Restitution (12 page)

‘Tell me about Vavilov,’ Preizler said. ‘Bearing in mind that you have no choice but to talk.’

Gregor’s nostrils flared as though he’d smelled something bad.

‘Gregor,’ Alix said. ‘Tell him.’

Preizler raised his gun again. ‘Come on, Comrade. I’ve already heard a little about Vavilov the Polish Communist,’ he said.

‘Then I won’t bore you further.’ Gregor still sounded flippant, even when that monster was threatening him with a bullet.

‘Continue or I’ll shoot you.’

‘You wouldn’t kill me in front of the women.’

‘Correct. I’d take you down to that cellar.’ Preizler placed a slight stress on the last word. ‘You were telling us about Vavilov. Where does he come from?’

Again Gregor shrugged.

‘What language do you use to talk to him?’

‘Polish.’

‘But you don’t think he’s a Pole, do you?’

Gregor said nothing.

‘Does he speak German?’

Gregor nodded.

‘With an accent?’

Gregor looked down at the floor.

‘You know I can extract this information from you, don’t you? It doesn’t have to be a bullet. There are other ways.’

‘No!’ Marie put out a hand. ‘I won’t have this!’ She looked at Gregor. ‘It can’t hurt anyone to tell us that, can it Gregor?’

Whole seconds passed until he spoke. ‘It might be a Hungarian or Slovene accent.’

‘How old is he?’ Mami asked. Alix glanced at her, startled by this interest in a Communist intelligence officer.

‘Forties.’ Gregor shrugged. ‘Could be younger. Most people coming from the east are younger than their faces. We never discuss these matters.’

‘Of course you don’t, Fischer. You’d be very careful not to talk about personal matters because Vavilov doesn’t know you’re a German, does he?’ Preizler spoke
softly but with an air of triumph. ‘I see your predicament. God help you if your comrades find out you’re really one of us.’

‘People are like rivers, they have no nationality but take on the nature of the terrain they pass through. No human spirit can be confined to a single state.’ Gregor folded his
arms.

Mami leaned forward. ‘What was that?’

He repeated the words.

‘That’s what he says, this Vavilov?’ Preizler snorted.

Mami’s face could have rivalled the shattered porcelain for whiteness.

‘What is it, Marie?’ Again Alix winced at the familiar use of her mother’s name.

‘Perhaps the baroness finds your interrogation rather tedious,’ Gregor said, stressing Mami’s title. Alix couldn’t resist a small smile. Preizler stiffened in his chair
but didn’t rise to the bait.

‘Someone else used to say that,’ Mami muttered. ‘Those exact words. Who was it? Is it a quotation?’ Her puzzled eyes sought Alix’s as though begging her daughter to
help her out. Alix shrugged.

Gregor was silent.

Preizler shook his head at Mami indulgently and gestured at Gregor to continue.

‘His finger,’ Mami said. ‘He was missing a fingertip.’

Gregor blinked. ‘I don’t have to say any more. You are only entitled to name, rank, number.’

Mami was staring at her cigarette box. ‘The little finger on his left hand.’

Gregor must have made some sudden slight movement. The cat jumped down to the floor, making Preizler start. In the second that his attention was diverted Gregor and Mami had exchanged glances.
Something about that missing fingertip. Alix noted how Mami’s hand holding the cigarette now glistened with perspiration. ‘I need something from my bag,’ she murmured. ‘Pass
it to me, Alix.’ Alix picked up the leather vanity case and handed it to her mother. Mami pulled out a pillbox. ‘Terrible headache,’ she said.

‘Pour your mother some water,’ Preizler ordered. Alix stood and reached for a glass and the pottery jug of water from the pump which Lena kept on the dresser. Mami crumbled a tablet
in her hand and kept watching Preizler.

‘How did you come to work for Vavilov, Fischer?’ demanded Preizler.

‘He came to Kolyma and asked if I could fight in the Polish unit.’

‘Kolyma?’ Preizler shifted in his chair and there was something else in his expression now when he looked at Gregor. Almost a respect. ‘You were there?’

Gregor nodded.

‘How did he know you?’

‘I don’t have to answer any more.’

Preizler half-pulled the trigger. Alix heard someone cry out. Herself. Gregor glanced at her. ‘It was opportunistic, he simply needed someone with medical experience. I’d been
working in the camp hospital.’

‘But you haven’t been acting as a medic since he took you out of the camp?’ Preizler asked.

Gregor said nothing.

