The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  The Fuehrer told me of his military conference four days ago, when he told the generals he was ready for war. He pointed out to them the military and economic weaknesses of the English and the French. Neither of those countries, he said, will come to the aid of Poland. They cannot afford a major war. The generals, not even Goering, questioned the Fuehrer’s plans. He is indeed a great leader! How fortunate I was to recognize this so early in the piece!

  Magda and the children are at Lanke; I shall drive out tomorrow to see them. I miss the children every day I do not see them; but not Magda. She was in another of her moods when she left for Lanke. She said it was her time of the month, but I doubt it. Women use that excuse far too much . . .

  Cathleen O’Dea used it tonight; though I did believe her. She is an intriguing woman, so down to earth. Not intellectual nor very well educated; one can’t discuss music or books or philosophy with her. But then women who can do those things bore me. I am becoming more and more infatuated with her. Or is it because I have not yet made love to her? Is it more satisfying to anticipate than to achieve?

  She has asked me to trace some American woman who has disappeared. They always ask something for their favours. A fur coat, a case of champagne, always something. All except Lida, who gave and never asked. And Magda . . . Though she has asked for enough in the past year. And got it.

  . . . A speech to prepare for the national conference of teachers. Speech-making comes so easily to me now. No more of the rehearsing in front of mirrors; though that was where I learned to be so good, Lida once told me I was a better orator than the Fuehrer. I agreed with her . . .

  6

  I

  IT TOOK Fred Doe three days to arrange the meeting with the Jews who might be able to help Carmody and Cathleen. He did not explain the delay, but Carmody guessed they might be checking on him before they agreed to a meeting.

  Sunday morning Doe phoned him. “They’ll see you tonight. The Green Man beer-garden in Mariendorf. Eight-thirty.”

  “What’s their name? How will I know them?”

  “They’ll know you,” said Doe and rang off. He sounded tired and irritable, as if he resented having to wake so early in the day to do someone a favour.

  Carmody looked at his watch: ten o’clock, a time when everyone should have been up for hours. No matter what time he went to bed, he was always wide awake by seven at the latest; the habits of his boyhood still clung. He dialled Cathleen’s number and she, a girl from the bush of Yorkville, sleepily bit his head off.

  “I should have let you stay the night—at least then you might have appreciated how tired a working girl can be at the end of the week. What do you want?”

  He told her of the call from Fred Doe. “It’s going to be a long day, waiting around for tonight. I thought we’d go out to Wannsee, have a picnic and a swim.”

  “I could sleep all day—” But, awake now, she knew she could not contain her impatience for tonight by trying to go back to sleep. “All right, pick me up at noon. I’ll have Hilde make us some lunch.”

  Hilde was the plump motherly woman the studio had engaged for her as a daily housemaid. She did not live in, because Cathleen, hopeful right from the beginning that she would find her mother, had not wanted someone spying on her if, through whatever circumstances, her mother had to be smuggled into the apartment. She now trusted Hilde, but she had let the arrangement stand and Hilde had been agreeable, since it gave her every evening free. She came in every day, including Sundays when she worked only in the morning. She was always freshly starched and ironed, like a great billowing hospital sheet, and she believed everyone should eat more than he or she thought sensible. The picnic lunch she prepared for Cathleen and Carmody, whom she had not yet met, would have satisfied a gang of road-workers.

  Carmody went round to a local garage and hired a car; the garage owner knew him and had rented cars to Carmody whenever the latter had had to go out of town on a story. The cars were always modest, mostly Opels, and the rental was modest, too. Even in love Carmody had an asbestos pocket: money was not going to burn a hole in it to impress his beloved.

  “I was hoping for a Mercedes tourer,” said Cathleen. “It’s such a lovely day.”

  “You’d only get sunburnt. You’re always telling me you have to keep that Irish colleen complexion. Anyhow, I think it’s better we’re not too conspicuous. Wear your hat—that red hair of yours stands out.”

  She put on her wide-brimmed straw hat and dark glasses. “You and I will never be compatible. You’re too tight with a penny.”

