The Other Side of Love (15 page)

She laughed.

“There, that’s better. We’re still allowed to laugh. I shouldn’t make fun of the judge - after all, obviously the old boy was worried about me. But frankly we’re nothing alike. The Leventhal family has lived here in Berlin for generations, so I looked down on him for moving to New York. Also I found him pompous and old-fashioned. Obviously my opinion was dead off the mark. No fossil, the judge. He was avant-garde. Nowadays every Jew in Berlin is struggling to follow him to America.”

Heinrich Leventhal shrugged.

“When I went to New York as a very young man, I palled around with the son. Myron. What a sense of humour he had, poor fellow. He was killed. Some sort of accident.”

Staring at the ancient ebony sculpture, Kathe felt dishonest at not

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saying the unsayable: that her aunt for six months had been Mrs Myron Leventhal.

“Fraulein Kingsmith.”

His voice had lowered.

“I take it that you and your British cousin are of the same mind about our regime?”

“I’m ashamed of being a German,”

she murmured.

“Let’s move on to Nefertiti,”

he said. They crossed the gallery to the exquisite painted limestone head.

“Some papers have to be delivered to Herr Schultze in Neukolln,”

he said.

“The person who should have taken them is ill, and it’s best if I don’t show up there too often.”

“The Neukolln station’s on my way home, almost.”

“You won’t be in any danger,”

he said, then paused.

“Well, several degrees less danger than talking to a Jew in a museum from which Jews are barred. He’s an Aryan.”

“What’s the address?”

“I took the liberty of giving you my catalogue. It’s in there with the papers. Please be careful. Don’t drop anything.”

Til put it in my bag.”

She added awkwardly:

“Herr Leventhal, isn’t it possible for you and your family to leave the country?”

“My wife’s dead. We had no children.”

He grimaced wryly.

“Besides, I’m a Berliner. Does that sound strange to you? I’m no longer considered a citizen yet in my own heart I remain quite the nationalist German. Besides, there’s a lot of work to be done here. We’re helping young people emigrate. I still have money, so I fork out the departure tax.”

“How generous.”

“Not at all. Better the kids should have a chance than for Herr Hitler to feather his nest. But we’re talking too much; the guard’s coming this way.”

Leventhal bowed withfca grin that ridiculed his formality.

“Gnadiges Fraulein, I thank yfu in advance for going to Neukolln.”

IV

Before 1933, Neukolln, a working-class quarter, had been home to a large number of Labour Union supporters, but now the labour slogans painted on walls were gone. The leaders of the unions had been killed or were in concentrationcamps; and the erstwhile membership, gone underground, were known to each other as

“beefsteak Nazis”

- brown-shirted on the outside, red inside.

The S-bahn passengers, most of them factory workers, jolted along in weary silence. The rain had started, and the crowded car smelt of wet synthetic wool, perspiration and cheap cigarettes. Kathe got off at the Neukolln station, following the conductor’s directions along winding, shabby cobbled streets. Herr Schultze’s building was typical of Berlin in that each courtyard led to another. At the third courtyard, Kathe went inside, climbing stairs that smelt of boiling

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potatoes, sauerkraut and rancid bratwurst, peering her way along the unlit corridor to 2D.

Her knock was answered by a deeply wrinkled man. Short, with thick rounded shoulders and a grumpy expression, wearing a cardigan and carpet slippers, he was anything but a heroic figure. ] Yet Kathe knew he was risking his freedom if not his life with his . anti-Nazi activities.

“

“Herr Schultze?”

Kathe asked.

“Well?”

he barked.

“What idiotic cause are you collecting for?”

She took the catalogue from her bag.

“I believe you lost this.”

“Come on in,”

he said in a tone only slightly less catankerous.

“And ,

don’t drip that umbrella across the floor. Leave it out there.”

In the

“

windowless hall, he flipped with nicotine-stained fingers through the

””

pages of the catalogue, deftly extracting two stamped visa-forms, pocketing them.

