by Jon Cleary
“What? That we might fall in love or that I’d get pregnant?”
Both; but he didn’t say that. He stepped off a cliff: “Do you want to get married?”
“Oh Helmut—” But she didn’t burst into tears; she sounded so much older and wiser than he in affairs of the heart. She even sounded motherly. “If you have to ask it like that, you don’t want to marry me. I’m disappointed—some day I may even hate you—”
He shook his head. “No, don’t ever do that. Give me a little more time to think—” To fall in love: but he didn’t say that, either. He had the best intentions in the world towards her; he just hadn’t expected such commitment to her, not so soon. He suddenly felt callow, like a boy with his first girl. “I really am caught up in something else with my father—I can’t turn my back on him, not now—”
“Is your father a Nazi?”
“No!” He hadn’t meant to sound so sharp. He suddenly wished he had taken her to meet his father some time; perhaps his father could have given him some advice. “No, he’s anything but that. It’s just—well, like everyone else he’s afraid of war.”
“Even though he’s a general?”
“They know more about it than we do. At least the winning or losing of it. But he’s no longer on the active list—he’s retired.”
“I’d like to meet him. I haven’t said that before—I’ve always had the feeling you didn’t want me to—”
“You will meet him. When—” But he couldn’t say when. Then he thought of someone who might give him advice: “He has a friend, Baroness Sonntag, I’d like you to meet her, too.”
She had brightened, looked vulnerable again. “When?”
“I don’t know—Friday, Saturday. No, Sunday.”
When the problem of his father would be solved one way or another.
She rose from her chair, came back and sat beside him on the couch. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him gently on the lips. “Helmut, don’t worry. If it doesn’t work out between us, I’m still going to have the baby. That part of it doesn’t frighten me at all. What I am afraid of is that if war breaks out and I’m back in England, I shan’t know what’s happened to you.”
He had never wanted to shed tears before because of a woman, but they were close to the surface now. He put his arms round her and wondered if he was in love and hadn’t recognized it.
8
I
“I LOVE you,” said Ludwig, “but you must go, for your own safety. My subjects are forcing me to abdicate.”
“I’ll stay,” said Lola. “They love you—they know you were right in all you’ve done. It is the foreigners with all their propaganda—”
“Cut!” called Karl Braun, and Willy Heffer and Cathleen fell out of their embrace with mutual relief. “That was terrible, darlings. You sounded like a couple of bureaucrats making love after office hours.”
“I think this script was written by a couple of bureaucrats,” said Cathleen. “Or was it five or six?”
Two of the writers were on the set and they slunk away, knowing they had no defence; writers were always blamed for all the shortcomings on a film, they told each other. Braun called for the lunch break and Cathleen headed for her dressing-room. She knew the morning’s poor takes were not entirely the writers’ fault, though the script was ludicrous; she had not been concentrating, had done nothing to lift the lines out of their banality. Willy Heffer, for reasons of his own, had given up the battle and was just working out his time, ready, like King Ludwig, to abdicate.
As she went down the corridor to her dressing-room she passed Melissa’s room. The door was half-open and she saw Melissa sitting in front of her mirror, staring at herself in the unlit glass. No lights were on and the only illumination came through the window set high in one wall. Cathleen knocked lightly and pushed open the door.
“Something wrong?”
Melissa looked at her in the mirror and then Cathleen saw the tears on the English girl’s cheeks. “Tomorrow is my last day, some re-takes. Then I’m going home.”
“It may be the best place to be. You want to have lunch with me?”
Melissa dried her eyes, stood up, came and kissed Cathleen on the cheek. It was the first time she had ever done it; they had never exchanged the usual actresses’ hypocritical pecks. But she did it naturally now and Cathleen knew it said more than she put into words. She took Melissa’s hand and squeezed it.
“How does Helmut feel about you going home?”
Melissa just shook her head, her eyes filling with tears again, and Cathleen knew she had said the wrong thing at the wrong moment. Still holding the other girl’s hand, she led her along the corridor to her own dressing-room. She slipped out of her costume, gave it to her dresser to take away for pressing, put on a robe and sat down opposite Melissa.
“Do you want a big lunch?”
Without thinking Melissa said, “Cathleen, I’m pregnant!”
“Then you want a big lunch.” She picked up the phone, ordered two big lunches from the commissary, then sat back. “I’m not pregnant, I just feel empty today. So . . .” She looked sympathetically at Melissa. “Does Helmut know? Is it his? Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Melissa had regained her composure. “He knows. It’s—sort of floored him.”
“Did it floor you?”
“No. I’m—I’m sort of glad, in a way.”
“Is he going to marry you?”
“I don’t know. He offered to, sort of.”
“Sort of. Everything seems to be sort of. Is he going to marry you or not?”
“I think he will if I insist. He’s very honourable.”
“Melissa honey, any marriage that’s based on the honour of the groom is going to be a mess of horseshit, if you’ll forgive my Hollywood French. He marries you because he loves you or he doesn’t marry you. Period. Or maybe period is the wrong word, since that’s what you haven’t got. Does he love you or not? And I don’t mean sort of.”
