In the Claws of the Eagle (20 page)

BOOK: In the Claws of the Eagle
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The encounter with Klaus left Louise trembling and fearful. Then the hateful images that he had conjured up in her mind began to take over her thoughts and a new and violent energy stirred within her. This man had given her a glimpse of evil stronger than anything she had ever come across before. So this was the Nazi mind: a cesspit of real or imagined horrors. She had just one desire now, and that was to defeat him – and his kind – in any way she could. But she could do nothing on her own. She must recruit Erich as an ally; he was her only hope. She remembered how he had stood up to Klaus that night back in the woods above Mödling, saving Izaac from a beating, or worse. Also, according to what she had heard Klaus say, Erich had gone back to rescue Izaac from a mob in Vienna. And just now, when he had turned her picture to the wall, she had felt protected, defended even. But yet he had greeted Klaus as an old friend, and had gone out with him
willingly
enough.

At quiet times during the past months Louise would catch glimpses of another existence: a half-dream, half-real, world, where Izaac was calling on her to listen and to work with him on whatever pieces he had on hand. She would hear music, and occasionally get glimpses of drab audiences and strange places, but the minute she tried to grasp it, the vision would be gone, slipping away tantalisingly just beyond her reach. It was as if she was living in two parallel worlds with only the
occasional
dream-like glimpse to bridge the gap between them. The fact that Izaac was still making music should have been reassuring, but there was a desperate, almost frenetic feel to his playing. The snatches that she heard were superb, but why
was she so often left with a nightmare taint, like a whiff of some dead thing passed on a country walk?

Recently, however, Izaac’s playing had sounded more relaxed and the glimpses she was seeing were of pleasant things – a laughing audience, trees in a town square. Klaus had said that Izaac was in a holiday camp in Czechoslovakia. Despite her recent experience with Klaus, she allowed herself to be reassured.

Without any particular plan, she left her portrait, and for the first time began to explore her surroundings. At the centre of the room was a large square worktable piled with pictures, reference books, a huge lens for examining the paintings, and bottles containing various chemicals. It reminded her of the Master’s studio in Delft. Ever since her capture, Erich had talked to her portrait, and she had heard about the progress of the war, and about the constant flow of art pouring into the Jeu de Paume from the great Jewish collections. Sometimes he would reminisce about his climbing and about a beautiful lake near the salt mines. He even told her of his clandestine spying into the activities of the senior Nazi art collectors. ‘There will always be rotten apples, even in the purest of regimes!’ he had said.

Louise halted in her prowling. Was that what he had said? Then, quite deliberately, she forced herself to listen again to Erich’s voice. This time, as with Klaus, she heard another voice, hidden beneath Erich’s self-righteous tones, a voice that said: ‘What can you expect other than rotten apples in a rotten regime!’ Louise’s pulse was racing. She remembered how Gaston, the French hussar, had described his involvement in a ‘glorious’ engagement at the Pont de Chasse, which turned out not to have been a glorious battle at all, but a tragic encounter with a group of peasants armed with scythes! The more she thought about Erich’s talk of the great
Führermuseum
, the
more convinced she became that under this was a whispered voice of shame. Which was the real Erich? Could the lad who spoke up for Izaac above Mödling be the real Erich, the ally she needed? There was only one way to find out.

Erich could never have contemplated an evening with an elite group of SS officers without Klaus’s support. At the very least he could expect to be shunned. Most SS men would regard being dismissed from the force for rounding on a senior officer as a matter of shame. When he spotted a couple of colleagues from his training days he would have slipped away if Klaus hadn’t stood up, drink in hand, and called order.

‘Gentlemen, please! Let me introduce my good friend Erich Hoffman.’ He put his arm over Erich’s shoulder. If anybody says “Snap” I’ll kill them.’ There was laughter; they certainly did look alike. ‘You’ve all heard of the climbing of the
Adlerwand
?’ there was a murmur of interest, and heads turned. ‘Well, young Erich here was not only on that first ascent, but he was first to the top. I filmed him myself as he broke through the… what do you call it … the cornice, that’s it. Let’s drink to “
Erich and the conquest of the Adlerwand
!” Soon Erich had a small circle of officers about him, mostly from the Waffen SS, the fighting unit, who wanted a firsthand account of the climb. For a while then he felt part of the group, the old camaraderie sweeping him in. The friends from his training days came up, and they reminisced about old times.

‘You were a star performer during training, Erich,’ one of them commented. ‘What’s the civilian suit for?’ He was evasive, and then felt ashamed. His oath had been to stand by these men, his comrades, to the death if needs be, and he had deserted them. What had he been doing over the last years while these men had been out there fighting for him? He
missed the camaraderie they had shared in training, and when they began to talk among themselves of their fighting, and of the mad rush of their armies through freshly conquered
territories
, he regretted having talked about his own paltry climbing exploits. Since his training days these men had acquired a whole new vocabulary of words that meant nothing to him now, but had them nodding solemnly, or guffawing with laughter at some in joke.

