The Kingdom of Shadows (29 page)

Or perhaps there was no calculation at all on Goebbels’ part; von Behren wondered if the
Reichsminister
had lost the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Perhaps it had all become the same to him – the great cynic, the manipulator of men who could have just as easily pulled the puppet strings for the Communists or been a film director himself. Whole divisions of the German army, or what was left of it, had been taken away from fighting real battles and then been costumed like Prussian regiments of the Napoleonic Wars, charging up and down hills for the big scenes of that pandering hack Veit Harlan’s
Kolberg
epic. Goebbels and the rest of the Nazi bigwigs obviously preferred the heroic past to this present that was falling in rubble around their ears. Of course, that golden past was as much a fantasy as any specter concocted in a film story. Once the door into those other worlds had been opened inside Goebbels’ head, then it had been easy enough for Marte, at von Behren’s off-screen urging – she still did what he asked her to; she was still grateful to him, though he was no longer sure why – to whisper to her lover, across the pillow of whatever bed she and Goebbels shared. About the script von Behren had written for her, the medieval fantasy concerning the red huntsman, the punisher of those who violated the ancient laws that bound men and their prey together. She had even given him a set of photographs from the costume test that von Behren had arranged, showing her in the long period gown, with its belt knotted intricately at her waist, her white-gold hair braided in the fashion of the maidens in the old woodcuts. Von Behren suspected that it was those photos alone that had secured Goebbels’ approval for the project; the
Reichsminister
wanted to see that vision of beauty come to life on the screen. Not enough to hold her naked in his arms, the woman all men desired; every fantasy had to be made real.

That was the insanity of the National Socialists, their
Frevel
, and now Goebbels had succumbed to it with the others. Very well; in that sense, the head of the German film industry was no different from
Herr
David Wise or any other man of power and money whose approval von Behren had to obtain before making a film. The Reich’s film office, upon the instructions of its head, had bestowed a nice fat production budget upon von Behren – this close to the Apocalypse that everyone could sense was coming, what did mere money signify? – with the only condition that the principal shooting was to be done here in Berlin. Of course, the only reason for that was to keep her here, close by Goebbels – it was so obvious that any other explanation wasn’t even bothered with, nothing about her wanting to remain and boost morale among her fellow Berliners or some similar nonsense.

Von Behren had had no objection; there was more than enough money in the budget to have the sets built on the UFA sound stages, elaborate reproductions of a medieval castle’s parapets and banquet halls, massive stones that were really nothing more than wood and canvas daubed with clay. And it kept him and his crew here in Berlin, where there was still a semblance of order and the familiar, despite the bombing raids; the electricity cut out for only a few hours each day, and the food rations were small but still obtainable. God knew what the conditions had become out there in the Reich’s shrinking empire; terrible stories of starvation and grislier deaths were carried into the city by the refugees streaming in from the east. A good number of Berliner
Hausfrauen
had taken to carrying knives in their handbags, not to defend themselves with, but to slash their own throats before the inevitable rape at the hands of the Russian soldiers. All Goebbels’ propaganda had successfully terrorized the women about what their fate would be; the men merely expected to be killed, and perhaps dismembered and eaten. Von Behren knew that wasn’t likely, but as a practical matter, there wasn’t a real castle where the shooting could have been done that hadn’t already been overrun and turned into a command headquarters by the Allied armies.

“So what shall we do now?” The assistant director, with the script cradled in his plaster armcast, was still standing next to von Behren; one of the assistant’s assistants had gone to snoop after the missing Marte Helle. “While we wait?”

Von Behren sighed as he looked around the studio interior. Most of the cleaning up had been finished, just in the last few minutes. That same sense of urgency – of time running out, life and work that had to be squeezed in between bombing raids – motivated everyone here. It seemed strange, but not really when he thought about it, how much more he himself had accomplished, scripts on paper and films in the can, since he had come back with Marte to Berlin and the war. When he had been in Hollywood, that sunny paradise, it had been easy to believe that time was infinite, stretching out in all directions like the golden light that buttered the hills. Even with no money in the bank and dependent upon the continued indulgence of
Herr
David Wise, he had taken whole days and weeks off to sit in the backyard of his little bungalow and re-read his childhood book of
Märchen
. When the thick, warm air had sent him drowsing, the old stories had come into his dreams; the red hunter had stalked him through a sun-dappled forest, not to catch and punish him, but to gather him up, a child again, and lift him to the face concealed inside the hood of stitched animal furs, a kiss in that small darkness . . .

“Sir?” The assistant’s polite, patient voice broke into von Behren’s drifting thoughts, the memory of a dream that had always ended before the last of its secrets had been revealed. “What is it you would like us to do now?”

He wasn’t blinking into the soft Californian sunshine, just thrown out of his own dreaming; he was in Berlin, always in Berlin, in what everyone knew was the last and hardest winter of the war. A wind sharpened with ice cut through the canvas nailed over the broken skylights.

“Yes . . .” He nodded slowly, rousing himself. “I’d like to . . . I’d like to do some exterior shots.” He knew there would be time enough for that, at least; it would be hours yet before Marte returned and any filming could be done with her. “Out in the streets. There were things I saw this morning . . . they might be something we can use.” A sector of residential blocks near the studio had been transformed by the bombs and fire, from Berlin of 1945 to a blackened, timeless vista, the bones of the city stripped of their modern flesh. He would have to see how they looked on film; the ruins might serve better than any construction from the carpenters and painters, for the final sequences of
Der Rote Jäger
, when the spectral figure’s wrath had laid waste the village and countryside of the sinning lords of the castle. Further proof, if any were needed, that Goebbels had not even read the script that Marte had taken to him; he had merely given his approval as a present to her. If poor Frank Wysbar could get into trouble for the black horsemen in his
Fährmann Maria
, those bringers of death too close to the real SS to be allowed, then surely the
Reichsminister
would have suspected a metaphor in the
Rote Jäger
script, a defeatist prediction of the Reich’s encircling fate.

