The Children's War (28 page)

“Ah, well. Okay then.”

They went up the stairs together, but then she left him alone. He located the
loose arm, and after reaching down between the arm and the seat, he quickly decided that was the wrong approach. He turned the heavy chair upside down and carefully began removing the fabric that covered the bottom. It had been fixed to the wood with brass studs, and he removed each of them and set them aside in a little dish. Beneath the fabric were springs and upholstery material, padding and support struts.

It did not take much looking, or rather feeling, to locate the source of the problem. The arm was affixed to the main body of the chair with several heavy bolts—most of which had been stripped out of the wood by overuse.

He stood for a moment thinking about what he could do to remedy the problem. He could try to fill in the holes, but he doubted it would hold for long given the way both Karl and Herr Schindler threw their weight against the arm. And Ulrike had a habit of perching on it and pressing her legs against the arm opposite. Or he could use bigger bolts and hope they would hold in the gouged wood. But where would he get some? The ones in the chair were already quite large. It was in fact a rather well-made piece of furniture. Old, almost antique.

He thought about drilling new holes and moving the bolts, but the thought of explaining all that to Elspeth to get her permission and the necessary equipment was rather off-putting. He stared at the chair for a moment longer. Funny, he wasn’t even allowed to sit in it. All of the furniture was off-limits to him. It meant that if he ever had a spare moment, there was nowhere he was legitimately allowed to rest. It really was quite ludicrous. Even more ridiculous was the constraints this rule put on his performing simple tasks such as sewing the endless little honor badges that the children earned onto their uniforms or repairing some small household device. Sometimes, he simply waited until everyone was tucked up in bed to finish such jobs; then he could use a table and chair with impunity. Also, whenever they were all out of the house, he would throw himself into the armchair or onto the sofa just for the sake of enjoying the forbidden luxury, but those occasions were rare. His only determined and obvious use of their furniture was that he would use the step stool in the kitchen, mainly to eat his meals, even when Elspeth was in the house. If she came into the kitchen, he simply stood up immediately. Of course she noticed, and once or twice she had reminded him that it was not his chair, but she had never punished him for using it. At least not yet.

“Why aren’t you doing anything?” Elspeth asked, checking up on him earlier than usual.

Deciding on his course of action, he explained,“Here’s what I need to do,
gnä’ Frau.”
He explained how he needed to put in an extra piece of wood along the arms to support the bolts and how he would have to dismantle the chair a bit further to reach all the relevant points.

“I don’t see what you mean.” Elspeth was, for once, perplexed rather than accusing.

“Here.” He shoved both hands in and pulled the padding back to show her how the arm was connected farther up, under the cushion. As he pressed forcefully
against the ancient upholstery, his fingers broke through an already existing tear in the fabric. The stuffing felt odd to him and he pulled a bit out as he extracted his fingers. He held it in his hand and they both looked at it.

“Horsehair,” Frau Vogel announced as though he had asked.

He shook his head, disconcerted. “No, it’s too soft.”

“Nonsense. Put it back in.”

He rolled the hair around in his fingers. “It’s human,” he said, mostly to himself. He realized that this was something he had not wanted to know. He looked at Frau Vogel, hoping she would offer an alternate explanation.

“Nonsense. It’s horsehair. Now put it back!”

“No, it’s too soft. Feel it.”

“I said put it back. Don’t make me have to say it again!”

“It’s human hair!”

“Peter! Do as you’re told!” She spun on her heel and left the room.

He continued to roll the hair in his hand. Black and brown and gold and gray strands tangled together in an irremediable knot. Finally, without knowing exactly what he planned to do with it, he put the selection of hair in his pocket and tried to concentrate on finishing his work.

27

A
LEX STUDIED THE PAPERS
on his lap, but he just could not concentrate on his work. He glanced down the aisle of the airliner, but no stewards were in sight. He leaned forward slightly so that he could see past his neighbor out the window. The Manhattan skyline was just visible on the horizon, and Alex smiled. Something about the Free City always appealed to him. He remembered how his father had talked about New York, back when it was still an integral part of the United States. New York was his second Vienna—the only other possible destination in his father’s abruptly terminated musical career. What would his father think of the teeming metropolis now? He would probably be pleased. Still a center for art and music, still the capital of the free world, and now a Free City in its own right, the home of numerous exiles, the seat of their temporary governments, the nexus of resistance to the Third Reich’s stranglehold on Europe. Only Britain had chosen a different location for its government in exile, choosing Toronto as its base of operations.

His father would have laughed at that. He would have guessed that Manhattan was too lively for them, and so they had fled to the stultifying atmosphere of Toronto. He had hated the English—not his wife, she was different, but the English as a group. “Cold people,” he would snort. “Think that showing affection to their children is a sign of weakness.” He had said that at Paddington, when Alex had pulled away too quickly from his embrace. “No soul!” his father
had snapped, waving his hands in an embarrassing display of emotion. Alex had winced, hoping that nobody in the busy train station would notice them. True to form, none of them did.

Alex had never understood his father’s rantings, never understood his desire to return to Vienna, never understood his father’s speaking German to him at home. “Didn’t you grow up speaking Polish?” he had once asked his father.

“Yes, and Yiddish, too! So why do you moan so much learning just one other language, huh? Speak German. When you can do that, I’ll teach you Polish.” He never did teach his son, though; events overtook him.

The plane dropped and Alex’s stomach grew queasy. He was nervous about this trip—it was so important to stir things up, yet so difficult to arouse any interest anymore. He tapped his fingers on the notes he had prepared and wondered, not for the first time, if this would at last do the trick.

