of the office.

  He walked over to the Leopold Palace, the headquarters of the Ministry of Propaganda. The Ministry was spread around town, occupying 22 houses it owned and another 23 that it rented: propaganda needed many voices. But the Minister’s offices were in the Palace and if he was holding a press conference this afternoon that was where it would be held.

  Carmody walked into the big ornate building, impressed as always; coming from a land where the only attempts at grandeur had been embarrassing imitations of mid-Victorian Whitehall, he had to be stimulated by what he saw. Someone more sophisticated might have found the Palace a bad mixture of the past and the present. It had been built in 1737, converted once in the 1830s and converted again when the Nazis had come to power. The big reception rooms had been left untouched, but once beyond them and in the offices one was smack in the middle of today: all the heavy panelling and plush curtains had been removed and one might have been in a transatlantic liner, all art deco and bad taste. All that was missing was the movement of the ship.

  As he crossed the main lobby Joe Begley, who worked for another wire service, fell in beside him. Begley, a balding thin man with bulging eyes and the longest chin Carmody had ever seen, was known as Trenchcoat Joe; summer and winter he always wore a rumpled trenchcoat, like Hollywood’s idea of a foreign correspondent. But he was a good reporter and no one ever laughed at his despatches.

  “The little guy is having his conference in his office today. He must be trying to impress us. You ever been in there?”

  Carmody shook his head. “I hope he’s got something worthwhile to say. They’ve been far too cagey this past week.”

  Another man joined them as they walked down the corridor behind the crowd of newspapermen being escorted to the Minister’s office. Oliver Burberry, who should have worn a trenchcoat but instead always carried an umbrella, always unfurled as if ready for any sudden downpour, was the London Times man. Tall and heavily-built, handsome in a heavy way, he was not conceited yet carried an air of authoritative superiority about him. Some employers, like unwitting popes, can make bishops of those who work for them.

  “My colleague in Moscow,” he said in his rich, port-wine voice; Carmody envied him his vowel sounds, “writes me that rumours abound in the Kremlin.”

  “Rumours always abound,” said Begley, who wrote a much flatter prose, “but what the hell do they say?”

  Burberry did not take offence; his episcopal air was partly self-mocking. “That von der Schulenburg, the ambassador from this fair country, has been in and out of the Kremlin so often in the past week that the guards no longer bother to check him. We—” he sometimes raised himself above episcopal rank into that of the royal plural “—we think our little friend inside may be making an announcement about it this afternoon.”

  But they were to be disappointed. Goebbels, smiling broadly, a friend to the world’s press, only wanted to make an announcement that the German film industry would be doubling its production schedule in the coming year. He hoped that would be further evidence that Germany was planning only for peace and not for war.

  Carmody, against his will, once again found himself admiring the little man. He should have been lost in his huge office, made to look ridiculous by it; but he wasn’t, he dominated the space and the trappings by sheer personality. There was an enormous desk, meticulously ordered and neat like the man himself; a portrait of Frederick the Great hung on a wall, an aesthetic eye looking almost benevolently at the commoner who now ran the arts of his country; tall windows let in sunlight between rich drapes. It all caught the eye on first entering the room, but in the end the eye had interest only in the man behind the desk.

  “Herr Reichsminister,” said Burberry, “would you care to comment on the events going on in Moscow at the moment?”

  “What events are those, Herr Burberry?” Goebbels was undisturbed by the question. He drew back his sleeve, exposing another half-inch of cuff. The shirt, noted Carmody, a nondescript dresser himself, was the usual cream silk; Goebbels was known to change his shirts at least two or three times a day. He was said to have hundreds of suits and more pairs of gloves than a company of chauffeurs. A pair of gloves lay on the desk, looking out of place, almost untidy, in the ordered neatness of the wide top. “The Times is turning into a fantasy magazine.”

  Only to accommodate your lies, thought Carmody; but left Burberry to answer the Minister. “Is some sort of treaty to be arranged between Germany and Russia? A trade treaty perhaps?”

  Bugger it! thought Carmody. Why give him an out? But it had been The Times’ habit to blow hot and cold over the Nazi government and Burberry had to play the game the way Printing House Square dictated.

  Goebbels smiled again, though his eyes had no laughter in them. “I think you should ask the Minister for Trade about that. Now isn’t there someone who wants to ask me about our film plans?”

  Carmody took a risk. He knew there was a file on him here in the Ministry and probably one with the Gestapo; it was no secret history that he had fought for the Loyalists in Spain and his despatches, once he had become a correspondent, had been frank and, he hoped, objective. “Will you hope for the return of German stars from abroad? People like Marlene Dietrich and Conrad Veidt?”

  It was difficult to imagine that a smile could disappear so quickly. But when Goebbels spoke there was no hint of anger. “I doubt if there would be a place for them, Herr Carmody. We have our new stars. Fräulein Dietrich and Herr Veidt are passé, wouldn’t you say?”

  “They are still talented, Herr Reichsminister.” Why am I persisting with this? Carmody wondered. But the thought of Cathleen, out at Neubabelsberg, working for this smug little monster irritated him.

  “Of course. If we have roles for older players that might suit them, I’m sure our producers will consider them. Next question, gentlemen?”

  When the conference was over, Carmody was joined on his way out by Burberry. “Why do you needle the little man so much, old chap? You spoiled it all for the rest of us.”

  “I’m sorry, Oliver.” Burberry, a public school man, an old Etonian, always called him by his surname, but Carmody, brought up in the easy friendliness back home, thought it cold, formal and even a little rude. Oliver Burberry, on the other hand, had at first thought him far too friendly. “I’m not naturally a trouble-maker. But he gets under my skin, he’s such a hypocritical bloody liar.”

  “You must learn, dear boy, that a thick skin is as necessary to us correspondents as it is to politicians. How else can we retain the objectivity our dear editors call for?”

  “I’ll try. I once had a thick skin, when I was a tar-boy in a shearing shed.”

  “Don’t tell me about it! It sounds obscene. A tar-boy!” He went off, opening his umbrella against the sun, striding along beneath it as under an episcopal baldachin.

  Carmody went back to his office, wrote a thousand words that said nothing but which could be read as hopeful by the optimists and as despairing by pessimists, then phoned them through to London for cabling to New York. He had ado
pted this procedure over the past month to avoid any unofficial censorship at the cable office here in Berlin. It was remarkable the number of protectors of the Nazi good name who had appeared since talk of war had become so open. War, it seemed, was a decent subject only when it had broken out.

  He left the office and, carrying his jacket over his arm, walked the couple of miles back to the Kurfürstendamm. The city had two main centres: that around the Unter den Linden and the Friedrichstrasse, with the government offices and foreign embassies on the Wilhelmstrasse and nearby; and that along the Kurfürstendamm, the bright mainstream of the newer Berlin, where the cafés and theatres flourished. He always enjoyed walking in the city: its citizens loved its trees and had preserved them, unlike the citizens of Sydney, the only big Australian city he had passed through. Everywhere one went in Berlin there was always a touch of green, like small reminders of the once-huge forests in which the Teutonic myths had begun. Berliners, the most cynical of Germans, still had inherited memories of gods who had dwelt in this land of great stands of trees.

  Walking was his principal exercise. He occasionally went swimming and once a week he played tennis with Joe Begley and several other men; but he felt he was getting soft, he was no longer the hard-muscled youth he had been when shearing in the woolsheds with his father. Paddy Carmody, twenty-four years his senior and several inches shorter than him, could probably lick him in a couple of rounds and not even be short of breath. He grinned at the thought of his father who, with two beers under his belt, would have gone a round or two for a pound or two with the world.