by Adam Thorpe
‘Well, here’s another one,’ said Morrison, moving his head in his usual way, like he was a rooster pecking corn.
He pointed his light at the face and the open eyes flashed back and so did the moisture on the teeth. It was not burnt at all, but the rats had been at the right cheek and the nose. As far as they could make out, it was a young guy dressed in peasant clothes, but he didn’t look like a peasant. What was left of his face was kind of sensitive.
This term ‘sensitive’ flashed like the light through Parry’s mind, straight out of the dime novel he’d been reading for the last four months, his nerves only allowing him very slow progress through Deadline at Dawn even in the times of waiting and waiting. He’d pick it up and have to check back a couple of pages and then only read one page and so mathematically, like the universe running down, he was heading backwards and would soon arrive at the first page.
The dead with the sensitive face had been shot, not suffocated. The bullets had hit below the neck and those holes in the weave were not goddamn moths.
Morrison pointed this out, playing the light over the dead like a cop, his lips pouting and yet curling up at the corners in that weird way he had – rosebud lips, for sure, the lips of a film star, maybe Clark Gable or someone. Not Tony Martin. He was wondering if it hadn’t been one of his own chance bullets, but the face was too pale and the blood too dry. The dead was definitely dressed in the kind of baggy corduroys and shabby cardigan that the old peasants here wore, which didn’t go with his face.
‘Maybe he had ambition,’ said Parry. ‘Maybe he wanted to canter instead of trot. Or maybe he was a crazy Red.’
‘Maybe he’s starting up on a whole new life,’ said Morrison, and hawked up another gobbet of spit.
They searched the pockets and found a picture of home, maybe, and a woman in a creased photo who was no doubt the mom and a notebook that was red with the name of the museum on the front. Kaiser fucking Wilhelm. Maybe he was still alive. The one that was growing tulips. The red notebook had a lot of close writing in pencil that Parry kept because it might just point in Heini to where Adolf H. was hiding out and the pages were purple-brown with blood. One page had a shaky drawing of some trees on a hill. Maybe it was the wood where Adolf H. was lighting his last cigarette, suggested Parry.
‘The cocksucking bastard never smokes,’ said Morrison.
‘So he’s crazy.’
‘We know that, Neal.’
They came back to where the four charred corpses lay two on each side beyond the burnt heap of paintings. There was a living woman on the edge of the hole where the sky showed; she was peering down between the fallen beams and her face seemed fair in all senses. She was flax-haired and distraught and saying something in German. It was as if she was calling someone. She was calling someone.
‘Heinrich? Heinrich?’ she cried.
Parry reckoned she couldn’t see the deads. She had tousled flax covered in ash, and red-rimmed eyes, and she was fair. One of the deads was bound to be Heinrich. The problem with death was that it didn’t end there.
‘You might as well go up, see what she wants.’
‘Would you mind if I take a little time to think that over?’ grinned Morrison.
Parry was too tired to tell him to go easy with her. Instead he shrugged, not smiling.
‘Check she’s not Mrs Himmler. That dead there with the glasses could be Heinrich Himmler. He’s got the right style of glasses.’
Morrison laughed.
‘About time we had some luck.’
‘He has to show up some time,’ said Parry, looking at the dead with the round glasses still on there like a clever trick.
‘I’ll cut it with you, say, thirty-seventy. I get the seventy –’
‘Morriboy, what the hell.’
He felt imprisoned in the tiredness of his physical body, tired enough to stay down here for good like a fish in the gloom of a pond.
‘That’s the Injun blood in you, Neal. Mean as fuck.’
‘Come on, get moving.’
He turned round to deal with the salvage that was a beautiful and valuable painting.
Morrison, however, clambered back up to the surface and the woman. He has some kind of trouble with the blood-Indian part of me, thought Parry. It was only my goddamn grandmother. And my ass is very uncomfortable.
I am at the bottom of a deep lake, without a head. My headless body floats among weed, attached to the surface by a rope. One day someone will come and pull on the rope. There is always something to live for, if you choose to. I might have turned by the pear tree to look back but I didn’t, I ran out of the garden without looking back. The one with the thin face brought me bread today.
