Cecilian Vespers (27 page)

“Let’s go. We’ll get a room, I’ll give Walker a call, and we’ll see if Saint Philomena speaks to us in a voice we can understand.”

When we got to the outskirts of Treviso we stopped and procured a little map, and the man who sold it to us pointed to the Via S. Bona Vecchia as the street where we would find the oratorio. We made our turn and cruised along looking for the church.

“It should be just along here on the right.”

We passed a food shop, a hotel, a tiny religious building of some sort, and then we were into a neighbourhood of white stucco houses with red or black scalloped roof tiles. “I don’t know, Brennan. I don’t see anything that looks like an oratorio.”

“What? Pull over.” He rolled down his window and called to an elderly woman going by on a bicycle.
“Scusi, signora, come si fa per andare all’Oratorio di Santa Filomena?”

Her directions had us backtracking to the unlikely-looking structure we had just passed: a little cream-coloured octagonal building with two small spires and a red tiled roof. The tiny building, behind a wrought-iron gate, was virtually in the parking lot of the hotel next door, a building several storeys in height with a tiled roof like that of the oratorio. The Ca’ del Galletto looked like a nice enough hotel, so the first thing we did was book a big room with two beds, an elegant bathroom and, to Brennan’s delight, a trouser press in the corner. He flopped down on one of the beds and closed his eyes. I left him there and went outside.

I walked around the tiny church, and noticed what appeared to be bullet holes in one of the walls.
Somebody had strong feelings about this place
, I thought. There was a large plaque on the site, giving a detailed history of the oratorio. It was too much for me to translate, so I decided to snap a picture in case it contained anything of interest. If Burke did not get around to reading it during our visit, I could enlarge the photo and he could read that.

The man at the desk greeted me when I returned to the hotel, and I asked him about the oratorio. I began in his native tongue, but his English was much better than my Italian.

“Somebody doesn’t like the oratorio, or the saint it was built for?” I asked.

He laughed. “It was nothing personal.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It happened in the First War. An Austrian grenade from across the Piave. It exploded close to the oratorio.”

“Battle of the Piave River, 1918.”

“Yes. You know history.”

“I’m a bit of a history buff.” But not such a good detective; the flak damage did not reflect an attack on Saint Philomena. “Thanks for the information. I have to go see a sick friend.”

“Your friend is in his room. I think he has maybe …” The man mimed a glass being lifted to his lips.

“Yeah, he needs to sleep it off.”

I let the invalid nap for an hour, then shook him awake. We walked from the hotel into the medieval town centre, with its crenellated clock tower, arcaded streets, and shuttered stucco houses, which cast shimmering reflections in the water of the canals. The streets were narrow and winding, the crosswalks marked with white marble blocks. Burke had cheered up; he was clearly in his element.

“You’re a man born out of time, Brennan.” “There’s much to be said for the medieval world,” he acknowledged.

Our Italian sojourn ended the following day when we drove back to Rome and caught our flight to Frankfurt. Our first encounter in that city was with the world’s most belligerent cab driver, who berated us for our inability to give him directions from the airport to our hotel, strangely named the Albatros. We tuned the cabbie out, and he finally located the hotel. We checked in and hired another taxi to take us to the Altstadt, the old town of Frankfurt. Luckily, this driver was much friendlier than the first one, so we asked him to give us a few minutes to walk through the old city. The town square was lined with tall, half-timbered houses that had been obliterated by Allied bombers during World War II, and rebuilt in exacting detail afterwards; even the original builders’ mistakes were replicated. I snapped a couple of photos for Normie who, I knew, would love the fairy-tale houses, then we hopped back in the cab for the drive to Sachsenhausen, the apple wine district. Moody Walker’s contact in Hamburg had set up a meeting for
us with Helmut Oster, a retired police officer from the former East Berlin.

