But the tense troop of police waiting among the statues in the Feldherrnhalle had heard that echoing rattle of bolts as hundreds of breeches at one time were flung open for inspection, and drew their own conclusions. So the rebels were loading: they meant with their vastly superior numbers to rush it. And the police were so few ... but that last hundred yards of the Residenzstrasse was a Thermopylae—fifty men could hold it against five thousand, if they were resolute.
At the corner of the Square Willi had thought he caught a glimpse of young Scheidemann near that purring yellow car. He seemed to be trying to signal to them, and Willi nudged Fritz—but this chap looked so doleful it surely couldn’t have been Lothar!
Funny, though, how empty the streets were, suddenly: what had become of all those cheering spectators who had filled the Marienplatz? As the troop in front wheeled left there was not a single civilian who followed it into the Residenzstrasse—only one funny little dog in a winter waistcoat of Scotch plaid, looking important.
When Princess Natascha (for that girl with the bicycle was Mitzi’s Russian friend) had picked herself up, the head of the procession was already out of sight and Perusastrasse chock-a-block with them; but she guessed they would turn left again up Residenzstrasse. She had better get to the Odeonsplatz ahead of them if she wanted to see the fun; and indeed she was determined to miss nothing, for the lonely young exile was impervious to cold and quite intoxicated with the singing and the marching and the general community and exaltation of the thing. She mounted her machine and bicycled up the few remaining yards of the Theatinerstrasse as if the troops in front of her just didn’t exist (and they were in fact very few).
“Damn her!” muttered the officer in command. “She’s right in my line of fire!” So he let her through, and thus Tascha found herself the only civilian in the whole empty center of the Odeonsplatz with every window looking at her; but she wasn’t embarrassed at all, it wasn’t her nature to be. Pedaling hard, she gave a wide berth to the one armored car stationed there, but it took no notice. Good! The top of Residenzstrasse was open, she’d ride down and meet them: she could hear already the tramp of the approaching marchers, and as she got to the corner she caught the gleam of their bayonets. But just then a troop of armed police appeared out of the Feldherrnhalle and stretched right across the street in front of her, right to the Palace wall. An absurd thin line; but she had to jam her brakes on, and dismounted close behind them. Tramp, tramp ... between the policemen she could see the procession coming now: Nazis with fixed bayonets and Oberlanders without, side by side, sixteen abreast, a veritable horde. This pitifully thin string of policemen could no more halt them than the winning-tape halts a race, they’d be trampled underfoot if they didn’t skip jolly quick. Tramp, tramp ... she was dancing in time with it. What a juggernaut!
No one was singing now, and she heard a voice among the marching leaders suddenly cry out to the police: “Don’t shoot—it’s Ludendorff!” and then a policeman fired.
It had seemed a juggernaut; and yet when that ragged unwilling volley at last rang out it melted clean away.
26
At the sound of that first shot Hitler dropped so violently to the ground (accelerated moreover by the stricken weight of Ulrich Graf on top of him) that the arm locked in Scheubner-Richter’s was dislocated at the shoulder. This saved his life, however; for a second later young Scheubner-Richter collapsed dead in his stead, his chest wide open. Almost all the leaders, their nerves already keyed to snapping-point, had flung themselves down instantly like Hitler, performing the old soldier’s instinctive obeisance to the flying bullet: this briefly exposed the dumbfoundered men behind them—till they too collected their wits enough to fall flat as well: thus it was they who chiefly suffered, not the leaders.
The reluctant police were mostly pointing their carbines at the ground; but that saved no lives, for the flattened bullets bouncing off the granite setts only made the uglier wounds. After those few seconds of nervous gunfire there were many wounded. Moreover there were sixteen men stone dead or dying: the street darkening before their eyes, their souls at their lips.
