‘I’m going to bed,’ she said.
I tossed aside the book I was reading and said that I was going to turn in myself.
In Paul’s bedroom I spent a few minutes studying the map of Spain that was pinned to the boy’s wall, documenting the fortunes of the Condor Legions, before turning out the light. It seemed that every German schoolboy these days wanted to be a fighter-pilot. I was just settling down when there was a knock at the door.
‘May I come in?’ she said, hovering naked in the doorway. For a moment or two she just stood there, framed in the light from the hallway like some marvellous madonna, almost as if she were allowing me to assess her proportions. My chest and scrotum tightening, I watched her walk gracefully towards me.
Whereas her head and back were small, her legs were so long that she seemed to have been created by a draughtsman of genius. One hand covered her sex and this small shyness excited me very much. I allowed it for a short time while I looked upon the rounded simple volumes of her breasts. These were lightly, almost invisibly nippled, and the size of perfect nectarines.
I leant forwards, pushed that modest hand away, and then, taking hold of her smooth flanks, I pressed my mouth against the sleek filaments that mantled her sex. Standing up to kiss her I felt her hand reach down urgently for me, and winced as she peeled me back. It was too rough to be polite, to be tender, and so I responded by pushing her face first on to the bed, pulling her cool buttocks towards me and moulding her into a position that pleased me. She cried out at the moment when I plunged into her body, and her long thighs trembled wonderfully as we played out our noisy pantomime to its barnstorming denouement.
We slept until dawn came creeping through the thin material of the curtains. Awake before her, I was struck by her colour, which was every bit as cool as her awakening expression which changed not a bit as she sought to find my penis with her mouth. And then, turning on to her back, she pulled herself up the bed and laid her head on the pillow, her thighs yawning open so that I could see where life begins, and again I licked and kissed her there before acquainting it with the full rank of my ardour, pressing myself into her body until I thought that only my head and shoulders would remain unconsumed.
Finally, when there was nothing left in either of us, she wrapped herself round me and wept until I thought that she would melt.
19
Saturday, 29 October
‘I thought you’d like the idea.’
‘I’m not sure that I don’t. Just give me a second to swill it around my head.’
‘You don’t want her hanging around somewhere just for the hell of it. He’ll smell that shit in minutes and won’t go near her. It’s got to look natural.’
I nodded without a great deal of conviction and tried to smile at the BdM girl Becker had found. She was an extraordinarily pretty adolescent and I wasn’t sure what Becker had been more impressed with, her bravery or her breasts.
‘Come on, sir, you know what it’s like,’ he said. ‘These girls are always hanging around the Der Stürmer display cases on street corners. They get a cheap thrill reading about Jewish doctors interfering with mesmerized German virgins. Look at it this way. Not only will it stop her from getting bored, but also, if Streicher or his people are involved, then they’re more than likely going to take notice of her here, in front of one of these Sturmerkasten, than anywhere else.’
I stared uncomfortably at the elaborate, red-painted case, probably built by some loyal readers, with its vivid slogans proclaiming: ‘German Women: The Jews are your Destruction’, and the three double-page spreads from the paper under glass. It was bad enough to ask a girl to act as bait, without having to expose her to this kind of trash as well.
‘I suppose you’re right, Becker.’
‘You know I am. Look at her. She’s reading it already. I swear she likes it.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Ulrike.’
I walked over to the Sturmerkasten where she was standing, singing quietly to herself.
‘You know what to do, Ulrike?’ I said quietly, not looking at her now that I was beside her, but staring at the Fips cartoon with its mandatory ugly Jew. No one could look like that, I thought. The nose was as big as a sheep’s muzzle.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said brightly.
‘There are lots of policemen around. You can’t see them, but they are all watching you. Understand?’ I saw her head nod in the reflection on the glass. ‘You’re a very brave girl.’
At that she started to sing again, only louder, and I realized that it was the Hitler Youth song:
‘Our flag see before us fly,
Our flag means an age without strife,
Our flag leads us to eternity,
Our flag means more to us than life.’
I walked back to where Becker was standing and got back into the car.
‘She’s quite a girl, isn’t she, sir?’
‘She certainly is. Just make sure that you keep your flippers off her, do you hear?’
He was all innocence. ‘Come on, sir, you don’t think I’d try to bird that one, do you?’ He got into the driving seat and started the engine.
‘I think you’d fuck your great-grandmother, if you really want my opinion.’ I glanced over each shoulder. ‘Where are your men?’
‘Sergeant Hingsen’s on the first floor of that apartment building there,’ he said, ‘and I’ve got a couple of men on the street. One is tidying up the graveyard on the corner, and the other’s cleaning windows over there. If our man does show up, we’ll have him.’
‘Do the girl’s parents know about this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Rather public-spirited of them to give their permission, wouldn’t you say?’
‘They didn’t exactly do that, sir. Ulrike informed them that she had volunteered to do this in the service of the Fiihrer and the Fatherland. She said that it would be unpatriotic to try and stop her. So they didn’t have much choice in the matter. She’s a forceful sort of girl.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Quite a swimmer, too, by all accounts. A future Olympic prospect, her teacher reckons.’
‘Well, let’s just hope for a bit of rain in case she has to try and swim her way out of trouble.’
I heard the bell in the hall and went to the window. Pulling it up I leant out to see who was working the bell-pull. Even three storeys up I could recognize Vogelmann’s head of distinctive red hair.
‘That’s a very common thing to do,’ said Hildegard. ‘Lean out of a window like a fishwife.’
‘As it happens, I might just have caught a fish. It’s Vogelmann. And he’s brought a friend.’
‘Well, you had better go and let them in, hadn’t you?’
I walked out on to the landing and operated the lever that pulled the chain to open the street door, and watched the two men climb up the stairs. Neither one of them said anything.
Vogelmann came into Hildegard’s apartment wearing his best undertaker’s face, which was a blessing since the grim set to his halitosic mouth meant that, for a while at least, it stayed mercifully shut. The man with him was shorter than Vogelmann by a head, and in his mid-thirties, with fair hair, blue eyes and an intense, even academic air about him. Vogelmann waited until we were all seated before introducing the other man as Dr Otto Rahn, and promised to say more about him presently. Then he sighed loudly and shook his head.
‘I’m afraid that I have had no luck in the search for your daughter Emmeline,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked everyone I could possibly have asked, and looked everywhere I could possibly have looked. With no result. It has been most disappointing.’ He paused, and added: ‘Of course, I realize that my own disappointment must count as nothing besides your own. However, I thought I might at least find some trace of her.