Zoo Station (3 page)

He told himself to calm down. He had talked himself out of worse situations than this.

His shin was oozing blood, but didnt look too bad. His stomach felt queasy, though whether from hunger or fear was hard to tell. Both, probably.

It felt like more than an hour had passed when he heard feet on the stairs. Booted feet, and several of them.

The sliding on his door window clanged open and clanged shut again. The boots moved on, another clang, but this time a door swung open. A voice protesteda voice Russell thought he recognizedthe Jew whod tried to protect his wife. The voice rose, and was cut off, leaving echoes inside Russells head. What had cut it off? A fist? A knee? A cosh? A door slammed shut.

Silence reigned, a heavy silence which offered no reassurance. Eventually a door scraped open, a remark drew laughter, and the boots were back in the corridor. Russell felt his breath catch as they headed his way, but they clattered on past and up the stairs, leaving him staring at his shaking hands. Pressing his ear to the door he could hear no groans of pain, only the stillness of unconsciousness or death.

Time went by. Hed rushed out of the hotel without his watch, and when a tray of food was eventually shoved through his hatch he wondered if it was lunch or supper. The boots never came back, and with each hour that passed he found himself feeling a little more optimistic. When the door finally opened his stomach lurched, but it was only the policeman whod brought him down.

This way, Herr Russell, the man said, nodding toward the stairs.

They beat people up in the cells, Russell told himself. Upstairs had to be better.

Two corridors and two flights of stairs later, he was ushered through a door labelled KRIMINALINSPEKTOR TESMER. The man himself had greased black hair, blue eyes, thin lips, and a bad case of five oclock shadow. Please sit, he told Russell.

He took one last look at the Englishmans passport, and then passed it across the desk with the journalists accreditation. There was no sign of Shchepkins envelope.

Everything is satisfactory, Tesmer said with a sudden smile. And Im sorry it has taken so long.

Russell reached for his documents. I can go? he asked, trying not to sound too relieved.

Just one question.

Yes? There was no life behind the eyes, Russell thought. This was a man to be careful with.

Why did you come to Danzig, Herr Russell? To write a story about the Jewish children?

No. I had no idea a
kindertransport
was leaving from here. Im staying at the hotel opposite the station, and the noise woke me up. I just walked across to see what was going on.

Then why did you come?

Why indeed. Because hed felt drawn to the place, the way a good journalist was always drawn to a story that mattered. A city in thrall to thugs and fools, and headed for disaster for precisely that reason. Danzig was Europe writ small. It was a story for everyone.

Almost everyone.

Stamps, he said, suddenly remembering a conversation hed overhead in the Cafe Weitzke. The citys German and Polish post offices were both putting out stamps to commemorate centuries-old victories over each other. I do occasional pieces for philately journals, and the two post offices here are bringing out some interesting new issues. Im hoping to interview the postmasters tomorrow.

Tesmer looked disappointed, like a fisherman realizing that this catch was too small to eat. Enjoy your stay, he said curtly.

ONCE OUTSIDE, RUSSELL DISCOVERED
it was almost ten oclock. A bar supplied him with a sandwich and a much-needed drink, and he trudged back to his hotel through mostly empty streets. Shchepkins envelope was still lying where hed left it.

It had been opened, though. Russell took out the single sheet and read it. They wanted four articles of between 1,200 and 1,500 words, delivered at fortnightly intervals, beginning in mid-January. The money was more generous than hed expectedas much as an ordinary Soviet worker earned over a five-year-plan. The thought crossed his mind that a car would transform his Saturdays with Paul.

The letter was in German, the promised fee in Reichsmarks. There was nothing to say where the offer came from or what the articles would be about. God bless the NKVD, Russell murmured to himself.

HE WOKE AROUND TEN.
Thick snow was cascading past his window, almost obscuring the station opposite. He used the lobby phone to call the two post offices, and was granted audiences with their postmasters late that afternoon. By the time he emerged from the Cafe Weitzke on Lange-Gasse, replete with scrambled eggs, Kashubian mushrooms, and a mocha, he still had five hours to kill.

