Checkmate in Amber

by Matilde Asensi

  He looked at me for a long time, thinking it over, and just as Amália began to open the workshop door, he said to me in a serious tone of voice:

  ‘No. I want you to stay. She’s going to have to get used to you. And you’re going to have to get used to her.’

  ‘But maybe this isn’t the best time …’

  ‘I’m here now,’ announced Amália, seeing that we weren’t paying her any attention. She was standing up straight facing the two of us, very dignified, with her arms crossed behind her back. José was frowning and staring at her with ice-cold eyes.

  ‘Exactly why were you eavesdropping on our conversation?’

  ‘I wasn’t listening to you deliberately. I was trying to study but your voices and your laughing came up through the hole in the floor.’

  ‘And what exactly was it that you heard?’ I grilled her, but taking good care to say it in a friendly tone of voice.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Everything, she says!’ roared José.

  Amália bowed her head against the onslaught. I don’t really think she was sorry at all, and I bet she had a great morning listening to us talking. But humoring her father by looking deeply apologetic was a very sensible tactic. It was one which I had often used successfully with my own father, even when I was really burning up inside with injured pride and resentment.

  ‘I didn’t do it out of badness,’ she mumbled. ‘If I hadn’t wanted you to find out, I wouldn’t have offered to help you.’

  ‘Well, despite your good intentions and understandable curiosity, Amália, you won’t be surprised that …’

  ‘Papá, you can’t punish me again! You already sent me to bed early last night!’

  ‘What do you expect if you don’t stop misbehaving, time and time again?’

  ‘Oh right, and now you’re going to wheel out the old Descartes and Francine speech, aren’t you?’ exclaimed Amália, in a resigned here-we-go-again tone of voice.

  José was clearly taken aback. His face reflected the fact that actually he had been about to launch into the Descartes and Francine speech and didn’t have a clue how Amália had second-guessed him.

  ‘You always end up telling me the same old story,’ she added scornfully. ‘Ever since I was only three years old.’

  I was getting curious here.

  ‘So what story is that?’ I asked, in serious danger of getting caught in the father-daughter crossfire. José kept his mouth firmly shut, looking hurt.

  ‘Only the most boring story you’ve ever heard in your whole life,’ Amália explained to me helpfully. ‘When Papá gets angry with me, he always threatens to build himself a mechanical doll that looks just like me, to replace me. So he wouldn’t miss me but wouldn’t have to ever see me again.’

  ‘Where the hell did he get that one from?’ I thought to myself, and laughed out loud. José got even more offended.

  ‘I could build one!’ he protested. ‘The only reason I haven’t is because I don’t want to. It’s a true story, Ana,’ he began to explain to me, sheepishly. ‘René Descartes, the French scientist and philosopher, lost his five-year-old daughter Francine in a scarlet fever epidemic in 1640. He missed her so badly that he built an automaton exactly identical to his dead daughter - a masterpiece that moved and acted just like a real girl. Until on a seaborne trip to Holland, the captain of the ship caught sight of her and was so scared and horrified that he dragged her up on deck and threw her overboard to wipe the curse off his vessel.’

  ‘And Papá thinks he can scare me with that fairy tale,’ Amália scornfully rested her case.

  ‘Well, it kept you in line when you were small …’

  ‘But I’m thirteen years old now!’

  ‘Maybe so - but you still behave as if you were five!’

  At that point they both switched into Portuguese, as they got more and more involved in a raging argument, of which I couldn’t understand a word. On the other hand, I did begin to get the clear impression from the sound of it that José was losing on points.

  I waited out the storm, and eventually both father and daughter quietened down and turned in unison to look at me. It seemed like I was back in the picture.

  ‘Go on, Amália. Tell her.’

  ‘Tell me what?’ I asked.

  ‘The map of Weimar. She downloaded it last night, thinking that we’d need it today. And she’s made big improvements to it.’

  ‘I’ve added in data from all kinds of different maps,’ Amália explained confidently, ‘so there’s now a huge amount of additional information on it. You can print it out or access it directly on the computer. I think it would make more sense to look at it on the computer, as there are a load of other files on it with useful data that you could consult if you need to.’

