The Lady from Zagreb (12 page)

“And are you? Is that the reason you’re building her up into a star?”

“Perhaps a little, yes. You see, when I’m with Dalia I find that I don’t really need a holiday. And right now all I want to do is to make her happy.”

“I can understand something like that.”

“Good. Because you should also understand that I would take a very dim view of anything that happened to embarrass her, or me.”

“I can keep my mouth shut, if that’s what you mean, Herr Doctor.”

“It is. I want this case handled as quietly as possible.”

“That’s just the way I was planning to handle it.”

“So then. What I want you to do is meet with her, find out what the problem is, and put a smile back on her face. I need that smile. And the picture needs it, too. We need it so that we can start production on this picture before the summer is over. I’ve got Veit Harlan and Werner Krauss under contract and it’s costing the studio a fortune. Not only that but this good weather is perfect for us, only we can’t shoot a damn thing until she’s got what she wants.”

I shook my head. “There’s still something you’re not telling me. Which really doesn’t surprise me.”

Goebbels laughed. “My God, but you’re an impudent fellow.”

“I expect that’s in my file, too. So why act so surprised about it? Like you said yourself, if I was a good national socialist I’d have already made something of myself in the RSHA and then I’d be no good to you.”

Goebbels nodded patiently. I’d pushed him just about as far as I could go and then a bit further. That’s the one thing I know about people with power and money; when you’ve got something they want, they’ll take almost anything in the ear in order to make sure they get it.

“You’re right. But I’d rather she told you herself. So, will you please go and see her? At least listen to what she’s got to say?”

I picked up his money off the table. It seemed the least I could do was see his girl. Like I said, it’s not every day the Reich Minister of Propaganda opens his heart and, more importantly, his wallet to you. And it’s not every day you get a chance to meet a film star.

“All right. Where can I find her?”

“In Potsdam. On Griebnitzsee, close to the film studios. There’s a house that’s recently come into my possession on Kaiser-Strasse. My secretary will give you all of the details. Address, telephone number, everything. When shall I tell her that you’re coming?”

I shrugged and glanced at my watch. “This afternoon? I don’t know. Is there an S-Bahn station near there? I don’t know Potsdam all that well.”

“Neu-Babelsberg,” said Goebbels. “I believe it’s quite a hike from the station. But you could go now and be there before lunch if you were to borrow my car.”

“Sure.”

He tossed me a set of keys. “One thing about the car,” he added, as if he already regretted letting me borrow it. “The supercharger whines a bit on start-up. And you have to let the oil heat up before you let out the clutch.”

I walked toward the door. “I’m trusting you with the two things I love most in this life. My car. And my leading lady. I hope that’s clear enough.”

“Crystal clear, Herr Doctor. Crystal clear.”

I
ought to have been in a better mood. I was driving a bright red Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster, the one with the streamlined body and the boot-mounted spare wheel. I had the top down, the wind in my hair, and my foot hard on the gas. I liked driving—especially on the AVUS speedway—and I should have been smiling from one earlobe to the other, but until Goebbels had asked me the question in his office, I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t in love with Kirsten, and wasn’t likely to be, either. Which made me wonder if I was doing the right thing in going out with her at all. Even a car as beautiful as the 540K wasn’t enough to compensate for that kind of feeling. After all, love is rare, and to find that you aren’t in love is almost as upsetting to the human mind as finding that you are.

I’d started seeing her regularly on my return from Smolensk after she’d spoken sharply to me in the line for bread, because of the uniform I was wearing. She’d accused me of jumping the line, which wasn’t true. Later on the same day, I saw her at the swimming baths on Schlacht-Strasse and she’d apologized. She explained that she was upset because the SD had come to her school asking questions in an effort to find out why none of the children in her school had chosen to be evacuated from Berlin to a KLV camp, because of the bombing. She’d told the SD that everyone in Berlin knew the poor reputation of these camps—that parents didn’t want their daughters taken advantage of by the Hitler Youth boys who were also at these camps. Kirsten was worried she’d said too much, and in truth she probably had, but I advised her not to worry and that, if she found herself in trouble, then I’d speak up for her, although in truth that would hardly have helped her cause.

I realized that when I was through with whatever service it was that Goebbels and Dalia Dresner wanted me to do for them, I was going to have to have a quiet word with Kirsten and tell her the bad news. It was only bad news for me, of course; she was an attractive girl and it wasn’t going to be hard for her to find another man, perhaps even one nearer her own age, assuming that after the war was over there would be any of those still left.

I came off the AVUS and slowed down to drive through Wannsee. A few people turned and stared at the red car; they must have thought I was Tazio Nuvolari. I know I did.

