Kissing Kin (40 page)

For three days no word came from Victor and with the von Schleichers gone Bracken had no private source of information as to Conrad. One assumed that he was in hiding. Then Johnny heard on his own grapevine that Conrad was dead—no
confirmation
, no details. Even Dinah was troubled. “Should we have tried to get him out of Germany?” she asked Bracken. “Some of them did get out in time.” Bracken said something about her poor little conscience because she had never liked the man, and expressed the opinion that Conrad would not have thanked them for trying—nor would Rosalind, either. “She wouldn’t have wanted it like this,” said Dinah
reproachfully
.

The Fourth of July reception at the American Embassy was
to be held as usual in Berlin, as at every other American Embassy in Europe. It was going to be a grim afternoon, especially for Johnny, counting up the missing, but the Embassy was gaily decorated, an orchestra played American music, and the Ambassador’s family was smiling and
composed
.

With Victor’s anxiety to accompany them weighing on her mind, Camilla had put on her prettiest frock and a big hat and slathers of make-up, and delayed her departure from the hotel as long as possible, hoping that he would still show up. When they finally had to start without him after all, she found herself sick with anxiety, her palms cold and moist, her heart beating thickly. I didn’t think I would mind so much even if something happened to him, she thought in further
consternation
. It’s only because I’ve known him so long—it’s only that one can’t bear to think of a good friend being murdered—it’s only the effect of this damnable, deliberate terrorism on one’s nervous system—but it isn’t as though he was somebody like Kim that belonged, that one had ever been really close to—I’m sorry for him, that’s all—I’d be sorry for anyone caught up in this nightmare—but suppose it was someone I really
loved
….

When she caught sight of him at the entrance to the Embassy ballroom greeting his hostess, only a few minutes after she had passed through it herself, she felt the relief like a blow in the diaphragm and hurried towards him, almost falling into his arms.

“Victor, oh, thank God,
lebst
du
noch!
” she said softly, and then with her hands gripping his hard upper arms on either side, she saw his face looking down at her, drawn, red-eyed, the bloodless lips stretched in a small fixed smile.

“You must not say that. It is cheap and tactless,” he said as his only greeting to her.

“I’m sorry. What have they done to you? Come and have a drink. Or is it food you need?” She glanced towards the buffet, pulled a little at his arm.

“I would like to sit down, if that is possible,” he said.

“The garden—out here—quick, before Bracken spots us—”

He followed her out to a small table set on the grass and they sat down facing each other. He said nothing, only gazed at her haggardly, a muscle jerking in his jaw, so that she rushed into speech herself, trying nervously to put him more at ease before they were interrupted.

“I was so worried about you—why didn’t you send me word? Where have you been?”

“At Lichterfeld.”

The word lay there between them, cold like a snake. She stared back at him, stricken almost as he was into a sort of glassy horror.

“You—saw—”

“Everything. We have not had much sleep.”

“And—your father?” She could hardly form the question.

“Dead.”

“N-not—?”

“No. By suicide.”

She made a sound, half pity, half shudder, and he continued woodenly, “I should not have come here and I cannot remain long. I came only because of you.” His eyes burned into her, hot and sick. “I wanted to look again at the sharp, sweet thing you are, Camilla, so sure of yourself and the things you believe in, so damnably
right,
no matter what you do! No fumbling, no guesswork, no mistakes—eh, Camilla? No regrets, shall we say, to carry to your grave!”

“Is that the way I seem to you?” She had winced
involuntarily
at the savage undertone in his controlled voice. “It sounds more like a description of yourself. And why do you hate me for it?”

“I wanted to love you—that is why I am damned. It is too late now. Always I have hated the soft English side of me, which was always tempted by you. Always I have fought the English blood in me, which I recognized as a weakness in my
heritage. And I have won against it. I have proved now that I am German.”

“But if you only
knew
the English, Victor—they are very different than you think. If you knew your mother you would love her.”

“That is hardly possible now,” he said stiffly. “However, at least I shall know the English, as you suggest. I am posted to the Embassy in London, when this is over.”

“London!” She gazed at him a moment apprehensively. “But why?”

