BERLIN

WINTER 1939

‘Thomas, the air is full of perfume,’ Carlson Mailer called out as he ran his fingers through his hair, which was brushed back against his scalp. Usually he took pride in his pompadour, which the people in the office called an ‘American’, and without it his forehead jutted over his black eyes, which always looked sombre. ‘A great party, isn’t it?’ His gaze skipped between the ladies in sparkling gowns and furs, and the waitresses in white skirts and silk stockings. He lit his pipe, a habit he had picked up from his new friend, Herr Professor, as he called the man from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Science. In the past few weeks Carlson had prattled volubly about ‘that genius’: ‘He’s a fellow you can do business with. During the war he and Professor Haber—that Jew who won the Nobel Prize, you drove him out of here, and he ended up dying like a dog—cooked up some compounds of poisonous gas for your army, and that gas didn’t gather dust in warehouses, as you know…’ Carlson winked. He was drunk.

He was babbling, and restless, Thomas could see. Something was bothering the man.

They were standing on the broad patio decorated with statues and paintings of ancient creatures: snakes with human faces whose tongues curled out from the walls, a horned beast whose skin was spotted with patches of black fur, and even birds of prey, whose wingtips were shaped like sword blades.

‘Look at this.’ Carlson’s gaze circled the patio. ‘It’s a European disease, to weave all kinds of historical threads around the present, as if everything has to be a gesture to something old. That’s the problem in Berlin: too many clashing styles and periods. A single street looks like a museum and an amusement park.’

How many times could a person say the same thing? Annoyed, Thomas turned away. Through the large windows lampposts were spreading lunar light, milky transparencies melding sky and earth.

‘A whole balcony built around a single theme!’ Thomas heard the young architect explaining his concept to a group of tall, fair-haired men, diplomats, apparently, from Scandinavia. A pale woman stepped between them. She wore a diamond tiara, and her long body was enveloped in gold cloth. There was a moment of tension as she went past. ‘It’s a gesture to man’s desire to blend with nature. Most of the artists that we’ve exhibited here are influenced by cave paintings.’ His voice was low, and his accent was clipped in an upper-class way. In contrast, Thomas sounded a bit strident. ‘Here, for example, is a fascinating version of the carnival scene from the Cave of the Trois-Frères.’

The woman laughed briefly, and Carlson fixed her with a bold look of satisfaction at finding someone who shared his opinion, and such a beautiful woman. ‘Wonderful festive spirit!’ he shouted and shook Thomas’s shoulder. The man really had no shame. Thomas decided to keep his distance for the rest of the evening. Carlson was losing control, and the presence of an undisciplined Yank, protected by the aura of a country no reasonable person would underestimate, could be damaging for a local. Mailer came up close to Thomas and stared at his face. ‘Drink something, Thomas! How come you never enjoy anything?’

An SD officer in a black uniform approached them, a strong, straight-backed man who took mincing steps like a girl. His eyes were light, almost transparent, so that for a moment Thomas felt like he was looking in a mirror. He had already met the officer at Milton. For several months Carlson and Jack Fiske, by now the company’s president, had been meeting with delegations from the Economic Office, from the SD and from Hermann Göring’s office. Someone had told Thomas about rumours connecting Milton with a secret deal, something to do with the Jews.

Thomas wasn’t insulted that he had been excluded: one felt insulted only when a clear loss was at stake. All the rest was just mental trickery, reruns of childhood pains, things to be amused by in Erika Gelber’s clinic.

‘Good evening, Herr Mailer,’ said the SD man. He didn’t greet Thomas.

‘Hello there, Oberleutnant Bauer. Long time no see,’ Carlson Mailer responded distractedly, not even looking at him.

‘Hauptsturmführer,’ the officer corrected him stiffly. ‘We met exactly one week ago.’

‘These days that’s a long time, wouldn’t you say?’ Carlson called out, and his eyes drilled into the group of tall men who were blocking his view of the woman in the tiara. ‘May I order you something to drink?’

‘No, thank you, Herr Mailer. I won’t be staying long,’ he said. There was open contempt in his voice, which was cold in any event. ‘The truth is, I was surprised by your decision to hold the party this year.’

