The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  “All the time,” said Carmody. He shook her hand and Klatt’s, felt the intimacy of hers and the challenge of his. “See you Sunday.”

  “Do you play tennis, Fräulein O’Dea?” said Klatt. “I forgot to ask.”

  “I’m just a little ol’ novice,” Cathleen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. “I just pat the balls back and forth.”

  “Ball, darling,” said Meg. “Not balls.”

  “You’d know,” said Cathleen. “Sleep tight.”

  Meg gave her an acknowledging smile and Klatt boomed a laugh that woke up the dozing bartender. They went out arm-in-arm and Cathleen said, “What does she see in him? He’s an oaf.”

  “He’s probably a champion in bed.”

  “So are you. Has she made a play for you?”

  He grinned modestly. “Once. I declined.”

  “Why?”

  “I feel sorry for her, but I don’t feel sexy about her.”

  “Why do you feel sorry for her?”

  “She’s in no-man’s-land—”

  “A bed is no-man’s-land?”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean politically—well, no, nationally. She’s a Nazi, but she’ll never be a German—she’s too English for that. But she can never go back to England, be English again. They’d never accept her.”

  Cathleen pondered, then shrugged. Women, having had more practice than men at making beds, have less sympathy for other women who make their beds badly and then have to lie in them. “I say serves her right.”

  “I thought you might.” He ate his second piece of toast with English marmalade, drank his second cup of coffee and sat back. He was a little more prepared now for Danzig. “I wish you could come with me.”

  “So do I.” She squeezed his hand, loving him and still amazed at her feeling. “Like she said, do be careful, darling. Don’t go picking fights with any SS officers, in drag or out of it.”

  “I’ll ring you to let you know I’m okay.” Then, his thought processes going off at an angle as obliquely as hers, he suddenly stood up. “Excuse me a minute. I have to ring someone.”

  He went to the bar phone, looked up the number of La Trattoria and dialled it. Tinkler’s voice, deeper than usual with sleep, answered. “Who is it, for God’s sake?”

  “Sorry to call you so early, Herr Tinkler. It’s Sean Carmody. I’m going to Danzig this morning. Have you any message for your wife’s family?”

  “Yes, yes!” Tinkler was instantly wide awake. He turned his head away from the phone; Carmody could hear hurried murmurs in the background. Then Tinkler was back on the phone. “Would you take a parcel for us, Herr Carmody? A small gift for Anna’s mother. We’ll bring it to the station.”

  “Sure. The train goes at eight.”

  He went back to Cathleen and she said, “What was that about?”

  “I’m doing someone a favour.”

  “You always are,” she said gently.

  She went with him to the station and while they waited for the train they walked up and down in the huge, smoke-grimed cavern. Engines blew steam like witches’ mist, whistles shrilled like dying souls and pigeons fluttered under the glass-domed roof like vampire bats; the sun came up through a haze of smoke and they walked through a beam of hellish red light. There came the sound of clumping boots and onto a neighbouring platform marched a contingent of pack-laden troops. A voice roared Halt! and boots thudded to a stop; the sound had the impact of a blow against the eardrum. Cathleen looked across the tracks at the soldiers, young men bound for God knew what, and suddenly her nerves began jangling again. She clutched Carmody’s arm so tightly that he looked at her in concern.

  “It’s all right. They’re not interested in us.”

  “They’re going east.” Her voice was low, almost fierce; all at once she wanted him not to go. “There must be war!”

  He tried to calm her, but he had the same fear. “Troops have been going east for the past month.” But the station seemed to be filling up with troops; everywhere he looked there were uniforms. A cloud of steam evaporated and disclosed a squad of SS men; they broke off and melted away like black devils. NCOs whistles were shriller, fainter echoes of the engines’ whistles; the pigeons beat silently against the glass roof, trying to escape the noise; out beyond the platforms the tracks suddenly were bright in the sun, like silver entrails. “Relax,” he said, but could feel the tension in himself.