  I smiled and moved towards her.

  ‘Amália,’ I said, and went to put my hand on her shoulder. But she shrunk back from me as if I had the plague. My smile froze on my lips. ‘You’ve clearly got everything it takes to replace Läufer in the Group when you’re older.’

  Amália looked me straight in the eyes and blazed a full-on smile at me - the first time ever, I think. That was the moment - although I didn’t know it at the time - that I finally won her over. By pure happenstance, I’d hit the bullseye: it was what she wanted more than anything.

  ‘You can print out any part of the map you fancy,’ she told me, ‘in whatever size you need. If you want, I can help you.’

  Shortly afterwards, the long-awaited email from Roi arrived. He started off by informing us that Läufer was to play no further part in the operation: he had already done enough and he was far too busy to be wandering the streets and wasting his time in Weimar while José and I were running about in the catacombs. José and I were both pretty taken aback by Roi’s dismissive tone, but assumed that maybe it was just an understated reflection of Läufer’s much more furious response on being told what we needed from him. Still, after the initial harangue, Roi put our minds at rest: he would personally take charge of all the above-ground details. Just after crossing the border, we would find the car keys of a good German car in a previously-agreed spot, along with a note indicating its location so that we could swap cars. As soon as we gave him the exact dates, he would set the plan in motion and, while we were underground, he would stay at the Hotel Elephant in Weimar’s market square, under an assumed name, ready to organize a rescue if we suffered some unfortunate accident.

  José put a big sea bream in the oven and I helped him prepare an onion and potato dish which would go beautifully with it. Amália helped with everything and also set the table, being such a complete sweetheart - a magical transformation, frankly - that her father could hardly contain his adoration for her. I had to face up to the fact that I’d foolishly fallen head over heels in love with a solid, respectable father-of-one, rather than the footloose father-of-none that I thought I had been looking for. But when José suddenly planted a kiss on my lips, catching me completely by surprise, any negative thoughts went straight out of the window.

  We were sitting down at the table, enjoying the delicious food, when Amália brought up the final problem we needed to resolve.

  ‘What are you going to do with me while you’re away, Papá?’

  ‘Well,’ José mumbled as he laid down his fork with a worried look on his face, ‘I guess that you could spend a couple of weeks at your mother’s, couldn’t you?’

  ‘There’s no way I’m going to stay with Mamá.’

  ‘You can’t stay here by yourself, Amália,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Why not? I’m old enough.’

  ‘You’re going to your mother’s, and that’s all there is to it. You can come home when I get back.’

  I happened to know that José’s parents were both dead, but it struck me that Amália’s mother’s parents might still be alive, and available to come and look after her. In any case, I had no idea how bad things were between Amália and her mother, and I assumed they couldn’t be so awful that they
couldn’t even spend two weeks together. At the end of the day, her mother’s place was her real home and her living with her father up until Christmas was only a temporary arrangement to get around some problem that I didn’t really know anything about.

  ‘Rosário’s parents live a long way away, in Ferreira do Alentejo, a small town down south,’ José explained to me, ‘and Amália has never really had very much to do with them. So she’s going to stay with her mother and we’ll say no more about it. Anyway, she can’t take any days off school. She’s in the middle of exams.’

  ‘That’s not true, Papá - tomorrow’s exams are the last ones until December. And I don’t want to go to Mamá’s. She’s perfectly OK without me, and you know it.’

  ‘Listen, Amália, it’s absurd for you to stay here by yourself with your mother living only three streets away. Just imagine how she’d react if she ever found out about it. She’d go straight to court and you’d end up without a father until you turned eighteen.’

  ‘So take me with you then.’

  I smiled to myself ruefully as I took a long drink of Coke. And Ezequiela calls me as stubborn as a mule! This girl made me look like a complete amateur.

  ‘How on earth could I take you with me?’ José objected, patiently. Frankly, if she’d been my daughter, the discussion would have been over and done with a long while back. ‘I can’t believe the things you dream up, Amália. You should know better at your age.’

