Death’s Head Read online

  The man slipped off his spectacles and polished them fussily on his sleeve. ‘All right, all right, sometimes such things pass through my hands. Anything is possible these days. But at the moment –’

  Schwarzenbach swept the glasses from the man’s fingers. They slithered across the desk and fell to the floor.

  ‘You have your reputation to think of,’ he said. ‘You can supply anything. Can’t you? Can’t you supply anything?’

  The man attempted to reach his spectacles but Schwarzenbach prevented him.

  ‘What sort of revolver?’

  ‘The question is academic. I want a gun with cartridges. And I want them now.’

  ‘My glasses. Please.’

  Stepping aside, Schwarzenbach allowed the man to retrieve the spectacles. The man was breathing heavily and perspiring and his fingers shook as he placed the glasses on his face. He turned to Schwarzenbach.

  ‘Can you pay in dollars?’

  ‘I will pay in German notes.’

  The man shook his head slowly: ‘No transaction. I’m sorry. American dollars or nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  Schwarzenbach caught the man by the wrist and, swinging him round, forced him to bend across the table. He pressed the full weight of his arm against the man’s neck and held him there for a moment.

  ‘You’re choking me. Please –’

  ‘German notes,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘Or nothing.’

  He stood back and the man straightened up slowly. ‘Very well. Very well. As you wish.’

  The man went towards the stairway that led to the apartment above. Schwarzenbach followed him. In an upstairs room the man opened a small wall-safe and took out a package wrapped in oilskin. He handed it to Schwarzenbach who immediately undid the wrapping.

  The revolver was almost new. Heavy, immaculate, it gleamed against the oilskin.

  ‘An American service revolver,’ the man said. ‘There are cartridges in the chamber and another box in the wrapping.’

  Schwarzenbach fingered the weapon lightly. He wanted suddenly to try it out, to select a target and take aim.

  Nervously the man said, ‘All right. You have your gun. We must discuss money.’

  ‘There is no basis for bargaining,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘So that you won’t insult me by asking for more than I can possibly afford, I shall name my own price.’

  The man was uneasily silent. He watched as Schwarzenbach took some notes from his pocket. He accepted the notes and counted them quickly.

  ‘Absurd. This is barely a tenth of what I paid for the weapon.’

  ‘No bargaining,’ Schwarzenbach said. He began to cover the gun with the oilskin.

  ‘But –’

  ‘No bargaining.’

  The man followed Schwarzenbach to the stairs.

  ‘It’s robbery! Daylight robbery! Do you think you can get away with it?’

  Schwarzenbach paused at the foot of the stairs and looked up. ‘Why don’t you report me to the military authorities if you feel like that?’

  A door slammed. Schwarzenbach went on to the street, the package inside his pocket.

  Last night he had seen Grunwald: he had seen the Jew in the company of a woman leaving a house on the Schumannstrasse. He had followed them across the Isar and along the Ludwigstrasse into Schwabing. He had tracked them down side-streets and then back again to the Schumannstrasse. The woman puzzled him. Was she Grunwald’s girl-friend? A relative? Her presence was a complication certainly, but there was no particular problem involved. If it was necessary he would kill her as well.

  He was conscious of the revolver in his pocket as he walked back to his hotel. But he thought of it less as an instrument of murder – more, much more, as an instrument of peace.

  Willi said, ‘According to this newspaper, they are asking for volunteers to help with the clearance of rubble. Interested persons are required to present themselves tomorrow morning at the Frauenkirche before ten o’clock.’

  Grunwald looked at his uncle, who was sitting in the chair with the newspaper folded across his knees.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Why don’t you go along, Leonhard? Physical exercise will do you good. Besides, it will help to keep you occupied.’

  ‘I don’t have the strength,’ Grunwald said.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Willi said, opening out the newspaper.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  Grunwald was silent for a while. He had returned to Willi’s apartment just before dawn while Elisabeth was asleep. His first impulse had been to leave, to clear out before Willi and Fräulein Strauss were awake. He had crawled between the armchairs silently, drawing a woollen blanket around himself. Had Willi heard him return? Had he deduced for himself what had taken place? He looked at the old man and wondered what was running through his mind.

