Postmark Berlin

by Anne Emery

  The lawyers drifted back to their offices, and Monty reflected on what he had just heard. Emscote Drive was one of the most exclusive streets in Halifax’s tony south end. Residents like Meika Keller and Hubert Rendell could look out their windows and see their sailboats tied up at the yacht clubs on the other side of the Northwest Arm. An old poem came unbidden into Monty’s mind, by E.A. Robinson. Monty only remembered bits of it, about a man who was “richer than a king, and admirably schooled in every grace.” He knew how it ended: “Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.” Simon and Garfunkel’s version was going through Monty’s head as he wondered what — or perhaps the question was who — had propelled Professor Meika Keller into the waters of the frigid Atlantic. He made his way into his office and opened his next criminal file, involving yet another client who lived as far as you could get, geographically and socially, from Emscote Drive.

  Brennan

  It all came back to Brennan when he was left alone in his room to brood over the death of Meika Keller and to agonize over whether he could have prevented her death had he not been out on a rip with his brother Terry. Terry was a commercial airline pilot flying out of New York; he had made no effort to pretend he just happened to be assigned a flight to Halifax instead of Frankfurt, Rome, or Zurich. In fact, he hadn’t been assigned a flight at all; he had taken a handful of unused vacation days and flown to Halifax as a passenger. “I’m here to check up on my big brother. Are you doing all right, Brennan?”

  Was he doing all right after spending eight months in prison in the North of Ireland is what Terry meant. Brennan didn’t care to dwell on the series of events that had landed him in the Crumlin Road Gaol and then the H Blocks, or on the distress his family had suffered on his behalf.

  When he had finally been released, he had spent a few days with cousins in Belfast, getting himself re-accustomed to living in the outside world. From there, he had flown to New York to spend another few days with his immediate family at their home in Queens. His father Declan, a former IRA man, was ready to set fire to the British and Irish governments’ Framework for Agreement and launch a rocket attack on counties Antrim and Down in revenge. And his normally serene mother, Teresa, was nearly as fierce as her husband in her condemnation of the “justice” system in Belfast that had railroaded him into prison.

  Brennan had arrived back in Halifax ten days ago. Terry had been away on overseas flights for most of the New York visit, so he was making up for that now. Brennan had done his best to reassure Terry that he was recovering from his ordeal, and they had headed out for supper and a pint at O’Carroll’s. It was quite the session of beer as Brennan recalled it now; his brother had termed it “drinking for Ireland.” And, yes, there was singing. The Burke brothers had given their fellow drinkers a few ballads and rebel songs, including a heartfelt rendition of “Our Lads in Crumlin Jail.” Nobody in the pub, including a couple of judges who were regulars in the place, had complained; in fact, some in the crowd plied them with drink and asked for more. Then what happened? They rolled out of the bar and stumbled to Terry’s hotel room, where they had a nightcap or two. There were twin beds, and it seemed now that Brennan had passed out for a while on one of them. What time had he made his way back to the parish house? Was the sun coming up?

  And it had all cost him the opportunity to minister to one of his parishioners, a fairly recent convert to Catholicism, a professor of physics, a woman who had asked for a nighttime consultation with her priest. Brennan had been so gilled by ten o’clock that Meika Keller had not even entered his mind. She would be in his mind and on his conscience forever now.

  It was time for him to say his noontime Mass, so he went about his showering, shaving, and dressing with splitting head, sick stomach, and heavy heart. He opened his door and what did he see at the end of the hallway but the faded blond head of Mrs. Kelly bent over a sponge and bucket. He wondered whether he could get past without having to acknowledge her, as she worried away at a nonexistent stain on the baseboard of the corridor wall.

  “Oh, Father!” she cried out in feigned surprise. He nodded at her and walked past. But, appearances to the contrary, she was too quick for him. “Did those two girls get home all right, I wonder?”

  Girls? What girls? He kept on walking. He wasn’t fool enough to play into her hands by asking what she meant.

  He managed to rise to the occasion and sing the old Latin Mass without sacrificing the quality of the worship. His confession of guilt during the Confiteor was especially heartfelt today: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. And he prayed fervently for the soul of Meika Keller and for her family. Today’s celebration of the Eucharist was even more precious to Brennan because Terry was his altar boy. They both greeted the parishioners afterwards and satisfied the curious by telling them that this was Father Burke’s brother. Some saw a resemblance; others did not. Terry had chestnut-coloured hair and bright blue eyes, while Brennan had black hair with strands of silver, and black eyes, but there was a similarity in their faces, several people agreed. What brought Terry to Halifax? Well, he had just touched down for a visit. There were a few cracks about the sky pilot and Father Burke having his own shuttle to the Man Above, and foolishness like that, and Brennan tried to enjoy the innocuous churchy humour and put his worries aside.

  But when he and Terry had left the church and were on their way over to the parish house, there was the bishop coming out of the house towards them. “I need a word with you, Brennan,” he said. Brennan nodded, introduced his brother, and waited. “About last night.”