We got out of the cab and walked along the cobblestoned streets to a very Germanic-looking establishment called Zum Stern. Next to it was the Anglo-Irish Pub, which attracted a longing gaze from Burke on the way by. He told me the bar was a regular haunt of his brother Terry, an airline pilot who frequently flew the New York–Frankfurt route. Oster was waiting for us in Zum Stern. He was tall and broad and had very short bristly salt and pepper hair. German was one of the handful of languages Burke could speak, and I had taken a couple of courses back in my university days, so we were able to exchange a few pleasantries with the policeman in that language before he switched to heavily accented English.

Speaking of heavy, I looked at the menu offering — bratwurst, schnitzel, and hackfleisch — and wondered whether my tender stomach could take it. As if he had read my mind, Burke folded his menu, put it down, and said: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” His stomach was in better shape than mine — no, apparently not. “Romans eat Italian food. I’ll have the pizza Margherita.” I had a salad. Oster laughed and ordered the hackfleisch.

Helmut Oster had been something of a dissident, at least to the limited extent possible for a police officer in East Berlin. He greeted with relief the disintegration of the Honecker regime in the German Democratic Republic, and did nothing to arrest its decline. He was of particular interest to us because, as Sergeant Walker had ascertained, he had been on duty for the state visit of Soviet President Leonid Ilich Brezhnev in 1971.

“Was Reinhold Schellenberg present at a demonstration against Brezhnev?” I asked him.

“Reinhold Schellenberg was shot and wounded at the demonstration.”

“What?”
Burke and I exclaimed.

“He was shot by the Stasi and taken into custody.”

“What brought this about?”

“It is my understanding that he had been warned, and failed to heed the warning.”

“Warned not to take part in the protest?”

“Yes. The authorities were anxious to avoid unrest and political embarrassment during the leader’s visit.”

“Who warned him off?”

“It was one of us, one of the
Volkspolizei
. As you may know, members of the
Ministerium für Staatssicherheit
, the secret police, worked closely at times with the VoPos, who were organized under the Ministry of the Interior. I believe it was Kurt Bleier who issued the warning. Bleier was involved in the operations surrounding the visit.”

“Was Schellenberg known to Bleier before these events took place?”

“I do not know. What I do know is that the Stasi had been watching Schellenberg. He was a theologian. He had worked in the Vatican and was thought to be influential with certain liberal elements in the church. He was a priest in Magdeburg at the time, at St. Sebastian Cathedral. When it became known that he would be travelling to Berlin, at a time which coincided with Brezhnev, he was watched more closely. And, as I say, he received a visit from one of the VoPos, and I think it was Bleier. Then he turned up at the demonstration anyway. Someone rushed in the direction of the reviewing stand; it may have been Schellenberg and some others, it is not clear. But it was Schellenberg who received a bullet in his arm. He was detained for several days after that. His wound was treated; he was eventually released.”

“What happened to him while he was in custody?” “I do not know. I suspect he faced some rough treatment. He returned to his church in Magdeburg. He later became a professor and taught in several universities. Then he went to work in the Vatican again, and was quite an important man there.”

“What can you tell us about Bleier?”

“I was not acquainted with him personally but what I know is that he was a dedicated socialist. He married a Polish girl, the daughter of a concert violinist. The family lived in Berlin. They were strong Catholics and were not in favour with the Party. The Silkowski home was known as a place of music and culture. The way I heard it, Bleier met the girl after going to the house to question the father. Perhaps he was seduced as much by the music and the spirit of the family as by the daughter!”

We were winding up our lunch and I asked Helmut: “Can you
think of any reason why Kurt Bleier would want Schellenberg dead after all these years?”

He shook his head as he balled his napkin up and placed it on the table. “If there is a reason, it is unknown to me.”

We thanked him, and he went on his way. We had one more person to see. This was a woman suggested to Moody Walker by the policeman in Hamburg. I had called her, and we had arranged to link up at the Albatros where she, too, had decided to stay the night.

