The Poison Tide (49 page)

She was watching for him now at a window and greeted him on the doorstep. ‘Oh Anton,’ her voice quivered a little, ‘I’m sorry – it must have been awful;’ and she kissed him and gave his hand a comforting squeeze. He tried to say something but could manage only a crooked smile. The maid took his coat and he carried his own bag to his room, falling on the bed, breathing slowly, deeply. When he was calmer he rang for some tea and a hot bath.

They didn’t speak of what he’d seen in Karlsruhe at dinner. Elizabeth told him she had visited the Zoological Gardens as they used to do every Sunday, but the gaiety had left the place. No concert band, no beer, only empty tables.

‘And the colonel?’ he asked, picking at his food. ‘Have you heard from him?’

She reached for her handkerchief, as she always did when he mentioned her husband. ‘He’s well,’ her voice was tense, ‘but his regiment has been engaged in the fighting at Verdun.’

‘Oh,’ he replied as casually as he could, then, because he had to, ‘I’m sure he’ll keep well, Elizabeth.’

‘Yes,’ she said mechanically, because that was also the polite thing to say.

Then she scolded him gently, just as she had when he was a boy: ‘You’ve hardly eaten anything, Anton – when so many go without food.’

After dinner they sat in her gloomy drawing room for ersatz coffee, and he drank the last of the colonel’s French brandy. The clock on the mantelpiece was still silent in his nephew’s memory. The photograph of him playing with Peter at the Dilger farm was on a table to the right of the fireplace; there was another of them both in uniform beneath the mirror.

‘I read about the attack in the newspaper, Anton,’ she said at last, leaning forward to touch his hand lightly. ‘What is our world coming to?’

Then it tumbled from him, in bursts like machine-gun fire.

‘They celebrate Corpus Christi with a festival in Karlsruhe,’ he said. ‘After the church services, there’s a circus for the children – Hagenbeck’s. It’s famous for its elephants and lions. I heard the planes, then the anti-aircraft guns, but I . . .’ he paused for a moment, too choked to continue; ‘. . . you see, the children were making so much noise no one in the big tent heard the enemy – anyway, I don’t know how many bombs were dropped . . .’ He paused again to take a deep breath. ‘The children were wearing white robes from the church procession and they were ripped and bloody – terrible, terrible injuries, little arms and legs – we did all we could but . . . and the mothers trying to identify the bodies – oh God.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘We were operating all night – children – children are different, aren’t they? It wasn’t war – a crime – it was a crime. The papers say two hundred people killed – seventy children, and more injured: a church festival, Elizabeth. A church festival.’

She tried to hold him as she used to do when he was a child, but he pulled away from her. ‘I didn’t realise – it
is
a fight for our survival – the survival of the German race. Corpus Christi. Ha!’ He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand and reached for his glass. ‘
Do this in remembrance of me
– isn’t that what they say?’ Then, after a pause, ‘Sorry – what a performance.’ He took a sip, the glass shaking against his teeth. ‘I’m tired.’

‘You’ve left the hospital, Anton?’ she asked quietly.

‘Yes.’

Silence.

‘Will you try for one here?’ She sounded anxious.

‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

Another silence.

‘You know Emmeline wrote to me,’ she said at last. ‘She says some men were chasing you – Englishmen. They talked about your work – your experiments.’

He grunted crossly.

‘She says they were spies. Don’t be cross with her, Anton, she sent them away – she’s worried about you, that’s all.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m worried about you.’

He stood up abruptly. ‘Yes. Well, she shouldn’t – you shouldn’t worry.’ He spoke more sharply than he meant to because he felt guilty.

‘Well, we are,’ she said firmly. ‘Emmeline says you’ve changed – I’ve noticed it too.’

He shrugged carelessly. ‘Hasn’t everybody? Isn’t that war?’

She paused, her gaze steady. ‘Will you see your Count Nadolny?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps,’ he said evasively, then, reluctant to lie to her, ‘Probably – yes.’

Elizabeth’s face was set in the determined expression they all had from their father. Feeling awkward, he stepped away from her to rest his elbow beside the silent clock on the mantelpiece.

‘What will he ask you to do?’

‘I don’t know if he’ll ask me to do anything,’ he replied coolly.

‘Promise me you won’t do anything dangerous. Promise me.’

He smiled at her concern but wasn’t sure what he should say. ‘I don’t know what—’

‘Promise.’

