The Pursuit of Pearls (34 page)

“T
hey built this place when we had our first colonies. The plan was to collect exotic plants from German territories all over the world and bring them back to Berlin. Think about that. The entire German empire in a garden.”

They were walking along a gravel path through the lush borders of the Botanical Garden, a short ride on the S-Bahn to the southwestern borough of Steglitz. The garden was the city's green jewel, an oasis of greenhouses, intersected by streams crossed by small bridges and stepping-stones, with meadow areas and formally laid parterres set behind high, unprepossessing walls. It was a favorite outing for Berliners, and even more for Hedwig and Jochen because it was where they first met.

It was more than a year ago, on a rare Saturday when Hedwig was not in classes at the Faith and Beauty school. She had taken a book with her to the Botanical Garden, but the book was only a prop because what she actually wanted was to sit beside the decorative lake beneath a monkey puzzle tree and imagine that she lived there. She loved the garden, partly because it was situated as far from Moabit as was possible in Berlin, and partly because being there allowed her to indulge her fantasy of being a Hohenzollern princess living in elegant splendor, rather than in a dank tenement with washing hanging in the courtyard.

But that day her fantasy was interrupted by Robert Schultz, an old school friend who, it turned out, was carrying out his
Arbeitsdienst
year as a gardener. He had a friend with him, a wiry, fierce-eyed young man who showed great interest in the book she wasn't reading. Shortly afterwards, Robert left, and she and Jochen spent an hour in intense conversation before he leaned over in the shadow of the monkey puzzle tree and—to her astonishment—kissed her.

They had come here often since then, although their approaches to the outing were entirely different. While Jochen was obsessively interested in botanical detail and would frequently squat down and scrutinize the plants and their Latin names, Hedwig was happy simply to gaze around her. She liked Nature to be orderly, and the sorting of plants into their appropriate categories—the Japanese garden, the Italian garden, the rose arbor, and so on—appealed to her sense of tidiness.

Today, however, the garden's tranquillity was shattered by the racket of drills. A band of workers at the far end of the garden were constructing yet more air-raid tunnels. A digger was biting straight lines into the ground, slicing through the grass and leaving a frill of earth behind.

“Those tunnels are going to house all the SS files and personnel,” commented Jochen quietly. “They've decided it's one of the safest places in the city when the air raids come.”

“How would you know a thing like that?”

He didn't answer. Apart from his comments about the colonies, he had scarcely said a word since they met at the S-Bahn and made their way here. There was nothing new about that—Jochen never saw the point of small talk and Hedwig was quite used to his moods—but that day his jaw was clenched more rigidly than ever and his tension, like that of some hunted wild animal, alarmed her. The horror of the past few weeks—of Lottie's murder and Jochen's revelations—had filled her with a constant, tremulous anxiety. But the task he had asked of her now—to smuggle illegal pamphlets into the following week's ball—made her feel physically sick. She had barely eaten for days. Even Mutti was casting suspicious glances at her.

They came to the biggest greenhouse, the Great Pavilion, an Art Nouveau triumph of glass and steel that towered at the garden's center like a glittering crystalline castle. As they passed from the clear air to the sweltering, damp atmosphere inside, the humidity clung to Hedwig's skin and the lush, dense plants seemed to pulse with their own life. This was another world, an enclosed, mossy universe, surprisingly noisy with the screeches of birds in the rafters and the rushing of artfully constructed waterfalls into koi ponds. Giant vines and bamboos stretched to the highest parts of the roof, and glossy leaves, as big as elephants' ears, waved all around. Between the delicate fronds, orchids dangled from hairy vines thick as babies' arms, and at their feet, the ubiquitous Berlin sparrows pecked at a tangle of ferns.

Hedwig and Jochen followed the winding path to the deepest part of the glass house. This area was reserved for the flesh eaters: the flytraps, with their suggestive lobes and stamens thrusting frankly up from reddened petals. Vivid tubes that persuaded insects to crawl into their pendulous prisons. Hedwig had always hated carnivorous plants. The whole idea of plants eating flesh seemed a dreadful inversion of the natural order.

Jochen sat down on a bench that had been painted yellow to indicate that it was for Jews. Since November, Jews were no longer allowed in the Botanical Garden, so the yellow benches had reverted to Aryan use, but they still bore the instruction
Nur für Juden,
and despite the fact that they were unobserved, Hedwig felt uneasy about disobeying an order. Beside them cacti, cobwebbed with flimsy silk, reared up, their spikes tipped with flowers like hanging drops of blood. She realized Jochen had chosen this spot because the trickle of a stream into a stone grotto behind them drowned out their conversation.

He reached into his bag and brought out a book wrapped in plastic:
The Proper Care of Cactuses.

