COLD WIND IN MAY
It was still cold on the island. The sky was gray and the water was gray, and the steady wind blowing across the Havel from the direction of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Tower was strong enough to raise whitecaps. It was Monday afternoon; only a few sails maneuvered briskly along the empty beaches on the opposite shore.
Sigrid von Waldstein stood with me behind the reeds and watched a smoke-belching tugboat pulling two barges of sand toward Kladow.
She still had not come to the point.
She had knocked on my door, apologized for interrupting me, and asked if I would like to take a walk. Alfred was working, and the baby was asleep, she would like to get some air and talk with me. She had never done that before. In fact, I had never been alone with her before.
Sigrid and Alfred occupied their Little House all winter. On the first of May, Lili and her parents and their servants had moved back into the Schloss, and that meant new arrangements for the portrait project. Since she was still in school, Lili usually rode into town on an early train from Nikolassee with her father, but then was expected to return in the late afternoon, which left no time for the hours at Helena's apartment.
The answer was the Little House. Lili worked it out with Sigrid, and since we didn't make any noise, Alfred raised no objections -- in fact he asked me to do something about Sigrid's English, to speak English with her at meals, to let her read English plays to me while I worked....
There wasn't much room in the Little House, but they gave me a comfortable garret with a cot and a chair and a desk and a magnificent view across the treetops and the water, toward Potsdam. Of course I couldn't be there every day, but I began with the weekends and they gradually became longer. Lili came up and sat for me whenever she could get away. I made one change in the pose: I still had her sitting at the table with her face in her hand, but now she was contemplating an object on the table - my Christmas present, the wine bottle containing the model of the sailboat.
I bought a Leica and took dozens of snapshots of Lili's face, and when she could not pose for me I tried to work from the photographs. We went for walks, we talked about putting the boat back into the water, I ate a lot of meals in the Schloss .... I don't know what if anything they told her father, but he never seemed surprised to find me at his table, and the portrait was coming along.
"I've been in Berlin over a year," I said to Sigrid, who turned to me as the wind blew golden hair across her face. "The first time Christoph brought me out you were sitting on that bench and Marie was asleep in her carriage."
Sigrid nodded, smiled, brushed the hair out of her eyes. "Was that when he told you about Kaspar? About me and Kaspar?" She stopped smiling and looked at me with steady sky-blue eyes, and I had a feeling she was coming to the point.
"I don't know exactly when ... I mean, I don't think Christoph -"
"Of course he told you, he must have told you, and Kaspar told you too. I was Kaspar's girl when he was a cadet, then Alfred came home and I fell in love with Alfred and it drove Kaspar crazy. I couldn't help it, Peter! You can't help how you feel about people."
Why all this now?
She took my arm and walked toward the iron bench.
"Peter, I must talk to somebody, and there is nobody else. Will you let me talk to you? "
The cold wind blew across the Havel.
"You know I was at home last week - I mean my family's home, Zeydlitz, out in the forests of the Mark, the place where I grew up. I went to see my mother and - well, there was sort of a family celebration, perhaps I shouldn't have gone, perhaps it was disloyal to Alfred and his family, but you can't imagine what it means to my mother, to my brother, this mortgage hanging over our heads, year after year with the interest unpaid, the new interest accumulating on the old interest like a stone on your back that gets heavier and heavier, and all the time the feeling that we must be grateful to the Waldsteins, they only don't take our place away because I am married to Alfred, they have the right to sell it anytime ... and now, all of a sudden, with the money from four wagons of potatoes the stone is lifted from our backs!
"Oh, I know that Alfred's father is hurt. He tries not to show it when he is with me, but I feel it and I understand, but in this matter I think my brother was correct. We did not make the inflation, but we would be idiots if we did not pay off this mortgage.
"But Peter, I did not want to talk about the mortgage. Something else. When I was at Zeydlitz, Kaspar was there. With another man from Munich. They were visiting my brother. Kaspar has been in the Ruhr, doing things against the French, blowing up coal trains, I think. He was coming from the Ruhr this time, but mostly he has been in Munich, and he has become a follower of Adolf Hitler. This other man with him, he became the leader of the Richthofen Squadron in the War, he knew one of my older brothers, his name is Hermann Göring, this man has become one of Hitler's top commanders. You know, all these Right Wing people, Nationalists, Freikorps people, all these years they have been screaming to each other about the Versailles Treaty and the Communists and the Jews, but they had no leader, no person strong enough to tell them what to do, no person who could make the ordinary worker listen.
