In the Claws of the Eagle (22 page)

‘You ungrateful little worm! After me saving you from death, no less!' She rubbed her behind. ‘Wait till we're in stage with a whole audience in front, I'll show you.' Pafko emerged,
smudged but defiant. Izaac told him to apologise. Not only had Aninka's quick action saved him from punishment, but it had possibly also saved the whole opera. Pafko's offer of a kiss was indignantly refused. He thought for a moment and then dug deep into his pocket, took out a small notebook and extracted something precious. It was a special meal ticket, the kind that people only got for exceptional labour. He gave it to Aninka and her eyes lit up.

The dress rehearsal had gone so well that everyone now expected a disaster on the night. Behind the scenes, Izaac's unruly flock of performers were sitting like hunched fledglings lost in the misery of first night nerves. As the hall of the
Magdeburg
barracks began to fill, curiosity began to replace nerves. When the small orchestra, with Izaac as leader, stood up for the conductor, they were ready. Rafík, concealed behind the painted houses of the set, had his hand up. Count eight bars, breathe in, nine bars. ‘Tohle je malý Pepíček…' and they were away, introducing the two children and their sick mother.

Marie had bargained and cajoled in order to get a bunk beside a window, partly because she wanted to be able to read, partly because she kept a journal and she needed light for this. She read through yesterday's entry: 

Now she sucked her pencil; a lot can change in a day. She enjoyed making entries by the beam of the searchlight because 
she liked the feeling that she was using the German's light for her clandestine activity. She wrote:

And then waited for the searchlight to creep across the window again.

Izaac was being jostled and pushed like seaweed in an ebb tide as he stared at the transportation list. Pafko had given him the news; he just had to see it for himself. There it was at the top of the list, a name clearly added by the Nazi administration:
Jacob Edelstein
. Izaac thought back; it was barely two months since Jacob had taken the unprecedented step of asking the Nazis about the transports, and what was at the end of them. Well, Jacob was about to find out. 

‘Damnation!’ Erich said to himself as he thrust the sheet of paper away from him and dropped his head on to his arms. ‘Why did I talk to her? Blast her!’ It was well past midnight now, and every attempt to draft his resignation to General von Brugen and request his transfer back into the SS had failed. His waste paper basket was half full of frustrated attempts, all of which would have to be burned because the ink and the process that he used were top secret; no one must know of his Gestapo connection. He emptied his waste paper basket, and, following his instructions to the letter, he burned the drafts in an old enamel basin, crushed them, and then washed them down the sink in his room.

At times of quiet, Louise would listen for sounds of Izaac’s playing, a faint vibrato to reassure her that somewhere out there she was participating in his music. Her waking dreams would be more vivid, but harder to interpret: sudden laughter and the impression of children circling about her, or bright young voices singing in a language she couldn’t understand. Had Izaac become a chorus master? Then she would see things that made her shudder: cockroaches on a floor, a cart covered by a cloth, a foot sticking out. But these soon became confused with her Klaus nightmares and she would wake, sweating,
unable to disentangle what she had been seeing.

She woke this morning with a feeling of despair. Her dreams had been bad, and she was certain that Erich had
written
his letter to General von Brugen. She could hear him moving about, with abrupt angular movements. He walked towards her picture; she felt a surge of hope, but then he moved away humming tunelessly. The door banged.

Erich had gone out to get something to eat, when Elaine, on her evening cleaning round, knocked on Erich’s door and,
getting
no reply, used her master key to come into the room.
Evening
light glowed through the high gallery windows. She walked over to Erich’s desk, reached up and turned Louise’s picture about, hesitated and then sniffed.

‘I smell burning. Paper?’ she said. She sniffed again. ‘What has Erich Hoffman been doing burning papers in here?’ She ran her duster over his desk, examined it, and rubbed the small flakes of grey ash with her finger. ‘Oh Erich,’ she said. ‘I hope you are not a naughty boy. Only people who have secrets burn papers – Gestapo people – and we don’t like Gestapo people here.’

When the Germans marched into Paris, Elaine’s father had decided that it was best for France, for him, to co-operate with them. Elaine, on the other hand, had chosen resistance. Father and daughter lived together happily, Papa knowing full well that Elaine was in the Resistance. Because she spoke some German and could use her father’s influence, she had been able to get a job in the Jeu de Paume. ‘We believe there is a Gestapo member there. We need you to find him for us!’ Her resistance leader had ordered her.

Surely Erich couldn’t be the one she was looking for?

‘Perhaps you lied to me and were really writing to your 
Fräulein, saying that you had fallen in love with a little French girl called Elaine?’ She dusted thoroughly, as if to remove the evidence, but paused again at his wash-hand basin. There too were signs of ash having been washed down the plughole. When she had finished she sat in Erich’s chair for a moment and let her eyes roam over the wall. Then, with an anxious smile at Louise she whispered, ‘Tell me that it was just a love letter.’ Then she turned the picture back to face the wall.

