Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

‘There’s an Upper Castle and a Lower Castle,’ explained Klein. ‘Both of them were owned by some Jewish sugar merchant. But when the Jew bastard took off in 1939 the estate was confiscated. The main house is the Lower Castle, further down the hill. It’s a nicer house.’

‘Doesn’t the General mind? That the place used to be lived in by Jews?’

‘Sir?’

‘You’ve seen the propaganda films,’ I said. ‘Those people carry diseases, don’t they? Like rats.’

Klein shot me a look as if he wasn’t quite sure if I was serious, and decided, wrongly, that I was. To be fair to him, my sarcasm had a cautious ambivalence about it since coming back from the Ukraine.

‘No, it’s all right,’ he insisted. ‘This merchant, he only owned the house since 1909. Originally, the house was owned by a German aristocrat who lost the place to the bank, who sold it to the Jew at a knock-down price. And before either of them, the estate was owned by Benedictine monks.’

‘Well, you can’t be less Jewish than a Benedictine monk, now can you?’

Klein grinned stupidly and shook his head.

I was toying with the idea of asking how a man with a name like Klein got to be in the SS at all, let alone driving for Heydrich, when the larger gates of the Lower Castle came in sight. In front of the gate posts were a pair of stone statues that would have given any animal-lover a moment’s pause. One statue depicted a bear being torn to bits by a pair of hunting dogs; and the other, a similarly beleaguered wild boar. But you could see how that sort of thing would have been appreciated by Heydrich, who was certainly the incarnation of Nature red in tooth and claw.

Beside the wild boar an SS soldier stepped out of his sentry box and came smartly to attention as our car turned into the gateway. At the end of a drive about fifty metres long was the Lower Castle itself. It was a modest little place, but only by the standards of Hermann Goring, or Mussolini, perhaps.

This ‘castle’ was actually a late nineteenth-century French style chateau, but no less impressive for that, with sixteen windows on each of two well-proportioned floors, front and back. Unlike the pink stucco Upper Castle, the Lower Castle was canary-yellow with a red roof, a square-tower portico painted white, and a central arched window that was about the same size as a U-Bahn tunnel. On the immaculate lawn was yet another piece of stone statuary: an enormous stag and two deer who were running away from the house. I took one look at the number of SS patrolling the grounds and felt like galloping away myself. With a couple of females in season for frolicsome company I might even have made it over the high wall.

Klein drew up at the front door and switched off the 320’s three-litre four-stroke engine. As it cooled, it ticked away like there was a family of mice living underneath the 2?-metre long hood.

For a moment I just sat there looking up at the house, listening to the soothing coo of some pigeons and, it seemed, to the sound of someone not too far away who was shooting at them.

‘Executions?’ I said, retrieving my pistol from the door pocket.

Klein grinned. ‘Hunting. There’s always something to shoot around here.’

‘Something, or someone?’

‘I can get you a gun if you’d care to go out and bag something for the pot. We eat a lot of game here at the Castle.’

‘Well, I always say, if you can’t play the game properly, eat it. That reminds me. Who do I give my food coupons to?’

The Lower Castle didn’t look like a food coupon sort of place, but I said it anyway, just for the fun of it.

‘You can forget about that sort of thing for a while. This is not like Berlin. There are no shortages of anything. The General lives very well out here in the countryside. Cigarettes, booze, chocolate, vegetarian. Anything you want. Just ask one of them.’

Klein nodded in the direction of an approaching SS valet wearing a white mess jacket who opened my door and came smartly to attention.

‘I’m beginning to see why he lives here. We’re not just outside Prague. We’re outside what counts as normal as well.’

I stood up, returned the Hitler salute, and followed the valet inside the house.

The main hallway was two storeys high with a wrought-iron gallery and a large, ornate brass chandelier that looked like Dante, Beatrice and the Heavenly Host of Angels waiting around for an appointment with Saint Peter. Behind the heavy oak door was a long-case clock the size of a beech tree and which I quickly learned was about as good at keeping time. There was a big round walnut wood table with a bronze of a mounted Amazon fighting a panther. The panther was wrapped around the horse, which looked like a mistake when you took into account the Amazon’s breasts. Then again, the Amazon had a spear in her hand, so maybe the panther knew what he was doing. There are some women who, no matter how good-looking they are, it’s best to leave well alone.

Across the hall and down a short flight of marble steps was a large room with tie-side Knoll sofas and a hardwood coffee table that might once have been a small Caribbean island. The only reason you might have assumed this was a room was if you also assumed that somewhere further than the human eye could see there were more walls and windows and a door or two. There was a big empty fireplace with brass firedogs and a cast-iron screen that belonged on the door of a gaol. Above this was a mantelpiece with a muscle-bound Atlas at each corner and on the mantel itself several framed photographs of Hitler, Heydrich, Himmler, and a strongly featured blonde I assumed was Heydrich’s wife, Lina. In another picture she and Heydrich were wearing Tyrolean costume and playing with a baby; they all looked very German. And it was difficult not to think of those Atlases as two poor Czechs groaning under the burden of their new masters. Above the mantel there was a large and unnecessarily well-painted portrait of the Leader, who seemed to be staring up at the Lower Castle’s gallery as if he was wondering when on earth someone was going to come down and inform him exactly what he was doing there. I had exactly the same feeling myself.

As my eyes gradually adjusted to the size of the place I saw, in the distance, a set of French windows and through them a lawn, some shrubberies and trees, and the clear blue sky that was the inevitable and very pleasant corollary of having no neighbours.

A tall butler wearing a tailcoat and a wing collar glided silently into the hall and bowed, giving me time enough to get a good look at his hair, which, like the deferential expression on his face, seemed to have been painted on his head. The Iron Cross first class ribbon on his coat lapel was a nice touch, reminding everyone wearing a uniform that he, too, had done his bit in the trenches. He had a thick, jowly face and an even thicker beef-soup of a voice.

‘Welcome sir, to Jungfern-Breschan. I am Kritzinger, the butler. The General presents his compliments and asks you to join him for drinks on the terrace at twelve-thirty p.m.’ He lifted one arm in the direction of the French windows, as if he had been directing traffic on Potsdamer Platz. ‘Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay here more comfortable. Until then, if you’ll come this way, I’ll show you to your quarters.’

My room, in the north wing, was larger and better appointed than I’d been expecting. There was a good-sized bed, a secretaire desk with three ebonized drawers for the clothes I had brought from the Imperial, a table-chair and a leather armchair that stood next to a fireplace that was laid but not lit. In the window was a folding tray-table with a princely range of alcoholic drinks, chocolate, newspapers and American cigarettes, and as soon as Kritzinger had made himself scarce, I set about throwing away my Johnnies and filling my cigarette case. With a drink in my hand and a decent cigarette in my mouth I inspected my principality in more detail.