Faith and Beauty (26 page)

Clara steeled herself not to look around, to check who might be listening. She was astonished at the freedom with which he was speaking his mind in public, yet the last thing she wanted was for Adler to stop talking.

‘Hitler used to say von Ribbentrop seems to know everyone, but Goering said the problem was that everyone also knew von Ribbentrop,’ he continued. ‘The man’s a buffoon. He has convinced the Führer that the British are ruled by a decayed and privileged clique who will never allow their country to go to war. His wife’s even worse. She may be a stickler for correct behaviour, but she hated curtseying to royalty. Her influence on Hitler is strong and believe me . . .’ he glanced at her thoughtfully, ‘she utterly detests the British.’

‘I heard.’

‘It was her time in London that did it. When the Führer came to power he favoured a partnership with the British – he saw the British Empire as a template for his own plans for expansion. But they laughed at Frau von Ribbentrop and now she has a very different agenda. In fact, if she has her way . . .’

He stopped to guide Clara across the road to the ancient white Pont-Neuf, arching over the black mirror of the Seine to the Ile de la Cité, with the looming mediaeval bulk of Notre Dame beyond. The pale stone was punctuated by iron lamps that cast pools of soft light in the darkness, and Adler paused in one of the alcoves, leaning on the balustrade, gazing into the ink-black water below.

‘How is it you’re so familiar with Frau von Ribbentrop’s thoughts?’

‘She took a shine to me.’

‘Can’t think why.’

Adler acknowledged Clara’s implication with a dip of his head.

‘True. I was a single man, away from home, with no ties. Extremely rich and of more than adequate social rank. She is infinitely more intelligent than that husband of hers, and besides, Annelies was bitterly jealous that he was sending carnations to Wallis Simpson, the English King’s lover, at the time. And of course, we shared a passion.’

He laughed at Clara’s puzzlement.

‘Nothing as exciting as you imagine. She studied Art History in Munich. She liked to swap professional expertise with me. I think she felt it might lead to something more, but I preferred to keep to the subject of painting. She owns several important pieces herself – Courbet and Manet and even a Madonna by Fra Angelico. She brought it to London with her and rigged it up to a burglar alarm. Unfortunately the thing kept going off, causing a complete evacuation of the Embassy every time.’

Clara laughed. The earlier tensions of her chase through the streets had dissipated and she found herself enjoying Adler’s company. There were far worse situations than to be here in Paris, enclosed in the ivory circle of lamplight, with only the comforting rumble of the city around them, the occasional hoot of traffic and the laughing murmur of a group of men walking beneath them on the banks of the Seine.

‘Did you work in the art world professionally? Before going into politics?’

‘For years. I lectured first, then did a little dealing, and advised on authenticity. Funnily enough, Art was not my first love. Philosophy was. When I was a student I thought I might make a future in that, but eventually I chose Art. Philosophy is a stricter mistress. It requires a mind as hard as diamond. That’s what I admire the Jews for. They cherish the intellect. You should appreciate that, Clara,’ he added, ‘being Jewish yourself.’

His words went through her like a knife. Clara froze. The relaxation she had felt until that moment, the pleasure in his company, evaporated instantly. The warmth of his manner, the conversation about art, had encouraged her to relax and let down her guard, yet here was a senior Nazi officer, casually dismissing her carefully constructed persona. At once the sounds of the city, the murmur of traffic, fell away, and it was just herself and Adler, looking at each other eye to eye.

‘That’s not true,’ she protested, quietly.

‘Isn’t it? Let’s see your documents then.’

Everyone in Germany was accustomed to showing their ID. In Berlin it happened all the time and both of Clara’s documents had always passed scrutiny. She kept them together, in a small calfskin wallet in her bag. The Deutsches Reich Kennkarte, the compulsory grey identity card complete with photograph and fingerprints, and together with it, the red cardboard document with an eagle on the cover containing an Aryan certificate, the
Ariernachweis,
confirming that Fräulein Clara Vine was a member of the German race, possessing birth and baptismal records of her parents and grandparents and a genealogy table going back to 1850. It was the document required for all members of the Reich Chamber of Culture and it had been procured for her six years ago by Leo, the Jewish ancestry of her mother and grandmother expertly replaced with Christian blood. For a second she contemplated telling Adler that she had come out without her papers, but no German would risk being without them, even in a foreign country. Even here in Paris.

