Second Violin (6 page)

It was a light night in the middle of August. Bemmelmann knocked on Hummel’s door and said, ‘We are leaving. Come with us.’

‘Leaving how?’

‘Downriver. By boat. A boat that will take us down the Danube, out into the Black Sea and then on to Palestine.’

‘What about the Germans?’

‘What about the Germans?’

‘How will you get past them?’

‘Trager will help us.’

‘Trager?’

‘Our German.’

‘
Our
German? We have a German?’

‘The one who patrols the street, Joe. His name is Trager.’

‘I know. I’ve just never thought of him as being
ours
. Why would he help you?’

‘The Germans want us to leave. They have established an office of Jewish Emigration.’

‘Herr Bemmelmann, I have heard of this office of Jewish Emigration, we have all heard of it. It’s a front for bribery. There are wags who call it Adolf
Eichmann’s Piggy Bank.’

‘There are even representatives from Palestine here to assist us to leave.’

‘Jews from Palestine? Zionists? In Vienna? How do you know this?’

‘Rabbi Lippmann at the Leopoldstraße synagogue told me so.’

‘Yet, Herr Bemmelmann,’ Hummel plodded on. ‘The Germans demand we apply for exit permits, for which they charge all our jewellery, all our savings and even our furniture
– and if they aren’t demanding exit permits, how many countries do not have an entry visa requirement? Schuster is even now stuck in Paris waiting for his British visa. Herr Bemmelmann,
this is so risky.’

‘You said it yourself that day in the Prater, Joe. They’re having fun. They want us all to go. They’d be happy if we all went to live in Palestine and complicated life for the
British instead. Meanwhile, it amuses them to make us jump through hoops. We fill out their forms, we pay their bribes, we sit in the trees and we chirp like birds.’

‘So you jumped? You have an exit permit? You have a passport?’

‘Of course not. Why would an old Jew like me have a passport? I have never been out of Vienna in my life. That is why we go by night, on a boat. That is why Trager will escort us across
the city. With him in uniform the night patrols will leave us alone. If anyone asks he will say he has arrested us.’

‘And how much has Trager asked for this service?’

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Yet,’ said Hummel. ‘Yet.’

‘Come with us, Joe. Joe, I have known you all your life. I spent the night of your birth sitting up with your father. I was present at your
bris
, at your
bar mitzvah.
Your
father asked me to watch over you the day before he died. I am too old to do that now. Come with us, Joe, you can watch over us.’

It was a neat inversion. The most subtle form of blackmail. Hummel smiled at the old man’s wiliness.

‘And the shop, Herr Bemmelmann, what about the shop?’

‘Ach, I sold it this morning.’

‘You were able to find a buyer?’

‘A gentile . . . ten pfenigs on the mark . . . he’d buy you out too at the drop of a Nazi hat.’

Hummel knew this to be true. The miracle, small though it was, was that he, Bemmelmann and the rest of the street were still in business. All over the city Jews had been forced to sell their
businesses at pitiful prices to demanding gentiles – Aryans as they saw fit to term themselves. In the tailors’ alley Schuster’s old shop was boarded up, as was the widow
Hirschel’s – although the old lady still lived behind the boards and broken glass – the rest carried on a scrappy trade, but then it had never been much better than scrappy.
Vienna had too much of everything . . . too many photographers . . . too many painters . . . too many composers . . . too many psychiatrists . . . too many tailors.

It was a long walk. Hummel was surprised Frau Bemmelmann had the strength – across Leopoldstadt, zig-zagging through the side-streets along Praterstraße, in what
Hummel thought to be a daft attempt at being unobtrusive on Trager’s part, to the broad avenue that led straight to the banks of the Danube, at which point Trager abandoned his plan and
ushered them along in the open. Hummel carried the bags. Trager walked behind them, carrying nothing but his rifle.

‘Why would I be carryin’ bags for Jews – be sensible.’

‘They are old, Joe. Perhaps we could catch a tram to the river?’

‘Now that is askin’ to get nicked. We walk, just like I’d collared you lot. Now, just trust me, will you?’

They reached the railway line that ran along the banks of the Danube, ducked under it to the riverside, and emerged on a stone quay a few yards from the Reichsbrücke. Hummel stared
unbelieving at the unbroken darkness of the other bank of the Danube, so dark he could almost believe it wasn’t there. He’d never been there. It wasn’t Vienna, at least not his
Vienna. He’d heard it was still farms and fields, and Hummel had never been to the country and never felt the desire to go to the country. This was as far east as he’d ever been.