“Good, isn't it? I made it up at work. Never judge a book by its cover.”

He took off the wrapping and opened it. Between the stiff boards was a wedge of what Hedwig immediately recognized as
Flugblätter,
a wad of pamphlets tightly packed together. She didn't want to look at them.

“You remember everything I told you?”

“Yes.” Just the thought of it made her feel even sicker.

“When you have the afternoon rehearsal at the Schloss Bellevue, go to the women's washrooms. They're on the ground floor, to one side of the reception hall. You'll have the book with you. Leave it in the cistern of the cubicle on the far end.”

“And Sofie will pick it up?”

“That's all you need do.”

“Why can't she take them herself?”

“The guards check their instrument cases and everything. The orchestra doesn't arrive until an hour before the ball begins, but the Faith and Beauty girls will be practicing all afternoon.”

“What if someone sees me?”

“They won't. Put it away in your bag now.”

“What if the pamphlets drop out of the book?”

“It's simple enough!” he snapped. “Just do it, Hedy!”

He was sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring ahead.

After a moment's silence she said, “Why are you being like this?”

Jochen took out cigarette paper and tobacco, rolled it, and lit up, even though smoking was not permitted in the pavilion.

“Something's wrong.” His voice was gentler but grim. “I think my number's up.”

Her insides churned. “Why? What happened?”

“There was a woman, the other day. Part Jewish. I was making an identity document for her. Everything seemed straightforward. I did the cards and we waited a while for them to dry. She left quickly and I waited a few minutes before leaving. But when I came out on the street, I realized she was being followed.”

“That's her problem, surely.”

“No. Don't you see? I have no idea how long she had been shadowed. If the man was watching her before we met, he would have tailed her all the way to the house, and then he would have seen me too. The house can't be used anymore. And they may be onto me too.”

“Oh, Jochen.” Instinctively she looked around her to check for eavesdroppers, but it seemed they had the jungle to themselves. “What did you do?”

“I evaded him at once. Jumped on a tram, doubled back. There was no sign that he was after me.”

“So you're safe?”

“No. I'm blown, Hedy. I'm sure of it. I've already moved out.”

“What did you tell your family?”

“I said I'd been sent away. I'd been specially requested by a manuscript factory in Dresden. They won't find out for a while.”

“But if you're stopped?”

“I'm changing my identity.”

“What about your job?”

She had a sinking feeling of desperation, as though they were in trouble with no path back, like a butterfly that has crawled into a flytrap and finds its frail wings stuck to the treacherous nectar. Insofar as there was no way out.

He flicked his cigarette into the leaves, where it fizzled out in the damp vegetation, then turned to face her.

“I'll have to leave it and lie low for a while. There's no alternative. I need to disappear completely. There are people who can help me. There's a pastor in the Westend who's offered me a place for a while, so please don't worry about me.”

“How do you expect me not to worry about you?” Her voice was harsh with anxiety.

“If you need to contact me, leave a message with Robert. You know where he lives, don't you? You can trust him.”

Panic was starting to overwhelm Hedwig, and she began looking wildly around her. “Of course I'll need to contact you. I need to see you—”

“And you will. I promise. We'll be together after all this is over.”

“Take me with you!”

He took her face in his hands as if he was trying to stamp the image of it in his mind.

“Do you mean that, Hedy? You'd leave your family and all those little brothers, would you? You'd leave the Faith and Beauty? Because you couldn't go back, if you went underground with me.”

She thought of everything she had been told her life would be: all the painting and dancing and chess. Then she thought of her real life: Mutti's tired face, the boys jousting and squabbling. She heard Kurt's laugh. Love was supposed to be uplifting. Love was a balm that made your life complete, not a knife slicing your heart into ribbons. Not a constant stream of questions about who you wanted to be. Hedwig or Hedy? Ordinary or exceptional?

She blinked back her tears and forced herself to focus.

“Yes. Yes I would.”

He smiled. “Perhaps then. But first, there's one more thing you can do for me.”

She clutched his hand tightly, as though he was proposing to vanish right there and then.

“What? What is it now?”

“I need you to find me a gun.”

R
ule Seven: Stick to public places
.

The spot in the Alte Nationalgalerie where the Titian had hung bore a small label:

ON PERMANENT LOAN TO THE COLLECTION OF HERMANN GOERING.

The Alte Nationalgalerie was one of the first places Clara had ever visited with Leo, and in the years since then it had become a regular outing for Clara and Erich. Increasingly, however, the more famous of the artworks were notable by their absence. Goering had led the way, favoring paintings of naked women, the more voluptuous the better. Then Goebbels had taken his pick, on the pretext of creating a home of sufficient grandeur for his ministerial rank, and Hess and von Ribbentrop had followed suit. Soon the walls were pockmarked with labels alerting the citizens to the fact that the gallery's paintings were serving a more important function in the private homes of the Nazis' senior men.