  “Yes?”

  “There was drink taken, as we know, and ballads sung, but was there something else?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Bishop.” And he didn’t, but it had him concerned.

  Archbishop Cronin looked from Brennan to Terry and back. “Was there perhaps some female companionship to round out the festivities?”

  Women?! What was Cronin on about? Brennan’s memories of the night before were dimmed by the tide of drink, but . . . he remembered the insinuating remark directed his way by Mrs. Kelly. And, it would seem, directed to the bishop. Was it something other than piety that inspired Mrs. Kelly to get up every morning for the early Mass? Was gossip being exchanged along with the sign of peace? Brennan recalled some of the singing in the bar, and there were women in the group around him and Terry and the musicians, but apart from that . . .

  Terry took over the controls and brought the imperilled conclave to a safe landing. “If you heard something about two women leaving the bar at the same time Brennan and I did, Your Grace, I can assure you they went one way and we went the other. They were part of a big group who were enjoying the music and the banter, and when the place closed, they came out with us. I put them into a cab — Casino Taxi, I believe it was — and sent them off home. Brennan and I then walked over to my hotel and chatted there for a while, catching up on family news.”

  Thank God and Saint Brigid, the patron saint of beer, for brother Terry and his clear head. Brennan was able to picture the scene then, the two women getting into the cab and waving goodbye.

  The bishop said, “All right. Glad to hear it. At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about today.”

  The encounter left Brennan seething. A parishioner of Saint Bernadette’s, a lovely woman who had spent many of her non-working hours raising funds for charities and for the arts, had been found dead in the water. And Brennan would wear the sackcloth and ashes for letting her down, following what seemed in retrospect to have been an urgent request. If he had done the right thing instead of going out and getting langered, she might still be alive. That was the evil sufficient unto this day. Not whether Father Burke and his brother had been out at a local bar for an evening of ceol agus craic — music and fun — with a group composed of a representative sample of the population, that is, women as well as men.

  Brennan
walked into the parochial house followed by his brother and caught sight of Mrs. Kelly scuttling out of view. He pointed her out to Terry and said, sotto voce, “That’s the informer, right there.”

  “We’ll bring one of the boys over from the old country,” Terry said. “Have her kneecapped.”

  When they got to his room and closed the door, Brennan lit up a smoke, took a much-needed hit of nicotine, and proceeded to tell Terry all about Meika Keller. Terry did his best to defend his brother. “You can’t take the entire weight of this on your shoulders, Bren. You couldn’t have known. If you’d sensed anything that dire, it would have stayed in your mind. You wouldn’t have forgotten it. So it must have seemed fairly routine to you.”

  “I appreciate your efforts here, Terry, but I’m gutted about the whole thing. And I deserve to be.”

  “So, who was she?”

  “A physics professor at Saint Mary’s University here.”

  “That’s where you teach your courses.”

  “That’s right. A course in philosophy and, now, the Irish language. Or Jailic, as it is called by the lads locked up in the place where I had so much time to practise the more colloquial elements of the language.”

  “Thank Christ you got something out of your time in the clink.”

  “Yeah, and they were good enough to keep me in there till my cuts and bruises healed. Sustained at the hands of the police and the warders.” He took a deep drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke out with a sigh.“Meika was a brilliant woman. Originally from Germany. Started coming to Saint Bernadette’s three or four years ago. Her husband was a churchgoer, an Anglican, but Meika was not. Not until she began to take seriously the implications of statements like that of Galileo, that ‘the universe is written in the language of mathematics.’ And of her fellow German physicist, Einstein, who did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with the doings of the crowd of us here on Earth but did believe in ‘Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists.’ She’d been told about the music here at Saint Bernadette’s and came to Mass to hear our choir.” Brennan thought back to some of their conversations. “I remember talking to her and the two of us exchanging quotations about mathematical laws, harmony, music. She said she understood what the mathematician J.J. Sylvester meant when he said, ‘May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason?’”

  “She was a deep one. Like yourself. Any time you get launched on this subject, I tell myself I have to read more!”

  “Either that, or listen to more music. Meika was a big opera fan, I know that. Do you know the name Fried Habler?”

  “If he flies for Lufthansa, I may have met him. But if, as I suspect from the direction of the conversation, he’s an opera singer, I’ve never heard of him. That’s no reflection on him, but I’ve never been to the opera in my life.”

  “He’s what’s known as a heldentenor. Sings the big beefy roles, heroic roles, such as those in Wagner. And Habler looks the part, a great big good-looking fella with a mane of salt-and-pepper hair, and an enormous laugh. I saw him just after I got back to Halifax. Dal here has an opera program, and —”

  “Dal?”

  “Dalhousie University. There are half a dozen universities in Halifax, Dal and Saint Mary’s being two of them, both in the south end of the city.”

  “Right, okay.”

  “So, Habler sang with some of the students at the Dal Arts Centre. He was brilliant, and the students were superb as well. Meika Keller’s name came up at the reception following the performance.”

