The impertinence of it.
You had to fish for a hook with a pole and lower a ladder. You had to find the way through a dusty attic, and afterwards you had cobwebs in your hair, the lengths you have to go to sometimes. And then after you’d bent through far too low a door, you were standing on a metal roof where you were constantly tripping over a seam, really not the right place for a businesswoman who’s put on almost her very best shoes for a conversation with an important customer.
At first she didn’t see Herr Grün at all. Someone had put washing out to dry on the roof, the unsightly intimacies of a big family. She had to duck under clothes lines hung with underpants and vests, and then at last discovered, in a niche between two chimneys, a wicker chair with someone sitting in it, someone of whom only a pair of slippers and an adventurously colourful dressing gown could be seen. The rest of the man was hidden by an open newspaper.
‘Herr Grün?’
He didn’t lower the newspaper straight away. As if he wanted to finish an article before he was prepared to notice her. But then he was exquisitely polite, which Rachel found merely aggravating.
‘Fräulein Kamionker! What a pleasant surprise! Unfortunately I can’t offer you a chair. There’s only one, and it’s not worthy of you.’ He briefly raised his backside to show her that the wicker chair was completely worn out, and should long since have been sent to the blind people’s workshop on Stauffacher for repair.
Désirée had been right: Herr Grün had changed. Whether it was for the better — Rachel wasn’t so sure. Previously he had been taciturn and hard-headed, now he seemed talkative, but she could have sworn he was no less stubborn.
‘I thought you were ill.’
‘Convalescent. Dr Meijer says the sun will do me good. Except I can’t climb down all the steps to the street and then back up again quite yet. So I’d rather come up on the roof.’ He had rolled up his newspaper, and was now using it to point, like a tour guide, at the panorama of surrounding houses. ‘The view is glorious.’
‘Nothing special.’ All that could be seen were parapets, chimneys and washing lines. A poor area of town isn’t the sort of place to find historic buildings.
‘Exactly,’ said Herr Grün. ‘Nothing special. That’s the wonderful thing about this country: that it doesn’t want to be anything special. You can’t imagine how much I envy you that ordinariness.’
Rachel wasn’t sure whether that was a compliment or a veiled criticism, so she changed the subject. ‘I hear interesting things about you.’
‘I envy you that too,’ said Herr Grün.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your curiosity.’
‘I am not curious!’
‘Yes you are,’ said Herr Grün. ‘Believe me. I’ve had to learn to assess people correctly.’
‘You flatter yourself!’ Rachel took a furious step back, and came into unpleasant contact with a wet sheet. ‘If you think that even for a minute I would…’
‘Curiosity is a fortunate quality in a person. If someone is curious, he also hopes that something good might happen. I’m not curious about anything any more.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘You see,’ said Herr Grün, ‘back in the cabaret… Did Fräulein Pomeranz also…? Stupid of me. Of course she did. You’ll have got everything out of her.’
‘I have absolutely no…’
But Herr Grün had started telling stories again, and heard no objections. Arthur had said that a blockage of words is like an abscess; once it’s pierced everything comes pouring out, and only then can the cure be lasting.
‘Back in the cabaret,’ said Herr Grün, ‘Blau was always the popular one, not me. I got the punchlines and he just supplied the prompts. You know why that was? Because he asked the questions and I gave the answers. If you ask questions you’re curious, and if you’re curious you’re likeable.’
If Rachel had been even slightly interested in Herr Grün, that could have been the link for some teasing banter. But as it was, she just folded her arms and tried to find a rather more relaxed position on the smooth metal of the roof. Her shoes were elegant, but they were also uncomfortable.
‘What happened to your Herr Blau?’ she asked.
‘Blau is dead. His name was Siegfried Schlesinger. Siegfried, of all things. I always teased him about his cufflinks. He had had his monogram engraved on them, and I said, “It’s outrageous, making me work with the SS.” It was a good punchline at the time.
‘Then we ended up in the camp. That was a scene we hadn’t performed before. Grün and Blau at the races, we’d done that one. Grün and Blau at the zoo. And so on. But now: Grün and Blau in the camp. A lousy sketch.
‘You know what bad comedians do when their punchlines don’t work? They slap each other. Kick each other in the backside. So that the audience have something to laugh at. Slapstick. The stick you slap someone with. Beatings always go down well, it’s an old stage rule. It’s a hit, a smash.
‘Blau got the biggest laugh of his life when they broke his nose. Had them rolling in the aisles. And then they tore into him again. Da capo.
‘Yes, Blau is dead.’ His voice was quiet now. ‘And Grün should be too. He just missed his prompt.’
His feelings were stowed away in jars, sealed and screwed tight. But now one of the jars had opened. The jar in which Herr Grün kept his tears.
66
Kassel, 28.6.37
Dear Dr Meijer!
I have had to read your last letter over and over again. In it you have written something that moved me very much. It would really be a great comfort for me if my husband’s death had been something impersonal.
But the car that drove him over didn’t come along by chance, and my husband didn’t stumble into its bonnet by accident. That’s just what I’ve told the children, to make it easier for them.
It was one of those open trucks that they used to drive around the streets in to kick up a row and intimidate people. Twenty men in the back, always ready to leap on somebody and beat him up.
My husband was a lawyer and had brought some cases against them. He even won a few. In 1932 such things were still sometimes possible.
It was on Königsstrasse here in Kassel, right in the centre of town, just in front of the town hall. My husband and I were walking side by side along the pavement, arm in arm. They drove by and recognised him. The driver wrenched the wheel around, I could see his face as he did it. His face open wide as if he were sitting on a roller coaster, in delighted panic or panicking delight. The car swung over and rode up onto the pavement, the uniformed men in the back all bounced up in rhythm, and then it was there, so close that I could smell the petrol, hot metal and the rubber of the tyres.
I can still smell it.
My husband let go of my arm. It all happened so quickly, but I’m sure he did it on purpose so that I wouldn’t be dragged along. Attentive until the final thought. And then there was that blow, not even particularly loud, just like a big suitcase falling off a luggage trolley. Then the truck hopped again, back into the street.
At first it looked as if nothing bad had happened. My husband was lying on his back, eyes open. There was no sign of an injury.
Until the blood started spreading beneath his head.
So much blood.
I told the children a different version. They couldn’t have borne it otherwise.