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‘There is one possibility,’ she said.
Felsen looked up, sun perhaps breaking through the cloud.
‘You could clean them out.’
‘I’ve thought of it,’ he said, laughing.
‘It could be dangerous but . . .’ she shrugged.
‘They wouldn’t stick me in a KZ, not with what I’m doing for them.’
‘They stick anybody in a KZ these days . . . believe me,’ she said. ‘These are the people who cut down the lime trees on Unter den Linden so that when we go to the Café Kranzler all we have are those eagles on pillars looking down on us. Unter den Augen they should call it. If they can do that they can stick Klaus Felsen, Eva Brücke and Prince Otto von Bismarck in a KZ.’
‘If he was still alive.’
‘What do they care?’
He stood and faced her, only a few inches taller but nearly three times wider. She put a slim white arm, the wrist a terminus of blue veins, across the door.
Take the advice you’ve been given,’ she said. ‘I was only joking.’
He grabbed at her, his fingers slipping into the crack of her bottom which she did not like. He went to kiss her. She twisted and yanked his hand away from behind her. They manoeuvred around each other so that he could get himself out of the door.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said, without meaning it to sound a threat.
‘I’ll come to your apartment when I’ve closed the club.’
‘It’ll be late. You know what poker’s like.’
‘Wake me if I’m sleeping.’
He opened the door to the apartment and looked back down the corridor at her. Her dressing gown had been rucked open. Her knees, below the hem of her slip, looked tired. She seemed older than her thirty-five years. He closed the door, trotted down the stairs. At the bottom he rested his hand on the curl of the bannister and, in the weak light of the stairwell, had the sense of moorings being loosed.
At a little after six o’clock Felsen was standing in his darkened flat looking out into the matt black of the Nürnbergerstrasse, smoking a cigarette behind his hand, listening to the wind and the sleet rattling the windowpane. A slit-eyed car came down the road, churning slush from its wheel-arches, but it wasn’t a staff car and it continued past him into the Hohenzollerndamm.
He smoked intensely thinking about Eva, how awkward that had been, how she’d needled him bringing up all his old girlfriends, the ones before the war who’d taught him how not to be a farmboy. Eva had introduced him to all of them and then, after the British declared war, moved in herself. He couldn’t remember how that had happened. All he could think of was how Eva had taught him nothing, tried to teach him the mystery of nothing, the intricacies of space between words and lines. She was a great withholder.
He pieced their affair back to a moment where, in a fit of frustration at her remoteness, he’d accused her of acting the ‘mysterious woman’, when all she did was front a brothel as a nightclub. She’d iced over and said she didn’t play at being anything. They’d split for a week and he’d gone whoring with nameless girls from the Friedrichstrasse, knowing she’d hear about it. She ignored his reappearance at the club and then wouldn’t have him back in her bed until she was sure that he was clean, but . . . she had let him back.
Another car came down Nürnbergerstrasse, the sleet diagonal through the cracks of light. Felsen checked the two blocks of Reichsmarks in his inside pockets, left the window and went down to join it.
SS-Brigadeführers Hanke, Fischer and Wolff and one of the other candidates, Hans Koch, were sitting in the mess taking drinks served by a waiter with a steel tray. Felsen ordered a brandy and sat amongst them. They were all commenting on the quality of the mess cognac since they’d occupied France.
‘And Dutch cigars,’ said Felsen, handing round a handful to all the players. ‘You realize how they used to keep the best for themselves.’
‘A very Jewish trait,’ said Brigadeführer Hanke, ‘don’t you think?’
Koch, still as pink-faced as he had been at fourteen, nodded keenly through the smoke of his cigar which Hanke was lighting for him.
‘I didn’t know the Jews were involved in the Dutch tobacco industry,’ said Felsen.
‘The Jews are everywhere,’ said Koch.
‘You don’t smoke your own cigars?’ asked Brigadeführer Fischer.
‘After dinner,’ said Felsen. ‘Only cigarettes before. Turkish. Would you like to try one?’
‘I don’t smoke cigarettes.’
Koch looked at his lit cigar and felt foolish. He saw Felsen’s cigarette case on the table.
‘May I?’ he said, picking it up and opening it. The shop’s name was stamped on the inside. ‘Samuel Stern, you see, the Jews are everywhere.’
‘The Jews have been with us for centuries,’ said Felsen.
