The Other Side of Love (14 page)

Kathe flushed. During the tension-racked voyage she’d had time for reflection about the Leventhals”

cousin. Fortunately she had given Wyatt no promises, for as they neared Europe it had become obvious to her that, insane as she was about him, obeying his order to stay clear would be impossible. How could she live with herself if she didn’t do her best to trace Herr Leventhal and, if he were in need of help, do all in her power for him?

“It would be difficult on my own.”

Aubrey used his knife on the cutlet.

“Mine’s a little tough. How’s yours?”

“Please?”

she said.

“It’s important.”

“Kathe, no. I won’t have you barging in where you shouldn’t.”

“Often the only possible choice is to barge in, the way things are at home.”

She voiced this disloyalty a bit too loudly, then gazed across the table at him.

“You of all people know that.”

The admiration in her luminous blue-green eyes excited him, and he sipped some wine, attempting to compose himself.

“Here in England I’ve become quite friendly with several refugees who were in prison-camps. None of them will discuss what happened to them. Then I met a chap on a bus, and we started to talk. He agreed to let me interview him. Kathe, believe me, that letter didn’t tell the worst, not by a long shot. This chap saw another prisoner kicked to death by the guards. Everybody was lined up on the parade-ground before roll-call, and there seemed no rhyme or reason to the way they chose their victim; two of them just yanked him forward and threw him into the dirt. Probably they’d had a few too many beers. They laughed as they kicked him. When he was absolutely still, the largest guard

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jumped hard on his stomach a few times, and the man in the front row could hear the bones break. The guards were still laughing.”

Kathe shuddered.

“In New York I was asked about a man stuck in one of those monstrous places.”

“A Jewish prisoner?”

“Yes. I’m going to see what I can find out.”

“Weren’t you listening? Didn’t you hear? Even after people leave Germany, they’re still afraid.”

“Then won’t it be best for me to contact your friend? He’ll know how to go about it more safely than I would.”

“I refuse to help you land yourself in hot water!”

The lights of the chandelier flashed on Aubrey’s glasses as he abruptly looked down. Embarrassed by his atypical outburst, he sawed at his cutlet.

They were on the raspberries and double cream before either of them spoke again.

“That man you’re worried about,”

Aubrey said.

“What’s he called? Let me see what I can find out.”

The maid was rattling cutlery in the kitchen. A car passed in the street below them. Telling Aubrey anything more would constitute an active betrayal of Wyatt - or, more properly, of the well-kept secret of his dual paternity. She could no more say

“Leventha,!”

than if her tongue had been cut out.

“You’d be in hotter water than I would. It’s not likely that anything will happen to an Olympic gold medal winner who’s been applauded by the Fiihrer.”

“Nobody’s immune.”

“Oh, you and Araminta! Everybody. Always making me feel so rotten being German!”

Kathe cried. Weariness rolled over her.

“I didn’t mean to sound so childish. It’s been a long day.”

She was in bed when there was a quAt tap on the guestroom door. *

Aubrey’s ears were crimson as he dropped a slip of paper on the counterpane.

“Against my better judgement,”

he said.

“Memorize it, then tear it up.”

“Thank you, Aubrey, thank you. You’re absolutely topping.”

“In small pieces,”

he said, stumbling on the rug as he hurried from her bedroom.

She looked down at the card.

Christian Schultze Telephone E2 11 21

Kathe love,

You’ve been gone twelve hours, and already the country

seems decimated. That’s the good news. The bad news

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is I’ve been on the phone all morning and it seems the world’s flocking to and from Europe. The only available August passage arrives at Bremen on the 21st, and the only available passage home leaves Bremen on the 19th. As you can see, a minor problem in logistics. So I’ve arranged to come over during the Christmas break.

Here the handwriting switched to pencil, and grew more uneven.

My pen just ran out of ink.

