The Violent Century (17 page)

Again he picks up the pace, the Seine on his right, Notre Dame rising in the distance, the fog wraps around him, hiding him from German patrols and unfriendly Parisians, he is the shadow man and he stalks towards his target. He’d found her by instinct, by a whisper, by a sense that the informant
hadn’t
been wrong.

This is what Fogg reasoned:

What, he thought, if the information was genuine? If Vomacht really
was
visiting Paris?

What if, instead of betraying them, the informant had been captured by the Gestapo and they, in turn, had then used it to their advantage? The operation could have been in its late stages by then. Fogg and Oblivion already in Paris, the backup team waiting, everything ready and then Spit comes back with the details – but by then the informant had been turned by the Nazis, and it’s a trap, Vomacht kept clean away as the British Übermenschen walked right into the ambush. It was just dumb luck they got away.

And then: Tank didn’t get away, did he, Fogg.

No.

Well screw Tank, he thinks, with sudden savagery. If it’s flavoured with guilt or shame then so what. Screw Tank, he knew the risks when he signed on to do this job. Screw him. No one asked him to help. No one asked him to take the fall. Fogg doesn’t want to think about Tank.

Instead:

If Fogg is right then Vomacht may still, in fact, be in Paris.

And so he goes looking.

He goes looking but, instead, he finds the girl.

68.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

Silence in the room, and warmth, and motes of dust. Fogg suddenly craves music. Something to break that oppressive, waiting silence. Reminds him of the interrogation room in the Berlin-Mariendorf DP Camp, in forty-five.

Echoes from the past, faint voices like dry leaves. Tell me about Erich Bühler, the Old Man suggests to Maria Becker. Tell me about Schneesturm. The sound of Jewish children singing outside. The sound of someone getting shot. The sound of a blackjack hitting a jaw, the sound of teeth spat on the floor. Only now it isn’t poor Maria Becker, secretary for SS Obergruppenführer Krüger in Warsaw, who is in the chair. It’s him, Fogg. And the Old Man still asking the questions.

Fogg wants to stand up. To shout. Get it over with! Remains sitting. Remains silent. The Old Man wets a finger and turns a page in the dossier before him. Vomacht, he says. Oblivion, stirring. Vomacht. The Old Man pulls out a photo. Pushes it towards Fogg. It’s the same photo they were given in Paris, before the mission. Shot with a long lens, and blurry. No good photos of the good doctor. He is by a lake, beside him is a young girl. He is holding her hand. Fogg takes the photo. Glances at it, casually. Puts it back on the desk. The tea warm where it rests on his knees. Waits. So does the Old Man.

– Well, it’s of little consequence, the Old Man says. Takes back the photo. Drums his fingers on the surface of the desk. Vomacht, despite our best efforts, kept eluding us, he says. Didn’t he, Oblivion?

– Sure, Oblivion says. Noncommittally.

– He wasn’t alone, either, was he, the Old Man says.

– Sir?

– Rumour had it that he had a daughter, the Old Man says. An only daughter.

– Rumours, Oblivion says. The Old Man laughs, shortly. Quite, he says. Still. Do you remember what else the rumours said, Oblivion?

Ignoring Fogg. Excluding him from the conversation. Fogg’s fingers tightening on the china cup in his hands.

– Yes, Oblivion says. Unwillingly, it sounds like. But playing his part. They said he had a daughter, didn’t they. And that she was there, with him, when he activated the device, in thirty-two. When it changed.

– Vomacht’s girl, the Old Man says. Yes. Spreads his hands, fingers splayed, as though searching for meaning, an answer. What was her name? he says. Vomacht’s girl. Do you remember, Oblivion?

Oblivion shakes his head. Perhaps a no, perhaps a criticism. Doesn’t look at Fogg. But the Old Man is. Fogg? the Old Man says. Perhaps your recollection is better?

But Fogg has had enough. Fogg feels a sort of red fog descending. That anger that’s been building up, the pressure, a kettle having to let out steam or it will explode, simple mechanics—

He shoots up, it feels so good to – just –
let
–
go
– to breathe out that anger, he lifts up the tea cup and the saucer, warm tea slushes on the floor, runs down Fogg’s arms, he turns, like a discus thrower, lets fly the cup, the saucer – they fly through the air and hit the wall and smash satisfyingly into bits. He stands there, breathing hard, tea running down his arms.

