Robert Wilson - The Company of Strangers

Voss reread the letter and burnt it in the grate, watching the slow, greenish flames consume and blacken the paper. He sat by the window again in a state of shock at this, his first intimate sight of the workings of his father’s mind. He gathered himself for a few moments; the conflicting emotions needed to be reined in before he went to speak to his mother. Anger and grief didn’t seem to be able to sit in the same room for very long.

He went back to his mother who still sat in the same position, the light poorer but her scalp visible under her grey hair, which he’d never seen before.

‘So,’ she said before he had sat down, ‘he told you about the girl.’

‘He told me he wants his ashes cast on her grave.’ His mother nodded, and looked over her shoulder as if she’d heard something outside. The light caught her face, no sadness, only acceptance.

‘She was somebody he knew, an army officer’s daughter. He fell in love with her and she died. I think he knew her for all of one week.’

‘One week?’ said Voss. ‘He told you this?’ ‘He told me about the girl, he was a totally honourable man, your father, incapable even of omission. His sister filled in the details.’ ‘But you’re his wife and…I can’t do this.’ ‘You can, Karl. You will. If it’s his wish, it’s mine too. Just think of it as your father being in love with the idea, or rather an ideal, that was not complicated or tarnished by the grind of everyday life. That is the purest form of love you can find. Perfection,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I can think of no better thing after what your father went through, than for him to rest with his ideal. To him it was a vision of peace that he failed to attain in life.’

The funeral took place three days later. There were few people, most of his father’s friends were at one front or another. Frau Voss invited the few back to her house for some tea. Major Giesler was one who accepted. At the house Karl asked for a private word with him and they went into his father’s study.

Voss began to tell him the contents of his father’s letter. Giesler stopped him, went to the phone, followed the line to the wall and removed the pin from the socket. He sat back down in the leather chair by the window. Voss told him of his willingness to talk. Giesler said nothing. He had his hands clasped and was chewing on a knuckle, one of the few hairless regions of his body. He was very dark and his thick black eyebrows joined over his nose. He had a large, full-lipped, sensual mouth and his cheeks, razored that morning, already needed to be reshaved.

‘I would understand,’ said Voss, ‘if you needed to make some inquiries about me before we talk.’

‘We’ve already made our inquiries,’ said Giesler.

Voss thought for a moment.

‘In Rastenburg?’

‘We know, for instance, how you felt about the…the death of the Reichsminister Todt,’ said Giesler, ‘and your…disappointment with the way in which good soldiers died needlessly at Stalingrad and, of course, you have an impeccable pedigree.’

Voss frowned, replayed some reels in his mind.

‘Weber?’

Giesler opened his hands, reclasped them.

‘Weber disappeared,’ said Voss. ‘What happened to him?’

‘We didn’t know he was a homosexual. There are some things that even the deepest of inquiries will not unearth.’

‘But where is he?’

‘He is in very serious trouble, which he brought on himself,’ said Giesler. ‘He behaved recklessly in a climate where scapegoats were eagerly sought.’

‘He must have been under pressure…’

‘Drinking is one thing.’

‘How do you know I’m not homosexual?’

Giesler looked at him long and hard, that sensual mouth becoming unnerving.

‘Weber,’ he said after some time, as if perhaps that source hadn’t been as reliable as he’d have liked.

‘Well, he should know, although I’m not sure how. Women were not abundant in Rastenburg and those that were available…’ he drifted off, disheartened by the turn the conversation had taken; this dip into the ignoble was not what he’d had in mind. This was supposed to be a courageous act and here they were parting the dirt.

Giesler had his answer. He didn’t need to pursue this discussion further. He gave Voss an address of a villa in Gatow with a meeting time for the next day and stood. They shook hands and Giesler hung on, which at first Voss thought was another sexuality test but, no, it was a sincerity hold, a brotherhood clasp.

‘Weber won’t talk,’ he said. ‘It’s possible he will survive, although he will never get back into Rastenburg. But it is something for you to think about before you come to Gatow tomorrow. It’s not easy to be an enemy of the State – not, I hasten to add, an enemy of the nation, but this State. It is dangerous and lonely work. You will be lying to your colleagues every day for perhaps years. You will have no friends because friends are dangerous. Your work will require a mental fortitude, not intelligence necessarily, but strength and it is something you may feel you do not have. If you do not come to Gatow tomorrow nobody will think any the less of you. We will go our separate ways, praying for Germany.’

Voss slept badly that night in a torment over his part in Weber’s arrest. At four in the morning, the death and debt hour, he found his mind crowded with thoughts of his father and mother, Julius and Weber, and it was then that he had a sudden perception of the power of words, of the business of communication. Once words are said nothing is the same. His father didn’t have to tell his mother about Rosemarie Hausser, but he did. It must have established an unrecoverable distance, instilled a lifelong sense of disappointment in his mother with a short line, some words and a name. In his own crucial conversation with Weiss, which he had not been prepared for, he realized that it was not physics that had alerted him but the words ‘physical’ and ‘women’. It had been a confirmation. It made him think that in talking to people you never know what they know, you never know what they think, and innocuous words can take on huge importance. He stopped writhing in his bed – he hadn’t served up Weber, he’d just handed Weiss the spoons.

He went to Gatow the following afternoon, nervous as if it was a visit to the doctor, who might find a mild symptom the precursor of something deadly. He was met by a housekeeper who took him to a book-lined room at the back of the house. She gave him real coffee and a homemade biscuit. Giesler came in with a large man of military rectitude but who was dressed in a blue double-breasted suit. He was bald with a brown, clipped fringe of hair at the back and sides. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. Voss was introduced but the man’s name was never given.

They talked about his work at Heidelberg University and recent developments in physics. The man was knowledgeable, not expert, but he understood. The words ‘fissionable material’, ‘critical mass’, ‘chain reaction’ and ‘atomic pile’ were not mysterious concepts.

The conversation switched from physics to the Russians. Voss expressed his fear of them:

‘They have no reason to be forgiving after what we have done to them. We have broken a pact, invaded their country, and brutalized the population. After the defeat we have suffered at Stalingrad it is possible that they will have the confidence to drive us back. If they succeed I believe they will not stop until they reach Berlin. They will punish us.’

‘So you would see it as advantageous that we negotiate a separate peace with the Allies?’

‘Imperative, unless we want to see Germany or a part of Germany in the Soviet Union. Perhaps we can even persuade the Allies that we are not the real enemy in this war and that…’