The Violent Century (19 page)

They are placed in a jeep and taken on a speeding ride, across the river and towards the Louvre. Fogg doesn’t know where he is, what he is doing. He doesn’t know who he is any more. All he knows is that the summer’s light has worn away his fog.

They arrive at a brothel. There is no other word for it. Bare-chested women drape themselves over high-backed chairs and chaise longues. Bow-tied musicians playing Mozart in the high-ceilinged reception room. Toulouse-Lautrec murals on the walls. A waiter glides past with a silver tray bearing vintage champagne. Fräulein Vomacht! What a pleasant surprise. Fogg turns and finds himself face to face with Fat Hermann Göring: World War One ace fighter pilot, notorious art collector and Adolf Hitler’s trusted Reichsmarschall and designated successor.
Herr
Göring, Klara says, with a curtsey. Fat Hermann downs a coupe of champagne and burps delicately. And who is your companion this evening? he enquires. Herr Schleier, Fogg says. The Reichsmarschall looks him up and down, then seems to lose interest. He disappears upstairs, accompanied by two of the young French women, both of whom have dyed black hair.

Fogg and Klara dance and drink champagne. From time to time senior officers stop by and speak to Klara. Fogg is a shadow man, he may as well not exist. I’m bored, Klara declares, later. They steal outside, into the night and the lights of the Louvre. They walk hand in hand through the Jardin des Tuileries. Oh, Henry, Klara says, I don’t want tonight to end – she looks sad. Fogg strokes her face, her cheek is wet with tears. Everything ends, Klara says. Everything but us. She pulls away from his touch and runs away. Fogg chases. Down the gardens and they are all alone and it begins to snow, Fogg makes a grab for Klara but she evades him with a laugh, reaches for a gardener’s shed door and pulls it open and the bright sunlight spills out onto the Parisian night and she disappears inside and leaves Fogg standing there, stupidly staring at an ordinary garden door.

78.
PARIS
1943

But when he walks back to his hotel the door of the bakery right ahead opens and instead of the smell of fresh bread sunlight spills out and she is there again, standing in the snow. She is calm now, her face is beatific. She takes him by the hand. He leads the way, feeling a new urgency, a desire. They sneak into the silent hotel and tiptoe up the rickety old stairs into the dark room. How did you know who I was, he says, whispering into the skin of her neck, feeling her life beating inside. Light casts shadow, she says, whispering too. Perhaps it is as simple as that. It’s wartime, there are no real answers. He strips her urgently, his hands seem to shake, she draws his shirt up over his head and runs her hand down his naked chest and Fogg shudders, Henry, she says, Henry, he whispers her name, pushes her back onto the bed, a boy, a girl, a night in Paris. He kisses her, all over. Her body is caught forever in that moment long ago. She tastes of blackberries and sun: though blackberries have the taste of autumn. The thought makes him sad, strangely. She pulls him up, kisses him on the lips. She draws him to her. I love you, she whispers, I love you too, he says, but what is love? Perhaps it is a way of unseeing.

Later, they lie in the bed, drowsy. The snow beats against the window, it makes Fogg think of Schneesturm, and of Tank, and that shame and hatred rise in him again. He realises he barely knows Klara. Barely knows who she is, what she likes and dislikes. She is different things all at once, she is both changed and unchanged. How do you explain what he feels? It isn’t rational, not something you can quantify or study in a lab.

Or can it? Can love, too, be distilled, explained away, used as a weapon?

– Hold me, Henry, she says. He draws her close, she is so warm, so real. It is the war that is make-believe, it is the Luftwaffe and Hitler, the whole damned thing. He holds Klara until they both fall asleep, and in the morning she is gone, and the door to the room is left just slightly ajar, letting the sunlight through, and he fo—

79.
DR VOMACHT’S FARMHOUSE
then

—llows, into that other place.

But later, much later:

– I have to go back, Fogg says.

– You could stay with me, here. Forever.

– You know that’s not true. You belong in the real world too.

– I could withdraw, seal the door, she says. I can! This moment is mine but I can make it yours, too.

