Istanbul (34 page)

‘Daniela.’

She turned and walked quickly away. The army officer stared after her in bewilderment. Nick brushed past him and followed her out of the door.

It was breathless hot outside and the bright sunlight hurt his eyes.

She looked over her shoulder and saw him following her. She took off her high-heeled shoes and ran back across the square in her stockings. She dodged into the Cretulescu church. He followed, barely breaking stride.

Burnished icons gazed down from the age-blackened walls. Gold gleamed from the altar in the visceral darkness.

A strange place for a Jew to look for sanctuary.

He waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom once more; then he saw her, kneeling beside an icon of Saint Antony. Her face was streaked with tears.

He was unimpressed.

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘I thought you were.’

‘I never thought I’d see you again.’

‘Oh God, Nick, how can you ever forgive me?’

She was still on her knees. She looked like a child. ‘What happened that night?’ he said.

‘I don’t know, there were two men, they put a cloth on my face, some sort of chemical and I couldn’t breathe, I must have passed out and when I woke up I was on a boat, I heard them talking about you, where they were taking you, what they were going to do.’

‘How did you get away?’

‘They left me tied up on the boat for hours, then they threw me in the back of a van and drove me to a prison, I thought they were going to kill me. They kept me there for weeks and then one day they just let me go. I don’t know why.’

He thought about what Maier had told him. He could have been lying: maybe he thought, well, if I can’t have her, neither will he. Who was he going to believe?

If he was an SD agent, he would have used the woman to get the man, the classic honeytrap.

‘What did they do to you?’ she whispered.

He looked into those wonderful golden eyes, searching for a reason to believe. ‘Nothing,’ he said. He gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet. She put her head on his chest. He smelled perfume, and there were silk stockings on those beautifully sculpted legs. No doubt there was a German officer in a staff car on his way out of Romania with fond memories of Bucharest. Major Overath?

He wondered if the Russians would be as generous.

‘You haven’t asked me about Maier,’ he said.

He heard footsteps in the nave, saw a priest enter from the sacristy. Daniela pushed herself away from him. ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

‘He came over to our side.’

‘You said he would.’ She looked up at him, and as quickly looked away again. ‘He told you?’

‘Of course. He took great pleasure in it.’

‘You must hate me.’

He let that pass. ‘Where are you living now?’

‘I’ll take you there,’ she said.

The heat was like a furnace after the cool of the church. She stopped at the top of the steps, then reached up and touched his face as she had done a hundred times before. ‘I always loved you,’ she said.

She lived six blocks from the Athenee Palace in a street with barely a building left standing. She led him up two flights of cement stairs, the landings piled with rubbish; the stench was stupefying. She pushed open the door to her apartment.

He followed her in and she lit a candle. There was a dingy living room with an ancient table and two chairs, a single bedroom with a narrow bed, and a dark kitchen, the sink stained with rust from the taps.

He saw that look of longing he had come to know well during their long affair. ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ she said.

‘Why did you run away earlier?’

‘I was afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of you. I saw it in your face. You knew what I did - how Maier made me trick you. I didn’t think you would ever forgive me.’

‘Maier said that you knew the SD were going to kidnap me. He said you were in on it.’

She turned pale and reached out to the table for support. ‘Tell me you don’t believe that.’

‘What is the truth?’

‘I could never do that to you. I always loved you. I never lied about
that
.’

‘You lied about a lot of other things.’

‘I had to.’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘Does it matter now?’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t answer. He was disappointed with her; he thought at the end she might at least have graced him with the truth. He reached into his jacket. ‘Do you need money?’ he said and he took out his wallet and threw a fistful of
lei
on the table. She stared at the money.

‘Jennifer and I are getting a divorce.’

‘She won’t do that. She loves you too much.’

He shrugged. ‘People get tired of waiting. And there was nothing to wait for, in the end.’

‘Do you want to stay with me tonight?’

‘Here?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘No.’

She looked disappointed but not surprised. ‘I understand.’

‘No, you don’t,’ he said and left. As he made his way back down the darkened stairwell, he felt as if there was a stone in his throat. He had mourned her once; now he would have to do it all over again.

CHAPTER 83

Simon had been shaved and washed at Stanciu’s orders. Nick picked him up from the Prefecture in an Opel saloon. He sat stiffly in the back in a suit Stanciu had arranged for him. It was two sizes too large and sat on his bony frame like a sack.

They stopped outside a crumbling apartment in a bombed-out street; Nick got out and indicated that Simon should follow. The younger man looked scared. Perhaps he thinks I’ve brought him here for execution, Nick thought.

He led the way up the concrete stairs. Here it was: he had lost everything he wanted. He reminded himself that you cannot lose something you never had.

He knocked on the door. He knew she would be waiting; he had sent a courier earlier that morning to arrange everything.

She opened the door, and he saw it for the last time, that look of delight and desire. He supposed in her way she had loved him, just not enough. Those golden eyes got him every time. His heart broke.

‘There’s someone to see you,’ he said and stood aside.

