Authors: Stephen Benatar
I used the pencil attached to a holder on the counter.
“Received message via Mrs H. Discovered I’m being watched, have been since Friday—regrettably, before coming to see yourselves. Enormously sorry. Maybe correspond by letter? Or phone after ten? Alternatively, meet at Ridgeway in fifteen, twenty minutes? Will try to shake off tail.”
The Ridgeway was a restaurant up the road, where Devonshire Street met the High Street. Buchholz might prefer some other place—which would obviously be perfectly all right with me.
I licked the edges of the card. Addressed it. Looked around me for a likely messenger.
And saw one straightaway. A middle-aged woman had recently joined the lengthy queue. A lad of ten or eleven, presumably her son, stood next to her. He wore a school cap, blazer, grey-flannel shirt and grey-flannel short trousers. He was reading a story in the
Wizard
.
“Excuse me, madam?”
Although addressing the woman, I was plainly including the boy.
“I was wondering if your son would like to earn himself five shillings. I need someone to deliver a letter to the newsagent’s in Paradise Street. It wouldn’t take long.”
In one hand I was holding my hat; in the other I had two half-crowns, conspicuous beside the lettercard.
The woman turned towards her son.
“Ronnie?” she asked.
“Yes, please!” replied the boy. “I could be there and back in probably under a minute!”
“I would think more like three,” I said. “You see, Mr Smee will want to send an answer; a short one. But if it takes you longer than
five
we’ll increase the rate of pay to seven-and-sixpence. What do you say?”
Actually, I felt it was likely to take ten minutes rather than three, but didn’t aim to be discouraging.
His mother said, “Well, as long as he isn’t late for his appointment!” (But there wasn’t any fear of that: she informed me of its time and place.) He crammed the comic into her shopping basket, took the letter and rushed off with an air of great importance—Robin being dispatched by Batman, on a tricky mission to help save the world. His mother had tried to straighten his cap before he left. “Careful as you cross the road!” she called.
I made sure that when he pushed through the inner swing door it would look to anyone standing on the pavement as if I was simply waiting there in line. Silently. Self-sufficiently.
He was soon back. It could even have been under the specified five minutes—I hadn’t been timing him and his mother was only just at that moment getting served. In any case, I held out the third half-crown.
“No, thank you, sir. The job was easy. And the old woman in the shop gave me an aniseed ball as well, while the man wrote out his answer.”
“A business deal is a business deal,” I told him. “It was nice of you to say no, but I’m adamant you’ve got to take it.”
I added: “And I hope everything goes okay at the dentist’s! Thank you for helping me out.”
Then I touched the woman’s elbow and thanked her, too. I returned to my corner and tore open the envelope her son had brought back. The contents read:
“Come anyway. If they were watching you on Friday the damage is done. But they may have assumed that you were visiting friends.”
Which was ridiculous—as Buchholz must have known. I wondered if he were trying to assuage my guilt; to atone for that jibe he had made about my lack of experience.
No, not a jibe, of course.
A justified comment.
26
So—a little sooner than expected—my return to Paradise Street.
We were again in the bedroom. As before, Buchholz wore slippers on his inordinately small feet, and was once more lying on the bed, his back supported by the various bright cushions piled against the wall.
But there were differences this afternoon. Firstly, he hadn’t offered me a whisky and, secondly, there was a lot of custom in the shop below … with many who came in to buy their evening paper smelling pungently of BO. “In England people
do
,” had said Frau Buchholz, after she had greeted me dourly from behind her counter and made some reference to the grandfather and toddler who had just left—Frau Buchholz, Mrs Smee, who despite her veneer of grime and her filthy-looking scarf, was certainly not afflicted with BO.
A third difference was maybe more important. The man outside the barber’s shop had disappeared; a young woman wearing pigtails and dressed in the tunic of a schoolgirl had taken his place. She was playing with a puzzle: I guessed, from her careful tilting of the flat glass-fronted box and from her tapping of its sides, that it might be one of those containing the hard outline of a map, jaggedly indented, along which you had to coax a piece of grooved Bakelite. Up from the Bay of Biscay all the way to the Baltic Sea. It was a game, as I could easily recall, that demanded total concentration. (If while you were playing it, that was, you cared for absolutely nothing but the game.) I sat in the same chair by the window and watched with wry amusement. At least I no longer had to wonder why they should be bothering to have me followed.