– Klara! he says. Shouts. Her name was
Klara!

Stands there, breathing heavily. Fingers curled into fists. A tea stain on the wall. Fragments of china on the floor. A silence. The Old Man takes a sip of tea. Puts his cup down. Nods. Klara Vomacht, he says. That’s right.

Interlaces his fingers. Regards Fogg thoughtfully. But we used to call her something else, didn’t we, Fogg? he says. She had another name. Do you remember it, Fogg?

Fogg looks at the Old Man, and the Old Man looks back at Fogg. Who sits back down. Wordlessly, Oblivion gets up and brings him a tea towel. Fogg wipes away the tea on his arms. Oblivion accepts back the towel and drops it on the tray and sits back down.

– Yes, Fogg says, tiredly.

The Old Man waits.

– Sommertag, Fogg says. Drained. But not yet defeated.

– We called her Sommertag, he says.

69.
PARIS
1943

But what do we really know about Sommertag? About Fogg? The dossiers are left carefully empty, the pages blank. We can only see her through his eyes. Does he lie? His fantasy, his summer’s day. Her innocence, that word we keep circling around. But there were no innocents in that war.

Can we trust him?

Can we trust anyone?

We sift through this account, but do we believe it, do we accept Fogg’s recollection at face value? The fog of history rises to obscure. Details lost in the mist.

Fogg, a watcher.

Watching the girl through the mist and the fog.

That week in Paris. Can you truly fall so wholly in love? Fogg burned by war and treachery: perhaps he needed something to believe in. Something to cling to. A dream, a flame. Something to burn bright and pure and true.

Everyone needs something to believe in.

And yet. And so.

Paris. Fogg. The girl:

For once, she is alone. The third day of watching and the girl sits alone in the café, her companion nowhere in sight. Fog creeps along the gutters and crawls up the windows of the café, obscuring Fogg. Obscuring the girl. She is drinking hot chocolate. Yellow and red leaves litter the ground on the street outside. Somewhere a violin plays, an invisible street performer teasing out lonely, haunted tunes.

Fogg watches the girl, spellbound by some invisible force. Turing, at the Farm: talking of gravity and electricity, the motion of atoms, nuclei and orbiting electrons, mimicking the movement of planets around stars. The very small matching exactly the very large. Things we don’t understand, Turing says, in his quiet voice. The way he sometimes looks at Oblivion. The way Oblivion sometimes looks back at him. And then going smaller, into the things electrons are made of, a Never Never Land of uncertainty. That’s how Fogg feels right now, if he had to describe it. Watching the girl the way Turing sometimes watched Oblivion. And perhaps, in that quantum fluctuation that no one can see, some connection, like an electric charge, is made. And the girl gets up and leaves some money on the table and walks out, and she’s alone. She pauses for a moment in the doorway of the cafe, smells the air. Looks ahead. Looks, in fact, directly at Fogg.

Who moves as if he has no control of his destiny. Perhaps, we wonder, somewhat uneasily, none of us ever does. He moves with a slow, wondering inevitability. Like swimming. Towards the girl. Like lodestones being pulled together by that mysterious energy, the motion of invisible particles that is electromagnetism. The girl is wearing a summer dress, with a coat over it. Her eyes are blue like the sky, her hair is the colour of the sun. Fogg is grey beside her. Then he stops and she does, too, and they stand there, in the middle of that Parisian street, having run out of room, and look at each other.

Fogg’s throat is dry. His palms are sweaty. The girl is very calm. He can’t read her face. Her eyes. She says, You are the shadow man.

Matter of factly. As if, by the very act of speaking, she has made him known.

– What? Fogg says.

– Wherever I turn my eyes, I can see you.

– You’re the Vomacht girl, Fogg says, and then the words are out there; they have been said, and cannot, now, be unsaid, unthought.

The girl looks at him quizzically. Yes, she says. Yes, I suppose I am. My name is Klara.

– Klara.

She laughs. It lights up tiny fires in her eyes. Fogg moves in place. The fog rises around them, blankets them in their own special world. You are English? Klara says.

– Yes, Fogg says.

She nods. Her eyes examine him. His face. You have come to kill me? she says.

