Only a small lie, thought von Behren. He knew that the American film producer’s favors weren’t being called in for his sake, but for Marte Helle’s.
“Everything’s settled,” continued Wise. “We got the okay to ship you out of here. Final stop on your itinerary will be Los Angeles.”
“Indeed.” Von Behren watched the point of his cane knock aside a few more bits of plaster. “And will I be unaccompanied on this voyage?”
“Of course not. We talked about this already, Ernst. It’ll be you and Marte and this kid you told me about -”
“Pavli.” The director nodded. “Yes, that will be absolutely necessary. I doubt if Marte would consent to go, otherwise. She relies on him a great deal. As distantly related as they are – some type of cousins, I understand – they are the only family each of them has left now. They spend long hours in conversation with each other; things that I suppose are not to be shared with me.” Von Behren voice turned wistful for a moment. “No matter. Young Iosefni has proved himself valuable to me as well. Did I tell you we started shooting again, with him as my new cameraman? Extraordinary – he seems to have had experience with cine equipment, but he won’t tell me from where. His father or his uncle – somebody – ran a photographer’s studio; that’s all I’ve been able to find out.” A shrug. “He picked up quickly the few things I was able to show him, but his eye for angles and lighting – that is a gift. He should do well at your studio in Hollywood.”
“That’s fine. Happy to give him a chance. Since it’ll be a while before there’s any more filming going on around here.”
“I suppose that’s true, Herr Wise.” It would have been easier if his old studio, plus his crew and actors, had all wound up in the American or British zones. Getting anything done through the Russian headquarters was nearly impossible; truckloads and freight cars full of loot, everything from factory machines to a shiny brass mountain of marching band instruments, were already heading eastward, never to be seen again – not to mention any human resources the Russians thought might be of value to them. “But it seems a shame. I realize that is callous of me, but I almost feel as if the destruction we see around us -” He gestured toward the empty windows and fire-blackened buildings nearby. “It is as if I had designed it all myself, the most elaborate set a filmmaker could ever devise. You recall, in the last pages of the script, how the land is cursed for the sins of its noblemen? The red hunter exacts a terrible retribution. What better way to show that than to point our camera toward these photogenic ruins that have been provided for us? Really, Herr Wise, there are sections of the city where one would hardly know they were still part of the twentieth century.”
Such would be easily believed by the American producer; Wise had no doubt seen as much for himself. Since Wise’s arrival in Berlin on the coattails of the U.S. Army, after the Russian artillery had at last gone silent, there would have been plenty of time to tour the devastated areas, the streets that still stank of corpses not yet dug out from the rubble. Long before now, von Behren had grown sick of the war and its aftermath; he could barely wait for the day when he’d step off the the train at Union Station and walk out underneath the palm trees and caressing sunshine. The reports were already circulating through the Military Government offices about how many deaths from cold and starvation were likely when winter rolled across Europe; the sites where the mass graves would be dug had already been marked on the Occupation maps. He was planning on being well away before that grim time came.
“Guess you’ll be glad to get out of here.”
“How soon?” He asked the most important question. “Before we leave?”
Wise shrugged. “Might be a few weeks yet. I tried, but I couldn’t arrange a flight out for us. There’s a limit to what I can do. We’ll have to wait until there’s a ship sailing out of Marseilles, see if we can squeeze onto that.”
“It is perhaps for the best.” Von Behren lifted the viewfinder to his eye and sighted through it. “A shame that my film will remain unfinished. Wouldn’t that have been an excellent item to bring back with us to Hollywood? A print of the rough cut of Der Rote Jager.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Wise scanned across the ruins, then turned his gaze back to him. “There are always other movies to make. As long as you’ve got your talent lined up.” He frowned. “Actually, that’s why I came looking for you. I was thinking Marte might have been here.”
“Ah, yes. Our leading lady.” Von Behren smiled again. “I’m afraid I can’t help you at the moment. She and her cousin, young Iosefni, disappeared this morning on one of their mysterious errands.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Why should they tell me anything?” He shrugged. “But you have no reason to fear. Pawli is quite devoted to her. What harm could come to them now?”
Wise nodded, though his expression remained troubled. Von Behren could tell what the man was thinking. Mysterious was indeed the word for Marte Helle now, even more so than before. Her quiet beauty was even more evident, but in a way that had somehow touched a cold hand to his heart when he had seen her again. Perhaps something had formed inside her, like ice, where there had only been emptiness before. That was to be expected, he supposed; no one could walk through the war and come out unchanged. He hadn’t.
There was one physical change in Marte that von Behren had pointed out to Herr Wise, the director’s hand gesturing toward the image on the screen. Her eyes, that had both been blue before. Something had happened, as in old stories of a person’s hair turning white in one day. Now her eyes were like those of her distant relation, one still blue, the other transformed to golden-brown. As if a mask had been stripped away, revealing the true face, the cold, level gaze beneath…
In black-and-white, the change was noticeable only in extreme close-up, and he had already made plans to work around those, using outtakes from the reels he’d shot before. When Der Rote Jager was completed, it would be unlikely that anyone in the audience would be able to tell what had happened.
Small details; Wise had shrugged them off. “You better have a talk with her,” the American said now. “This city’s still hardly the safest place in the world in which to go wandering off. And if you’re going to have your things pulled together before the ship sails – all of you – you’d better get busy.”
“Yes, yes; of course.” Von Behren slipped the viewfinder into his pocket. “She has already made a promise to me about that. I expect she will keep it.”
Herr Wise left him still poking through the studio rubble. As he watched the American thread his way through the wreckage in the streets, he tried to push Marte’s face out of his thoughts.
Another remembered image rose inside him, unbidden, evoked by a glimpse down one of the rubble-filled streets, of the burnt and twisted ruins of the Reich Chancellery. That was where he had been, before making his way over here to the remains of the old studio. A group of Russian soldiers, their rifles slung behind their backs, had waved him over. They had known he was German, but it hadn’t seemed to matter to matter to them now. Alcohol made them friendly and expansive; von Behren had handed their schnapps bottle back, nodded and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and let himself be led by the elbow toward something lying on the ground. The other Russians had drawn back so he could have a clear view.
“ Alles kaput,” the Russian soldier beside von Behren had said. He spat at the dark, elongated object at their booted feet.
It had been a corpse, charred by gasoline, but not enough to have done more than blacken and shrivel the flesh upon the skeleton within. The first indication that von Behren had received, of what had happened to the bunker’s occupants. He had looked down at the corpse lying on its back, its slitted eye-sockets staring up at the sky above the shattered city. It’s Goebbels, he had thought suddenly; he could recognize the former Reichsminister, even in this state. Von Behren’s stomach had coiled into a sour knot as he sensed the vestiges of evil and desire still emanating from the dead thing before him. One of its hands, coal-black as the rest of the body, had been raised up into the air, as though trying to claw a hold upon some vision above it…