You could say that this was something.
Buchholz had asserted—the same as he’d done before—that he had no wish to know the reason for my being in Britain.
“But would you say your task has been successful?”
“Yes,” I replied.
It sounded curt: an accurate reflection of the way I happened to be feeling—despite his having pardoned me for the situation into which I had thrown both him and his clearly adored mother.
I couldn’t keep it up, though. I added less abruptly: “Yes. I’d say I’ve now done everything I had to.”
A statement not intended as a boast … my mood could hardly have encompassed that. All the same, he congratulated me.
But I paid no attention to his irony. If that was what it was.
I said: “I was sent over here to check on the veracity of something. It turns out there’s no veracity attached to it whatever.”
“Which—I take it—is exactly as our superiors in Berlin expected?”
“Which—you may take it—is exactly as our superiors in Berlin did not expect at all.”
He hesitated.
“Are you certain of that?”
“Completely.”
“There’s no faint chance that you might be mistaken?”
“About what? The nature of their expectations?”
“No. The truth of your findings.”
“Not the faintest chance in the world.” I shook my head, decisively.
“I see,” he murmured. “Tell me: what strikes you as so fascinating—I mean, down there in the street? MI5?”
I sighed and turned away from the window. He came and stood beside me and, without lifting the net curtain, stared for several seconds at the pavement opposite.
“You mustn’t blame yourself for that.”
“As you keep on reassuring me. Not everyone, I think, would be so kind. I appreciate it.”
“But your tone still sounds extremely flat.”
“Maybe that’s because my tone actually
is
extremely flat, and for the moment I can’t be bothered to do anything about it.”
“You seem a little different from the way you were last Friday.”
I didn’t answer.
“Even a great deal different,” he remarked.
Had he known, I reflected, he could have added with similar accuracy that I seemed a great deal different from how I had been in the post office a mere ten minutes ago. That, too, made me uncomfortable. Was it only because in the post office I had been in need of a favour? Or was it also because in the heat of the moment certain memories had receded, and because a silly unfortunate thought hadn’t yet occurred to me—as it had when I was scarcely six feet away from the paper shop.
The last time I was here I felt happy
. My present state of depression ignored the fact that such, in any case, was not the full unvarnished truth.
“Look, Heinrich, Mrs Hilling told me this was urgent.”
“Yes, you’re right. I stand corrected. We shall proceed.”
I thought that, if he had been dressed for it, he might have clicked his heels, sprung smartly to attention, and solemnly saluted.
But his slippers were far too soft and—besides that—he was now back on the bed.
“The thing is, Erich, you say you’re taking back to Germany some information substantially at odds with what is generally expected? To Germany and also, of course, to Willy Canaris?”
“Of course to Admiral Canaris.”
He began to gnaw at a patch of dried skin beside one thumbnail.
“Do you remember that on Friday you spoke of a newspaper article aiming to give us the lowdown on our valiant employer? A highly irritating article suggesting that possibly his days in power are well and truly numbered.”
“Heinrich. Why are you even wasting your time—or indeed
my
time—by referring to that?”
Buchholz tore away the piece of dead skin, removed it fastidiously from between his teeth, then investigated his thumb and seemed satisfied. From below we heard a sudden chortle, almost a cackle, but even the son was unable to identify it as belonging—or not belonging—to his own mother.
“Often down there,” he said, “there’s this neighbourly foregathering of the local crones and witches. Voices indistinguishable! I’m still so enormously impressed by the way she can blend in!” The shred of dry skin was relegated from fingertip to bedspread.
I wanted to say:
Oh, for God’s sake! Can’t you get to the point?
Wanted to shout it, more like.
“How well do you know him?” he asked.
“Know the admiral? Well, how well do you think I know him? He’s the chief; I’m a nobody. Why don’t you ask me how well I know the Führer? Or will that be your next question?”