"Well, they have found a leader. I listened to Kaspar, I listened to Göring, they talk about this Hitler like the new Messiah! He was nothing but a corporal. A little Austrian with a moustache like Charlie Chaplin. No education. Can't speak German properly. Hermann Göring was a captain, Richthofen's successor, Kaspar Keith was an officer cadet, son of a general, and both of them went on and on about this corporal, how he talks to the people, how the people listen, how he is going to bring order out of this chaos, how he is going to unite the Germans, how he is going to throw out the traitors running the country - and how he is going to take away the power of the Jews! First Bavaria, because, they say, the Bavarians are all behind him; then a march on Berlin.
"And that was Göring's mission here, exploring, trying to find out how the Reichswehr would react, young officers like my brother, officers commanding troops in the field. Of course I did not hear the actual discussions, but people like my brother will always carry out the orders they get, whatever orders they get from their generals, so it will all depend on General von Seeckt, what happens."
Sigrid stopped and put her head into her hands. Was she crying? She sounded excited, disturbed but not tearful. She had not come to the point, so I just waited until she looked up again, dry-eyed and grim, to continue her story.
"Why do I tell you all this? Because I am so terribly worried. About Hitler, yes, all the hatred against the Jews when my baby is half-Jewish, I just don't know what to do about all that, I don't even want to think about all that, but there is something more immediate. Have you heard the word Feme? You know what a Fememord is?"
"That's what they did to Rathenau."
"And many others. They're doing it now in the Ruhr. Killing people who are cooperating with the French." She suddenly grasped my wrist. "Kaspar is one of the killers. He told me. He was drunk one evening, he came into my room -"
"He came into your room? At night?"
"Yes. He brought a bottle of Cognac and two glasses. Said he wanted to have a drink with me. What could I do? Shout and wake the house? And... you know -" She paused and looked down at her shoes, pushing the gravel around with the heel of her shoe "- you know, I still have some feeling for Kaspar, I did love him once and I know I hurt him so badly and I feel so sorry, I feel somehow responsible for what has become of him -"
Then she looked sideways and saw my expression. "No, no, Peter, don't worry, I love Alfred very much. I did not feel that sorry for Kaspar, but I did drink with him and let him talk. But perhaps I wish I had not."
"Kaspar mad at us?"
Sigrid nodded.
"Because of the Rathenau thing?"
"Yes. Kaspar is absolutely wild about what you and Christoph did to him. Still! You compromised him with his comrades, you stole their car, you drugged him, you got information from him, you gave Kern's and Fischer's names to the police, you disgraced him, it took him six months of the most dangerous work to prove he's not a traitor too -"
"But why should anybody think he was a traitor when we had to shoot him full of Amytal? It doesn't make sense, Sigrid."
"Of course, but some of these people are quite crazy, you know. It has been suggested that Kaspar wasn't drugged at all, the whole thing was some kind of a trap -"
"A trap? How? For whom?"
"I don't know. I don't think he knows, apparently some people think it might have been a trap arranged by Rathenau himself, or perhaps by the Prussian State Police, to make the O.C. expose themselves, to catch them in the act, to catch them just before they killed Rathenau -"
"Well, I wish somebody had been that clever!"
"Yes, but Kaspar -he did not tell me this part. This part is what I have had nightmares about - Kaspar hates his brother so much ... I don't think he hates you, really, you're not a German, you just became involved through friendship ... but Christoph -"
She stopped and looked at me.
"Sigrid, what are you trying to tell me?"
She shook her head. "Can't say it."
"Well, my God! Why don't you warn him?"
"How can I tell them all I have been with Kaspar?"
"But you haven't been with him, have you? You met him visiting your mother."
