Robert Wilson: A Small Death in Lisbon

An old woman who'd been working her way up the frozen pavements of Nürnbergerstrasse drew level with the huddled Felsen and saw the poster and the sick look on his face. She gave the Berliner Blick up and down the street and pointed her cane across to the pharmacy.

'What have we got to thank him for?' she said, emphasizing her clouds of breath with her spare fur-cuffed gloved hand. 'The National Socialist coffee bean? How to bake cakes with no eggs? The only thing we've got to thank him for is that the Völkischer Beobachter… it's softer than the National Socialist toilet paper.'

She stopped as if she'd been knifed in the throat. Felsen's coat had fallen open and she'd seen the black uniform. She ran. Her feet suddenly as sure as a speed skater's on the sheet ice of the pavement.

Lehrer arrived in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. The driver loaded the cases into the boot. They drove past the skittering old lady who still hadn't made it to the Hohenzollerndamm and Felsen mentioned her.

'She's lucky she didn't meet someone more severe,' said Lehrer, whacking his gloved hands together. 'Perhaps you should have been more severe. You'll need to be.'

'Not with old ladies in the street, Herr Gruppenführer.'

'Selective severity weakens the whole,' he replied, and wiped the window with the back of his fat black finger.

They headed south-west out of Berlin to Leipzig and then across the whitened countryside to Weimar, Eisenach and Frankfurt. Lehrer worked out of a briefcase all the way, reading documents and drafting memos in a spidery unreadable hand. Felsen was left to think about Eva but couldn't find any discernible change in the pattern of things-long nights drinking and laughing and listening to jazz-bouts of lovemaking in which she couldn't seem to wrap her arms around enough of his body-terrible arguments which started because he wanted to have more of her but she wouldn't give it, and which only stopped when she threw things at him, normally her shoes, never the china unless she was in his apartment and there was some Meissen available.

There was nothing… except for the incident with the Jewish girls. For days after she'd found out about them, she'd been like the sole survivor from a direct hit-pale, vacant and fluttery. But it had passed, and anyway it didn't have anything to do with him, with them. He looked across at Lehrer who was humming to himself now and staring out of the window.

They arrived at a Gasthaus on the other side of Karlsruhe just as the light was failing. Felsen lay down in his room while Lehrer borrowed the manager's office and made telephone calls. At dinner they were alone but Lehrer was distracted until he was called to the telephone. He came back in an expansive mood and demanded brandy in front of the fire.

'And coffee!' he roared. 'The real stuff, none of this nigger sweat.'

He rubbed his thighs and warmed his arse. He took in his surroundings as if it had been far too long since he'd been in a simple roadside inn.

'I've never seen you in the Rote Katze before,' said Felsen, testing some untrodden ground.

'I've seen you,' said Lehrer.

'Have you known Eva long?'

'Why do you ask?'

'I just wondered how you knew about my old girlfriends. She introduced me to all of them… including the poker player.'

'Who was that?'

'Sally Parker.'

'She didn't mention her.'

'If she had you wouldn't have proposed the game.'

'Yes, well… I've known Eva for some time. Since she had that first club. Where was it now, Der Blaue Affe? '

'I've never heard of it.'

'Back in the twenties when she first started out.'

Felsen shook his head.

'Anyway. Your name came up. I recognized you. I asked Eva, who spoke very highly of you which she knew very well was not what I wanted. Then, of course, she was as discreet as she could be but, I'm an SS-Gruppenführer and… and that's it,' he said, taking the brandy off the tray. 'You weren't…?'

'What?'

'Fräulein Brücke wasn't one of the reasons you didn't want to leave Berlin, was she?'

'No, no,' said Felsen, annoyed at himself for snatching at it.

'I was going to say…'

The wood hissed in the fire. Lehrer moved his hands over his buttocks to warm them.

'What were you going to say, sir?' asked Felsen, unable to stop himself.

'Well, you know, Berlin clubs… the women… it's not…'

'She wasn't a hostess,' said Felsen, tamping his anger.

'No, no, I know that, but… it's the culture. It's not conducive to…' he waited to see if Felsen would fill in the word for him and reveal some more of himself, but he didn't, '…stability. Very artistic. Very free. Very easy. Permanent attachments are rare in a night-time culture.'

'Wasn't the most famous Party rally of all time held at night?'

'Touché ,' roared Lehrer, throwing himself into an armchair, 'but that was just so the camera wouldn't pick up the fat sods in the Amtswalter and make the Party look like a bunch of Bavarian pigs. And, may I remind you, Herr Hauptsturmführer, that glibness is not an approved National Socialist attitude.'

They went to bed shortly after that, Felsen feeling outmanoeuvred and sick. He lay on his cot and stared at the ceiling smoking through his cigarettes, turning over Eva's dismissal of him, the slickness with which she'd set him up and pulled it off.

'Ah well,' he said out loud, crushing his last cigarette into the ashtray on his chest, 'just another in a long line.'

It took him two hours to go to sleep. He couldn't get rid of a picture in his brain and a thought. The sight of his father's bare feet and ankles, swaying minutely at eye height, and why did he take his shoes and socks off?

They wore suits to breakfast. Lehrer's was single-breasted thick wool, dark blue and heavy. Felsen felt flashy in his Parisian cut, double-breasted bitter chocolate suit and a regrettable red tie.

'Expensive?' asked Lehrer, his mouth full of black bread and ham.

'Not cheap.'

'Bankers don't believe you unless you wear dark blue.'

'Bankers?'

'The bankers of Basel. Who did you think we were going to see in Switzerland? You can't buy wolfram with chips.'

'Or Reichsmarks apparently,' said Felsen.

'Quite.'

'But Swiss francs… dollars.'

'Dr Salazar was a professor of economics.'

'And that entitles him to be paid differently to everybody else?'

'No. It just entitles him to the opinion that in wartime it's best to have strong gold reserves.'

'You're sending me down to Portugal with a consignment of gold?'

'A problem is developing. The Americans are being difficult about letting us have our dollars so we've started paying for what we want in Swiss francs. Our suppliers in Portugal exchange those Swiss francs for escudos. Eventually, through the local banks, the Swiss francs find their way to the Banco de Portugal. And once they've accumulated enough, they use them to buy gold from Switzerland.'

'I don't see the problem.'

'The Swiss don't like it. They're worried about losing control of their gold reserves,' said Lehrer. 'So, we are experimenting.'

'How do we move this gold?'

'Trucks.'

'What sort of trucks?'

'Swiss trucks. There'll be armed soldiers with you all the way. It's taken some organization I can tell you. You don't think I enjoy having my head in my briefcase all day, do you?'

'I didn't realize gold was physically moved. I thought it was accounted for on paper by national banks.'

'Perhaps Dr Salazar likes… physically… to sit on his gold,' said Lehrer, thinking some more, but he left it at that.

'Whose gold is this?'

'I don't follow your question.'