The whole world was flat, the living among the dead, except for Ludendorff. For generals tend to lose the instinct to lie down as well as the agility; and the old war-lord’s magic was worth just this much still, that no one did aim at Ludendorff. He had stumbled and nearly fallen, but then with his hands in his jacket pockets he continued his stroll without one glance back at the dying and wounded and frightened men behind him, straight through the green line of police (which opened to let him pass). He seemed deep in thought. As he passed Tascha she heard him murmuring, “One, and nine, and two ...” Then he was gone.
No one fired twice—but it was enough. As soon as the noise ceased all who were able sprang to their feet and vanished. They were headed by the little dog in the plaid waistcoat at full speed, but Hitler—unhit, though stumbling from the pain and awkwardness of his shoulder—lay a good second in the race.
The sound of the firing had carried right to the rear of the column, and the rest of the parade too instantly dismissed. The police stood aghast. At that moment a dozen men could have rushed them; but there weren’t a dozen.
Stretcher-bearers appeared.
In front of Tascha lay Ludendorff’s young von Scheubner-Richter: his lungs had burst from his chest. Poor Max-Erwin! She’d met him at parties: he’d had so much charm ... and beside him lay someone else whose brains spattered the roadway for ten yards round. Weber, the Oberland leader, had staggered to his feet and stood leaning against the palace wall, in tears. Young Hermann Goering with two bullet-gashes in the groin was trying to drag himself behind one of the stone lions in front of the Residenz palace.
The street was bright with blood. As soon as the fumes of the carbines cleared you could even smell it; and at that something mad seized Tascha. She jerked into the saddle and bicycled wildly down the street, wobbling her course between the dead and dying. Tascha’s one object was to get plenty of splashes of blood on her bicycle-wheels (Hitler’s if possible: surely she had seen him fall?). But in point of fact even before Tascha had mounted, Hitler, legging it, had reached the Max-Josefs-Platz and been hustled into that waiting yellow car and was gone. Lothar caught a glimpse of him climbing into the car—he held his arm queerly extended, as if carrying something. So Tascha had to be content with quite anonymous blood: it was mostly Willi’s, as it happened.
Ludendorff continued his way unhindered across the empty square. As soon as he had added together the digits of this fatal year 1-9-2-3 and registered that their sum was 15 his mind went suddenly blank. He continued to march straight forward like a mechanical toy—quite without object, merely without impediment, plod, plod ...
He had already turned into the Brienner Strasse like that, plod, plod, when all at once he halted, thunderstruck—his brain suddenly springing into action again. But of course! Fifteen was the same total 1-9-1-4 added up to!—Fifteen! Ten and Five: applied to the alphabet these digits gave the letters “J” and “E”—the first two letters in JEhovah ... yes, and in JEsus too! Thus both years were auspicious years for both Germany’s joint enemies—the JEws and the JEsuits!
1914 ... the “JEhovah-JEsus” year when the noose of International Jewry-cum-Papistry had first closed so tight that Germany had been forced to strike back—in vain. Now, 1923 ... No wonder we’ve failed!
But at that moment a policeman dared at last to address him, politely requesting His Excellency’s attendance at the station. At the station however they were not quite so polite. A one-eyed wooden-faced sergeant looked up from his ledger and asked this distinguished client his name and address and made him spell it. The constable looked at his superior in surprise: why, surely Sergeant knew that face—and knew how to spell Ludendorff? Hadn’t Sergeant lost his eye (he always told them) in the ill-fated “Ludendorff offensive” of 1918?
27
The little dog in the waistcoat at last found his master again—an elderly
, frock-coated, elegant citizen with so neat a spade beard it deserved a prize (he slept with it in a net); and they both rejoiced. Willi meanwhile sat on the pavement outside the post-office in the Max-Josefs-Platz, applying a tourniquet to his own copiously-bleeding leg, his head in a whirl. Tascha had the misfortune to have her bicycle stolen while she was being sick in a ladies’ lavatory, and hurried home on foot to write her letter (in two-inch script) to Mitzi.
