The Violent Century (18 page)

A German soldier turns and smiles at the lovers. An old man selling newspapers grins at them affectionately without teeth. An accordion player follows them around with a cheerful tune and Henry throws him some coins, which the man snatches deftly from the air. Laughing, they run arm in arm, Henry and Klara, Vomacht’s girl and Fogg, through the narrow, winding streets of the Quartier Latin, with no destination, it seems, in mind; floating on light and air in a city untouched by war, a city healed by love.

– Come on! Klara says. Through here! They cut through the garden of a small stone church and emerge on the other side, a quiet street, a stray cat skulking by the rubbish heap, a smiling moon in the sky. A closed and shuttered bookshop on the corner, opposite the church. She leads him to a plain wooden door set into the wall, next to the bookshop.

– Here? Henry says.

– Anywhere and nowhere, Klara says.

Henry holds his breath as she speaks. The moonlight catches her features, casts them in a bewitched light, and Henry thinks of magic, that maybe it is real. Klara reaches for the handle, her hand engulfs the metal and she presses it down, her white hand on the silver of the metal, and she pushes the door open and a bright, an impossibly bright light bursts forth from the opening door, bright impossible sunlight and the smell of fresh hay and grass and the humming of insects and flowing water: the smell of summer. Klara laughs delightedly. Come on! she says. Sunlight transforms their corner of the street. She pushes the door fully open and goes in, pulling Henry after her.

72.
DR VOMACHT’S FARMHOUSE
then

The sun warms Henry’s face. He takes a deep breath of clear mountain air. The sun on his face. Insects humming. He opens his eyes on a perfect summer’s day. Blue skies with white clouds like trails of smoke. Mountains in the distance, almost blue in outline. Green grass all around him and a white path of pebbled stones leads onwards, towards a white stone house just ahead. Faint music comes from the direction of the house, an old French chanson. Klara pulls Henry along the path then lets go of his hand and turns, laughing, swirling in the grass with her arms stretched out. Henry stands there. He looks back, sees nothing to show how they came to be there, at that no place, at that no time. Where are we? he says, his voice filled with wonder. Klara stops dancing. This is just … she says. Just the place I go away to.

Henry just looks at her. The music comes wafting from the house. A butterfly hovers near Klara’s outstretched hand. Klara regains her smile, as innocent and beatific as the day is.

– This is what it was like before, she says, with new confidence. Like a child sharing her favourite toy. Before things changed.

Her smile turns wicked and she jumps on Henry, she is surprisingly light but she pulls him down and he lets her and they fall to the grass together, Henry on his back, Klara straddling him. She leans down and kisses him on the mouth and he responds hungrily, engulfing her in his arms. She presses him down and looks into his eyes and her eyes are the colour of the sky, her smell is the scent of summer.

– It’s better here, she says, softly. And – We can stay here, forever.

73.
DR VOMACHT’S FARMHOUSE
then

It never gets dark in this place. The sky is a perfect blue, the air is warm and scented. Insects hum outside, in the green grass. Henry stands at the window bare-chested.

– I have no power here, he says. There is no fog.

He turns to Klara, who smiles up at him from the bed. We can’t stay here forever, Klara, he says. This is madness. I could be court-martialled for this.

Klara pats the bed invitingly. There are no court martials here, she says. Come back to bed, Henry. We have time. We have all the time in the world.

– Where
are
we? Henry says.

– This is where it all happened, Klara says. This is where it started. You, me. The war.

– Where is your father, Klara? Henry says.

– He’s outside. He can’t come in here. Klara smiles, happily. This is my secret place, she says.

She jumps out of bed. She wears her nakedness comfortably. She is young, Henry thinks. She will always be young. Do you want to see it? Klara says. Grinning. Like a kid sharing a wonderful secret. Henry collects his clothes, which are strewn across the room. See what? he says.

Klara jumps up and down in excitement and grabs Henry’s hand. Come on! she says. She takes him by the hand and leads him out of the bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen. It is a spacious, airy room, flooded with sunlight. Strings of garlic hang on the wall alongside iron pots and pans. On the long wood table sits a small machine, about the size of a briefcase. It is impossible to say what it is, what it does. Klara stops and Henry stops with her. He stares at the room, at the silent machine. What? he says, at last.

