The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  He hung up, looked once more about the flat, then went to the door. He had opened it, when he remembered why he was supposed to have come here. He went back and along a short hall to Burberry’s library and study. He took the first book that came to hand on the shelves, went back and let himself out of the flat. He went down the stairs and, as he had expected, the caretaker was waiting for him in the entrance hall. He held up the book.

  “Got it. I’ll give Herr Burberry your compliments.”

  “Yes, please do that,” said the caretaker suspiciously, “Herr—?”

  “Smith.”

  He opened the front door and stepped out into the street, paused for a moment on the narrow step. He was tempted to go back in to see if the caretaker was already on his way up to the flat; he resisted the temptation and walked on. The image of a game his father had played came into his mind: two-up, a game in which bets were made on the toss of two coins. The coins were in the air now and all he could do was hope they came down heads.

  He looked at the book he had randomly chosen: it was Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon. He had met Hemingway, once in Madrid, hadn’t liked him and now the big braggart was jerking his thumb at him, putting the mockers on him. He flung the book into the first waste-bin he passed.

  II

  The woman sat on a bench gazing out at the big goldfish pond. She did not move, not her head, her hands or her body; Carmody was too far away to see if her eyes or her lips moved. He stood watching her; and watching everyone else in sight. He could see no sign of the Langs; their job, the delivery of Mady Hoolahan was done, and they had disappeared, to remain safe for further tasks. There were only a few people round the big pond: some elderly couples shuffling along as if at the end of their long road, two nannies with their baby carriages, some young mothers with older children, a young SS trooper arm-in-arm with his girl: what Carmody guessed to be a normal mid-week crowd in the Tiergarten. All of them appeared to be preoccupied with themselves, none of them had eyes for the still, lonely figure on the bench.

  Carmody approached her, coming at her from the front so that he would not startle her. He sat down beside her, raised his hat. “Mrs. Hoolahan?” He said in English. “I’m Sean Carmody, a friend of Cathleen’s. Don’t be afraid.”

  She had started, her hands suddenly clasping each other. She looked at him warily, fearfully. “Where is she?”

  “You know she’s been making a picture here?”

  “Frau Schmidt told me.” The Langs, evidently, did not trust their true name even to those they helped.

  “She couldn’t get away from the studio—I’ll explain why later. She is finishing up today. I hope we’ll have both of you on a train or plane for Paris by tomorrow.”

  She shook her head, blinking back tears. “I can’t believe it—”

  She was much older-looking than he had expected; Cathleen had said something about her being in her late forties, but she looked at least ten years older. He could see the resemblance to Cathleen, but only faintly, as through a cracked and dusty glass. She wore a felt hat pulled low down on her head, a dark brown dress and cardigan that were too big for her, black shoes that looked ready to slip off her thin bony feet. Somewhere, hidden in this frightened, drab woman, was the real Mady Hoolahan. He hoped Cathleen could find her and revive her.

  “I want to take you back to my office—”

  “What are you? What do you do?”

  “I’m a newspaperman. No, no, I’m not going to write anything about you—” She had looked at him suspiciously, again fearfully. “I have to take some photos of you—for a passport and your exit permit.”

  “I have no passport. I have—nothing.” She spread her hands: all I have, all I am, is what you see.

  “It’s all right, it’s all fixed,” he said, and hoped so.

  He helped her to her feet, feeling the thin bony arm in his hand, and they began to walk away from the pond. Alert to anyone’s following them, he took her along the same path he and Cathleen had followed the day before yesterday. They came round a bend and there was the plump young tenor standing right in front of them, arm outflung, mouth open in the lingering last breath of a soft high note. Mady clutched Carmody’s arm as Cathleen had done on Tuesday evening.

  “It’s all right,” he said and smiled at the singer as the latter, embarrassed again, closed his mouth. “How did your audition go?”

  “I have to go again this afternoon.”

  “Good luck.”

  He and Mady walked on and as soon as they were out of sight the young tenor took up again, bursting full-voiced into an aria. Mady lifted her head, listening.

