March Violets (37 page)

As the weeks turned into months. I knew my chances of finding Inge grew smaller as an almost arithmetically inverse proportion. And as the trail grew colder, so did hope. I felt — I knew — that I would never see her again.

Dagmarr ordered some more coffee, and we talked about what each of us had been doing. But I said nothing of Inge, or of my time in Dachau. There are some things that can't be discussed over morning coffee.

‘How's business?' she asked.

‘I bought myself a new car, an Opel.'

‘You must be doing all right then.'

‘What about you?' I asked. ‘How do you live?'

‘I'm back home with my parents. I do a lot of typing at home,' she said. ‘Students' theses, that sort of thing.' She managed a smile. ‘Father worries about me doing it. You see, I like to type at night, and the sound of my typewriter has brought the Gestapo round three times in as many weeks. They're on the lookout for people writing opposition newspapers. Luckily the sort of stuff that I'm churning out is so worshipful of National Socialism that they're easy to get rid of. But Father worries about the neighbours. He says they'll start to believe that the Gestapo is after us for something.'

After a while I suggested that we go to see a film.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘but I don't think I could stand one of those patriotic films.'

Outside the café we bought a newspaper.

On the front page there was a photograph of the two Hermanns, Six and Goering, shaking hands: Goering was grinning broadly, and Six wasn't smiling at all: it looked like the Prime Minister was going to have his way regarding the supply of raw materials for the German steel industry after all. I turned up the entertainments section.

‘How about
The Scarlet Empress
at the Tauenzienpalast?' I said. Dagmarr said that she'd seen it twice.

‘What about this one?' she said.
‘The Greatest Passion,
with Ilse Rudel. That's her new picture, isn't it? You like her, don't you? Most men seem to.' I thought of the young actor, Walther Kolb, who Ilse Rudel had sent to do murder for her, and had himself been killed by me. The line-drawing on the newspaper advertisement showed her wearing a nun's veil. Even when I had discounted my personal knowledge of her, I thought the characterization questionable.

But nothing surprises me now. I've grown used to living in a world that is out of joint, as if it has been struck by an enormous earthquake so that the roads are no longer flat, nor the buildings straight.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘she's all right.'

We walked to the cinema. The red
Der Stürmer
showcases were back on the street corners and, if anything, Streicher's paper seemed more rabid than ever.