‘Bert!’ I cried. ‘I’m so glad. How did you—?’
‘Pull it to,’ Dora ordered.
I closed the curtain. She was rolling up the maps, a cigarette on her bottom lip and one eye squinted against the smoke.
Bert and Hans hugged, then Hans held Bert a long moment by the shoulders, towering over his little friend.
‘How well you look,’ he said.
Bert did not look well. He looked thinner, older, sallower. His spectacles were held together at the right-hand hinge with a knot of gauze that had turned brown from fingering. His goatee was already more silver than black–though Bert was only thirty-four–and the hair on his head sat sparse and feathery off his skull. He beamed.
After our university days, Bert had done time in prison. When eighty-one young men died in a ‘practice manoeuvre’ at Veltheim an der Weser, Bert had become suspicious. He studied the death notices in the local papers and visited the cemeteries and bereaved families, cross-checking the dead under their fresh mounds against official military rolls. He proved that at least eleven of the boys had been illegal ‘volunteers’ in ‘work Kommandos’ of the Black Army. The Chancellor denied any knowledge of them, as did the Defence Minister. For publication of this truth, Bert was convicted of attempted treason–violation of the State Secrets Act–and served eight months’ hard labour in Gollnow prison. After he was released he crossed the border to Strasbourg and kept up his investigations, publishing a bulletin he called the Independent Press Service. Though it was still illegal, Dora was helping him distribute it in Germany.
Prison had no doubt been terrible, but it had also transformed Bertie, whether he wanted it or not, into the living embodiment of a cause. Nationwide fame sat oddly on those narrow shoulders. It hadn’t made him grander, more statesmanlike. Instead, Bertie seemed to have developed a sense of himself as a phenomenon apart, a one-man reckoning. He maintained the habits of obscurity, introducing himself to people who knew full well who he was, failing to smile at well-meaning passers-by.
‘How did you get back in?’ Hans was asking.
‘With parliament prorogued before the election, I thought they mightn’t have clear instructions any more.’ Bertie was scratching the back of his neck. ‘On who to keep out at the border.’
Prorogued. Like all autodidacts, Bert always used the biggest word he could find.
Dora shook her head. ‘It’s not as if just because we’re going to the polls the gates are open for all the old political crims to come in,’ she laughed, looking fondly at Bert. ‘I told you: you just got lucky.’
Bert coughed into his hand. He was congenitally unsuited to luck; luck would have upset his sense of himself.
Afterwards, Berthold Jacob was dubbed the Man Who Tried to Stop the Second World War. But at that time, so long before, although people admired his doggedness, behind his back they said, He exaggerates, all the same. It was as if he knew no measure. He had let his cause swamp his life, and this constituted, even in our committed circle of friends, a certain lack of form. Despite all he had done he was still poor Bertie: self-righteous, argumentative, and scrounging meals, his ears sticking out like questions and his pockets rustling with newspapers. Hans admired and loved him, but to me he called him ‘living proof that being right is no consolation’.
I loved him more simply, and so, I think, did Dora. Measure was not, after all, what the times required.
The bench seats of the TicTacToe were cool, olive-green leather. The four of us sank into them, into the pleasure of our velvet-walled, candlelit cave. Outside, applause rose and ebbed between the acts.
‘What are you two up to?’ I nodded at the documents.
‘Bert’s showing me some of our burgeoning new towns in the back-blocks of Brandenburg,’ Dora said, ‘and their brand-spanking-new electrical works.’
‘A wireless for every hearth?’ Hans asked. In practically his opening address, Hitler had promised every household a wireless.
‘No,’ Dora said. ‘Components for fighter planes. Disguised as railway switches.’
Hans leaned back, with an arm around me along the seat-top. I caught a wave of his piny cologne. ‘You know what they’re going to call them?’ he asked.
‘The planes or the wirelesses?’ Dora shot back.
‘The wireless,’ Hans sallied calmly. ‘It’s called the Volksempfänger, or VE 301–after the day he came to power, 30/1.’ He offered Dora the vial and she took it, raised the bitter spoon to her nostril.