Frau Professorin Doktor
Greta Schliemann met us at the door of her room leaning heavily on a cane. She appeared to be in her late seventies. The woman was dressed in what looked like old army pants topped by a blouse in a mod geometric pattern of tan and pink, which might have come from a shop in Carnaby Street in the 1960s. She bade us enter and make ourselves at home on the bed, while she sat in an armchair by the open window. Her room, like ours, had bright yellow walls and a blue carpet with a pattern of tiny yellow flowers. If Normie could see it, she would demand yet another renovation of her bedroom.

“You are interested to hear about Max Bleier and Father Johann Schellenberg. We were all interned in the same camp outside Berlin in the 1940s.” Greta Schliemann picked up her cane and said: “This is not the result of old age but of Nazi brutality. I have been using this cane since I was released from the camp in 1945 at the age of twenty-two.” That put her under seventy, considerably younger than she looked. “What would you like to know?”

Brennan said: “Reinhold Schellenberg has been murdered, as you know. We’d like to find out whether there was any connection between Father Johann Schellenberg, who was his uncle, and Max Bleier, in the camp.”

“I was intrigued to hear that Max’s son, Kurt, was in Canada at the time of the murder. What was he doing there?”

“I have set up a schola cantorum, a college of sorts for the study of traditional Catholic music.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Hardly the setting in which I would expect to see Max Bleier. But of course I do not know the son.”

“It’s hardly the setting in which
we
would have expected to see Kurt. He does have a reason to be there, an ostensible reason at least. His wife is a Polish Catholic and a musician.”

“Well, well. One never knows. I can tell you only about the father and the uncle. Bleier was imprisoned, as was I, because he was a Communist, Schellenberg because he was a Catholic priest. They became acquainted with one another in the camp.” Greta reached down to her left, rummaged in a large quilted bag, and brought forth a small tattered leather book. She flipped to the page she wanted and held it open on her lap. “My diary for my time in the camp. Comrade Bleier and Father Schellenberg passed time playing chess together. Many of the inmates did, of course, but those two played often, and I don’t know whether they ever concluded a game.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“They were distracted by other matters that interested them.”

“Such as?”

“Debate, argument.”

“They were antagonistic to one another?”

“They were German! They had a dispute going every time they came together at the chessboard. Arguments over politics, religion, philosophy. Johann Schellenberg was a big man, broad-faced, with thick fair hair. He was turning greyer by the day, of course, in there. Max had short brown hair; he was small and wiry. He was in constant pain from a beating he had received from the guards. But he tried to hide it, tried not to let on that they had hurt him. I can still see the two of them sitting out in the yard, in the shadow of the watchtower, their chess pieces forgotten between them. I was a student of philosophy before I was imprisoned; I was fascinated by their conversations and tried to remember them, so I could think them over. There were two doctors who were in the camp; I used to follow their talks as well. Anyway, Max and Johann … of course I had to reconstruct it later in the barracks, so I may not have it word for word.” She consulted her diary.

“Here is Bleier, followed by Schellenberg:

Your church lulls the people into accepting their oppression here on earth, by promising a fantasy life in the hereafter
.

That is a cliché. You can do better than that, Herr Bleier
.

It is not a cliché, Comrade Schellenberg; it is the sine qua non of your religion
.

Hardly. Jesus exhorts us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. This life is an important part of God’s plan; otherwise, we would not be here
.

Jesus also said the poor will always be with us. Marx assures us they will not. They will throw off their chains and take their rightful place as owners of the means —

We have had a quarter of a century of the revolution in Soviet Russia —

History takes time. No thinking man could expect otherwise, Comrade Schellenberg
.

“He was right, you know,” Greta said, giving us a direct look with her watery light grey eyes. “We need only look at our own era. Bad times for the left, a period of adjustment, of going backwards. But socialism will rise again. It is inevitable. Except in America, where political consciousness is not highly developed. How we used to laugh during the time of the ‘red scare’ in the United States! How we wished they really had something to fear! But no, what they have there is a huge underclass pacified by television. Goggling at the garish display of wealth and frivolous gadgets, which they believe they will some day acquire. They will not. They are fools.”