– This is it, Klara says. This is the device.

– But …

– I remember it like it was today, Klara says.

She laughs. She spreads her arms wide and dances on the spot. It
is
today! she says. It is always today. Oh, Henry.

She throws her arms around him, nuzzles his neck. It is always today, she whispers, against his skin. One perfect summer’s day. She pulls away from him, growing serious. Points at an empty chair placed at an angle by the table, beside the strange machine.

– He was sitting right there, she says.

– Your father?

– Yes. Tinkering. Always tinkering. With his quantum box. Muttering about Heisenberg. He was a doctor my father worked with for a while, before they fell out. Muttering about cats in boxes. I used to have a cat. Dinah.

– Dinah, Henry says. Klara’s face crumbles. Oh, what does it matter! she says. What does any of it matter.

– Klara, I—

– What? she says, with sudden savagery. You don’t want to be here? You don’t want to be with me? Look at you, in your shadow man clothes! What’s so important out
there
?

– Klara, Henry says, wait—

But she is angry, a sudden and scary transformation, as if a switch had been flipped on, or off, with nothing in between. Just
go!
she shouts.

Henry looks to all sides, like a trapped animal. Klara makes a pushing motion with her hands. Although she doesn’t physically touch him something forces Henry back, like a gust of air, like he is being sucked back, somehow. Everything – the farmhouse, the warm day, the sun – seems to dim, a grey fog opens behind and around him, engulfing him, and Klara grows small in the distance, standing there with her hand extended and Henry falls, falls into the fog, until it swallows him and he can’t see her any more.

74.
PARIS
1943

Fogg lands awkwardly, as if the ground was not quite supposed to be there. It is cold and the rising fog sticks, not unpleasantly, to his skin. He is on the Left Bank of the Seine. There is a new moon in the sky, a sliver moon, hanging like a scythe over Notre Dame. A German patrol drives slowly down the road. Fogg just stands there, stares at it, stares at the new, fragile moon.

75.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– And that is it? the Old Man says. That is all?

Fogg feels the tense muscles, tiredness starting to take effect. Looks straight at the Old Man. His secrets out in the open, laundry left to dry in the sun.

– I never saw her again, he says.

The Old Man doesn’t say anything. Leafs through the dossier on his desk. Humming.

– She was innocent, Fogg says, but we are not sure who he is trying to convince, the Old Man or himself.

Still the Old Man says nothing. His old tactic. Drawing Fogg out.

– I went back to London, Fogg says, answering an unvoiced question. And, fiercely – Don’t you think I would have done anything to get back Tank if I could?

– Would you? the Old Man says. Would you have?

– She was innocent.

– No one is innocent, the Old Man says. Turns another page. Raises his eyebrows. Well? he demands.

– I made my way back to London, Fogg says. I submitted my report—

– A false report, the Old Man says – almost reproachfully.

– Everyone lies a little, Fogg says.

The Old Man, silently, turns another page.

76.
PARIS
1943

Curfew.

But what does Fogg care for curfew, for the Germans’ patrols? The hushed air of deserted streets is his background music, the fog that rises and clings to the walls is his to do with as he will. Like a restless shadow he prowls the city, anger and need intermingling, and shame. The shame of seeing Tank captured. The shame of being pushed from that secret place, that summer’s day. Anger at her. Her name, Klara, echoes through the city in the bells of churches still allowed to operate. Klara. Klara. Their lovemaking is echoed in the motion of the Seine. And Fogg’s anger stalks along with him through the narrow cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter, a shadow to his shadow.

He comes across a group of German soldiers surrounding two girls. One light, one dark. Dressed in long army overcoats. What are they doing outside at this hour. An Oberschütze waving his hand angrily at the cowering girls, Your papers, where are your papers?
Vos papiers!