The airport weapon scanners were even less obtrusive than last time, and this time there were no bomb-sniffing dogs. Automated, Alex guessed. He greedily eyed the computerized scanner that examined his documents. The surly immigration official removed the documents from the machine, opened them by hand, and compared Alex’s face with his picture.

“Swiss?”

“That’s what it says,” Alex answered.

“You’re all fucking Swiss, aren’t you?” The official seemed to object to the whole hypocritical procedure, but that did not stop him from stamping the word
admitted
on Alex’s documents.

“Thank you,” Alex said with distinct courtesy. He caught a cab and headed to the home of a friend.

“Pay him,” Alex ordered as he greeted his friend. “I don’t have any money.”

The friend shook his head and paid the fare. By midafternoon Alex was on the fourteenth floor of a midtown building, trying to convince a disinterested young man to take a closer look at the materials he had smuggled in.

“I don’t know why they sent you to me,” the youth admitted while his eyes scanned the ceiling of his office as if looking for fairies. “I’m sure there must be someone else who has a better grasp of this, uh, history stuff.”

“It’s not history!” Alex harrumphed.“Look here, young man, this is footage of executions that take place nowadays in the camps! They’ve claimed those places have been sanitized, but I have proof to the contrary!”

“I don’t know . . .”

“People risked their lives—paid with their lives!—to get this footage.”

The young man touched the film canister. “Is this stuff even compatible with our machines?”

Alex sighed. “Yes, it can be translated . . .”

“Are there any, you know, like sex scenes?”

* * *

Three days later Alex was having no better luck with a wizened old producer. “I’m sorry, old boy, this stuff is just old hat. I mean, we can show it, and all that happens is we get a protest from the German delegations that we’re defaming their culture. Everybody else is not interested. They’ve seen it all. Much worse in fact. I mean, how many times can you watch someone getting shot? Hmm?”

“But this is politically important. The government is trying to normalize relations! Don’t you think the people should know the cover-ups going on?”

“The people couldn’t give a shit about cover-ups. Hey, the U.S. has an election coming up, and have you heard about the sexual shenanigans of the vice presidential candidate?”

“Yes, I know, he’s supposed to be a closet homosexual,” Alex agreed tiredly.

“Not just! Now we have the hate groups organizing against him, we have denials from the candidate, we have his wife describing their ‘luscious’ sex life, we have queer groups asserting that he should be proud of his leanings . . .”

“How, in the end, will this affect world policy or the standing of the United States as a world power?”

“Huh? Oh! Not at all, but that’s not the point. The point is, we’re in this business to make money, and that”—the producer pointed at the film—“won’t make a cent. End of story.”

“What about your commitment to public service?” Alex indicated the plaque on the wall behind the producer’s desk. “Won’t this help fulfill your quota of public-interest, not-for-profit stories?”

The producer leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Just between you and me, old boy, in theory it would, but”—and here he lowered his voice even further—“it seems there has been some pressure from the government to put a lid on this sort of stuff. Seems it fouls up negotiations on certain key things.”

“They’re selling them arms and equipment, huh?”

The producer waved his hands and pursed his lips in determined silence.

“Better the Nazis than the Communists, huh?”

The producer shrugged.

“I thought this was a free and independent city, beholden to no national government.”

“Yes, in theory, but we have many legal ties with the continent. It’s complicated.”

“I thought you had freedom of the press enshrined in your Constitution.”

“We do,” the producer sighed. “We could run with this, or anything else for that matter. But it won’t make money, it won’t make the government happy. . . . What’s the point? I mean, we have to get our license renewed, we have strong competition out there. Have you seen the sort of stuff that’s aired nowadays? Sex, violence . . .”

“This is violent,” Alex tried one last time.

The producer laughed. “That’s a good one. Wrong sort of violence, old boy. Not personal enough.”

“It was for the people who died.”

“Ah, well, they don’t subscribe to our channel, now, do they?”

Alex stood. “Thanks for your time. Sorry it was wasted.”

“Ah, no problem! Hey, take your film directly to Congress, maybe you’ll find a subcommittee that’s interested.”

“I have an appointment in D.C. tomorrow.”

The producer laughed.

“It’s not that the congressman is not sympathetic to your concerns,” the suave young woman assured him, “it’s just that he really does not have much power on the committee. We’ve tried several times to introduce this sort of evidence into the record, and each time we’ve been stymied.”

“People are dying,” Alex said.

“People are dying everywhere. If we took time to fixate on every detail of the internal runnings of every podunk country, I’m afraid we wouldn’t have time to conduct our own affairs.”

“How can you be so callous?”

“I’m not.”The woman stood and closed the door of the office before reseating herself. “Personally, this is one that bothers me. But I work with other people who are worried by famines or crime or child abuse. Each and every one of them has the right to think his or her problem is the most important. We try our best to steer the government in a direction that would be beneficial to your people, but we are a large country, with many interests. It’s difficult making a case for the importance of a bunch of foreigners who have been at each other’s throat for centuries. Among some of our colleagues, it’s even said that we should be glad that the Europeans are only slaughtering each other currently, and if we were to free them from their current predicament, they’d go off and create mayhem in some innocent corner of the world.”

“Innocent?”

“I’m quoting. Look, we’ll make a copy of the film, and I’ll do what I can to see that it is used as evidence in some committee or other, but the prospects aren’t good right now.”

“Why not?”

“Politics. The current majority wants to dispense with this whole human rights stuff. Caring about foreigners is a vote-loser, and nobody wants to lose votes.”

“What do you suggest I do?” Alex asked in desperation.

“Make it a vote-winner,” she said simply.

“How?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t a clue.”