The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  “What business did you have with Frau Pavel?” The second man was half a head taller than Carmody and seemed to be all muscle; even his broad face bulged with muscle. When he spoke he sounded muscle-bound, or so it seemed to Carmody. He looked at the press card in his partner’s hand. “Did World Press send you to interview her?”

  “A woman in a back street, a nobody?” said the first man.

  “I brought her some food, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law in Berlin, that was all.”

  “The son-in-law, that is Herr Tinkler? He is a Jew?”

  Carmody had to restrain a laugh. “If he were a Jew, would he have a licence for a restaurant in Berlin?”

  The two men did not like being asked such a question. The big one snapped, “Come with us!”

  Carmody was about to protest, but knew it would get him nowhere with these two. He could see people looking out of their windows and on the other side of the street passers-by had slowed, but not stopped, and were casting covert glances in his direction. It would be of no use to ask these citizens for help. He had been told that no one intervened in the Gestapo’s business.

  The Gestapo men hustled him towards a car, pushed him in. He sat in the back with the big man while the other one drove. There was no conversation and that suited Carmody; it gave him time to sort out his thoughts for the interview ahead. He did not feel afraid for himself, foreign correspondents so far had the protection of the Foreign Press Office, but already he could see ripples spreading out to touch the Tinklers and Frau Pavel. And, the thought that chilled him, to touch Cathleen.

  The Gestapo office was in a warehouse near the docks. It was obviously a new post, part of the increase in Gestapo activities since the crisis. It was sparsely furnished and the two men and two girls in the office were sitting around, looking as if they had nothing to do. Brand new typewriters sat on brand new desks; the notices on the walls were not yet flyblown or curled at the edges; the electric globes, still free of grime, shone too brightly. Carmody, still feeling safe, wondered wryly if the rack had yet been taken out of its packing.

  He was led into an inner room that, though newly painted, had a stale smell to it. He decided it was due to cigarette smoke and the fact that, even on this warm evening, the window was closed. He was told to sit down. Paper and carbon were produced and his particulars taken down in triplicate. Carmody looked at the men and saw them as bureaucrats with muscle, a formidable combination.

  “You are in trouble, Herr Carmody.” The smaller man had lit up a cigarette, was blowing smoke as if signalling someone.

  Carmody shook his head, deciding on a little philosophy. “My father used to tell me as a boy, you’re not in trouble till you can’t see your way out of it. Then you are in trouble.”

  Both men digested this and seemed impressed; they were not unintelligent. “You can see your way out of this?”

  “All I have to do is tell the truth. All I am is a messenger boy. Frau Tinkler was worried that her mother was not answering her letters. She thought she might have been ill. Frau Pavel told me she has been writing to her daughter, but for some reason those letters have not been delivered in Berlin.”

  Neither man commented on this, but the big man got up from his chair and moved close to Carmody, sitting on the edge of the room’s one table. He, too, had lit a cigarette and was blowing smoke. “You are not telling the truth, Herr Carmody. You came here for another reason.”

  Carmody suddenly knew the evening might be dangerous, that he might be hurt before he got out of here. He looked around the room; it did not look like a torture cell. There was the obligatory photograph of the Fuehrer; a brand new poster for an event already past, Reich Party Day for Peace; and a calendar with certain dates, already gone, circled in red. Red letter days when victims had cracked? he wondered.

  He looked back at the big man and said mildly, as if puzzled, “What reason was that?”

  “You are a messenger for people who are conspiring against the Reich.”

  “You are barking up the wrong tree.” Both men looked blank and he explained patiently, “You have the wrong idea. As far as I know, the Tinklers are just ordinary innocent citizens. The Gestapo in Berlin has never gone near them.” He was not sure of his facts, but he was taking a newspaperman’s licence: facts were only for when you were dealing with an honest audience.