‘It’s not like they’re hiding anything, is it?’ he continued. ‘They should just call it the Hitler-Hearer.’ We all laughed.
‘They’re not hiding it well, anyway,’ Bert said, who wasn’t much into jokes.
‘Speaking of wirelesses,’ I said, ‘we just ran into Rudi.’
Dora smiled. ‘Did you hear what he did?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Magnificent, wasn’t it?’
‘I hope he’s being careful now,’ Bert muttered. Then he turned to me. ‘Et tu, Ruthie? What are you up to?’
I told him how yesterday the Communist headquarters had been raided by Röhm’s brown-shirted SA. They stole the entire membership list of four thousand people.
‘It’s getting harder,’ I said. ‘They killed the mayor of a town in Thuringia.’
‘I heard,’ Bert said.
‘What about you?’ I put a hand on his arm. Hans had picked up the phone to order from the bar; Dora was stuffing the maps and notebooks away in her bag.
‘Fine. Bit of a problem with my waterworks actually.’ He gestured dismissively to his lap. ‘Doctor said it was gout. I said, “How can I have gout on one meal a day?”’ Bert laughed, then started to cough again. In the too-soon offering of intimacy I saw all four corners of his lonely life.
A waiter opened our curtain. I glimpsed the stage behind him, empty now but for a bathtub. Then the players came on and took up their instruments again. They began a steady Greek dirge: ta-la-la-la, TA-la-la-la, TA-la-la-la. The music of anticipation, of slowly rising madness. A pair of wet hands rose from the tub, reached for a rope. They pulled up a man in a full suit and tie, his body held horizontal, sheeting water. He wound one ankle into the rope and started to spin. Then he clipped a noose to the rope and put his head in. A fine arc of droplets sprayed from his body onto the crowd.
When I turned back, Dora had taken off her jacket. She wore only a slip underneath–she never ‘dressed’ for anything. Without trying, she was now a creature of this place, apricot and brown, wings and skin and points under silk. She had her elbows on the table. ‘I wonder why we bother, really,’ she was saying. ‘This election is a veneer. It can’t save us even if we win.’
‘Why not?’ I said.
‘The Nazis dislike parliamentary democracy as much as the Communists do. They won’t accept defeat.’
‘Why not just take over, then?’
‘May I?’ Bert was pointing at Dora’s half-eaten fish. He started to slide the plate towards him, then stopped, cleared his throat and touched his glasses. ‘Hitler needs it to look legal,’ he said. ‘He wants a two-thirds majority so he can pass his Enabling Act, then forget about parliament altogether and rule by decree. That way he can keep the military and industry onside. I’m told I.G. Farben and Krupp and others are going to give him three million Reichsmarks, which they wouldn’t do after a putsch.’
‘Democracy for sale,’ Dora said.
‘How do you know all this?’ Hans goaded Bert. ‘Got a “source” now, have you?’
Bert never had inside information because he was massively indiscreet, about every-one and anything he thought people should know. He was so used to divining secrets from publicly available information that confidentiality was inconceivable to him. I found him open, brave; others found him hideously unreliable.
I watched Bertie’s lips pull back over mottled teeth, as he bided his time thinking of a riposte. In those excruciating seconds I wondered what righteous rabbi of his childhood had taught him that
truth was a defence; that if one was right, one needn’t be liked. As if being liked were a trivial thing, like pleasure, or heating. Or functioning waterworks. A round of applause rose and fell for the spinning man.
Finally Bert said, ‘I don’t need a source, Johannes.’
Hans smiled a crooked drunken smile. He started to clap, slowly. ‘Quite so, my friend,’ he said. ‘Quite so.’ I felt my love pivot and wobble. I spoke over his mocking applause.
‘But he won’t get a two-thirds majority,’ I said. ‘That’s what we’re counting on.’
Hans stopped clapping and poured himself another schnapps from a little jug. ‘There are rumours,’ he said, ‘that they might stage their own assassination attempt on The Great Adolf. Then use that as an excuse to crack down on all the opposition.’