7
The shattering glass billowed in front of them like a grey sail.
Herr Hoffer was not aware of any noise except a low whistle that went on and on. Blood was dripping from Hilde Winkel’s mouth, splattering down from her chin onto her chest. Werner Oberst seemed to be studying his shoulder, his scrawny neck twisted like a cockerel’s. His right ear was cut. Blood welled from the lobe and was dripping onto his shoulder, splashing the paper sleeves of the gramophone records under his arm. Herr Hoffer did not know quite how to act behind his whistling wall of deafness. The noise of the explosion seemed to be trying to push through into his mind.
Then he felt warm liquid on his fingers and saw that he, too, had been caught by the glass. His left hand was red with blood; the lamp with its precious paraffin was broken on the floor. He felt, for some reason, embarrassed. He had been sure the glass had missed them. But no; they were standing in glass, on the edge of the sea of glass. It had cheated, he thought. That is very unfair. He even felt dusty glass fragments on his lips. Frau Schenkel had not been touched, though she had glittery bits in her greying hair and on her long coat. She was telling Werner that his ear was cut – Herr Hoffer could just hear her shouts as if through a thick mattress. She had given Werner a handkerchief, which he was holding rather hopelessly over the wrong ear: it comforted Herr Hoffer to see poor Werner, who was always so precise, coping so badly. Hilde was holding her sleeve to her mouth. Her generous upper lip had been hit in the middle and Herr Hoffer could see the flap of the gash.
They were smearing the blood on the floor with their shoes. There were spots of blood on the bare white walls as well as on their faces. If only they had gone immediately to the vaults, as they would have done in the early raids!
He felt a terrible sense of dread, holding his hand, not daring to examine the extent of the wound. The cut had started to sting only now, as if thinking about it before leaping into action. They might have been blinded, he thought. Frau Schenkel’s arm was on Werner’s back, astonishingly. They stumbled on and as they went through the cupboard in the Prints Room they tripped on the brooms and one struck Herr Hoffer on the nose. He fumbled for the hidden handle in the back wall, his vision blurring; the strike on the nose had produced tears. Halfway down the stone stairs to the vaults, there was a bright orange flash and the lights went out.
Herr Hoffer heard Hilde Winkel give a little scream: his hearing was back. He could not believe that the shells were hitting so near, though down here they sounded more like the thumping and booming one gets on a wildly windy day in the city.
They felt in the gloom for the steel door to the vaults, unlocked its heavy lock, stumbled in and caught their feet on the paintings stacked in rows on their wooden trestles. There was only a stretch of wall left free each side, with threadbare cushions, and a narrow line of floor down the middle.
The four of them made themselves as comfortable as possible.
Frau Schenkel briefly examined the wounds in the light filtering down the stairwell and found them to be superficial, mere scratches. Herr Hoffer wasn’t sure whether to believe her. Hilde’s looked deep and ugly, at least, and her lip was already swelling. It hurt her to smile, she said, holding a hankerchief to the wound. Don’t tell any jokes. At any rate, seeking medical help now would be a f
olly.
It was very dark without the paraffin lamp, and with the door closed it was pitch black. Werner knocked the resident bedpan with a clatter.
‘Thank God it was emptied,’ he said.
‘Ow,’ said Hilde. ‘Please, no jokes.’
Such blind darkness gave Herr Hoffer the sensation of being suffocated. He asked if the door could be kept open, despite the added danger this entailed, and the others agreed. With the door open a little, life came back. Death is pure darkness. But then, so is pure whiteness. Three coats of size to stiffen the canvas. He glanced nervously over at the ranged paintings. He was nervous because he had a secret and he was not someone who dealt with secrets very well. Why had he bothered with three coats? One would have done. Or none at all. And what is white when there is no light? Or, for that matter, what is red, ultramarine, yellow, burnt sienna, carmine, black? These from which all colours can be made! All the miracles he had devoted his life to!
Without light, nothing exists. Death, perhaps.
There was a cupboard in the corridor upstairs, with emergency candles and matches. Herr Hoffer mentioned this, but no one volunteered.