She looked over his shoulder at Simon and for a moment there was only confusion. Then she recognised him. Simon stepped forward and threw his arms around her. She clung to him as he wept. Their eyes met over Simon’s shoulder and, as she had said to him in Instanbul, the truth was there in her eyes.

He walked into the flat and threw some papers onto the table. ‘These are safe conduct passes,’ he said. ‘I pulled some strings. There’s a little money also. It will get you both as far as Istanbul. From there I can arrange British passports.’

She tried to break free but Simon clung to her like he was drowning. ‘Why have you done this?’

‘You don’t have to ask me that.’

Simon sank to his knees, sobbing. He cried into her skirt.

No goodbyes. Nick hurried downstairs to the street. His driver was waiting in an Opel. But as he got in, he heard a shout and when he turned around he saw her running towards him.

‘Wait!’

She tried to put her arms around him but he stopped her. He would do this with dignity, at least.

‘You don’t have to explain,’ he said.

‘I owe you at least that much.’

He shook his head. ‘No you don’t. I don’t even want to know the details.’ He got in the car.

‘Let’s just get out of here please,’ he said to Stanciu.

Daniela stared at her husband. She barely recognized him. What have they done to him?

She went into the kitchen to make him something to eat. Her Romanian officer had brought her some meat and she had a little polenta and bread. His eyes went wide at the smell of the meat cooking in the pan and when she put the food in front of him, he gulped it down like an animal and did not look up once, barely drew breath.

Afterwards she fetched him some
tsuica
and they stared at each other across the table.

‘Who was he?’ Simon asked her.

‘The Englishman? I met him in Istanbul. He helped me.’

‘Was he your lover?’

‘No,’ she lied.

‘I could see it in his eyes. He loves you.’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.’ He hung his head. ‘Look what they’ve done to me.’

‘You’ll soon be well again. You’re alive, Simon. Most of the others are dead.’

‘I wrote to you every month. Did you get the letters?’

Of course, she had the letters. They were his lifeline, and she had read them all, kept them in her battered brown suitcase along with the photograph of her mother and her best clothes and her silk stockings, all she had in the world.

His first letter was an appeal to her to help him, written under the eyes of his Nazi gaolers. They had become shorter and more disjointed as time went on, but his keepers had made him write them, how else could they have made her do for them the things she did?

She still had them, all of them, tied with string in the bottom of her suitcase; her last link with him and with the life she had once cherished.

Now she realized she was married to a ghost.

‘Did they beat you?’

‘The Guardists beat me every day. Then the Germans came and took me away and they did this.’ He held up his hand, showed her his mutilated left hand where they had cut off his third finger. ‘But after that they treated me all right. They only beat me when they felt like it and they made sure I got a meal every day.’ He looked around the room. His eyes were haunted. ‘Can you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

A shadow passed across his face. “I thought I heard someone screaming.’ His eyes found their focus once more. ‘What about you? How was your war?’

‘Let’s not talk about it now,’ she said. She laid his head on her breast and stroked his hair. ‘I’ll look after you now,’ she whispered and held him in her arms like a child. She had kept him alive, he was hers now. She tried to ignore the voice that said: Oh how I wish you had died and then I could be free.

‘Come,’ she whispered.

She took him into the bedroom, helped him take off his clothes, was shocked at how thin he was. He reached hungrily for her, squeezed her breasts and ripped at her clothes. She let him lay her on the bed; he lifted up her skirt and tried to enter her too soon. She had to guide him inside her and it was over very quickly; he cried as he came.

Afterwards she held him and stroked his back.

He slept badly, moaning and shouting in his sleep. She held him in her arms and did not sleep at all. She thought about Nick. She wondered where he was tonight and wanted him more than she ever had.

CHAPTER 84

The next day an envelope was delivered to Nick’s room. It had been left at reception that morning. It was addressed:
‘Nicholas Davis, C/- Athenee Palace Hotel, Room 412. Please deliver.’

He sat on the bed and stared at it for a long time. Finally, he found the courage to open it.

As he did, he remembered again when he had met her in those summer days of 1940; it had been a different city then, and he had been a different man.

He tore open the envelope and let it slip to the floor. He did not read the letter word for word the first time. The second time, he read it more slowly, and read it many more times before he finally set it aside:

Sweetheart, you have to know that I love you, here, today, right now. Now you know my little secret but you do not know everything. So I will tell you. I owe you at least that much.

I imagine Siggi took great delight in telling you what I did for him. I wonder if he told you why.

When I was sixteen I was courted by a boy called Ilie, a Romanian, and an Orthodox Christian. I did this over the objections of my family, went on seeing him after they forbade it, because I thought he loved me. I became pregnant to him, and when he found out, he abandoned me. I was disgraced. My mother stood by me; if not for her, my father would have thrown me out on the street.

I lost the baby, a boy, in childbirth. The doctor says I cannot have children now.

I did not think any boy would want me after Ilie. But then Simon came into my life. Simon had known me since schooldays, he said he had always loved me, and he married me despite everything.