The kitchen floor was cold to his naked feet. He opened a couple of cupboards. Dusty crockery and a few half-empty packets of food. The refrigerator was ancient, might have been borrowed from some institute of biology, its contents blue-furred and mottled with exotic moulds. Self-catering, it was clear, was not a priority around here. He boiled a kettle, rinsed a mug and heaped in three spoonfuls of instant coffee.
He wandered through the apartment sipping the bitter drink. In the sitting room he stood beside the window and pulled back the curtain a fraction. Billow Strasse was deserted. He could see the telephone box, dimly illuminated, and the shadows of the station entrance behind it. He let the curtain fall back.
America. The prospect had never occurred to him before. When he thought of it, his brain reached automatically for the images Doctor Goebbels had thoughtfully planted there. Jews and Negroes. Top-hatted capitalists and smokestack factories. Beggars on the streets. Striptease bars. Gangsters shooting at one another from vast automobiles. Smouldering tenements and modern jazz bands, wailing across the ghettos like police sirens. Kennedy’s toothy smile. Charlie’s dark eyes and white limbs. America.
He went into the bathroom. The walls were stained by steam clouds and splashes of soap. Bottles everywhere, and tubes, and small pots. Mysterious feminine objects of glass and plastic. It was a long time since he had seen a woman’s bathroom. It made him feel clumsy and foreign — the heavy-footed ambassador of some other species. He picked up a few things and sniffed at them, squeezed a drop of white cream on to his finger and rubbed at it with his thumb. This smell of her mingled with the others already on his hands.
He wrapped himself in a large towel and sat down on the floor to think. Three or four times before dawn he heard her shout out in her sleep — cries of real fear. Memory or prophecy? He wished he knew.
TWO
Just before seven he went down into Bulow Strasse. His Volkswagen was parked a hundred metres up the street, on the left, outside a butcher’s shop. The owner was hanging plump carcasses in the window. A heaped tray of blood-red sausages at his feet reminded March of something.
Globus’s fingers, that’s what it was — those immense raw fists.
He bent over the back seat of the Volkswagen, tugging his suitcase towards him. As he straightened, he glanced quickly in either direction. There was nothing special to see — just the usual signs of an early Saturday morning. Most shops would open as normal but then close at lunchtime in honour of the holiday.
Back in the apartment he made more coffee, set a mug on the bedside table beside Charlie, and went into the bathroom to shave. After a couple of minutes he heard her come in behind him. She clasped her arms around his chest and squeezed, her breasts pressing into his bare back. Without turning round he kissed her hand and wrote in the steam on the mirror: PACK. NO RETURN. As he wiped away the message, he saw her clearly for the first time — hair tangled, eyes half-closed, the lines of her face still soft with sleep. She nodded and ambled back into the bedroom.
He dressed in his civilian clothes as he had for Zurich, but with one difference. He slipped his Luger into the right-hand pocket of his trench coat. The coat- old surplus Wehrmacht-issue, picked up cheaply long ago — was baggy enough for the weapon not to show. He could even hold the pistol and aim it surreptitiously through the material of the pocket, gangster-style: “Okay, buddy, let’s go.” He smiled to himself. America, again.
The possible presence of a microphone cast a shadow over their preparations. They moved quietly around the apartment without speaking. At ten past eight she was ready. March collected the radio from the bathroom, placed it on the table in the sitting room, and turned up the volume. “From the pictures sent in for exhibition it is clear that the eye of some men shows them things other than as they are — that there really are men who on principle feel meadows to be blue, the heavens green, the clouds sulphur-yellow…” It was the custom at this time to rebroadcast the Fuhrer’s most historic speeches. They replayed this one every year — the attack on modern painters, delivered at the inauguration of the House of German Art in 1937.
Ignoring her silent protests, March picked up her suitcase as well as his own. She donned her blue coat. From one shoulder she hung a leather bag. Her camera dangled from the other. On the threshold, she turned for a final look.
“Either these "artists" do really see things in this way and believe in that which they represent — then one has but to ask how the defect in vision arose, and if it is hereditary the Minister of the Interior will have to see to it that so ghastly a defect shall not be allowed to perpetuate itself- or, if they do not believe in the reality of such impressions but seek on other grounds to impose them upon the nation, then it is a matter for a criminal court.”
They closed the door on a storm of laughter and applause.
As they went downstairs, Charlie whispered: “How long does this go on?”
“All weekend.”
“That will please the neighbours.”
“Ah, but will anyone dare ask you to turn it down?”
At the foot of the stairs, as still as a sentry, stood the concierge — a bottle of milk in one hand, a copy of the Volkischer Beobachter tucked under her arm. She spoke to Charlie but stared at March: “Good morning, Fraulein.”
“Good morning, Frau Schustermann. This is my cousin, from Aachen. We are going to record the images of spontaneous celebration on the streets.” She patted her camera. “Come on, Harald, or we’ll miss the start.”
The old woman continued to scowl at March and he wondered if she recognised him from the other night. He doubted it: she would only remember the uniform. After a few moments she grunted and waddled back into her apartment.
“You lie very plausibly/ said March, when they were out on the street.
“A journalist’s training.” They walked quickly towards the Volkswagen. “It was lucky you weren’t wearing your uniform. Then she really would have had some questions.”
There is no possibility of Luther getting into a car driven by a man in the uniform of an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer. Tell me: do I look like an Embassy chauffeur?”
“Only a very distinguished one.”
He stowed the suitcases in the trunk of the car. When he was settled in the front seat, before he switched on the engine, he said: “You can never go back, you realise that? Whether this works or not. Assisting a defector — they’ll think you’re a spy. It won’t be a question of deporting you. It’s much more serious than that.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “I never cared for that place anyway.”
He turned the key in the ignition and they pulled out into the morning traffic.
DRIVING carefully, checking every thirty seconds to make sure they were not being followed, they reached Adolf Hitler Platz at twenty to nine. March executed one circuit of the square. Reich Chancellery, Great Hall, Wehrmacht High Command building — all seemed as it should be: masonry gleamed, guards marched; everything was as crazily out of scale as ever.
A dozen tour buses were already disgorging their awed cargoes. A crocodile file of children made its way up the snowy steps of the Great Hall, towards the red granite pillars, like a line of ants. In the centre of the Platz, beneath the great fountains, were piles of crush barriers, ready to be put into position on Monday morning, when the Fuhrer was due to drive from the Chancellery to the Hall for the annual ceremony of thanksgiving. Afterwards he would return to his residence to appear on the balcony. German television had erected a scaffolding tower directly opposite. Live broadcast vans clustered around its base.