The Foreign Correspondent (24 page)

He stopped at the threshold. Inside a dark bedroom, a white shape was stretched full length on the bed. “Christa?”

“Oh my God,” she said, sitting bolt upright. “I fell asleep.” Slowly, she lay back down. “I meant to answer the door,” she said. “Like this.”

“I would have liked that,” he said. He went and sat beside her, bent over and kissed her briefly, then stood and began to undress. “Next time, my love, leave a note on the door, or a garter, or something.”

She laughed. “Forgive me.” She propped her head on her hand and watched as he took off his clothes. Then she put a hand out, he took it in his, and she said, “I am so happy you’re here, Carlo.” He kissed her hand, then went back to unbuttoning his shirt.

“I did wonder,” he said. “I thought I was going to a party.”

“But my dear, you are.”

Done with his clothes, he lay down on the bed and stroked her side. “I thought you might call, last night.”

“Better for me now not to go to a hotel,” she said. “That’s why all of this, your friend Wolf, and dear Alma. But, no matter.” She put her arm around his shoulders and embraced him, her breasts against his chest. “I have what I want,” she said, her voice softening.

“The front door is ajar,” he said.

“Don’t worry, you can close it later. Nobody comes here, it’s a building of ghosts.”

The skin of her legs was cool, and smooth to the touch. His hand moved slowly, up and back, he was in no hurry, took such pleasure in anticipation that what came next seemed somewhere in a distant future.

Finally, she said, “Perhaps you’d better close the door, after all.”

“Allright.” Reluctantly, he stood and headed for the door.

“Ghosts might hear things,” she said as he left the room. “We wouldn’t want that.”

He was back in a moment. “Poor Carlo,” she said. “Now we’ll have to begin all over again.”

“I guess I must,” he said, his voice elated. After a time, she moved her legs apart, and guided his hand. “God,” she said, “how I love this.”

He could tell that she did.

Sliding down the bed, so that her head was level with his waist, she said, “Just stay where you are, there is something I have wanted to do for a long time.”

“May I have one of those?” she said.

He took a cigarette from his pack of Gitanes, handed it to her, then lit it with his steel lighter. “I don’t recall you smoking.”

“I’ve taken it up. I used to, in my twenties, then I stopped.”

She found an ashtray on the night table and put it between them on the bed. “Everybody smokes now, in Berlin. It helps.”

“Christa?”

“Yes?”

“Why can’t you go to the Adlon?”

“Too public. Somebody would tell the police.”

“Are they after you?”

“They’re interested, in me. They suspect I might be a bad girl, I have a few of the wrong friends. So, I asked Alma for a favor. She was very enthusiastic.” After a moment, she said, “I wanted to make it exciting. Answer the door, all bare-assed and perfumed.”

“You can do it tomorrow. Can we come here tomorrow?”

“Oh yes, we shall. How long can you stay?”

“Two days more, I’ll find a reason.”

“Yes, find some Nazi bastard and interview him.”

“That’s what I do.”

“I know, you’re strong.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

She inhaled her cigarette, letting the smoke come out with her words. “You are, though. One reason I like you.”

He put his cigarette out and said, “There are more?”

“I love to fuck you, that’s another.” In her husky, aristocratic voice, the vulgarity was no more than casual.

He leaned over and put his lips on her breast. Surprised, she drew in her breath. Then she stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, reached down, and held him in her hand. Which was slightly cold, at first, but, not long after, warmed. “I have one nice thing to tell you,” she said.

“What’s that?” His voice wavered.

“We can stay here tonight. The official version is ‘at Alma’s.’ So we can go to a charity breakfast, before work.”

“Mm,” he said. “Probably I’ll wake you up, at some point.”

“You better,” she said.

•

It was nearly dawn, when that happened. He’d almost forgotten how much he liked to sleep beside her, spoon fashion, her legs drawn up. After they made love, they heard clinking bottles out in the corridor. The milkman.

“Apparently, the ghosts drink milk,” Weisz said. “Why do you call them ghosts?”

“The rich used to live here. According to Alma, some of them were Jews, and some of the others find it opportune, lately, to be in Switzerland.”