Whenever the babble of voices dropped, there would be a call for a toast to anyone one from the Führer down, with ‘
bottoms
up’ to show that their glasses had been drained. As the evening wore on he became more and more conscious of the isolation of his work in the museum. He should be out there fighting with these men. Erich, now unsteady on his feet, wandered over to where Klaus and other officers of the Death’s Head detachment were chatting and laughing. As he approached, he saw Klaus signal to the others to be careful of what they were saying. Erich would have gone away, but Klaus, as if to make amends, raised his glass.

‘Here’s to the Jeu de Paume and the Girl in Green!’ Nobody knew or asked what he meant, but glasses were raised and the moment passed. Klaus, however, looked at Erich over his glass, and despite his smile, Erich knew that this toast was a challenge:
She’s got you in her thrall hasn’t she, Erich? Fancy, you – conqueror of the Adlerwand – losing your manhood to a girl in a picture
!
With a shock Erich realised that Klaus was right; Louise had become part of his life. Tomorrow he would write to General von Brugen and explain to him that, with the dire state of the war, he would like to be relieved of his spying responsibilities so that he could volunteer for the Waffen SS, the fighting regiments of the SS.

When he arrived back in the Jeu de Paume he struggled to get his key into the keyhole, which, for some reason, seemed
to be scuttling about the door like a mouse. At last he got to his room and stood braced against the doorjamb until the floor stopped tilting. Now he finished the SS song with which the company had ended their revels: ‘…
Diese gotverdammte Juden Republik
!
’ He began again: ‘
Blut blut
–’

‘Don’t you dare sing songs like that!’ The voice came from
inside
the room. He let go of the doors and stepped in unsteadily, to be met by a vision in green. The girl, whoever she was, was berating him for being drunk, for singing Nazi songs … His eyes were beginning to focus now. He recognised her now, of course! Who else, but the girl from his picture?

‘Lou … ise!’ he said, having difficulty with the word. ‘You look ’zactly how you look in your portrait.’ He lurched forward and opened his arms, not quite sure of his intentions.

‘Come to Erich.’ The girl looked at him in disgust. Then, avoiding his grasp, she slipped behind his desk and headed for her portrait.

All evening Louise had been thinking about Erich, wondering how best to appeal to his better nature. Surely his Nazism was only skin deep? But now the fool had come in drunk; he hadn’t even reacted to her presence. He was no use to her in this condition. She turned to her painting but it had
disappeared
! It
must
be there! What in God’s name was a portrait of Hitler doing there, where she was sure her picture should be? Where could she go? She never left her frame unless she knew where her picture was!

‘What have you done with my picture? Where is it?’ she demanded.

Erich stopped, looked puzzled, and turned to the wall. Then he let out a roar of laughter and lurched over to the Hitler portrait, reached up and turned it around. Oh, joy. There it was – home – her own place, where Pieter had made a special room
for her in the studio, and the Master had teased her about Galileo, and where Annie had sat sipping Kathenka’s special brew. It had never occurred to her that there might be another picture on the other side. Erich was standing back, pleased as punch with his conjuring trick. He bowed; she was free to go.

Erich manoeuvred himself upright with care, feeling as though an axe had been driven through his head. He put on a dressing gown against the chill, went out into his workroom and sat down at his desk. He remembered his dream about Louise. Klaus had said he was in her thrall, perhaps he was right. He would hand her picture over to the archivist as soon as he had written his letter of resignation to General von Brugen. It was nonsense to think that a mere picture might influence him.

Making a conscious effort to smarten himself up, he washed and shaved with only one cut to the chin, and went out to the café where he usually went, under the colonnade on the Rue de Rivoli, for breakfast and a cup of the brown liquid that they called coffee.

Elaine Colville, the proprietor’s pretty daughter, came over and sat with him for a while. She worked in the gallery as a cleaner, a job she had got through her father, who was a strong supporter of the Vichy Government of France that co-operated with the Germans. Erich liked her and flirted with her when he could.

When she had gone, he thought back to the events of last night and how he had felt with his old comrades. His route to the SS had been so different from theirs. It had really started after the climbing of the Adlerwand, when the Nazi
propaganda
machine had taken over, claiming that it showed what Germany and Austria could do together if they merged. When Erich was offered a commission in the SS, it had seemed
logical to accept. In the months before the Anschluss, while he was at SS training in Germany, Erich had seen nothing but
Germany
’s industry and prosperity. Autobahns streaked the country like arteries. Volkswagens – ‘people’s cars’ – buzzed like bees, factories boomed, whereas in Austria everything seemed to be stagnating.

BOOK: In the Claws of the Eagle
12.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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