“Are we going somewhere?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Now that you’ve been banished from the house, I thought we could just sit in the car and talk awhile.”
I opened the door and she got in. I went around to the other side.
“Well, this is cozy,” I said, closing the door behind me.
“Shut up and give me a cigarette.”
I lit her and she took a long hard drag on it.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “I didn’t expect Stefan back home until tomorrow. He just turned up in the middle of the night.”
“I guessed as much.”
“What on earth did you say to him?”
“Not much.”
“He says you were rude.”
“Only because he’d been rude to me.”
“That doesn’t sound like Stefan. His manners are usually impeccable. I’ll say that for my husband.”
“Are they? I watched him pour himself a coffee without offering me a cup.”
“Ah, I see. So that’s it. You have to understand, Stefan is an aristocrat. He could no more serve you with his own hand than he could sweep the floor.”
“He answered the door, didn’t he?”
“I wondered who answered it. I thought it was Agnes, my maid. I gave Albert the day off. Because you were coming. I wanted us to be alone in the house. I’ve thought about nothing else since you called last night.”
“Albert?”
“The butler.”
“Of course. I generally answer the door myself when my own butler’s busy polishing the pewter, or fixing the dripping tap in my drafty garret.”
“You make it sound rather romantic.”
“My life in Berlin — it’s La Bohème, right enough. Right down to the cough and the frozen hands in winter.”
“All the same, I wish we were there right now, Bernie. Naked. In bed.”
“My hotel room at the Baur au Lac’s not much to look at. But it’s still bigger than my apartment. The bathroom’s bigger than my apartment. We could go there now, if you like. The front desk will very likely report us to the Swiss police but I think I can survive the scandal. In fact, I think I might rather enjoy that, as well.”
“I will come,” she said. “But it will have to be this afternoon. Around two o’clock?”
“I certainly can’t think of anything else I’d rather do in Zurich.”
“Only this time I’d like you to take more than twice as long doing what you did to me the last time we were in bed. Or, as an alternative, you could do something you’ve never done before. To any woman. You understand? You could do something you’ve only ever dreamed of, perhaps. In your wildest dreams. Just as long as you can make me feel like a woman is supposed to feel when a man makes love to her.”
“I’d like that. And two o’clock sounds good. But there’s something I have to tell you first, Dalia. It’s about your father.”
“Oh dear, I’d guessed it wasn’t going to be good news when Stefan told me you wouldn’t tell him about Papa.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’m more or less certain that your father is dead.”
I would have felt a lot more guilty about this egregious lie if Dalia’s father hadn’t been such a monster. Nonetheless I did feel guilty.
“Oh. I see. You went there? In person? To the monastery in Banja Luka?”
“Mm-hmm. By car. All the way from Zagreb, which is a journey I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. I spent several hours in the monastery, having dinner with the monks. The Father Abbot told me that your father had left the monastery and joined the Ustaše. I’m afraid I got the impression that the Father Abbot strongly disapproved of your father, Dalia. Maybe because he left the Franciscan order, but more likely because of some of the things that the Ustaše has done. Like all civil wars, I think some cruel things have been done on both sides. After that, I went to the Ustaše headquarters in Banja Luka and it was there I learned that Father Ladislaus was now called Colonel Dragan and a bit of a local hero; and then, that he was dead. Killed by communist partisans in a skirmish in the Zelengora Mountains. This was later confirmed in Zagreb. Things are pretty rough right now in Croatia and Bosnia, what with the war and everything. I saw several people killed while I was there. The men I was traveling with — ethnic Germans in the SS — they were a bit trigger-happy. You know, the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later type. It’s chaos, quite frankly, and getting accurate information is hazardous. But I’m as certain as I can be that he’s dead. And I’m sorry.”
“That must have been horrible for you, Bernie. I’m sorry. But I’m grateful, too. Very grateful. It sounds like it was dangerous.”
I shrugged. “A certain amount of danger is part of the job.”
“Does Josef know? About my father.”
“Of course. He sent me down here to tell you and bring you back to Berlin. Or at least to persuade you to turn up to work at the studio.”
“Well, I had to try. Or rather, someone did. You do see that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Believe me, nothing could be more understandable. With your mother dead, it makes perfect sense that you should have wanted to find your father again.”
“After all, it was she who fell out with him, not me. A father is supposed to mean something. Even one you haven’t seen in an age.” She took another fierce drag at her cigarette. “I thought I’d be more upset. But I’m not. Does that strike you as a bit strange?”
“No, not really. After all, you must have suspected he was dead, given that your previous letters were never answered.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“And it strikes me that you’re no worse off than you were before. At least you know now. For sure. You can put it all behind you and get on with the rest of your life.”
“There is that to think about, yes.”
“What will you do? About the movie, I mean.”
“I don’t really know. If I come back to Berlin, then perhaps I can see you, of course. That’s on one side. To be quite frank with you, Bernie, you’re the only good reason I have for going back to Germany now. On the other side’s the fact that I don’t particularly want to work on this stupid movie with Veit Harlan. I can’t imagine it’s going to do my career any good in the long term to make a movie with a notorious anti-Semite like him. It’s bad enough that I was in The Saint That Never Was. I just know I’m already going to have a hard job living that one down. There’s that and the fact that Josef Goebbels wants to make me his mistress. Believe me, he’ll do his damnedest to find a way to make that happen. He’s devious and unscrupulous and you’ve no idea the trouble I’ve already had keeping that little Mephisto from conjuring me out of my underwear. It’s one of the reasons I came here. To escape from him.”
“I’ve a pretty shrewd idea of what he’s capable of. I’ve been subject to quite a bit of pressure myself, angel.”