‘Really?’ Carlson raised his glass. ‘It’s a tradition at Milton. I’m sure you wouldn’t deny that tonight we’re welcoming in a new year?’

‘It’s a ten-year-old tradition,’ Thomas said to back Carlson up. Had he addressed the officer obsequiously?

‘Now that your ambassador has been withdrawn from Germany, the connection between our countries isn’t what it was,’ the officer declared. He still hadn’t even graced Thomas with a glance.

Carlson understood. His eyes narrowed, and a vein pulsed in the middle of his forehead. He leaned towards the officer. ‘Hauptmann Bauer, are you speaking on behalf of Germany now? Because this evening I met people who really are entitled to speak on behalf of your homeland, and they believe it’s merely a temporary misunderstanding, and maybe we can do without overly zealous young men who are looking for hatred where there is friendship. Tonight, on four continents, fifteen Milton parties are being held, and can you guess which one Jack Fiske, the president of our company, decided to attend?’

Sometimes Carlson was pleasantly surprising. Thomas also despised the pretension of the shoe-shine boys on the street corner who gave speeches in the name of the state. ‘Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he happens to belong’—in his imagination he brandished Schopenhauer like a hammer to smash the shining glass of the officer’s eyes.

At least this time Carlson was considerate and did not refer to him as ‘our senior colleague, Thomas Heiselberg’. In his first meetings with people close to the regime he used to gush, when introducing Thomas, that he was ‘a four-hundred-per-cent Aryan fellow’, as though speaking about distilled alcohol. In private Mailer and Fiske used to make fun of all the stupid Aryan gibberish, and their laughter would ring out from behind closed doors, laughter that emphasised for Thomas the foreignness that separated them. Even though he didn’t talk about the race issue in the typical style of party members, to the Americans he would always be a German with affected manners, a foreigner who spoke well ‘in all those European languages’.

Bauer said nothing and did not shift his gaze from Carlson. Two identical wrinkles creased his nose. Thomas believed that Carlson’s defiance was meant to impress the woman with the tiara, who was looking at them now for the first time, with an air of triumph: finally somebody was performing a manoeuvre worthy of her beauty.

‘I very much hope it is only a misunderstanding,’ the officer fired back. ‘Many of the people you invited won’t come tonight because of this provocation. Would it occur to you that we should withdraw our ambassador from Washington because some niggers in America complain?’

‘Very well. We’re not going to solve all the world’s problems tonight,’ Carlson grumbled and stepped backwards in an effort to get rid of Bauer. His good cheer had evaporated. Unexpected difficulties always made Carlson feel that some personal injustice had been done to him. And who was to blame? Enemies. Friends. Fate. God.

‘You must understand,’ Bauer said, ‘that these recent events may have an adverse effect on our common project. Reichsmarschall Göring’s people are not pleased.’ He turned and walked away.

Carlson was perplexed. ‘Go to hell, you bastard,’ he muttered. He stood there for a few minutes, calling the waitresses ‘sweetie’ and ‘doll’, knocking off drink after drink. Afterwards he looked around with bloodshot eyes and called out, ‘Make sure that man doesn’t get near me again!’

Thomas led him to a corner, where Carlson confessed that Bauer was right on target about the mood in America: Fiske had recently received messages from some damn government officials, yes, even senators, asking him to reconsider Milton’s connections with Germany. ‘And you know what he said, the sly fox? His friends at Lockheed had let him know that their shitty aeroplanes are landing in Japan right now, and technicians from Lockheed are helping the slant-eyes service them. So as long as there is a single Lockheed employee in Japan, he’ll do as much business in Germany as he pleases.’

Thomas didn’t ask about the secret deal. He was perturbed by the question: what kind of business was Milton doing with the SD and with Göring’s Ministry of Aviation? But after witnessing the latest exchange, he decided he would be better off if he didn’t know anything about it. He had no wish to work with that officer, and, seeing Mailer’s swollen face—he had never seen him so drunk—he realised that his fondness for any deal was even less than his fondness for Bauer.