Melissa was silent for a moment. She had never expected to weigh love on scales, but love, she supposed was a commodity, since it seemed to have its price. Whores had known that for centuries, but she, being a romantic, had thought of it as a give-away. “I think he does love me. He just won’t admit it, even to himself.”
Cathleen sighed. Though a woman, she was continually amazed at the blind faith of women. She was not a cynic, just someone who had learned from her experiences. “Honey, men will rarely admit anything to themselves about women, except to abuse us. They’re afraid of us, most of them. Even the ones who belt the hell out of us. Especially them.”
“He’d never do that, I know.”
“I’m not saying he would. He’s a gentleman, I know. He’d be more of a gentleman if he was honest with you—” There was a knock on the door. “Come in. You were quick—”
But it wasn’t the waitress with their lunch; it was Helmut. He pulled up sharply when he saw Melissa. “I’m sorry—I wanted to see you, Cathleen, about changing your dress—”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“I’d like a lighter colour. It’s not lighting too well—” He and Melissa were looking at each other, both caught off-balance. Then he sighed, sat down on the only other chair in the room and looked at Cathleen. “She has told you?”
Cathleen nodded. “I’m her big sister—for today, anyway. It’s a bit of a shock for you, I gather? It always is. For you men, I mean.”
“Have you been caught, too?” said Melissa.
“You mean caught pregnant? No. I never trusted the men I went to bed with. Don’t look shocked, Helmut. I was never an easy lay, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I’ve fallen in and out of love half a dozen times. I just was never sure if the guys were in love with me. So I took precautions. Are you upset that Melissa didn’t?”
“I just took it for granted—”
There was another knock on the door: this time it was the waitress from the commissary. She gave everyone a
big smile, wished them bon appetit and went. “Bon appetit?” said Cathleen.
“She’s from Alsace,” said Helmut.
“Another outsider?”
“Not really.”
“Would you be happier if Melissa were not an outsider? If she were German?”
Melissa looked shocked at the question and Helmut stiffened. “You really are her big sister today, aren’t you?”
“Someone has to be. She’s a long way from home. Have you eaten? You have? Okay, Melissa, tuck in. You have two to feed now.”
She knew she was being blunt and heavy-handed, but she felt like hitting Helmut over the head. Women alone have patience and are inclined to forgive; together they are as belligerent as any man. Melissa, the silent one in the two-women army, tucked in, feeding two, though so far she was not aware of the baby, only of its future.
“In ordinary circumstances—” Helmut said.
“There are no ordinary circumstances, not when you’re pregnant and you aren’t married. Don’t beat about the bush, Helmut. Eat your dessert, too, Melissa.”
Melissa was only halfway through her schnitzel. “Cathleen—please. Don’t badger him so—” She moved her chair; suddenly Cathleen was facing both of them, big sister or big mother or big teacher. “He has his problems. With his father—”
“What’s the matter with your father?” But Cathleen had decided she was already out-gunned, the victim had gone back to the other side. So much for the US cavalry coming to the rescue. Shirley Temple had joined the Indians.
“It’s—business. I only learned about it a few days ago—just before Melissa told me about the baby . . . My mind’s all over the place—” He sounded sorry for himself and didn’t mean to. “Once his problem is out of the way . . .”
Cathleen looked at both of them, knew they really didn’t want her help. Melissa was a born loser; she would play the role with dignity, a poor man’s Greer Garson. Helmut was an aristocrat, even though in pictures; he was honourable and he would play the role of an honourable man. That, of course, she thought, was the trouble: they would both finish up playing roles. She shrugged, attacked her own schnitzel with sharp knife and fork.
“Call me if you want a godmother.”
Then the phone rang. She picked it up, recognized Inge Lang’s voice. “I have some definite news for you, Fräulein. Can we meet?”
“Of course!” Then she tried to rein in her excitement, one eye on Melissa and Helmut. “When?”
“This evening. Eight o’clock.”
“Same place?”
“Yes. Till then.” She hung up: Frau Lang was a woman apparently afraid of tapped telephone lines.
Helmut, with unaccustomed spite, getting some of his own back, said, “The Herr Doctor?”
“No, Helmut.” She felt so excited she forgave him his spite; indeed, she understood it. What right had she to butt into his life? Suddenly his and Melissa’s problem meant nothing to her. We are all selfish about our troubles. “Someone has some news from an old friend. I hope.”
II
It seemed to Carmody that Danzig, despite all the political weather of the past weeks, had not changed since he had last been here. The citizens appeared at ease, intent on enjoying the summer; certainly they were going about their work rather desultorily, but it was the real weather not the political, that was causing that. Thunderstorms hung like purple volcanic explosions out in the Baltic and the air in the city was thick enough to be felt. A summer shower passed over and when it had gone the cobbles in the older streets glistened and gave off steam like thermal rocks.
There were German military vehicles everywhere, some rushing through the streets as if war had broken out just round the corner; they carried their own mocking note (or hint of the future? he wondered) with their Danzig licence plates. The nearby hills of Bischofsberg and Hagelberg had been fortified and, coming in by train, he noticed that the roads leading in from Poland were blocked by tank traps and log barriers. Yet within the city there was an atmosphere of complacency, an air of “what’s all the fuss about?”