‘I’m not a soldier, like your Peter or the colonel.’

‘Promise’; the pitch of her voice rising.

‘I promise.’

Her gaze dropped to her hands, cupped in her lap. ‘Promise me you won’t do anything dishonourable.’

‘Elizabeth,’ he exclaimed, hurt by the implication that he might. ‘Only my duty.’

She took a deep breath. ‘War – this war – people are not themselves. The bitterness. Perhaps because it touches us all so. I don’t know who will win – if it is even possible—’

‘We must win,’ he interrupted.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said, shifting impatiently on the edge of the settee, ‘we will, Anton, I’m sure. But when it’s over we must live with ourselves – with what we’ve become.’

‘Didn’t you hear me say – we’re fighting for survival?’

‘I don’t know, Anton,’ she replied quietly, ‘but we must hold true to what is good, in others and in ourselves. Our father was so proud of you – his clever son, the doctor. You have the gift to heal – to help those who suffer. I’m sure he’d want you to use it. But I’ve said enough, I know.’ Lifting her dress a little, she rose and took half a step towards him. ‘You know we love you, Emmeline, Carl, Josephine, Butzie
– all of us. Peter loved you too,’ and she reached out to touch his arm. ‘Please be careful.’

They didn’t speak of the Count in the following days but he considered what she’d said, drifting through parks and through galleries, sitting in cafés where he paid too much for very little. In the new Kaiser Wilhelm Church, too, the blues and reds and yellows of the memorial glass dancing at his feet, and although he wasn’t a believer he tried to say a prayer for the children of Karlsruhe. He telephoned Frieda Hempel but her housekeeper said she’d left to sing to the old Emperor in Vienna. One evening he visited a seedy club near the Anhalter Station with doctors he knew from his time at a city hospital. To pretend he was merry he drank too much, and when at last the girls came high-kicking on to the stage he felt ashamed. ‘Thinner than before the war,’ one of his companions remarked, with the carelessness of someone who spent most of his waking hours triaging the wounded. To forget, I must work, Dilger told himself, and he remembered thinking the same after Peter’s death: only in action will I find release.

A baking hot day at the end of June, dressed in a light-blue suit from Wanamaker’s like an American gentleman. Stifling on the tram, seated next to an old man with a summer cold, wheezing, and wiping his nose on his sleeve. Walking the last few stops, and the Military Veterinary Academy was extravagantly decked in imperial bunting. ‘The Crown Prince of Prussia visited this morning,’ the professor’s assistant informed him as they walked along the whitewashed corridor. Professor Carl Troester was at his desk, tall and pale in the sunshine pouring through the window behind him. The room was extraordinarily bright, clinical like an operating theatre. Count Nadolny was rising from the chair beside him with a pleasant smile: ‘My dear Doctor.’ As he stepped forward his reflection was mirrored in the glass-fronted cabinets lining the walls, and for a moment it was easy to imagine he had many faces: dark-brown eyes appraising Dilger carefully, the signet ring pressing his hand, a gentle reminder always of his authority. ‘Appalling.’ He shook his head. ‘So many children – a religious festival. I was just saying to the professor, it is impossible to imagine the enemy could mistake a striped circus tent for a military target’ – he shepherded Dilger to a chair – ‘and you operated on the children? What a shock.’

‘You’re our second important visitor of the day,’ Troester observed with a distant smile. ‘You saw the flags? The Crown Prince came to see some of the research we’re doing on new vaccines.’

‘And our work?’ asked Dilger. ‘Did you show His Royal Highness our work?’ Startled by his hostile tone, Troester was unable to think of something to say.

‘I didn’t think it was wise, Doctor,’ Nadolny remarked, coming to his rescue; ‘not after the fuss in the American newspapers. We must let the dust settle.’ The sun was full on his face, smoothing lines and the duelling scar from his skin. It seemed to Dilger he enjoyed its heat, his eyes almost closed, like the skinks that used to bask on walls at the family farm.

‘You achieved so much in America,’ said Troester, finding his voice. ‘An experimental operation that yielded notable successes. So unfortunate it ended the way it did.’

‘I blame myself, of course,’ Nadolny declared. ‘De Witt surprised us all. I should have taken more care. And I’m afraid Sir Roger Casement was a poor judge of men – rather an innocent – but that is the past and the future is our concern, isn’t it, Professor?’

