He gripped her arms in strong hands, shaking her. The green glitter in his eyes was cold. ‘You don’t love any man more than you love your Daddy, do you?’
She hung her head. ‘Daddy…’
He shook her harder. ‘Do you?’
‘No, Daddy,’ she whispered.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘And you know that no man will ever love you better than I do, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘You know that I’ve taken care of you all your life. You know that no man could have taken better care of you. Don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘All your life. From when you were a little, tiny girl. I dried your first tears.’ He rubbed his thumb under her brimming eyes. ‘Just as I’m drying your tears now. Isn’t that right?’
A heavy calm was settling over her, following the slow, rhythmical cadence of his voice, an acceptance that was like despair. But it was better than the anguish. It stopped her from falling into the chasm. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said dully.
‘You see, Rosie, the difference between me and all other men is that I understand you. Nobody else can. Nobody else ever will. I’m sure this Cubby is a nice enough boy, but he can never know you the way I know you. Sooner or later, he’ll find out what you really are, and then he’ll hurt you. He’ll go away. I will never hurt you. And I will never go away. I will always be here.’
‘Daddy…’ She swayed against him. He took her in his arms again, stroking her tangled hair with one hand.
‘It’s all over now,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll forget everything and then you’ll be better again. Calm again. It’s going to be great. The best. You and me. Nobody else. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just you and me?’
She nodded her head, no longer able to speak.
‘Good.’ He studied her face. ‘You’re so tired. This has been bad for you, Rosie. Very bad. We can’t let this happen again, can we?’
She shook her head.
‘You need to sleep, now. Go to your room and get into bed.’
She walked away from him slowly, like a woman in a dream, her eyes almost closed. He made sure she got out of the door without bumping herself, and watched her drift down the dimly lit corridor and vanish into the shadows.
Then he went back to the telephone on his desk and called his wife.
‘She’s arrived safely,’ he told her. ‘She’s calm now. I’m putting her to bed. Everything’s under control.’
The Western Approaches
Servicing the torpedoes was a regular task which nobody enjoyed, least of all the crew who had to live in the company of the greasy monsters. It didn’t help that the sea continued to be very rough. U-113 pitched and rolled violently, causing even the nimblest sailors to lose their footing and slide into metal projections which seemed designed to imprint the human body with a rich diversity of bruises.
In the forward torpedo room, the torpedo mechanics were hauling the long, heavy ‘fish’ out of their racks, using the hoists installed for that purpose. The things were twenty-five feet long, weighing three thousand pounds, eight hundred pounds of which was high explosive. They were complex beasts, with tails and fins and brains and teeth, and they could swim at a speed of forty knots.
The few ratings who had chosen to remain watched the torpedomen unbolt the access hatches of the torpedoes and work in their tangled entrails. The rest were squatting along the passageways, some with miniature chessboards between them: Rudi Hufnagel, in an effort to combat the tensions bred by boredom and fear on board, had organised a chess tournament.
He had drawn up a league table with considerable care. Out of forty-eight crew members, twenty-three were chess players. All of them had signed up eagerly. Somewhat to Hufnagel’s surprise, Todt put his name on the list, and as luck would have it, the commander drew Hufnagel for his first match. They played in the captain’s quarters, wedged around his fold-down table. Todt wore his white captain’s cap, perhaps to remind Hufnagel who was boss.
‘Chess,’ Todt said, inserting his pieces into the little holes on the board, ‘is an intrinsically Aryan game.’
‘I thought it was Persian.’
‘Exactly so. The Persians are descended from ancient Aryan races. It is from the very word “Aryan” that they draw the name of their country, Iran. The meaning of the word “Aryan” is free, noble and strong.’ Todt made his first move and scratched at an ugly red rash that had spread around his groin. Despite the cold, he was wearing shorts so as to air the inflammation.
‘That’s very interesting,’ Hufnagel said, making his countermove. He was wondering whether to try to win his match or whether it would be more diplomatic to allow the captain to beat him.
‘Do you know that I found recordings by Vladimir Horowitz in the crew’s music collection?’ Todt said.
‘That is very serious,’ Hufnagel replied gravely.
Todt did not pick up the irony in his tone. ‘The difference between music made by Aryans and music made by Jews is the difference between healthy air and poison gas. Any contact with Jews spreads an infection, insidious but deadly, which eventually overpowers the strongest organism. The danger of Jewish infection is something you ignored when you took one of their females to your bed.’
Hufnagel had a memory of a night at the opera, of a soft body in his arms, of soft lips on his. He moved a pawn, saying nothing.
‘And this is not to mention the case of negro music, which although different, is equally dangerous. Negro music attempts to excite the worst passions in man, to drag man down to the level of a jungle ape. It drives the listener to sexual excess of the worst kind. And in the United States, of course, the Negroes have been given a dominant place.’
‘If you say so,’ Hufnagel replied dryly.
‘They are allowed to dominate in music and sport, to name but two areas.’
Hufnagel hid a sour smile. No sooner had the Nazis banned Aryans from frolicking to the rhythms of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington when along had come Jesse Owens and his Negro teammates to sweep past pure-blooded Germans at the Berlin Olympics – and that under the nose of the Führer. ‘Shocking,’ he murmured.
‘Shocking indeed. This worship of the savage is the surest sign that the American culture is doomed.’
Half-listening to Todt’s high-flown analysis of what he called ‘nigger-music’, Hufnagel tried to disguise his boredom. Unlike Todt, he had visited America, albeit briefly. Their training ship had docked at Baltimore, Maryland, and a group of them had caught the train to New York to do some sightseeing.
They’d been careful not to show swastikas or other emblems, knowing that Nazism was already held in opprobrium by many people. He remembered the first Negroes he had seen, their lively grace, their seeming good-fellowship, mingled with a certain humorous cynicism.
They had strolled around Harlem, looking at the dark folk and listening to their music spilling out of shabby doorways, along with the smell of spicy cooking. He’d been struck by the difference between them and the hard-faced, thrusting, white New Yorkers who bustled like ants from one skyscraper to another.
He studied the board. Perhaps in his enthusiasm for the topic, Todt had made an unwise move. Hufnagel capitalised on this quietly, bringing up a knight which had been previously held back, strengthening his command of the middle of the board. As they played, they could hear noises from the bows of the U-boat, where the torpedomen were working, the rattle of chain winches and the clank of tools on metal casings.
Todt continued. ‘This war, Hufnagel, is not being waged for profit or land. We are Teutonic knights, going to war against an enemy who spreads his tentacles right around the globe. If we allow infection to spread here, under our very armour, then, Hufnagel, we are beaten before we begin.’ He scratched his crotch, looking more closely at the board. ‘I see I have made bad moves.’