They descended by steps to the water’s edge, Frau Bemmelmann wheezing all the way, and ducked under the shadow of the bridge. Two more German soldiers waited for them, visible at first
only by the glow of their cigarettes. No money changed hands. Hummel could only assume that Trager had taken care of all this beforehand.

Then he saw the boat. He grabbed Trager by the sleeve of his jacket. The look Trager gave him was enough to make him relax his grip and take a step backwards. There were ways to behave when they
were alone and ways to behave when there were other Germans around. He’d just broken the cardinal rule. He’d touched a German. He thought for a moment that Trager might carry the
pretence of protocol to the point of hitting him just to save face in front of the Germans. He didn’t, he snarled, ‘What?’

Hummel took a few steps closer to the river and pointed down.

‘The boat is not a boat. It’s a raft.’

Trager looked.

‘Nothin’ I can do about that.’

‘Herr Trager, it is a couple of dozen logs and planks and old car tyres lashed together, with a makeshift rudder at one end and a dog kennel for a cabin. Frau Bemmelmann is supposed to
live in a dog kennel? On this they are supposed to reach the Black Sea?’

One of the Germans called out, ‘What’s the problem, Joe?’

Trager yelled back, ‘You know kikes. Nothing’s good enough for the chosen race!’

Bemmelmann said, ‘Joe, it doesn’t matter. It floats. We will go. Anything is better than staying. Now, I urge you one last time . . . come with us.’

A piece of his life, a piece of his childhood was breaking off in front of him.

‘I cannot.’

Bemmelmann hugged him silently.

Hummel watched as they drifted out into the flow. Herr Bemmelmann struggling with the rudder, Frau Bemmelmann sitting on the bags. Lost and awkward, miserable and terrified. Weeping. And the two
Germans hooting with laughter. Hummel watched until they were lost in mist and darkness and all he could hear was the occasional splash, soon smothered by the night.

‘C’mon, Jew-boy. Back the way you came.’

Trager prodded him in the small of the back with the barrel of his rifle. Hummel went up the steps, turned, looked downstream one last time and could see nothing and hear nothing of the
Bemmelmanns. The Germans’ laughter echoed in his mind, but not half so loud as the weeping of Frau Bemmelmann. Schuster was gone, Hirschel was dead. Now Bemmelmann had gone. There was only
him and Beckermann left of the old street. Another piece of his childhood had broken off and drifted away – off into the night and the fog.

Out of sight of his comrades, Trager shouldered his rifle, said ‘Fuckem’ and strode out for Leopoldstadt.

Walking back it seemed to Hummel that they must look an odd couple to anyone they passed, but it was as if they passed no one. Vienna had become a city in which everyone
averted their eyes and made no contact. Trager and Hummel walking side by side, a miscegenous version of Laurel and Hardy. Hummel the lanky Jew, much the taller; Trager the brick shithouse of a
soldier, dumpy in his grey uniform, his rifle slung from his shoulder as casually as a fishing rod. What they did not look like was captor and captive.

Neither spoke. Only when they reached Hummel’s shop did Trager have anything to say.

‘You should have gone with the old boy, Joe.’

30 September 1938

Informed by his office that the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain – the first Prime Minister to fly to a foreign conference, and thus, arguably, the inventor of shuttle
diplomacy – had arrived back from Munich, from a meeting with Hitler which had carved up Czechoslovakia without so much as a word from any Czech, as none had been invited to the meeting, and
was now waving bits of paper in the air and bleating about peace and honour, Alex Troy decided to break the habit of many months and to hear the idiot in person. He had the chauffeur drop him in
Horse Guards Parade, walked the back way into Downing Street, stood behind a crowd of hacks and listened.

‘We, the German Führer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognising that the question of Anglo-German relations is of
the first importance for our two countries and for Europe.’

The man looked, as an odd but fetching English phrase had it, ‘like death warmed up’.

‘We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.

We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to
remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.’

Alex thought this to be bollocks. We had just sold yet another small country up the river. But, Chamberlain was not finished.

‘My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time . . . Go home and
get a nice quiet sleep.’