As he opened the door on a tiny sitting-room crowded with furniture, there was a rustling sound. A little girl with black pigtails slipped into a bedroom. Not commenting on the child, he turned on the radio. A Schubert sonata overrode their conversation.

“You came by the bus?”

he asked.

“The S-bahn.”

“Good, good. On your way back, you’ll walk the kid to a house i

on the Reuterplatz. I was planning to take her myself, but this is better.”

“Is she?”

He held up his hands.

“Listen, the less you know the better off we all are.”

He went to the curtained corner with a tiny stove-top, pouring two mugs of coffee.

“You can count on me,”

Kathe said.

“It’s good to know that all Germans haven’t turned into Nazi weasels.”

“You won’t tell Aubrey, will you?”

Traulein, didn’t I just make it clear that this is no Kaffeeklatsch. I don’t talk, you don’t talk, none of us talks. Jabbering’s dangerous.”

He lit a fresh cigarette from the butt.

“So. You’ll run an occasional errand?”

“Any time.”

“Go in and help the kid to change.”

A few minutes later a young woman holding an umbrella over i

herself and a dark-haired little girl in a Jungmadel uniform passed the windows of the Kneipe, the corner bar. None of the beer-drinkers paid any attention.

After dinner, Kathe wrote a long letter to Wyatt, her heart pounding as she filled the pages. She could not mention what lay foremost

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I*

in her mind: the familiar mordant smile on Heinrich Leventhal’s thin face, the gruff chain-smoking old man, the dark-haired child’s small hand trembling in hers. Each word she wrote, therefore, seemed a lie.

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In September the doctors released Euan. An ambulance drove him to the Mayfair flat, and a heavy-hipped Scottish nurse helped him into his own bed, Elizabeth hovering in attendance. After a few days of having his wife flutter over his bed, he sent her packing back to Quarles. Araminta stayed on in London, lunching and shopping with friends, returning to change and to kiss her father’s balding head before she went dancing with her )4|ung men.

Aubrey felt obligated to remain in the lat to keep an eye on the convalescent. He finished his novel, now entitled The Thousand Years, corrected the typos - he found a great many - and packed the pages in a box, carrying it on foot all the way to Hampstead, where Keiffer Press was located.

He passed the next week looking over the carbon copy. Every page seemed a betrayal of the truths he had attempted to pin down, the emotions he had experienced in the writing. He turned hot and red-faced as he imagined the editors at Keiffer Press laughing over certain passages.

Then, on a windy October afternoon when Aubrey was having a cup of tea alone in the lounge-hall, the door-bell rang. It was the second afternoon mail-delivery, and there was a letter for him on Keiffer Press stationery. Aubrey carried it to his room, standing at his window while a Rolls-Royce pulled up to the mansion opposite. The two chauffeurs bowed as a stately fur-coated woman was admitted by a liveried footman. Aubrey wasn’t watching the Mayfair

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street scene. He was staring down at the envelope. Drawing a breath to steel himself, he pulled at the flap.

Dear Mr Kingsmith,

Mr Keiffer has requested that I pass on his admiration for your work. The entire house is enthusiastic about THE THOUSAND YEARS. It is a finely wrought novel, a serious novel. Exposing as it does the cancer of our times, we will endeavour to ensure that it reaches a broad readership.

Publishing this, your first book, is a source of honourable pride to us and, needless to say, we look forward to a long and fruitful relationship. We at Keiffer Press are firmly convinced that the finest in British literature and the name Aubrey Kingsmith will become synonymous.

Aubrey straightened his shoulders. First grinning, then laughing, he raised his hand, lifting an imaginary hat in a victorious gesture.

All at once his face drained of pleasure. He dropped on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

He was realizing that the name Kingsmith couldn’t be joined with the finest in British literature - at least, not in a novel depicting the dark side of the Third Reich.

Hadn’t he met enough refugees who refused to speak of any ill treatment for fear of endangering relatives still in Germany? What fatal blind spot had prevented him from seeing that he couldn’t publish the novel under his own name? The answer was only too obvious. He had longed to dazzle his family - to dazzle Kathe.

