Restitution (10 page)

‘This packet was gratefully liberated from an SS mess in East Prussia and has joyfully allied itself with the cause of anti-Fascism.’ Gregor’s grin gave her a glimpse of the
boy who’d loved pranks. She fetched the coffee pot, much lamented by Lena but not regarded as essential enough to take west. But Lena would never again make coffee. First Papi, now Lena. How
many more of them would she lose?

‘We asked about Papi everywhere we could.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth as she found the cups. ‘His name wasn’t on the list of those executed after the bomb plot,
but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dead.’

‘It must have been terrible for your mother.’

‘She became very practical, taking charge of things here.’ She was amused at the surprise on his face. ‘I know. It’s strange how war changes people.’

‘I remember her so well. She was vibrant, that’s the best word to describe her.’ And there was a look in his eyes that seemed to reflect images of Mami singing in the mornings
as she arranged flowers in the salon or teasing Papi about a malfunctioning clock. The flash of memory flickered and went out of Gregor’s eyes, and in its place Alix saw thousands of miles of
empty steppe and burned-out cities.

He blinked and she had the impression that he was dragging himself into the present. ‘Is the Steinway still in the salon?’

She nodded. He got up, holding out a hand. ‘Come and show me. I haven’t played for months. We found a piano in a house in East Prussia that hadn’t been wrecked. Before that I
had to make do with a mouth organ.’

‘A mouth organ?’ It seemed a very plebeian kind of instrument for someone like Gregor.

‘Don’t mock. I’m actually not bad. Played all kinds of Russian folk tunes for the guards.’ He came to another abrupt halt. Again she had the impression of leagues of
emptiness between them.

She took the lamp and led him through to the salon, pulled the dustsheet off the piano and opened the lid.

‘I hardly know where to start.’

She put the lamp on the Steinway and lit the candles above the fireplace.

‘Just play a scale or something.’ She sat on a sheet-covered sofa. Gregor played a C major scale with his right hand, then added the left. Stopped. Shook out his hands. Started
again, working up through all the scales, majors first then minors, then arpeggios, broken chords, his long fingers gliding over the keys. His shoulders relaxed as the notes became smoother and
more even.

‘Vavilov is missing the tip of one of his fingers. But he can still play almost as well as I can.’

‘Almost?’ The old Gregor Fischer had never believed in false modesty.

He grinned. ‘Even if he had all his fingers Vavilov’d still lack a certain seriousness of purpose in his music-making.’

She didn’t want to think about the intelligence officer now and turned her concentration to Gregor, noticing how his hair was growing long at the back of his neck. Red Army barbers must be
scarce. The curls looked soft, as though they belonged to a sleek young animal rather than a political enemy who’d survived imprisonment and war. She found herself wondering what the curls
would feel like to stroke.

‘It’s all still here.’ He tapped his head. She rose and pulled out a Prelude from the pile of Chopin sheet music kept in a mahogany box beside the Steinway. He played,
stumbling at first before regaining control. Against the chords, distant tanks rumbled a malevolent percussion – the war rolling on, unstoppable, unyielding. She and Gregor could sit inside
and listen to music but they were chaff, nothing more.

Gregor glanced at her and then to the shuttered windows.

‘No more. It’s too cold. And it reminds me of my father. He used to like hearing me play. He taught me, you know.’

He hadn’t mentioned Matthias before.

‘Gregor?’ He might not know what had happened. Alix remembered Mami telling her the news about his father, her face white. She’d sat next to Alix on the stone steps leading
down from the terrace and told her, her hands shaking so much she couldn’t hold her cigarette lighter. That had been the year before Papi was arrested. ‘Have you found out what happened
to your father?’

‘He was executed. Dachau.’ Gregor’s eyes took on a cold fire. ‘Vavilov told me. For a time I took great pleasure in seeing our men shoot German soldiers.’

Alix shivered and he must have noticed. ‘Wait by the stove,’ he ordered, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll bring in more logs.’

She opened her mouth to tell him not to, but what point was there hoarding wood now?

‘In the front porch,’ she told him.

As he made for the door something caught his eye. ‘Your mother’s gramophone. I remember this.’ His face lost its steeliness and looked like a child’s as he opened the
mahogany lid. ‘She used to take it on picnics. Needle looks fine.’ His face fell. ‘No records, though?’

