The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  Probably; but he would never say so. “I’ll go round to that hotel in Wilmersdorf tonight and start there. The night porter often talks more than the blokes on during the day. He gets less tips.” He would put it down to agency expenses.

  The orchestra began to play: Deep Purple treacle came out of the saxophones and the strings were halfway between Vienna and Tin Pan Alley. The young man with the broken nose said something to Mehlhorn, then stood up and came across to bow stiffly to Cathleen.

  “Fräulein O’Dea, I am a great admirer of yours—I have seen you in many American films. May I have the pleasure of dancing with you?”

  “What a pity, Herr—?” But he didn’t introduce himself, a most un-German thing. “Herr Carmody has just asked me. Perhaps some other time.”

  He didn’t look at Carmody. He flushed, then bowed stiffly again and went back to his own table. “So that means you have to dance with me,” said Cathleen. “I hope you can.”

  “You might have been better off with him,” said Carmody. “I learned to dance with sheep. I was going steady with an old ewe.” She looked curiously at him and he grinned. “An old shearers’ joke.”

  But he was light on his feet and had good rhythm, though not a wide variety of steps. “How’m I doing?”

  “Fred Astaire has nothing to worry about, but you’re passable.”

  “You may have something to worry about. I don’t know who your bruiser friend is, but the older bloke at his table is Oberfuehrer Mehlhorn. I don’t know what he’s doing here—he and his SD men usually keep out of sight. They’re worse than the Gestapo, if that’s possible, because they pick on everyone, even good Party members.”

  She looked back at the table where Mehlhorn and his two juniors were rising from their table. Mehlhorn was in uniform, but the younger men were in civilian clothes. As she and Carmody glided past, the broken-nosed man stared at them, but Mehlhorn and the other man ignored them. The three of them went out of the dining room and she noticed that if anyone recognized them at all it was with the barest politeness. Most diners studiedly looked at their food or their dinner companions. As the three SD men went out of the wide doors of the dining room, one of the saxophonists blew a sour note. A few of the dancers smiled, but those at the tables kept a straight face. No one was sure there was not another SD man in the room. Cathleen shuddered, suddenly pining for Hollywood, where informants might put you in dutch with the front office but where you were never jailed or beaten.

  “Let’s sit down,” said Carmody, feeling her shiver in his arms.

  The waiter brought their first course as they sat down. Carmody was aware of people looking at them; earlier he had been proud of Cathleen’s company when he had seen the admiring stares, but now it seemed the other diners were suspicious, even hostile. Carmody, who had grown up as xenophobic as most Australians, was once again feeling what it was like to be a foreigner. Most of the people in the big room would not have known who or what he was, but if he had incurred the displeasure of the SD they did not want to know. Foreigners were always expendable.

  “Have you still got that crazy idea of encouraging Goebbels?”

  “Yes.”

  That spoiled the rest of his dinner. They did not dance again, though the music improved as the evening wore on; the orchestra played some jazz numbers, Riverboat Shuffle and others, one of the trumpeters rising to do solos that made even Carmody, preoccupied with Cathleen though he was, turn round. A couple on the floor had even begun to Charleston, laughing at their own efforts and causing merriment around them.

  “That man on trumpet is an American,” said Cathleen. “Fred Doe.”

  “Is that really his name?”

  “Probably not. But there are a lot of us like him—” Abruptly she gathered up her handbag. “Let’s go.”

  “Steady on.” Carmody never allowed himself to be rushed. He looked around for the waiter and when the man came with the bill he carefully checked it before paying. Cathleen sat on the edge of her chair, fuming at his slowness. At last he stood up, took her arm. “Don’t whistle me and expect me to run, darl. You only do that with sheep dogs.”

  It was their first disagreement and she knew she had been in the wrong. But she could not bring herself to apologize till they were out in the taxi. She had no more than the usual actress’ vanity, but she had a stubborn ambition to be always in the right. Still, he loved her and he, too, was entitled to be stubborn.

  “I’m sorry, darling.”