  ‘Right - so if you accept that I’m so grown-up, why don’t …’

  At this point, they both switched into Portuguese, which they seemed to prefer whenever they got into a serious argument. I, in the meantime, got quietly on with my meal, happily free of the bolts and arrows flying back and forth across the table, as father and daughter played out their family dispute in their own sweet style. Then suddenly a crazy idea came into my head.

  ‘José - why don’t you leave Amália at my place, with Ezequiela?’

  ‘At your house? In Spain?’

  OK, fine, the idea was off the wall, I knew that, but - hey - at least it gave us a break from the constant arguing.

  ‘Ezequiela could look after her perfectly well while we were away. Hell, she’s looked after me all my life, and I didn’t turn out too badly.’

  Amália looked at me, unconvinced, while José was trying to wrap his head around the whole idea.

  ‘Who is Ezequiela?’ Amália asked me.

  ‘She’s my old nanny. She has always lived with my family and, as I lost my mother when I was small, she was really the one who brought me up. And she still lives with me in my house in Ávila. I warn you: she’s a grumpy old so-and-so and the only kid she’s ever known was me, but she’s a sweetheart and an absolutely brilliant cook.’

  ‘I’d die of boredom,’ she pronounced.

  ‘Sure you would, but you’d be fine with her,’ José stepped in, with those beautiful eyes, ‘and we could tell your mother that you were coming with me on a business trip to Spain.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to.’

  ‘Fine - you’ll stay with your mother then. That’s it. It’s settled.’

  Amália went all quiet and thoughtful. Then she looked up at me.

  ‘Would you let me use your computer?’

  I was on the point of getting up on my hind legs and screaming ‘No, no, no and no!’. But if age teaches you anything at all, it’s how to keep your cool in the most trying circumstances. So, in the softest and sweetest of voices, I answered:

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well in that case I’d rather stay here.’

  ‘You could always take your laptop,’ her father suggested diplomatically, ‘and Ana could let you use her internet connection.’

  Once again I struggled to contain my rampant and admittedly childish urge to impose a ban, and forced a helpful smile onto my face:

  ‘We can negotiate on that one.’

  ‘OK, I agree to it then. I’ll stay in Ávila. But only if I can use your connection.’

  Later that night, after a boring flight and an hour’s drive back into Ávila, I gave Ezequiela the news as we sat around the mesa camilla together, warming our legs. She didn’t say a word. Not even a single question. But the next day, Monday, when I finally got myself together to make a start, there she was, with enormous energy and not a little noise, well into a major clean-up of my old bedroom, the one I had used all my life until I moved into my father’s, which was so much bigger and better-lit. She was really looking forward to having a girl in the house again, I figured.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  José and I got to Weimar following the exact route we had planned out. On the Saturday afternoon, the last day in October, we went to the telephone switchboard room of a private clinic on the outskirts of Toulouse and picked up the envelope that Roi had left us there, with the car keys and instructions, as agreed. On the Sunday morning, November 1st, we switched our car for a dark blue Mercedes with old Bonn license plates, which was waiting for us in the deserted garage of a ruined building in Frankfurt’s Römerhofstrasse. There was a powerful walkie-talkie in the trunk and a note from Roi, spelling out the frequencies, the times and the codes we would need to use to get in contact with him. We were well ahead of time, only a hundred and ninety miles short of Weimar - and we had already driven nine hundred and fifty in the last twenty-four hours. So we rested up for a good while at the first service area we came to on the Autobahn6 and took the opportunity to change our clothes there, putting on the thermal protection suits under our pants and pullovers. Back on the road, it was already dark when we took the turn-off onto the last stretch of the A4 Autobahn, the Eisenach-Dresden section, which would finally take us to our destination. We were tired, of course, after so many hours on the road, but we were just so happy to be together, we never stopped talking the whole way.