  “Tannhäuser. I’ve missed the opera.” She didn’t say whether she had missed it in Ravensbrueck or Los Angeles and he didn’t ask. She was regaining some confidence, even seemed to have a little more strength in her thin body. She looked up at him. “Are you Cathleen’s boy friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re different from the other ones she’s had.”

  “She’s never talked about them.”

  “And you don’t want me to?”

  “No,” he said, but smiled gently at her.

  “Good. You’re sensible.”

  “I’ll get us a taxi.”

  “No, let’s walk. You don’t know what it’s like to be able to walk freely.”

  When he took her into World Press he saw just a slight raising of Olga Luxemburg’s eyebrows, but the secretary said nothing. He led Mady into his own office, sat her down and asked Olga to bring some coffee.

  “Some food, too?” said Olga, looking at Mady, who was now slumped in the chair, feeling the effects of the walk.

  “Yes,” said Carmody, then made a decision. It was not fair to keep Olga in the dark; she was an ally and she had to be trusted. “Olga, this is Frau Hoolahan, Fräulein O’Dea’s mother. She has just got out of Ravensbrueck and we’re trying to get her and Fräulein O’Dea out of Berlin by tomorrow.”

  “Ravensbrueck? Are you Jewish?”

  Oh Christ, thought Carmody, she’s an anti-Semite! It had never occurred to him that she might be; they had never discussed the Jewish question. He said sharply, “Yes, she is.”

  Olga looked hurt at his tone. “Herr Carmody, I don’t think being a Jew is a crime—”

  He saw he had been wrong; he was more on edge than he had realized. “I’m sorry. It’s dangerous having her here—I have to take some photos for a passport and exit permit—”

  Mady, watching them both silently, took off her hat. Olga looked at the close-cropped dark head and said, “You can’t take photos of her like that. They will know at once where she has been.”

  Mady ran a hand over the stubble on her head. “It will take months to grow.”

  There had been no place for vanity in the camp, but now, out here in the real world where vanities counted, she was rapidly becoming a woman again. Just like a bloody woman, thought Carmody.

  But he was wrong: “She’s right,” said Mady. “We can’t put a photo of me like this in a passport—I might just as well wear a yellow star. Can you get me a wig?”

  “There’s a wig shop on the Tauentzienstrasse,” said Olga. “What colour would you like?”

  “Auburn,” said Mady, a little vanity peeping through. “It would make me look more like Cathleen’s mother.”

  “A grey one,” said Carmody. “You’re not supposed to be Cathleen’s mother.” He went to the safe, took out the passport. The grey-haired woman in the passport photo looked sadly at the three of them. “That’s who you’re supposed to be. Sybille Dix, born November 10,1873.”

  “She looks unhappy,” said Mady.

  “We’ll try and make you look happier,” said Carmody. “Righto, Olga. Get some coffee and food sent up, then go over and pick out a wig.”

  “Something with a fringe, and short,” said Mady, becoming livelier by the moment. “And not too grey.”

  Olga nodded and went out, as brisk an ally as one could ask fo
r. Carmody looked at the phone on his desk. “I’ll call Cathleen and tell her you are safe. But I don’t know whether you should speak to her, in case you both break down. I think my line is tapped by the Gestapo.”

  Mady looked at the phone as if Cathleen were already on the other end of the line. Then she nodded: “I’ll wait. Just tell her I’m all right.”

  Carmody dialled UFA, waited till he was connected to Cathleen on the set. Then: “Everything is okay. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Can I—?”

  He cut in: “Not now. I’ll wait for you here. What time will you finish?”

  “God knows. Maybe nine o’clock, nine-thirty. Sean—” She sounded as if she wanted to weep.

  “See you then,” he said and hung up. He looked at Mady sitting on the edge of her chair. “She wanted to speak to you, but I chopped her off. I think it’s too much of a risk.”

  “Do they watch your office?”

