So by the time the pounding on my door started, I was prepared. But it wasn’t the police; it was Lily from the post office, tear-stained and frantic. Her father’s a revolutionary, that’s how she and Nini met.
‘They’ve got her, Frau Susanna! They’ve got Nini! They’ve rounded up everybody in the group — as soon as Knapp died they went to the cellar and took everyone.’
‘What happened to Knapp?’
‘Someone threw a bomb at his car as he was coming down the Ring.’
I took the paper from her. Assassination Horror screamed the headline. A young man dressed like a student had stepped out from behind a tree as the car slowed down to take a bend, and thrown a bomb. Herr Knapp died instantly, as did his chauffeur. His secretary was seriously injured and so were a number of by-standers. The assassin made no attempt to escape. ‘Long live the poor and the oppressed,’ he’d cried, and biting on a cap of fulminate of mercury which he had in his mouth, he fell lifeless to the ground.
‘You must tell me exactly how far Nini was involved,’ I said to Lily. ‘That’s the only way I can help her.’
‘I don’t know exactly, Frau Susanna. Honestly I don’t. I know she had to go to a hat shop in the Neuermarkt at three and pick up a message. It was part of a chain of messages, I think. But she couldn’t have been there when the bomb was thrown because she was in Ottakring when the police came and that was miles away. They were all there.’
Oh yes, I thought wearily. Naturally. They would all assemble afterwards so as to save the police the trouble of rounding them up one by one.
‘Where have they taken her, Lily? Have you any idea?’ Lily’s face was grim. ‘She’s at Pechau. They’ve taken her to Pechau.’
It’s the worst of all the gaols in the city: ancient, rat-infested, notorious. I packed a shawl, some washing things, a basket of food — quite without hope that they would let me see her.
It takes an hour to drive to Pechau and you can tell that you’re approaching it because even the surrounding streets are dank and squalid and the muffled people who walk in them seem blighted by the proximity of that awful place.
I had dressed carefully, I spoke carefully, I smiled. This got me past the outer office and into an inner one with a desk and a chair — and an official of the kind I remembered from the days when I had pleaded for particulars about my daughter. A stone-waller, a no-sayer, a cipher whose bumbledom was itself an act of cruelty.
‘I have come about my assistant. A dressmaker. A girl I have adopted. I think she was arrested last night in Ottakring.’
He drew a dossier towards him.
‘Name?’
I gave Nini’s name which is long and very Hungarian. He consulted his papers.
‘There is no one of this name here.’
Oh God, Nini — did you have to give a false name as well as everything else?
‘Herr Lieutenant,’ I said, elevating the oaf to officer status, ‘the girl is just twenty years old. She is a minor. Would you allow me to see the prisoners you took last night? That’s all I ask. Justice must be done, I entirely see that; she must take her punishment. But I am, in effect… her mother. I only ask to know where she is.’
I made no attempt to bribe him. The sums involved, the procedure, the donations to the Prison Officers’ Welfare Fund, were out of my reach. I could only entreat.
‘You may look at the female prisoners taken last night. Three minutes only. And leave the basket here.’
I followed a janitor into the basement.
It’s the smells that tell you first that you are in a place without hope. Unwashed bodies, urine, vomit… Then the sounds; moaning, keening, a raucous laughter that is worse than the wails… A monotonous, endless banging of something against iron… And the cold.
We had passed through a steel door into the women’s quarters. A series of cages, each the size of the lion’s cage in Schönbrunn Zoo, but filled with women. Some stood by the bars, hanging on with their hands as Alice had stood at Rudi’s funeral; some lay huddled on the ground, rolled up as if to make themselves as small as possible and minimize their wretchedness. A few sat with their backs to the wall, gossiping, not ashamed. These, I supposed, were the prostitutes who were picked up and released at the whim of the police. Nini was not in the first cage, nor in the second, on the floor of which lay a woman so old that it was impossible to believe she was still capable of wrongdoing. In the third cage I saw her at once. She had lost her jacket and her blouse was torn, one spiky shoulder protruded from it. There was a bruise on her forehead and a patch of dried blood. She still wore her assassination shoes.
‘Nini.’
She lifted her head, came towards me. Best not to remember her look as she saw me; I have done nothing to merit that. ‘Oh, Frau Susanna! How did you know?’
‘Lily told me. Don’t worry, Nini. I’ll find some way of helping you.’
She shook her head. ‘The others are all in the same boat. They’re all my companions. I mustn’t get anything they don’t get.’ She pushed her hair out of her eyes — prisoners are not allowed hair pins. ‘But we did it,’ she whispered, ‘we killed the swine!’
‘Yes. And a number of other people too. Listen, Nini, you know you mustn’t admit to anything — not even taking messages. Nothing. Not for your sake — you wouldn’t mind being martyred — but because you’ll make trouble for someone else.’
‘I know. Don’t worry, they can cut out my tongue.’ Then suddenly her eyes filled with tears. ‘They don’t let us go to the lavatory,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect that. We have to go in a bucket in here. With everyone watching. I expected the beatings, but not that.’
‘I’ll get help, Nini; we’ll get you out.’
But the janitor had had enough. ‘Time’s up. No more talking.’
I was led back to the office. ‘The sanitation in this prison’s a disgrace,’ I said furiously. ‘I’m going to see that questions are raised in Parliament.’
He shrugged. ‘No one’ll spend the money. Did you find the girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, they’ll be charged next week. Nothing to be done till then.’
‘I’ll be back with a solicitor,’ I said, and left.
I drove straight to the lawyer who had helped me when I rented my shop. He did not deal in criminal cases, but recommended a colleague in the Borse Platz. The colleague kept me waiting an hour and said he would find it very difficult, on ethical grounds, to defend an Anarchist. Even if he could overcome his scruples, the fee would be very high.
‘How high?’ I asked, and blenched as he told me.
‘Don’t you have a friend in Important Places?’ he asked, leering at me. ‘They’re worth all of us poor lawyers put together, these important friends.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’
Not any more. Not now.
Then I drove to the main post office and found Lily behind her grille, and she helped me to send a cable to New York.
Somehow I’ve crawled through the last three days. I’ve left it to Gretl to explain to my clients what has happened and most of them have been patient and understanding. The Baroness Lefevre even offered to ask her husband to plead for Nini, but when it came to the point the Baron didn’t feel able to intervene on behalf of a girl who wanted to destroy the fabric of society.
Meanwhile I’ve gone backwards and forwards between the prison and the offices of anyone I thought might possibly help me: lawyers, welfare workers, priests, but nothing has happened — nothing.
And there’s been no answer to my cable. I hadn’t really expected it.