A Choice of Enemies (8 page)

“I’m going out for a walk,” Norman said. “See you soon.”

Joey poured Charlie another cup of coffee.

“Poor guy,” Charlie said at last.

“He’s a coward,” Joey said.

“A coward? It’s not easy, you know. He was crazy about his brother.”

“Norman has never faced a crisis in his life. He’s always run away.”

“You know,” Charlie said. “You know everything.”

A mist rose from the Seine. Ernst yawned. All his bones ached. The bum who was curled up next to him on the cobblestones began to cough wetly again. Ernst was afraid that he was dying. He ran off into the night to the nearest café and returned with a small bottle of cognac. The bum accepted his drink gratefully, but just as Ernst was falling asleep a few moments later, his coughing worsened. Ernst took the bum into his arms and pressed more cognac on him until he passed out or fell asleep; Ernst couldn’t tell for sure. By then it was nearly 5 a.m. The bums began to stir as one by one they were nudged by the sun. An old man rose and stretched. Another, still stiff with sleep, heaved his pack over his back and urinated under the bridge. Ernst rose and hopped first on one leg and then on the other. As soon as he felt warm enough he started up the concrete steps to the street.

This was Ernst’s tenth day in Paris and he was still without prospects. He had a letter from his mother. She was in Hamburg. She needed money. His father had sent him a postcard from Berlin. He needed money.

Ernst’s father was a grey, shrunken man with weak moist eyes and an annoying habit of bowing his head when he spoke with strangers. He had not always been like that. When Hitler had come to power Karl Haupt had not joined the Nazis, but neither had he worked against them. Always a little inclined towards anti-semitism, never very fond of the British, he had, nevertheless, found Hitler offensive. As he was in the legal business his attitude was very costly to his family. You could not practise law unless you were a party member. During the war Karl Haupt, who was in and out of the punitive camps, did odd jobs for lawyers. His friends pleaded with him to be sensible.

Karl, did not the Jews overrun most of the professions before Hitler?

Exactly.

Karl, isn’t it our sacred duty to defend the fatherland from the Jewish bolsheviks?

Exactly.

So Karl, why make it hard for yourself and your family? Join the party.

No, Karl would say, your party is rotten, and into prison he would go.

After the war Karl Haupt enjoyed a brief time of money for the first time in his life. The Americans made him a judge at minor denazification trials in a provincial town. As all his old advisers came up before him they got sentences of from six months to two years. Then, abruptly, the trials were over. A year, two years later, Karl Haupt was worse off than before. All the denazified were out of prison and back in the courts and, of course, they made sure that he got no work. So he took to the Soviet Zone, but there it was soon established that he had worked for the Americans and, what’s more, he would not join their party either.

Ernst lit a butt he had saved from the night before.

At Les Halles the higher sun bit ravenously into exposed crates of melons and lettuces and peaches. Ernst wriggled through the sharp-smelling maze to where M. Krespe stood with his grimy little pad.

“I told you to be here at four.”

“I asked them to wake me at my hotel,” Ernst said, “but they forgot.”

“That’s a good one. At your hotel, eh?”

Ernst helped unload crates of oranges until nine a.m., until two cuts in his hands had reopened and his back was knotted with pain, and then he had to hang around the café for another half hour before M. Krespe paid him. The sun was wide in the sky, this was going to be another white hot day. Ernst went to the Gare St. Lazare, had a cup of coffee at one of the wagons, and then went down to the toilets and rented a private cubicle and sat down and ate two oranges and a
banana while he read a story by Kipling in a German translation. He dozed briefly. In his dreams he returned to the black market at the Potsdamerstrasse. Again the American soldier whom he had cheated the day before returned sobered and with two friends. Again he came to with his knife gone and his nylons gone and three teeth gone. The dream faded; Ernst woke in a sweat. He washed and shaved. But it was still too early. The boat-train wasn’t due for another twenty-eight minutes. So Ernst sat down on a bench opposite track nine and counted his money. Seven hundred and twenty francs. Not enough to get him to Dieppe. Not a big enough stake for London.

He fell asleep. Once again he sat on the bed, waiting for Nancy to come back to him. Once again instead of the thin pretty girl there came the familiar shriek of
M.P
. sirens. Fortunately the window was directly above the patio roof. From there, a leap into the garden would be easy, and he would be gone. But as he turned to raise the window he had been suddenly yanked from behind. There was Nicky, a smashed beer bottle in his hand, and a crazed look on his face.