– What? Fogg says. Takes a half-step back. Like he’s dancing. What do you mean? Why would I? Words taper into nothingness. She just stands there, looking at him. The intensity of her gaze acts on Fogg like gravity. He says, How could you see me? I was never visible.

– You are … changed, too, are you not? Klara says. I can see all the changed. We are brothers and sisters, my father’s children. He made all of us.

– You will forgive me, Fogg says, and he can’t say where the words are coming from, from what deep, hidden spring they well. The boldness of them. You will forgive me but … I do not look at you as one looks at one’s sister.

Oh, she says. For a moment it seems to him she is hiding a smile. Oh, she says, looks away, looks back at him. She is very near to him. He can feel her warmth. I do not see you as a brother either, she says, softly.

What
does
she see? We know many things, but even we do not entirely understand love. Perhaps love is need, and love is selfish, it is self-preservation. Perhaps she can see the future and she does not like it. Everybody needs somebody, we think, uneasy again.

Fogg looks at her face. Her skin is pale. He strokes her cheek with the back of his forefinger. His trigger finger. Leans in closer. He can smell her hair. It smells like summer. You have not told me your name, she says, whispers, the words are soft and light against his cheek. It’s Henry, he says. Henry, she says, as if tasting the word. Henry.

– Klara, he says. Yes, she says. She smiles, and it transforms Fogg, there is nothing wistful or reflective about her smile, it is so …

Innocent, he thinks. Like something from another time. She leans into him and her lips touch his, lightly at first, then harder, pressing against his, and he presses back as they kiss, surrounded by the fog.

70.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

But was she ever an innocent?

None of us, we think, are.

The Old Man studies Fogg. Like an etymologist studying a fascinating word. Turning it around and around, looking for its flaws.

The older you get, the more conscious of time you become, the Old Man says.

Oblivion stirs.

– Sir?

The Old Man looks to Fogg, who doesn’t reply. Who closes in on himself, like a card player facing another man’s not-yet-winning hand.

– Time used, the Old Man says. Time wasted … time unaccounted for.

The tea cups are empty. No one seems inclined to refresh them. And Fogg’s is on the floor, smashed. The Old Man is suddenly more expansive. Seems in a philosophical mood now. Leans back. Supports his head with his hands behind him. But his eyes are hard, Fogg thinks; Fogg, who had seen the Old Man do this hundreds of time, from the Berlin-Mariendorf DP Camp in forty-five, to barren rooms in nameless towns, tents in no-man’s-lands, prisons, cells, detention centres, the Bureau’s own interrogation rooms. Fogg, who knows every move and step of this dangerous dance. No. Fogg isn’t fooled.

– Time unaccounted for, the Old Man repeats. Like a lost week in Paris, he says. Looks at Fogg, who shrugs. Well, the Old Man says. It is of little enough significance, I suppose. It
was
wartime, after all.

– Yes, Oblivion says, as if he’d just woken. Looks at Fogg, looks away. Not giving anything away either. The Old Man looks from one to the other. As if he is weighing all their actions, all their tiny giveaways.

– Still, the Old Man says, and his voice hardens, it matches his eyes. Still, he says. There must always be an account.

71.
PARIS
1943

They draw apart, breathless from the kiss, this moment frozen in time. Klara takes Henry’s hand, laughing. Come on! she says. She pulls him with her and he follows.

We too remember what it is like, we too remember Paris, in our own time, the quickening of our blood, the beating of our heart, our young bodies, the sense of promise, the feeling that anything and everything is possible. Perhaps we are a little jealous, even, now.

Through a Latin Quarter alive with revellers; Paris, City of Love, City of Lights, transforms into a magical place with one kiss, a Sleeping Beauty awakening, awash with light and love. Night transforms it into carnival. Paris! Through open doors the smells of cooking waft out: butter, garlic, mussels, saffron; cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla; chocolate, white wine, pastries and glacés. By a bakery, men queue patiently in their suits and their hats for baguette and demi-baguette; nearby they sell jambons, olives, brie and camembert; an old woman sells flowers on the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michel and Henry buys a red rose and hands it to Klara, who laughs and tosses it in the air.

She is so beautiful at that moment, Fogg thinks, captivated. He is encased in amber, like an ancient, vanished unicorn fly from the early Cretaceous. He is caught in her moment, her unchanged timelessness, she is a message from an earlier, happier, more innocent time and he responds to her with need and desire and greed.