Until the 540K arrived there, Potsdam was a quiet town of about eighty-five thousand just thirty miles southwest of Berlin, although it might as well have been located on Rome’s Palatine Hill. Most of Prussia’s kings had made the place their summer residence, which is a bit like saying that Louis XIII used to own a hunting lodge at Versailles. With several beautiful parks and palaces, and surrounded by the Havel and its lakes, Potsdam is now home to some of the richest people in Germany. Of these the richest probably live on the edge by the Griebnitzsee in the so-called villa colony on Kaiser-Strasse, where the houses are a little smaller than the average palace, but rather more private, which is what real money buys these days. That and twenty-five rooms and entranceways like the Parthenon and enough garden to park a squadron of Dorniers.

The finials on the wrought-iron fence in front of the address I’d been given looked like oak trees; there were smaller ones in the front garden. I hadn’t ever seen the Alhambra, but I imagine there were parts of it—the guesthouse perhaps—that resembled the place I was looking at now. Built of cream-colored stone, with redbrick details and church windows, it even had towers and castellations, not to mention a car parked on the gravel driveway that was the exact twin of the one I’d just left on the street. It was exactly the kind of house where you expected to meet a movie star, so the little lozenge-sized scar on the right-hand side of the doorpost from where a
mezuzah
had once been fixed to the doorframe brought me up short. You didn’t have to be the local rabbi or see a bar mitzvah party in the garden to know that this large eccentric house had once belonged to a family of Jews.

I cranked the old-fashioned silver doorbell handle and heard it ring loudly in the hall. I waited and cranked it again, and when nothing happened I peered through the glass in the door for a while but, seeing nothing but a hall tree and bench with a mirror as big as a cinema screen, I walked around to the back where the lawn rolled gently down to the side of the lake. Several orange marker buoys had been deployed in the water to remind any unwelcome visitors with boats that the residents of the house weren’t ever home to visitors. But I wasn’t looking at the water, I was looking at the green baize lawn and what was on the lawn, because it was there, lying on a large white linen spread, that I first laid eyes on Dalia Dresner in the flesh, of which there was rather more on show than I’d been expecting. She was as naked as a Potsdam Giant’s bayonet and every bit as hazardous to men, as I was about to discover. Tiresias at least had the good grace to cover his eyes when he accidentally walked in on Athena taking a shower. I did not. Eventually my own natural good manners persuaded me that—certainly after five minutes—I should have announced myself or at least cleared my throat.

“When Dr. Goebbels asked me to come and see you I had no idea that this is what he meant.”

She sat up quickly and covered herself with the linen spread, but not before she’d made sure I had seen everything.

“Oh,” was all she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t sorry at all. “I rang the bell but no one answered.”

“I gave the maid the day off today.”

“If she doesn’t come back, I’ll take the job.”

“You’re Gunther, of course. The detective. Josef said you were coming.”

“I’m Gunther.”

“The studio makes us lie in the sun like this. To get a tan. I can’t imagine it’s very good for my skin but Josef insists that this is what the public wants.”

“I’ve got no argument with that.”

She smiled shyly.

“Perhaps I ought to wait in the house.”

“It’s all right. You stay here. I’ll go and put on some clothes. I won’t be long.”

She got up and went into the house. “Help yourself to some lemonade,” she said without looking back.

It was only now that I noticed the garden chairs and table and the jug of lemonade that was standing on it. If there’d been a pink elephant in the garden I probably wouldn’t have noticed that, either. I unbuttoned my tunic and sat down and lit a cigarette and put my face in the warm July sunshine. There was a smile on it now although really there shouldn’t have been. After all, I’d seen Dalia Dresner naked before. Millions had seen her naked. It was the only high spot of
The Saint That Never Was
, a
Jud Süss
–in–reverse movie about a woman called Hypatia who was a fourth-century Greek philosopher. At the end of the movie, also directed by Veit Harlan, Hypatia, played by Dalia Dresner, is stripped naked and stoned to death by the Jews of Alexandria. Until that moment it had been a very boring film and there were some women I knew who said that Hypatia had it coming—that Dresner’s was not a great performance. Others, less critical of actors and acting and mostly men such as myself, enjoyed the film for what it was—a good excuse to see a beautiful woman taking off her clothes. Goebbels knew half of his audience, anyway. The smile on my face persisted; but instead of rerunning a sequence of shots inside my mind’s eye of Fräulein Dresner’s naked body, I ought to have asked myself how, if she knew I was coming to the house on Kaiser-Strasse, she’d prepared so carefully for my arrival—after all, there were two glasses on the table next to the lemonade jug—by being splinter-naked in her garden.

A few minutes later she came back wearing a dark blue floral dress. The brown cowboy boots were an eccentric, individual touch. I’d never seen a German woman wearing cowboy boots, least of all with bare legs. I liked her legs. They were long and brown and muscular and they were attached to her backside, which had seemed just right, for me. Her golden-blond hair was now gathered into a bunch. On her strong wrist was a gold Rolex and on her ring finger a sapphire as big as a five-pfennig piece. Her nails were nicely manicured and varnished with pink, like the perfectly formed petals of little geraniums. She sat down and stared at me with the most direct stare I’d ever received from a woman; when she looked at me it was like facing down a cat with blue eyes.
The kind of cat that plays with a mouse until the mouse can’t stand the game for another minute, and then some more.