One soldier grabs a girl’s arm, laughing. She struggles against him as he pins her to the wall. The other screams, the sound pierces the night and Fogg is aware of all those faces behind windows and walls, hears everything. But who will come to her rescue, on this night, in this country, at this terrible time? The soldier presses close, his face leaning in for a kiss, the girl spits in his face. The soldier roars, slaps her, she falls to the cobblestones, the other girl seizes the moment and runs:

Towards Fogg, towards the sheltering fog, she comes towards him and the moonlight catches her pale, frightened face. She comes so close, Fogg could reach out and pull her to shelter, to safety. The girl’s eyes open wide: she sees him. He reaches out to her. Two shots ring out. The girl drops to the cobblestones. A dark stain on the pavement. The Oberschütze holsters his gun, swears:
Verdammten Frauen
, he says. In sadness more than anger. Motions at the girl still living. Take her to the Gestapo, he says, this is not our business. His men pick the girl up and march her away. They pass by Fogg and the dead girl, so close. Fogg, wishing for a knife, a gun. For courage. But to observe something is to change it.

When they pass, the Oberschütze is left momentarily alone. He comes and stares down at the body of the dead girl. He shakes his head, says something too softly for Fogg to catch. The moon in the sky. Through a patch in the fog he can see the Sea of Serenity, forming one eye of the man on the moon. Something snaps in Fogg and he steps out of his hiding place. The soldier sees him stepping out like a ghost and his eyes open wide, like the girl’s had. What— he begins to say, his hands begin to rise, too slow, as if to ward off Fogg. Fogg wraps his hands around the man’s neck and squeezes, the soldier’s skin soft and warm and the heartbeat inside it like a caged bird, struggling to break free, and Fogg helps it, squeezing, his thumbs digging into the soft pliable flesh, staring into the man’s eyes; all the while he looks into the man’s frightened eyes until the bird is free, is gone. He lets go and the body softly crumples to the ground, to lie beside the dead girl. The pleasant and the loved, in death as in life they were not parted, Fogg thinks, the half-remembered verse of a Bible song. Feels queer, something obscene in the two of them, the French girl and the German soldier, down there on the cobblestones. He feels bile rising in his throat, holds it down. He hears the soldiers calling out for their leader, coming back, but the fog rises, they become lost in it and Fogg walks away, walks past closed doors of shops and apartment blocks, walks and walks through the city like a ghost, his feet making no sound.

But then, as he comes to a cul-de-sac, and prepares to turn back, a door opens.

A door opens in the night, before him. The door to a shop or a house, he doesn’t know. An ordinary door.

And light, so much light, comes pouring out of it. The bright light of a summer’s day. And he stands there, entranced, and a lithe figure steps through the door and onto the cold pavements, into that occupied night.

– Klara, Fogg whispers, Klara, and she turns, and sees him, and her smile lights up her face. Look! she says. She points up at the moon, There’s a man in the moon! and she laughs, delighted. You can’t see it from the other place. She runs to him. Hugs him. That scent of her, something so pure. Fogg buries his face in the crook of her neck and inhales. I’m sorry, he says, I’m sorry.

For what? She is laughing. She pushes him back and looks into his eyes. He is a little taller and she must rise on her toes to match him. Let’s not go back there, she says, not for now, not for a while. I want to be with you in your world. In the real world. But she says the word
real
dubiously, and perhaps she doesn’t truly believe in it. It is too fantastical, this world, with its marching armies and its rockets and its death camps. It’s just the world of a cheap novel, surely. She hugs him, then lets go and takes his hand, instead. She is dressed in her summer dress but she wears a thick army coat over it. Look, she says, reaching into an inside pocket. She brings out a document. My papers, she says, proudly.

And Fogg thinks, You are Dr Vomacht’s daughter, and something cold reaches deep inside him and squeezes. But she puts it away and laughs again and her warmth suffuses him, this summer day taken human form, this Sommertag, and he lets her lead him by the hand, I want music! she says. I want to dance.

77.
PARIS
1943

The night is a blur.

They walk down the quiet streets and run into a patrol. The soldiers cry
Stop!
, but Klara turns on them, barking orders, Do you know who I am, she says, Take me to Le Chabanais! One of the soldiers looks shocked, but the officer just looks resigned, Please escort Fräulein Vomacht and her companion to her destination, he says.