Unlike Bertie, Hans thrived on rumours, on having sources, on being in the know with his ‘ear to the ground’. He didn’t have the patience to scrutinise government announcements or read pay lists from the public service. Although he secretly admired Bertie’s capacity for work and his courage to publish and go to prison for it, admiration was a difficult thing for Hans–there was always the risk he might compare badly in his own mind. He managed this fear by teasing Bert for pernicketiness.
Bert, in turn, envied Hans his extravagant charm, his ability to wring so much pleasure from life. He watched Hans over the top of the beer Hans had ordered for him.
‘Where did you hear that about an assassination?’ I asked Hans. He turned his head to me but said nothing.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Dora said. ‘The gist of it is true, rumour or not. It’ll be like 1914, when they said the French had attacked us. They need an emergency to save us from.’
‘He is the emergency,’ I said. Dora laughed.
‘You might be right,’ Bert said slowly.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘No, I mean Dora.’
‘Might I?’ She smiled. Bert had no tact, but I could never take offence. He picked up a pen and started colouring in the squares of the TicTacToe grid on the coaster. Dora offered him the cocaine but he shook his head.
‘No!’ He dropped the pen and slapped the table. ‘That’s it! Hitler needs the emergency before the election. Then he can rule by emergency decree, “in times of terror”, shut down the press and stop us campaigning altogether. With the polls as they are, that’s the only way he can get his majority.’ Bert put both hands to the sides of his head, as if reproving it for not coming up with this sooner. ‘Then, after the election, he’ll pass his Enabling Act and do whatever he wants.’
There was a moment at the table in which the thought sat there and became solid, self-evident.
Bert looked at Dora. ‘Where’s Toller?’
‘In Switzerland. Lecture tour.’
‘Wire him to stay there.’
Dora frowned. ‘You’ll have to leave too,’ Bert continued. ‘You’ll be high on their list.’ He turned to Hans and me. ‘You two as well.’
‘I think we should stay and fight it out here,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s happened yet.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Bert said. His predictions were so often right he took doubt as a personal affront. ‘It’s clear. They’re making lists. Or stealing them. I’ll leave tomorrow myself.’
‘I agree,’ Hans said, suddenly sober. ‘We’re no good to anyone locked up.’
There was a pause.
‘I’ll have to get his things out then,’ Dora said, to no one in particular.
Bert slid Dora’s plate the rest of the way towards him and picked up his fork. While he ate, no one spoke. The evening, for Dora and Bert, was over: there was work to do. They left as soon as he’d finished.
But Hans and I stayed. In the early hours a woman came on stage in a red rubber dress with long sleeves, tight as skin. The band began a slow strip tune: she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve. People laughed. Then one from the other sleeve. She bent down to her shoe and found one there. She patted her thighs, then tentatively reached up into the dark under her dress. Felt about. Her hand came out empty. People laughed a little more. She patted her pubic bone: a drum beat once. Another pat: twice. More laughter. She stretched her knees apart and reached up between them again–Aha! With one palm she stopped the laughter. Her head tilted slowly in astonishment.
With her hips canted forward just a little, she started to pull. Out came a bright piece of yellow silk, like a puppet’s thread. A soft drum roll began. Hand over hand, the red rubber woman pulled, delicately, curiously. Each handkerchief was knotted to another, this one green, then blue then orange, purple, aqua, red. They came and they came–she was made of silk inside! She was empty but for silk, she was turning herself inside out for us. And at the end before we realised it was all over, there hung a tiny bell, like you might put on a cat to stop it catching birds.
I went home to sleep after that, but Hans found some friends from the paper and stayed on.
‘You got any more rubber gloves? These’ve got holes in.’ Bev is standing in the doorway, holding up her hands to show me the offending pink rubber articles. She does most of my shopping and knows full well that I have no idea about the current rubber glove situation. She is asking me so I’ll acknowledge that I have ceded control over this house to her and pay due homage.