Kathe, I think about all the times we’ve had together here in New York, but the memory that comes to my mind most often is of you running the twohundred-meter race. Everything about you seemed right: the long platinum hair streaming out behind you, those fine legs pumping in a long stride. The other parts looking great, too. When you crossed the finish-line, you looked up at me. The stadium was jam-packed and screaming, yet somehow I felt we were the only two people alive on the planet.

I need to get this letter in the mail right away or it won’t catch you on the day you’re in London, so I’m not going to read any of this junk to see if it makes sense.

He had forgotten to sign his name.

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The German border was all efficiency. Visas and passports collected and returned to the first-class compartment while the Customs inspector selected and opened one suitcase from each passenger how different from the welter of dirty and clean clothes that had spilled from their luggage in the Customs shed at Southampton. Kathe’s homecoming pleasure lasted until the train started again and they chugged past a bench adorned Aith ajuden Verboten sign.

As the sunlit farmland rushed by, doJPats jumped in her mind. Wyatt had told - no, commanded - her to steer clear of Leventhal’s affairs. Aubrey had overflowed with dire warnings. And let’s say I do find out Herr Leventhal’s in a camp, then what? Sigi was the only person she knew with top-notch connections. Would Sigi, dear sloppy Sigi, help her? SS Reichsfiihrer Himmler held sway over the malignancy that was the concentrationcamp system; and Sigi, who admitted goodnaturedly that the warrior qualities of his Prussian forebears had skipped him entirely, made it a point to avoid tangling with the black-clad SS. Even if he were willing, how could she ask her beloved halfbrother to stick his pudgy neck out for a complete stranger?

The side of her clenched hand was thumping involuntarily against the starched white antimacassar on the armrest. What was the point of attempting to be logical? She could no more ignore the judge’s evasive and formal cry for help than she could soar like a bird above this train.

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At the Anhalter terminal, her parents and Sigi pushed their way through the dense crowd, Alfred and her brother bearing the requisite bouquets.

Driving out to Griinewald, Sigi and Kathe sat on the jump-seats leaning towards Clothilde and Alfred, the four of them talking in quiet tones. Even so, and though the glass was shut between them and Gunther, the conversation remained guarded, centring on Euan’s condition. Willkommen in Berlin, Kathe thought. Beautiful, neat and orderly city where respected merchants and General Staff officers whisper their innocuous questions in front of a chauffeur who’s a party member.

“How did you find New York?”

Clothilde asked.

“Uncle Humphrey and Aunt Rossie were wonderful to me. And the Fifth Avenue branch took my breath away - but I wrote that.”

“And you didn’t miss a sight,”

Sigi said.

“If Wyatt doesn’t become a lawyer, he’ll make a wonderful tourist guide.”

Kathe attempted to sound casual.

“He showed me every nook and cranny of New York.”

“You?”

Alfred asked.

“Where was that flapper cousin of yours?”

“Oh, Father! Nobody says

“flapper” any more. Lucky Araminta. She snagged herself a young man. Charlie Eberhardt. We met him on the Duchess of York going over.”

“That’s not a proper introduction, and I’m surprised that your aunt and uncle permitted him to call,”

Clothilde said.

“Kathe, we’re grateful that you behaved like a lady. It was the proper thing for your cousin to take you around.”

Kathe turned to look out of the window. Young men in earthbrown Labour Service uniforms swung along in unison, singing. The sunlight caught on spades shouldered like guns.

II

The next morning Kathe walked her bicycle to the Griinewald station, which was designed like a peak-roofed cottage to fit in with the wooded rustic surroundings. Using the public telephone, she asked the operator for the number that Aubrey had so reluctantly given to her, then held her breath until the ringing ceased.

“Schultze here.”

The masculine voice with a coarse Berlin accent sounded angry.

“This is Kathe Kingsmith. You don’t know me, but my cousin Aubrey asked me to look you up.”

“So, Aubrey Kingsmith, how is our Englander?”