‘Always, Count,’ Troester replied stiffly, recognising the question as a gentle rebuke. The door opened and an orderly brought in the coffee. ‘Thankfully we’re not reduced to drinking acorns yet,’ he observed, lazily stirring sugar into his cup. ‘We will be if things carry on as they are.’

‘The doctor has seen how things stand at home with his own eyes,’ the Count said, turning to address Dilger more directly. ‘You know, America was merely a setback. Your – our work isn’t over – it can’t be.’ He paused, gazing down at his hands long enough to indicate that he was preparing to say something of importance. ‘The Chief of the General Staff has given me authority to expand our operations – to improve the delivery of these germs . . .’

‘Germs, Count?’ Troester snorted contemptuously.

‘To harness the deadly force of nature, shall we say. New targets – new weapons—’

‘What sort of new weapons?’ Dilger interjected.

‘Well, we will consider everything – we must.’ He inclined his head quizzically. ‘I hope you agree?

They were staring at Dilger, inviting him to reply. Troester removed his pince-nez and wiped his face with his handkerchief. ‘One of our doctors is proposing we drop liquid cultures of plague bacilli from Zeppelins,’ he declared, inspecting his glasses carefully. ‘But there are other possibilities – cholera perhaps.’

‘We need someone with experience to explore the possibilities,’ Nadolny explained; ‘direct an experimental laboratory.’

In the corridor outside the office, the sound of breaking glass and the clatter of a tray.

‘Clumsy fool,’ Troester muttered.

‘And the Crown Prince?’ Dilger enquired. ‘Will he be invited to visit this new experimental laboratory?’

Nadolny smiled. ‘I know why you ask – and you’re right, there is a certain hypocrisy. No, it will remain secret . . .’ he paused, examining his nails thoughtfully. ‘But it’s part of the science of war now, whether the rest of the world is ready to acknowledge it or not. The enemy will do the same in time; he’ll have to – it’s the future.’

Troester was shuffling papers on his desk impatiently. It was too hot in his office.
I’m perspiring so profusely they’ll think I’m afraid
, Dilger reflected as he gazed beyond the professor to the window and the stern face of the Charité opposite. His sister had told him that the hospital was founded by the Prussian King to treat victims of the plague. But that was then; this is now, he thought. They were at the beginning of a new century, a new age.

C
SENT THE
new office boy to escort Wolff to London.

‘What happened to Fitzgerald?’ Wolff enquired.

‘Didn’t care for the work, sir,’ came the reply. ‘He enlisted – probably in this latest show.’

The show was the British offensive on the Somme that had begun on the first of July, just four days before. His young chaperone, Lieutenant Snow, was full of the news and confident that victory was at most weeks away. The
Times
correspondent in France sounded a more cautious note, describing the battle as ‘ninety miles of continuous chaos, uproar and desolation’. Just the fog of war, Snow declared, shaking the newspaper excitedly. Wolff said he would wait for it to clear. His eye had been caught by a small piece on an inside page, confirming that the King was to ‘degrade the traitor’ Roger Casement of his knighthood.

At Charing Cross Station they were held at the platform barrier while the wounded from a hospital train were loaded into ambulances. ‘Haven’t stopped,’ Wolff heard a guard grumbling to a passenger; ‘so many we’re diverting to Paddington.’ A crowd had gathered in the Strand to cheer the wounded as they swept by. Snow spent ten minutes searching for a taxicab before tentatively suggesting they leave the luggage and walk. ‘If you’re feeling strong enough, sir?’

It was the sort of hot white-sky day that made London seem drabber and oppressively close. Christ, wasn’t it good to be home,
Wolff thought with a pang of regret, what with its dirty little buildings and khaki uniforms, Coleman’s and Wright’s, ‘Enlist today’ and ‘Let your conscience be your guide, boys’, while in Trafalgar Square well-heeled women shook their tins for the limbless. He longed for the shade of a canyon street and the view to the Hudson from his last apartment, and, well, lots of things it was foolish to contemplate.

They had drained the lake in St James’s Park so the Army could build barrack huts; it wasn’t the pleasant place to walk that it used to be. Soldiers showed no respect for things they couldn’t polish. Lieutenant Snow was anxious because they were late, and C was unpleasant to people who were late. Wolff trailed faithfully in his wake, very short of breath. He’d spent the daylight hours of the Atlantic crossing wrapped in a blanket on the promenade deck and his evenings brooding and drinking in his cabin. A comfortable invalid, at least; he had Sir William to thank for easing his passage.