  “What was her connection?”

  “Well, for one thing, she’s a big fundraiser for the symphony, and they perform regularly at the Arts Centre. So most of the people at the reception knew her or knew of her. But the reason Habler mentioned her was that he had gone to school with her in Germany, in their hometown of Leipzig, before he’d made a name for himself in Vienna. So, they got reacquainted when he was selected to spend the year teaching opera students at Dal and at the University of Toronto. He commutes between the two and sings with the Canadian Opera Company. He said he phoned home to Mutti — to his mother — about seeing Meika Keller. Said he had known Meika as Edelgard, but she had never liked that name. One of the advantages of growing up was that you could change an unwanted name. He told us that Mutti was pleased to hear he was meeting nice German friends here in Canada.”

  “So, did he invite her up on stage with him, ‘my long-lost pal,’ that sort of thing?”

  “He probably would have, but she wasn’t there on that occasion.”

  “Missed a big event like that?”

  “She was away; she had decided to go for an opera fix in Milan and Vienna. He said he wanted to think that seeing him again recently had rekindled her love of opera — that was his preferred interpretation, not that she fled Canada after he turned up here. And he belted out a couple of lines from ‘Rondine al Nido’: ‘Sei fuggita e non torni più.’ ‘You have fled, never to return.’

  “So, a few laughs. There was more, but I missed it because someone else in the crowd started talking to me. I did hear him say the reunion between the two school friends had made the news back home in Leipzig, and his mother had faxed him the clipping. It was a nice, cozy little event.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Just enough to chat with after Mass, talk about music, that sort of thing.”

  “Had she ever, well, I know you can’t reveal anything . . .”

  “No, she never came to me for confession. If she went to some other priest, I’ve no idea. I’ll go see if Mike O’Flaherty is in, ask if he had any contact with her. Make yourself at home. There’s some . . .”

  “I’ll not get into it yet.” His brother knew exactly what there was some of in Brennan’s cabinet.

  “All right, back in a minute.”

  Monsignor O’Flaherty was not in his room, so Brennan went downstairs but there was no sign of him there either. He was not going to ask Mrs. Kelly for the whereabouts of Michael O’Flaherty. He would not have asked her for directions to the fire escape if the building had been firebombed.

  When he got back to his room, he found he had missed a phone call. “We’re invited to a hooley,” Terry announced.

  “How did we manage that?”

  “Your pals Monty and the MacNeil are having a house party on Friday. To give everyone a bit of cheer in the depths of winter, she said. And she was kind enough to include your little brother in the invitation.” He peered at Brennan. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He lit up another cigarette, drew the smoke into his lungs and took his time letting it out.

  “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “No, I just . . .”

  It was beyond Brennan’s capabilities at that point to make something up. And he wasn’t going to use poor Meika Keller to excuse his reluctance. The truth was that Brennan had not seen Monty and the MacNeil — she being Monty’s wife, Maura — since his return to Halifax a week and a half ago. Had not seen them since the ill-starred venture they had embarked upon together in Belfast. Maura had called when her daughter, Normie, reported Father Burke’s reappearance at Saint Bernadette’s Choir School, but he had deflected Maura’s invitation to dinner with the excuse — and there was nothing dishonest about it — that he was overwhelmed with work, catching up on his duties at the church, the university, and the choir school.

  Brennan had been reluctant to face people and their inevitable questions upon his return to Halifax. And his first appearance at the choir school was a mixed blessing. One of the many things he had agonized over while lying awake in his prison cell was the fear that he might never see the children again; they would have been long gone from the school if he had served the six-year sentence he had been handed. So, seeing them again was a joyful experience for
him. But he had then faced the task of explaining what had happened, that he had been tried and convicted of a number of offences, and that justice had finally been done when the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction. It was a particularly emotional scene when he saw little Normie Collins. Normie had a heart of gold, and she was in tears when she met him in the school corridor. She kept saying, “I didn’t know! They didn’t tell me for the longest time! I’m so sorry about what happened to you!” Brennan knew that Maura and Monty would have sheltered their daughter from the appalling news as long as they could.

  Maura had made another call after her initial effort, and Monty had made one, too. Brennan had trotted out his over-work story again, but he suspected that they didn’t buy it. He suspected that they knew he was avoiding them, because of the Flanagan case. Monty had taken on a client when they were all in Belfast the year before. The lawsuit was a righteous one; Brennan had no quarrel with that. But Brennan found out that Monty had been warned that there was more to the case than Monty realized, and that it could have repercussions for Brennan and other people he knew in Belfast. And indeed it did have repercussions. All of it, the show trial in the Crumlin Road Courthouse, the beatings, the unbearable months in prison, all could have been avoided if only Monty had listened to those warnings. But he hadn’t; he had simply brushed them off.

  Maura did say that the next time she issued an invitation, she would not be taking no for an answer. So now he’d be seeing them all. Terry had accepted the invitation for Friday night, and Brennan was not going to make obvious his disquiet by refusing his old friends’ hospitality.