It had almost stopped snowing, but the sky was still heavy with cloud. As he stood there wondering what to do, there was a sudden swell of music from the loudspeakers which peppered the city. Hitlers New Year speech to the nation, Russell remembered. Danzig wasnt yet part of Germany, but try telling the Nazis that.

Russell sometimes enjoyed listening to Hitler. The mans sheer effrontery was entertaining, and knowing that millions were being taken in by his ludicrous bloodlust gave the whole experience a deplorably thrilling edge. If the Fuhrer told them that gravity was a Jewish trick then millions of Germans would be practicing levitation before the sun set.

But Russell wasnt in the mood. A couple of hours by the sea, he thought. There wouldnt be any loudspeakers on the beach.

Hitler was just being introduced when a tram with a Brosen destination board burrowed out of the Lange-Gasse Gate. Russell took a seat on the right and watched through the window as the tram skirted the Holz-Markt, swung right into Elisabeth-Wall, and passed his hotel at the bottom of the Stadt-Graben.

It was about six kilometers to Brosen. Russell had taken the same ride back in 1935, during his last visit to Danzig. Hed been doing a series of articles on Germans at play, and it had been the middle of summer. The resort had been awash with holiday-makers, and he had gone for a paddle.

Not today. It was as dark as it had been all morning, and as the tram clanged and squealed its way out of the city the sparks from the overhead wires lit up the housefronts on either side of the street. The loudspeakers were still audible, though. As they passed through the outlying suburbs of Langfuhr and Saspe he heard snatches of the familiar voice, and one short passage in which the Fuhrer offered the German people his fulsome congratulations for their wonderful behavior in 1938. He was probably talking about
Kristallnacht
.

By the time they reached Brosen the sky had visibly lightened. Russell got off outside the closed casino, where a single loudspeaker was manfully trying to distort the Fuhrers message. Russell listened to the crackle for a few seconds, struck by the notion that he and Hitler were sharing a private moment together. The latter was promising help with the general pacification of the world. Russell wondered how much irony one nation could eat.

He walked down past the boarded-up refreshment stands and pad-locked beach huts to the snow-strewn beach. The previous seasons final water temperature was still legible on the lifeguard hut blackboard, alongside a poster explaining the mysteries of artificial respiration. The men in the poster all wore striped bathing suits and mustaches, like a posse of cartoon Fuhrers.

The sea was gunmetal gray, the sky almost as dark, slate gray with a yellowish tinge. There was no one else in sight.

A couple of kilometers to the east, two beacon lights marked the end of Danzigs channel to the sea, and Russell started walking in that direction. In the distance the lighthouse at the end of the dredged channel flickered into life with each revolution. To the north, a darker line marked the horizon and the outflung arm of the Hela Peninsula. Between the two a smudge of a freighter was inching out across the bay.

The stamp story was made for him, he thought. A story that amused and didnt condemn. A story of stupidity, and rather lovable stupidity at that. He could implant a few ironies just beneath the skin of the text for those who wanted to pick at it, leave enough clues about the real situation for those who already understood it. They would congratulate themselves on reading between the lines, and him for writing between them. And he could sit on his necessary fence for a few more months, until Hitler drove something through it.

Too many metaphors, he told himself. And not nearly enough satisfaction.

He thought about the real Danzig story. Ten years ago hed have written it, and written it well. But not now. Step out of line that far, and the toadies at the Propaganda Ministry would have him deported before he could say Heil Hitler. Hed be saying goodbye to his son, probably for the duration of a war. And probably to Effi as well. Shed told him often enough that shed go to England, or better still America, with him, but he had his doubts whether she meant it, whether shed ever willingly leave her sister, parents, agent, and vast array of friends for life in a new country where no one knew who she was.

He left the path and walked down to the edge of the water, searching for pebbles to skim. He wanted to take Shchepkins offer, he realized. He wasnt sure why, though. He only half-bought the argument that by helping the Soviets hed be hurting the Nazis. If he really wanted to take Hitler on there were more effective ways, but most of them depressingly self-sacrificial. The money would be nice, but the risks would be high. The Nazis still beheaded spies.