He left Carlson on the patio and went back into the hall. He noticed that light from the chandelier fell unevenly: near the dais the white shirts and the gold epaulets on the black uniforms glowed, but thick strips of shadow stretched between the bar and the staircase. Perhaps it would be a good idea to direct the attention of the architect, king of the beasts, to this strange effect. Chains of little German and US flags were hung on either side of the stairs, while above them, as though in a different world, a gigantic poster bathed in the light of the chandeliers:

1939—YEAR OF FRIENDSHIP AND BROTHERHOOD THE MILTON COMPANY

Thomas twisted his cuffs. He felt that the nauseating odour of Carlson’s hair tonic had clung to his suit, and he remembered in disgust the way he had shaken his shoulder. An attractive black-haired man in a striped jacket was leaning against one of the sculptures, and several pretty women had gathered around him.

One of them, about thirty, bared a shoulder underneath a pink fur coat with ostrich feathers on the collar. ‘Herr Fritzsche,’ she wheedled, ‘it’s so wonderful to hear you on the radio. Your voice simply relieves all my pains.’

‘Really, madam, I just broadcast the news and keep the German people informed,’ the man with the famous voice said modestly, wiping his brow with a handkerchief exactly on his receding hairline.

‘Did I tell you I’m the understudy in a new production of Schiller?’ The woman set her head at a coquettish angle. ‘You must know about it, Intrigue and Love.’

‘Of course, wonderful!’ Fritzsche said. ‘I had the honour of accompanying the Führer and the Minister of Propaganda to the premiere. Afterwards we talked about the marvellous acting in our theatre, which isn’t afraid of pathos, or of good old romanticism.’

Thomas studied Fritzsche: he could see how much he was trying to disguise the feeling that he didn’t deserve to be loved. Evidence of people’s admiration for him must pile up at his feet every day, and he must long to exhibit the light touch of a man used to being loved, but he didn’t have it.

‘I’ve been reading alarming reports in the papers,’ a woman said. ‘There won’t be a war, will there? My two sons are in the Wehrmacht.’

A stabbing pain passed through Thomas’s body, sharpening in his ribs.

‘As you know, I work very closely with the Minister of Propaganda,’ Fritzsche boasted, ‘and I can guarantee that Germany is doing everything it can to avoid war.’

‘Herr Fritzsche.’ Thomas approached him and bowed. ‘On behalf of Milton allow me to thank you for choosing to celebrate New Year’s Eve with us. My name is Thomas Heiselberg. I am a partner in the company.’

A shadow crossed Fritzsche’s face. Had Thomas addressed him impolitely? Since when had he doubted his ability to win people over? He hadn’t been at his best recently. A wind was blowing that he found hard to read.

Thomas felt the familiar weakness spread through his body. It was as if dark veils were wrapped around his eyes. People became shadows. Everything blurred—the colours of the dresses, the jewellery, the intricacies of the light. With tremendous effort he turned away from Fritzsche and looked around the hall. Like a drowning man, he sought something to grasp, as Erika Gelber had taught him to do at such moments: find something that has the spark of life and concentrate on it until the malaise passes. He couldn’t stand the term ‘attack’, which was how she described these events. But where would he find the spark of life in this hall? Was there anything here that his imagination couldn’t annihilate? The party was already over, wrapped up, stuffed into the past. This wasn’t a new feeling: even in his childhood his imagination had cast a pall over holidays or birthdays, coating the people around him in a sickly, dying yellow. People like him, seeing death everywhere, would never understand how others could celebrate the passage of time.

Meanwhile he heard his voice speaking to Fritzsche, praising his talent as a broadcaster, hinting at business proposals. How proud he was that his voice remained steady.

‘Let’s meet soon,’ Fritzsche proposed. ‘I’d be happy if a senior representative of Milton such as yourself honoured us with a visit to the radio station. I understand that your company and the government have been working together of late.’

Was Fritzsche referring to the secret deal? Actually, that didn’t matter now! He had had a victory—to hell with all the heretical thoughts that only weakened him. Miserable souls like Bauer wouldn’t like him, but Fritzsche wanted to be close to him. People like Fritzsche would always trust him. Fritzsche said something else, but Thomas didn’t understand. He felt his smile become tense. There he was, standing steadily, radiating charm.

He withdrew but not before he heard Fritzsche complete his conquest of the actress with a story about his beloved mother, who had passed away last year. With tentative steps, he headed for the bar. His body gradually began to obey him again.

