Pale Horse Riding Read online

  He took to watching her surreptitiously as he pretended to read. Sometimes he played records on an old wind-up gramophone. She said she liked working to music. Her favourite was ‘You Shall Be the Emperor of My Soul’, with its line ‘in the free land of my heart’.

  They didn’t talk much but she seemed to find his presence reassuring. There wasn’t much to say. Sybil was still mourning for her lover, killed in the most brutal way by the Gestapo.

  In the time he and Sybil had together, Schlegel entertained the fantasy of creating an island of his mother’s summerhouse, they its castaways; a precarious dream he knew could not last. Each time he left with the greatest reluctance, just as his step was lighter with every approach.

  He kept his true feelings hidden, often from himself, most of all from her. He rarely admitted that he found her unreadable, and therein lay the heart of the attraction. He suspected her enigma, the state of not knowing, and the impossibility of love and her hiddenness made her the ideal projection for his confusion. Not that it mattered because whatever was between them would remain unresolved. She would be shocked, he was sure, were he even to hint at what he came to think of as the troubled calm of her company.

  He talked instead of his mother’s memory lapses and confessed the condition unnerved him. He told her he sometimes experienced a lurch of panic between seeing a commonplace object and the relief of naming it. This led to its own form of lunacy, wondering why a table was called a table, rather than a fountain pen or an armadillo.

  For the first time in as long as he could remember he saw the trace of her smile. Perhaps he never had seen it. Such fleeting moments sustained him for days.

  Where his mother’s mind was starting to go, his stepfather, always the most contained of men, was losing physical control. One day Schlegel had found him stalled in his study, standing but unable to walk. Schlegel was told to put his foot in front of his stepfather’s.

  ‘Like a hurdle.’

  Schlegel did and his stepfather’s stuck foot moved effortlessly over it and he carried on walking as though nothing had happened. Schlegel asked how long it had been going on. About three months, his stepfather said. Had he seen the doctor? His stepfather appeared quite uninterested by the interrogation and said instead, ‘I am more worried about your mother.’

  So over that summer domestic preoccupations came to dominate Schlegel’s mind and the bigger conflict recede. He wanted to buy Sybil something, a token or keepsake that she could keep innocently, without knowing it was a declaration of his love. Nothing obvious. He couldn’t decide.

  Then the hammer blow.

  Schlegel put in an appearance at work. Even though going in was a waste of time, they could just as easily throw the book at him for absenteeism. He suspected he was damned either way. His secretary had been transferred. He had no casework. His superiors ignored him, all the way up to Nebe, the boss, who was a friend of his mother and stepfather. His mother said it was happening more, panic at the top and everyone wandering around like ostriches, with their heads buried.

  ‘I have no trouble remembering a word like ostrich,’ she said.

  He was surprised when his stepfather telephoned that morning, telling him to come immediately. Such a call or summons was unprecedented. He was an enigmatic man, probably of high influence, who never said, any more than he indicated, what he did.

  Schlegel found him weeping in his study. At first he thought him upset about his illness.

  His stepfather was unable to speak but could walk unimpeded. Never one for physical contact, he took Schlegel’s arm. It was strange being touched by such remoteness. They went out through the French windows of his study to the summerhouse where the mess told its own story. Stuff kicked over. A record or two smashed. Casual violence. Sybil gone. Schlegel asked if his mother had been taken too. His stepfather nodded.

  Gestapo.

  Enquiries revealed nothing of their whereabouts. Schlegel’s sense of persecution grew. He feared they would come for him or his stepfather next. The shock of the arrests was compounded by his stepfather’s failure to intervene, despite his influence – or maybe he too was a victim of some latest power play. Schlegel was sure the telephone lines in the house were being listened in to. He took to sleeping in Sybil’s room in the attic of the summerhouse, almost inviting them to come and take him away. His stepfather grew more withdrawn. His mother’s social circle greeted the news of her arrest with schadenfreude and astonishment at the removal of such a permanent social fixture.