  She took his hand and pressed it. He sat stiffly, unresponsive, and for a moment she was angry; he was acting like a goddam actor. But she tried again: with her other hand she turned his face towards hers and kissed him on the lips.

  She was surprised at his reaction. He had kissed her before; now he seemed to want to devour her. His mouth covered hers like a boa constrictor’s; she had been face to face with a tame one in a Tarzan movie. His hands were all over her like a plague of crabs; Crab Island, with Jon Hall. She wanted to laugh, she was being attacked by a junior class from Hollywood High; she was almost shocked at how gauche he was. But she didn’t laugh, just bunched her fist and hit him in the crotch. He sat back with a gasp of pain, clasping the wounded parts. Men, she thought, never looked so ridiculous as when they were massaging their treasured possessions.

  She straightened her dress, took out her compact and in the dim light of the taxi tried to straighten her face. “If you’re ever going to make love to me, you have a lot to learn. I can see now what you meant by going steady with an old ewe. Didn’t she teach you anything?”

  The pain had begun to subside, as had everything else. He shook his head, then managed a sick grin. “You win. I’m willing to learn, if you’re willing to teach me.”

  She knew enough about men to know how much it had taken for him to say that: men thought they had invented love-making. She patted the lower end of his lap, like a solicitous nurse. “But not tonight. I’m going straight to bed. Alone.”

  Then she wiped off the lipstick that smeared his face, kissed him on the cheek and they continued the rest of the way to Uhlandstrasse in silence, though she let him hold her hand.

  When the taxi drew up outside her apartment building she said, “No, don’t get out. Call me tomorrow evening.”

  He didn’t press to get out; he had done enough awkward moving for the evening. Besides, he still felt sore. “Stay away from the Doctor.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll be careful. I don’t want the Gestapo knocking on my door in the middle of the night.”

  But when she let herself in from the street the Gestapo, or a close relation, was waiting for her in the narrow entrance hall. With Herr Stumpf, the caretaker, was the broken-nosed young man.

  II

  Carmody leaned forward to speak to the taxi driver. “Do you know the Hotel Ernst in Wilmersdorf?”

  “Of course, sir.” The taxi driver was an old man with a tobacco-stained walrus moustache and a dislike for foreigners who hinted that he did not know his own city. He was a natural amongst his breed. He got in his dig: “A good hotel if you want to save money.”

  “That’s me,” said Carmody.

  Wilmersdorf was one of the better parts of town, its streets flanked by solid houses and apartment buildings, the houses and apartments occupied by solid citizens, solid Nazis amongst them; Carmody knew that several top Party officials lived here. The Hotel Ernst was in a side street, an ideal foxhole for someone who wanted to remain inconspicuous. He wondered how Cathleen’s mother had discovered it.

  He paid off the driver and went into the small lobby of the hotel. A night clerk rose up from behind his counter as if he were the subject of a levitation act, slowly and with no visible stretching of limbs. He was plump, young, bald and sunburned a bright pink; his head hung above the desk like a child’s balloon. Teeth were painted on the balloon in a welcoming smile.

  “I’m looking for an old friend who stayed here early this year. An American lady, Frau Hoolahan.” The name
sounded like a joke.

  The smile faded, the soft high voice became a harsh whisper. “I wouldn’t remember her, sir. So many people come and go . . .”

  Carmody took five marks out of his wallet, saw the dead look in the clerk’s eyes and made it ten. “She is my mother’s best friend—” He doubted if his mother Ida had ever said hello to a Jew; there were not many of them around the shearing sheds. “She wrote my mother from this hotel, then we heard nothing more. She just disappeared. Did she check out at night, while you were on duty?”

  The clerk hesitated, then took the money and leaned across the desk till his face was only inches from Carmody’s; the latter imagined he could feel the heat from the sunburned flesh. The voice was still a whisper, but no longer harsh: “They came for her about midnight—I was on duty—”

  “They?”

