Famous Last Words (54 page)

Authors: Timothy Findley

BOOK: Famous Last Words

3.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

shutters wide.

Outside, there was a hush, and the air was scented with the smell of freshly fallen snow and the warm green smells from the valley far below. Two worlds: and now the horror was over in both of them.

Quinn turned back into the room and went down the hall, thinking he would get some coffee or some tea and a biscuit.

But he was stopped by Freyberg at the door of Garbo’s salon.

Freyberg was drunk.

“Come in,” he said. “I’ve been up all night.”

“So have I,” said Quinn. “I was just going down to get

some breakfast…”

“I have lots of breakfast,” said Freyberg. “Come in.”

Quinn could smell the wine from the corridor, even before he entered; but the smell of it inside the room was dense as a fog.

“I’ve been working,” said Freyberg “and I want to show

you. Over here. This…”

He was the sort of man who was formalized by drink. His gestures widened and became almost graceful. His words

came out in single file, each word very nicely rounded off before the next word began: no slurringonly elocution. It was the syntax that suffered.

“Breakfast” was a red, nameless wine offered up in coffee tins and a chocolate bar for bulk.

What Freyberg had to show Lieutenant Quinn was a set

.Ll_. i

of scrapbooks whose covers—having been designed for children at play—were incongruous lambs and calves and ducklings in barnyards; Mickey dancing with Minnie Mouse; a

clockwork band of shining toys; and a smiling doll with a bow in its hair.

Inside: Dachau.

“Why are you showing me this?” said Quinn. “I was

there.”

He was very tired and very angry.

“I know you were there.” said Freyberg. “But do you

remember?”

“Yes; I remember. God damn it, sir. And I don’t want to see those things again. I can see them in my mind. I don’t need any bloody photographs.”

“Everyone needs photographs, Quinn. You see this

here…?”

Quinn tried not to look—but Freyberg forced the picture up in front of him.

There was a man being set on fire. The man was still alive.

“Experiments,” said Freyberg. “Eh? Remember?”

“Yes. I remember, Captain.”

Freyberg turned the pages.

“You see this?”

Quinn looked.

There was a man inside a pressure chamber. Screaming.

“More experiments. Yes?”

“Yes. I know that, Captain.”

Freyberg picked up the scrapbook showing Mickey and

Minnie Mouse dancing on the cover. He flipped through the pages.

“Here,” he said. “You see this? Look.”

There was a picture of Quinn himself. He was standing

beside an open oven door—and inside the oven twenty bodies, or thirty, unburned.

“Yes. I know that, Captain. Can’t you see I’m standing

right there.”

“Yes. But do you remember it?”

“Yes.”

“And this…?”

391

The book with the doll.

Children. All the children.

“Yes.”

“And this?”

Calves ar d ducklings: lambs.

Inside: the living—starved.

“You see this? You see this? You see this? You see this?”

“YES!” Quinn screamed at him. “Yes, God, damn you!”

“Yes,” he whispered.

They sat.

Freyberg shoved the scrapbooks back across the top of his desk and knocked his tin of wine onto the floor.

The sound of it dripping was like the residue of rain that falls from the corners of roofs when a storm is over.

Finally, Quinn stood up.

He went around behind the desk and picked up the coffee tin and set it carefully out of harm’s way.

Freyberg was beginning to sag. Quinn looked down at the top of his head: just like the head of a boy; a child.

Quinn reached out to lay his hand on the back of Freyberg’s chair: letting it fall with a sideways motion. All that touched was the edge of his little finger.

Freyberg didn’t move a muscle.

Then Quinn went away.

Later, Quinn went in to look at Mauberley—just to make sure there was snow enough to cover him. The room was

like a refrigerator.

All Quinn could see was the back of Mauberley’s neck,

and the tail of one of his scarves. Wanting something—anything—he drew the scarf away and held it in against his

chest. And then he put it around his neck. And turned and left and closed the door.

That night, he lay on his cot and stared at Mauberley’s stars. All he could think of was: they are there. And they will not go out. Like other stars.

Freyberg and Quinn were both preparing their summations when the news came.

They were to vacate the hotel. Now.

Quinn didn’t understand. But Freyberg did. He was apoplectic with rage.

“It’s the same old story,” he said. “The same damn story all over again.”

A colonel had been sent from Munich to enforce the evacuation.

Apparently Captain Freyberg’s attitude towards the

Nazis was a matter of concern.

“We are leaving,” said Freyberg to Quinn, “for no better reason than the fact the Russians have occupied Vienna.”

“So?”

“So we have a new enemy, Lieutenant. Understand? Nazis

are out. And Commies are in.” Freyberg threw his pen across the room. Quinn considered picking it up. But didn’t.

“What will be done about the walls?” he asked.

“Defaced, I suppose. I don’t know. Blown up. Does it

matter?”

“Of course it matters. All the people…”

“Precisely, Lieutenant. All the people. Every last man jack of them is going to get off scot free. Not, of course, that it’s going to worry you. God damn it! Scotfucking-free.”

“I can’t believe that, Captain… .The very fact that Mauberiey’s put them there means they will not go free.”

Freyberg looked at Quinn: amazed. “You know,” he said.

“I think you just may be the dumbest man I’ve ever met.

You really think the people on those walls won’t be absolved?”

“No, sir. I don’t think anyone’s going to be absolved.”