Thomas glanced at his watch. He had arranged to meet the head of the Paris office along with Fiske and Carlson at the bar at 11.30 p.m. to drink a toast to the New Year. Thomas was sorry that Federico Tofano, who ran the Italian operation, had to stay in Rome. He would have been proud to introduce the warm and confident Federico to the American bosses. The head of the Polish branch, Mieczyslaw Buszkowsky—they called him Bizha in Berlin—had sent a message that ‘in consequence of recent events, I will find it very difficult to travel to Germany, and the continued existence of the branch is in doubt’.

Thomas, whose opinion of Bizha and his accomplishments was limited, wired him back: ‘The differences between Germany and Poland should not influence Milton, which has kept its distance from politics since its establishment.’

Bizha had not answered. Carlson was sympathetic: ‘Bizha knows—just as you do, by the way—that sometimes politics swallows up everything, including business.’

He decided that Carlson had abandoned the Polish branch as a lost cause. But Thomas—who had established the office himself, located it on the corner of Zgoda and Szpitalna in Warsaw, in a building that housed big companies from all over the world, supervised the renovations, and even cut the ribbon at its opening—did not intend to give up.

A group of women sat beneath the painting of an ochre rhinoceros. A stick was glued to its lips. Thomas gaped at its red eyes. ‘An ugly rumour has reached my ears that Göring’s baby daughter isn’t his,’ he heard one say, a woman wearing a white blouse buttoned to the top and a grease-stained black tie. He remembered her name was Scholtz-Klink. She had accosted him at an earlier event to ask whether Milton could advise how their organisation, the Nazi Women’s League, could increase its influence.

Then he heard, ‘And eternal gratitude to the adjutant,’ followed by a chorus of soft laughter.

‘In my opinion, it’s a scandal for us to mention such crude gossip. Hermann Göring is a splendid man,’ said a young, innocent voice. ‘He’s so romantic. No man ever loved a woman the way he loved his first wife.’

‘Did you hear that Elena von Brink committed suicide last week?’ the lady from the Nazi Women’s League said in a stage whisper.

‘It’s all because her despicable Jewish therapist disappeared,’ an angry voice rejoined.

‘But she was in love with him,’ the sweet young voice trilled, ‘and, when true love disappears, we die.’

Thomas wanted to turn around and look at the woman with the pure voice, but he was reluctant to make his eavesdropping obvious.

‘I advised her to stop such unnecessary treatment,’ complained a voice with a faint tremolo. ‘That Jew only made her sink deeper into morbid fantasies!’

How the devil had it not occurred to him? That is to say, from time to time the idea had flashed through his mind, but hadn’t solidified into real understanding. Only fear can make clear something so simple: Erika Gelber’s time in Berlin was growing shorter.

Immediately after that night in November she had been evicted from her clinic. Apparently the people who had been protecting her and delayed the cancellation of her licence were no longer able to help. A few days later she had received a letter forbidding her to treat Germans, and she was required to pay a tax for the damage done to her office. She didn’t tell Thomas about the tax. She never confided in him about her troubles. Even when the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute underwent Aryanisation, and she had to sever all connections with it, he only learned the facts from his own sources.

That week he called her to find out whether she was safe and to tell her that his mother had died. She expressed condolences, of course, but a week later she told him that to her regret she could no longer treat him. He begged her to take him for a final session, and at that meeting explained to her that she needed money. He offered to double her fee, in cash, and to hold their sessions in his house. ‘After all, I just lost my mother,’ he added.

He also convinced Paul Blum, a friend who worked at one of the Jewish banks, to try psychoanalysis. The therapist had to be Jewish, of course, and Erika Gelber was the best. ‘Things are happening to you that a person can’t bear, Blum. It’s horrible the way the world you knew has suddenly ceased to exist. You have to analyse the experience, or else you’ll go crazy. You know what a tragedy I had. Without Erika, I would have jumped off some tower.’

Blum was pleased, and Thomas looked for other Jews in distress whom he could send to Erika. She needed money. For what? To clear out. At last he understood that a few Jewish patients wouldn’t be enough to keep her in Berlin.