– You are going back to Germany, he says. And I must go back to England.

– I don’t want you to. England is cold and the Führer says we will soon win the war. And then what will happen to you, Henry? she says with a cold, childlike logic.

– You’re not like them, Fogg says, you’re not one of them, you could come with me, you could help—

– My father needs me. Her voice is small when she says it. Henry, she says. If we lose …

– Yes?

– Will you find me?

He holds her tight; he never wants to let go. I will find you, he says.

– I do not want it to be over, she says, and for a moment he doesn’t know if she is talking about their being there, together, or about the war; and a shudder runs through him.

– Promise you will find me, she says.

Fogg strokes her hair, there in that place where it is always a summer’s day.

– I will find you, he says.

NINE:

THE LOST DECADE

LONDON
1954

GERMANY SURRENDERS

May 7, 1945

REIMS Following the death of Adolf Hitler on April 30, by suicide, and the fall of Berlin to Soviet forces on May 2, on this day in Reims, France, General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the German armed forces, has signed the unconditional surrender document on behalf of all extant German forces, thus ending the War in Europe.

ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN

August 6, 1945

WASHINGTON American President Harry S. Truman has announced today that an atomic bomb has been dropped over the city of Hiroshima, in Japan. The President was on board the cruiser USS Augusta in the mid-Atlantic. He said the device was 2,000 times more powerful than any conventional bomb ever before deployed. Hiroshima is one of the chief supply depots for the Japanese army.

The bomb was dropped at 08:15 local time from a B-29 airplane nicknamed the Enola Gay. A vast, mushroom-shaped cloud engulfed the city of Hiroshima and it is currently impossible to assess the damage caused by the blast. ‘If they do not now accept our terms,’ the President said, ‘they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on Earth.’

Speaking in London, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who has replaced Winston Churchill at Number 10, read out a statement prepared by his predecessor to MPs in the Commons. He said, ‘By God’s mercy, Britain and American science outpaced all German efforts. These were on a considerable scale, but far behind. The possession of these powers by the Germans at any time might have altered the result of the war.’

President Truman said the atomic bomb heralded the ‘harnessing of the basic power of the universe.’

ELIZABETH II CROWNED QUEEN

June 2, 1953

LONDON Following the death of King George VI, ending his reign after sixteen years on the throne, the crown has passed to his 25-year-old daughter Elizabeth. The young Queen served as an ambulance driver and mechanic during the War. She was crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury at a coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Eight thousand dignitaries and heads of state attended the ceremony, while thousands of Her Majesty’s subjects lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the new monarch. Millions more watched the ceremony around the world in a special broadcast by the BBC.

80.
BATTERSEA POWER STATION, LONDON
1954

The machines hum inside Battersea Power Station, behind the dull brown bricks the coal never stops burning, the steam boilers humming with suppressed energy, the barges along the Thames docking at the jetties, this endless song of the loading and offloading. The lights always shine over Battersea Station, the steam turbines never cease. Out of the tall chimneys their smoke rises into the night.

Oblivion waits in the shadow of the station. A new moon. A new Queen. Prime Minister Churchill on his way out, again.

The Nineteen Fifties. The post-war years. Powdered eggs, how he hates the taste of them. The Bureau wrapped in shadows. Spit somewhere in Kenya, a Mau Mau uprising. Oblivion turns his head, sharply. The moonlight catches his pale cheekbones. Footsteps on gravel. The fog makes it hard to see who it is.

– Oblivion.

– Fogg. I didn’t think you’d come.

– I almost didn’t.

They hug, awkwardly.

– They told me you’d left. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for the service.

– I got a medal, Fogg says. From the King. Before … he makes a gesture. You know.

– You retired from the Retirement Service.

Fogg laughs, without much humour. Yes, he says. I suppose I did.

Oblivion looks at him but, of course, Fogg is unchanged. Why did you leave? he says.

– You know why.

Oblivion takes out a hip flask. Unscrews the top and takes a gulp. Passes it to Fogg. It’s over, Fogg, he says. It’s over. The Old Man doesn’t know—

– Don’t, Fogg says. They stare at each other.