‘Mami put them away after . . .’ After Papi’s arrest. She blinked.

‘So I can’t ask you to dance?’

‘Dance?’ She tried to remember when she’d last danced. At one of those wretched parties for young officers due back at the eastern front.

He put his arms around her waist. ‘I’ll hum.’

‘We’ll need to roll back the rugs.’ She could hardly meet Gregor’s eyes: she might have been a girl at her very first dance. He held out his arms to her and started to
hum ‘Roses from the South’.

He had been taught well. Strange that the aggressively modernist Eva had taught her son something so old-fashioned. After a while Gregor stopped humming, but the waltz continued in her ears. The
cold, dusty north German room became a ballroom, chandelier-lit and scented with hothouse flowers. Around her ankles rustled the taffeta of a magnificent ballgown, while medals twinkled on
Gregor’s mess jacket. Onlookers sipped champagne, girls flirted and giggled, the orchestra wore roses in their lapels. The occasional sprinkles of light against the windows weren’t
rockets or mortars; they were fireworks. The rumble of tanks was carriages clattering over an elegant cobbled street.

Dancing without music . . .

Gregor stopped. The sparkling ballroom dissolved and they were just two castaways, clutching one another. From the wall a series of black and white photos of Mami in her various film roles
stared down at them, her mouth in that photogenic half-smile, her eyes deep pools of indescribable emotion. Gregor released Alix. ‘Go. Wait in the kitchen.’

She did what he said and blew the candles out and took the lamp back to the stove, hearing him walk to the inner porch, where Lena always stored a day or two’s worth of logs in case they
were snowed in. The resinous scent of pine reached her before his tall figure came through the kitchen door. When had skinny Gregor Fischer become a man like this, a male creature with broad
shoulders who could carry armfuls of heavy logs without seeming to notice? He was still thin but there was a sinewy grace to his movements, despite the limp, visible even in that ill-fitting
uniform. She rose to open the stove door for him and he added the logs one by one. Flames curled round the wood, hissing and popping, their shapes reminding Alix of human figures running, writhing,
dancing.

He closed the stove door. ‘That should keep us going.’ He paused and caught her eye. ‘Alix, there’s something I must tell you—’

He stiffened suddenly and turned, eyes narrowed.

She’d heard it too.

‘The door.’ While they’d been fooling around in the salon the war had sent this reminder of their vulnerability.

Gregor’s hand went to his holster.

‘Perhaps it was just logs falling off the pile,’ she said. Please God.

‘No.’

There were other noises now. She knew the squeak the front door made. Now someone was treading across the marble tiles in the hall, past the antlers mounted on the walls. Whoever it was wore
heavy boots.

‘Stay in here.’ Gregor walked to the kitchen door, gun in hand. ‘Stand still,’ he ordered the intruder. ‘Hands on your head.’

Lamp in hand, Alix moved from the stove to stand behind Gregor. A man in a greatcoat glared at Gregor and raised his hands. ‘You,’ she said. No way of telling from Gregor’s
expression whether he recognized him too.

‘Alexandra?’ He sounded baffled. ‘I thought you’d left for the west.’

‘Shall I shoot him?’ Gregor asked. ‘I can take him outside.’ He sounded as though he was worried about making a mess on the marble floor.

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said the captive. ‘There are still a few SS units in the woods – with nothing to lose if they think you’ve killed someone of my
position.’ The slight accent still betrayed Preizler’s Tyrolean origins. Snow from his boots fell to the floor.

‘Drop it.’ Gregor nodded at Preizler’s gun, which clattered onto the marble, its Walther brand mark visible on the barrel.

‘Has he mistreated you, Alexandra?’ Preizler asked.

She shook her head without meeting his stare.

‘That was a very sudden push we made this morning,’ said Gregor. ‘Must have caught a lot of people out. Shame your Führer doesn’t listen to his
intelligence.’

Preizler looked surprised. Probably not expecting fluent, unaccented German from a Red.

‘You still don’t recognize me, do you?’ Gregor’s scorn seemed to fill the entrance hall. Preizler’s eyes betrayed confusion, followed by a flash of something else
– recognition? Dismay? Whatever it was he immediately reset his features to a stony indifference. ‘I expect it’ll all come back to you. Where’s the cellar key,
Alix?’

Preizler blinked at the familiar use of her name.