“Bullshit, Lieutenant. Bull shit. And you know why? Because, even in spite of everything you’ve seen and read—

you yourself—I can see it in your eyes—are already turning away to look at something else: to find some other place to lay the blame for the hell we’ve all been living in this last

393

five years. It’s written all over you: Mauberley himself has already been forgiven.”

Freyberg was shaking.

Quinn could think of nothing to say.

But Freyberg could: and he said; “look. Come here a

minute.”

Quinn stepped forward.

Suddenly Freyberg struck him: very hard in the stomach.

Quinn fell down on his knees.

Freyberg looked at him without a trace of passion.

“What are you doing down there?” he said.

Quinn had to fight for his breath—but he said; “you hit me.”

“No I didn’t,” said Freyberg. “The wind did it.”

And he walked away.

Quinn was the last to leave the Grand Elysium Hotel.

He preferred not to ride and requested he be allowed to follow the others on foot. He wanted, he said, to walk down the mountain. The Colonel from Munich had no objection

to this: his whole concern was with Freyberg.

Mauberley’s body rode by itself in a small, three-quarter ton truck that followed the ambulance which carried the crates of Captain Freyberg’s Dachau Collection. Captain Freyberg himself sat up very tall in the Colonel’s Jeep and appeared not to hear a word that was said to him. Quinn could not help but think the Captain looked like a prisoner.

In all, there were seven vehicles, the rest being six-wheeled “Deuces” and the single armoured car thai went with them everywhere.

Quinn went out and stood on the steps to watch them

leave. He caught the briefest glimpse of Private Annie Oakley, who was sitting in the rear of one of the “Deuces”. He

noted that Annie’s eyes gave a flick as he was driven past the portico: one last look—then away. A dead look, impossible to analyse; except, Quinn thought, Private Oakley’s

final shot of the war had been fired in the lobby of the Grand Elysium Hotel.

Mauberley’s body was driven past, moving towards the

emerald waters of the Otzalsee. And looking out from the parapet Quinn could see the valley of the Adige and the rising mists of the spring of 1945. It made him feel very sad and he wished that he did not know how much that view

had meant to Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.

The hotel was empty.

Like Annie Oakley, Quinn was forced to take his own last look.

And, like Captain Freyberg, he would take away his own

collection. Around his neck, the scarf he had lifted from Mauberley and in his kit the two dusty halves of the Alfred Cortot recording of the Schubert Sonata.

In time, the remainder of the stories were concluded. Hess and von Ribbentrop were convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg in 1946, Hess sentenced to life imprisonment and

von Ribbentrop to death. Hess, it is said, has moments of what appears to be sanity, claiming that if he could speak with Alan Paisley, much would be explained. But Alan Paisley died in 1954, and Hess cannot, it seems, be made to

believe this is so. von Ribbentrop struggled for twenty minutes, hanging at the end of his rope, but his executioners

were deaf to the sounds he made. It was said this death was his due.

Count Galeazo Ciano was shot by a firing squad in Berlin—

1944.

Charles E. Bedaux was murdered in his cell at Key Hiscayne in Florida in February of 1944, while the Duke and

Duchess of Windsor were still in residence across the Straits in Nassau. His killer has neither been found nor identified, although it is thought that it might have been a man who worked for a very brief time in the prison infirmary, since

395

Bedaux was killed by an overdose of drugs and the man in question disappeared shortly afterwards. This crime remains unsolved, as does the murder of Sir Harry Oakes. Alfred de Marigny was charged with that murder and put on trial, but was acquitted in the fall of 1943, and upon his acquittal, the case was closed. In spite of entreaties from interested parties, the Duke of Windsor, acting in his capacity as Governor of the Islands, declared that no further investigations or inquiries would be tolerated.

Ezra Pound was convicted of treason and sent into prison, although he was ultimately released into a mental hospital and in the end, was pardoned and allowed to return to Italy where he died in 1972.

Walter Schellenberg was also put on trial at Nuremberg; convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Three years later he was free.

Before he left the Grand Elysium Hotel to walk down the mountain, Quinn went upstairs one last time to look at

Mauberley’s epilogue.

Think of the sea, he read.

Imagine something mysterious rises to the surface on a

summer afternoon—shows itself and is gone before it can be identified.

The people on the shore sit beneath their umbrellas, comfortable and dozing. Half of them are asleep. Of the other

half, perhaps only two or three have seen the thing. None of them points: none of them shouts. None of them dares.

After all, one could be wrong.

By the end of the afternoon, the shape—whatever it was—

can barely be remembered. No one can be made to state it was absolutely thus and so. Nothing can be conjured of its size. In the end the sighting is rejected, becoming something only dimly thought on: dreadful but unreal.

396 0000185717

Thus, whatever rose towards the light is left to sink unnamed: a shape that passes sJowiy through a dream. Waking, all we remember is the awesome presence, while a shadow tying dormant in the twid’ght whispers from the other side of reason; I am here. I wait.

^N^1^%^;?”^^ … -

”i^^&,^^y^^^,|^

s^^.i^^^^i^Si^’^N’iS^l SIs^^^t^,^^^

^^^^^^^^^i^^

^..^J^^li^^^i^ ;%tW’;^’.^:,^l&^’^:&8;^^ťťAfliS.ať;l^ť

MfLLS C 1. ^

^. H S. LIBRARY

Important:-Do not remove this card from pocket

DATE DUE ,

^m 2’^^

r2W

Wm a^^