Kissing Kin (39 page)

The Foreign Press Corps in Berlin mingled quite freely with Nazi officialdom and its most ardent sympathizers, and there was no Party ban on such association so far—in fact, each paper’s office
had its Nazi spy as well as its secret sources of information, most of the correspondents were shadowed
constantly
, and it was no novelty to any news man to be called on the carpet by the Secret Police or the Foreign Office and
requested
to explain a hostile dispatch, as a threat or a warning. To Dinah the fact that Johnny was regularly so summoned whenever he was in Berlin seemed each time like his death warrant, but Johnny was merely rather bored by the
interviews
, and his confrères reacted to them with anger or
resignation
or ennui rather than fear. There were seldom any social repercussions, and Goebbels himself attended the big Press parties and became quite jovial as the evening lengthened.

With Bracken and Dinah and Jeff Camilla was invited to the at-home
bier
abends
given by the journalistic set for themselves. Norman Ebbutt was the dean of them all, and Johnny by his long European experience was one of the outstanding figures, and gave marvellous parties of his own at his bachelor
apartment
on Dornburger Strasse. Liquor was plentiful and the talk was free, even when the company was very mixed. Everybody in the Foreign Office was suddenly too busy to bother about Johnny, and nothing further had been heard about his leaving Germany under compulsion, though it was pretty certain that one of these times was going to be the last.

June thirtieth was a Saturday, sunny and hot, and again a
drive to Potsdam had been planned. Johnny arrived at the Adlon in mid-morning, late for their appointment to start, tight-lipped, and excited. They weren’t going, he said.
Something
was up. Even as he spoke there was a spatter of gunfire in the distance and Camilla flew to the window overlooking the Linden. The street below was full of uniformed men in groups. Two military trucks dashed by, with gun-muzzles pointing out, and the soldiers in them wore steel helmets.

“Women must keep away from the windows and stay indoors,” Johnny said crushingly, and pulled her back into the room. Bracken reached for his hat, Jeff did likewise, and the three of them left the suite.

Dinah and Camilla looked at each other blankly.

“This is it,” said Dinah, and sat down as though her knees had given way.

“We only have to try for Potsdam and something always happens,” Camilla said unreasonably. “Where are they going? How long will they be away?”

“You never know,” said Dinah, out of years of being a correspondent’s wife.

“Well, what are
we
supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Wait.” Dinah picked up a day-old copy of the London
Times.
“Occupy our minds. Twiddle our thumbs.”

“I wonder what Sigrid Schultz is doing,” said Camilla rebelliously. And then, as the thing began to dawn in its further implications, “I wonder where Victor is. I wonder what he knew about this.”

“Everybody knew
something
was coming,” Dinah reminded her. “He’s surely had time to dodge, if he needs to.”

“He was afraid,” Camilla murmured, gravitating to the window again.

“Of what?”

“I couldn’t find out.”

“Must have had a guilty conscience,” said Dinah heartlessly.

“I don’t know. He’d broken with his father. Does that mean they are on opposite sides of whatever is happening now?”

“I’d rather be in Victor’s shoes than Conrad’s if they are,” said Dinah.

“I don’t think Victor was so sure—” Camilla leaned to the window. “That’s funny, it’s all Goering’s men you see—the green police uniform. What’s become of all the others? Hardly any traffic moving now, and there’s a truck full of
machine-guns
and their crews parked opposite. Johnny was right. There’s not a woman in sight.”

“Don’t stick your silly head out if there’s any more shooting. Come and sit down.”

“Can’t we have some coffee sent up, or something, just to pass the time?”

“A very good idea,” said Dinah.

When the coffee arrived the china chattered on the tray in the waiter’s hands, and his face was greenish.

“What’s happening outside?” Camilla asked him at once. “Why all the police? What was that shooting?”

The waiter glanced at them nervously and away, his unsteady hands fumbling unnecessarily at things on
the tray.

“There was a plot, they say—discovered in time.”

“What sort of plot?” Camilla asked persuasively.