“You son-of-a-bitch. First you steal Frank’s wallet, then you cost me one of my best friends, and now –”

“You don’t understand.”

“– and now you come upstairs to steal.”

In another moment, Ernst had thought, the
M.P
.s will be here.

“Get away. I’m going through the window.”

Ernst had tried for the window once more and Nicky, the smashed beer bottle in his hand, had rushed him. Ernst had tried to take him by force, but then, in the distance, he had heard the whine of another police siren, so he had pulled out his knife. Nicky had lost all semblance of individuality for him, he had become simply another opponent. Ernst had worked swiftly and accurate. Then, acting from the memory of other encounters, he had removed Nicky’s wristwatch, taken his papers, smashed the window with a chair, and jumped.

Ernst ran and ran and ran, until he had collapsed on the pavement in a little street in Schwabbing, the blood pounding through his head. His hand had been bloody. He had sat there – a panting, empty-eyed boy on the pavement – until he had risen at last and had been sick once, twice, in the gutter.

The following morning, and every morning since, he had rationalized his crime to himself, but once he was alone in the dark, the rationalizations had no longer served a useful purpose. Each night Nicky came and was knifed and murdered again.

Ernst jerked awake. A scream died, unheard, in his throat. Breathing heavily, he wiped his forehead with his arm.

After the boat-train arrived Ernst waited at the head of the platform until the people began to come through with their luggage. There were many Americans, more than he had hoped for, and at last he spotted a man of roughly his own size. The American was struggling with three pieces of luggage; he seemed baffled. Ernst hastened to his side.

“Porter?”

“I don’t think –”

But Ernst was already in charge. “There are two more inside,” the American said lamely, pointing at the train.

“Wait for me here. I’ll get you a taxi.”

Ernst picked up the heaviest of the three bags and boarded the train. Inside he picked up another bag and then raced ahead through four cars and descended to the platform again. By this time a camera was strapped to his side and he was wearing sun glasses. “Porter,” he called. “Porter.”

A porter picked up his bags and Ernst followed him through the gates.

“Vite,”
Ernst said.
“Je suis très pressé.”

Ernst gave the taxi driver the address of an hotel on the left bank. Inside the hotel he registered as D.H. Hollis, the name on his
luggage tabs. He told the
patron
that he was in a hurry, he said that he had to get to the American Express before it closed and that he would return before evening to fill out the proper papers, then he followed a sluggish boy to a room on the third floor. As soon as the boy left, Ernst locked the door. Then, the shaking came. He tumbled on to the bed and brought his knees up to his chin and hugged himself tight. When the fear had passed again he took out his last cigarette and smoked it on the bed. He stepped out of the hotel again about an hour later. He wore a Brooks Brothers suit. Carrying a raincoat over his arm in spite of the cloudless skies, he took a bus to the Rue des Rosiers and entered a dark seedy café there. Albert bought the camera, a Leica, for about a quarter of what it was worth.

Ernst walked to a café in the Opera district, sat down on the terrace, and ordered a beer. This, he thought, is a good time for a spot of
Selbst-Kritik
. He had twelve thousand three hundred francs and some change. Ten thousand would go to his parents. The night mortician, he thought, will sell me identity papers for fifty thousand francs, but what then? My French is bad; I haven’t got a trade. A tall middle-aged Texan drifted down the street clutching his pretty wife like an all-day sucker. Lanky Swedes with packs on their backs, boys of his own age, passed brown and confident before him. Ernst took the newspaper clipping out of his pocket again. As a special service to tourists this summer, the clipping said, the British and French governments have agreed to allow all-day trippers to travel between Newhaven and Dieppe without passports. But if I’m going to London, he thought, I’ll need more money.

A week later, in London, Sally went to visit the Lawsons.

“Look who’s here,” Charlie said, “the teach. Isn’t that wonderful, darling?”

Joey was typing a script for Charlie at Norman’s desk. Perhaps it was the horn-rimmed glasses, maybe it was just an off day, but she seemed depressed. Charlie, though, was in excellent spirits. Wearing a patched cardigan, corduroys, and slippers, he was perched high on a ladder, running gaily coloured streamers from wall to wall.

