News From Berlin (3 page)

Should she offer to put him up at her flat? Her heart said yes, but her head said no. Matteous would quite likely be returning to the Congo, although she could not imagine what sort of life awaited him there. The daily hour in his company, the wary rapprochement and the struggle to find words, the sounds of the ward and the intermittent voices and laughter from the courtyard, all these things gave her an unprecedented sense of kinship with a stranger. She could not speak to Oscar or Emma about this, nor did she wish to: they would not understand. Oscar and Emma lived in a different world.

She would find lodgings for him in the neighbourhood, not too close and not too far.

*

A black beacon in a surf of beds. She saw him at once when she entered the vast ward, which for the past weeks had served as his bivouac. It was indeed a bivouac, a foxhole into which he had dug himself. But today Matteous was up and dressed in an old, shabby uniform. Hardly anyone spoke, and he kept quiet himself. A few nurses were attending to him; their manner was brisk, though not without kindness. He stared at them as though they were apparitions drifting by. Clouds over a battlefield.

Kate stood in the doorway, waving to him. He took a step forward, stiffly like an old man. The men lying in the beds on either side nodded towards him as he came past, one raised a hand in greeting, all in silence. A salute to a soldier, a solo parade reviewed by a small army of patients brought in from all over, bandaged and splinted and patched up. Matteous, soldier, made his way across Africa and was never the same again. Now he made his way across the ward, to the door where Kate stood waiting. She took his luggage: a wicker basket. A basket with a lid. He turned around one last time with a shy, near-rueful glance, as though taking flight from an enemy that had already been defeated. He raised his hand to an imaginary cap, and went through the door which Kate held open for him.

On their way to the exit they paused in the courtyard overlooked by his cubicle, from where he used to hear the nurses’ voices. He smelled the jasmine Kate had told him about, the hedges and the flowers: fragrances of a foreign continent.

She led him gently past the garden, through the reception hall, to the street outside. They went to catch the bus Kate always took to the city centre. Matteous seemed half asleep, she thought, or rather, as if he were dreaming. His movements were unsure, everything about him seemed dumbfounded. She realised that London was unlike anything he had ever before seen. And that the ease with which she walked down the street with him was unsettling.

Kate had found him a bedsit on Earls Court Road, ten minutes away from her flat. She had not yet told Matteous about this, and was unsure about his reaction. She explained when they were sitting side by side in the bus. Did he understand, did he know what she meant? He stared motionless out of the window, incredulity in his eyes at the city he found himself in. He had spoken of Élisabethville a few times, but to her it had sounded more like a sprawling village.

She sensed his bewilderment, and repeated her news about the room she had rented for him. He replied with a quick fist to his heart, and gazed out of the window again. The
route travelled by the bus was not exactly cheering. At the Richmond Royal Hospital all was clear-cut and regulated, but outside all was devastation. The whole bus route was a miracle, as Kate reminded herself daily. Despite the danger and disruption, London Transport kept daily life moving. Buses had to run, and they did. Stops might be bombed beyond recognition, depots shattered, roads impassable, but somewhere, in some magician’s den, new routes were contrived, new bus stops organised, broken vehicles replaced.

As they drew nearer to the city centre the traffic thickened, and Matteous stopped looking outside. He said something Kate did not understand. Perhaps he was not addressing her, for it was more of an invocation, or a short prayer in a language she did not recognise, the language of his parents. The other passengers stared at them, and especially at him. A bird of paradise from overseas, a soldier with a wicker suitcase, a displaced person. Kate helped him down from the bus; his wounded foot was not yet properly healed. Following him up the stairs to his room she could see how poorly it functioned, whereas out on the street he had been able to hide his limp. Well, at least they wouldn’t be wanting him back in the army for the foreseeable future, she told herself.

The room with a bed and a kitchen in the corner was not
much bigger than his cubicle at the hospital. Matteous left his luggage on the bed and walked to the window. Kate followed him with her eyes, hearing the soft hiss of a gas geyser at her back. His shoulders, the window, the traffic, the worn carpet on the floor, the melancholy of it all. They had come a long way. She from a life among clever diplomats and well-educated folk, he from the raw Congo heartlands.

“Why?” he said.