  The big head bobbed in a nod; or rather it seemed to float up and down in a nod. Carmody felt disconcerted by the man, felt he was listening to a blown-up puppet worked by invisible strings. “Them. The Gestapo—you know what they’re like—” Carmody didn’t, but already he was beginning to feel that his knowledge of them was about to be expanded. “They told me I was to mind my own business.”

  “Have they taken anyone else away from here?”

  “No one but Frau Hoolahan. This is a respectable hotel.” Not a whorehouse or a bookie’s joint or a den for conspirators.

  “How was Frau Hoolahan when they took her out?”

  “Frightened.” How else? The clerk shrugged.

  “She took all her luggage with her?”

  “No. I believe they came back for that the next day.”

  “So you told the hotel management what had happened that night?”

  “Of course.”

  “And they were like the Gestapo, they told you to mind your own business?”

  The clerk didn’t answer that one and Carmody knew the ten marks had run its course: there was going to be no more information. But the clerk wanted some information of his own, just in case: “May I know your name, sir?”

  It was on the tip of Carmody’s tongue to say it’s none of your business, but he contented himself with: “I think it would be best if you didn’t know.”

  But he knew that if the clerk got in touch with the Gestapo they would have little difficulty in tracing him. The clerk might not recognize an Australian accent, but he would know it was different from an English or American one; there were very few Australians in Berlin and sooner or later the Gestapo would narrow down the field to himself. He was not worried for himself, the worst they would do would be to take away his accreditation and have him deported; but he was worried that they might connect him with Cathleen. He abruptly said goodnight and hurried out of the hotel lobby, hoping the clerk might have difficulty in remembering what he looked like. He had always thought of himself as average-looking and that could be an advantage now.

  He stopped at the corner of the street and pondered whether he should go to Kreugerstrasse and try to find out something about the disappearance of Cathleen’s grandmother. Then he looked at his watch and decided it was too late. A knock on the door of No. 33 at this hour could only cause apprehension, even terror, for those inside. If the Gestapo had called there once, there was always the chance that they would call again.

  He walked back to his apartment, glad to breathe the cooler night air. He passed a bar, Rosse’s, and all at once felt like having a beer; but when he pushed open the door and saw the other customers his thirst and taste abruptly disappeared. The bar seemed full of uniforms, including too many black uniforms of the SS. Before anyone could turn to scrutinize this newcomer, he had closed the door and walked on.

  When he turned the corner into his own street he saw the two men coming out of the front door of his apartment building. He pulled up, as alert now as any scout stalking through Nationalist territory in Spain; he had not been as tense as this since the night patrols amongst the ilex and eucalypts (smelling like home) in the Casa de Campo outside Madrid. He saw the two men pause for a moment under a street lamp and he guessed at once who they were.

  They were as type-cast by their dress as gangsters in a film about Chicago; he was reminded of plain-clothes policemen back home who all seemed to wear pork-pie hats. The Gestapo had its own wardrobe: suits that were too tight and always worn buttoned-up and hats that looked as if they could be used to smother their owners’ victims. The men walked on, turned round beyond the church and were gone.

  Carmody waited a minute or two, letting the tension seep out of him, then he went on to his front door and quickly let himself into the building. There was no one in the dimly-lit entrance hall, no janitor or curious other tenant, and he went quickly up the stairs to his first-floor apartment. His door had not been forced; it was still locked. But as soon as he opened it and entered he knew someone had been in the apartment.

  He could smell the cigarette smoke; he did not smoke. He found the butt in a saucer on the table in the kitchen: they had left a calling card and, he was sure, not by accident.

  III

  “I have come to pay my compliments, Fräulein O’Dea.” Back at the Adlon she had not noticed that the broken-nosed young man had had too much to drink.

  Cathleen looked at the caretaker. “Did you let this man in, Herr Stumpf?”

  “I could not stop him, Fraulein. He pushed his way in—” Stumpf was a mixture of curiosity and fear. His eyes were lottery balls, anything might come up.

  “I think you had better give me your name, Herr—?”