  “We have read their letters,” said the smaller man. Both men had taken off their hats, revealing bald heads; they looked like Little Brother and Big Brother. Smoke wreathed around their heads; they were smoke manufacturers. “And Frau Pavel’s.”

  I thought you might have.

  “We are not concerned with what our colleagues in Berlin think about the Tinklers, that is their business. We are concerned with what Frau Pavel is advocating here in Danzig.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rebellion. A rising against the Fuehrer.”

  Carmody shook his mind, if not his head. He could see Frau Pavel’s rebellion, a gust of honest exasperation at rules and regulations. “You’re blowing it up out of proportion—”

  “Blowing up?”

  Carmody couldn’t help it: he laughed. Before he could duck the big man had hit him across the side of the head and sent him sprawling off his chair. He scrambled up before the Gestapo man could put the boot into him, but the latter had sat back on the table, was grinning at him, puffing on his cigarette again. “Sorry, Herr Carmody. You were only joking.” But his tone implied that he had not been: the blow had been a warning.

  Carmody picked himself up, sat back on his chair. His head was ringing from the blow and when he put his hand up to his ear it came away stained with blood. He got out his handkerchief and held it to his ear. “The Foreign Press Office is not going to like this when I tell them about it.”

  “The Foreign Press Office is part of Dr. Goebbels’ department—he does not run the State Police.” There was no mistaking the contempt in his voice for Goebbels; Heinrich Himmler had set an example for his minions to follow. “In Danzig you are answerable to us, Herr Carmody.”

  What he was saying was that, as an East Prussian, he did not care what Berlin had to say. It was the old regional quarrel; it happened all over the world. Carmody had read that the East Prussians did not refer to themselves as such; they sub-divided themselves even further into Masurians, Oberlanders, Königsbergers and Samlanders. Out of here had come the Teutonic Knights, the knights of the church militant, the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other. History had run down to this: the knights of the black Maltese cross had been reduced to these Gestapo thugs and their swastika. Berlin had meant nothing to the knights, it meant nothing to these men. Danzig was not part of East Prussia, but it soon would be.

  “Does Berlin have a file on you, Herr Carmody?” said the big man.

  “I wouldn’t know.” Carmody’s head was clearing, enough for him to be careful what he said from now on. He wanted to ask why they cared if Berlin had or had not a file on him, since obviously they had no time for Berlin itself. But the next clout on the ear might be more damaging.

  “Is World Press owned by Jews?”

  “No.”

  “America is owned by the Jews, isn’t it?”

  “Not as far as I know. General Motors and the Ford Motor Company aren’t.”

  The questioning went on while the two men chain-smoked, and, with his head clear again, Carmody kept his wits about him. A file would be started on him here in Danzig; he just hoped that regional differences would keep it from being relayed to Berlin. It was enough that Lutze and Decker had their eye on him; he did not want constant surveillance by a team of secret police. That would mean, sooner than later, that there would be constant surveillance of Cathleen.

  At last, with a reluctant look at the passport and press card, as if disappointed they held no incriminating evidence, the smaller man held them out, “You may go, Herr Carmody.”

  “May I come back to Danzig?”

  “When it belongs
to the Reich? Of course.”

  “When will that be?” He saw the big man’s hand turn into a fist and he hastily smiled. “Never mind, I’ll read about it in the newspapers.”

  When he stepped out into the street the air was something he could taste; or so it seemed after the fog in which he had sat for the past hour. His eyes were sore and his nostrils dry; he just stood and opened them and his mouth to the evening air, warm and thick though it was. He walked down to the docks, stood there and drew in deep breaths of the sea air. It seemed to him that he was breathing something else: freedom. A fishing boat went out of the harbour, carving its way through the absolutely still water as through thin blue ooze; a fisherman stood in the prow looking out to sea and Carmody wondered what his thoughts were. Was he only looking for tonight’s catch or for something more?