“Welcome to the Young Pioneers, Kensington Division,” he said. “Mandrake Lawson’s show begins at four.”

Charlie was giving a party for the
émigré
children. An amateur magician, he was going to perform for them as well. Sally discovered that Joey was worried because Charlie’s deal to do a picture for Winkleman had hit a snag. They were broke, she gathered, and not very popular. But Charlie was sure that the deal would work out. Sally let an hour go by before she asked about Norman. Norman had been away for two weeks and she had yet to hear from him.

“We haven’t heard a word either,” Charlie said.

Joey told her about Nicky’s death.

“Hold on a sec,” Charlie said, “I’ll go and see if there’s any mail.”

As soon as Charlie had gone Joey shed her glasses and turned solemnly to Sally. “Are you very fond of Norman?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I’m not trying to snoop,” Joey said, “believe me, but for your own good you may as well know right now that Norman is very erratic. He’s also selfish, thoughtless, and irresponsible.”

“I don’t see that this has anything to do with me,” Sally said coldly.

“Maybe not,” Joey said. “But you’re young and impressionable. I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you to build up things in your mind when –”

“I’m fond of Norman,” Sally said, rising, “but no more.”

Charlie returned, breathless. “No mail.” He turned to Sally. “Aren’t you staying for the party?”

“I really must go.”

After Sally had gone Charlie noticed that Joey was in tears.

“What happened?”

“I’m not staying for your party either,” Joey said, getting up. “How can you do this to me?”

“Do what,” Charlie asked. “Beat you?”

“A children’s party,” she said. “Haven’t you any feeling?”

The first weeks of summer in London were the loneliest Sally had ever experienced. Every day she raced eagerly forth to adventure: none came.

Bob Landis took her out twice. She was flattered, and she certainly would have gone to bed with him that night after the theatre if, no sooner than he had succeeded in removing her blouse, he hadn’t said, “You know that I’ve got a wife, baby, and that this is just for kicks,” which had given her the giggles.

At night Sally often cried herself to sleep. She visited the British Museum, she went to the theatre, she stood on Westminster Bridge and she swept through gallery after gallery until her feet ached. The West End, except for the grand swing of Regent Street, was another disappointment. This seemed to be little more than a second-rate, inchoate Broadway. America’s hit tune of last year triumphant again in the record shops of Charing Cross Road. Broadway’s hit musical of 1948 a hit again at the Hippodrome. Johnny Ray at the Palladium; Billy Graham at Harringay. At night the parade of depraved itchy faces, men in black rubber trenchcoats and whores past the indecent age, was the most appalling she had ever seen.

So Sally, ordinarily the most inadequate of correspondents, wrote her father every night. She missed her family, her friends, her own comfortable bedroom and, most of all, her bath. Missing these conveniences made her feel even more wretched. For when friends of the family had returned after a summer in Europe only to complain
about the filth and the inefficiency she had summarily dismissed them as “middle-class,” a word which until recently had epitomized everything she abhorred.

One evening Sally set out to fish for sexual experiences in the espresso bars of Hampstead. Her first bite came from an elderly roué who was unhooked like a catfish. The next few nibbles were hardly worth the bait. A non-objective painter with the necessarily rotten teeth, a Dane who translated Chinese poems from the English of Arthur Waley, and an assistant television producer who wore a black turtleneck sweater and corduroy trousers. Denis Patmore was the last boy’s name, and he took her to a bottle party at a friend’s studio the next evening.

“I just don’t dig Freud on people,” a girl said, “that’s all.”

The floor was heaped with unwashed girls in blue jeans and sweaters. Bleached ones, black ones; plump and unplundered ones. A long loony-eyed one with a fistful of teeth and another one with pillowy breasts. But the men, after you allowed for a few exceptions, were a much drier lot. They seemed afraid that they would be devoured like pretzels after the next round of drinks. One of the exceptions was an obese art critic with stinging red eyes: “Higgins is a clod. The silly fool can’t get his roger up unless Inga wears handcuffs.” An emaciated man, who described himself as a writer of “progressive space-fiction,” sold Sally two tickets to a meeting of the Anglo-Rumanian Friendship Society. A Negro novelist wiped his wine-stained hands on her skirt. “The world,” he said, “is so completely,” before he staggered off.