‘Well well,’ said Frau Shenkel, ‘we must count our blessings.’
‘Start counting, then,’ muttered Werner, as if angered by the pain.
They sat leaning against the wall, two on each side – Hilde Winkel next to Herr Hoffer, Frau Schenkel next to Werner, who had his elbow on the gramophone.
The Acting Acting Director felt he had already failed, especially over the loss of the lamp. He wished once more that he was with his family in the apartment cellar. All he had wanted was a quiet, industrious, contented life, and it had started so well. He had been lucky to get the job of Assistant Director so young, before the war, fifteen years ago now, in Herr Director Kirschenbaum’s day; he had been blessed with this opportunity, living among beautiful pictures, building up the collection, working somewhere civilised and quiet, a priest of the sacred temple of culture. He had been blessed with his lovely plump wife and his two little beautiful girls, Erika and Elisabeth. So very blessed.
He wrapped his handkerchief around his hand, thinking to himself (between empty words of comfort for the others, through his own stinging pain) how stupid and unnecessary all this was, and how perhaps such suffering and pain was the reality and everything else was camouflage thrown over it like a blotched canvas sheet. Even his nose still stung.
‘We should have covered the windows,’ said Frau Schenkel, out of the gloom, as if telling him off.
‘There are about a hundred windows in the museum, not counting the glassed roof,’ Herr Hoffer replied. He and the Acting Director had costed it as far back as 1938: it was quite impractical.
‘They should have thought of that when they built it,’ said Frau Schenkel.
‘Everything was peaceful in 1904.’
‘Who wants to live in a giant pillbox?’ muttered Werner.
‘I didn’t say that,’ snapped Frau Schenkel. ‘I said they should have protected the windows. They’ve covered them in the Rathaus and the SS headquarters.’
‘That’s a privilege,’ Werner murmured, ‘reserved for the elite.’
They all had little wounds on the face, with unseen fragments of glass that made them sting. Herr Hoffer’s hand was stinging more than his face: a bloom of red was appearing on the handkerchief. He wondered if it would stand him in good stead when the Americans came. They wouldn’t shoot an injured man, would they?
‘We should hang out a white sheet of surrender, anyway,’ Frau Schenkel went on, as if picking up his thoughts. ‘Or they might shoot us when we come out.’
‘The Party will shoot you first, if you do that,’ said Werner, flatly. ‘That’s what happened in Hannover a few weeks ago. Gauleiter Lauterbacher personally supervised the executions. My sister told me.’
Herr Hoffer was surprised at the strength in Werner’s voice; perhaps the cut on the ear was, after all, superficial. The handkerchief lay neatly on the archivist’s shoulder, to catch the blood – though Werner didn’t have much blood, it seemed: it had stopped dripping. That certainly wasn’t surprising.
‘So?’ said Frau Schenkel. ‘That’s Hannover. What they do in Hannover is not our business.’
‘I’m from Hannover,’ said Werner. ‘And I am in the Wehrmacht.’
‘Please, don’t quarrel now,’ said Herr Hoffer.
‘Anyway, I tell you what I’m afraid of,’ Frau Schenkel said.
Herr Hoffer’s heart sank. At least once a week the same discussion took place as if it had never taken place before.
‘That little problem was all dealt with, I was led to believe,’ interjected Werner, as usual, word for word always the same.
‘They won’t stay where they were put,’ said Frau Schenkel. ‘Jews never do. They’re always wandering here and there. They’ll be on their way back soon. They won’t be in a good mood, either. That train I saw full of them, stopped off at the station – they looked terrible. They really did.’
There was a silence. Frau Schenkel must have told them about this train a hundred times, over the last couple of years.
‘Don’t worry, Frau Schenkel,’ said Werner, as he always did, ‘the Russians will finish them off first. You can sleep soundly in your bed, like all decent Germans.’
‘Who’s going to sleep soundly in this racket?’ she scoffed, lighting another sour cigarette. Like Herr Wolmer, she had hoarded them for years, and was now cashing in.