  The flat light threw the buildings and the boats into relief; there appeared to be no one moving anywhere around the quays. There was absolute quiet, at least for that long moment as he turned and looked about him. Then he heard the police klaxon, then another, and he knew that, no matter what Frau Pavel and the other citizens of Danzig might think, peace for the city was an illusion.

  He began to walk back towards his hotel, glad that he would be leaving here tomorrow to go back to Berlin.

  III

  Cathleen, wearing her dark wig and her pale horn-rimmed glasses, left her apartment and walked up to the Kurfürstendamm. There was a man standing in a doorway on the other side of the street when she came out of her front door; it looked like Decker, but she couldn’t be sure. She steeled herself not to take any notice of him but to walk away unconcerned; her act succeeded, because he did not follow her. On the Kurfürstendamm she hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to Mariendorf. She got out of the taxi two blocks from the Green Man beer-garden, made sure once again that she had not been followed, and then went on to meet the Langs. Though she was nervous and excited, there were times, even after nearly five months here in Germany on her mission, when everything felt unreal, artificial, as if she were no more than playing another role in another film. She kept wanting to look back to see if the camera was being tracked after her, kept waiting to hear the director call “Cut!” Then the thought of her mother would drop into her mind like cold water and she would come back to reality, to the knowledge that nothing in this scenario had been scripted and nobody knew the end.

  The Langs were not waiting for her; she guessed they were too shrewd, too experienced for that. They would wait till she was seated at a table, had made sure she had not been followed, and then they would make their appearance. Which was what happened.

  At first she thought they had missed her, were going to pass right by her. Then Frau Lang grabbed her husband’s arm as if she had just recognized Cathleen, they feigned surprise and after a moment’s argument between themselves decided, “Why not sit here? It’s our friend, Fräulein—We’ve forgotten your name! Do forgive us.”

  They sat down, and while Lang ordered drinks Frau Lang leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Forgive all the play-acting. You must think we are very amateurish, but it is necessary. There are informers everywhere. Where is Herr Carmody?”

  “In Danzig. You have some news for me?” She was trembling with anticipation.

  “A moment—” Frau Lang paused till the waiter had gone away, then she nudged her husband. “Tell her, Heinz.”

  Lang came straight to the point, but gently; he was a man accustomed to delivering bad news. “Your grandmother, I’m sorry to say, is dead. She died last March, in Ravensbrueck concentration camp. That’s where your mother is now.”

  Cathleen had known her grandmother only from photographs; there was no sense of loss, just sadness that the old woman had died in such a place. “Is my mother all right? Was she with my grandmother when she died?”

  “We don’t know about that—we can only learn just so much. But yes, your mother is all right. Or as well as can be expected, considering where she is.”

  “Where is Ravensbrueck?”

  They could talk safely, so long as they kept their voices low. The beer-garden’s band was playing, something from a Lilian Harvey musical; two violinists strolled amongst the drinkers, fiddling saccharinely in their ears. Lang said, one eye on the violinists who were coming closer, “It is north of Berlin—there is a big men’s camp called Sachsenhausen just south of it. But don’t get any ideas of going up there, please. You would only finish up in there yourself.”

  “What do I do then? Now I know she’s there—and alive—”

  The violinists arrived at their table, had just begun to play The Shadow Waltz. They were smiling at Cathleen, telling her the music was for her; she felt chilled, looked around for Lutze or Decker, someone who had told the musicians she was American. She remembered Dick Powell singing the song in—was it Gold Diggers of l933? It could have been All Quiet on the Western Front or even the Marx Brothers’ Horsefeathers; her mind just stopped functioning while the music rubbed against her like a torture. At last it was finished, she fumbled in her handbag, gave the musicians a generous tip and waited till they had passed on to another table and another song.

  “How did they know I was American?”

  “They didn’t,” said Lang. “They often play the more sentimental American songs. Germans are very sentimental in their beer-gardens. It brings out the best and the worst in them.”