That day the gallery was thronged with summer tourists. A crocodile of Bund Deutscher Mädel girls were being shepherded through a gallery of Austro-Bavarian realism—the type of folksy landscapes the Führer adored, replete with jolly monks and tavern scenes. Art came well below sprinting and long jump in the BDM curriculum, yet the occasional tour round the duller parts of the city galleries, avoiding nudes or foreign painters, was offered for those who showed an interest. And, judging by the giggling, even those with no interest at all. Clara drifted in the girls' wake, pretending to eavesdrop on the lecture, but all she could hear was a date.

September 1. Just weeks away. The date for the invasion. The date for war.

She had stolen back to Winterfeldtstrasse that morning for a change of clothes. She'd made her way up the familiar stone steps, so worn away by the tread of thousands of feet that they caved in the middle, shut the door, and leaned against it, trying to absorb everything that had happened. The suggestion that her own sister was liaising with anti-Nazis in France was astonishing, but whether it was true or not, Angela's name featured in Heydrich's Black Book, and accepting Conrad Adler's proposal was the price for her sister's safety.

Clara longed to barricade herself inside, to sit amid her own belongings, brew coffee, to linger and reflect. Yet what if her apartment was no longer a sanctuary but a place of danger? She had no idea if her release had been approved, or whether a Gestapo car would appear in the street outside, ready to pick her up. There was no point in waiting to find out. She donned a pair of sunglasses, covered up the gash on her cheek as best she could with foundation, and closed the door behind her.

Walking through the ground floor of the gallery—Neoclassical and Romantic—she focused on the people around her, checking for repeating faces, or anything that suggested anomaly. An art gallery was the perfect place to disappear. One could linger, staring not at the pictures but the reflections in the glass, wandering this way and that as taste dictated. Clara found herself gazing blindly at still lifes of dead game, spoiled fruit, and rotten, blown flowers. The bloodied fur of a rabbit posed beside a dying rose. Until a soft voice came in her ear.

“Did you know that the Führer originally wanted to be a painter? He was turned down by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts twice. I wonder if they're regretting that now.”

She turned, astonished. The speaker was a man of middling height with solemn brown eyes and a fedora, which he doffed with an air of old-fashioned gallantry.

“Forgive me. You are, I think, Fräulein Vine?”

Strangely she felt no alarm. There was something benign in the man's expression and his vaguely beseeching air. He looked more like a salesman than a policeman. Besides, what choice did she have?

“That's right.”

“I wonder if I could have a word?”

“Should I know you?”

The man glanced round the gallery, with his gray felt hat clasped in front of him, as if he too was unsure why he was there.

“Not at all. We've never met before. But you might know my brother. My name, you see, is Goering. Albert Goering.”

With his slender frame, thin mustache, and sideburns, Albert Goering could not look less like his older brother, Hermann. His high, arched eyebrows gave him a startled air, and he was dressed with dapper Viennese charm, from the handkerchief sprouting at his jacket pocket to a fat gold watch suspended by a chain across his waistcoat. He looked more like an assistant in a high-class gentleman's outfitters than a member of Nazi royalty. Instantly Clara recalled Emmy Goering's words.

It was Hermann's brother who wanted you to come, actually.

“I have tried to contact you a couple of times. I even visited your apartment. I hoped to find somewhere discreet, but it seems Fate has intervened. Shall we visit the Postimpressionists?”

Clara shot a glance around her, searching for any police or security services, but there was nothing unusual. Besides, who was going to arrest her with the brother of Hermann Goering? He was employed at the film company Tobis-Sascha, Emmy had said. Perhaps he wanted to talk to her about a part.

“Why not?”

The Postimpressionist gallery was predictably deserted. The exhibits that had not been filched or deemed Degenerate were of dubious quality and mostly French. No schoolchild in Germany was going to waste time learning about French artists. Although there was little to detain them, Clara and Albert Goering strolled slowly along the undistinguished walls.

“Are you here for the ball, Herr Goering?”

“I had a little business to attend to first.”

“Film business?”

“No.” He fished out his handkerchief and gave a quick, fastidious dab at his mustache. “It was to do with some Jewish friends. I needed a word with my brother about them.”

He acknowledged her astonishment.

“It is a little sideline of mine. I escort them personally to the border and provide them with currency.”

“And your brother knows about this?”

“Of course.” He gave a quick, nervous laugh. “Hermann says he will decide who's Jewish. He tells me he can get anyone he likes redesignated as Aryan. Occasionally it works the other way. It was Hermann who called me about Henny Porten. The actress. You've heard of her, I'm sure.”