Mami and Preizler exchanged one of their speechless looks. Now it was as though the two of them were transmitters tuned to the same frequency, picking up signals nobody else could receive.
Preizler drained the last of his coffee. ‘Let me refill your cup.’ Mami reached for it.

‘Fetch me some rope, Alexandra,’ he said, ignoring the ministrations.

Alix sat there, mouth open, blood running to ice, unable to protest.

‘Do it, Alix,’ whispered Mami. ‘Anton won’t hurt Gregor.’ Her hands were shaking as she poured the coffee.

‘I just want to tie him up so I can put this gun down.’ Preizler twinkled like a kindly old uncle. ‘Then I can relax a little.’

Relax. As though they were all on holiday.

‘All right.’ She rose and took one of the candles. ‘I’ll go to the boot room to get it.’ She tried to meet Gregor’s eye but all his attention was given over
to an invisible mark on the oilskin tablecloth. His mouth was set, as though he were clamping it shut.

In the boot room Alix eyed the door to the garden. But if she failed to return, Preizler would certainly use his gun on Gregor. No way of knowing whether Mami would try and stop him. And
Preizler’s affection mightn’t be strong enough to stop him from shooting her, too, if she did.

Alix picked up a coil of rope from the peg by the door and brought it back into the kitchen, setting it down on the table in front of him as though bringing tribute to an emperor.

‘Fischer, give your knife to her. Cut four lengths about this size, Alix,’ he ordered, holding out his hands to show her.

Gregor removed the knife from his belt and handed it to her. For a second their fingers made contact and she felt something like an electric shock. She thought of trying to stab Preizler but
Mami was watching her and furtively shook her head.

‘Let’s go down to the cellar,’ he told Alix when she’d finished. ‘Take the lamp with you, Alexandra.’

She swallowed hard. The man’s memory was impressive. All those years ago yet he remembered about Gregor and the cellar. She picked up the lamp and led the way. The steps were steep. Behind
her the two men clattered down. Had Mami followed them or had she stayed in the kitchen? Alix undid the bolted door. They’d filled the cellar with boxes packed with the china and glass that
hadn’t been buried in the garden, hoping without any conviction at all that the Bolsheviks wouldn’t find them. Beside the boxes stood an old wooden chair, placed down here so it could
be chopped up for firewood. ‘Sit,’ Preizler told Gregor. ‘Tie his hands and feet to the chair,’ he ordered Alix. ‘And remember, I’ll shoot him if you try
anything.’

She put the lamp on the floor. If she turned it off, Gre-gor’d have a chance to make a run for freedom, if he could move fast enough in the dark.

‘Get on with the knots.’ Preizler must have read her thoughts. She did as he asked. ‘Tighter,’ he said.

Gregor blinked back at her.

‘Now upstairs we go,’ Preizler said, leading the way. ‘Bring the lamp.’

Alix couldn’t bear it. She remembered the last time he’d been left down here. Preizler had been in the house on that occasion too. Something had started that night but she
hadn’t understood what it was, what it meant. ‘We could leave the lamp—’

‘No.’

She took a last look at Gregor, apologizing with her eyes, aware that she was saying sorry for more than just this imprisonment in the cellar. She was telling him how much she regretted all that
had happened here seven years ago, all those things she had failed to comprehend.

July 1938

The day would probably end with a thunderstorm, Lena told Alix as she pushed the window sash up and opened the shutters. ‘You slept through a beauty last
night.’

Shame. Alix liked storms: the drama, the noise. ‘I didn’t hear it.’

‘Didn’t you hear me come in to check the shutters?’

Alix got out of bed. ‘It feels lovely now. Fresh.’

‘Won’t last. You know these July days, moody as a chestnut mare.’ Lena walked to the wardrobe, taking care not to disturb the row of toys on the carpet. She was smiling.
‘You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Your birthday.’

Alix let out a squeal. ‘I had!’ she sat up. ‘Fancy forgetting your own eleventh birthday.’

‘Alles Gute zum Geburtstag
!’ Lena pulled a small wrapped parcel out of her apron pocket. Alix sprang out of bed and hugged her.

‘Danke,
darling Lena! What is it?’ She took the parcel. It was something long and thin.

‘Open it.’

Alix’s fingers tore at the paper. Pencils from Switzerland in their own tin, with a picture of the Eiger on the front. Beautiful. ‘You always know what I like!’

‘Of course I do.’ Lena disentangled herself from a second hug. ‘I’ll press your frock for tonight.’