  Schlegel got nowhere with the Gestapo. He didn’t expect to as the butchers case had exposed one of their rising stars as corrupt and homicidal.

  He took the matter to Nebe but Nebe was a fastidious washer of hands and master of the hanging silence.

  It was as though they had never existed, even his mother, the nexus of a whole social network.

  The last conversation with her, where she had irritated him by not minding her own business, became increasingly poignant.

  She asked point blank, ‘Are you in love with the Jewish girl?’

  Thrown by such a direct question, he said it was complicated.

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, feeling ticked off.

  ‘Put her out of your mind. No good can come of it.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said lamely.

  ‘You make a habit of wanting what you can’t have because it’s safer.’

  He supposed. The image in his head of Sybil was a distant, idealised portrait of passive repose: the lowered gaze, the circular motion of the sewing hand. Thinking about her brought him the only peace of mind he had, regardless of how inappropriate that love was. She could do nothing with it. He could give nothing to sustain her. Love declared would add nothing to her life. There were too many obstacles. Let alone all the rest . . . race, history, war, persecution.

  ‘So the daisy chain goes,’ were his mother’s last enigmatic words to him.

  That same afternoon he remembered being asked by his stepfather to fetch his pills from his dressing room. There in a half-open drawer he came across magazines showing bound, naked oriental women in positions of brutal submission.

  The veil of secrecy covered everything.

  After a silence of weeks, Morgen called. His telephone manner dispensed with any preamble and he said only, ‘I need you to come with me to Horcher’s. At least you will get a decent lunch.’

  Schlegel’s only instruction was to ask for table seven.

  Table seven was an exclusive booth, a sign of their mysterious host’s standing. Schlegel was first to arrive. He had no idea who they were meeting. Schlegel doubted it would mean anything to know his name. In the higher echelons, it was up to juniors to interpret according to rank. The cardinal rule was to avoid such encounters in the first place.

  For all the belt-tightening, a crowd was in. The place had closed at the start of the big austerity drive six months before, later circumvented by Göring doing a deal with Goebbels for it to reopen as a private dining club.

  Horcher’s was dull and stuffy, in the baronial style, with wood panels and what looked like a job lot of Italian oils. The one above Schlegel featured a corpulent cherub. He knew it from sombre birthday treats with his stepfather and not his mother, who preferred livelier joints. Schlegel had decided not to tell Morgen about his mother and Sybil, for the question remained whether Morgen was a hypocrite or a man of conscience. Was his nihilism a variant of the regime’s and he its watchdog? Was the maverick stance to provoke others into betraying themselves, or a reflection of a properly subversive nature: for instance, declaring the Germans bureaucrats of desire, being too theatrical and too philosophical, and the Austrians even worse, resulting in a lethal combination of wild dreamers and pettifogging clerks.

  One fact Schlegel could say: superiors tired easily of Morgen.

  Morgen strolled in twenty minutes late to find their host had trumped him by being even later.

  He sat wit
hout any greeting and automatically lit up. He wore a new suit to replace the one the moths had got. The criminal police was plain-clothes. Out of uniform Morgen looked like a resting actor.

  He broke the first rule of the house by snapping his fingers at a waiter, who looked like he might keel over from the breach of etiquette. Morgen ordered a beer and for Schlegel too, after he said he didn’t want one.

  Schlegel was annoyed by Morgen’s lateness. Morgen ignored his obvious mood. Schlegel, apprehensive, looked around.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Morgen. ‘Given the venue, I would say we’re not going to be taken out and shot.’

  ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea, honestly.’

  Schlegel asked where he had been.

  ‘Shovelling shit.’

  Morgen was in the process of explaining how people were in the end answerable for their actions when they were interrupted by the arrival of their host.

  Schlegel found himself subjected to intense inspection by a tall, lean man with a lopsided grin and eyes full of hard amusement. Schlegel couldn’t tell who he worked for because he also wore a suit, better than either of theirs. A man young enough to be dynamic, old enough to be senior. Schlegel’s impression was of authority at ease with power.

