The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  “You may not get the picture finished in time.”

  “You mean war? I don’t care, not about the picture. I only came here to find Mother—that’s all I care about now. I don’t want to collapse just when I look like finding her.”

  They went to bed, but Carmody first set his alarm clock. “I have to phone New York at one o’clock. They’ll want to know if there’s any late news for the morning editions.”

  Editors were like wives: they hated the thought that their men might be doing nothing while they themselves were slaving. Or so he had been told by married newspapermen.

  They made love, gently and violently, the best way; then fell asleep. It seemed only minutes later when the alarm went off. He sat up, switched on the bedside lamp and looked at Cathleen’s face on the pillow beside his. She was frowning and even as he watched her she twitched sharply, devils running dagger-toed through her sleep. He smoothed the dark red hair, darker still with sweat, away from her brow, wished, like all true lovers, that he could protect her from all suffering and threats. Then he got out of bed and went into the living room to phone his editor in New York, another threat.

  “What the hell’s happening over there?”

  I’ve just been making love to my girl. “Nothing. Everybody’s marking time.”

  “They’re doing what? This is a bad line.” Carmody had never met this editor, but he had the reputation of believing the world was against him. Tonight it was the Atlantic Ocean sitting too heavily on his conversation. “Why aren’t you in Danzig?”

  “I was there two weeks ago. This is where things are going to happen, if they happen,”

  “The first shots are gonna be fired in Danzig. Get over there for a coupla days.”

  “And get shot?”

  “What you say? I told you, this is a goddam awful line.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it?” said Carmody and hung up. When he turned round he saw Cathleen, nude, standing in the doorway. “That doorway suits you. I should buy it as a frame.”

  “I didn’t know you were poetic.”

  “Neither did I,” he said, admiring her, still marvelling at his luck. The boy from the bush sleeping with a beautiful film star . . . Then he said, coming back to earth, “I have to go to Danzig.”

  “For how long?” She looked frightened, as if she did not want to be left alone.

  “A couple of days. There’s a morning train at eight. Let’s go back to bed.”

  She shook her head. “No, let’s go out somewhere. A nightclub, anywhere. I can’t sleep.”

  He imagined he could see her nerve-ends, frayed as old rope. He was shocked at how suddenly she seemed to have gone to pieces; it had happened since Sunday night, when they had met the Langs. Hope, it seemed, had unravelled her.

  “Righto. Let’s have a bath first. I’ll pack a bag and bring it with me.”

  It was two o’clock when they went out. In the deserted street he looked for someone spying on them; but there was no one, or if there was they were doing their job perfectly, not letting him know. They walked to a night club on the Kurfürstendamm, where most of the customers were drunk or half-asleep by now, where the chorus girls danced behind tired smiles and the resident comedian told tired jokes; after half an hour Cathleen wanted to move on and Carmody, glad to get out of the place, gladly followed her.

  They went to another nightclub but Cathleen also grew bored there. They caught a taxi over to Friedrichstrasse, found a bar which turned out to be a haunt for transvestites. Carmody had ordered drinks before he became aware of the stares of the other clients; at first he thought he and Cathleen had fallen into a suppertime canteen for prostitutes. Then he saw the muscular legs of some of the “women,” the blue jaws showing through the make-up of some of them, and he suddenly realized where they were. This was not the notorious Eldorado, on the Motzstrasse, but its clients were possibly the younger brothers (the sons, too?) of those who had gone there in its heyday. Berlin was not the wide open sin city it had been in the Twenties, but it was still a magnet for deviates.

  “What’s the matter?” said Cathleen.

  “I think I’m the odd man out in here. And you’re the odd girl.”

  Cathleen looked around. The bar-room was decorated in Art Deco style; the walls were hung with posters and cartoons that had survived from the Twenties. There were only two or three men present, none in uniform, and the only swastika in sight was on a small flag hung behind the bar. Then she looked again at the women in the room and realization dawned. But unlike Carmody, she was not embarrassed. She smiled at four “girls” at the next table; the four looked at each other, then smiled back. Cathleen turned back to Carmody. “If it pleases them, what’s the harm? At least they’re not out molesting kids.”

