Rath needed a moment to work out what was happening. It was Tornow’s initial, barely suppressed cry of pain that alerted him.
‘Pull your hand away, for God’s sake,’ he cried.
‘I can’t! I can’t!’ Tornow’s voice was already panicked. ‘Stop the damn thing! Stop it.’
Rath looked around for an emergency switch, but that was nonsense: it was gravity pulling the gasometer down. Someone had to pump in more gas to reverse its relentless downwards motion. He climbed onto the maintenance gangway, ignoring Tornow’s cries, and called down to the others. ‘Stop it!’ he shouted, as loud as he could. ‘You need to stop the gasometer. Send it back up!’
He couldn’t tell whether they had understood. Tornow was still screaming when he climbed back onto the dome and tried to lift him out of the trap. It was hopeless.
Tornow pulled on Rath’s arm, but it was already too late. The two rails had wedged his forearm tight and wouldn’t let go.
He screamed like a banshee as the bones in his forearm broke one by one. Rath tried to pull him away, but couldn’t, the steel rails that were slowly moving apart had his arm firmly in their grip. The pistol slipped onto the catwalk grating; Tornow’s hand hung loose and strangely contorted above it.
Tornow wasn’t screaming any more. The pain had rendered him unconscious. Still, the gasometer descended relentlessly, millimetre by millimetre. Rath heard muscles and ligaments tear, bones crack, and despairingly tried again to pull him away. He didn’t think about what he was doing, just pulled and pulled, knowing all the while that it was hopeless. Then, abruptly, and with one final, ugly noise that sounded like a curtain ripping, the gasometer released the cadet, and Rath pulled his body away from the handrail.
Dismayed and exhausted, Rath gazed at the unconscious Tornow, at his right arm, or what remained of it. From the shredded stump jutted fragments of bone, torn sinews and ligaments. Blood sprayed at regular intervals onto the metal of the gas bell. Rath took his belt and bound Tornow’s arm, until the blood was no more than spitting from the horrific wound. He climbed onto the maintenance gangway, surprised, at that moment, not to experience any vertigo, and looked for Gennat and the officers below. ‘An ambulance,’ he shouted down. ‘We need an ambulance, God damnit! Quickly!’
Part III
CODA: Escape
119
The announcement that grated through the loudspeaker sounded every bit as miserable as Rath felt.
‘Attention please, the fast train from Hannover will shortly be arriving at platform 3. Please mind the platform!’
He stood with Kirie in the queue, waiting to buy a platform ticket. They had already checked in Charly’s luggage but, even so, her nervousness was driving him mad. He had accompanied her to the station as a matter of course… but something told him it was a bad idea, and not just because he hated goodbyes.
‘Come on,’ she said, for at least the twenty-third time, ‘or we’ll miss the train.’
He rolled his eyes, but the gesture was only seen by the man at the counter, who assumed it was directed at him.
‘Hold your horses! I’ll be with you soon.’ First he had to supply tickets to a family of five.
Rath winked at Charly and waved the ticket as if he had won first prize in the lottery, but she seemed to have left her sense of humour at home. Perhaps she had stowed it in one of the three suitcases that were making the long journey with her.
They made for platform two where the train to Paris (via Magdeburg, Hannover, Cologne and Brussels) was scheduled to depart in twenty minutes. Kirie pulled on her lead excitedly, sensing, as usual, that something wasn’t quite right.
Potsdamer Bahnhof was where Rath had begun his own fateful journey, arriving in the crisp cold of March 1929. It was where he had received and taken leave of his few visitors since then; and it was where, in a station locker, he had deposited evidence that no one must ever find.
Yet never before had he felt so out of place.
They walked along the platform, hoping to avoid the crowds. Charly looked at her watch. ‘Where has Professor Heymann got to?’
‘The train doesn’t leave for fourteen minutes. It hasn’t even arrived yet.’
She wasn’t listening, but rummaging in her handbag, looking for her passport for the umpteenth time.
‘In the side pocket,’ he said. ‘Next to the ticket.’
He couldn’t bear it any longer, and didn’t know how he would manage the next quarter of an hour until her professor showed up. He had to take his leave now while they were still alone and a private, intimate goodbye was still halfway possible.
‘Kirie and I had better go. We don’t want everyone to find out that… you know.’
Charly nodded wistfully. She leaned down and ruffled Kirie’s black fur. ‘Well, my darling, look after this one for me,’ she said. ‘I’m glad he’s still got you at least.’
She stood up straight and looked at Rath. He could hardly bear her gaze. ‘Let’s keep it brief,’ he said. ‘I hate long goodbyes.’
She nodded.
He took her in his arms. ‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear, as a shrill whistle sounded from the platform opposite. He wondered if he had ever told her before, remembering an old saying: that love disappears as soon as you give it a name. You should never talk about love, simply live it. He could no longer remember which clever person laid claim to it, but all of a sudden it seemed horribly plausible.
‘What did you say?’ Charly asked, looking at him through eyes which seemed strangely different. The whole situation felt unreal.
‘Nothing important,’ he said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. She hadn’t heard, perhaps that was a good sign. ‘So!’ he adopted a confident smile. ‘Safe trip. I’ll call you tomorrow in the hotel.’
She nodded, but looked straight through him, as if she hadn’t processed what he said. ‘Oh, look, there’s Guido,’ she said and waved over Rath’s shoulder. ‘How nice of him.’
Guido, the grinning man? Rath looked around. Him as well! Time to leave, before her friend Greta showed up too.
He embraced her so tight it was as if, for a fraction of a second, he never wanted to let go, and kissed her. She didn’t reciprocate, probably because Guido was already close by. Rath looked at her for a final time, her face, her eyes, and turned around. He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear to stand here with Guido to wave her off. Greta, too, had always despised him. Charly must see that! He had pictured their goodbye differently. He didn’t know how, exactly, just differently. The lump in his throat grew larger.
He met Guido with a mumbled greeting, and proceeded towards the milling mass in the station concourse, not wanting to turn around in case he triggered some catastrophe, like Orpheus or Lot’s wife.
Passing through the platform barriers he gave in and, though he didn’t turn into a pillar of salt, and Charly didn’t glide off, never to be seen again, part of him felt as if they had parted for good. She didn’t even gaze after him. Instead she chatted animatedly with Guido, who gave her a friendly hug and handed her a package, a book most likely, for the long journey. All of which reminded Gereon that he hadn’t got her anything. Whatever, he had no idea about books, and you didn’t give someone flowers at a train station…
He could no longer stand and watch.
‘Come on, Kirie,’ he said, jostling his way through the mass of people without really noticing them.
In the initial weeks following Charly’s abduction he had felt close to her like never before. At the same time, her imminent departure had cast a cloud over everything. She would be in Paris for six months, and they hadn’t even discussed seeing each other in that time. He didn’t know what to make of it, only that he would have wished it otherwise.