Or perhaps Goebbels had indeed read it. Von Behren wondered if the dramatist inside Goebbels’ soul had embraced the apocalypse as the fitting conclusion to this great film he had written, the one that had taken all the world for its sets.

It little mattered now. His old friend Wysbar had made his escape to America, where he at least had had the good sense to hunker down and stay. The last von Behren had heard, Wysbar had been having a hard time finding work; there were too many German refugees under the palm trees for all of them to be hired.
And here I am
, he mused,
and I can make all the films I want. For a while, at least; while there’s still time. So who’s the fool now?
Von Behren pulled his coat tighter around himself as he watched the studio doors being rolled back, the cameras being readied for the grey, wintry light outside.

* * *

He had made love to her in so many different rooms. And outside as well, on the grounds of his Schwanenwerder estate, soft grass still warm from the passage of the summer day, the lights of a reception inside the grand house visible through the overhanging branches of the night-shaded trees. Everywhere it had happened, where she without will had let it happen, on velvet couches or beds that he had once shared and would share again with his wife – they were all the same place, the tiniest room, the darkness behind her eyelids. She closed her eyes and went in there, leaving him in the world outside that held her body.

“It is sad, isn’t it?” Joseph’s voice came to her, close beside where she stood on a carpet littered with rubble. “I can barely stand to look at it myself. They’ve done such damage here . . .”

Marte opened her eyes and looked across the high-ceilinged room. The intricate cornices and plasterwork above had come crashing down, into dust and white crumbling fragments, revealing the skeletal girders and ragged patches of sky beyond. Snow had fallen through, melting and then freezing into grey mirrors on the floor. Through the frames of the shattered windows that had filled one wall, scraping mechanical noises and faint voices could be heard, the clean-up squadrons filling in the bomb craters on the
Wilhelmstraße
below. The corpses had been dug out from the hills of fallen brick and taken away, in the first hours of quiet after the planes had departed, while the fires in the other parts of the city were still being extinguished.

A gloved hand ran across one of the empty shelves; Joseph looked at the dust on his fingertips. He had on his trench coat, belted over his severe National Socialist uniform. “You see?” He turned back toward Marte. “This is why we had to move the ministry’s staff down to the basements. Impossible to do any work here, under these conditions; my own home is now an annex for at the ministry’s senior officials. But this arrangement will not last forever.” His gaze swept across the room, taking in the now-ragged wallpaper, the blank spot where the portrait of the
Führer
had hung, the empty space where his own ornate desk had stood. She could see him transforming it all in his mind, one set being struck and a new and grander one being erected in its place. “When the war has been concluded, and we can turn our attention once more to the rebuilding of our nation . . . this will all be different. And better.” Joseph nodded in satisfaction at what he alone could see. The future. A gesture of his hand took in the entire room. “There are great plans . . . the ministry, this building itself will be gone, replaced by one of such splendor . . .” He smiled at her. “Those whom you knew in America, those Hollywood
Juden
such as David Wise . . . nothing of theirs will compare to what we will achieve here. Soon . . .”

Strange, to hear David’s name come from Joseph’s mouth. She knew there was still some jealousy there, even though he had been the victor. One thing to share her in the dreams of men who saw her on the screen, another to think of a Jewish film mogul – a real one, a prince of Hollywood, the exact creature Joseph had modeled himself after – running his manicured hands over her skin, drinking in her kiss. Joseph had all that now, but he could still speak his rival’s name with venom.

She thought about him, the other, for a moment. David . . . she had seen him last in a newsreel, one of the many that Joseph’s propaganda writers and filmmakers churned out for the German theaters. A piece about how the American film industry was controlled by Jews, all part of that great international conspiracy. The wicked lies they used to deceive the American public – or at least that fair-haired, blue-eyed Aryan part of it – so they could go on raking in their bloodstained profits while sending innocent, handsome youths to their senseless deaths in Europe. The narrator had been some anonymous UFA hack, but Marte had heard Joseph’s voice, speaking his strident, battering words. He must have had a hand in it, or even written it personally; her own image had shown up on the screen, old footage of her disembarking at the Templehof airfields, a virtuous German heroine who had fled in disgust from Hollywood and the rich, hook-nosed lechers who ran it. Her face had looked tired as she had come down the steps from the JU-52’s door, from the long flight out of Lisbon, but the voice – Joseph’s voice – had hinted darkly of some lingering sadness at what the
judischen Zuhälters
had forced her to do while she had been in their thrall. No doubt the blood of the German males who watched the newsreel had quickened at the thought, and they could even feel virtuous while their groins tingled; such was Joseph’s mastery with words. The newsreel had ended with a still photo, taken from an American newspaper, of those rich Jewish film moguls, all in dinner jackets and with thick cigars in their hands, smiling and laughing among themselves at some USO fundraiser. David had been the youngest man in the photo, but even so, she had barely been able to recognize him. He had put on weight, and the dark, curly hair she remembered had thinned and greyed, just in these last few years of the war – as if he were turning into one of the men on either side of him, men old enough to be his father. His eyes hadn’t been laughing; even in the grainy newsprint blown up on the screen, Marte had been able to see the simmering anger under his brow. They seemed hard, mean-spirited eyes now, a rich man’s eyes, as though he had become exactly that which Joseph’s propaganda spoke of, a grasping figure of money and power.