Good People (10 page)

Sasha stopped listening. He was spouting off again. He knew that stories about Nadyezhda didn't concern her now. The hum of an engine could be heard in the distance, and a black car came around the bend. Podolsky gave it a suspicious glance, and a dreadful thought took hold of her: maybe she hadn't understood what his real position was? Maybe he wasn't as influential as he pretended. The car had unnerved them both. An external eye had invaded their rendezvous. Now he became businesslike, severed from the past—from hasty kisses in the schoolyard, from looking at the sky from the Republican Bridge in the last hour of the night as the stars disappeared. She hadn't dared ask him directly, expecting that he himself would put an end to the worry that had gnawed at her for so long; it was more than a year since she had concluded that Nadya would be arrested.

She needed answers. There was no more time. ‘Can you help my father?'

He exhaled loudly. Sasha imagined that the air he breathed out was permeated with all the things he knew and she didn't. There was a silence. Maybe he was expecting that she wouldn't force him to answer. A second car drove into the lot. Its headlights gleamed on the car roofs.

‘It was very smart of you to turn to me,' he said in the end, possibly surprised, possibly accusing. He seemed to have realised how much she expected of him. ‘Actually, it was the only thing you could have done.'

A man and a woman emerged from the first car, stood on either side of it, smoked, and spoke softly. Podolsky seemed to recognise them, and grew calmer.

‘Your Nadyezhda Petrovna would have been arrested anyway. You figured that out. Her time in Leningrad was over. We just couldn't find the time to tell her. The fact that I was the one who received the information allowed me to take care of the first stage of the investigation. But that woman arouses interest higher up as well. The poems that you copied for us—for example, ‘Moustached fuck in Koba's church'—people were shocked by them, but also a bit amused by her
courage.
*
After all, that sentence alone provides three reasons to eliminate her. The NKVD is aware of your contribution to the investigation, and people there know they should consider your request.'

‘And my father?'

‘He'll be arrested. No doubt about that. I'll do my best to see that he's released.'

‘Can you prevent his arrest?'

He looked at her as though saddened by her refusal to admit the obvious. ‘No.'

A feeling of weightlessness overwhelmed her. How did people become so small? It happened suddenly. She looked at him. He'd broadened out but he was still of average height: in her imagination he had been tall.

The deal she'd cooked up seemed perfect to her: they could have Nadyezhda, and she wouldn't lose her parents. All the parties would get what they wanted. How could she have fooled herself into thinking she would have any influence at all? Now she was filled with helpless rage: all her actions had been in vain. She could hardly contain the urge to go berserk, to scratch her body until it bled. In her world—what a dumb world, where did it exist except in the imaginations of naive women?—the people at the NKVD saw who she was and paid heed to her requests. But it was all nothing. Instead they saw her as a grain of sand that was flung into the air and then fell to the floor.

‘And my mother?' Had she brought this destruction down upon her parents?

‘Most likely not up to me. I intended to have Nadyezhda Petrovna sign a confession tomorrow, about the poems and the other poets who were her accomplices, and then send her into exile, so she can read her work to polar bears. But the director of the second department intervened, and now there's the issue of Bliumkin. It's written in the report. Maybe that's good, because it will lead to the links she once had with
counter-revolutionary organisations and shift the spotlight away from your parents.'

Podolsky had just admitted it was out of his hands. He had said from the start that giving him the poems was less dangerous than not doing it. And yet, it was dangerous.

Sasha shivered. They were sleeping now, all of them, and catastrophe was overshadowing their house. The final days they would spend together there would be trapped in the slender space between that night and its consequences: they would wake to the morning chill in the living room, to cups of tea and maybe cheesecake sprinkled with sugar, and they would all hurry to school or to work, and there would be some dinners when Dad would sit with them—for he had nowhere else to be now that his Nadya was in prison—and maybe another card game or a logic puzzle that he made up for the twins, who would fall asleep in the living room, and later shuffle up to the attic, and she would follow them, and, in a little while, their parents would follow too.