Thomas looked around: the manager of the Paris office was nowhere to be seen. Now Rudolf Schumacher was approaching the bar. He had put on more weight. The seams of his white waistcoat were bursting, and a pin in the shape of two horseshoes was inserted between the buttons. How could anyone dare to dress so badly in public? After Thomas’s mother died, Schumacher began annoying him with gestures of sympathy. Thomas couldn’t recall that he had ever been close to the fat man, even at university, but Schumacher, who worked in the Ministry of Economics, possessed useful information, so Thomas found subtle ways to keep him at bay.

Now he went to look for the toilet to evade Schumacher. He had to wash his face and freshen up. Attendants in dark blue suits, holding white towels, stood in the hallway.

‘Thomas!’ It was Frau Tschammer. How she loved the moment when he had to stop and turn back to her and obey the imperative of her voice! The light in the corridor was dim, and Frau Tschammer’s shadow towered up behind her. She suddenly looked tall. ‘Thomas,’ she said again and came close. ‘Herr Fiske asked if you could join us this week at the meeting in the offices of the Ministry of Aviation.’

‘Have we gone into aeroplane manufacture, Frau Tschammer?’

‘Helmut Wohlthat will chair the meeting,’ said Frau Tschammer, delighted that she’d managed to surprise him. ‘Do you know him?’

‘You know that we’ve met.’

‘In that case, you know that in his official capacity in the Four Year Plan he is managing the sale of Jewish assets and their removal from the economy.’

‘And the point is, Frau Tschammer?’ Thomas snorted. Now it was clear that the matter had nothing to do with Göring’s post as Minister of Aviation but with one of the many other hats that he wore: administering the Four Year Plan.

‘Maybe you haven’t noticed, but things are happening in the office. We are now advising the Dresdener Bank in connection with their acquisition of the Jewish Bamberburg Bank,’ Frau Tschammer proclaimed brightly. ‘The Deutsche Bank also made an offer.’

‘Those are serious competitors,’ said Thomas. He had always regretted that Milton worked with the Dresdener Bank and not with the Deutsche Bank, the one he admired. ‘The people from the Deutsche Bank are good friends. They have connections—’

‘The decision will be made by the Bamberburg Bank,’ Frau Tschammer interrupted. ‘The government requires the immediate transfer of the bank to German ownership. The Dresdener Bank, thanks to us, has an advantage shared by no competitor.’

Thomas understood: thanks to Fiske’s connections, we can obtain US visas for all the Jewish directors of the Bamberburg Bank and their relatives. Now he understood what Mailer had meant when he said that politics devours everything. He was full of anger: how did they—Fiske, Mailer and Frau Tschammer—dare to risk the reputation of Milton in Europe, a name built out of his own hard work, just to satisfy the greed of Dresdener? His eyes drilled into Frau Tschammer’s pink forehead: he had a well-founded suspicion that this cherry face was what had got Milton mixed up in the deal.

‘Frau Tschammer, despite your limited knowledge of what’s going on in the world, you did know that the Dresdener Bank started managing the great bank merger in Austria after the Anschluss, and now it’s active in Czechoslovakia, too. So the Jewish bank is small change for them.’

‘But I also know firsthand that the deal does interest them,’ Tschammer replied. ‘At first the Dresdener Bank wanted us to do market research on the Jewish bank and calculate the chances of resurrecting its good name. To our surprise we learned that, despite the restrictions, the bank was profitable this year: possibly because the Bamberburg Bank charged Jewish businesses fat fees to transfer their assets abroad. At the Dresdener Bank they understood that, in order to beat out a serious rival like the Deutsche Bank, it was wise to have access to the techniques of the Milton company.’

‘I once knew a director of the Bamberburg,’ said Thomas.

‘A Mischling named Blum.’ Frau Tschammer had surprised him again. ‘We received that information.’

‘And guess what, I was invited to the meeting,’ Thomas laughed. ‘Take heart, Frau Tschammer, we’ll make sure you stay in the picture. There’s no one like you for taking care of the little details.’