He skimmed a flat pebble between two waves. Could he trust Shchepkin? Of course he couldnt. The Soviets might want what they said they wantedno more, no lessbut even if they did, that wouldnt be the end of it. You didnt do a few articles for Stalin, bank the checks, and move on. You were now on a list, one of their people, someone to call up when something else was needed. And once you were on the list, they took refusals badly.

And then there was the attitude of his own country to worry about. He didnt need England now, but the way things were going he soon might, and writing for Stalin would hardly endear him to the Foreign Office. He could end up persona non grata with just about everyone. Why was he even thinking about it?

He knew why. A couple of weeks before Christmas Paul had told him about an exercise that new recruits into the
Jungvolk
were forced to undergo. They were taken out into the countryside without maps and invited to find their way back home the best they could. It was called a
Fahrt ins Blau
, a journey into the blue.

The idea had appealed to Paul, as it probably did to most boys of eleven. It appealed to Russell too. If he took this journey into the blue he might, conceivably, find his way home again.

He skimmed his last stone, a large one that took a single bounce and sunk. The sparse daylight was receding. The freighter and the Hela Peninsula had both been sucked into gray, and the beam from the lighthouse was sending shivers of reflection back off the darkening sea. He was in the middle of nowhere, lost in space. With ice for feet.

THE TWO POSTMASTERS WERE
both short-sighted men in sober suits with small mustaches. The Polish one could hardly wait for the honor of distributing his new stamps. A minion was sent for samples, and came back with King Jagiello and Queen Hedwig. The Polish queen, the postmaster explained, had spurned a German prince in favour of marrying the Lithuanian Jagiello. Their joint kingdom had forced the Prussians to accept the first Polish Corridor and bi-national status for Danzig. Admittedly this had all happened in the early fif-teenth century butand here the postmaster leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smilethe contemporary relevance should be obvious. Even to a German.

The German postmaster had his own sample. His stamp featured a beautiful miniature of stout Danzigers routing the Polish forces of King Stefan Batory in 1577. A German city defended by German arms, he announced smugly. Russell repeated the question he had put to the Polish postmasterwerent these stamps a little provocative? Shouldnt the civil authorities be trying to reduce the tension between their two countries, rather than using their stamps to stoke up old quarrels?

The German postmaster gave the same reply as his Polish opposite number. How, he asked, could anyone take postage stamps that seriously?

RUSSELLS TRAIN LEFT THE
Hauptbahnhof
at ten oclock. After paying for a sleeping berth he could barely afford, he sat in the restaurant car for the better part of two hours, nursing a single gold-flecked schnapps, feeling restless and uncertain. The Polish customs officials checked his visa just before Dirschau and the German authorities examined his passport at Flatow, on the far side of the Polish Corridor. He had no trouble with the latter: If the Danzig SA were submitting a report on his visit they must have still been struggling with their spelling.

He thought about the
kindertransport
, wondered where it was at that moment. Still chugging west across Germany, most likely. The Englishwomans cheek would be purple by nowhe hoped she would go to the press when she got back and make a real stink. Not that it would do any good. It had taken her five minutes to learn what Nazism was all about, but there was no substitute for first-hand experience. If you told people they didnt believe you. No one, their eyes always said, could be as bad as that.

He walked back down the train to his sleeping compartment. The two lower berths were empty, one of the upper occupied by a gently snoring German youth. Russell sat on the opposite lower berth, pulled back the edge of the curtain, and stared out at the frozen fields of Pomerania.

He lay back and shut his eyes. Gisela Kluger looked back at him.

He would write Shchepkins articles. See where the journey took him. Into the blue. Or into the black.

Ha! Ho! He!

RUSSELLS TRAIN STEAMED ACROSS
the bridge over Friedrichstrasse and into the station of the same name just before eight in the morning. An eastbound Stadtbahn train was disgorging its morning load on the other side of the island platform, and he stood behind the stairwell waiting for the crowd to clear. On the other side of the tracks an angry local was shaking a toasted almond machine in the vain hope that his coin would be returned. A railway official intervened and the two men stood there shouting at each other.