‘I don’t understand,’ she repeated.
‘Oh, I think you do,’ said Lorenz, offering her the knife. ‘Give this back to your patriotic friends. And tell them that next time, they should attack from behind — not from the front.’
She took the knife and stared at it. Then, her face crumpled, and tears ran down her cheeks. ‘They said they would kill me. They said they would kill me if…’ He was tempted to take her in his arms and console her, but he knew that now there could be no going back. ‘You don’t know what it’s like for us.’ She sobbed, her shoulders shaking. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. They send coffins — you open a letter and you find a tiny coffin inside with your name scratched on it.’ Her anguish brought her to the edge of delirium, the threshold of ecstatic pain. She continued crying, and her face became red and swollen. Suddenly, her legs buckled, and she leaned against the jamb for support. When, finally, her sobbing became less violent she closed her eyes and said, ‘What are you going to do?’
Lorenz buttoned his coat. ‘I’m going to have a drink with Gessner.’ As he made his way down the stairs he felt something snagging in the vicinity of his heart — and with every step the sensation became more intense.
Lorenz arrived in Berlin late in the afternoon and boarded a train bound for the northern suburb where his sister lived. Her house was situated in a pleasant, tree-lined street on the very outskirts of the city, only a short distance from woodland and a picturesque lake. Steffi opened the door and threw her arms around his neck, saying softly, ‘I didn’t tell them.’ She released him from her embrace and shouted, ‘Jan. Pia.’
A boy answered. ‘What is it?’
‘Just come out here — both of you — at once!’
Two children came running down the hallway and when they saw their uncle they both screamed. He scooped them up and they clung to him like monkeys. The customary charade, in which he pretended to have forgotten to bring gifts, was played out until little hands searched his pockets and discovered several chocolate animals and a beribboned packet of gingerbread biscuits. ’All right, children,’ said Steffi, ‘That’s enough. Let your uncle through the door.’ Lorenz stepped into the house and said, ‘It’s good to be here.’ He lugged his suitcase up to the spare bedroom where he changed and allowed himself a few minutes rest before returning downstairs.
While Steffi cooked, the children continued to compete for Lorenz’s attention. He found their antics and playful conversation strangely restorative, and memories of Paris began to fade. After supper, Pia and Jan were prepared for bed, and Lorenz was summoned to read them a story. Before turning the light off, he paused at the door. They were both looking back at him with wide, adoring eyes. Jan’s hair was standing on end. The love that he felt for them was so visceral and deep-rooted, he could barely speak. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, before flicking the switch. He had to compose himself before descending the stairs.
When he entered the kitchen Steffi asked, ‘Will you be staying for Christmas?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I have to go back.’
‘They’re so inflexible. As if a few extra days would make any difference!’
Lorenz ran his finger along the grain of the tabletop. ‘How is Elias?’
‘We got a letter from him only last week.’
‘Where is he?’
‘On his way to Leningrad.’
Lorenz nodded, expecting his sister to say more. Instead, she remained silent, pressing her lips together until they became pale. He decided that it would probably be wise to talk about something else. ‘I heard about the bombing: I was worried.’
‘Actually,’ Steffi relaxed, ‘it wasn’t that bad. There were a lot of planes but most of them got shot down, and there was very little damage — considering.’
They discussed the war in a roundabout, allusive manner, and when their talk dwindled Lorenz produced a bottle of perfume that he had bought for Steffi on the Rue du Louvre. She unscrewed the top, dabbed a little on her wrist, and inhaled. ‘Thank you — divine. Did your friend help you to choose it?’
‘No,’ Lorenz shook his head.
Steffi’s eyes became slits. ‘Sigi?’
‘It didn’t work out.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. What happened?’
‘We just weren’t right for each other.’
Steffi shrugged and replaced the bottle top. ‘I know someone who’d like to meet you. A school teacher: she’s very nice.’
The next day Lorenz went for a long, solitary walk around the ice-fringed lake. He skipped stones like a boy and observed scudding clouds reflected on the water. Frozen leaves crunched beneath his boots in the forest. Entranced by the chilly stillness of the winter morning he was overcome by an eerie sense of remove, of having entered some magical, timeless domain. This fantasy was shattered by the sudden roar of a low-flying plane. Lorenz had already called out the first syllable of the word ‘alarm’ before he recognized its redundancy. Looking up through a canopy of bare branches, he saw the underside of a Messerschmitt heavy fighter. Even after it had passed and the stillness was restored, his heart was still hammering.
The days were passing too quickly. He didn’t want to return to the boat, he didn’t want to plunge deep into darkness, to endure yet another eternity of explosions, breaches, and shrieking metal. And most of all, he didn’t want to face the unknown. Eschewing the word ‘ghost’ in favor of vague abstractions helped to mitigate fear. He was still clinging to the notion of himself as a rational man. But the dread that he felt at his core was like molten rock, exploiting weaknesses, finding ways to the surface through chinks and fissures. Lorenz picked up a piece of ice and held it until the cold became pain.
He had arranged to have lunch with an old friend, Leo Glockner, and when he arrived at the restaurant behind St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, Glockner was already there, sitting at a table and reading a typed document. Glockner had been a thin, weak, myopic boy, always coughing, always feeling poorly, and attracting the attention of bullies. Lorenz had been obliged to rescue him on countless occasions. Poor Glockner had compensated for his physical deficiencies with hard work: he became fluent in five European languages, including Russian and Greek, studied law, and went on to teach jurisprudence at the university, where his skills were valued, and he was swiftly promoted to a very senior position. Glockner was also very well connected, which was surprising, because he was constitutionally shy and did not enjoy the receptions and dinners that he was frequently invited to attend. Looking at him, Lorenz didn’t think that his friend had changed very much over the years. He was still thin, nondescript, and easily overlooked, the kind of awkward, unprepossessing, largely invisible man who might have made an excellent spy.
Their conversation was warm, jovial, and punctuated by reminiscences. When they had finished eating, and the coffees had been ordered, Lorenz said, ‘Can you do me a favor?’
‘Well,’ Glockner replied, ‘that depends…’
‘I’d like you to find something out for me.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’d like you to find out about a professor who used to have a chair at the University of Oslo. He’s dead now. Bjørnar Grimstad — an archaeologist. He may have been involved with the Norwegian resistance.’
‘What do you want to know, exactly?’
‘I want to know what he studied: I want to know if he was regarded as an authority on anything and I want to know what sort of a man he was.’ Glockner looked over his glasses, sensing that Lorenz hadn’t quite finished. ‘And…’ Lorenz lowered his voice, ‘I want to know why the SS were interested him.’