She handed them to him.

Adler took a brief look.

‘Impressive.’

‘What do you mean?’ A chill went through her.

‘An obvious forgery.’

‘Don’t joke.’

‘You forget, my dear, in my business I have plenty of experience in spotting fakes. And this is a fake. It’s a good one, I admit, but it has certain elements that mark it out instantly to a trained eye. The colour of the eagle – that imperial purple – is not quite precise, for example.’

Clara was rooted to the spot, fighting the urge to flee. What was she to make of his nonchalant dismissal of the document that had served her so well for the past six years?

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t you?’ he asked boredly, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’m surprised. You seem such an intelligent woman.’

Clara forced herself not to look around and check if their conversation was being overheard. What else did Adler know about her, that she had so confidently believed was concealed?

He scrutinized the cards closer, squinting in the lamplight.

‘A specialist, you see, is trained to tell the genuine article through the minutest scrape in the paint or the pattern of brushstrokes. I can see a forgery in a patch the size of a thumbnail. My eye is honed to authenticity in the same way as a piano tuner can tell if an instrument is tuned. I know all about provenance. So I know yours.’

Clara did not trust herself to speak. The man next to her held her entire future, her work as a member of the Reich Chamber of Culture, her credibility with the senior Nazis, her freedom itself, in the palm of his hand.

‘You should get a new one made. Tell your man to pay more attention to the colour. And the bleeding of the ink at the edge of the stamp. Just there. That kind of definition can be hard to replicate with cork stamps.’

‘Please give it back to me.’

He was enjoying himself.

‘In a minute. You see, it’s interesting to mark how they’ve made the forgery. This stamp here . . .’

‘Give it to me. Now!’

Clara reached to snatch the documents from his hand but as she did, he jerked them up out of her reach and she stumbled and collided with his chest. Adler put out an arm to steady her, clasping her to him, and in the process lost hold of the cards, which spiralled upwards, into the air, then pirouetted lazily down behind them into the shifting, sliding waters twenty metres below. Instantly, they both reached over the balustrade and stared as the pale flash of Clara’s cards flickered a second on the surface before being engulfed in the vast, swirling water of the Seine.

‘Forgive me . . .’

At that moment the rumble of a well-tuned engine caused them to turn. A black Mercedes, shiny as a jackboot, pulled up on the bridge alongside them and a man climbed out of the back. He was in his forties, balding and thuggish, dressed in a clearly expensive evening suit, and he leant against the car, lazily snapping a pair of calfskin gloves as he regarded them. In a second Adler’s deportment changed.

‘Herr Adler. I’ve been looking for you. But as so often you’ve found yourself a more appealing diversion.’

Adler stiffened. His eyes lost their flash and became flinty and unreadable. His face was formal again, sculpted into official disinterest. He was transformed into the sober Obersturmbannführer.

‘I’m afraid I must leave you.’

Clara was still too dumbstruck by the loss of her documents to make a proper reply. She gazed at him in desperation.

‘Please don’t let me hurry you, Herr Obersturmbannführer.’ The man had a lascivious gleam in his eye. ‘I wouldn’t want to interfere with private . . .
affairs
. But if you have finished with this young lady I would remind you that we do have some pressing business.’

Adler bowed and gave Clara a swift hand-kiss, leaving her only with the rough brush of his cheek against her skin and a sense of utter desolation as he turned abruptly and climbed into the car.

Chapter Twenty-one

Hedwig loved the library at the Ahnenerbe. It was her secret domain. Other people assumed she enjoyed her workplace because it was in an upmarket part of the city, amid leafy, pine-scented streets where expensive cars stood in the driveways, but it wasn’t anything to do with that. When she was in here the outside world dissolved away, and she was alone in an exotic space, smelling of floor wax and the concentrated must of ancient wisdom. She loved the idea of History; that things had been going on for thousands of years and would continue long after they were all gone. Everyone kept telling her they were living in historic times, by which they meant the Führer’s birthday and the expansion of the Reich, but that wasn’t the kind of history Hedwig liked. For her, History was about an ancient world and most of all it was about books. At home they hardly had any books – only a couple of children’s fairy stories and Goebbels’ autobiography
From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery
. And a big picture book called
The Growth, Struggle and Victory of the NSDAP
, which her parents had collected from coupons in their cigarette packets and exchanged for real snapshots of the Führer, to be stuck in like an actual family album. But the books here were different.