  Then Tinkler and his wife arrived, hurrying on to the platform with awkward runs, he leaning forward as if he were running ahead of his long thin legs, she leaning back as if afraid her weight would pitch her forward on to her face. They were carrying a large basket with a cloth hiding whatever it contained.

  “Food, wine,” Tinkler gasped. “We don’t know if they have rationing in Danzig—Anna’s mother loves her food—”

  Anna laughed nervously, the first time Carmody had ever seen her laugh at all. “You have only to look at me . . . Thank you, Herr Carmody. Tell her to write—to give you a letter for me—”

  Then the train conductor blew his whistle, yet another in the chorus of whistles, and a moment later the train began to move. Carmody had only time to hug Cathleen to him, to kiss her, then he jumped aboard. He leaned out of the doorway, waving to her and to the Tinklers, tempted to jump off and go back to her and them. He looked across at the opposite platform, saw the soldiers there coming to attention again, beginning to move towards the train that had just drawn in on the other side of the platform. An engine’s whistle shrieked, seeming to go on and on as the Danzig train pulled out of the station into the bright glare of the summer’s day. When he looked back into the shadow of the station he could see nothing.

  III

  Extracts from the memoirs of General Kurt von Albern:

  . . . When Colonel Hans von Gaffrin told me that Hitler had set the date for the invasion of Poland as Saturday, 26 August, I felt as much relief as excitement. Relief that at last we should have to move and quickly, that the doubters amongst us could no longer advocate caution. History shows that there are always those in a conspiracy who hope that events will overrun plans, that God or destiny or pure accident will accomplish the deed they have planned for and they will have their lives and their consciences left intact. Conspiracy is abhorrent to me, it is utterly foreign to any code that was bred into me. If, however, there was no other way to save Germany from destruction, then there had to be a conspiracy. Only a madman tries to save the world on his own.

  We called a meeting. Our telephone calls were guarded, couched in mundane terms—“Your uniform, sir, will be ready for a fitting tomorrow morning at 10.” Of course we did not meet at 10 in the morning; we were all too well-known to converge on the one spot in daylight. The meeting was for 10 p.m. and the place was the home of General Werner von Heller.

  His home, incongruously, was just off the Gendarmenmarkt, the centre of the financial district. It had been in his family for over a hundred years and stubbornly his family had refused to move as the money-men moved in about them. The house, solid-looking as a bank, was surrounded by banks; it did not look out of place in itself, but only because of who resided there. Heller was out of place for another reason: his family no longer had any money.

  He was tall, thin, always red-eyed as if he had just been poking a smoky fire, and a charming host. He was a widower and lived alone with two servants, an ex-corporal from the Uhlans and his wife. I was the first to arrive, probably because I was the most enthusiastic of us all, and saw the calm, hospitable way in which he received the rest of us as we came in, at five-minute intervals, through the front door. There were five others: Mueller, Nagel, Gussing, Rein and Gaffrin. All seven of us were entitled to von: we were, if you wish, a conspiracy of aristocrats. We came from the Foreign Ministry, the Army, the Navy and from industry. Only the Luftwaffe, that den of Nazis under Goering, was unrepresented.

  Heller, the most senior, called the meeting to order . . . I shall not describe it in detail: we were planning a military o
peration and for outsiders military operations are often boring. Suffice to say, we had thought of everything; or thought we had. How many battles have been lost for lack of a proper map co-ordinate?

  “Unfortunately,” said Hans von Gaffrin, “I have not yet been able to learn if and when Hitler is returning to Berlin.”

  “We cannot reach him if he remains at the Berghof.” Mueller was an ex-ambassador to Washington and now held a senior post in the Foreign Ministry. He was a tiny man with a sharp face and sleek brown hair; he always reminded me of a sparrow with pince-nez spectacles. “Unless one of us volunteers to go there and sacrifice himself.”

  “Out of the question.” Walter von Gussing was second-in-command of the Northern Fleet, a merry man in most circumstances but not this evening. He looked the sort of man who should have been playing Saint Nicholas to his grandchildren at Christmas time; he was, he had told us, in our conspiracy for the sake of his grandchildren. “Sending only one man to commit the deed would only lessen the chances of success.”