Buchholz disregarded my outburst, and studied his thumb again.
“You see, I felt it was absolutely crucial I should speak to you before you went back,” he said. “I’ve received disquieting news about him—and from sources far more reliable than those of the
Sunday Express
.”
“What sources?”
“That really doesn’t matter. But as I say—practically unimpeachable.”
“Okay, then. So of what do all these sources that are practically unimpeachable now take great pleasure in informing us?”
Buchholz also disregarded my heavy-handedness. He disregarded the actual question, too.
“Erich, what makes you so protective of him? Especially when you tell me that you don’t even know him? It seems quite evident you like him.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! How could I be qualified to say I know him? For such presumption you’d be the first to shoot me down.”
“Would I, indeed? How extraordinarily harsh of me!” He even looked repentant. “But, you see, I myself have met him on only two occasions. Both times briefly. Eight years ago? No, nearer ten. So talk to me about him, if you would.”
Abstractedly, I glanced out of the window again. Then wearily returned my eyes to the bed.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just humour me,” he said. “I’d appreciate it.”
“Well, what do you want me to tell you? First conjure up the popular image of your typical storm-trooper.” And it actually made me smile: the expression on his face. “Now picture the exact opposite. Small … frail … nervy. Even almost timid. In short, just about the least military-looking man you could ever hope to find in Germany today. I mean, amongst the top brass.”
“
Hope
to find?” queried Buchholz, amiably.
“Oh, all right, Heinrich.
Expect
to find. What’s in a word?”
“Precisely.”
“He’s witty, urbane, astute. Well-read: often quotes from the Greek philosophers. Observant, too: I get the feeling there’s nothing that he ever misses. I also think—”
“Does he quote from Nietzsche and Hegel, Schopenhauer and Spengler? Those a little closer to home?”
“Oh, yes, more than likely. As I say, he’s well-read.”
“Like you yourself are; no wonder you admire him!” He smiled. “You seem to know him rather intimately—despite your strange reluctance to admit it.”
“Nonsense. I’ve learned all this at second-hand. Studied his writings and heard what people say about him. And naturally I see him around from time to time; can form my own opinions. On occasion, he even drops me a friendly word.”
“Really? How interesting. But I am sorry; I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“What?”
“You were talking about his powers of observation: how there’s nothing he appears to miss. And then you said, ‘I also think…’”
“I also think he has a stealthy love of adventure.”
“
Adventure
?”
“Yes, that’s pretty much my impression. Even if I don’t have a lot to back it up.”
“What
do
you have to back it up?”
“At interview, I remember, he spoke about the importance of the calculated gamble; of being prepared to risk everything for what you consider right; of never closing your eyes to the possibility of change … or, at least, the possibility of improvement…”
In view of my despondency, it was odd how swiftly I was warming to my subject. Like Gwatkin on Friday; like Sybella, both yesterday and this morning. There was one big difference, though.
I
believed what I was saying.
“He strikes me as being sympathetic,” I ended hurriedly. I recognized the bathos. “I feel comfortable in his presence.”
“Not withstanding his nervousness? His timidity?”
I had to reflect on this. I would have agreed that the question pointed to a contradiction in the admiral’s character. (Or, at least, in his character so far as
I
was capable of understanding it.) But possibly such a contradiction made him yet more sympathetic to somebody like myself … somebody increasingly aware of the divided nature of his own feelings.
A sudden thought occurred to me. In spite of his numerous idiosyncrasies … had I gradually come to see him as a father figure?
Canaris was older than my actual father. But he seemed younger … more open to life … more curious about it. Warmer. Whether I would have felt this way prior to
Kristallnacht
I wasn’t quite sure—yet at the same time I couldn’t forget how one big difference of opinion had done nothing whatever to alter the love I felt for my grandparents. And, something I sensed unreservedly about Canaris,
he
would never have excused anyone at all for their pleasurable participation upon that grim November night. If only off the record, he would have declared—unequivocally—that such barbarity was not, was absolutely
not
, excusable. Whereas my father had repeatedly condoned it.