  ‘You’d be doing something useful, instead of slouching around here all day long.’

  ‘Are you tired of having me here? Do you want me to leave?’

  Willi folded the paper and let it drop to the floor: ‘Don’t get so cross, Leonhard. You know that you’re welcome here for as long as you like. I’m thinking only of you. Don’t you get bored sitting around doing nothing?’

  Grunwald shrugged: he did not know why he was being so aggressive. Willi was simply being considerate and constructive. But he was thinking less of his uncle’s suggestion than he was of his memory of the woman. Before dawn, just as he had awakened, she had placed her arms tightly around his body and confessed – if confession were the word – that she was in love with him. He wanted to laugh, but didn’t: instead, he was silent, wondering if she would still want to love him when she discovered the true facts of his miraculous survival. He attributed it all to her loneliness: she was making a desperate attempt to fill the gaps of her life. And there was pity, of course. As he was dressing to leave her room she had suggested that they go to Palestine together: a new life lay out there, just waiting to be embraced. He said nothing. What was there to say? If she had asked him what he felt, whether he loved her or didn’t, he couldn’t have answered. He might have mouthed a few select sentiments – but to go as far as saying that he loved her would have been a lie. Love – if it was to be recognized – required the kind of scrutiny of himself that he wasn’t prepared to make. What was love? Was it any more than the act of sex that had taken place? It was easy to be confused, as indeed he felt that she was confused, falsely labelling her feelings with the nearest descriptions that came to mind. Love: it was the kind of word that contained meaning only in the creeping hour before dawn, dragged out of some sleepy exhaustion, a moment of gratitude for the fact that he had been her first man.

  ‘Why don’t you go along to the Frauenkirche in the morning, Leonhard?’ Willi asked.

  ‘Because I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘That’s as good a reason as any, I suppose.’ Willi got up from his chair and crossed the room, surveying his nephew’s face. ‘How is Elisabeth? I haven’t seen her this morning –’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘You went out with her last night, didn’t you?

  ‘We went walking.’

  ‘I think she’s attracted to you. That’s what I think.’

  ‘She isn’t attracted to me at all.’

  ‘God, you’re so bloody cynical.’ Willi flapped his hands in an angry way. ‘You make me sick sometimes.’

  ‘Sick?’

  ‘Practically throwing herself at you, that’s what she’s doing. A blind man could see that.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense.’

  ‘Am I? Look, she’s practically going down on her knees before you. And what do you do? You fart around this room with a face like thunder. I know you’ve had a bad time, Leonhard, but the misery can’t go on forever.’

  Grunwald turned angrily to his uncle. ‘Mind your own business. Why don’t you?’

  Willi’s face clouded with despair. ‘All righ
t. I’m an old man. I’m wandering in the head. Forget it.’

  He returned to his chair where he sat down. He picked up the thin newspaper – which he had already read several times – and turned the pages. Grunwald watched his anaemic hands shake against the paper.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry, Willi. Forgive me –’

  ‘Forgive you what?’

  Grunwald went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. The best thing to do would be to leave. Willi would die, and Elisabeth had enough strength to live out a useful life. As for himself, it barely mattered. He did not want to see Elisabeth again. It was better that way.

  A moment later he heard her voice from the other room. And then the bedroom door opened and she was standing there. She looked different somehow.

  ‘I found a piece of ribbon and tied my hair back – do you like it?’

  He said that he did. She closed the door and sat down on the bed beside him. She took his hand and pressed it against the side of her face.

  ‘Do you think I’m silly?’ she asked.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Because I said what I did say.’ She paused for a second: ‘When I woke up this morning at first I thought it had all been a dream. But it happened, didn’t it? It actually took place.’