The books at the Ahnenerbe were fragile manuscripts with strange scents of spice and leather. Some were so old their leaves furled up like tobacco and their ink was clotted and dark as if they had been written in blood. She imagined them preserved on their shelves like fossils, their wisdom gradually hardening and solidifying, compressed between the pages like dirt turning into diamonds. Some books had photographs in them of natives, looking into the camera with alien, thousand-yard stares. When Lotti used to come and visit the Ahnenerbe – no one ever minded Lotti visiting – Hedwig would guide her proudly around the library and Herr Doktor Kraus would join in, explaining to Lotti how the Tibetans and Mongolians, with their exotic faces like crinkled autumn leaves, were really part of the Aryan tribe. ‘Why do they want to be Aryans?’ Lotti demanded. ‘Why couldn’t they stay being themselves?’ Secretly, Hedwig agreed. It was hard to believe that all those flat-faced tribesmen could possibly come from the same Aryan family as her. Then again, it was often hard to believe that her own parents came from the same family as her.

Her mother had started again last night.

‘I hope you haven’t been seeing that boy.’

They were in the kitchen, preparing dinner on the scarred oak table. The kitchen, with its dark brown papered walls, was the warmest room in the apartment, courtesy of the coke stove from which clouds of steam were unfurling. The damp, urinous smell of boiling laundry mingled with a bone broth on the stove. Kurt was perched in a high chair for Hedwig to feed him, looking around with a bright excitement as if everything they did was a game.

Trussed in an apron, chopping potatoes, Mutti looked hot and fat. Six babies may have earned her a silver Mother’s Cross, made of blue enamel with the motto
Der Deutschen Mutter
and displayed in a proud frame on the parlour wall, but six pregnancies had left layers of flesh around her middle like the rings around a tree.

‘Jochen’s not a boy. He’s twenty-one,’ Hedwig protested, not actually denying their meeting. She offered a spoonful of porridge to Kurt and he turned his head just before it reached his mouth, so the spoon collided with his cheek and he laughed.

Mutti tossed the potatoes into her stew and gave it a savage poke, then began decapitating the green fronds from the carrots.

‘He looks like a Bolshevik.’

Hedwig knew for a fact that Mutti didn’t know what a Bolshevik looked like. Reiner and Wolfgang came in and began wrestling on the floor, tumbling like puppies until their mother smacked them on the back of their heads. Kurt observed proceedings with a lordly air.

‘How could he possibly be a Bolshevik when he spends all day painting the Führer? You liked that painting he gave you.’

Mutti allowed the truth of this with a grudging tilt of her head. She began peeling carrots and Kurt reached out for the bright festive ribbons that curled onto the tabletop.

‘He wasn’t in the HJ though.’

‘So what? He’ll still be called up if there’s a war.’

‘There’s something about him I don’t trust.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with him!’

Mutti turned round and nodded savagely towards Kurt.

‘So if he’s going to be called up, why throw yourself away, Hedwig? You want to be a widow before the age of twenty-two stuck with some screaming brat in an apartment the rough end of Pankow?’

Oblivious to the bad press he was getting, Kurt slapped his hands into the bowl, spattering porridge everywhere, then wiped them on his hair. Hedwig often wondered if Kurt owed his existence to the enticing prospect of the silver Mother’s Cross, which qualified her mother for all sorts of privileges and better treatment on public transport. No one with a silver Mother’s Cross would ever find herself standing on a tram or at the back of the bread queue. Then she chided herself. Mutti loved children, even if it didn’t seem like it most of the time and perhaps Kurt’s difficult birth, or his playfulness, accounted for the fact that she never seemed to show him much affection. Secretly Hedwig had vowed to make up for that. As she took a cloth to his chubby face, Kurt chuckled and reached his sticky fingers out to catch her braids.