Henny Porten had been a legend of the silent movie era, but with the arrival of the Nazis, her star had faded. Although she was Aryan herself, her husband was Jewish, and she had no inclination to divorce him.

“I met her a couple of times.”

“It was Emmy, I think, who got Hermann to contact me. I was able to secure a contract for Miss Porten at my company, so she moved to Vienna.”

There was no way to know how to react to this. That Hermann Goering, a man capable of such extreme viciousness, who had inflicted so much misery throughout the Reich, who had personally dreamed up the plan to fine Germany's Jews a billion marks for the damage inflicted on Kristallnacht, should bother himself with sorting out the affairs of an aging actress and her Jewish husband.

His brother gave a pained grimace.

“You look surprised. But Hermann wouldn't be the first to be flexible in his approach to Jewish affairs. Goebbels was once engaged to a half-Jewish girl, I believe, and his wife was involved with a Zionist. I can't pretend I have anything but abhorrence for Hermann's behavior. My brother's actions horrify me, Fraülein, but I do what I can to atone for it. It's a very little part, but the Jews have a saying
.
‘He who saves a single person, saves the whole world.' It comforts me.”

“So what exactly did you want with me?”

“It's a bit of a story.” Albert Goering looked around him, but the room remained as deserted as a church. Not a soul had entered or left in the time they were there. All the same, he lowered his voice.

“A few months ago, a friend of mine, Gustav, a former employee of Tobis-Sascha who I had helped escape to England, got in contact with me. He is now working for British intelligence services, and he said there was someone coming to Vienna that he wanted me to meet. Gustav said the man would be waiting at six o'clock in the musicians' section of the Zentralfriedhof—the big cemetery, you know. He would stand by the Mozart memorial.”

Mozart. The closest that music comes to prayer.

“I went to the cemetery, and sure enough, the chap was there.”

Her throat constricted. “Leo.”

“Yes. Mr. Quinn knew I was in the habit of making regular trips to Berlin, and he begged me to get in contact with you. He gave me your address and made me promise to find you. He said he had needed to leave very suddenly and that you would be worried about him. But you must not be. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes. Yes, it does!” She was laughing, half mad with delight. In her joy she barely registered that Albert Goering remained somber. “Thank you, Herr Goering. Please, tell me, where is he now?”

His kindly eyes dipped. “That, my dear Fräulein, is the part of the story I am less happy to tell. We arranged to meet the following day at the same time and place. But when I arrived, there was no sign of him.”

“So he missed the meeting. There must have been a hitch. Or some misunderstanding. Surely you went back?”

“I did. I returned the following day. And the next. And I asked around, as much as I could.”

Clara reached forward and gripped his wrist unintentionally hard. “You must have contacts. Couldn't you ask them?”

“Of course. That's exactly what I did. And what I discovered was most unfortunate. A policeman I knew reported that a suspected enemy agent had that day been denounced to the Gestapo. I'm afraid the man who betrayed his predecessor must have betrayed Mr. Quinn too.”

“But you don't know.”

“I fear the worst, dear lady. I'm very much afraid that he's gone.”

Gone
. The word hit Clara like a piece of shrapnel. It ripped inside and hollowed everything out.

Albert Goering rested a hand on her arm, then replaced his hat and made to leave.

“I'm sorry to bring you this news, Fräulein Vine. If you are ever in Vienna, please come and visit me at the Tobis-Sascha studio. I would be happy to see you again.”

After he had left she stood for a while, clenching and unclenching her fists. She needed to move, yet stood as if transfixed. Was it true then, as Conrad Adler said, that she was in love with a ghost? Did she face years of private mourning, or never being able to tell another soul what Leo had meant to her? Would she become one of those women she had known in childhood, who lost their fiancés in the war and were dogged with disappointment and silent grief?

There was a painting in front of her. It was of a naked girl washing. With a shock she realized that she recognized it as one that Leo had pointed out to her when they visited the gallery together, all that time ago. It was a small pastel by Manet of a woman in a tin bath, the water silvering her back, looking up at the painter with a frank and open gaze. It had a kind of purity about it. The model was not ashamed of her sexuality, nor was there anything salacious about it. Instead the connection between the woman and the painter seemed to contain a deep, unspoken conversation. She wondered how this portrait had remained in place without being removed. How it had been spared Goering's wholesale pilfering and Alfred Rosenberg's strictures on degeneracy. How it had escaped the attention of Robert Ley, the labor minister, famous for his salacious tastes. Perhaps being inconspicuous, or simple, or foreign was what it took to survive.

It was then that she made a deal. A pact with whichever deity might be listening. If Leo was alive she would do whatever he wanted. Go back to England, abandon her work, leave Berlin entirely. Become the woman he wanted her to be. If only he was alive. Let him be alive.