Good People (36 page)

‘In the most recent list that we got from the Americans,' said
Kresling, putting on tiny reading glasses and looking at some papers, ‘there's one Mieczyslaw Buszkowsky. They say he's an employee of Milton. You worked there for many years. In the American office they claim that he still works for them.' Kresling seemed distracted, annoyed at having to deal with such a minor matter.

‘And how do you intend to act on this matter?' Thomas asked. Obviously he mustn't express personal interest in Bizha's fate.

‘Have you met with that man since you arrived in Warsaw?'

‘No,' Thomas answered. ‘Our relations were strictly commercial, and they were severed early last year when the company closed its offices in Germany.'

‘I understand,' Kresling grunted and asked abruptly, ‘Do you like Dürer? That was a present from an old and faithful friend.'

‘An artist of the greatest importance.' His voice sounded false to him. He focused on a small point below the horse until the whole etching went cloudy. ‘Personally I prefer his portraits.'

‘Yes, they're also lovely,' Kresling stated dully. ‘To get back to the subject…' He coughed.

Exactly what subject, Thomas wondered.

‘It's a big problem even to locate those people. They could be in any hole, maybe they're dead, and now Himmler's men are causing difficulties. We want to make a few little gestures, show a bit of generosity.' Kresling smiled. ‘Do the Americans in Milton have a lot of influence?'

‘Absolutely,' Thomas answered.

‘Maybe I didn't make myself clear.' Kresling's black eyes surveyed Thomas as though seeking some giveaway expression, and at that moment Thomas knew that Kresling had had him investigated and heard unfavourable things. ‘We invest effort in helping refugees only if their patrons in America can be valuable friends to Germany.'

‘The people at Milton will never be our friends, no matter what gestures we make,' Thomas said.

‘Professional to the end, without any sentiments for your previous employer,' Kresling observed. ‘Look, Reichsmarschall Göring and his
men, including me, are fostering opportunities with American companies in the framework of the Four Year Plan, and I'm pleased to say that the economic connections are good. Big American companies like ITT, Standard Oil, General Motors have all invested tens of millions in Germany, and they want to defend their investments. Last week we received messages from big American banks, Rockefeller Chase and J. P. Morgan, concerning their business in Paris. They're asking us to act fairly with them. We told them that Germany always acts fairly.' An oily tone of satisfaction sounded in Kresling's voice. The man liked to deal with broad topics. ‘It's just too bad that their government doesn't act with the same fairness.'

Thomas was stricken with doubt: was Kresling the right man to help him take the leap? Was the gamble correct, or was he taking a risk in vain? Just now he looked like the kind of provincial who makes you yawn, hardly a man of action.

Kresling spread his arms as a sign that everything was controlled by more powerful forces—Göring, and maybe the beneficent deity. ‘As for our grand plan, I respect your loyalty to the Foreign Office. Loyal men like yourself have become scarce. But we might need to consider a change in your status. You wouldn't be hugely opposed, I hope?'

‘I'll do my best for Germany.' Thomas sat up. Now he understood what Wolfgang meant about Kresling's compliments: the more effusive they were, the less he meant them.

…

No one knew where Hermann was, but Thomas could feel his breath: the feeling that someone was observing you, noting what you did, waiting for your first error.

He was reconciled to the fact that at least for now Hermann had the advantage. On top of his old fear, as soon as he left Kresling's office a terrifying drone began buzzing in his ears that the plan to transfer the model would prove to be a trap. He had never in his whole life
been superstitious and was contemptuous of those who were—so that drone confused him. Horrible fantasies split open in his imagination—a cursed piling up of death, violence and pestilence—and filled him with shame. Nevertheless, as days passed, one single thing became clear: every time he set about transferring the model to Kresling he failed to act because of some mysterious gravitational force—he had no other name for it—that opposed him.

Meanwhile, in the compound they were organising a party to celebrate the conquest of Paris. The Polish workers scrubbed the courtyard again and again, built a wide wooden stage, and started to put up a gigantic tent. Every day trucks unloaded loudspeakers, wooden beams, lighting stands, chairs and tables. Wolfgang, who was chosen by secret ballot to run the festivities (ahead of Weller), announced that the artistic program would be extraordinary. Then he confessed to Thomas his braggadocio had got him into trouble again. He hadn't the faintest idea how to carry out his brilliant program.