  ‘Yes, it happened.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Her hair smelled of soap: the ribbon was scarlet and tied in a bow like a little girl’s. It was an incongruous splash of colour.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. ‘You seem so gloomy.’

  ‘Do I?’

  She sat up, her face blank: ‘You don’t regret what happened, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There must be something.’

  He stood up and went to the small, square window. There were children playing below: every day at the same time they played amongst the garbage. He watched them chase each other around the yard and wondered what he felt: what did he feel about her? Did he resent himself so much that he felt nothing? Or was he afraid of emotion? These questions struck him as being banal and irrelevant to his real dilemma: wherever he went, whatever he did, he carried the past upon his back like a sack of lead.

  ‘Elisabeth,’ he said.

  ‘What is it? Tell me what’s the matter.’ She was standing beside him at the window. Light set fire to the red ribbon.

  ‘I don’t think that you genuinely feel love for me.’

  ‘I think I do,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I do, but I do.’

  ‘You must appreciate that I don’t want you to,’ he said, as if he were dictating a letter cancelling a magazine subscription.

  ‘I know what makes you say that.’

  He faced her quickly: ‘Do you?’

  ‘I think I’ve worked it out, Leonhard,’ she said. ‘Because of the way things are, I mean because of the bloody misery and depression everywhere, you can’t see any hope for anything – including our relationship. Isn’t that it?’

  He looked at her and thought it remarkable how easily she could rationalize obstructions out of existence, even if her deductions were the wrong ones.

  She said, ‘But that doesn’t worry me. It doesn’t worry me at all. You must know that I have enough hope for both of us.’

  He felt her fingers close around his hand and for a second he wished that what she was saying were true. It would be simple to resign his responsibility, to discard it entirely, and let her carry all the loads. If she had hope then perhaps after a time it would infect him as well. Was it possible? Could he still hope for something? He shut his eyes, pressed his face flat against the glass, heard the shouts of the children rising from below, and in that single moment was seized with a paralysis of despair.

  ‘I can’t accept your hope,’ he said.

  ‘Leonhard, you must. It’s more important than I can say. You must let me help. I’m strong, you said so yourself, I’m strong enough for both of us. It won’t always be like this.’

  She stopped. Willi had come into the bedroom.

  ‘Private conversation?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not really,’ Grunwald said.

  Willi looked at the woman: ‘Make him come to his senses. Make him get a grip on himself.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Grunwald said.

  Elisabeth smiled at the old man. ‘I’m trying, Willi. I’m trying.’

  Willi sat down on the bed. ‘If I were a young man again, you wouldn’t have to try so hard with me, Elisabeth.’

  Grunwald looked out of the window. He had the impression that he was travelling on a huge ship through a dangerous minefield. One false move would blow everything apart. He tried to imagine Elisabeth’s reaction if he told her about Chelmno. Hatred? Revulsion? Would she damn him?

  She said, ‘I’ll make some coffee. Would you like that?’

  ‘I’m as dry as dust,’ Willi said.

  She went out of the room.

  Willi turned to Grunwald and said, ‘She could do a lot for you. If you’d let her.’

  In his room Schwarzenbach took the revolver from his coat and put it down on the bed. Retreating to the other side of the room, he stared at it for a time. After a moment it seemed to lose its shape and purpose: its ugliness was appalling. But when he returned to pick it up, it became meaningful again. He polished it on the edge of the blanket and then put it back into his coat. He hung the coat upon a peg fixed to the door and noticed that the weight of the gun distended the garment slightly. He rearranged the coat to disguise the bulk of the gun and he was satisfied after some minutes that nobody entering the room could possibly tell, just by looking at the coat, that a revolver lay in the left pocket.

  Later, he went down to the restaurant. The food, consisting of a watery soup and scraps of meat surrounded by potato substitute, was abysmal. But he ate hungrily, absorbed in what he was doing, completely unconscious of the waiter who served him. When he had finished the meal the waiter lingered by his table, as if he had been assigned solely to serve Schwarzenbach and no one else. After a time, Schwarzenbach realized that the waiter was staring at him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I need anything else.’