Still lying on the bed, Aubrey reached to his bedside table for the notepad and pencil. Lifting a knee, he rested the pad and began to draft a letter that would express his gratitude at Keiffer Press’s belief in his novel. The second paragraph, by far the longer, he devoted to the urgent need for pseudonymous authorship and a change in title. If this were not agreeable, the manuscript would be withdrawn

The phone rang outside in the hall. He lifted his head, listening. He heard the murmur of the maid. Heavy lagging footsteps, then his father bullying some hapless Kingsmith employee.

Aubrey set his notepad on his concave stomach, pressing his hands over his eyes. Here was a decision which unlike the one he had just reached regarding anonymity - he had been brooding over since he’d first seen Euan lying pale and comatose in the Harley Street hospital.

To be at Kingsmith’s or not to be …

You know the answer already, he told himself. Go ahead, leap on to the pyre of duty. But don’t expect the least praise ever, ever will be directed your way by that raging pitiful voice.

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Later that same afternoon he told his father the novel had been rejected.

“Didn’t I tell you all along that your scribbling would be a dead loss?”

Euan, home from his slow promenade with his nurse to South Audley Street and back, sprawled on the lounge-hall sofa with a triumphant smile.

“Well, you had your way and now you need a job, is that it?”

“Yes, Father.”

“What about Oxford?”

“It seems a waste of time.”

“Well, there’s nothing for it, then, but to give you a try in the business.”

“Thank you.”

“No more lolling about, Aubrey. I’m only taking you on with the clear understanding that you’ll put your shoulder to the wheel.”

“I expect to work.”

“You’ll learn the business from the bottom up, the way I did, or out you go.”

Euan, attempting to hide his delight, sounded gruffer than he intended.

Aubrey had known his father’s inevitable response would smart. But he was taken by surprise that the hard pale face propped up by sofa cushions could cause this choking tenderness in his throat.

“And don’t try to run circles around me with your grandfather. He and I are in complete agreement. You’ll be treated identically to every other apprentice.”

” … There’s a seventeenth-century Jungfrauenbecher, and a matched pair of Ananaspohal - extremely rare, it says, but I don’t have to tell you that, Grandfather. And a Reisenpokal, described as an unusually excellent example of Wenzel Jamnitzer’s work.”

Aubrey was reading the inventory of German drinking-vessels to Porteous. The pair were lunching in the wainscoted grill of the Connaught. It was December, and Aubrey had been at Kingsmith’s for two months.

“Uncle Alfred’s written a note at the bottom.

“Each of the pieces is exceptionally fine, but we’re already overloaded on high-priced items, and quite a few of our customers have their own sources.”

“

Aubrey looked up.

“I suppose that’s the most tactful way of saying that high-ranking Nazis are taking over Jewish collections.”

“Poor devils.”

“I’d like to take a look.”

“You? Didn’t you read that Alfred has to decide in a few days? And this is the heart of the Christmas rush.”

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Til take an aeroplane. I won’t be gone more than three days, including Sunday. Grandpa, I have an American customer, a brewer, filthy rich, coming in. He’s quite keen on early drinking-vessels.”

“Mr Kingsmith, sir.”

The skeletal old waiter set down their plates of mutton Porteous’s was discreetly sliced in small pieces.

After the waiter had hobbled away, the sightless yet penetrating eyes rested on Aubrey.

“Euan will pretend to be furious that I’m letting you gad about during our busiest time.”

Though Euan hadn’t yet returned to work, he kept close tabs.

“But if you handle your American brewer chap right he’ll be very proud - not that he’ll tell you. Go ahead, my boy. Safe journey.”

Lines of rain dashed across the small round windows as the plane descended at Tempelhof Airport. Aubrey, who had vomited twice during the long bumpy flight from Croydon, again felt queasy, but he forced himself to take in the scene rushing towards him. There were far more hangars than at the London airport, and raincoated soldiers patrolled everywhere. He knew by now that German airports were built with military use in mind, and that the pilots and navigators of commercial flights were Luftwaffe officers who knew the aerial views of the capitals of Europe as well as the. lines in their own palms.