  “I’d dong ‘em if they tried to molest me.” He knew he sounded unsophisticated and narrow-minded, but growing up in a shearing shed hadn’t prepared him for the switches in sex he had met since coming to Europe. The waiter, a man (or was he a girl dressed as a man? Carmody wasn’t sure), came back with their drinks.

  “My friend would like to buy drinks for the four ladies at the next table,” said Cathleen. “Will you take their orders?”

  Carmody swore under his breath; and swore again when the four “ladies” ordered champagne. Cathleen turned her chair, faced the next table and said pleasantly, “I like your outfits. Where do you buy them?”

  “Anywhere that catches our eye,” said a big blond with a false bust and a false voice. “Where do you get yours? That’s a beautiful dress, so chic.”

  “American,” said Cathleen, standing up and showing off her dress. “I got it in New York, Bergdorf Goodman’s.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” said a tall thin brown-haired one with bangs and a 1920s shingle cut. “It’s a Jewish store, isn’t it?”

  “I believe it is,” said Cathleen, sitting down, crossing her legs and showing them off. Carmody noticed that the four pairs of legs at the other table seemed to creep back out of sight. “But they always have the nicest stuff, don’t you think? I believe Kohner used to be the best couturier in Berlin, wasn’t he?”

  “We could never afford his creations,” said the blond, then laughed, showing teeth like those of a guard dog. He played with one of his dangling ear-rings. “He never made my size.”

  The conversation went on and Carmody, not asked to join in, sat silent and bemused. His embarrassment had faded away, but was revived when one of the transvestites, petit and with a gold-chestnut curly wig, leaned across and put a slim hand on his knee.

  “When you came in with that bag—” he nodded at Carmody’s small overnight bag “—we thought you were going into the loo to change. You’d look good in slacks and jacket. Those shoulders—like Marlene Dietrich’s.”

  It was Cathleen who lifted the slim hand from Carmody’s knee. “He’s mine, sweetheart. He gets nervous when strange girls touch him.”

  The curly-wigged one smiled, sat back. “Half your luck, darling.”

  Carmody gave him a weak smile for the compliment. Then he said, “What happens when you girls get your call-up?”

  They fluttered their hands in exaggerated gestures, rolled their eyes; all except the big blond, who said in his true voice, a rough baritone, “What business is it of yours? Why don’t you foreigners go home?”

  Carmody stood up. “I think we might do that. Anywhere would be better than here.”

  Cathleen, too, stood up. She had been recklessly gay all night, had got into conversation with the transvestites out of a perverse mood that she herself didn’t understand; it was as if her nerves were prodding her on, daring her to create situations the outcome of which she couldn’t guess. But now she saw this was a situation of which she had lost control. The men, one in male clothes, the others in their dresses, suddenly were at odds. It struck her that, deep down, how the five men were dressed had nothing to do with the antagonism that had suddenly flared.

  The blond stood up, but the tall thin brown-haired one gr
abbed him and tried to pull him down into his chair again. “Don’t, Karl! You’ll only get into trouble!”

  The curly-wigged one all at once grabbed Carmody and Cathleen by the elbows and pushed them ahead of him towards the steps leading up to the street. Carmody allowed himself to be pushed, surprised at the strength in the slim hands and wrists. “Get out quickly and don’t come back! He is an SS lieutenant. Go—quickly!”

  Carmody looked back, saw the SS officer still on his feet, glaring after him with an angry hatred that the distance between them did nothing to dissipate. He had snatched off his wig, exposing a nearly-bald head that shone with sweat; something had happened to his bust, perhaps a strap had snapped as his muscles had swelled, and his bright red dress hung on him like a limp banner. He looked ridiculous and Carmody had to check himself from laughing. Instead, he turned and pushed Cathleen ahead of him up into the street.

  “Christ Almighty!”