  He went to the window, looked out on the Potsdamerplatz. A tram, travelling too fast, went round a curve, its wheels screeching on the rails; people seemed to stop and turned their heads, as if the sound were a more threatening one, like the scream of a shell. People were going in and out of the chemist’s on the corner in a steady stream (stocking up against future headaches?). The flower-women, their flowers wilting in the early afternoon heat, were gathering up their baskets to move back closer against the railings and under the trees. The square was busy, everyone seemingly on the move: he could see no one standing watching his office window. Maybe Lutze and Decker suddenly had bigger fish to catch.

  “They come and go,” he said.

  He went to a cupboard, took out an old Graflex camera he had inherited from the previous World Press man, who had fancied himself as a news photographer and had aspired to work for Life. He blew the dust out of it, found a plate and loaded it. “I’m no Cecil Beaton, but I think I can do a good enough job.”

  “Passport photos aren’t supposed to flatter you.” She had begun to study him; he wondered if his image in her eyes was flattering. “What are you doing so far from home?”

  A boy arrived from the café downstairs with coffee and rolls and pastries. Over the lunch Carmody told her about himself, to fill in time till Olga came back and to put her mind at rest that he was worthy of Cathleen. Slowly he began to discern the real Mady beneath the mentally scarred woman he had brought in here half an hour ago. Given her own secure environment, she would be more vivacious than Cathleen; given another six months and one would see more of the beauty she once must have been. He found it strange sizing up a woman who would, he hoped, be his future mother-in-law. She was so different from Ida, his own mother; after twenty-six years in America, she was still really European. Ida, a fourth generation Australian, would never be anything but Australian: the bushlife had seen to that. Yet he felt the two women might get on well together: they had a sympathy for others.

  “I hope Fräulein Luxemburg won’t get into trouble on my account

  “I’ll see she doesn’t,” he said.

  Then Olga came back with the wig in a box. Mady put it on, adjusting it in the mirror hanging behind the outer door of the office. Olga had also brought her some powder and lipstick, something Carmody knew he would not have thought of. When Mady turned round from the mirror she was a different woman, a grey-haired beauty, thin-faced and faded but still a beauty.

  “I’ll do,” she said matter-of-factly and Carmody knew she had already taken the first firm step on the road back.

  He cleared a space against one wall, stood her against it and took half a dozen full-face shots. “I have to take these down to be developed. Olga will take care of you.” He was about to say, If we have any visitors . . . Then he decided against it; he did not want to disturb her again. If Lutze and Decker did appear, they would remain here till he returned. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  He went over to the Morgenpost building, went into their darkroom, paid some money to one of the men there and emerged half an hour later with a dozen prints of passport size. If the darkroom hand, a pale, stained man in his sixties, had any suspicions about the subject of the photos he asked no questions. He had developed and printed pictures of murderers, rapists, emperors, dictators and anonymities: they were all the same to him, faces emerging like ghosts out of his solution tanks.

  Carmody went out again during the afternoon to cover the government offices and the major embassies. The atmosphere was tense; there was even an air of unreality. Nobody seemed quite able to believe that the inevitable would happen; war was an impossibility, they said, while the convoys rumbled by their open windows. In the streets that mythical creature the man-in-the-street stopped to look at the convoys; if he were young he was wide-eyed, if he were older he had memories and his eyes were glazed. Diplomats galloped from embassy to ministry to Chancellery; phone wires hummed like dynamos; but tea and biscuits were still being served at four in the British embassy. Carmody sipped tea with Wilmington, the assistant press attaché.

  “Packed your cricket gear?” He noticed that the bat and pads were gone from the corner of the attaché’s office.

  “Afraid so. Got everything packed, just in case. That’s just between you and me, of course. We’re still hoping . . .”

  “You’re kidding yourselves.”

  Wilmington looked at him; all at once the thin, schoolboy’s face seemed to age. He nodded and his voice seemed to deepen with despair. “Of course we are. Have been for weeks. I’ll be in uniform within a month.”

  “What will you join?”

  “The RAF, if they’ll have me. Christ—” He shook his head. “It’s our job here to prevent wars. We really have cocked it up.”