“Fit as a fiddle. I saw him two days ago, on the way home from New York. He thought you might be able to tell me about a friend of a friend. Herr Heinrich Leventhal.”

“Like the old department store?”

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‘Exactly.”

“What is this - a joke? Aubrey knows I don’t move in such exalted circles. But that cousin of yours is a lunatic. Tell me, is he still cracked about ancient Egypt? The last time I saw him he never stopped raving about our Tel-el-Amarna exhibit here in Berlin you know, on the first floor of the New Museum.”

“We’ve been there often together,”

she lied.

“In the afternoon, I’ll bet. He was forever blathering how rotten the light was in the morning. He said he could see best around three. Can you beat that? Your crazy cousin even has a favourite time to look at that old junk.”

By two-thirty, thick grey clouds had gathered threateningly, and Kathe carried an umbrella as she trotted across the statue-adorned Schloss Bridge to the island in the Spree River known as Museum Island because of its forest of museums. At the New Museum she paid her admission and bought a catalogue. She was far too early. Climbing the broad staircase, she pretended to examine the grandiose murals, dawdling at the glass cabinets filled with papyrus. Her destination, the Tel-el-Amarna gallery, was almost empty. A somnolent guard leaned his chair back against the entry. Retreating from him, she studied limestone sculptures with the ferocity of a devout Egyptologist. She was poring over a small ebony head of the Pharaoh Akhnaton’s mother when slow masculine footsteps came down the gallery, halting at her side. Her mouth went dry.

“Interesting old girl, isn’t she? Can’t accuse the artist of flattering her, can you?”

The amused voice spoke i*the patrician tones of the Offizierkorps. ji

Turning, she saw a tall lean man in his late forties. The way his smile fitted into the humour-lines carved into his face was naggingly familiar, yet she was certain she had never met him. His cheeks were sunken, as if he were convalescing from a debilitating ailment, and his suit, too, seemed over-large; yet despite this he had a youthfully raffish air. Without knowing why, she liked him.

“May I be so bold?”

he said.

“Aren’t you Kathe Kingsmith, our Olympic running champion?”

She nodded.

“I thought so,”

he said.

“I’m Heinrich Leventhal.”

The catalogue slipped from her hands. She’d had no idea who would contact her, but it hadn’t crossed her mind that it might be Heinrich Leventhal, whom she had pictured as the stiff elderly German equivalent of the judge. She glanced swiftly around. Halfway between them and the distant guard, a feminine tourist consulted her Baedeker.

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‘You seem startled?”

“I wasn’t expecting you’d be here yourself.”

Leventhal returned her catalogue.

“I was available, and this seemed the safest place for us to meet. Akhnaton was the one pharaoh who permitted realism in art - doubtless why Berliners don’t flock to this particular gallery nowadays.”

“Herr Leventhal, I was wondering how I could help … uh, find out about your father?”

She spoke rapidly and awkwardly. What could be more ridiculous than for her, a girl not long out of the lyceum, to offer aid to this urbane confident man?

“Have you a connection in that other, better world, Fraulein Kingsmith?”

He was smiling again. Now she knew why he had seemed familiar. Wyatt had this same wry grin.

“My father died in nineteen twenty-eight.”

“You’re the head of Leventhal’s The Berliner?”

“Not since it was Aryanized. You expected somebody longer in the tooth, is that it?”

“Yes, I’d heard you won the Iron Cross.”

“At twenty a man has those berserk moments. But who told you all this?”

“In New York I met Judge Leventhal - actually it was less than a fortnight ago. He’d heard a rumour that you were in a camp.”

Her voice rose questioningly.

“It’s more than a rumour. I spent three delightful months in Esterwegen, and the holiday only cost me ten thousand marks.”

The sum was more than the price of a home.

“You had to give them money?”

“Privileges of that sort are expensive. Tell me, has the judge had his surgery?”

“Surgery?”

“The last I heard was he had been considering whether to remove the poker and replace it with a spine.”