“Where is Alma?”

“She lives in a big house in Charlottenburg. She used to live here, now it’s her place in town.”

“What do we do about the sheets?”

“Her maid will change the bed.”

“Is she dependable, the maid?”

“God knows,” Christa said. “You can’t think of everything, you have to trust in fate, sometimes.”

22
May. The signing of the Pact of Steel took place at eleven in the morning, at the sumptuous Ambassadors Hall of the Reich Chancellery. In the press gallery, Weisz sat next to Eric Wolf. On his other side, Mary McGrath of the
Chicago Tribune,
who he’d last seen in Spain. As they waited for the ceremonies to begin, Weisz made notes. The scene had to be set, because here was the power of the state, its wealth and strength, expressed in splendor: immense chandeliers of glittering crystal, marble walls, vast red drapes, miles of heavy carpet, brown and rose. Stationed by the doors, prepared to admit the cream of fascist Europe, were footmen dressed in black with gold braid, white stockings, and slipperlike black pumps. To one side of the room, the newsreel cameras and a crowd of photographers.

The journalists had been given handouts, with highlights of the treaty. “Look at the last paragraph,” Mary McGrath said. “‘Finally, in case of war involving one partner, no matter how started, full mutual support with all military forces, by land, sea, and air.’”

“That’s the deadly phrase,” Wolf said, “‘no matter how started.’ It means if Hitler attacks, Italy has to follow. Four little words, but enough.”

The footmen walked the doors open, and the parade began. In the most splendid uniforms, set off by ranks of medals, a steady stream of generals and foreign ministers entered the hall, walking slowly, stately and dignified. Only one stood out, in the simplicity of his plain brown uniform, Adolf Hitler. There followed an endless procession of speeches, and, ultimately, the signing itself. Two groups, of four officials from the foreign department, carried large books, bound in red leather, to the table, where Count Ciano and von Ribbentrop awaited them. The officials set the books down and, with great ceremony, opened them, to reveal the treaties, then handed each man a gold pen. When the treaties were signed, they picked up the books and set them down for countersignature. Two powerful states were now joined together, and an elated Hitler, with a huge grin, took Count Ciano’s hand in both of his and shook it so violently that he nearly lifted him off the floor. Then, Hitler presented Ciano with the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Reich’s highest honor. In the handout, the press was informed that, later in the day, Ciano would bestow on von Ribbentrop the Collar of the Annunciata, Italy’s supreme decoration.

Amid the applause, Mary McGrath said, “Is it over?”

“I think that’s it,” Weisz said. “The banquets are tonight.”

“Think I’ll skip those,” McGrath said. “Let’s get the hell out of this.”

They did, but it wasn’t so easy. Outside the hall, thousands of Hitler Youth filled the streets, waving flags and singing. As the three journalists worked their way across the boulevard, Weisz could feel the fearful energy of the crowd, intense eyes, rapturous faces.
Now,
he thought,
there will surely be war.
The people in the street would demand it, would kill relentlessly, and, in time, would have to be killed. These children would not surrender.

Christa was true to her word. When Weisz arrived at the apartment that evening, she made him wait—he had to knock a second time—then answered the door wearing only a modestly depraved smile and clouds of Balenciaga perfume. His eyes swept over her, then he ran his hands up and down before pulling her to him, for, even though it was no surprise, it had the effect she wanted. As she led the way down the hall to the bedroom, she swung her hips for him—his very own merry trollop. And so she was. Inventive, hungry, flushed with excitment, starting over again and again.

Eventually, they fell asleep. When Weisz woke up, he had, for a moment, no idea where he was. On a table by the bedroom door, the radio was tuned to a live broadcast of dance music from a ballroom in London, the orchestra faint and distant amid the crackling static. Christa was sleeping on her stomach, mouth open, one hand on his arm. He moved slightly, but she didn’t wake up, so he touched her. “Yes?” Her eyes were still closed.

“Should I look at the time?”

“Oh, I thought you wanted something.”

“I might.”

She made a kind of sigh. “You could.”

“Can we stay here tonight?”

She moved her head sufficiently for him to understand she meant they could not. “Is it late?”