  “I’m sorry, darling—”

  “Don’t you ever get me into a spot like that again!” He would not have believed he could be so angry with her; but he was. He was taking deep breaths, trying to control himself. He was alarmed at how he felt: he wanted to strike her. Not because she had got him into danger, but because she had endangered herself. “If there’d been a fight, you’d have got hurt, too. At the very least we’d both probably have finished up in jail. Christ, can’t you understand we have to stay out of trouble? Now, especially, when we could get word about your mother—”

  “I said I’m sorry. I am, really. But you shouldn’t have asked them about their call-up—that must have got under that SS man’s skin—”

  He was cooling down. “I couldn’t help that. I didn’t mean to needle them—I was just curious. How often do I talk to blokes like that?”

  She looked at him in the yellow glow of the street-lamps. Sometimes she thought of him as remarkably young; but perhaps she herself was innocent, she had mistaken decency for immaturity. She had lived too long in a world where decency was only something dreamed up by the Hays Office, the film industry’s guardian of the morals of everybody but its own. All at once he looked older, he knew more about the real world, of the quick and the dead, than she possibly ever would.

  He was standing with his back to a Litfasssäule, one of the thick pillars that stood like a robot sentry on almost every street corner dressed in advertisements and official placards. Immediately behind his head was a poster advertising a recent gathering at the Sportspalast: Hitler glared at her over Carmody’s shoulder, the hypnotic eyes seeming to blaze out of the poster. A police car went by, followed by one of the green police wagons; she started as the klaxons began to blare. She leaned forward and put her head against Carmody’s chest and he put his arms round her.

  “Come on,” he said gently, “I’ll take you to the Adlon for breakfast, then you can put me on the train.”

  They began to walk up towards the Unter den Linden, turned into it and walked beneath the trees towards the hotel, their arms round each other; happy lovers, one might have thought, after a full and happy night. Then abruptly she giggled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You and your shoulders like Dietrich’s. I can just see you dressed like her. I’ll buy you a beret to go with the slacks and jacket.”

  “Do me a favour—don’t ever mention tonight in front of the other fellers. Joe Begley would split his trenchcoat.”

  But he was laughing with her as they went into the lobby of the Adlon. Then he stopped laughing as he saw who had entered just ahead of them. He looked around for a place to hide, wanted to duck behind one of the square clouded-yellow marble pillars. But Meg Arrowsmith had already turned round and seen him.

  “Darling!” She was in evening dress, a black silk shawl slung over one shoulder; she looked the worse for wear, as if she might have been in the same dress, unchanged, for two or three evenings; she was setting no example this early morning for the badly dressed Berlin women. The man with her, however, looked as if he had just been freshly laundered and pressed, an elegant bear. “And the darling Miss O’Dea, too!”

  Carmody waited for Cathleen to bare her teeth and her wit; but she looked at him and he knew she was leaving the approach to him. “Hello, Meg. You’re up late. Or early. Whichever it is.”

  “Late, darling. We haven’t been to bed yet. We’ve been to the most marvellous party—oh, you don’t know Nicky Klatt, do you?”

  Klatt was bald, beefily handsome, with bright blue eyes that one knew would always be wide awake to an opportunity to make either a woman or a profit. Carmody knew of him, if he didn’t know him: he was one of the industrialists who had backed the Nazis and the bet had paid off in millions. Part of his fortune had been made by buying up plants, at bargain prices, from Jews who had been ordered to dispose of their properties. He looked fit and muscular enough to wrestle a bull, thought Carmody, and probably could. Yet he might find a match for him in Meg, when he finally got her to bed.

  “We’re about to have breakfast in the bar—” He had a booming hoarse voice that bounced off the marble pillars. “Do have it with us!”

  Cathleen smiled, but remained mute, leaving the decision to Carmody. He wanted to escape, to take her somewhere quiet for their last couple of hours together before he caught the train for Danzig; but his tongue was stumbling, he was tired and he could not think of an excuse on the spur of the moment. Too, his newspaperman’s instinct was too strong: so far, in the months he had been in Berlin, he had never had an opportunity to sit down and study one of the rich men backing Hitler. Wars could not be fought without money and he might learn something by listening to one of the sources.

  “Thank you,” he said, and felt Cathleen squeeze his arm. But wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or disappointed in him.