  “Better to send a fleet,” said General Rein, but smiled to show he agreed with Gussing. He was my best friend amongst those present and all these years later I can still remember his handsomeness, enhanced by the duelling scar down his left cheek, and his graceful movements. His particular bête noire was Himmler and I knew that he had been practising pistol shooting in the hope that, somehow, somewhere, he could challenge the SS leader to a duel. “No, we just have to pray that he comes back to Berlin before Saturday.”

  “He has begun to isolate himself down there at the Berghof.” Theodore von Nagel was the industrialist. He owned steelworks in the Ruhr and one would have thought would have more to gain from war; but he was a peaceful man and wanted his steel used to build peace. He was a pillar of steel himself, grey in hair and face, despite the summer we had had, always dressed in grey, hard-edged and uncompromising in his attitude.

  “He is terrified of assassination,” said Gaffrin. “As soon as he leaves Obersalzberg, we have to act. He may fly direct from there to somewhere close to the Eastern Front—if there is an Eastern Front. We must get to him before he boards his plane.”

  Heller had been quiet up till now. He had been Deputy Chief of Staff up till the previous year; he had resigned at the same time as myself. He was a man of few words, but those were always spoken in a soft, almost kindly way. There was no man I respected more and had he been agreeable, which I knew he would not be, I should have nominated him as President of the new Republic we had planned.

  “We seem to be forgetting the gist of our plan,” he said quietly. “I thought we had decided at our last meeting that there should be no assassination? That we were to take Hitler and Goering into custody for their own protection after we had announced that Himmler and the SS were planning a rising against Hitler. Have we doubts now about our support in the Wehrmacht and the Navy?”

  “No, Herr General,” said Gaffrin. “But he has caught us on the wrong foot with the date he has set for going into Poland. If you remember, we had not expected it to be for at least two weeks—he is still hoping that the English and the French will back down. Admiral Canaris told me that General Haider and all the other officers at Tuesday’s conference at the Berghof were shocked at the earlier date.”

  “Did they protest?”

  “No, sir.”

  Heller sighed at the spinelessness of those who now surrounded Hitler. He and I had resigned because we would not stand for our military arguments being shouted down by an Austrian ex-corporal, who saw himself as a combination of Clausewitz, Schlieffen and Bernhardi. He turned his red-rimmed eyes on me and it seemed that they looked more tired and sadder than usual.

  “Have you finished your mapping of the Gestapo posts, Kurt?”

  I nodded. “Copies of the map are now being run off for distribution. The posts can be taken over and those in charge arrested as soon as the command is given.” Heller looked at Gussing. “What about the Navy, Walter?”

  “I have officers who are ready to take over the radio installations. Orders will be broadcast for ships to remain at stations.”

  “What about Admiral Raeder?” Grand Admiral Erich Raeder was Commander-in-Chief of the Navy and had always been willing to be led by the ex-corporal.

  “He will be taken into custody,” said Gussing and gave his huge Saint Nicholas smile. “For his own good.”

  “So all that remains is for Hitler to come up from Obersalzberg and into our trap.” Heller looked round us all. “I am a religious man. I shall go to Mass in the morning and pray that God delivers him to us.”

  “God, they say, is an Englishman,” said Alfred Rein. “Would it not be ironic if God did deliver him to us?”

  . . . I was never a religious man. Perhaps I should have been. Our prayers, had there been more of them and more fervent, might then have been answered. The world, till now, has not known how close we came to saving it from war . . .

  IV

  “Do you want me to go home?”

  “Home? You are home.”

  “I mean to England. When the film is finished.”

  Helmut had come to Melissa’s flat in Neubabelsberg, the first time he had done so. It was a gesture of conscience on his part, a way of showing he did not expect her always to be running after him. He was still off-balance at her pregnancy; he had woken that day with his own morning sickness. His thoughts did not go as far as to whether he cared for children or not; it had only just occurred to him that he knew none, except some of the brats who appeared occasionally in films, and no one could care for them. Melissa’s baby, so far, was an abstract, another shadow in a life that had, it seemed, become invaded with shadows in the past few months. What disturbed him about the pregnancy was that it made him responsible for her.