  “Not you,” said Carmody sympathetically. “Chamberlain did that in Munich. Thanks for the tea. Good luck.”

  “What will you do? Go home to Australia? I shouldn’t blame you.”

  Carmody knew he wouldn’t be going home, not for a long time yet. His father would write to him, abusing him for staying on to become involved in an imperialist war, even if as a war correspondent; his mother would write of dances at the School of Arts hall, the new shearing team his father had joined, the old racehorse Our Place now on his last legs in the pasture paddock. Subtly, but subconsciously, she would be calling him home; his father, stridently and consciously, would be doing the same. But he wouldn’t be going. It suddenly struck him, like a physical pain, that neither would he be going with Cathleen when she left for home.

  He went back to the office, wrote his piece and phoned it through to London. Mady and Olga had become friends, but he could see that Mady was becoming impatient to be reunited with Cathleen. At six o’clock Kreisler, minus hurdy-gurdy and monkey, arrived.

  He bowed to both women, looked at the photos, then at Mady, then at the passport of Sybille Dix. “It can be done. But you don’t look sixty-five.”

  “Thank you,” said Mady, smiling. “I don’t feel it.”

  “I’m sorry, that was not very gallant of me.”

  Carmody was amused at Kreisler’s reaction to the women. The communists he had known back home in the shearing teams had never been gallant towards women; indeed, women had been looked upon as a bloody nuisance, necessary kitchen-maids, in the cooking of the revolution. “How soon can you do the passport and the permit?”

  “You will have them first thing tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock here?”

  He bowed to the ladies, tipped his hat and went away. It seemed to Carmody that his walk was jaunty, like that of a man who had, unexpectedly, been returned to his old trade and hadn’t found his skills had rusted. Or was forgery more than a trade, was it an art?

  At ten o’clock Cathleen arrived. She came bursting into the office, enveloped her mother in a hug that threatened to snap Mady’s spine. Carmody and Olga retired to the outer office, both of them moved by the reunion of the mother and daughter.

  “They truly love each other,” said Olga. “Frau Hoolahan has been telling me
.”

  “Yes,” he said and wondered if she and her mother, the Nazi flag-waver, ever embraced each other.

  When Cathleen and Mady came out of the inner office they were both red-eyed and sniffling. “Oh God, isn’t it wonderful! Sean, I can’t believe we’ve done it—”

  There was still a long way to go, but he couldn’t throw cold water on her, not right now. “We’ll have to find somewhere for you to stay tonight. You can’t go back to your place—”

  “What about yours?”

  “Too risky. Olga, where is there a good hotel that the Gestapo wouldn’t be watching, one where there’d be no foreign tourists?” Though all the tourists, he guessed, would have gone by now.

  “The Hotel Kern, off Landsbergerstrasse. It caters for ladies. My aunt stays there when she comes up from Dresden.”

  What a treasure she is, thought Carmody; what use will they make of her when I’m gone and they draft her into some sort of war work? “Righto, will you take them there?”

  “Aren’t you coming?” Cathleen was disappointed.

  “I can’t—I’m still working. I’ll sleep here tonight. Have you finished at the studio?”

  “Yes, thank God. I finished the last shot, put on my hat and walked out. I may not even get my last pay-check, but I don’t care.”

  “You’ll get it.” The Nazis, he knew, always paid their debts. He kissed her, aware of the approving gaze of Mady; he didn’t look at Olga. “What about your exit permit?”

  “Goebbels must be keen to get rid of me. It was delivered to me this afternoon. No note, nothing, just the permit.”

  “Righto, be at your embassy at nine o’clock. I’ll meet you there. We’ll get your mother’s visa and you’ll be on the eleven o’clock train for Copenhagen. I couldn’t get you on a plane—they’re all fully booked.”

  “What about you?” Her grip tightened on his arm.

  “I can’t go with you. Not now.”

  She looked ready to weep; instead she kissed, said softly, “Not even our last night together?”