The public health department cleaned up the messy Residenzstrasse with wonderful speed and thoroughness: is was the sort of job they excelled at. The police put on ferocious airs as if one and all they habitually ate Kampfbund kids for breakfast, and made numerous difficult and dangerous arrests (such as Willi, who was too giddy to stand up). Then one by one the shops and restaurants on the route of the march re-opened (the others elsewhere had never closed) and all was as before. Lothar slipped quietly home for a quick change and was back as his desk at the Bayrischer-Hof, shaved and in a neat gray suit, without anyone quite seeing him arrive (at the Bayrischer-Hoffew were even aware any disturbance had taken place).
Meanwhile the police had already raided that gymnasium. There they found Augustine’s ten-shilling note in the till, and showed it to the Press. Once again that note turned out a windfall; for wasn’t it proof positive the Nazis were in foreign pay?
Ludendorff was (rather unflatteringly) released on bail, and carried his dudgeon home with him to Ludwigshöhe. Goering’s brownshirt friends found Goering in a rather bad way, behind a stone lion outside the palace, groaning: they took him to a Jewish doctor, who patched him up with infinite kindness (a kindness Goering never forgot) and hid him in his own house: so Goering did get in the end to Rosenheim and thence into Austria as he had all the time intended. There he found Putzi Hanfstaengl and others who had arrived before him: not Rosenberg, though, who after all was hiding in Munich. Nor Hitler, of course: Hitler in a depressed state was driving about Bavaria at top speed without the least idea where to go. Finally he fetched up at Uffing of all places—at the Hanfstaengl country cottage, which was bound to be searched sooner or later—and was hidden in the attic where they kept their emergency barrel of flour.
Most of these things had happened before the Steuckels’ party had even begun; but true news travels slowly, and the party had dispersed before the upshot of the Putsch was known. When a full and authentic account of it all did at last reach Lorienburg with the next morning’s papers it caused little stir there for the only politically important fact in it was already surmised—that Kahr’s planned restoration of Rupprecht had after all not come off.
Moreover a miss-fire like this might mean that it had to be put off for quite a while. That led to some desultory abuse of Ludendorff, whose clumsy, amateurish interference had upset all von Kahr’s delicate timing. Ludendorff would now be totally discredited for keeps: there was at least that much to be thankful for. And that silly little Hitler too: like the frog in the fable he had tried to play a role too big for him and burst. After this we’ll hear no more of Hitler—and that too’s a good riddance! I expect when they catch him he’ll just be pushed back over the Austrian frontier as an undesirable alien.
As a proved incompetent, Exit the White Crow!
Thus it was all soon forgotten. For the Kessen family had now something on their plates even more important than politics, for once: a family problem—what to do with Mitzi now she was stone-blind.
BOOK THREE
The Fox in the Attic
1
IN THE DARKNESS of the unvisited attics the bats flitted endlessly or huddled in bunches against the cold, and under the heavy pile of furs in the corner the sleeping figure stirred and moaned.
The very young face with its closed, wide-set eyes was contorted. He was having one of his “red” dreams, when everywhere there was always blood. Tonight he was dreaming that his legs were paralyzed and he was dragging himself on his elbows across a heap of bodies, and from their open bellies the living entrails writhed towards him. When they wound themselves round him they were barbed, like barbed wire; and the fetid, dully-crimson air was full of twittering though there was nothing winged here ...
This winning, open-faced boy having his nightmare in the attics was the missing Wolff, Lothar’s warrior-brother: Franz’s best schoolfriend, and still his guiding star.
Wolff woke, half-swallowing a scream. His lips were dry and his mouth tasted of blood from a bleeding gum (he had pulled his own tooth himself, the day before). His body was wet and for a moment he thought that was blood too; but it was only his sweat, under too many furs. Hauling himself out of his dream by main force he deliberately recalled to the surface of his mind that day four years ago when his troop was storming the signal-box on the Riga railway and he stumbled in the hidden wire and fell into Heinrich’s body that was burst and steaming and the wire had held him there, in that motherly warmth, while round him the bullets splashed in the waterlogged meadow like rain.