  They had talked last night in his flat, but they might have been strangers discussing someone else’s adopting a baby. She had realized it before he did and she had gone home, refusing to let him drive her but slamming out into the night and, her only stroke of good fortune for the past few days, finding a taxi whose driver, for a ransom price, drove her home to Neubabelsberg. Helmut had gone out looking for her and, not finding her, had come back to a sleepless bed. It was then that his conscience, the only thing of his that had never before been stirred by a woman, had begun to itch.

  “It would be best,” he said. “Going home to England, I mean.”

  “Why?” It was not an innocent, naïve question; she had matured, was more composed than he now. She had, for the moment at least, accepted her pregnancy; she had decided, most strongly, against abortion and there were another seven months to go before birth. She had decided to be fatalistic, which is to say she had given up depending on him.

  He looked at her, as much surprised by her composure as by her question. “There is going to be war. You can’t stay on in Germany, not to have a child.”

  “If there’s a war, there’ll be war in England, too.” She lost her composure for a moment at that thought, though she did not show it. She could not imagine war in the Yorkshire Dales, could not see Bradford or London bombed: war happened in other countries.

  “I doubt it.” But his father had told him of Luftwaffe officers who were rumoured to be boasting of what they would do to London when they were let loose with their bombers. “Anyhow, if you remained here you would be an enemy alien, you would be interned.”

  “Not if I were married to a German,” She had never been so composed; or acted better. He wasn’t sure which.

  “Which German did you have in mind?” He had once been witty, but he felt no wit this evening. Then he saw, just for an instant, the quiver of her lips and once again conscience bit him, like a pet squirrel he had neglected too long. “I’m sorry. This German.”

  “Are you proposing?” Her lips were firm once again, she had recovered.

  “I don’t know. Am I? Do I love you, Melissa?”

  “That’s for you to decide. I don’t honestly think you do, or you wouldn’t
be asking me. But I wish you did, Helmut. Oh crumbs, I wish you did!” Her lips did quiver then, her composure broke and she wept. He tried to put his arm about her, but she brusquely brushed it away, got up from the couch on which they were sitting and flung herself into a chair opposite.

  He sat helpless, looking at her, trying to fall in love, just to please her. But weeping women upset him; he looked away from her, around the room. His cameraman’s eye took in every detail: the flat, though rented, had her mark on it. It was as neat and orderly as his father’s house, which had five servants to run it. The prints on the walls were of German castles and cathedrals; a print of St. Paul’s in London was an alien note. There was a studio photo of herself, back-lighted and with every small imperfection air-brushed out; and a photo of her parents, a middle-aged pleasant-looking couple who seemed to be miles apart even while in the 12 × 8 frame. We’d be the same if we married, he thought, and looked back at Melissa.

  She had dried her eyes, was blowing her nose. Men, he thought, can blow their noses and still look presentable; women should never blow their noses, it is one trick they have never mastered. He was looking at her through a deep-focus lens, something no lover, or would-be lover, should ever do. It is a trick for cads looking for an excuse for their own decisions.

  “Melissa—” He leaned forward across the space between them, managed to take her hand. “I’m not thinking straight. I have another problem—one with my father—” That was caddish, bringing his father into it. But it was true: his father was a problem. The hours spent in the Opel last night, driving around listening to his father and Romy, had convinced him that the two of them, without realizing it, were embarked on a suicide pact. He had to prevent it, and soon. It was something that was going to happen this week, not in seven months’ time.

  “Can I help?”

  Yes, take them back to England with you. But he knew they would not go. “Melissa—be patient with me. I’ll stand by you—” Was he reciting dialogue he had heard from some film or were the words always as banal as this in situations like this? Perhaps the B-film scriptwriters had a truer ear than one gave them credit for. “I don’t know why, I just never even thought it could happen to us—”