“A foreign plot, of course—in which German officers were involved—the Brown Shirts meant to betray our Leader, the story goes—that’s Roehm and his gang—” The man’s lips curled. “It was the French at the bottom of it, you be sure—the French again, always at work, like moles—” He glanced over his shoulder, tucked the napkin under his arm, and stood at attention, his gaze avoiding theirs. “Was there anything else you require?”

“What about the SS?” Camilla persisted. “I don’t see them in the streets either.”

“A few,” said the waiter cautiously. “But it is Goering’s affair here in Berlin, they say. If that is all, you will excuse? We are very busy just now.” The waiter departed, walking jerkily, his head down.

Camilla poured out the coffee thoughtfully and realized that
she was going to worry about Victor. But if Goering was in charge in Berlin surely Victor would be safe. Then what had he been afraid of?

She shook off the paralysis of dread which caused Dinah to sit vaguely stirring her coffee without drinking it. Camilla stood up, moved about the room with her cup, sipping the strong, sweet liquid. Would he let her know soon? Would he still think their friendship a protection?

“Should I try to get in touch with Victor?” she asked doubtfully, thinking aloud.

“Heavens, no!” said Dinah. “Keep out of it. You don’t know what he may have been up to. If this is any sort of plot against Hitler, the gutters will run red!”

“But Victor is loyal to him!”

“How do you know? He only says so. It’s death to say anything else. Victor was scared. Remember?”

“But if he thought I could help, even before it started, perhaps I ought to make some effort—” She noticed that Dinah was looking at her sadly and went to sit beside her on the sofa, putting down her cup. “Honey, don’t think I’m in love with Victor. I’m not. I never have been, though I couldn’t tell you why. There is something in him that holds you off, just as there is something that attracts.”

Dinah nodded.

“Conrad was the same,” she said. “Virginia always called it sheer brute magnetism in the old days when he was courting Rosalind. There was something about him that made us not quite sure that she would be miserable with him after all—but she was! Don’t ever let it fool you, will you! There is no compassion in them. Rosalind found that out. You can’t trust yourself to a man who has no pity.”

“I know.” Camilla was silent, thinking of Victor’s attitude towards the atrocities. Dinah had put her finger on the thing he lacked. “But even so,” she argued slowly, aloud, “one can’t bear to think of him being hunted or—tortured. And it was something more than getting shot in a fight that was weighing
on him lately. A fight would be all in the day’s work. It was something
worse
than that.”

A look crossed Dinah’s tell-tale face, but she did not speak. Camilla caught it, and waited, and then said, “You thought of something. What was it?”

“Only guesswork,” said Dinah uncomfortably, but Camilla went on waiting. “Well, I was only thinking—suppose his father was involved in this thing, on the other side—von Schleicher and his friends might be. Suppose Victor knew what was coming—”

“—and had a chance to warn his father—had a chance to
choose
,” Camilla interrupted, and they sat looking at each other with parted lips. “It would be a terrible dilemma—it would explain the strain he’s been under—”

“And how did he choose?” Dinah wondered.

“If he gave a warning—and then was afraid he would be found out by his own side—Oh, poor Victor!” Camilla rose, and began to walk up and down. “I suppose they would execute him for a thing like that.”

“Well, not—right away,” said Dinah significantly, and Camilla put both hands to her face and shivered. “Perhaps we’re just imagining things,” Dinah suggested after a moment.

“We’re not imagining impossibilities. It must have been something like that. Victor was—was quietly going crazy inside himself.” Camilla deliberately poured some more coffee, sugared it, and raised the cup in a shaky hand. “What a country,” she said. “Johnny tried to tell me, before I came. I made Johnny awfully cross sometimes, and now I see why. You can’t realize, till you’ve been here and seen for yourself—and
feIt
it, like damp from a graveyard! It’s fear you feel—millions of people afraid. Nobody safe, nobody daring to speak freely, or trust anybody else—surveillance everywhere, spying, and tale-bearing—”

“They teach the children to repeat at school what they hear their parents say at home,” said Dinah. “A child, not quite understanding what it is doing, or deliberately currying favour,
or nursing some childish grudge, can condemn his own father or mother to a concentration camp. A lie will do it, even—a deliberate, malicious lie.” There was a silence. “I doubt very much if Victor’s father was warned,” she added.