  The waiter approached the table. ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  ‘I said that I don’t want anything else,’ Schwarzenbach remarked.

  ‘I’m sorry if I seem to have been staring, sir,’ the waiter said.

  ‘Were you? I hadn’t noticed.’ Schwarzenbach shifted uncomfortably. Across the room, upon a raised dais, two violinists were playing a selection of tunes from Strauss. There was something of the pre-war atmosphere in their music, but their evening suits were drab and threadbare.

  The waiter, smiling, said, ‘I was trying to place you, sir.’

  ‘Place me?’ The music had become louder. He was aware now of the number of uniforms in the dining-room.

  ‘It’s just that I seem to recall your face, sir.’ The waiter, smiling in a watery way, lowered his head. ‘It seems familiar. I’m trying to remember where we’ve met before.’

  Schwarzenbach wiped his lips and threw his napkin upon the table. ‘You’re mistaken. I haven’t been in this hotel before.’

  ‘No, not the hotel. Somewhere else.’ The waiter reached for Schwarzenbach’s empty plate and the discarded napkin. ‘I hope you don’t think me rude. Somehow I think we’ve met before.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Schwarzenbach said, and yet he knew that the waiter’s face contained the germ of recognition. An old patient? Someone from the past?

  ‘I’m certain that I’ve seen you before. Years ago.’

  ‘Hardly likely. I didn’t visit Munich often.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ The waiter piled the plate and cutlery upon his tray. The cuffs of his shirt were yellow and scruffy and his fingernails unclean. ‘My mistake, sir. You reminded me of someone.’

  Schwarzenbach rose from the table and walked towards the f
oyer. He heard the waiter behind him. Damn him: was he going to remember something?

  Suddenly the waiter called out: ‘Dr Schwarzenbach!’

  Schwarzenbach did not turn round. He walked across the foyer and towards the stairs. A sense of dizziness touched him. He reached the first step and grabbed the handrail. The waiter was immediately behind him.

  ‘Isn’t it Dr Schwarzenbach?’ he asked.

  Schwarzenbach turned round: ‘Sorry. You must have made a mistake. My name’s Lutzke.’

  ‘Oh.’ The waiter seemed disappointed. ‘The resemblance is quite remarkable. You’re thinner than Dr Schwarzenbach and you don’t have as much hair as he had, but otherwise you could pass as his twin brother.’

  ‘These resemblances happen,’ Schwarzenbach said and moved up the stairs.

  ‘It’s just that I visited him when I was a schoolboy. An emergency case, it was. I cut my wrists on some rusty metal. He was a good doctor.’

  ‘Was he?’ Schwarzenbach looked down at the waiter: for the life of him, he couldn’t recall the man’s face.

  ‘Very good indeed, sir. Knew what he was doing.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  Schwarzenbach continued to the first landing. The waiter had gone. He climbed up to his room and lay on the bed, gazing at the coat against the door. What a bloody nuisance, to be recognized by a waiter. But had he convinced the waiter of the mistake? Had he persuaded him? What if the waiter was still unconvinced? No: he had to relax. He had to close his eyes and forget about the waiter. Soon he would no longer have any use for the hotel and the incident would be forgotten. He got up from the bed: it was impossible to relax. He took the revolver from his coat and fingered it gently for a moment. He walked up and down the room, the gun hanging in his hand.

  At the window he looked into the street. In the reflected light of the hotel he saw a group of Americans in their greatcoats huddled together below. They seemed to be talking in an animated fashion. He drew the curtain across the window. Outside it was perfectly dark.

  She felt that she had laid herself bare in front of him: it was more, far more, than the uncomplicated nakedness of her body. She had torn large pieces out of herself and held them raw in her hands and offered them to him. And what had he done? What had he done? He had turned his eyes away, shifted his head, refused. Now what more could she do?