“Josef said that you’re a famous detective.” Her voice was low and soft, like an eiderdown pillow. “I always thought they’d be men with waxed mustaches and pipes.”

“Oh, I’ll smoke a pipe when I can get the tobacco. And you’re the famous one, Fräulein Dresner. Not me.”

“But you
are
a detective.”

I showed her my beer-token—my little brass warrant disc.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said.

“The important stuff?”

“Of course.”

I shrugged. “I’m forty-seven. I smoke too much. I drink too much. When I can.”

“I’m afraid all I have out here is some lemonade.”

“Lemonade will be fine, thanks.”

She poured two glasses and handed one to me.

“Why do you drink too much?”

“I’ve got no wife and I’ve got no children. I work for the army right now because the police—the real police—they don’t want me anymore. You see, there’s no room in this country for people who want to know the truth, about anything. People like me, that is. I have one good suit and a pair of shoes that I have to stuff with newspaper in the winter. I have a bed with a broken leg. That’s in a tiny apartment in Fasanenstrasse. I hate the Nazis and I hate myself, but not always in that order. That’s why.” I smiled ruefully. “I’ll tell you a secret, fräulein. I don’t know why but I will. There are times when I think I’d like to be someone else.”

She smiled to reveal a row of perfect teeth. Everything about this woman looked perfect. I was beginning to appreciate her.

“That’s something I know a little about. Who? Who do you wish you were?”

“It doesn’t really matter who. The important thing is what.”

“What, then?”

“Dead.”

“That must be easy enough to fix in Germany.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you? But you see, there’s two kinds of dead. There’s ordinary dead and then there’s Nazi dead. The worst kind is Nazi dead. I don’t want to die until I’ve seen the last Nazi do it first.”

“You don’t sound like a detective. You sound like a man who’s lost all his faith. Who’s full of doubt, about everything.”

“That’s what makes me a good detective. That and a certain romantic charm I might have.”

“You’re a romantic, then. You begin to interest me, Herr Gunther.”

“Sure. I’m a regular hero with a sentimental yearning for old times. Almost eleven years ago, to be precise. You should see me walking around on the seashore. I can get quite sensitive about a lot of things. The dawn, a storm, the price of fish. But mostly I specialize in helping damsels in distress.”

“You’re making fun of me now.”

“No, I meant what I said. Especially the part about the damsels in distress. The minister of Truth told me you were in trouble and that you needed my help. So here I am.”

“Did he, now? What else did he say about me?”

“That he was in love with you. Of course, he could have been lying. It wouldn’t be the first time. That he’s been in love, I think. I imagine he always tells the truth, at least about that sort of thing. And now that I’ve met you, it’s easy to see anyone might feel that way.”

“Did he also tell you I’m married?”

“He left out that particular detail. But then men in love often do. I think it’s what the poets call a pathetic fallacy.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“Yes. I was a private detective for about five years. I did a lot of missing persons, husbands mostly. For one reason or another.”

“Then you sound like the one man who might be able to help me.”

“I bet you said exactly the same thing to—to Josef.”

“He warned me that you were a tough guy.”

“Only when I’m standing next to the doctor.”

She smiled. “You know, I don’t think he’s a real doctor.”

“I wouldn’t get undressed in front of him if that’s what you mean. But he’s a real doctor, all right. At least, he has a PhD from Heidelberg University on nineteenth-century literature. I guess that’s why they put him in charge of the book burning. There’s nothing like a university education to make you hate literature.”

“What book burning?”

I smiled. “Before your time, I guess. Suddenly I feel my age. Do you mind me asking how old you are, Fräulein Dresner?”

“Twenty-six. And I don’t mind at all.”

“That’s because you’re twenty-six. In ten years’ time you’ll start to think differently. Anyway, back in 1933, when you’d have been sixteen, I guess, the good doctor helped organize an action against the un-German spirit. That’s what they called it, anyway. They burned a whole load of books right here in Berlin, on Opernplatz. Books written by Jews and more or less anyone who was opposed to the Nazis, but mostly people who could just write. People like Heinrich Mann.”

She looked horrified. “I wasn’t living in Germany at the time so I had no idea. They really did that? They burned books?”

“Sure. And it wasn’t because it was the end of Lent or because the public libraries were looking to make some space, or even because of the tough winter we were having. This was in May. They put on quite a show. Lit up the whole city. I had to draw my curtains early that night.”

Dalia shook her head. “You say the strangest things. I wonder how Josef even knows someone like you, Herr Gunther.”

“I’ve asked myself the very same question.”

“I mean, wearing that uniform you look like a Nazi. But you make it quite clear, to me at least, that you disapprove of them.”

“Obviously I didn’t make myself clear enough. It’s a lot more than disapproval. I hate them.”

“You know, I think you did, only I’ve learned to be one of the wise monkeys when I hear that kind of subversive talk. After all, if you’re a good citizen you’re supposed to do something about it, aren’t you? Call the Gestapo, or something.”