  The young man looked cunning; one eye seemed to look speculatively in on his bent nose. “Why should I do that? Don’t you care for anonymous admirers?”

  “No more than for anonymous critics.” She did not sound as uneasy as she felt: she was acting, doing what came naturally on the surface. “Thank you for your compliments, whatever they are, and now, please, I’d like to go upstairs.”

  He had moved to the bottom of the stairs; drink and temper were making him sway a little. “I want to come up with you and discuss the social significance of your film Lola und Ludwig.”

  She laughed at that, but made it sound inoffensive. “There’s no social significance—it’s just pure entertainment.” Which wasn’t true: it was the clumsy attempt to put propaganda into a musical comedy that had turned the picture into the dog it was going to be. “You’ve got the wrong girl if you’re looking for socially significant conversation. Try Leni Riefenstahl.”

  “You don’t admire Fräulein Riefenstahl?” He leaned forward belligerently, just managing to keep his balance.

  My big mouth. She was aware of Stumpf watching all this with bulging eyes, but he would be no help to her in getting rid of this lout. “I don’t know Fräulein Riefenstahl, only her pictures. Now please get out of my way or I shall have to get Herr Stumpf to call the police.”

  Stumpf almost fainted at that and the broken-nosed man giggled. “Do that, Fräulein. See which of us is arrested—you, me or him.” Her jerked a contemptuous thumb at Stumpf and the caretaker shut his eyes in pain.

  Cathleen was at a loss for a moment. They had been speaking quietly, but she knew their voices would have been floating up from the tile-floored hall through the stairwell to the landings above. No faces had appeared at the balustrades on the landings, but she was certain she had heard a door or two open. She hardly knew any of the other tenants in the building, but those she had met on the stairs had appeared friendly. But they were not going to rush to her assistance in getting rid of an obnoxious SD man.

  “It might be me who is arrested, but I am sure Dr. Goebbels would see I was released immediately. And whoever ordered the arrest would be in trouble.” She had taken a risk in naming Goebbels, but if she was going to have an admirer let him be a genuine one, not a drunk like this.

  “Ah, Goebbels!” There was no mistaking the contempt in his voice; but for the first time he looked unsure of himself. He hesitated, then stepped aside, clicked his heels and bow
ed unsteadily. “Goodnight, Fräulein O’Dea. I should not have expected anything more from Hollywood. You sleep with anything!”

  She was about to hit him with her handbag, but restrained herself just in time. But she knew she had won, if only for now. “Get out!”

  He glared at her, then, going out of his way to get close to Stumpf, he pushed the caretaker aside and went out of the front door, slamming it behind him. Instantly, faces appeared hung above the balustrades on the landings, popping out like the heads of prairie dogs she had seen in the Mojave Desert; the hollow column of the stairwell hissed with whispers. She looked up, smiling at her neighbours.

  “I’m sorry you have been disturbed. It was just a fan being a nuisance. It won’t happen again,” she said, trying to convince herself more than them.

  Cathleen said goodnight to Stumpf, who just nodded, already building tomorrow’s gossip in his head. Then she slowly climbed the stairs, all at once feeling more like Lola Montez than she had at any time on the lot out at Neubabelsberg. Lola had spent the last four months of her life ministering to the inmates of a Magdalen asylum near New York. Germany was turning into a mental asylum, but she couldn’t see herself staying here to do good works. She had to find her mother and get out before the madmen tried to take over the world.

  IV

  Further across the city, in his small flat overlooking the Landwehr Canal, Helmut von Albern lay in his bed with Melissa Hayes in his arms. They had made love and, as always afterwards, he felt a heavy guilt. He was only half in love with her and that was not enough return for a girl who held nothing back from him. His mother had been a famous beauty and had had scores of admirers besides his father; his parents’ marriage had been a true love match, but he knew his father had not been her only lover, though she had never told him so directly. But, as with most mothers with an only child, she had given him advice that other mothers, more fecundly blessed, might have given only to their daughters. She had told him of the vulnerability of women, which is a terrible thing to lay on any man with a conscience.