  “Pennies I spend. It’s the quids I hang on to.” He was not offended by the jokes about his reluctance to spend. Unlike most people, he was never unhappy in the bargain basement.

  They drove out to the Wannsee, parked the car and found a reasonably uncrowded spot on a small quiet beach. Cathleen declined to go in the water, but sat, under her hat and behind her dark glasses, in the shade of the trees. Carmody, who had worn his bathing trunks under his outer clothing, stripped off and went down to the water. Offshore the lake was crowded with sail-boats; they brought back a memory of billabongs crowded at morning light with herons and cranes and pelicans. He had begun to think a lot of home this past week, as if his mind were seeking a hole to run to when the worst happened.

  The water was cold, but he enjoyed it. He was a powerful swimmer, with his shearer’s shoulders and arms, and he had a lazy Australian crawl stroke that set him apart from the other swimmers, most of whom floated along on a breast stroke. He turned over on his back, gazed up at the burning sky and tried to imagine it full of bombers. But the thought was beyond him. He rolled back on to his front and swam slowly and gracefully back through the crowd, wondering how many of them had looked at the sky and tried to test their imagination as he had done. None of them, it seemed. If Germany was holding its breath it was not apparent here in the shouts and screams of laughter of the Berliners on Sunday.

  “You’re a beautiful swimmer,” said Cathleen as Carmody dried himself off. “You’re also beautiful with your clothes off.”

  “Cut it out.” He was not accustomed to women complimenting him on his looks. Besides, beautiful was not a word you applied to a bloke. He sat down, changed the subject slightly: “Is your mother beautiful?”

  “Yes, I think so. Different than me, though. She’s smaller, more—vital, I guess. She’s dark, too. She’d never get sunburnt, freckled like me.”

  “How did you get on with her?”

  “Pretty well. We didn’t live together in California and I think that helped. She was a typical Jewish mother and she’d have run my life if I’d let her- they love you to death. She was always trying to pick my boyfriends for me—” She looked at him, gave him a lovely smile under the dark glasses. “She’d have picked you, a nice solid boy sensible about money. She’d have preferred you to be Jewish, but if she couldn’t have that she’d settle for Irish.”

  “You love her a lot, don’t you?” he said perceptively.

  She nodded, not saying anything; behind the dark glasses tears formed in her eyes. He put a sympathetic hand on hers, squeezed it, then turned and opened the picnic basket. There was ham, sausage, sauerkraut, sliced cucumbers in sour cream, potato salad, tomatoes, two sorts of bread, an apple tart and a bottle of white wine wrapped in a wet cloth. It was enough to lift the spirit while weighing down the stomach.

  Half an hour later, both of them full but the basket only half-empty, they lay back on the rug they had brought and looked up through the trees. Most of the swimmers had come out of the water and were having lunch; a murmur of chatter had replaced the shouts. There were several families seated close by and Carmody and Cathleen now spoke to each other in low voices. There was no point in speaking German; they knew they had been recognized as foreigners. Cathleen was not afraid of being recognized as herself; she had received a good deal of publicity, but she was far from being a Lilian Harvey or a Renate Müller, who would be known at once in any crowd.

  She
had worked late Saturday and he had seen her only for a couple of hours last night. She had been tired and he had not pressed her with questions about Goebbels; it was easier to put the man out of his mind. She had been excited when he had told her of Doe’s trying to arrange a meeting with the Jews who might be able to help; but he, ever the Celt, had told her not to build her hopes too high. They had spent the evening like two old lovers content to do no more than hold each other and listen to the radio. The programme had featured the Berlin Philharmonic, under Furtwängler, defender of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. But they were not experts in classical music, knew nothing of the political battles behind the composers, and just enjoyed the sounds for what they were. She had sent him home rather than let him sleep with her and he had not protested. He felt certain there would be other nights when he would be asked to stay.

  They left the beach before the city-bound traffic began to thicken. He dropped her at her apartment. “I won’t pick you up here. Take a taxi to the Hohenzollernplatz U-Bahn and I’ll be there. Eight o’clock.”