Alex walked out into Whitehall. His chauffeur pulled the Rolls up at the kerb and asked simply, ‘Where to, Boss, office or home?’

‘Home. I have been told to get a good night’s sleep.’

Sleep? Nice? Quiet? Alex would be up most of the night, and most of the next, writing his editorial for the following Sunday. ‘Peace for our Time’? How long did the man take our time
to be? Peace until our time chanced and changed into the next entity? It was a slogan for the next five minutes and no more.

The Sunday Post
2 October 1938

Like most of my readers I am an Englishman. Unlike most of my readers, I chose to be an Englishman. I doubt what little remains to me before I shuffle off this mortal coil will
alter my accent one jot, but I have long since ceased to be incomprehensible to London cabbies, and when they ask ‘Where to Al?’, I do not flinch at the curt improbability of the
abbreviation, I wear the badge of Englishness with pride. No doubt there are some among you who feel that I have not yet earned the right to lecture you on the matter of Englishness. Tough –
I am about to do just that.

Patriotism, as Dr Johnson so famously observed, is the last refuge of a scoundrel. It can be evoked as excuse without apology, but this should not blind us to the possibility of virtue inherent
in what a nation stands for. As simply as I can put it, Englishness has, since Magna Carta, meant the rule of law and the notion of constitutional law. In that document lie the foundations of
democracy. We tinker with it at our peril – indeed we should no more tinker with it than America would tinker with the Bill of Rights – for much the same reason – it is the chief
constraint on tyranny.

All too easily Germany has become a tyranny. Herr Hitler shows no respect for the rule of law, either domestic or international. What Germanness (if such a concept can be said to exist at all)
stands for is the rule of the jackboot. Might is now right. Mr Churchill has been at pains to point this out to us for some time. I fear he has been a voice in the wilderness. But I say now, and I
say it unequivocally, that Mr Churchill has been right about Hitler all along. Mr Chamberlain’s aerodrome diplomacy, his abject shuttling back and forth this summer between England and
Germany, has given us the worst of compromises, it has given us – to steal from whichever German minister uttered the phrase at the start of the last war – another ‘scrap of
paper’ (contempt all but oozes from the words, you will agree) for Hitler to tear up at some not-so-distant date.

The agreement at Munich is not peace with honour, it is not peace for our time – it is a post-dated cheque written in the blood of Europe’s young men. It cannot surely be long before
the word Munich has the same ominous ring to it that Sarajevo has had these twenty-five years. It is time to pray for peace, gear for war and ignore all ideas that the former is rendered
hypocritical by the latter. It is not. It is the key to our survival as a nation. Ask me what virtue of Englishness I admire most at the moment and

Later that evening a telegramme arrived at Church Row addressed to Alex Troy. It read:

As they sat down to dinner Alex showed both the leader and the telegramme to his son.

‘Fine,’ said Troy. ‘Do you want me to give you a list of all the tyrants England has thrown up since Magna Carta?’

Alex tucked a corner of his napkin between the buttons of his waistcoat and reached for the soup spoon.

‘Perhaps later,’ he said.

One pleasant, sunny Monday morning in early November – the 7th to be precise, and this is a matter of precision – the moment, one of those moments, when small acts,
in themselves of little significance, precipitate greater – a young German Jew, only seventeen years old, of Polish parentage, bought himself a five-shot hammerless revolver in a Parisian
backstreet in the 10th arrondissement, caught the Metro to the Boulevard St Germain and walked the last few yards to the German Embassy in the Rue de Lille with the intention of shooting the Reich
Ambassador Count Johannes von Welczeck. Welczeck passed the young man as he set off for his morning walk. Instead, Herschel Grynszpan shot one Ernst vom Rath, a third secretary at the embassy, not
quite the nonentity Grynszpan was himself, but not much more. He fired all five bullets at vom Rath and hit him twice in the abdomen. On hearing the news, Hitler immediately promoted vom Rath to
the rank of counsellor and dispatched two physicians to Paris. Vom Rath took almost three days to die, but by then Grynszpan, a boy thought by those who knew him to be an indolent non-achiever, had
written both himself and his victim into history as surely as Gavrilo Princip had done almost a quarter of a century before. The motive? The Reich had just indulged in a pogrom, rounding up
non-German Jews and forcibly repatriating them. Most of Grynszpan’s family had been dumped at the Polish border and told to walk home.