Now it was Kate who failed to respond. It was a question she was unable to answer. Why had she taken the trouble all these months to visit him daily, to listen to him, collect him when he was discharged, find him lodgings? Of all the soldiers she had offered assistance to in the hospital, Matteous was the only one to have affected her so deeply. A dreamed-of son, someone who needed her, a lost child, a boy holding out his hand? There was no explanation, she reckoned, and anyway she did not need one. Looking past Matteous out of the window, Kate saw that it had begun to rain, and his question dissolved in the patter on the glass.

Oscar wore a dark-grey coat, a dark-grey hat and dark-grey trousers, beneath which his tan shoes struck a jarring note.

He walked hurriedly under the arcades of the Gerechtigkeitsgasse. Seven p.m., the city was all but deserted. Sunshine had been predicted, but it was raining, and the tourists, such as there were, stayed away. Oscar heard the echo of his footsteps: a pleasing sound, breaking his own small sound barrier. Reflecting on this, he slowed his pace, his haste receding. The shop windows slid past him. He paid no heed, he saw nothing and no-one.

Oscar Verschuur, aged fifty-six, was on his way to the first secretary of the Swedish legation. It was the second day of June 1941, and it was raining in Berne, capital of sun and snow and flower-filled Alpine meadows. Welcome to the heart of Europe, welcome to an oasis of tranquillity and rectitude.
Willkommen!
The word was blazoned on placards and windows – God, how the sound of German had come to grate on his ears.

He knew who else would be present. David Kelly, the British
resident minister. Pinto, the Portuguese military attaché. Horst Feller, a Swiss diplomat. Walter Irving, the American chargé d’affaires. Ismet Fahri, the Turkish envoy. And the American journalist Howard Smith, just arrived from Berlin. It was to be an informal dinner party, all protocol having been waived. Ambassadors mixing with lower-ranking diplomats was generally frowned on, and having a journalist present always carried an element of risk. And risk-taking was not normal ambassadorial practice, but in Berne, on that particular day in June, other considerations applied. Over the past weeks of gathering menace in a world already in the grip of fear, everything had come to be viewed in a new light.

Verschuur had recently learned the date. It was quite soon: June 22, just under three weeks from now. But he knew he had to keep the information to himself, there was no other option. He was a past master at keeping secrets, it had become second nature to him. He enjoyed it, it was food and drink to him. It was what he did for a living, his brief being to uncover what lay hidden, and to cover up such tracks as had been inadvertently exposed. He was a cover-up artist. A diplomat, on secondment to the Dutch legation, with a covert mission.

But this secret was different. In an unguarded moment, he
had been hurled out of his orbit by a message to which he could not shut his ears, even as his lips had to remain sealed. The ramifications were immeasurably vast and terrifying. Three more weeks to go, and it was impossible to breathe a word. Yet there was every reason to give out warnings, telephone government ministers, sound the alarm, raise a great hue and cry.

Oscar crossed to the other side of the Junkerngasse, then turned into the Kreuzgasse; he walked past the cathedral and down the Schifflaube, stopping at no. 52. The door was opened by a maid, who took his coat and hat. He was late, too late according to the rules of diplomacy, the higher ranks having already arrived. But there were to be no rules this evening, no-one was there in an official capacity, it had more the air of a conspiracy. Verschuur was acutely aware of the anomaly of the scene before him: a British ambassador and a Swiss diplomat having a chat at a side table over a carafe of white wine, a Turkish envoy resting his hand on the shoulder of an American, a Swede showing a German newspaper to a Portuguese. The diffusely lit reception room was the stage for a shadow play in which he, Verschuur, was the last actor to make his entrance. Unheard music passed through his mind, the voices, the gestures all around him, an entire alphabet of
goings-on. He noted that they all raised their heads when he came in, saw a smile here, a wave of the hand there. Björn Henderson, the Swedish host, stepped forward to greet him:
välkomna,
welcome,
willkommen.
That German word again.

Henderson pointed to Oscar’s shoes.

“Just as well the boss has gone off to the mountains, Oscar.” Sweden’s neutrality was not to be compromised, least of all by a man’s footwear. “That colour would have had him putting on his sunglasses and turning the lights down – good grief.”