  The man turned to Morgen. ‘You’re the troublemaker.’

  Morgen said nothing.

  ‘Two wise monkeys, perhaps.’

  He showed good teeth, in contrast to the usual abysmal dentistry, and held Schlegel’s eye with a stare that had nothing funny about it.

  The menu was waved aside and the waiter told to decide.

  He did not volunteer who or what he was. Whatever was going to be discussed was going to have to wait until after eating. Guinea fowl as it turned out, with preserved cherries and cabbage.

  The man treated food as an interruption barely to be tolerated. Morgen excused himself to go to the washroom. Schlegel thought: Why not just summon us to an office and get on with what we need to be told? Unless of course the man didn’t want them to know who he was. So much ran on intrigue these days.

  The man surprised him by asking if he rode. ‘Your stepfather owns racehorses.’

  Schlegel, disconcerted at finding him so informed, said he had but didn’t much.

  Morgen sauntered back and was asked if he rode too.

  Only a couple of times, he said. ‘Too far off the ground.’

  Their host showed his teeth.

  ‘I trained at the Fegelein riding academy before the war.’

  He stared at Morgen, who remained poker-faced, and Schlegel sensed the stakes had just got higher.

  ‘You investigated Fegelein, I believe.’

  ‘Nothing came of it.’ Morgen, sounding casual, looked tense.

  ‘Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth. Bad joke. Go, go.’

  The case had come to his attention two years before in 1941, Morgen said. Fegelein had been posted east, in charge of a cavalry unit on active duty behind the lines. The investigation was into Fegelein’s theft of Jewish furs from a confiscated company in Warsaw, which he had taken over.

  ‘I was ordered to desist. The Führer’s mistress was indirectly implicated. Fegelein had protection in high places.’

  Schlegel supposed Fegelein was a friend of their host. Morgen’s next remark, calculated to produce a reaction, was that in some quarters he was known as Flegelein – little lout.

  The man treated them to the same dark look.

  ‘Tell me about Buchenwald. You created quite a stink.’

  Morgen sighed, as if expecting it would come to this.

  ‘A few months ago the Kassel police sought my cooperation because a known embezzler had escaped them by attaching himself to an SS camp, which lies outside their jurisdiction. As a prosecuting judge, however, I could gain entrance.’

  The other man cut him short. ‘How did you get into the camp?’

  ‘By presenting myself.’

  ‘Turning up at the guardroom?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And made yourself extremely unpopular.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I encountered witnesses murdered as they tried to cover up their corruption.’

  ‘You made big trouble for the man in charge here in Berlin.’

  ‘Pohl. He made that clear to me, in no uncertain terms.’

  ‘How is it left between you and Pohl?’

  ‘All his camps have orders to refuse me admission, however much the subject warrants investigation. In Buchenwald the corruption was so blatant that the commandant and his wife were moved on before I turned up.’

  ‘Your conclusion?’

  ‘It reflects badly on Pohl; either way.’

  ‘If he doesn’t know what is going on he is incompetent.’

  ‘Yes, and if he does then he deliberately covered it up.’

  ‘There is an anti-corruption crusade, of which Pohl is bound to take note.’

  ‘Not to the extent of permitting external examiners into his camps.’

  ‘He has several commandants under review, which suggests he is attempting some housekeeping.’

  ‘The camps are a sequestered world. Anything could be going on.’

  Schlegel wondered about their host.

  ‘What do you want from us?’ Morgen asked.

  ‘I want you to go back.’

  ‘To Buchenwald?’

  ‘Auschwitz.’

  ‘We won’t get past the gate!’

  All Schlegel knew was it was one of those vague names connected with terror, somewhere in the General Government.

  The man steepled his hands and told them it had come to his attention, through the army post office, that a staff dentist was using its services to smuggle gold declared as food parcels.

  ‘Gold?’ echoed Morgen.

