Entwined (25 page)

"They?" He said it quietly, but with such sarcasm. "My dear Helen, I am the family, I am the head of the family, and I can't for the life of me think what you are trying to say."

"I think you know, Louis."

He shook his head in disbelief, and then walked to the windows, drawing the drapes to one side. "You really think I would care?"

Helen cleared her throat. "I think the old baroness would have, perhaps your father; it was common knowledge he allowed the Gestapo to take over your villas."

He patted the curtains into place. "I think, Helen, you should try and get some sleep, before you say or insinuate anything else."

"You have not answered me."

He was at her side, gripping her arm so tightly it hurt. "You know nothing, nothing, and your inference insults me, insults my family."

She dragged her arm free. "It's always your precious family. I think you, Louis, hate the thought of your precious family being Jewish, as much as you hate the thought of producing more insanity!"

His slap sent her staggering backward, she cried out more with shock than pain. He rushed to her, touched her reddened cheek. "Oh my God, I'm sorry…but you don't understand."

Helen put her hand up to indicate for him not to come close. He flushed, and gestured another apology with his hands. "I am so sorry."

She watched as he took out his handkerchief, touched his lips, the brow of his head, and then crossed to the window and unhooked the shutter. He remained with his back to her as he reached through the half-open shutter to the window.

"I don't care if Vebekka is Jewish, how could I? She's the mother of my children, I care only about their future." He opened the window, breathed the cold night air, but still seemed loath to turn and face her.

Helen twisted her ring around her finger. "Then surely you can understand my confusion—why don't you want to try and find out as much as possible, Louis? Please, look at the photograph, look at it."

He walked briskly to the table and snatched up the photograph where Helen had left it. He turned the photograph over, then let it drop back onto the polished wood surface. He saw the childish looped writing, the name Rebecca.

"Helen, if she is this little girl, if she is in some way connected to that dreadful woman this evening, to these people in Philadelphia, then we must do whatever you think is right. But please don't ask me to show enthusiasm. Show this photo to my wife, if you wish, or preferably ask Franks to, because if she looks at it and admits it is her, then she has lied to me, to everyone. Let Franks do it, but don't ask me to…"

"Don't you see, Louis? It is the reason why she has lied that may be important—it has to be, and when we discover why, maybe…"

He snapped then, his face taut with controlled anger.

"Maybe what? Everything will fall into place? Have you any idea, any knowledge of how often I have hoped for that? Let Dr. Franks handle this photograph and any further developments."

"As you wish!"

As Helen crossed to the door, he said her name very quietly, making her turn.

"I obviously appreciate all you are doing for my wife, and any financial costs to yourself will be met. I had no conception of how, well, how much we would be seeing of each other, or how much my own personal life would be placed under scrutiny. I ask you, please, to realize at all times you are privy to very private emotions, traumas—whichever terminology you wish to use. But please do remember that you are my guest, and that you are here because my wife asked you to accompany us. You are therefore free to leave at any time you wish to do so."

Helen felt as if he had slapped her face for a second time; his cold aloofness deeply embarrassed her.

"I arranged my vacation so that I could spend time here…"

"How very kind…but I will as I said make sure you incur no extra costs. Now, if you don't mind my asking, in future, if you wish to join me in my suite, you will be good enough to dress accordingly: Hotels are notoriously scandalous places. My wife has already managed exceptionally well in making a spectacle of herself since we arrived."

Helen gave a brief smile of apology. "Anything we have discussed is, and will remain, completely confidential. Good night Baron!"

He saw the glint in her eyes, and flushed, moving back to the shutters once more. He switched off the lights, leaving the shutter ajar, the streetlamps outside giving the only light in the spacious drawing room.

Helen would never know what a raw nerve she had touched, he assured himself. His mother had accused him of marrying not only a fortune hunter, but a Jewish bitch, with no breeding, no education, just a pretty face. She had ranted at him, shouting that men in his position took women like Vebekka as mistresses, never as wives, and the reason the bitch had never let him make love to her before marriage was because the promise of sex was all she had to lure him.