That morning Thomas woke up despondent: for days he hadn't done a thing to advance his plan. Perhaps his inactivity was a hint that he should give up on the idea of transferring the model to Kresling. Since he had always believed that his actions were strengthened by his rare creative talents, by his ambitions and his dreams, by his deep understanding of people's motivations and the dynamics of power, he regarded submission to some abstract fear as a betrayal of Thomas Heiselberg and everything he had done in his life.

He resolved to act, to take a risk: he shut himself up in his office, and composed a letter with a precise explanation why the model should be removed from the Foreign Office: the Foreign Office was now pushing the Madagascar plan, intervening in matters out of its jurisdiction, irking Heydrich and the SS and everyone who knew anything at all about Poland. Transfer of the model would be useful to Reichsmarschall Göring and the
Haupttreuhandstelle Ost
, and would enhance its reliability, since it would no longer be subject to the half-baked plans of Franz Rademacher and the Foreign Office. He didn't bother to re-read the letter; in the afternoon he walked to
Kresling's office and put it on his desk. Back in his office, he sat in his armchair and his heart pounded. Voices within him shrieked impending disaster. But he was relieved too: he could not have acted differently.

Too tense to concentrate, haunted by the image of Kresling reading his memorandum beneath the Dürer etching, he cancelled his meetings, locked the door, and wrote to Clarissa:

He imagined her skimming over his letter at her desk, her fingers playing with her hair, and now she was choosing a new sheet of paper; she always liked to write more than to read, and sometimes ignored his questions when she replied to him. Every time he wrote to her, he imagined the dust of battle swirling around him, as factions were briefly formed and shattered, while she dwelled in a white bubble—to touch her would be like touching a freshly painted wall with a sooty finger.

In the evening, upon leaving the office, he was astonished to find it was empty. The air outside had cooled. On his right rose the lower part of the Jewish wall. It always seemed to pop up in front of him, wherever he turned. Even when he walked away from it, its red bricks seemed to stab his eyes from behind buildings or trees. He focused on the street corner where he would turn left and get away from the wall, but the streetlights dimmed his vision, and he no longer knew whether he was looking at the thing itself or at its reflection. He imagined that a wall quivered before him as well; he walked towards it but it receded. Rain began to fall. He was wearing a summer suit. The wind whistled into his body through a cold hole it drilled in the back of his neck.
Soldiers stopped passers-by and examined their documents. He lengthened his stride, but that sight had deepened his sorrow. He remembered a phrase that Frau Stein used to say when she was asked how she was: ‘One and no other.' As a boy he thought she was talking about God, and he even asked his mother which god Frau Stein believed in. His mother answered that she was referring to loneliness, not to God. In his teens that phrase would sometimes ring in his head: ‘One and no other'. Again he quickened his pace and almost ran down Jerozolimskie towards Nowy Swiat. Their compound towered up in his imagination; there would be no walls there.

A soldier wrapped in a raincoat appeared before him.

‘I'm German,' he said.

‘Documents, German!' shouted the soldier.

He fumbled in his jacket, pulled out his identification and waved it in the soldier's face. ‘I'm German, understand? I'm not going to stand in the rain like a slave!'

‘You call this rain?' the soldier grumbled. And retreated to the shadows.

At the corner Thomas stopped and looked to his right down Nowy Swiat. There, dominating the horizon, shining above the roofs, was the wall. He stared helplessly at it.

He recovered and lengthened his stride once more. Here was his building. Now, as if on their own, his steps resumed a familiar pace. He buttoned his jacket, and pushed sticky clumps of hair from his forehead. Someone could recognise him here. A small crowd was gathered around the gate, and he remembered: Wolfgang's Paris Party…He couldn't turn up in a sodden suit with his hair dripping with sweat. A quick glance at him would arouse revulsion in any cultured person. Could this be Heiselberg from the Foreign Office?