How quickly her nightmares became facts. She had already wrapped them in a layer of steely acquiescence—she was like someone whose arms have been amputated, who leaves them behind and keeps running.

One final question remained: ‘The twins?'

BERLIN

WINTER 1939

‘Thomas, the air is full of perfume,' Carlson Mailer called out as he ran his fingers through his hair, which was brushed back against his scalp. Usually he took pride in his pompadour, which the people in the office called an ‘American', and without it his forehead jutted over his black eyes, which always looked sombre. ‘A great party, isn't it?' His gaze skipped between the ladies in sparkling gowns and furs, and the waitresses in white skirts and silk stockings. He lit his pipe, a habit he had picked up from his new friend, Herr Professor, as he called the man from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Science. In the past few weeks Carlson had prattled volubly about ‘that genius': ‘He's a fellow you can do business with. During the war he and Professor Haber—that Jew who won the Nobel Prize, you drove him out of here, and he ended up dying like a dog—cooked up some compounds of poisonous gas for your army, and that gas didn't gather dust in warehouses, as you know…' Carlson winked. He was drunk.

He was babbling, and restless, Thomas could see. Something was
bothering the man.

They were standing on the broad patio decorated with statues and paintings of ancient creatures: snakes with human faces whose tongues curled out from the walls, a horned beast whose skin was spotted with patches of black fur, and even birds of prey, whose wingtips were shaped like sword blades.

‘Look at this.' Carlson's gaze circled the patio. ‘It's a European disease, to weave all kinds of historical threads around the present, as if everything has to be a gesture to something old. That's the problem in Berlin: too many clashing styles and periods. A single street looks like a museum and an amusement park.'

How many times could a person say the same thing? Annoyed, Thomas turned away. Through the large windows lampposts were spreading lunar light, milky transparencies melding sky and earth.

‘A whole balcony built around a single theme!' Thomas heard the young architect explaining his concept to a group of tall, fair-haired men, diplomats, apparently, from Scandinavia. A pale woman stepped between them. She wore a diamond tiara, and her long body was enveloped in gold cloth. There was a moment of tension as she went past. ‘It's a gesture to man's desire to blend with nature. Most of the artists that we've exhibited here are influenced by cave paintings.' His voice was low, and his accent was clipped in an upper-class way. In contrast, Thomas sounded a bit strident. ‘Here, for example, is a fascinating version of the carnival scene from the Cave of the Trois-Frères.'

The woman laughed briefly, and Carlson fixed her with a bold look of satisfaction at finding someone who shared his opinion, and such a beautiful woman. ‘Wonderful festive spirit!' he shouted and shook Thomas's shoulder. The man really had no shame. Thomas decided to keep his distance for the rest of the evening. Carlson was losing control, and the presence of an undisciplined Yank, protected by the aura of a country no reasonable person would underestimate, could be damaging for a local. Mailer came up close to Thomas and stared at his face. ‘Drink something, Thomas! How come you never enjoy anything?'

An SD officer in a black uniform approached them, a strong, straight-backed man who took mincing steps like a girl. His eyes were light, almost transparent, so that for a moment Thomas felt like he was looking in a mirror. He had already met the officer at Milton. For several months Carlson and Jack Fiske, by now the company's president, had been meeting with delegations from the Economic Office, from the SD and from Hermann Göring's office. Someone had told Thomas about rumours connecting Milton with a secret deal, something to do with the Jews.

Thomas wasn't insulted that he had been excluded: one felt insulted only when a clear loss was at stake. All the rest was just mental trickery, reruns of childhood pains, things to be amused by in Erika Gelber's clinic.

‘Good evening, Herr Mailer,' said the SD man. He didn't greet Thomas.

‘Hello there, Oberleutnant Bauer. Long time no see,' Carlson Mailer responded distractedly, not even looking at him.

‘Hauptsturmführer,' the officer corrected him stiffly. ‘We met exactly one week ago.'

‘These days that's a long time, wouldn't you say?' Carlson called out, and his eyes drilled into the group of tall men who were blocking his view of the woman in the tiara. ‘May I order you something to drink?'

