Two grey buses were parked beside the pharmacy. A floodlight touched their dull coachwork, and was moved a way. The windows were quite black, sealed from inside.
And we were grateful, Karfeld continued. Grateful to be admitted to such an exclusive club. Of course we were. The club did not exist; its members did not like us; the fees were very high; and as the Germans were still children they must not play with weapons which might damage their enemies; but we were grateful all the same, because we were Germans and had lost the war.
Once more the indignant murmur rose, but he scotched it again with a terse movement of his hand. 'We want no emotion here,' he reminded them. 'We are dealing with facts!'
High up, on a tiny ledge, a mother held her baby. 'Lookdown,' she was whispering. 'You will not see his like again.' In the whole square, nothing moved; the heads were still, staring with cavernous eyes.
To emphasise his great impartiality, Karfeld once more drew back in the pulpit and, taking all his time, tilted his spectacles a little and examined the pages before him. This done, he hesitated, peered doubtfully downwards at the faces nearest him and deliberated, unsure how far he could expect his flock to follow what he was about to say.
What then was the function of the Germans in this distinguished club? He would put it this way. He would state the formula first and afterwards he would give one or two simple examples of the method by which it could be applied. The function of the Germans in Nato was briefly this: to be docile towards the West and
hostile towards the East; to recognise that even among the victorious Allies there were good victors and bad victors...
Again the laughter rose and fell.Der Klaus, they whispered, der Klaus knows how to make a joke; what a club that Nato is. Nato, the Market, it's all a cheat, it's all the same; they are applying the same principles to the Market which they applied to Nato. Klaus has told us so and that is why the Germans must stay away from Brussels. It is just another trap, it is. encirclement all over again...
'That's Lésère,' de Lisle murmured.
A small, greying man who obscurely reminded Turner of a bus conductor had joined them on the steps and was writing contentedly in his notebook.
'The French counsellor. Big chum of Karfeld's.'
About to return his gaze to the scaffold, Turner happened to look into the side street; and thus he saw for the first time the mad, dark, tiny army that waited for the signal.
Directly across the square, assembled in the unlit side street, the silent concourse of men waited. They carried banners that were not quite black in the twilight and there stood before them, Turner was certain there stood before them, the remnants of a military band. The oblique arclights glinted on a trumpet, caught the laced panels of the drum. At its head stood a solitary figure; his arm, raised like a conductor's, held them motionless.
Again the radio crackled, but the words were drowned in laughter as Karfeld made another joke; a harsh joke, enough to raise their anger, a reference to the decay of England and the person of the monarch. The tone was new and hard: a light blow on their backs, brisker, a purposeful caress, promising the sting to come, tracing like a whip's end the little vertebrae of their political resentment. So England, with her allies, had re-educated the Germans. And who better qualified? After all, Churchill had let the savages in to Berlin; Truman had dropped atom bombs on undefended cities; between them they had made a ruin of Europe: who better qualified, then, to teach the Germans the meaning of civilisation?
In the alley, nothing had stirred. The leader's arm was still raised before the little band as he waited for the signal to begin the music.
'It's the Socialists,' de Lisle breathed. 'They're staging a counter-demonstration. Who the devil let them in?'
So the Allies set to work: the Germans must be taught how to behave. It was wrong to kill the Jews, they explained; kill the Communists instead. It was wrong to attack Russia, they explained; but we will protect you if the Russians attack you. It was wrong to fight for your borders, they explained; but we support your claims for the territories of the East.
'We all know that kind of support!' Karfeld held out his hands, palms upwards. 'Here you are, my dear, here you are! You can borrow my umbrella as long as you like; until it rains!' Was it Turner's imagination or did he detect, in this piece of theatre, a hint of that wheedling tone which once in German music-halls traditionally denoted the Jew?
They began to laugh, but again he silenced them.
In the alley, the conductor's arm was still raised. Will he never tire, Turner wondered, of that gruesome salute?
'They'll be murdered,' de Lisle insisted. 'The crowd will murder them!'
'And so, my friends, this is what happened. Our victors in all their purity, and all their wisdom, taught us the meaning of democracy. Hurray for democracy. Democracy is like Christ; there is nothing you cannot do in the name of democracy.
'Praschko,' Turner declared quietly, 'Praschko wrote that for him.'
'He writes a lot of his stuff,' de Lisle said.
'Democracy is shooting Negroes in America and giving them gold beds in Africa! Democracy is to run a colonial empire, to fight in Vietnam and to attack Cuba; democracy is to visit your conscience on the Germans!
Democracy is to know that whatever you do, you will never, never be as bad as the Germans!' He had raised his voice to give the sign, the sign the band expected. Once more Turner looked across the crowd in to the alley, saw the white hand, white as a napkin, fall lazily in the lamplight, glimpsed the white face of Siebkron himself as he quickly relinquished his place of command and withdrew in to the shadow of the pavement, saw the first head turn in front of him, then a second, as he himself heard it also: the distant sound of music, of a percussion band, and men's voices singing; saw Karfeld peer over the pulpit and call to someone beneath him; saw him draw back in to the furthest recess while he continued speaking, and heard, as Karfeld assumed his sudden tone of indignation, heard through all Karfeld's new anger and his high-pitched exhortation, through all the conjuration, the abuse and the encouragement, the unmistakable note of fear.
'The Sozis!' the young detective cried, far out across the crowd. His heels were together and his leather shoulders drawn well back and he bellowed through cupped hands. 'The Sozis are in the alley! The Socialists are attacking us!'
'It's a diversion,' Turner said, quite matter of fact. 'Siebkron's staging a diversion.' To lure him out, he thought; to lure out Leo and make him chance his hand. And here's the music to drown the shot, he added to himself, as the Marseillaise began. It's all set up to make him have a go. No one moved at first. The opening strains were barely audible; little, irrelevant notes played by a child on a mouth organ. And the singing which accompanied it was no more than the male chant from a Yorkshire pub on a Saturday night, remote and unconfident, proceeding from mouths unused to music; and to begin with the crowd really ignored it, because of its interest in Karfeld.
But Karfeld had heard the music, and it quickened him remarkably.
'I am an old man!' he shouted. 'Soon I shall be an old man. What will you say to yourselves, young men, when you wake in the morning? What will you say when you look at the American whore that is Bonn? You will say this: how long, young men, can we live without honour? You will look at your Government and say; you will look at the Sozis and say: must we follow even a dog because it is in office?'
He quoted Lear, Turner thought absurdly, and the floodlights were extinguished at one turn, a tone black fall of the curtain: deep darkness filled the square, and with it, the louder singing of the Marseillaise. He detected the acrid smell of pitch carried on the night air, as in countless places the sparks flickered and wheeled a way; he heard the whispered call and the whispered answer, he heard the order passed from mouth to mouth in hasty conspiracy. The singing and the music rose to a roar, picked up suddenly and quite deliberately by the loudspeakers: a mad, monstrous, plebeian, unsubtle roar, amplified and distorted almost beyond recognition, deafening and maddening.