He pushed through the crowd, relieved that none of his acquaintances was there, and passed rapidly through the entrance, planning to slip up to his apartment and put on a dinner jacket. (In honour of the event Wolfgang had confiscated a few dozen tuxedos from a department store and distributed them to tenants.) Thomas walked over to
the white tent that was decorated with colourful ribbons and flags of the Reich.

‘Thomas!' Wolfgang was standing at the entrance to the tent, a brilliant figure in a white tuxedo. He was holding a small tray of brimming flutes, ‘Straight from Champagne,' he boasted. ‘All the wines and cheeses at the party are from France! My friends there made a big effort for us.'

Thomas sipped the sparkling drink. ‘Bless you, my brilliant friend,' he intoned.

Astonishment flickered in Wolfgang's eyes, and, as always when he was hesitant, the tip of his tongue curled over his front teeth. ‘You're the man I was waiting for. Tonight is your big night.'

‘Really?' Thomas stuttered. The bright light whipped his face and he felt that his flaws were visible to everyone.

‘Of course,' answered Wolfgang magnanimously. ‘You thought we wouldn't pay up? That we'd run away with the money? We're honourable men.' He withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Thomas. ‘Exactly one thousand Reichsmark, between 14 and 16 June, what an extraordinary nose for history! You beat us all.'

Thomas gripped the envelope. ‘Thanks,' he said. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a group of officers playing quoits. About five metres away a short man in a broad-brimmed hat was playing a Polish folk song on the accordion. One of the officers twirled a quoit in his hand, measured the distance to the musician and threw it—to the laughter of his friends—at the accordion player's neck.

‘Is that part of the artistic program?' Thomas asked Wolfgang.

‘Not at all,' Wolfgang answered nervously. ‘I don't know them. They just showed up here. The news about my Paris party seems to have spread like wildfire.' A few figures enveloped in smoke passed by. ‘My friend, I'm a bit insulted by your lack of trust. The artistic program tonight is in the finest German tradition. They wanted me to perform crass songs like “The Watch on the Rhine”, but I told Kresling and the rest we wouldn't stoop so low.'

Wolfgang apparently expected him to ask which songs would be
played, but Thomas said nothing, waiting for his chance to sneak into his apartment. Maybe he wouldn't come back to the party at all. Finally Wolfgang turned away, somewhat disappointed, and Thomas walked through the courtyard among the white dress shirts, the black ties and the black dress uniforms. He raised a hand and touched his own shirt—like touching plaster. He was disgusted.

Too late he noticed that he was walking right towards Weller, who was with a baby-faced man wearing glasses, and whose shoulders were so broad that his shirt seemed to be suspended from a hanger.

‘Heiselberg!' Weller called. ‘I want you to meet Raul von Thadden, a friend from my student days in Heidelberg. Unfortunately I could only dream about his grades.'

The man extended his hand to Thomas, ‘It's a great honour to meet you, sir.'

His pleasant baritone reminded Thomas of the broadcaster Fritzsche, and he was constrained to look straight into the man's eyes. His stylish appearance—hair coated with brilliantine, stiff tie, dinner jacket hanging off him with casual elegance—aroused resentment in Thomas. If they would just let him get out of here at last, he would look like him, and even better.

‘You look tired, Heiselberg,' Weller declared. ‘A hard day?'

He wanted to excuse himself, but von Thadden started talking. ‘In the past I supported the Social Democratic Party, and when my cousin Eberhard von Thadden—I'm sure you've heard about him in the Foreign Office—joined the National Socialist Party, I refused to speak with him.' He held forth like someone used to imposing authority, as though his right to pontificate and your obligation to listen were ceremonial rules, as though you were an uncouth idiot if you didn't know his tribe. Weller, von Thadden and their ilk thought that what they had to say was original, but in fact they were masters of the obvious. ‘I spent the day with Georg here in the courtyard. We helped prepare for the party, and when we spoke with the Slav workers I understood how true National Socialism is. Among them were
someone from a rich family of leather dealers, the son of a professor, as well as a trolley driver and a fishmonger—and they all received the same pay. The Social Democrats spoke eloquently about equality, but here is the living evidence! My son has been writing the same things to me about his unit in the Wehrmacht.'