“No reason—except that I have my orders. There are to be some changes there.”

She sat silent a moment, looking at his haggard, somehow dogged face and the splendid body sagging in the little iron chair. Something rushed up in her, warm and impulsive and protective. She couldn’t bear to see him like this, as though he disintegrated before her eyes. She leaned towards him across the table and laid a quick, caressing hand on his sleeve.

“Victor—let me help you!”

“Help me?” he said hopelessly, looking down without interest at her hand.

“It needn’t be too late, Victor—need it? This job you’ve got in London—maybe that’s the answer—maybe it’s come just in time—for you. Suppose I came with you?”

“How do you mean?” he asked dully, for the liquor he had drunk to steady him was gaining on him fast.

“However you like,” she said recklessly, seized by a sudden private hysteria of her own, born of the mass hysteria all around her—a passionate wish to save a man from his own implacable destiny, as though she threw down a challenge to his Nazi masters: My woman’s power, my beauty and wit and experience, all the things I stand for and believe in, against your tyranny of fear—all my cards on the table, against yours, for this man’s soul. “Victor, you’re going to get
away,
don’t you see? Take advantage of it, for the love of God! Come and meet
my
people, come and see how
we
live, come and learn
the difference, darling, between being free and being part of a machine! Victor, I’ll do anything I can, do you hear—I’ll give you anything you want, I’ll prove to you that our way is best, and that people don’t have to live like this, in mortal terror morning, noon, and night! Let them send you to London, by all means—and I’ll go with you to London too—and I’ll guarantee that you’ll never want to come back to this!”

His bloodshot, heavy-lidded eyes tried to focus on the vivid face upturned to his. His dry lips opened slackly and his words came blurred and slow.

“Are you suggesh-ting that I should desert the Leader for you—a woman?”

“Not just for me, Victor—for a way of life that I could make for you, so much more worth living than this! I
dare
you, Victor—escape with your soul while you can!”

“My soul?” He gave an ugly snort of laughter. “There’s no such thing. I saw them die at Lichterfeld.” He wagged a clumsy negative finger confidentially. “There’s no soul.”

“What about the ones with the courage to commit suicide?”

“For them it was made easy. They had privacy.”

“And perhaps time to pray.”

“Pray for what?” It was a sneer. “Mercy? From whom? Pray or not, they’re just as dead now.” He wavered groggily in the chair, jerked upright, and tried again to focus on her face.

“Victor, go and get some rest now, and we’ll talk
tomorrow
. Can you come to see me at the hotel? I want to hear more about this assignment in London.”

“Lon’on.” He said it with loathing, and then levelled an unsteady forefinger at her across the table. “Now, you keep out of this, Camilla, un’erstand? I don’t want any help from you in Lon’on. I know what I’m doing there. The fact is—” He rose, and caught at the chair-back to save himself from falling, and stood leaning on it looking down at her. “The fact is, I never want to see you again. And after today it’s not likely, is it!”

He let go the chair cautiously, and walked away from her
like a somnambulist, towards the house, without seeing Johnny who was almost in his path. Johnny came on to where Camilla sat numbly at the table and said, with all sincerity, “The poor guy. The poor, goddamned son-of-a-gun.”

“He’s ill,” she said, staring after him.

“He’s drunk,” Johnny said, sitting down in Victor’s chair. “What did he tell you?”

“That he was at Lichterfeld.”

Johnny gave a low, comprehending whistle.

“He’s done for, then,” he said. “He’ll know too much.”

“On the contrary, he’s posted to the London Embassy, whatever that may mean.”

Johnny leaned forward in the chair.

“Sure about that?”

“He said so.”

“
Now
what?” Johnny muttered, and his eyes went
thoughtfully
towards the house, where the black uniform had already disappeared in the crowd. “Always up to something, aren’t they. This could be very interesting—and very nasty too.”

“His father,” said Camilla, “committed suicide.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Johnny, who very seldom was. “Von Papen is still alive, though. Another one of his little miracles.”

Camilla was looking down at the table in front of her with widened, hypnotized eyes.

“Perhaps when he goes to England he
will
realize, even without me there,” she said slowly. “I thought perhaps if he met the right people, and was made decently welcome, and saw how free people live and talk and enjoy life, he would comprehend.”