‘No, thank you, Herr Mailer. I won't be staying long,' he said. There was open contempt in his voice, which was cold in any event. ‘The truth is, I was surprised by your decision to hold the party this year.'

‘Really?' Carlson raised his glass. ‘It's a tradition at Milton. I'm sure you wouldn't deny that tonight we're welcoming in a new year?'

‘It's a ten-year-old tradition,' Thomas said to back Carlson up. Had he addressed the officer obsequiously?

‘Now that your ambassador has been withdrawn from Germany, the connection between our countries isn't what it was,' the officer declared. He still hadn't even graced Thomas with a glance.

Carlson understood. His eyes narrowed, and a vein pulsed in the
middle of his forehead. He leaned towards the officer. ‘Hauptmann Bauer, are you speaking on behalf of Germany now? Because this evening I met people who really are entitled to speak on behalf of your homeland, and they believe it's merely a temporary misunderstanding, and maybe we can do without overly zealous young men who are looking for hatred where there is friendship. Tonight, on four continents, fifteen Milton parties are being held, and can you guess which one Jack Fiske, the president of our company, decided to attend?'

Sometimes Carlson was pleasantly surprising. Thomas also despised the pretension of the shoe-shine boys on the street corner who gave speeches in the name of the state. ‘Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he happens to belong'—in his imagination he brandished Schopenhauer like a hammer to smash the shining glass of the officer's eyes.

At least this time Carlson was considerate and did not refer to him as ‘our senior colleague, Thomas Heiselberg'. In his first meetings with people close to the regime he used to gush, when introducing Thomas, that he was ‘a four-hundred-per-cent Aryan fellow', as though speaking about distilled alcohol. In private Mailer and Fiske used to make fun of all the stupid Aryan gibberish, and their laughter would ring out from behind closed doors, laughter that emphasised for Thomas the foreignness that separated them. Even though he didn't talk about the race issue in the typical style of party members, to the Americans he would always be a German with affected manners, a foreigner who spoke well ‘in all those European languages'.

Bauer said nothing and did not shift his gaze from Carlson. Two identical wrinkles creased his nose. Thomas believed that Carlson's defiance was meant to impress the woman with the tiara, who was looking at them now for the first time, with an air of triumph: finally somebody was performing a manoeuvre worthy of her beauty.

‘I very much hope it is only a misunderstanding,' the officer fired back. ‘Many of the people you invited won't come tonight because of this provocation. Would it occur to you that we should withdraw our
ambassador from Washington because some niggers in America complain?'

‘Very well. We're not going to solve all the world's problems tonight,' Carlson grumbled and stepped backwards in an effort to get rid of Bauer. His good cheer had evaporated. Unexpected difficulties always made Carlson feel that some personal injustice had been done to him. And who was to blame? Enemies. Friends. Fate. God.

‘You must understand,' Bauer said, ‘that these recent events may have an adverse effect on our common project. Reichsmarschall Göring's people are not pleased.' He turned and walked away.

Carlson was perplexed. ‘Go to hell, you bastard,' he muttered. He stood there for a few minutes, calling the waitresses ‘sweetie' and ‘doll', knocking off drink after drink. Afterwards he looked around with bloodshot eyes and called out, ‘Make sure that man doesn't get near me again!'

Thomas led him to a corner, where Carlson confessed that Bauer was right on target about the mood in America: Fiske had recently received messages from some damn government officials, yes, even senators, asking him to reconsider Milton's connections with Germany. ‘And you know what he said, the sly fox? His friends at Lockheed had let him know that their shitty aeroplanes are landing in Japan right now, and technicians from Lockheed are helping the slant-eyes service them. So as long as there is a single Lockheed employee in Japan, he'll do as much business in Germany as he pleases.'

Thomas didn't ask about the secret deal. He was perturbed by the question: what kind of business was Milton doing with the SD and with Göring's Ministry of Aviation? But after witnessing the latest exchange, he decided he would be better off if he didn't know anything about it. He had no wish to work with that officer, and, seeing Mailer's swollen face—he had never seen him so drunk—he realised that his fondness for any deal was even less than his fondness for Bauer.