Frau Tschammer turned away without a word and departed. He listened to the click of her shoes. Once again she had learned that any provocation would end in defeat. With unconcealed amusement Carlson Mailer used to share Frau Tschammer’s interpretation of his personality with him: ‘Thomas’s method is beautiful and simple, as all truly great swindles are.’ (Thomas assumed that Carlson had added the last phrase. It was doubtful that Frau Tschammer would quote an American author.) ‘Every one of his actions,’ she went on, ‘is justified by the Heiselbergian Ethics, which are infinitely elastic. Thomas Heiselberg is actually an assembly of traits, gestures, ideas and feelings that he puts together from here and there. He’s a master at taking things from other people and making them his own. Even a marble bust that fascinates him is likely to contribute to the various expressions he glues onto his face. In the darkroom of his empty soul, he develops stolen negatives into charming pictures he persuades himself were always his.’

Thomas rinsed his face and combed his hair. The grey hollows under his eyes had grown deeper. Tomorrow he would see a doctor. He looked at his watch. It was after eleven. He made his way back into the hall, swearing to himself that he would shove aside anyone who stood between him and the meeting at the bar. But meanwhile the hall had filled with revellers. Voices rang out, shouted, laughed. Glasses clinked. The music swelled. Arms and bare shoulders touched him, mouths breathed smelly hot air in his face. Drums thundered, and then a voice was heard—Fritzsche’s?—announcing a performance, and the throng turned towards the stage. Thomas was swept along with it. It seemed to him that he saw the square face of Christophe, from the Paris office, pressed against Fiske, who was being shoved, apparently for the first time in his life, and was looking around, bemused, at the people besieging him. His usual lordly expression had vanished.

Now Thomas noticed Schumacher elbowing two notables out of the way and approaching Fiske. Two slim women looked at him with disgust and protested. Schumacher stretched his hand towards the president of Milton, and Fiske wrapped it powerfully in both his hands. They stood close together, with a little hill of four hands between them, smiling and shouting polite phrases that no one could hear. When could you truly admire the power of a man like Fiske? When a sign of weakness becomes visible in him, and a struggle takes place in his soul, and you understand how determined he is not to give anything away. Schumacher disappeared. Now Fiske was alone. Carlson hurried over to him, holding the hand of the woman from the patio. She had the diamond tiara in her other hand. Mailer grasped Fiske’s shoulder. The three of them looked like frightened passengers on a rocking ship. Thomas took pleasure in their distress. He had worked it out. Under the cover of doing market research for Dresdener—and probably for a fat commission—Milton was messing with one of those deals to buy Jewish property at ridiculous prices.

An elbow struck his arm. Somebody has to put things in order here, and soon, he thought in alarm as he was pushed against the wall. Looking right and left, he saw only more bodies. A trumpet sounded on stage, and the drums beat a military march.

‘Somebody important has arrived,’ a young woman told her curly-haired daughter, and her voice was full of the curiosity of people who enthuse over the obvious.

‘Pick up the girl!’ Thomas shouted to her. ‘We might all get ourselves killed here.’

…

The first thing he sees when he wakes is the white wall. He smells the fresh paint. Although he took care to ventilate the room every day, with his first waking breath he sucked fumes into his lungs. He learned to plunge his nose between the sheets. Sometimes it seemed to him as if they had been painted, too.

For the past few weeks he’d been waking early, around five, which gave him a lot of free time before going to the office. He roamed the house in his bathrobe and looked out at the street, waiting to see old Wagner, who at exactly six would take a seat outside the café he once owned. They were both letting time pass. As a boy he would buy ice-cream from Wagner on credit, until his father forbade him to buy ‘without money’, claiming that Jews seduce children into buying ice-cream before shoving the bill under their parents’ noses. Last year Wagner had been forced to sell his café to a German who agreed to employ him as the storeroom manager.

Every morning Thomas played the role of the man who lived here, hoping to stamp his ownership of the place onto the walls, but the barrier between the house and him only grew. Even when he did the most ordinary things—brushing his teeth, brewing tea, stretching out on the sofa—he had the overwhelming sense that he was doing something forbidden. Sometimes he crept from room to room in secret, lest he be caught. He had no idea who would convict him, or for what crime—illegal possession, being a trespasser benefiting from other people’s misfortune. Every step that he took sounded loud and clumsy, and where was his mother’s voice, calling him from the bedroom, ‘Thomas, how many times have I asked you to take off your shoes?’ His breath blew ugly, petty life into a place that was supposed to contain memories alone.