‘I’ll fetch it.’ But first she lit the small lamp on the table in the hall, not liking to leave Gregor in the dark with this man. She went back to the stove, where Lena kept
the key hanging on a nail.

‘Before you incarcerate me you may wish to know why I’m here,’ Preizler said when she came back.

Alix said nothing.

‘I’ve been working to free your father, Alix.’

‘That’s what Mami said.’ She tried to keep her voice neutral but her tone conveyed everything she felt about Preizler. ‘Doesn’t explain why you’re here now,
though.’

‘We – I – wanted to check he hadn’t come back here.’

‘Kind of you.’ She heard her voice shake.

‘This has all been quite a business. Treachery’s something they take very seriously.’

They.
He must think she was stupid. ‘I thought you were in Berlin. In some high-level meeting with my mother.’

‘Enough of this.’ Gregor waved the gun towards the steps leading down to the cellar door. ‘Go and unlock it, Alix. He can stay down there until Vavilov gets here. We’ll
question him then.’

Alix had reached the steps when she heard the front door squeak again. ‘Now you’ll see something you weren’t expecting,’ Preizler said, behind her.

‘Anton?
Liebling
?’ a voice hissed. Alix stiffened. It couldn’t be . . . Tiredness had confused her senses. She turned very slowly and looked at the figure standing in
the hallway.

A woman, clothed in furs, a silk scarf wrapped around her face to keep out the worst of the snow. It couldn’t be her . . . That
Liebling
. . . In north Germany an endearment only
for men in your close family. Or men you loved: lovers, in fact. Even if you moved in theatrical circles . . . She looked back at Gregor. He’d tell her she’d got this wrong. She saw the
confusion on his face. Perhaps he didn’t recognize this woman with her famous face – it had been seven years.

While Alix’s mind was throwing up all these jumbled thoughts she’d taken an involuntary step towards the woman. There was the click of a released safety catch on a gun.

In the confusion, Preizler had reached inside a pocket and pulled out a small pearl-handled gun. He pointed the delicate object at Gregor’s head. ‘Your turn to drop your
gun.’

Gregor’s revolver thumped down to the floor beside Preizler’s Walther.

‘Clara’s pistol,’ Preizler said. ‘I gave it to her so she could shoot the children and herself if the Reds caught them. But she’s safe across the Oder now.’
He sounded highly satisfied. ‘Is there anyone else in the house?’

Alix shook her head, seeing no advantage in pretending that there were Soviets upstairs. Any words she might have spoken were trapped inside her. The blood raced so violently through her veins
it must surely be audible. She clenched her hands.

‘Alix?’ the woman said. Alix closed her eyes and opened them again, willing them to tell her something else. She must be hallucinating. The slender figure in the furs she must have
retrieved from their Berlin apartment, that woman who’d lavished that endearment on Preizler, couldn’t be Mami.

‘You have all the information you require,’ her governess used to tell Alix. ‘How is it you can’t complete the equation, Alexandra?’

Well, Alix had all the solution right in front of her now, didn’t she? Mami plus Preizler. Of course the two of them had been lovers all along, playing this game of trying to free Papi as
an excuse for their assignations. How much of Mami’s grief for Papi had been guilt? And what a performance it had been! Worthy of anything she’d done at Babelsberg studios with all
those famous directors.

‘Alix?’ Mami was coming towards her, arms outstretched, anxiety furrowing the smooth skin ‘What on earth are you doing here? You were supposed to be on the road by now.
Where’s Lena? What happened?’ Her eyes swept Alix’s face. Alix stood back. ‘What is it?’ Then she saw Gregor and put a hand to her mouth. ‘My God!’

‘Baroness.’ Something seemed to be caught in Gregor’s throat.

‘It
is
you, Gregor Fischer! After all these years. But tell me, your mother—’

‘I suggest we sit in the warm.’ Preizler nodded towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll interrogate this one first.’

‘Interrogate him! Anton, this is—’

‘Go and lock the front door, Alix.’ She crossed the marbled floor, wondering if she could run for it. But who would help her? And she was still in her stockinged feet. She pulled the
thick iron bolts across the door and returned.
‘Gut.
Now put down the lamp and pick up those two guns,’ Preizler told her. ‘Lay them in front of me on the table when
I’ve sat down and then bring in the lamp.’