Louis could see his perfectly coiffured mother turning to gesture with her cane at the paintings, the tapestries. "Your father would turn in his grave…she is a tramp! And you cannot see it. What kind of name is Vebekka? Eh? Tell me that. I tell you, she is trouble. Marry your own kind, Louis, marry a woman who can run this estate, bring money to this estate, marry a woman who will make a wife."

Louis had ignored his mother and had married Vebekka. Later, when he had confronted her with a
fait accompli
—knowing it was too late for her to do anything about it—his mother had opened her Louis XIV writing desk and tossed a thick manila envelope at his feet.

"You should have checked on her background before you acted so rashly, now it's too late. You have made your bed, so you must sleep on it. I hope for your sake it works, because there can and never will be a divorce, I don't want the family name dragged through the courts and the press. I don't want to know about your private life, that is your business; my grandson must be protected, and if you want your inheritance, you will, in future, do as I ask."

Louis had known all those years she was really Rebecca Goldberg, but he had chosen never to confront her with what he knew. He had burned the contents of the private investigator's notes, and then left for a trip abroad.

Now the ghosts were catching up with him. His eldest son, wanting to marry, needed to know whether his mother was clinically insane. He also had to wait for the old baroness's inheritance to be released, to see whether he would be socially accepted by the family of his fiancee: She was one of the richest heiresses in France.

The entire family had always waited for the old baroness to die, most of all Louis. His fortune had not been released thus far.

Louis laughed softly; his whole life had been spent waiting. His mother had tied the bulk of the family fortune in trust funds for his children, leaving Louis an allowance for life. His second son was courting a daughter of a rich German industrialist, while his eldest daughter was engaged to a Brazilian multimillionaire. He laughed again, a soft humorless laugh. The promise of a massive fortune in the future was their cross in life!

Dear Helen, how very little she knew. Louis had been able to live in luxury and to create one of the finest polo stables in the world, only because of David and Rosa Goldberg's inheritance. It wasn't his money that he squandered so lavishly, but Vebekka's.

He yawned, and rubbed his hands. He felt chilly, the window was still open. As he reached to draw the shutters closed he saw a figure standing close to the brick wall opposite the Grand Hotel. He could not see if it was a man or woman, just a dark outline leaning against the wall, waiting. He paid no further attention, thinking it was probably a prostitute from the red light district.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ruda stared at the window, saw the light being extinguished. Her eyes flicked to the next window; it was dark. What had compelled her to return to this hotel in the middle of the night? What was here? She felt cold as she walked slowly to the taxi stand, and stepped inside a waiting cab…giving one last look at the dark window, the window with the shutters firmly closed.

Her driver was a small withered-looking man, who seemed delighted to have a fare at that hour. "Do you know what night it is tonight?"

Ruda lit a cigarette, and did not reply.

"Tonight is November the tenth. In 1938 Nazi mobs destroyed Jewish property, murdered a number of Jews, and arrested thirty thousand. They paved the way for the Holocaust. It was
Kristall-nacht
—the Night of the Shattering Glass. And tonight, you know what is happening in Leipzig? Fighting! Hundreds arrested, the outbreak of violence is a nightmare. Some of my friends have gone there, for business, but me? Nobody will shatter the windows of my cab."

Ruda closed her eyes, she remained silent and motionless in the center of the backseat, aware of his dark eyes watching her in his mirror—suspicious, darting black eyes.

Back at the circus she paid him, leaning into his cab as he carefully counted the change. Suddenly she touched his cheek.

"Keep it. If they break your windshield, you get a new one…"

Grimaldi had been drinking steadily all evening. He and Tina had gone out for dinner, and now they were about to make the rounds of some nightclubs. He had asked the taxi to stop when he saw a familiar street; very excited, he directed the driver to a doorway from which emanated loud music and around which a throng of kids were milling. He couldn't believe the club was still in existence. He had paid off the taxi before he realized his mistake; it was not the same club he remembered.