‘Look under the sink,’ I say, because, in the scheme of things, my domestic incapacities are really the least of it.
‘Hmmph.’ She turns on her heel.
Dora went straight from the TicTacToe to Toller’s apartment. The stairwell was pale pink, like skin, and had flowers and field plants painted on it, fennel and nettles with tender stems stretching up the wall. She had the keys. She had every right. She would say she was delivering a parcel. Strange, how quickly we know what is forbidden. Is it the part of us that is like them which tells us?
Later, they sealed off his apartment with planks screwed into the doorjamb where the locks had been smashed, and put up a notice from the Ministry of Justice: ‘Contaminated Area. Entry Prohibited’. The place stayed empty for the six and a half years up until the war and then for all the six years of war. A trophy, or a trap.
She had the keys, but because he’d gone away Toller had snibbed the top lock as well. Dora had to get both tongues to stay out at the same time. The metal teeth jangled on their ring; so loud–why, now, so loud?
She opened the lower one and held the handle with her left hand, while turning the key above her head in the top lock, scratching and slipping, looking for traction. The stairwell light timed out. She had to let go. Before she reached the switch on the wall it came on again by itself. She jumped backwards. Footsteps, and a scuffling, dragging sound up the stairs. She had every right.
He rounded the banister. Herr Benesch from the flat above, and his dachshund Willi dragging its stomach up each step, claws scratching the wood.
‘Good evening,’ Benesch nodded. He was a retired civil servant of some kind. ‘Midnight call of nature,’ he said, gesturing to the dog with a gloved hand.
‘Of course.’
‘Herr Toller back, then?’
‘No,’ Dora said, ‘not yet.’
Toller never did come back to Germany. In a few weeks’ time they would take his books from shops and libraries and burn them.
‘I’m just dropping off some books,’ she said. Her bag was on the floor.
‘Need a hand?’
‘Thanks. I’m fine.’
He moved past her to go up the stairs. Then, over his shoulder, ‘They’ve been here, you know.’
She nodded. Turned back to the door.
When he was out of sight she looked at the space where he had been. You could never know if someone was giving you a warning out of kindness, or enacting some kind of self-exculpation. Was Benesch warning her before making himself safe by calling them back?
In the flat she kept the lights off. She moved from the hall past the little bookshelf where they took off their shoes to the first of the three
rooms facing the street. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness; she could make out the divan on the left against the wall, with the silk sari draped over it, the little square reading table in the middle of the room. The windows were unseeing panes of black. She crouched to below the level of the balcony and pulled the curtains across, moving sideways like a monkey. She hoped it was too dark to notice the fabric swaying from outside.
Her mouth was dry. In the kitchen she turned on a light. Scratched her forearms. Ashtrays sat unemptied and a rose in the neck of a bottle was turning to paper. She took a glass from the shelf. The tap sputtered, plumbing juddering in the wall.
Back into the hall, where the ceiling was high and the walls lined with bookshelves, all the way down. The books that were published could never be exterminated completely; somewhere a copy would survive, the fossil imprint on the world of that particular soul at that particular time. The floor creaked and groaned as she walked down. At the end was the grand corner room–windows on two sides to the street. So many times she had waited for him, working in this bed as he paced out his nights, that the creak-and-groan of the corridor when he came down to her had the same effect as the chink of his belt buckle undoing. She was unsentimental, practical, hedonistic about sex. Very beautiful play, she called it. Toller had been shocked.
But now the empty bed unmoored her heart. This heart with a life of its own. He closed his eyes when they made love.
The men were never the same, he said, after they came out of prison. Inside, some turned into girls, wearing ribbons and mincing; swapping sex for protection from rape, sex for cigarettes. They all masturbated like boys; some made vaginas out of bread rolls. There was a traffic in matchboxes of semen from the men to the women prisoners; pubic hair back. Talismans of longing, the body’s own need for another. The men’s dreams of women were whittled and honed to slick and practical things, and when they came out living women did not match them. She knew he felt this as a loss, another way that he could not, now, get back inside his life.