– Come back, Oblivion says, at last.

– We don’t grow old, Fogg says. We don’t forget. The past never dies, not entirely. Not for us, Oblivion.

– You can’t
bury
yourself in the past, Henry!

– Somewhere it is always summer, Fogg says, and drinks. He hands the flask back to Oblivion.

– Don’t come back to see me again, he says, quietly.

But a vengeful spirit seems to take over Oblivion. One day I might have to! he says, and hates the sound of his own voice. Fogg, turning to leave, stops. He looks at Oblivion and his face is agonised.

– I know, he says.

He turns his head away. Goodbye, Oblivion, he says. He walks away and Oblivion does nothing but stand there, and watch him go.

– Damn it, Fogg, he says, but softly, to himself. Behind his back the steam turbines growl and hiss and burp.

An account, Oblivion thinks. Words they daren’t say. But there must always be an account.

81.
LONDON
1954

Oblivion walks away from the power station, walking along the south side of the Thames, crossing the river at last at London Bridge. It’s late but there are people about and Oblivion misses the comfort of the fog. On the bridge he stops. He takes out a coin, newly minted, a penny with the young Queen on its face. Turns it and turns it in his fingers. Berlin, in forty-six. The thing they can never talk about. So many things one cannot talk about, he thinks. He flicks the coin up and watches it arc over the railings. The moonlight catches the Queen’s youthful face. Oblivion watches the coin tumble down to earth, down towards the dark surface of the river. It falls in with a tiny splash and is swallowed by the water. He makes a wish; we suppose he makes a wish.

He walks on. A cold night but he welcomes it. Past the Tower of London where the ravens stand guard over the Empire, crying fiercely into the night. A lone prostitute calls to him but he shakes his head and hurries on, into the night, the dark twisting streets of the East End.

The fog grows around him. Rubble in the streets. Houses still demolished by the bombings, not yet rebuilt. A dismal decade. Things moving in the abandoned houses. He doesn’t quicken his pace. Let them come, he thinks, with savage anticipation. It isn’t like him. But he feels angry, and lost. Fogg’s damned
selfishness!

Walks on. The river on his right, the city on his left. A pub ahead, lights inside and laughter, a figure lurches drunkenly out of the door and into the street, near colliding with him. He growls, Watch where you’re going, old timer!

– Sorry, son, sorry. Hands pat him, the drunk steadies himself. His beery breath on Oblivion’s face. Say, aren’t you—

– Aren’t I what – tries to push the old man but he won’t budge. The old man’s eyes open wide. Mrs Cable’s boy, he says. From down that way – he jerks a thumb at the opening to a narrow lane. From up by Stepney, he says, Mrs Cable, the midwife.

– I’m afraid you are quite mistaken, Oblivion says, coldly, and the man takes a step back and looks him up and down, the Savile Row suit and the cane, and shakes his head, I’m sorry, sir, he says, You look the spitting image of her boy, but he would be much older now, and not …

– Yes?

– A gentleman, begging your pardon. She was an honest woman but her boys, none of them were gentlemen.

– Push off! Oblivion says with sudden vehemence, and his fist rises, pale and menacing, and the old man shrinks from him. He raises his hands up defensively, palms open, and Oblivion, as though ashamed, lowers his hand.

– What happened to her? he asks. The midwife.

The old man lowers his hands, which are shaking. The look that he gives Oblivion is queer. Died in the war, didn’t she, he says.

– How?

– Bombing raid. Didn’t make it to the shelter in time. The old man spits on the ground. Lost my wife the same way, he says.

– I’m sorry.

The old man shrugs. Well, there you are, he says.

Oblivion just stares. The old man looks back, uncomfortable. Here, Oblivion says. Reaches into his pocket. Comes back with a shilling. Take that, for your troubles, he says.

The old man takes it haltingly. Thank you, he says. But still looks at Oblivion’s face with that puzzled expression.

– Go! Oblivion says and the man, startled into action, walks hurriedly if unsteadily away. Oblivion stares after his retreating back.