Tina moved down the murky stone corridor lit by a naked light bulb. She shrieked over the music that it was a terrible place. A young punk passed them, laughed at Tina, and then shouted to his friends. "What did he say?" shrieked Tina.

Grimaldi put a protective arm around her. "He said, 'Welcome to the Slaughterhouse!'

The club was throbbing with kids where once it had resounded with the screams of slaughtered animals. Tina pushed and shoved her way to the bar. The music was so loud it was impossible to hear. Grimaldi felt his age among all these kids, dancing and drinking, smoking pot, and openly passing drugs. He suggested they drink up and leave.

Tina pouted. "Don't be so boring! This is the one night we have. Once the show starts, I won't be able to get out."

Grimaldi shrugged, made his way to a small alcove and a couple of crude benches. Tina sat on his knee as he squeezed himself onto the edge of a bench. She tipped back her bottle of beer, her feet tapping to the music. All around them young men and women prowled in black clothes, dark faces, white makeup. They shouted and danced while Grimaldi leaned back on the old white tiles, giving a shove to the girl behind him as she fumbled with her boyfriend's pants.

A young man asked Tina to dance. She kissed Grimaldi, gave him her purse and her half-empty bottle of beer, and dived onto the dance floor.

He sat waiting, getting hotter and hotter. He finished Tina's beer, and began to look around the crowd of thrashing kids to see if he could find her. He got up, looked over the heads of the dancers and saw her flinging her body around, dancing with her eyes shut, loving every minute of it.

Grimaldi made his way up the crowded staircase, and then pushed and shoved his way out. He heaved for breath on the pavement, and looked right and left. He was trying to get his bearings, sure the old club he remembered had to be close by. He grabbed hold of the beefy doorman, and shouting to be heard, tried to describe Tina in the event she came out looking for him. He told the doorman he had her handbag. He said that he was looking for a club called Knaast that had been in the area.

The doorman pointed down the street. Grimaldi walked for about ten minutes, stopped and turned this way and that, and was about to give up and return to the Slaughterhouse when he saw the club door. He grinned, and crossed the road.

The club looked the same, but the clientele had changed a lot. The club was now a leather bar; he had never seen so many chains and leather jackets crammed into such a small space. Beefy bar men, with T-shirts and muscles, wearing spikes and God knows what attached to their chests and throats, served customers, chained to bars. Some men were chained to each other, carrying on animated conversations, as if their chains were part of the decor.

Grimaldi pushed his way to the bar, asked for a beer, and turned to face the club floor. Only then did he realize that the patrons were all male! He was asked to dance by an aging homosexual in a strange leather helmet, a jockstrap and white tights. He downed his beer, and tried to edge his way toward the exit but it took a great deal of jostling. He shoved a large muscular man wearing an SS hat, who turned and gripped Grimaldi by the testicles. "Don't push me!"

Grimaldi grimaced, the man's grip tightened. "I just want to leave, I am not looking for any arguments."

"You don't, cocksucker?"

Grimaldi was eye to eye with the SS officer's handlebar mustache. "I don't, but you will get in a lot of trouble if you don't get your fucking hands off me!"

"Make me," lisped the pursed lips through the mustache. Grimaldi backhanded the SS queen, then jabbed an elbow in his throat. He could feel his testicles burning as the man went sprawling.

Suddenly a blond-haired boy tried to swipe Grimaldi with his whip. Grimaldi snatched the whip and began to crack it, giving rise to a mixture of hysteria and applause. A bottle of champagne was waved at him from behind the bar, the chained barman screaming it was on the house, and Grimaldi abruptly broke up, laughing. The incident was so crass, so hideous, he had to laugh, and everyone joined in. He kept on saying he had only fallen into the place by mistake, he was straight. "Just get me out of here, somebody get me out!"

Grimaldi could hear his name being shouted, bellowed.
"Luis…Luis…Luis!"

Grimaldi shook his head. His name was being yelled by a bloody chimp!

Boris was up on Fredrick Lazars' shoulders, the little animal's arms and legs virtually covering the man's face. Boris was pursing her lips; she looked as if she were the one calling Luis.