  They went into the bar, sat at a table and ordered bacon and eggs. “And I’d like a steak with mine,” said Carmody.

  “A man with an appetite!” Klatt boomed; he sounded like a battery of guns on a wet morning. “At this hour, too!”

  “He’s travelling,” said Cathleen, speaking for the first time. Meg had been looking sideways at her, obviously wondering why she was so quiet. Women suspect silence in another woman; they are just annoyed by it in a man. “He’s catching the eight o’clock train for Danzig.”

  “Darling!” Meg put her hand on Carmody’s, caught Cathleen’s eyes, smiled and took her hand away. Carmody, despite himself, felt flattered: women and transvestites were at odds over him. “Why go to that dreary place? Nothing’s going to happen there.”

  “I can vouch for that,” said Klatt, lowering his voice to the boom of a mortar bomb. Why do I keep thinking of him in arms terms? Carmody wondered. Klatt was not an armaments manufacturer, he built roads and government buildings. “The Poles won’t fight, not now with the Russians sitting right behind them.”

  “What will happen?”

  “It will be settled by plebiscite. There are 400,000 Germans in Danzig—they have a right to belong to the Reich. But don’t let’s talk about politics at this hour- that’s for students. I have seen your American films, Fräulein O’Dea. Very entertaining.”

  Cathleen, being an actress, accepted a review from any source; still, she showed her surprise. “I was never a star, Herr Klatt. How would you have noticed me?”

  “Dr. Goebbels pointed you out to me—I have been to his private screenings. We have adjoining houses out at Schwanenwerder. You must come out there!”

  Cathleen looked at Carmody, who said nothing. It was Meg who spoke up: “Can’t you see, Nicky, Fräulein O’Dea goes nowhere without Herr Carmody? You must invite both of them. And me, too.”

  “Why not?” He smiled, showing a mouthful of the most expensive teeth, and putting a muscular paw over Meg’s bird-like hand. “You won’t mind meeting my wife?”

  “Of course not, darling. I’ve been meeting men’s wives ever since I left Cheltenham Ladies’ College.”

  Klatt let out a laugh that made
Carmody want to duck. “Sunday then? Will you be back from Danzig by Sunday, Herr Carmody?”

  “War permitting, yes,” said Carmody.

  For just a moment the bright blue eyes hardened; then they were merry again. He had too much energy to be morose; he had more than enough to be angry, but he was not going to expend any of it on an argument with a foreign newspaperman over bacon and eggs (and steak) at five o’clock in the morning. Dealing with Nazi officials had given him a sense of perspective and priorities. There was no profit in political argument.

  “Do you play tennis?”

  “He is a champion,” said Meg, holding the Empire together. “Aren’t all Australians?”

  “Good! We’ll play half a dozen sets!”

  I’ll bet the bastard would, thought Carmody. Klatt had that characteristic that so many self-made men had, of having to prove themselves in everything they attempted. Carmody’s experience of them was limited, but they all seemed to be the same. It pained him, a democratic republican, to find himself preferring the relaxed air of the aristocrats with inherited wealth. They might be arrogant bastards, but they did not challenge you to six sets of tennis at five o’clock in the morning.

  “I’ll get in some practice in Danzig,” he said.

  Again there was the momentary hardening of the brilliant blue eyes, then the instant smile. “Good, good! You can tell me how the Poles play.”

  The two women had been uncharacteristically quiet, watching the two men duel with each other. They did not take sides, since the men were not duelling over them. Breakfast arrived and the two men attacked their plates; the women toyed with theirs. Cathleen was pleased to see that Carmody had not lost his appetite; she had feared that the night had been such a disastrous one that he might have gone off his food. She did not want him going off to Danzig feeling totally empty. It was enough to be depressed without also being hungry. He looked up at her from his plate and smiled and she felt a warmth run through her that was like a sedative on her nerves. I’m in love, she thought, and could hardly believe it.

  She was relieved when, as soon as Klatt had finished his bacon and eggs and drunk his coffee, Meg Arrowsmith rose from her chair. “I’m for bed. It’s been a long night. Be careful in Danzig, darling.”