  While the violinists had been serenading them they had been the centre of interest for those around them; now, with the violinists having moved on, those at the other tables had turned their interest elsewhere. Lang said casually, as if he were picking up a trivial topic that had been interrupted by the music, “We have tried before to get people out of the camps. I have to tell you our success rate has not been high.”

  “But we were told you have got people out—” She was leaning forward, too tense. He’s a better actor than I am in this sort of situation, she thought. But then he had had much more practice.

  He shook his head, smiling, still relaxed. “Sit back, Fräulein. We are supposed to be casual acquaintances—we should not appear as if we are arguing. There, that’s better. Yes, we have got people out—out of Germany. We have rescued them before they were sent to the camps. It is much more difficult, much much more, once they are inside the camps.”

  Cathleen had sat back, but her body felt as if it were an iron framework. Then the iron began to melt as hopelessness, like an acid, weakened her. “I can’t even visit her?”

  “Even if you could, what good would that do?” Frau Lang had been quiet, but now she offered a woman’s comfort. Lang had not been unsympathetic, but he did give the impression that Mady Hoolahan’s case was only one amongst many; or perhaps he, too, had become dispirited, a commander of lost causes. Inge Lang had a natural sympathy about her, a Traveller’s Aid for people on hopeless roads. “You could try at your embassy—they might be able to do something—”

  “Is your mother an American citizen?” said Lang.

  “No.” Cathleen felt a sudden unreasonable anger at her mother’s failure to protect herself. “She was stubborn—she was Jewish, but she insisted she was German. Do you understand that?”

  “Of course,” said Inge Lang. “My husband and I would not want to be anything else but German, if it were not for—” She trailed off, put her hand on her husband’s. “He had trouble explaining that to some of our friends, those we got away.”

  “I think your mother might have been more sensible to have become an American citizen before coming back here to search for her mother,” said Lang. “There are times when it pays to be expedient.”

  “I don’t think Mother would even have thought of it. She could be expedient when she liked—” Like advising her daughter to be Irish to get ahead in movies. “She was never political-minded, but she used to think the Nazis were only a temporary thing—an aberration?”

  “What sort of Germany did she want?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t thi
nk she knew. Knows.” She had to keep thinking of her mother in the present; Mady Hoolahan was not yet dead. “She thought of Germany as its people and the countryside and what Berlin used to be like when she was a young girl. I don’t think she could ever have named one of your politicians. I guess she sounds dumb to you.”

  “Not at all,” said Inge Lang, but she didn’t sound convincing.

  “Go to your embassy, if you think it will do any good. But don’t make too much of a fuss,” said Lang. “Just in case there is someone in the embassy spying for the Gestapo. Give us a few more days—”

  “A few more days? How many? Herr Carmody thinks war may break out any day—”

  “We—” Lang looked with sad affection at his wife. “We have learned to live from day to day. Try to do the same.”

  “I wish I had your strength,” said Cathleen admiringly.

  Inge Lang smiled. “You may be surprised at yourself. One never knows till the test comes.”

  IV

  When Carmody got back to Berlin the anti-aircraft guns were already mounted on the roofs of some of the taller buildings. There was one on top of the uncompleted IG Farben building opposite the Adlon and Carmody wondered why the Unter den Linden should be considered a target for bombers. The traffic now seemed to be clogged with military vehicles and it seemed that uniforms had multiplied in the streets, like costumes brought out for some mad Fasching. The symptoms of war were not to be denied: in fact they were being advertised. War in Spain had already started when he had joined it, but he guessed it must have begun with these overtures.

  He went first to his office, where Fräulein Luxemburg greeted him with relief, as if he had just come back from the Somme; or from Amiens. One army’s victory is another army’s defeat: Olga Luxemburg remembered the casualties of the Great War. It was Friday, so he brought her flowers.

  “Did you have a safe trip?” She was arranging the carnations in the vase that had been waiting for them; it suddenly struck him that her life was like the empty vase, waiting to be filled. “I kept hoping you wouldn’t be trapped there—”