“Oh, Dinah, that’s horrible! Victor isn’t like that, whatever you may say! He had great pride in his father once, as one of the old school.”

“But if Hitler says now that the old school must go—”

“No, I won’t believe that! There is a limit to how low an ordinarily decent man could come, even if he is a German—”

They were still at it, futilely, when lunch-time had gone by and their three men returned. Bracken glanced sharply round the room and saw that the telephone wore its usual muffling sofa cushion, and that all the doors were shut.

“Haven’t you eaten?” he asked briefly, and they shook their heads. They had forgotten to. “Might as well have something up here. And a bottle of whisky.”

While the order was given, Jeff sat limply in the corner of the sofa looking at nothing, and Johnny smoked cigarettes. They said very little till after the meal was served and the waiter had gone.

“Oddly enough,” said Johnny then, “I’m hungry.
Excitement,
no doubt,” he added philosophically.

“What did you see?” Camilla demanded. “What did you learn?”

“Not much, first-hand. Martial law in Berlin. Goering’s men are cleaning up the city according to their lights, and a lot of old scores are being settled in an impromptu execution ground at Lichterfeld barracks, on the edge of town. One of von Papen’s secretaries has been killed and his house is surrounded. He’s had narrow squeaks before, but this looks bad for him. Not that I care much, about von Papen.” After a pause, reluctantly, he said, “But von Schleicher caught it—and his wife as well.”

“
Dead?
”

“His
wife!
”

“Shot. In their home this morning.”

“But
why?
”

“Treason,” said Bracken in quotation marks.

“Then there really was a plot? And he was in it?”

“That will be the official explanation. They were probably just afraid of him. He stood for something, with the better element in Germany. He was a healthy influence, as far as he went—and the Nazis can’t afford to have one of those around.”

“But why his wife too?”

“She probably saw who did the shooting.”

Dinah was not eating.

“She was such a pretty woman,” she said quietly. “And she loved him. You could see that she did.”

“And nobody warned von Schleicher,” said Camilla, and caught Dinah’s eyes, and glancing at their rigid faces Bracken decided not to ask her what she meant.

When Johnny returned to the hotel after the official Press conference for the foreign correspondents at which Goering presided—for Goebbels was with Hitler in Munich, which some people said was the only reason he had not ended up at Lichterfeld too—there was something to add regarding the death of pretty Elisabeth von Schleicher. Goering had accounted for it in a few casual words of one syllable, as he rose to dismiss his already speechless and shaken audience. “Frau von Schleicher was killed in attempting to place herself between her husband and the police,” he said.

For three more days the suburban neighbourhood near Lichterfeld shuddered at continual volleys from the execution rifles in the barracks square. The bodies accumulated in a freshly dug hole outside until they were burned and the ashes mailed back in little boxes to the families—or something that was supposed to be the ashes.

A court-martial sat there, in which Goering was one of the judges. Only a matter of minutes passed between the reading of the charges before the prisoner, who had no opportunity to
reply, and the volley which ended his life. The shooting was done by groups of SS men with one blank cartridge amongst them. Young troops and attachés were required to witness the executions as part of the Nazi hardening process—a few of them broke under the delirium of slaughter and were not seen again. Even members of the firing squads turned sick and were summarily replaced. The confusion was so complete that some of the condemned died believing they were in the hands of the opposite faction, and with a loyal Heil Hitler as their last words.

Lichterfeld was the most orderly part of the massacre. Everywhere in Berlin, in cellars, in alleys, in private homes, in all sorts of refuges and hiding-places, wherever someone on the black list could be run down, there were shooting and terror and bloodshed. There were suicides too—and a few miraculous escapes. Social engagements were all cancelled, and even the Hohenzollerns took cover. People whose dearest friends had disappeared dared not make inquiries nor try to learn their fate for fear of jeopardizing some last slim chance of safety. And a cryptic greeting, which became a slogan, was recklessly used by friends who met by chance and had felt apprehension for each other—
“Lebst
du
noch!”
they would say, clasping hands, which meant, “What, you still alive?”