  Finally, at about three in the morning, we entered the dark and silent streets of the city of Weimar. Weimar lies on the banks of the Ilm river, in the very heart of Germany. No other European city had lived through such a dramatically disparate range of historical experiences, from being the cradle of late-eighteenth century humanist thought, synthesizing Classical, Romantic and Enlightenment philosophy, to its becoming the Nazis’ first power base in Germany. As an artistic and cultural center of the first rank, Weimar could boast of painters like Lucas Cranach, musicians such as Bach and Liszt, writers such as Goethe and Schiller, and philosophers such as Nietzsche. But Weimar also went on to house one of the most notorious concentration camps, the KZ Buchenwald, where over fifty-six thousand human beings - Jews, homosexuals and political opponents - were tortured and killed.

  Fortunately, when José and I arrived in Weimar that November night, that barbarity was long gone. The passage of time had preserved the city’s charms and beauties and wiped out the traces of the nightmare. As we drove in, we could enjoy the medieval feel of Weimar’s lovely narrow and winding streets, the attractive mix of formal and landscape parks and gardens, the statues of many of its most famous inhabitants and the traditional houses with their high-pitched gable roofs. But it was impossible not to mourn and remember those who, not much more than fifty years before, had been driven to the very limits of suffering and had lost their lives in that hellhole. The city of Weimar slept quiet and clean that early morning, but the sheer contrast, if anything, actually heightened an all-pervasive and intensely powerful sense of the horrors they underwent.

  Finding the old Gauforum turned out to be very straightforward. Much to my surprise, Amália had agreed to lend us her laptop, but only in exchange for unlimited access to my computer while she was in Ávila - a concession which I found unbelievably hard to make. But it did mean that I could easily consult our state-of-the-art map and tell José where to go and when to turn. So, without getting lost even once, we arrived at the Beethovenplatz, an enormous rectangular esplanade with rows of buses parked on the grass in the middle. On one side stood a long grey building with a large and brutally neoclassic
al central pavilion with an imposing wing stretching out on either side: Sauckel’s old - though now restored - Gauforum. José circled the square a few times in the dim glow of the streetlights, and then turned into the street which I had identified as a good place to leave the car, a wide avenue with parking spaces on both sides and no-limit parking signs. We found a space just after the second side street, parked up, wiped off the car for fingerprints (just in case something went wrong), opened the car doors and got out with our legs stiff from so many hours sitting still.

  ‘So. Here we are then,’ José said quietly, taking a good look around. Every syllable formed a cloud of water vapor. Just as well we had thermal suits and leather gloves on, otherwise we would surely have died of the cold: it was several degrees below zero, at least, and it felt as if my ears and nose were about to drop off any minute.

  We quietly opened the trunk, took out our heavy backpacks, shrugged them on and headed back into the Beethovenplatz. There was not a soul on the street - although, just in case, I had already put in my sound-amplifying earphones. A woman forewarned is a woman forearmed.

  The manhole I had chosen as our gateway into the underworld was the one closest to the Gauforum’s main entrance: its central positioning suggested that it would lead into the network of tunnels directly connected with the old museum and official residence of the Gauleiter. As luck would have it, the manhole cover we needed to lift off was more or less in the shadows. José put down his backpack, pulled out a crowbar from a zipped side pocket and, sticking one end into a small slot, cleanly jerked it loose. It barely made a sound - except through my earphones, where it rang like a cathedral bell. We would have to get down through the narrow opening as fast as we could, to avoid being seen by a passing insomniac or a night patrol by the local police.

  I put on my night vision goggles and looked down into the depths. A metal access ladder was cemented to the wall, six or seven feet high. Without hesitation, I put one foot on the first rung and passed the goggles up to José, to help him put the cover back in place and follow me down. The amplified echo of the friction of our gloves and the soles of our shoes on the ladder was joined by the faint sound of running water. Once José had finished replacing the manhole cover, I got out my headlamp unit with one hand and placed it awkwardly on my head. He did the same, and the narrow concrete shaft we were perching in suddenly lit up to reveal its filthy and unpleasant state. The sweet smell of cesspit made me wish that I had a bad cold and a seriously blocked-up nose.