‘I hate that dress.’ It was white silk with a blue taffeta sash. Mami had brought it back from Berlin last week. Alix had groaned as she’d undone the tissue paper. ‘She
always chooses things I don’t like.’ Mami seemed to want Alix to be a girl in a Winterhalter painting, all white-dressed and glossy-haired, instead of the scruffy gamine Papi said she
was.

‘Be grateful for your kind mother.’ Lena’s tone was tart. ‘She does all kinds of things for you nobody else would.’

‘You would.’ Alix threw her arms around Lena. ‘You’re always good to me. You wouldn’t make me wear a dress designed for a silly doll.’

‘Nobody could ever be as good to you as your own mother.’ But now Lena’s hands were stroking her hair. Alix remembered the story of how Lena’s mother had disappeared one
Sunday morning while she and her sisters were at mass in Meran, the Tyrolean town she and Mami came from. ‘She left without a word,’ Lena had said. ‘While we were on our knees in
church. When we came home the stove had gone out and there was no lunch waiting. My father pulled out a bottle of Schnapps and didn’t put it down until he died ten years later.’

‘I know it was dreadful for you,’ Alix said now. ‘I know Mami loves me.’

‘Never forget how lucky you are to have a woman like her as your mother: beautiful, accomplished, kind. She could have been a Hollywood star, too. She made those few films at Babelsberg
studios before she had you and she dazzled them all.’ There was a catch in Lena’s voice that morning, as though she were starting a sore throat. ‘When people saw her on the screen
as Anna Karenina they couldn’t believe a woman could be so beautiful.’ She gave Alix’s hair a last stroke. ‘Don’t forget to tidy up these toys on the floor.’ And
she went downstairs.

Alix washed and dressed. When she reached the dining room the others had already finished breakfast. Mami wouldn’t be pleased she’d slept late, even if it was her birthday.
When
we have guests we are first out of bed . . .
Tinkling sounds from the salon told Alix that Gregor was already practising at the Steinway, working on a Chopin Prelude even though it was the
holidays. When she’d finished her rolls and chocolate she went to find him. The maids had been working hard: vases of flowers covered every surface in readiness for tonight’s dinner
party. Gregor looked up when she came in but didn’t break his playing. ‘Happy Birthday, Alix. Just wait a minute and I’ll find your present.’ She listened for a while.

‘You used to play those rude songs saying funny things about Hitler and Himmler. You never play them now.’

‘Are you mad! Course I don’t.’

‘Stop being so scared all the time.’ Surely he knew he was safe here?

Gregor snorted. ‘Just let me get on with my practice.’

Alix stood so one of the maids could plump up the cushions on the sofa. They’d dusted the portraits of the ancestors and polished the picture-glass so they looked less gloomy. But the
ancestors still pursed their lips, nostrils slightly flared as though they could smell something unpleasant. Alix had grown up thinking her forebears disapproved of her. Then she realized they wore
the same expression regardless of who was in the room. Papi had told her his great-aunt Friederika had once sent the future Kaiser out of the room for impertinence. Family lore had it he’d
teased her pug.

Gregor played a last chord and stood. ‘Come on. Let’s find your present.’ They went upstairs. Gregor went into his room and returned with a small parcel, wrapped in plain
paper. ‘I’m afraid it’s not new.’

Emil and the Detectives.
‘I’ve been longing to read this!’ She threw her arms around him. Usually he hated physical expressions of affection. This morning he let her
embrace him.

‘What did your parents give you?’

‘I haven’t had it yet but I’m pretty sure it’s a new saddle for Florian.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘And a new dress.’

They’d found their way into Alix’s bedroom. Gregor stared at the rows of soft toys and dolls on the floor and the single large stuffed dog facing them, flanked by a small blackboard.
‘What are you doing with these kids’ things?’

She felt her cheeks burn. ‘Nothing.’ She’d forgotten to tidy them up. At eleven she was too old to be doing this.

‘It looks like you were playing some kind of game?’ He gave a slow grin. ‘You were playing schools, weren’t you?’

Her cheeks burned on.

‘Go on, own up.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ she burst out. ‘You get to go to a real school.’

Something flashed over his expression, but in her indignation she didn’t stop.

‘I’ve never even been in a classroom.’ Her parents wouldn’t send her to school in Germany. She’d had governesses, the latest one had just gone home to England
because of the Unsettled International Climate, whatever that meant. ‘I like to pretend.’