‘So was Samuel Stern until Kristallnacht,’ said Koch, sitting back satisfied, synchronizing a nod with Hanke. ‘They weaken us every hour they remain in the Reich.’
‘Weaken us?’ said Felsen, thinking this sounded like something verbatim from Julius Streicher’s rag, Der Stürmer. ‘They don’t weaken me.’
‘What are you implying, Herr Felsen?’ said Koch, cheeks reddening.
‘I’m not implying anything, Herr Koch. I was merely saying that I have not experienced any weakening of my position, my business, or my social life as a result of the Jews.’
‘It is quite possible you have been . . .’
‘And as for the Reich, we have overrun most of Europe lately which hardly . . .’
‘. . . possible you have been unaware,’ finished Koch shouting him down.
The double doors to the mess thumped open and a tall, heavy man took three strides into the room. Koch shot off his chair. The Brigadeführers all stood up. SS-Gruppenführer Lehrer flicked his wrist at waist height.
‘Heil Hitler,’ he said. ‘Bring me a brandy. Vintage.’
The Brigadeführers and Koch responded with full salutes. Felsen eased himself slowly out of his chair. The mess waiter whispered something to the dark, lowered head of the Gruppenführer.
‘Well, bring me a brandy in the dining room then,’ he shouted.
They went straight into dinner, Lehrer fuming because he’d wanted to stand in front of the fire, warming his arse, with a brandy or two.
Koch and Felsen sat on either side of Lehrer at the dinner. Over a nasty green soup Hanke asked Felsen about his father. The question Felsen had been waiting for.
‘He was killed by a pig in 1924,’ said Felsen.
Lehrer slurped his soup loudly.
Sometimes he used a pig, other times a ram. What he didn’t do was tell the truth, which was that as a fifteen-year-old, Klaus Felsen had found his father hanging from a beam in the barn.
‘A pig?’ asked Hanke. ‘A wild boar?’
‘No, no, a domestic pig. He slipped over in the pen and was trampled to death by a sow.’
‘And you took over the farm?’
‘Perhaps you know this already, Herr Brigadeführer. I worked that farm for eight years until my mother died. Then I sold it and joined the Führer’s economic miracle and I’ve never looked back. It’s not something I enjoy doing.’
Hanke sat back after that, shoulder to shoulder with his protégé who smiled pinkly. Lehrer slurped on. He knew it all anyway. Except for the pig, of course. That had been interesting, not true, but interesting.
The soup bowls were removed and replaced by plates of overcooked pork with boiled potatoes and a sludge of red cabbage. Lehrer only ate it for something to do while Koch gave him the party line. He shovelled food faster and faster into his face. In a momentary lull he leaned over to Felsen and said:
‘Not married, Herr Felsen?’
‘No, Herr Gruppenführer.’
‘I’ve heard,’ he said, nibbling at a hangnail, ‘that you have a reputation with women.’
‘Do I?’
‘How does a man who’s never been south of the Pyrenees speak Portuguese?’ asked Lehrer, valuing his earlobe with thumb and finger. ‘And don’t tell me that that’s what they’re teaching you down in Swabia these days.’
Lehrer arched his eyebrows in a parody of innocence. Felsen realized that Susana Lopes had moved in higher circles than even he’d known about.
‘I used to go riding with a Brazilian around the Havel,’ he lied, and Lehrer’s stomach grunted.
‘Horses?’ he asked.
After dinner they moved into an adjoining room. They each bought a hundred RM of chips and sat at a green baize table. The waiters moved a wooden trolley with drinks and glasses alongside, served brandies and left. Lehrer loosened off his tunic and drew on the cigar Felsen had given him, blowing the smoke on to the ember.
The light above the table, stratified by smoke, lit only the players’ faces. Koch, even pinker now with the wine and brandy. Hanke with hooded unreadable eyes, the shadow of his dark beard already showing through. Fischer with pouches under his eyes and his skin taut and scraped raw as if he’d been half the night in a blizzard. Wolff, blonde and blue-eyed, impossibly young for a Brigadeführer, in need of a duelling scar to lend experience to the face. And Lehrer, the big man, with jowls fully formed, hair grey on the wings, dark eyes, wet and glistening with the anticipation of joy and further corruption. If Eva had been there, thought Felsen, she’d have told him that this was a man who liked to spank.