Wolff flashed his torch. The beam lit a chin-high stack of ancient account-books covered with bat-droppings, for this hiding-place of his was a kind of muniment-room—the only room right up here close under the castle clock and the great water-tank ever finished since the castle was first built. In the shadows two red eyes were watching him, and the air smelt strong of fox.
The torch-beam shifted, and shone on what looked like a gigantic snail. This was a coil of climber’s rope he kept there, covered in cobwebs. Even after the Baltic collapse those dedicated young men Wolff and his like-minded fellow killers had kept on killing “for Germany”—though killing in Germany and killing secretly now. But ever since Rathenau’s death the police-net had never relaxed: Wolff was deeply involved, and for the past eight months had never once set foot on the ground outside.
In the wavering beam the watching red eyes blinked, and Wolff snapped out the light. But he dared not drift off to sleep again, and to keep awake in the dark and to soothe his jangled nerves he made an effort to think about his “Lady.” For Wolff had fallen deeply in romantic love, last summer, with that fair-haired girl in the garden below who was unconscious of his existence even.
But tonight she eluded him, for tonight he was wholly in the grip of images of a sort yet more compulsive still than hers: that cat, for instance, in the drawing-room of the little deserted manor in the Livonian woods ... a fat, white cat ... willy-nilly he began to recall it all, now, nervously smiling the while.
*
It had been one day they were looking for a missing reconnaissance-party of their own men that they came on this modest house, hidden among the birches and pines. There were fresh pink English hollyhocks round the door; but although it was nearly noon the green shutters were all closed as though the house were sleeping. Whoever had been there last had gone, and had clearly left it empty. But those shutters fitted so close that coming in from the sun you couldn’t at first see: only stand there listening to the drawing-room clock that was still ticking, and wait for the dazzlement to wear off. This happened to be Wolff’s sixteenth birthday, and at the sound of that clock the boy had felt desperately homesick.
Moreover, he could hear a purring ...
But soon the pupils of his eyes dilated enough to see that the room was heaped with bodies—their missing friends. The bodies were mutilated in the usual Lettish way; and these men hadn’t died fighting, this had been done to them alive.
The purring cat had been sleeping luxuriously on the sofa in this very room when the searchers arrived. But now she took refuge on the top of that ornate mantelpiece clock, arched and spitting, her drawn claws slipping as she scrabbled to keep her balance on the smooth marble. Underneath her the clock whirred, then started to strike with tuneful silvery chimes.
In his rage he had torn the cat to pieces with his bare hands, then slipped in the mess on the floor and twisted his ankle. Meanwhile the others had rushed outside to search the buildings; but they found nothing living out there either except one cow. Her they killed too: they??
?d have killed even the tomtits if they could have caught them.
Now Wolff himself, as he remembered it all, lay there purring ...
*
Conscience had first sent Wolff east, to those freelance wars in the lost provinces where his birthplace was; and a conscience blindly indulged like his tends to acquire a stranglehold. “Conscience” had now become the one call he could no longer ever resist. The fighting had long been over; but those Baltic years of the beastliest heroism had been the years while Wolff grew his last inch of height and his spirit set in its mold; and nowadays the dictates of his conscience had become quite invarious: always the simple command to kill.
Hidden here, and now no longer able to go out and murder, Wolff was in every sense an exile from “life”: even from its warm trickles in the house he hid in. No human sound reached here: only from close overhead all night the huge clock’s slow, loud, heavy ticking.
2
In the roof the castle clock thumped the hour and on the last stroke Mitzi woke.
It was pitchy black, and a smell of outdoor furs. There was not even a glimmer from where the window lay opposite her bed; yet Mitzi was broad awake, and agitated moreover by a sense of urgency. She reached for the box of matches by her candle and struck one ... and nothing happened. She heard the usual sputter, but it made no light.
It was only then that she remembered. But ... but however could a person have forgotten she had gone blind?