“I knew he’d be away, Björn, or I’d have worn my funeral shoes.” Which would have suited his mood rather better, he thought to himself.

Henderson and he were on good terms, they were the same age, and both had a stubborn streak to their character. Not for them the likes of ambassadorial or high office. Oscar harboured no resentment about this, the very idea of such a post was distasteful to him – having to attend tedious dinner parties and useless formal audiences in a straitjacket of directives and unattainable proposals, what could be worse? Still, there were several astute, upstanding men among the diplomats of his acquaintance.

Wherever he went, Oscar found ways of circumventing
the Foreign Ministry’s rules. Or of breaking them, laughing them off. He was not supposed to consort with ambassadors and ministers more than was strictly necessary, but for reasons unknown, objections had never been raised to his presence among them, nor for that matter to his lower, or at any rate unclear, status. He had more or less conquered his own position, no-one knew quite how or when, but at a certain moment it was a fact. He was a diplomatic freewheeler, dispatched on far-flung assignments that were considered too delicate or challenging for ordinary civil servants. A diplomat with a special mission, an attaché, someone in possession of a
laissez-passer
. He knew everybody, but very few people knew him. His card said: Dr. O.M. Verschuur, Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands. That was all. Oscar Martinus Verschuur had earned his doctorate,
summa cum laude
, with a thesis on the Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa, paying particular attention to the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift on 22 January, 1879. Unusual subject matter, brilliant analysis as well as presentation. A touch eccentric, a touch unconventional in the context of contemporary historical studies. He had done field research, seeking out the elderly survivors of the battle to hear their descriptions first-hand, and the resulting work, written in English, had
the makings of a full-blown novel. His argument was that the defeat at Isandlwana marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire. “Here they come, as thick as grass and as black as thunder,” a British soldier had cried. It was a warning quoted by Verschuur during the public defence of his thesis, in response to which the audience froze. Kate had been watching him from the front row, her expression grave and tense.

Now he saw them all around him: German armies, as thick as grass and as black as thunder. Black and tightly packed, more than ever girded up for the inferno, waiting for Zero Hour.

“Operation Barbarossa, Papa, June 22nd, they’re going to invade Russia, Carl saw the order,” Emma had hissed at him, her face tight with shock and distress. “They’re going to invade Russia, Carl says it’s definite!”

Carl Regendorf, his son-in-law, was employed at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, the only place where some elements of resistance against Hitler and Ribbentrop lingered.

Oscar had been with the Dutch legation in Berlin for a spell during the Thirties. Kate and he lived in Fasanenstrasse. The happiest years of their marriage, in the midst of a rising tide of violence and betrayal. Emma had met Carl at a dinner party at their house. Oscar had seen it all unfold that evening.
Kate had been very concerned, but Emma and Carl were living life to the full, in perfect harmony. In the tumult of Berlin.

*

It was five days since Emma and Carl unexpectedly found themselves in Geneva: a tour of duty with Carl’s boss, Adam Trott. A special mission, during which Emma was permitted to accompany her husband as his secretary, a ploy they had used successfully before. Emma had telephoned her father from the hotel, and Oscar had taken the first train from Berne to meet them. They had been discreet, he thought, but was that true? Switzerland was rife with German spies, more so than any other country. It was in the restaurant, when Carl absented himself from the table for a moment, that she told him. Barbarossa. So that’s what they called it, the barbarians.

They had fallen silent when Carl reappeared, after which Emma made some remark about her mother. But her words kept pounding in his brain.

The train back to Berne took him past Nyon, Rolle, Morges, Lausanne. He noted the names of the stations, each one a small paradise, and was struck by the baffling ordinariness of everyday life as seen from his carriage window. Riding on a Swiss train often reminded him of being ill in bed as a child,
listening to the reassuring street noises – the rag-and-bone man’s cry, the refuse collector ringing his bell – and feeling soothed and snug. Not today, though. On this train, passing through innocent stations along the lake, with hayfields creeping up the mountainsides and sailing boats on the mirror of water, Emma’s whispered message weighed like a stone on his heart. The content defied the imagination, while the fact that he knew became ever more terrifying. The long-expected attack on Russia was finally to be launched. And he knew the date and the hour.