They played. Felsen lost consistently. He dumped hands which had any excitement in them and bluffed with no will to back it up. Koch lost flamboyantly. They both bought more chips and transferred them to the SS officers who showed no inclination for the process to stop.
Then Felsen started to win. There were comments about the cards turning. Hanke and Fischer were quickly burned out. Koch was stripped clean, going down for 1600 RM. Felsen concentrated on Wolff and began to lose to the man consistently on bluffs. Felsen was down to 500 RM when Lehrer cleaned Wolff out with four of a kind to a full house. Wolff looked as if he’d been speared to his chair. Lehrer was enormous behind his stacks of chips.
‘You might wish to replenish your stocks if you want to take me on,’ said Lehrer. Felsen poured himself a brandy and sucked on his cigar. Lehrer beamed. Felsen reached into his pocket and took out 2000 RM.
‘Will that be enough?’ he asked and Lehrer licked his lips.
They played for an hour with Lehrer, now stripped to his shirt, losing lightly. Wolff, out of the light, watched the game with the intensity of a falcon. Hanke and Koch colluded on the sofa while Fischer slept noisily.
Just after 1.30 a.m. Lehrer declined to draw on a hand. Felsen thought for a full three minutes and drew two which he looked at and laid face-down on the table. He moved 200 RM into the centre of the table. Lehrer matched him and raised him 400 RM. Felsen likewise matched and raised. They stopped and checked each other. Lehrer was trying to find the light, the narrow crack, the hairline fissure that was all he needed. Felsen knew then that his strongest card wasn’t face-down on the table in front of him and allowed himself a tiny smile in the pit of his stomach. It was enough for Lehrer who matched Felsen and raised him 1000 RM. Felsen moved his remaining 500 RM into the centre and drew a block of 5000 RM out of his pocket and threw it on top.
Wolff was up to his chest at the table burning holes in the green baize. Hanke and Koch shut up. Fischer stopped snoring.
Lehrer smiled and drummed the table with his fingers. He asked for a pen and paper. He pushed his remaining 2500 RM into the centre and wrote a note for 2500 RM.
‘I think we should see each other now,’ he said.
‘You first,’ said Felsen, who’d have been happy to go on.
Lehrer shrugged. He turned over four aces and a king. Koch was gritting his teeth with fury at how Felsen had bought the job from under him.
‘Well, Felsen,’ said Wolff.
Felsen turned over his draw cards first. The seven and ten of diamonds. Wolff sneered but Lehrer leaned forward. The next two cards were the eight and nine of diamonds.
‘I hope that last one’s not a jack,’ said Lehrer.
It was the six.
Lehrer tore his tunic off the back of his chair and left the room.
Perhaps, thought Felsen looking at the deflated men leaving around him, that had been a step too far. Beating four of a kind with a low straight flush – that could be seen as humiliation.
The sleet had turned back to snow. Then it became too cold for snow and the air froze still. The black ruts in the white roads iced over and the staff car taking Felsen back to Berlin fish-tailed its way up Nürnbergerstrasse.
Felsen tried to tip the driver, who refused. He limped slowly up the stairs to his apartment. He let himself in, threw off his coat and hat and slapped his money on the table. He poured himself a brandy, lit a cigarette and, despite the cold, stripped off his jacket and hung it off the back of a chair.
Eva was asleep in a wool coat, a blanket over her legs, on the chaise longue. He sat in front of her and watched her eyes fluttering under their lids. He put his hand out to touch her. She woke up with a small cry that sounded as if it came from the night rather than her throat. He took his hand back and gave her a cigarette.
She smoked and stared at the ceiling and stroked his knee without thinking about it.
‘I was dreaming.’
‘Badly?’
‘You’d left Berlin, I was on my own at a U-bahn station and where the tracks should have been there were crowds of people looking up, as if they were expecting something of me.’
‘Where’d I gone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I doubt I’ll be going anywhere after tonight.’
‘What did you do?’ she asked, mother to small boy.
‘I cleaned them out.’
Eva sat up.
‘That was stupid,’ she said. ‘You know Lehrer . . . he’s not so nice. You remember those two Jewish girls?’
‘The ones who got washed up in the Havel . . . yes, I do, but that wasn’t him was it?’
‘No, but he was there. He was the one who’d ordered the girls.’
‘He knew about me too,’ said Felsen sipping the brandy. ‘He knew about me and Susana Lopes. How do you think he knew that?’
‘It’s the nature of the regime isn’t it?’
