Otto de Kat - News from Berlin

The train to Fribourg departed on the dot. Oscar was often irritated by the never-ending quest for precision. The Swiss were maniacs, watchmakers, disciplinarians of strict regularity. Today he did not care one way or another, all he wished was for time to be abolished altogether, no clocks, no calendars, no appointments. It was Thursday, 19 June, and the train departing from Berne at 9.32 a.m. would arrive in Fribourg at 10.17. By 10.28 a.m. he would be with Lara.

Oscar had asked her not to pick him up at the station, preferring to find his own way to her house in the event of him being followed. On previous occasions he had known by the time he reached Ensingerstrasse whether this was the case, but apparently today it was not. The arbitrariness of whether or not one was targeted by those sorry types was confounding. A matter of nobody being available, most likely.

Once more he found himself in the company of sleeping soldiers. Wherever he went – Portugal, England, Switzerland – there were soldiers lounging in doorways or huddled in corners fast asleep. War was tiring.

Fribourg. He had gone past it so often, without ever asking himself who lived in the medieval toy city. Now he had been there repeatedly, within a short space of time. Lara lived in the very centre, near the wall tied like a ribbon around the old streets. His wish for the abolition of time appeared to have been granted in Fribourg: there was hardly any town in Europe quite so redolent of the Middle Ages.

The muffled throbbing of the wheels over the track held the cadence of reunion. He longed to see her, touch her, brush the hair from her eyes, have her hand covering his. And yet, for the first time, he also felt uneasy. A vague sense of foreboding, a gathering apprehension. She would ask him why he had gone off to London so suddenly, and he would have to give her a straight answer. He had to be straight with her now.

Down the platform, across the hall to the exit, up the steep hill to the old city, it was a matter of ten minutes. Straining at a taut leash, animated by desire.

“Oscar!”

She stood in the open window of the first floor, the sun shining on her laughing face.

Under her spell again, yet conscious of that strange sliver of desolation. Lara opened the door, out of breath from running down the stairs.

“The chamois of Fribourg! How quick you are, Lara.”

He clasped her hand with both of his, and leaned over to lay his cheek against their hands in humble greeting, as though bowing before some fragile enigma. With equal solemnity, Lara placed her free hand on his nape. During the second that they stood thus, all was in dreamed-of balance. Their lives touched. It was a gesture of tranquil awaiting, the rapprochement of those who know not where they are going, what they are doing, or how to move ahead.

She led him up the stairs to her room, into her arms and into the sun streaming in through the open window; he heard the carefree sounds of the street and how they fell away, leaving only her arms and her mouth and their surrender.

Afterwards, having got up from the bed, Oscar found himself standing very still by the window, reflexively on the lookout for a spy. As though there were two of him, as though his soul were moving from the one to the other as a precautionary safe haven. A Thursday morning in Switzerland, a sun-drenched hour of innocence and peace. Nothing untoward, you would think. The river flowed past, clouds sailed across the sky. He wondered what the time was, and what the date.

“Why did you need to go to London at such short notice?”

Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, Lisbon, London, Fribourg – the trajectory of a single word, whispered in confidence, then the terrifying ramifications, the biting of the tongue. Never in his life had he felt so torn. He had the ability to juggle with veracity, to don disguise and shed it at will, to roam free without leaving traces, to be the player in a casino of his own devising, but for the past weeks it was the case that Oscar Verschuur harboured a secret that was too important to keep to himself, and yet impossible to share with anybody else. He knew that hundreds of thousands of people would be butchered three days hence, before daybreak even, and he also knew that his information was worthless. It would not be credited. There was a complete lack of trust on every side, so that Emma’s sacrifice would be pointless, supposing he were mad enough to say anything.

Both Lara’s hands rested gently on his wrist, as an intimate entreaty for an explanation, for the truth.

“It’s Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia. June 22nd, three days from now. Emma told me, that time in Geneva. She knew from Carl.”

“So you relayed that to London. Thank goodness they’ll be prepared, to some extent at least.” Her tone was pragmatic, without a trace of naivety.

No, Lara, he had changed his mind, he had turned tail at the last moment. They would not have believed him for any number of reasons, such as that the intelligence came from a German source, which made it corrupt by definition. The exact date was meaningless, the attack would be launched anyway sooner or later. His version. His last resort, because of Emma. Everything else was ruled out by the unthinkable likelihood of Emma being charged with treason. Oscar could hear his own voice accounting for himself, using all the arguments and explanations he had learned by rote.

Lara’s silence was disturbing. She had let go of his wrist, and had put her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown. Hiding the hands in that way is to hide the mind. She wished he would stop talking, wished she had not heard right. She drew herself away from him and drifted, faster and faster, out of the room, out of her house, back into the snow, to the time when there was only a village, a breathtaking view, no future, no past, no time. Away from him as he held forth, piling one excuse on top of the other in his blinding fear for his daughter. Fear corrupts. No-one will know what I know, Lara, no-one sees what I see: my child at the hands of the Gestapo.

Lara’s shoulders said enough. The way she recoiled, between despair and outrage, between anguish and resignation. She knew that talking was not going to help, he had it all worked out, he had the whole chess game in his head, there was no way of getting through to him, not even for her. Or was there?

“Remember the Norwegian house at the Hunnenfluh?”

A voice from the light, an angel from the Berner Oberland. It sounded more like a statement than a question. What was that about, why did she mention that house? They had seen it and talked about it, a dream house, an unattainable Viking fantasy with small dragons guarding the drainpipes and brightly coloured ornaments on turrets and balconies, a work of art for the benefit of lone mountaineers, who would watch in wonder as the elfin occupants flitted from one window to the next. Imagine living there, Lara, with no-one to disturb us – he had said something like that to her once.

“I would have loved to go there every winter of our lives.”

He had heard what she said; I would have loved. No anger, no stridency, no hostility there, only finality. Lara had nothing more to say. He could see their Norwegian house sliding down the hillside. The rapid ebbing of a love that was hardly underway.

Emma pressed Wapenaar’s doorbell a second time. In her impatience at finding every available wall covered with roses, she had dropped her bicycle on the ground. The wheel was still spinning when Wapenaar opened the door. They recognised each other immediately. He was delighted to see her, an opportunity at last to have a chat with the daughter of his good friend Verschuur. Was there anything he could do for her? Please come in, he would begin by making them a cup of coffee.