“It’s too late now,” said Johnny, and her eyes came up to his face.

“He said that too.” There was a long silence, while she traced meaningless patterns on the table-top with a finger-tip, and Johnny smoked, waiting for her to regain composure. “Do you know what I think?” she said at last.

“I’m afraid I do.”

“You think so too. You think he might have saved his father—and didn’t. And that’s what’s been eating into him. He had a choice—and he let it happen.”

“He ought to feel just fine about that, as time goes on,” said Johnny with some satisfaction. “It’s the kind of thing that’s likely to grow on you.”

“But now that he’s going to get out of Germany—if only one could get at him—if only there was a way to rescue him—there’s so much in him that was worth saving—”

“Have you got some idea of going in for a lifetime of Good Works?” Johnny asked ironically, and she gave him an odd, slow look.

“Not me, Johnny. It’s not my job. He said he wanted never to see me again.”

“And is that so hard for you to take?”

“I don’t know yet.” Her gaze fell to her beautiful, restless hands on the table. “Maybe I was fonder of him than I knew. Maybe I was just sorry for him. But whatever it was—I feel as though I’d just seen it die.” She shivered a little in the warm summer air, and sighed. “Maybe I came close to making a fool of myself—again.”

“Maybe you need a drink,” said Johnny sympathetically.

Camilla sat on the terrace of the Oesterreichische Hof in Salzburg with the cable from Williamsburg in her hands. She had developed a nostalgic affection for the little Austrian town which not even the growing international popularity of the Festival could spoil with its influx of tourists unsuitably clad in native dirndls and short leather pants. A great deal had
happened
to her there, and yet the place remained a refuge, a sort of emotional fourth dimension, to which she retreated again and again when she needed sorting out.

This time she had gone straight to Salzburg from Berlin in July, shaken and unreasonably frightened, groping her way back to normal from what seemed like a prolonged panic,
with its usual aftermath of shock. When the others went on to Vienna, Johnny and Bracken sniffing upwind while the Dolfuss Government struggled to maintain itself against the backstairs Nazi invasion, she had stayed behind at the Oesterreichische Hof, glad of a few days’ solitude.

And then the cable came, forwarded from Cannes.

Still a little dazed and unbelieving, she had just read it again, wondering at the back of her mind if they had had the same cable in London, and if she must send it on to Bracken or if he would have heard by now through his own channels that Aunt Sue was dead. What would Williamsburg be like now, without that gay, wise presence? What would become of the lovely house which had sheltered them all at one time or another? She had never meant to be away so long. She had never meant not to see Aunt Sue again….

She sat with her eyes on the encircling mountains, drifting, bewildered, lost. Ought she to go home to Williamsburg? For what? She wrote to her mother in Richmond once a month, but they didn’t miss each other, it was no good pretending that they did. She had no knowledge any more of the Sprague children in England Street, and she had lost touch with the Princeton bunch. Like Cousin Sally a dozen years ago she would feel herself a ghost now in Williamsburg. There was only Cannes, and London, and Salzburg. Virginia’s youngest had come out last year, and the other three were married. Oliver’s Hermione was getting spinsterish and sharp and had developed political opinions. Somebody was being married in September—one of Edward’s girls, wasn’t it? Should she go to London for the wedding, or just send a lavish present? And did it matter very much?

Nothing seemed to matter very much, all of a sudden. Was that old age? Had Aunt Sue ever come to a dead end like this, or Sally? Yes—Sally had. More than once.
Some
years
are
not
so
good
as
others
—
sometimes
you
love
less,
sometimes
more
—
and
you
can
never b
e
sure
that
the
best
is
not
still
to
come
. From where, Camilla wondered idly, doubting and depressed, with an aged,
listless sensation of having been everywhere and met everybody there was.
Take
what
comes
to
you,
and
when
you
give,
use
both
hands.
Well, she had done that, for a long time now, and with some success, it was true. People had loved her, been kind and generous and grateful, and no one had ever parted from her in anger or with an ugly quarrel. Even Kim was still her friend. She had offered even Victor both her hands.