She shook her head again. "No. They won't like it. They are angry at my family anyway, now here is my brother putting up Hermann Göring at Zeydlitz. And Kaspar. I thought perhaps to talk with Helena, but she's a Waldstein too." Sigrid kicked the gravel with her foot again. "You are the only one, Peter."
"But what can I do?"
"Get him out of Germany."
"Sigrid, how can I get Christoph out of Germany?"
"I don't know."
"Well..." I didn't know either. Where could he go? Why would he go? Would he run away from Kaspar if I told this story?
"What about Miss Boatwright's friend?" asked Sigrid.
"Which friend - Oh, you mean Whitney Wood?"
"Yes. He is a banker in New York?"
"That's right. J. P. Morgan and Company."
"There was some talk of sending Bobby to New York, to learn about American banking methods. They wanted to send Christoph with him. Just for a year or so. But now, with the Russian girl in America, with the dollar so incredibly high ... there is no more talk about Bobby going to New York."
"Christoph wouldn't do it! Run away from his own brother? He wouldn't think of it!"
"No, you are right. But if he is offered a position in New York, perhaps the opportunity to earn dollars for his mother, for his life with Helena -"
I thought about it. Of course I could ask Whitney Wood, but I knew what the answer would be. The people at Morgan (like the people at Drexel) are passionately Anglophile. A lot of their younger men had joined the British or Canadian armies long before we got into the War. They still attended regimental dinners at clubs in London and Toronto. They still detested the Huns. Even now, Herr Oberleutnant Keith, ex-fighter pilot, ex-Death's Head Hussar, would not be welcome at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets.
And that was only half of it. Although Whitney Wood had been the model of courtesy at the Waldsteins', the people at Morgan's (like the people at Drexel) were anything but fond of Jews - German or any other kind. Would J. P. Morgan's partners hire a man from Waldstein & Co. to learn American banking methods?
"Well, it's an interesting idea, Sigrid. I'll see what I can do, but-"
"But you don't sound optimistic."
"I'm not. I think the best thing would be for you to tell Christoph this story, and let him make his own decision. Why would Christoph care that you've seen Kaspar? Or Göring, for that matter? He knows Göring. He introduced me to Göring, last year. Remember my drawing of 'Hauptmann Ring'?"
"No," said Sigrid firmly. "I don't want to tell Christoph."
"Well then, I'll tell him."
She grabbed my wrist again. "No, Peter, you must not! Promise me you will not! I told you all this in confidence because there is no one else."
PROLOGUE - THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
I. HOW I GOT THERE
1. PARIS 1922
2. VERDUN 1916
3. IT'S STEALING MONEY, ISN'T IT
4. WHERE WERE YOU IN 1919?
5. RELIABLE TROOPS
6. AN ISLAND
7. BISMARCK FOUND THEM USEFUL
8. INTRODUCTIONS
9. THE LITTLE HOUSE
10. INDIAN CROSSES
11. ANOTHER PART OF TOWN
12. A VIEW OF THE GENDARMENMARKT
13. TWO FOR TEA
14. ON THE TOWN
15. A VIEW OF THE HAVEL
16. REIGEN
II. WHAT HAPPENED
17. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
18. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1922
19. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1922
20. FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1922
21. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1922
22. WHAT HAPPENED?
III. THE WITCHES' SABBATH
23. SILENCE WITH VOICES
24. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
25. SAME SONGS, DIFFERENT SINGERS
26. THEY'RE ONLY GOING TO HIRE HIS VOICE
27. INFLATION WORKS IN DIFFERENT WAYS
28. SMALL CHANGE
29. WHY NOT PAINT LILI?
>30. COLD WIND IN MAY
31. ROLLING THUNDER
32. WALDSTEIN'S VOICE
33. THE MATTER OF A DOWRY
34. A RUSSIAN WORD AND A GERMAN WORD
35. THE MARCH ON BERLIN
36. A PIG LOSES MONEY ALL THE TIME
37. THE ARTISTS' BALL
IV. STRIKE TWELVE ZEROs
38. AMYTAL DREAMS
39. LETTERS
40. PROFESSOR JAFFA'S PROGNOSIS
41. THE OTHER SUBJECT
42. ROLLING HOME