  ‘The post office will pass on its authority, allowing you in under its aegis.’

  ‘You mean we go in undercover?’

  ‘To get you in.’

  ‘And we have a roving brief until we get thrown out?’

  ‘Fair summary.’

  ‘Pohl’s men will arrest us on any old charge once we set foot inside. I doubt anyone will send in the cavalry.’

  ‘Look at what you achieved in Buchenwald. You brought down the commandant.’

  ‘Luck.’

  ‘What if lightning struck twice?’

  ‘New broom?’ asked Morgen cautiously.

  Their host showed his palms. ‘We have reached the stage of cure and incentive.’

  Morgen asked what was the point of Schlegel being there; he hadn’t gone to Buchenwald.

  ‘There’s a financial angle. The fact of the post office’s involvement.’

  ‘And if we need to reach you?’ Morgen asked carefully.

  ‘I will contact you.’

  ‘How do we contact you?’

  ‘You don’t. This is the last you will see of me.’

  ‘Your name, at least?’

  ‘Irrelevant.’

  ‘On our own, you say?’

  ‘An entrée. Talk to Horn, who runs the garrison post office. He will point you in the right direction.’

  Schlegel spoke up at last, telling Morgen, ‘We don’t have to do this.’

  The man turned to Morgen. ‘Your faint-hearted colleague is correct, you are within your rights to refuse. The matter vexes me because I cannot strictly order you.’ He addressed Schlegel. ‘But we both know when Morgen’s blood is up he is unstoppable. Besides, as a sweetener for you, someone you know is there.’

  With that he was gone.

  After the lunch a silent, brooding Morgen did his disappearing trick until late one morning he called to check Schlegel was in the office and said he was coming in. Their office was a dingy hole where the sun only ever appeared as a crack on the wall opposite, which Schlegel had grown to accept as a metaphor for life.

  He had learned that where they were supposed to be going had a telephone number with an area code that c
ould be dialled direct from Berlin. A switchboard had answered, like anywhere. The operator put him through to general enquiries. The first few times no one answered. When a brusque-sounding man eventually did and Schlegel said he was criminal police and needed to check on two women he was told the place wasn’t a publicity company, and that was that.

  Morgen turned up distracted and sat at his desk opposite. Schlegel couldn’t remember the last time he had used it.

  ‘What do you know of our destination?’ Morgen asked.

  ‘Only that it’s one of those places no one talks about.’

  ‘Yea, the black hole into which countless disappear. Do you have any desire to make the trip?’

  ‘None.’ Unless it was for Sybil, which Schlegel didn’t add. He was surprised Morgen hadn’t picked up on their host’s final remark.

  ‘Me neither. We are a couple of gunsels.’

  The term was unfamiliar.

  ‘A little man carrying a gun. US slang. That’s us, two gunsels.’

  Schlegel could only agree. He was no hero. He didn’t understand the world, beyond it being a miserable place that happened to coincide with his existence.

  On top of that, always the troubling question of where Morgen’s true loyalties lay.

  ‘We can only be prepared,’ Morgen went on.

  Schlegel couldn’t see how when everything was secret.

  Morgen agreed. ‘No one knows how the SS works, probably not even Heini Himmler, our glorious leader and supreme bureaucrat. How much do you understand about how we are governed?’

  It was ubiquitous and amorphous, that much Schlegel knew.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Morgen, patronising. ‘With the potential for a well-oiled, efficient machine, all parts working independently and synchronised, and, at the same time, a blueprint for total dysfunction. Nowhere is that model more evident than in the case of our employers.’

  ‘Is this about our host?’

  ‘His name is Dr Kammler.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘His name was in Horcher’s reservations book. I looked.’ The name meant nothing.

  Morgen looked glum. ‘I suspect Dr Kammler is using us like divers in a bathysphere, testing how deep we can go before the plates start to buckle. Actually, that flatters us, we’re more bit parts in a bad play being sent into the underworld. Bring your coins to pay the ferryman.’