He reached over her to the night table, retrieved his watch, and, by the light of a small lamp in the corner, left on so they could see, told her that it was eight-twenty.

“There is time,” she said. Then, a moment later: “And, it seems, interest.”

“It’s you,” he said.

“Now, if I could move.”

“You are very tired, aren’t you?”

“All the time, yes, but I don’t sleep.”

“What will happen, Christa?”

“So I ask myself. And there’s never an answer.”

He didn’t have one either. Idly, he trailed a finger from the back of her neck down to where her legs parted, and she parted them a little more.

At ten, they collected their clothes, from a chair, from the floor, and began to get dressed. “I’ll take you home in a taxi,” he said.

“I would like that. Let me off a block away.”

“I wanted to ask you…”

“Yes?”

“What’s become of your friend? The man we met at the carnival.”

“You’ve been waiting to ask me that, haven’t you.”

“Yes, as long as I could.”

Her smile was bittersweet. “You are considerate. What’s the French?
C’est gentil de votre part
? They put it so nicely, a kindness of you. And also, I think, and not so nice, you sensed what I would have to say, and left it for our last night.”

He had, and showed it.

“That he’s gone. That he left for work one morning, a month ago, and was never seen again. Even though some of us, the ones who could, made telephone calls, talked to people, former friends, who might be able to find out, for the sake of old friendship, but even they were unsuccessful. Too deep, even for them, in the
Nacht und Nebel,
night and fog, Hitler’s very own invention—that people should simply vanish from the face of the earth, a practice dear to him for its effect on friends and family.”

“When are you leaving, Christa? What date, what day?”

“And, worse, much worse, in its way, is that when he disappeared, nothing happened to the rest of us. You wait for a knock on the door, for weeks, but it doesn’t come. And then you know that, whatever happened to him, he didn’t tell them anything.”

The taxi stopped a block from her house, in a neighborhood at the edge of the city, a curving street of grand homes with lawns and gardens. “Come with me for a moment,” she said. Then, to the driver: “You’ll wait, please.”

Weisz got out of the taxi and followed her to an ivy-covered brick wall. In the house, a dog knew they were there and began to bark. “There’s one last thing I must tell you,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t want to say it in the apartment.”

He waited.

“Two weeks ago, we went to a dinner party at the house of von Schirren’s uncle. He’s a general in the army, a gruff old Prussian, but a good soul, at heart. At one point in the evening, I remembered I had to call home, to remind the maid that Magda, one of my dogs, was to be given her medicine, for her heart. So I went into the general’s study, to use the telephone, and on his desk, I couldn’t help seeing it, was an open book, with a sheet of paper he’d used to make notes. The book was called
Sprachführer Polnisch für Geschäftsreisende,
a guide to Polish for the business traveler. And he’d copied out phrases to memorize, ‘How far is it to,’ put in the name, ‘Where is the railway station?’ You know the sort of thing I mean, questions for the local population.”

Weisz glanced back at the idling taxi and the driver, who’d been watching them, turned away. “It seems he’s going to Poland,” Weisz said. “And so?”

“So the
Wehrmacht
is going with him.”

“Maybe, it’s possible,” Weisz said. “Or maybe not, he could be going as a military attaché, or for some kind of negotiation. Who knows?”

“Not him. He’s not the attaché type. A general of infantry, pure and simple.”

Weisz thought about it. “Then it will be before winter, in the early summer, after spring planting, because half the army works on farms.”

“That’s what I think.”

“You know what this means, Christa, for you. In two months, at the latest. And, once it starts, it will spread, and it will go on for a long time—the Poles have a big army, and they’ll fight.”

“I will leave before that happens, before they close the borders.”

“Why not tomorrow? On the plane? You don’t know the future—tonight you can still go, but, the day after tomorrow…”

“No, not yet, I can’t. But soon. We have one more thing we must do here, it’s in progress, please don’t ask me to tell you more than that.”

“They’ll arrest you, Christa. You’ve done enough.”

“Kiss me, and say goodby. Please. The driver is watching us.”

He embraced her, and they kissed. Then he watched her walk away until, at the corner, she waved to him, and disappeared.

Forever.