Except for the drunks. On his only other visit here he had remarked that there were more drunks in Danzig than he had seen in any other city, including Sydney, Chicago and New York. He had been told that was because the farther east one went, the bigger the schnapps glasses and the stronger the schnapps; he had tasted the local schnapps and it seemed to him that it had burned not only his throat but the soles of his shoes from the inside. There seemed, however, to be more drunks this time, some belligerent, some maudlin, some morose, but all of them seeking some escape.
He went into the old part of the town looking for the address the Tinklers had given him. The sky had cleared and the evening light played on the old Gothic houses with their steep gables and their decorated fronts; there was almost a fairy-tale look to them and he shuddered at the thought that soon they might be bombed. Carrying the Tinklers’ basket, the food in it still covered by a cloth, he felt like something out of a fairy tale: the fairy godfather, maybe.
He found the address in a narrow street where it seemed that the houses needed each other for support. They were old but their paint and the geraniums in their flower-boxes were fresh; the cracks in their walls were like the cracks in the make-up of old crones. The woman who opened the door to his knock was no crone, however: grey-haired she was, but she shook and shivered with remnants of her laughing youth. She was even bigger than her daughter, a huge woman; one would have found it easier to paint a panorama of her than a portrait. She had none of Anna Tinkler’s timidity.
“Herr—Carmody, did you say? Come in, come in! Oh look at what you have brought! Does Anna think I am starving here? Do I look as if I am? No, tell me, tell me the truth, Herr Carmody—do I look as if I’m starving?”
Carmody grinned, shook his head. He looked around for a place to sit down; he had never been in a room so crowded with furniture. He wondered how Frau Pavel, with her massive bulk, managed to negotiate her way through the crush without bruising herself. He watched, fascinated, as she slid between table and chairs, seeming to draw in, like a huge jellyfish, every time she looked like bumping against something. She pushed a chair at him and he dropped on to it, aware of the looming sideboard right behind him that seemed ready to topple, like a black cliff, and crush him. Frau Pavel whipped the cloth off the basket, exposing sausages, jams, cakes, fruit, and gurgled with excitement. Carmody imagined the sound was that of her gastric juices running riot throughout that great body.
She made him coffee, gave him a slice of cake that threatened to break his wrist as he lifted it to his mouth. Cake forks were not for this house; and all at once Carmody felt at home. This was how his mother would have served her cake, though the slice would not have been so big.
“How are Anna and Luis? Are things good for them in Berlin?” He had told her his German was not the best and she had slowed down her delivery after her initial volleys. She had an East Prussian accent, which he found harsh and unappealing; he had to keep reminding himself that she was Polish, not German. “They want me to join them. But how can I leave here? My family have lived in this house for God knows how long. A hundred and fifty, two hundred years.”
“They are afraid there is going to be war. Haven’t you got their letters?”
“No. They haven’t received mine? That damned Gestapo!” She bit into a piece of cake, chewed it as if it were Gestapo bones. “They hound me as if I were some sort of anarchist who was going to blow them up. All I do is speak my mind—” Carmody could imagine her doing that, a great wind of protest howling through these narrow streets. “Why do Anna and Luis think there will be war?”
“Most people do. I do.”
She shook her head. “No, nobody here thinks there will be. The Germans here are all sure Hitler will take them back into Germany. He won’t need to go to war to do that. The English and the French won’t fight for Danzig.” She curled her lip, then looked shocked at her gaffe. “I’m sorry, you’re Engl
ish!”
“No, Australian. Irish-Australian.”
“The same thing,” said Frau Pavel, and on the other side of the world Paddy Carmody spun in his sleep. “They call Danzig a free city. We Poles who live here joke that anyone is free to do what they want with it. And with us. First the Poles had it, then the Prussians, then Napoleon said it could go its own way, then the Prussians had it again—it just goes on and on. Sometimes I wish I’d been born in the South Seas . . . Tell Anna and Luis not to worry. There won’t be any war.”
He felt sad at her optimism. “I hope not, Frau Pavel. Do you want to write a letter that I can take back to your daughter?”
“I have one written! A moment—” She jumped up, the house seemed to shake and Carmody waited for the sideboard to fall on him, and she went clumping up some narrow stairs to the floor above. A minute, then she came gasping downstairs again. “Those stairs are getting steeper every day! Here—” She handed him a thick letter. “Tell her not to worry. I shall come and visit them for Christmas.”
She showed him out of the house, clasping his hand like an old friend. He left her, still sad at her faith in peace, and went up the narrow street. At the top he turned and waved. She stood in the doorway of the narrow old house, filling it; she waved a huge arm, a gesture of defiant hope, and he thought he heard her laugh. Then he turned the corner and walked into the two men in the tightly buttoned suits and the recognizable hats.
“Your identity card,” said the smaller of the two men. He was about Carmody’s height and build, but had a thin face in which his black eyes seemed to have some difficulty in remaining apart. He had a Prussian accent and a voice that raised Carmody’s hackles.
Carmody produced his passport and press card. “I am here on legitimate press business, for my wire service.”
