Circles of Time (38 page)

Martin smiled as he drew a chair toward the side of the bed. “I'm surprised you were able to get old Coatsworth to part with a bottle of the really good stuff.”

“Oh, we see eye to eye. Coatsworth only hates to uncork a bottle for people who don't know the difference between good and superb.” He lit a cigar and watched his nephew pour himself a brandy. “I know what's top-rate in wines—and people. I'm not offering you a job out of charity, Martin. You're the type of man I need. The world is about to explode with new technocracy, and Rilke will be a part of it, making and selling everything from radio sets to refrigerated railway cars. Work for me and I'll make you a millionaire in five years. I guarantee it.”

“I wouldn't doubt it for a minute. But to be truthful, Uncle Paul, I'm not that anxious to become a millionaire.”

“That's a lot of baloney and you know it. Everyone wants to be rich.”

“Not necessarily in your sense of the term. Most people are content to be successful in whatever it is they do, be it painting a house or writing a daily column for the London
Times.
I've achieved that kind of success, Uncle Paul. I know that anytime I want to go back to work I can join any newspaper or wire service I want to.”

“And in the meantime you can loaf.”

“Well, hardly that. Writing a book isn't loafing.”

“What's your book about?”

“The political turmoil of post-Versailles. The rise of fascism and communism in western Europe and the effect of these movements on democratic principles of government.”

“How long will it take you to finish?”

“About a year.”

“Can you hold out financially for that long?”

“Yes—with a little generosity from friends.”

Paul scowled at the tip of his cigar and then flicked ash on the bedspread and swept it away with his hand.

“I'll make a deal with you. I'd like you to come to Germany with me. This is a very important trip. I won't explain now what's at stake—it's complicated and would take too long. Suffice it to say it's worth a great deal of money to me—to the Rilke companies. You've seen the German Rilkes since the war, I haven't. I know that cousin Frederick had a stroke, I know that his son Werner is running things now. That's about all that I know. You and Werner are friends, I understand from Hanna.”

“I feel sorry for Werner and he respects me. That's about the extent of our friendship.”

“When did you see him last?”

“About two and a half years ago. He'd finally been released from the hospital in Berlin. I drove him and his wife, Carin, to Altenburg.”

“A pleasant trip?”

“Lovely scenery. Werner was in pain.”

“What exactly is the matter with him?”

“He was hit in the belly during the fighting around Amiens in nineteen eighteen. They took out most of his intestines.”

“How bitter is he about that?”

Martin's smile was a shadow as he poured himself another glass of Cognac. “Not overjoyed at having a grenade explode next to him.”

“Naturally. But I didn't mean that. Does he feel much bitterness toward
us
? The Americans … the Allies?”

“As soldiers? No. Men rarely feel bitterness toward the men they face in battle. I wouldn't know his feelings about the peace treaties—we never discussed them.”

Paul leaned back against the pillows and blew smoke toward the ceiling.

“Good enough. I'll assume he's like most Germans, not overjoyed by Versailles. But then neither were you—if I judged your articles correctly.”

“That's right.”

“And Werner probably read them.”

“If he read the
Vossische Zeitung
in nineteen nineteen.”

“We'll say he did—or at least heard about your criticism of the terms. I think it would make him inclined to trust you—and your motives.”

“Exactly what motives are you talking about?”

“Business motives. Pure business, Martin.” He waved his cigar at his paper-strewn tray. “Rough proposals I've been working on. I want to buy a variety of patents and manufacturing rights from the Rilkes and the Grunewalds. I'll pay good, sound Yankee dollars. Do you know what one dollar means in Germany today, Martin? It means over two hundred thousand marks.” He blew a stream of smoke and stared at it for a moment. “Sweet Jesus. Before the war, one dollar bought
four
marks and a few pfennigs. Now it's two hundred thousand and will go to half a million by summer if the slide continues—and I can't see what can stop it. I'm offering our German cousins a chance to keep from going bankrupt. My proposal is fair—five million dollars deposited in any bank they wish—but I'm a little afraid they might turn me down … might think me a carpetbagger.”

“Aren't you?”

Paul grunted and flipped ash onto the bed. “You're damn right. But I'm a rich carpetbagger paying in hard coin. And between you, me, and the gatepost, I'll go as high as eight million. And that's not highway robbery, Martin.”

“No, I don't imagine it is.”

“And if you can help me swing the deal—just pave my way with those damned Junkers on the Rilkeswerke board—I'll hand you fifty grand. Think it over—and goodnight.”

M
ARTIN THOUGHT OF
Werner von Rilke as he lay in the darkness and watched the delicate tracery of shadows and moonlight on the walls. He had met most of the German branch of the family on his first trip to Germany in August and September of 1914—as war correspondent for the Chicago
Express.
There were so many German-American readers of the
Express
that the editor had wanted coverage of the war from the German side of the fence. Werner and his brother Otto had met him at the railroad station in Berlin and had taken him to meet their great-aunt, the ninety-four-year-old Louise, Baroness Seebach, in her huge house in the Grunewald forest with its magnificent view of the Havel. Then back to Berlin the next day. Dinner at the Adlon and then on to the Winter Garden on Friedrichstrasse. Werner a happy-go-lucky guy of his own age. Otto a year or two older, studious and shy. Otto gloomy and pessimistic about the war and unhappy about being called up by the artillery reserve. Werner a lieutenant in the Lübeck grenadier regiment, hoping to see a little action before the war should end—Christmas at the latest. So long ago. Otto killed at Verdun, and Werner not so happy-go-lucky anymore.