  “Are you afraid we’ll be followed?”

  “Maybe. Just keep an eye out when you’re in the taxi. The bloody Gestapo are still interested in us, I’ll bet.”

  “Sean, you don’t have to do this—”

  “You’re wrong, darl. I do have to do it.” He kissed her. “Take care.”

  She was already waiting outside the underground station when he arrived in the Opel. He didn’t recognize her at first, not till she had opened the car door and got in beside him. She was wearing a dark wig and pale horn-rimmed glasses. “You look like a schoolmistress.”

  “Nobody followed me.” Inwardly she was trembling with anticipation, but she was trying to maintain a calm exterior; she did not want to put too much hope in what might prove to be another dead end. But she could not help putting a hand on his arm and saying, “Say a prayer this may lead somewhere.”

  “I went to evening Mass. All the angels and saints are on our side.” But he did not feel as hopeful and light-hearted as he sounded.

  He drove south to Mariendorf, found the Green Man beer-garden not far from the Underground terminus. The warm evening had brought out the drinkers; the families with children had gone home. Whether the hot day had tired them or dusk had brought a reflective mood, the drinkers were much more subdued than those Carmody had seen in beer-gardens earlier in the summer. Many of them seemed to be staring into their beer glasses as if they were amber-coloured crystal balls; Carmody had seen the same preoccupation in bush pubs back home. Then the band struck up, oompah oompah, and everyone looked up, suddenly brighter, and Carmody wondered if it was not his own vision that had become sombre.

  He and Cathleen found a small table in a corner, ordered two beers and looked around, not knowing whom or even how many people to look for. Would it be a single person or a committee? The garden seemed to be full of a cross-section of the accepted idea of Germans, as if a club of cartoonists had invited all their models to a party. There was a preponderance of stout drinkers, some of the men with en brosse haircuts and waxed moustaches looking as if they had been left over from Great War cartoons; the women were blonde, big-breasted and hearty. But then a second, longer look saw thinner, dark-haired drinkers, like shadows, amongst the weighty, fair-haired ones. They all, blonde and dark, stout and thin, seemed to be looking at the two strangers in the corner. Carmody realized that this beer-garden, like pubs back home, was the haunt of locals and any newcomers were instantly spotted. He wondered why the Jews had chosen it.

  A plane roared overhead, going down to Tempelhof airdrome nearby, and Carmody looked up, his imagination caught again by the thought of bombers. Tempelhof had been a parade-ground in the Kaiser’s day; it would be only a progression of military history if it should become a parade-ground for Goering’s Luftwaffe. We progress through arms, someone had once said: probably an arms dealer.

  When Carmody looked down again two people had slid into the seats on the opposite side of the table.

  “Do you mind if we sit here?” He was a tall man, handsome, with a deep pleasant voice that could be heard without effort despite the noise in the garden. “Our name is Schmidt.”

  “A common name.” The woman was small, with bright dark eyes and a wide friendly smile that spread her mouth right across her thin face.

  “My name is Carmody. This is Fräulein McCool.” It was his mother’s maiden name and he dragged it out of the air on the moment. He and Cathleen had completely overlooked the precaution of giving her another name; she had disguised her appearance, but they had almost shouted her real name. We are going to have to learn, thought Carmody.

  “We were expecting only you, Herr Carmody.” Schmidt had sat back and was speaking casually. “Act as if we have only just met, the way people do in places like this.”

  “My husband always wanted to be an actor,” said Frau Schmidt and looked affectionately at her husband.

  He returned her smile, then ordered drinks for them: beer, with a schnapps chaser for him, lemonade for her. “What connection does Fräulein McCool have with you?”

  “She works for me.”

  Schmidt shook his head, “No, she doesn’t. Fräulein Luxemburg works for you. You are going to have to be more honest with us, Heir Carmody, if you want our help.”

  Carmody looked at Cathleen, who nodded. “Tell them the truth.”