Hilde Winkel said, not very clearly with her gashed and swelling lip: ‘Some of them never left. What about Herr and Frau Pischek?’
‘They’re not Jews,’ said Frau Schenkel, with a snort that implied they were something just as bad: Herr Hoffer wondered how she knew the Pischeks, who were his neighbours.
‘No, but Frau Pischek’s brother in Berlin was hiding a whole family in his cellar,’ said Hilde.
‘I never knew that,’ said Frau Schenkel, perhaps sarcastically, perhaps not; as with Werner Oberst, one could never be quite sure.
Werner Oberst shrugged.
‘They’ll creep out of hiding and denounce everyone,’ he said, ‘as long as they’re given a good price.’
‘Not everyone,’ Herr Hoffer said. ‘There’s no point in denouncing everyone.’
‘Of course not everyone,’ said Werner. ‘Of course they won’t denounce those who had the foresight to keep a little Jew handy, just in case.’
‘How disgusting,’ said Frau Schenkel. ‘Some people have no morals.’
‘At any rate,’ said Werner, with a peculiar smile, ‘don’t expect the returning packs to show any mercy. It’s an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, for the Hebrews. Isn’t that what we all learnt?’
‘Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe,’ Herr Hoffer quoted in the dramatic tones of the pulpit.
‘Ten out of ten, Heinrich,’ Werner muttered.
‘I thought you said they’d be finished off by the Russians,’ said Frau Schenkel.
‘Oh, some will get through. They always have done.’
‘They haven’t had much practice, like the rest of us,’ Herr Hoffer pointed out. ‘I mean, at shooting people and bombing and all that nonsense. Not recently. Maybe they’ve lost the habit. It’s been a couple of thousand years, now, if you think about it.’
He hadn’t ever thought about it before, in fact.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Frau Schenkel.
‘They belong to no nation,’ explained Hilde Winkel, holding her hand over her lip. ‘They’re internationalists.’
‘They’ve been doing it behind the scenes,’ Frau Schenkel said. ‘Like the Communists. Anyway, half of them were Communists, on the quiet. They invented it, didn’t they? They’re sneaks and they’re clever. They’ll use their bare hands, as they did on Christian infants to get the blood.’
‘And that’s why,’ Hilde went on, ignoring her, ‘international capitalism has been so successful
at infecting the world.’
Herr Hoffer pictured the dark, polished wood of banks behind vast doors on broad avenues.
The walls shook suddenly as if a huge train was passing and what felt like plaster or mouse-droppings pitter-pattered about them. The air made them cough, but it wasn’t shell-smoke.
Suddenly, and without his meaning to, Herr Hoffer felt very afraid. The vaults were like a tomb. It would be extremely easy for the inanimate matter of stones and mortar to shift and become a tomb. This was not good. He would have to feel just as inanimate, or be sick. There was not a flicker of conscience in stones and mortar. Nor in paintings, for that matter. If he thought about his humanness too much, his desire to be alive, he would throw up from fear.
And then, as if understanding his dilemma, there was a plaintive mewing outside and Caspar Friedrich, the museum’s tabby cat, slipped in to join them.
‘Good morning, Caspar Friedrich,’ they all chanted, as if hiding the truth from a child.
Caspar Friedrich made straight for Hilde’s lap, kneading her thighs like dough before curling up and purring loudly. There was plaster dust on the fur.
‘The Destruction of Lohenfelde, 1945,’ said Werner, quietly, folding his hands together on his chest as he would always do when discussing an historical fact.
‘It never gets anywhere, does it?’ said Frau Schenkel.
Werner cleared his throat. ‘Did you know that, according to the archives of certain districts, the rural population of Thuringia was reduced by some 80 per cent between 1631 and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648? Then – listen to this: it increased by up to 125 per cent in the following decade.’
‘Good gracious,’ Herr Hoffer smiled. ‘Folk must have been very active.’
‘Redistribution, Heinrich. We mustn’t get excited and jump to wrong conclusions. Refugees fleeing open country for the walled town. Then returning to their fields when peace came. Like the Jews. Lots of coming and going, Frau Schenkel.’