That evening it was Erich who turned her picture about. He glared at her, but his look told all. He had not sent his letter of resignation to von Brugen! She realised she had won. She felt a surge of relief; she hadn’t realised how her helplessness had been weighing on her. But what had she won? A little time, perhaps, until he was put to the test again? He had admitted that he didn’t believe in the Nazi cause, but he had been a Nazi long enough to steal her picture from Izaac, and to volunteer for the SS after a drunken night out! Louise shuddered. There was something insidious about the Nazi doctrine. Klaus knew all about it and exploited it to his own ends, but Erich was trusting. Was it lying dormant, like a worm inside him? She needed to know for her sake, but also for his.

Erich’s scowl softened as she emerged. He got up and cleared some books from her chair and then sat down himself. She wondered how to start, but then decided that the direct approach was best.

‘Erich,’ she said, ‘I know very little about you, apart from what you told me while you were talking to my picture. You never sent your letter to General von Brugen, did you?’ He shook his head. ‘So we have a little time. When you
remembered
happy times, you talked about a village up in the
mountains
; I’d like you to tell me about it. Were the salt mines there?’ 

Erich had felt unusually flat since he had burned his last draft to General von Brugen. He had enjoyed the thrill of action again and had dreaded another evening of inactivity. Now the girl was challenging him and this fitted his mood. He made himself a cup of barley coffee, sat down opposite her and began to tell her about Altaussee. As he talked, the Jeu de Paume developed a misty quality until eventually it blew away and he was facing into a stiff breeze on the Loser Mountain. Surprised, he faltered, but Louise’s voice was with him, like a companion urging him to pick up the thread again. After she had done this several times, she said simply, ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to take me with you?’ and somehow she was there, walking, talking, and climbing like any other congenial companion.

If Louise had known in advance where Erich would take her, she mightn’t have been so keen to come. He tested her mettle. She found herself added to the rope on his first real rock climb, and later even on sections of the first ascent of the Adlerwand. She found a whole new dimension, where eagles soared and fixed her with tawny eyes, and the thrill of having what Erich called ‘air beneath your heels’.

He told her about the salt mines, taking her into caverns and lakes deep under the mountain, where he showed her where the miners had cut out a chapel and built an altar out of solid salt. She listened to the timbre of his voice and liked it; she could trust this man. But then one day, Louise was suddenly alert. She realised that what he had been telling her was not in fact what he was showing her. It happened one evening when they had been on a long walk, returning over the top of the Kleinkogel and running across the meadow towards the chalet. 

‘Look, there’s a car at the house, I wonder whose that is?’ he had said. As they passed the window they paused and she saw Erich’s mother, Sabine, crying. There was a man with her, Jewish looking, who was comforting her. Sabine moved towards him and momentarily rested her forehead on his shoulder. Erich had said with relief, ‘Oh, good, Herr Solomons has come!’ He hurried around to greet the man like an old friend.

Now Louise stared across the table at Erich in disbelief; the image she had seen and the words Erich had used bore no resemblance to the account he had just given her, here in the Jeu de Paume. What he had said was: ‘
It was that bloody Jew, Solomons, making a pass at Mother, so I went around, burst in, and gave him a piece of my mind
!
’ This was like Klaus, but in reverse! Had she found the worm?

‘
Erich
! Do you realise what you have just said?’

‘About Solomons making a pass at Mother? Yes, I was
disgusted
!’

‘But Erich, that is
not what happened!
I was beside you, just seconds ago, when you saw Herr Solomons with your mother. What you really said was, “Oh good, Herr Solomons has come,” and you went round and greeted him like a friend!’

A sudden chill came over the room.

‘You shouldn’t interrupt,’ Erich said angrily. ‘How can
you
know what happened?’ It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Because you showed me,’ but she kept quiet. He got to his feet and, angling his shoulders, strode away across the room. ‘I’m not going to waste my time talking if you start making things up against me. Go on, fade away, or do whatever you do when you’re not wanted.’

Down in his tiny bedroom, Erich banged about, washed his face, combed his hair; then feeling suddenly tired, he sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, the defiance 
draining out of him. She was right. He had been pleased and grateful to see Solomons comforting his mother. It had only been later that Veit’s poison had crept in, twisting poor
Solomons
’s concerned smile into a wicked leer. Oh God, he
wondered
. How much more had he distorted in his mind, and where was Solomons now? In a concentration camp, most likely. It was almost a relief to find that Louise was no longer there when he went back into the room; he needed time to think.

As Izaac’s audience and critic, Louise had learned how to deal with him when he had convinced himself that he was playing something right – when he knew deep down that he was wrong. Erich was, if anything, more willing to have his false notes shown to him: he had found something in himself that he didn’t like. She never told him about her theory of a ‘worm’ but she became adept at spotting it in the memories that he told her about. They found it in Grandpa Veit, but also in the poverty Erich had experienced after the first war. They found it in Erich’s father’s sickness, and in poor Mr Solomons’s charity to them. But above all they found it in Klaus. When she saw the way Klaus had skilfully manipulated Erich on his ‘
eye-opening
’ tour of Vienna’s Jewish banks and cafes, she thought, poor Erich, he didn’t stand a chance.