  Which Carmody did, sitting back in his chair, trying to look relaxed as if he were swapping trivialities with strangers he had just met. The band up on its platform, red-faced and sweaty, galloped its way through a piece that was vaguely familiar; it was halfway through the second chorus before he recognized it as The Music Goes Round and Round. He finished Cathleen and Mady Hoolahan’s story as the band, looking as if it were about to blow itself apart, blasted out the last phrase of The Music.

  “Frau Hoolahan may have been picked up under her maiden name, Miriam Razman.”

  “What was your grandmother’s name?” Schmidt asked Cathleen. He seemed unimpressed that she was a film star, but his wife had sharpened her scrutiny, as if trying to see beneath the dark wig and the horn-rimmed glasses. Women, sensibly, never take other women at face value.

  “Frau Rose Razman.” Cathleen gave her grandmother’s address. “Can you help us? I’ll pay anything—”

  “Money is not important, Fräulein McCool. We’ll continue to call you that, just as a precaution. If you wish to make a contribution to our funds, that will be welcome—there are always expenses. But we don’t place a price on people’s lives.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you were mercenary—”

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” said Frau Schmidt, but her smile was not so wide this time. “Where you come from, nothing is done for free, is it?”

  “America or Hollywood?” Cathleen’s voice was suddenly stiff.

  Carmody thought it was time he stepped in again; he had the male’s suspicion of women trying to do business. But he noted that Schmidt looked mildly amused “How soon do you think you could get us some information?”

  Schmidt shrugged. “If Frau Hoolahan—or indeed both women—are in a concentration camp, we should be able to get you their whereabouts within a week.”

  “That long?” said Cathleen, suddenly desperately impatient.

  “Fräulein, we have our sources—that’s what costs us money. But we don’t have immediate access to all the records. Would you care for another drink?”

  “My shout,” said Carmody and hailed a passing waiter, gave their order and waited till the man had gone away. Then he said carefully, putting his hand on Cathleen’s: “What if they’re not in a camp?”

  “You mean if they’re dead?” Schmidt saw Cathleen’s hand turn over and clutch at Carmody’s. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, Fräulein, but that, unfortunately, is the way life is in Germany these days . . . Rudi! Dorothea! Going home so soon?”

  A couple had stopped by the table: middle-aged, middle-class, healthy and h
appy-looking. The man had all the cheerfulness of one of the beer-garden’s waiters, except that his was not an act; his wife might have been a transvestite mirror image for him. They were friends to the world, especially to any friends of Heinz and Inge Lang.

  Schmidt didn’t bat an eyelid at being revealed as Lang (if even that is his real name, thought Carmody). He introduced Carmody and Cathleen. “Herr and Fräulein McCool are on their way home to America. They say they have been having a last look at our wonderful country.”

  Rudi Heck feigned amazement; he was a bad actor and looked ridiculous. But his wife, his travelling audience, laughed heartily at his performance. “A last look, Herr McCool? You think Germany is going to sink out of sight?”

  “I’m afraid of war, Herr Heck. Aren’t you?”

  Heck laughed; behind him the band, less energetic now, had begun to play a Schubert love song. “There will be no war, Herr McCool. I have it on the highest authority.”

  “Whose?” Schmidt/Lang was also laughing.

  “Hers,” said Heck, slapped his wife on her broad rump and dragged her off, both of them laughing heartily, between the tables.

  The laugh abruptly died on Lang’s face; he picked up his glass and gulped the beer down as if it were a suicide draught. His wife patted his arm, looked at Carmody and Cathleen.

  “Heinz has to put up with that oaf every day. They work together.”

  “Where?” said Carmody.

  “A government department,” said Lang quickly, taking his face out of his glass. He looked severely at his wife. “It is better they do not know too much. You understand, Herr Carmody?”

  Carmody nodded. “I always protect my sources, Herr Lang. It is part of a newspaperman’s code.”

  “Not in Germany,” said Lang. “I think you had better go now. Say goodbye as if we are no more than casual sharers of this table. I’ll be in touch with you at your office.”

  “What if we want to get in touch with you, if there’s an emergency?”