“Oh, it wasn’t exactly a newspaper kiosk,” he said. “It was one of those solid iron kiosks you see everywhere plastered with posters.”
“You’d better show me the place.”
“But is Anna all right?”
“The police are watching the flat. They won’t try anything else yet.”
I didn’t want to make a fuss and stir in the neighbourhood with a police car, so we took trams-several trams, changing here and there, and came into the district on foot. I didn’t wear my uniform, and I doubted anyway after the failure of the attempt on Anna, whether they would risk a watcher. “This is the turning,” Martins said and led me down a side street. We stopped at the kiosk. “You see he passed behind here and simply vanished-into the ground.”
“That was exactly where he did vanish to,” I said.
“How do you mean?”
An ordinary passer-by would never have noticed that the kiosk had a door, and of course it had been dark when the man disappeared. I pulled the door open and showed to Martins the little curling iron staircase that disappeared into the ground. He said, “Good God, then I didn’t imagine him…”
“It’s one of the entrances to the main sewer.”
“And anyone can go down?”
“Anyone.”
“How far can one go?”
“Right across Vienna. People used them in air raids: some of our prisoners hid for two years down there. Deserters have used them-and burglars. If you know your way about you can emerge again almost anywhere in the city through a manhole or a kiosk like this one. The Austrians have to have special police for patrolling these sewers.” I closed the door of the kiosk again. I said, “So that’s how your friend Harry disappeared.”
“You really believe it was Harry?”
“The evidence points that way.”
“Then whom did they bury?”
“I don’t know yet, but we soon shall, because we are digging him up again. I’ve got a shrewd idea, though, that Koch wasn’t the only inconvenient man they murdered.”
Martins said, “It’s a bit of a shock.”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. You can bet he’s hiding out now in another zone. We have no line now on Kurtz, for Harbin’s blown-he must have been blown or they wouldn’t have staged that mock death and funeral.”
“But it’s odd, isn’t it, that Koch didn’t recognize the dead man’s face from the window.”
“The window was a long way up and I expect the face had been damaged before they took the body out of the car.”
He said thoughtfully, “I wish I could speak to him. You see, there’s so much I simply can’t believe.”
“Perhaps you are the only one who could speak to him. It’s risky though, because you do know too much.”
“I still can’t believe… I only saw the face for a moment.” He said, “What shall I do?”
“He won’t leave his zone now. The only person who could persuade him to come over would be you-or her, if he still believes you are his friend. But first you’ve got to speak to him. I can’t see the line.”
“I could go and see Kurtz. I have the address.”
I said, “Remember. Lime may not want you to leave the Russian zone when once you are there, and I can’t protect you there.”
“I want to clear the whole damned thing up,” Martins said, “but I’m not going to act as a decoy. I’ll talk to him. That’s all.”
SUNDAY HAD laid its false peace over Vienna: the wind had dropped and no snow had fallen for twenty-four hours. All the morning trams had been full, going out to Grinzing where the young wine was drunk and to the slopes of snow on the hills outside. Walking over the canal by the makeshift military bridge, Martins was aware of the emptiness of the afternoon: the young were out with their toboggans and their skis, and all around him was the after-dinner sleep of age. A notice-board told him that he was entering the Russian zone, but there were no signs of occupation. You saw more Russian soldiers in the Inner City than here.
Deliberately he had given Mr Kurtz no warning of his visit. Better to find him out than a reception prepared for him. He was careful to carry with him all his papers, including the laissez-passer of the four powers that on the face of it allowed him to move freely through all the zones of Vienna. It was extraordinarily quiet over here on the other side of the canal, and a melodramatic journalist had painted a picture of silent terror: but the truth was simply the wide streets, the greater shell damage, the fewer people-and Sunday afternoon. There was nothing to fear, but all the same in this huge empty street where all the time you heard your own feet moving, it was difficult not to look behind.
He had no difficulty in finding Mr Kurtz’s block, and when he rang the bell the door was opened quickly, as though Mr Kurtz expected a visitor, by Mr Kurtz himself.
“Oh,” Mr Kurtz said, “it’s you, Rollo,” and made a perplexed motion with his hand to the back of his head. Martins had been wondering why he looked so different, and now he knew. Mr Kurtz was not wearing the toupee, and yet his head was not bald. He had a perfectly normal head of hair cut close. He said, “It would have been better to have telephoned to me: you nearly missed me: I was going out.”
“May I come in a moment?”
“Of course.”
In the hall a cupboard door stood open, and Martins saw Mr Kurtz’s overcoat, his raincoat, a couple of soft hats and hanging sedately on a peg like a wrap, Mr Kurtz’s toupee. He said, “I’m glad to see your hair has grown,” and was astonished, in the mirror on the cupboard door, to see the hatred flame and blush on Mr Kurtz’s face. When he turned Mr Kurtz smiled at him like a conspirator and said vaguely: “It keeps the head warm.”
“Whose head?” Martins asked, for it had suddenly occurred to him how useful that toupee might have been on the day of the accident. “Never mind,” he went quickly on, for his errand was not with Mr Kurtz. “I’m here to see Harry.”
“Harry?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Are you mad?”
I’m in a hurry, so let’s assume that I am. Just make a note of my madness. If you should see Harry-or his ghost-let him know that I want to talk to him. A ghost isn’t afraid of a man, is it? Surely it’s the other way round. I’ll be waiting in the Prater by the Big Wheel for the next two hours-if you can get in touch with the dead, hurry.” He added, “Remember, I was Harry’s friend.”
Kurtz said nothing, but somewhere, in a room off the hall, somebody cleared his throat. Martins threw open a door: he had half expected to see the dead rise yet again, but it was only Dr. Winkler who rose from a kitchen chair, in front of the kitchen stove, and bowed very stiffly and correctly with the same celluloid squeak.
“Dr. Winkle,” Martins said. Dr. Winkler looked extraordinarily out of place in a kitchen. The debris of a snack lunch littered the kitchen table, and the unwashed dishes consorted very ill with Dr. Winkler’s cleanness.
‘Winkler,” the doctor corrected him with stony patience.
Martins said to Kurtz: “Tell the doctor about my madness. He might be able to make a diagnosis. And remember the place-by the Great Wheel. Or do ghosts only rise by night?” He left the flat.
For an hour he waited, walking up and down to keep warm, inside the enclosure of the Great Wheeclass="underline" the smashed Prater with its bones sticking crudely through the snow was nearly empty. One stall sold thin flat cakes like cartwheels, and the children queued with their coupons. A few courting couples would be packed together in a single car of the Wheel and revolve slowly above the city surrounded by empty cars. As the car reached the highest point of the Wheel, the revolutions would stop for a couple of minutes and far overhead the tiny faces would press against the glass. Martins wondered who would come for him. Was there enough friendship left in Harry for him to come alone, or would a squad of police arrive? It was obvious from the raid on Anna Schmidt’s flat that he had a certain pull. And then as his watch hand passed the hour, he wondered: was it all an invention of my mind? are they digging up Harry’s body now in the Central Cemetery?