T
HEY WENT BY
sea, a north German Lloyd steamer from Folkstone to Hamburg, Paul Rilke moody for a day, feeling somehow insulted that Martin had agreed to come with him—but not for money. But Paul had shrugged it off—‘Like father, like son'—and he was in an expansive mood as they took the train from Hamburg to Berlin, smoking his corona-coronas and telling anecdotes about the German Rilkes and their varied family branches, the Seebachs and Grunewalds and Hoffman-Schusters. Martin only half-listened as he looked through the window of the carriage at the lush farmland, woods, and lakes of Mecklenburg. A white horse plodded slowly across a meadow, led by a young woman with flowers in her hair who did not look toward the train nor wave.

“What's that you said, Martin?”

“Just part of a poem, Uncle Paul—about the melancholy of young girls with flowers in their hair. This is a sad country.”

Paul grunted and rolled the cigar between his lips. “They'd be happy enough if they'd won the war. It's the price they paid for marching into Belgium.”

The Berliners looked happy enough viewed from inside a taxi rolling down Unter den Linden. The cafés were filled and the smart shops crowded. And there was no sign of unhappiness or poverty in the gilded lobby of the Bristol Hotel. But it was all thin icing on a sour cake. Martin was aware of that, even if Paul chose to ignore it.

The cold sweat of poverty lay beyond the bright lights and the verdant linden trees, behind the facade of elegant bars and restaurants along Kurfürstendamm, in the rotting stucco tenements of Nollendorfplatz and Neukölln. The great gray stone sprawling city with its hideous Hohenzollern monuments. But it was not all granite, bronze, and iron. Past the Doric columns and mammoth horses and chariot atop the Brandenburg Gate stretched the chestnut trees of the Tiergarten. And there was the clean, brisk air and high, pale sky of spring. The chattering of birds and, from somewhere along Mauerstrasse, the tinkling hurdy-gurdy notes of Strauss.

Not all defeat, Martin thought as he stood by his window on the fourth floor of the hotel. Berliners knew how to roll with the punches and turn inevitable disaster into a gallows jest. The New Yorkers of Europe, proud, cocky, openly derisive of Germans who had the misfortune to live elsewhere—the great melting pot of people and ideas. Below him in Unter den Linden, shabbily dressed young men in blue workers' caps peddled copies of the communist newspaper
Die Rote Fahne
elbow-to-elbow with young men in faded army uniforms trying to sell copies of the
Volkischer Beobachter
, a crudely written weekly printed in Munich and grandly subtitled “Battle Organ of the National Socialist Movement of Greater Germany.” The police did their best to hustle them away from the entrances of the hotels and restaurants, ignoring the street urchins who darted about like sparrows, peddling mimeographed sheets advertising the clubs and bars where every known sexual preference of man or woman could find satisfaction.

Berlin!

M
ARTIN STEPPED OUT
of the elevator in the lobby and spotted Werner von Rilke seated stiffly in a high-backed chair next to a potted palm. He was wearing evening clothes, the black suit and white shirt enhancing his air of spectral frailness. His thin, handsome, sharp-featured face had a waxen pallor. He saw Martin coming toward him and got to his feet.

“It's good to see you, Martin.” He smiled warmly. “I really do mean that.”

Martin took his cousin's outstretched hand. “And it's wonderful to see you.”

Werner scanned the lobby. “Where's Paul?”

“Still struggling with his shirt studs, I think. He'll be down soon. Can I buy you a drink?”

“I would like nothing better, old fellow, but I am no longer permitted to touch alcohol in any of its delightful forms. I think at times of my father's wine cellar and weep.”

“How are you feeling?”

Werner reached down and touched the wooden arm of the chair. “No more pain, thank God. But I look like a rail.”

“Well, you're thin, but you'll put on weight again.”

“I don't see how. I have the intestines of a canary bird.” A shadow crossed his face and then he smiled again. “But enough of talking about me. I was surprised and delighted when Paul cabled that you were coming, too. Not strictly business, I hope?”

“No. But to be truthful, Paul asked for my help.”

“I thought as much. I told Father and Uncle Theodor. I said, ‘Cousin Paul is bringing along an ambassador of goodwill.'”

“I hope you don't resent it.”

“Why should I? Frankly, I'm all in favor of a deal—Paul needn't have worried. Things here have gone from bad to worse since he left Chicago. French and Belgian troops squatting in our factories in Essen and Duisburg … the mark going under like a drowning man. I don't envision any problems with Father or my uncles as long as Paul's check is good.”

“Looks like I came for nothing.”

“Are you working for Paul now?”

“No. He wanted some help and I felt I owed it to him.”

Werner put an arm about Martin's shoulder and gave him a quick hug. “God! That's one of the things I admire about you, Martin. If the family tales are true,
he
owes
you.
But you live by your own codes, don't you? Your own unique sense of honor and duty. What a true German you are!”

T
HERE WAS NO
sign of hard times in the palatial home of Frederick Ernst. The baroque house of pale yellow stone set amid woods and formal gardens sparkled with light from every window. Uniformed servants stood on the gravel drive to escort the arriving guests into the house. It was a large party this night, in honor of Paul Rilke, although fully half of the guests had come out of a desire to meet Martin. His battle reports had been printed in many German newspapers even after America's entry into the war in 1917, picked up from Dutch or Swedish papers and run without the official permission of Associated Press. After the war, his articles on Versailles had been widely circulated. The
Berliner Tageblatt
had called him “An honorable and impartial man … a compassionate friend of the German people in this, our hour of despair.”

Frederick Ernst was a large man, much like his cousin Paul, but the stroke he had suffered in the last year of the war had shrunk him. He was confined to a wheelchair now, the left side of his body paralyzed. It was difficult for him to speak; and when he did talk, saliva dripped from the frozen corner of his mouth. He dutifully met his guests in the long marbled hallway, and then a white-jacketed attendant wheeled him to an elevator and took him to his quarters on the second floor.