No evidence of that night remained, except the broken window in her bedroom. The new furniture didn’t remind one of the earlier furnishings, except for the replacement sofa in the parlour, which he had bought in the store where she had bought the old red sofa, after its cushions had been slashed with knives and its stuffing had been flung everywhere.

That night he returned home into a white cloud of feathers. He heard glass splinters grinding under his shoes. The windowpanes, china bowls, lamps, mirrors—almost nothing was intact after the visit by Hermann and his friends. Even the door hinges had been jimmied off. Wooden cabinets and dressers were smashed with hammers, the gas and electricity lines ripped out. At least a dozen jars of fruit preserves had been hurled against the bathroom wall, and flour mixed with soap powder and blood was strewn all over the sink and lavatory.

Frau Stein had been stabbed in every part of her body. She lay face down, her head cradled in her folded arm. He leaned down and turned her over. When he saw her face, coated with a layer of blood-soaked flour, he realised that after stabbing her they had smothered her in the sink with a mixture of flour and soap powder. She looked like a sad clown in the circus. They hadn’t even let her die with that stern expression of hers, well versed in suffering, that had always aroused people’s respect. He gathered some feathers and covered her face with them.

Neighbours went up and down the stairs and stared into the apartment. Not one of them crossed the threshold except Clarissa Engelhardt, a student who lived with her parents on the first floor. She gathered up shards of glass from the floor and put them in a washbasin. A grey-haired, bespectacled man appeared in the doorway, coughed and wiped his nose with a handkerchief. He leaned over Frau Stein. Feathers clung to his clothes and his neck, and from time to time he brushed a dusty feather away from his face, where the wind, swirling through the room, had blown it.

‘I’m allergic to feathers,’ apologised the doctor, who must have been summoned by the neighbours.

Thomas didn’t know him. It was a good thing they hadn’t called in Doctor Spengler, that romantic soul who became attached to his patients and mourned for them. Even the dying had to hear about the suffering of the poor souls who had been buried the previous week.

The doctor stepped to the window and shouted something, and soon two men came in, picked up Frau Stein’s body and carried it outside. Only her high heels remained. Seeing them, Thomas remembered how she had crossed the city that morning to come here. She had doubtless walked for hours in those fine shoes that his mother had bought her for her fiftieth birthday, and in her best dress. Had she intended to ask for help? Jews were turning to everyone they knew. She had probably remembered that he worked for an American company. Maybe she had planned to coax his mother into asking for his help.

For the next half-hour he took care of Frau Stein’s body, surveyed the damage and tried to work out what to do, but he didn’t dare approach his mother’s room. A voice in his head shouted that he was in danger—he would be asked to explain why a Jewish woman was in his house—and he knew he had to think things through. If he saw his mother now, he would lose any chance of remaining lucid.

Between his encounter with Hermann and his gang and climbing the steps to his house, he understood that his mother was no longer living. Any faint hope was snuffed out as soon as he crossed the threshold. He had never felt anything with so much certainty as the fact of her death. When he came home from school and knocked on the front door, he always knew by the sound of Frau Stein’s heavy steps whether or not his mother was at home.

‘Where is Frau Heiselberg?’ the doctor asked.

Thomas stared at the man who was streaked with feathers and flour. The doctor shook him and slapped him. His hands were damp. Thomas was afraid that the source of the dampness was Frau Stein’s blood.

The doctor shook him again. ‘Where is Frau Heiselberg?’

He pointed down the dark corridor at the only door that remained in the house.

The doctor disappeared down the corridor, and in a few minutes emerged from the darkness. Thomas reached out and dusted away some feathers that clung to his lapel.

‘It’s all right, Herr Heiselberg,’ the doctor said.

He doesn’t remember how he got to her room. Maybe they dragged him there. She lay on her bed in a nightgown, and pallor had already spread on her face. Her head rested on two pillows, her sculpted neck was slightly stretched, but it didn’t violate her tranquil expression. She seemed to have gone to sleep. Her arms were crossed on her chest, and her lower body was covered by a sheet. He cautiously approached the corpse, struggling with the fear that he would be called upon to explain why he had invaded her room in the middle of the night. He shouldn’t have left her with Frau Stein. His fingers crept along the sheet and touched her arm. They were even colder than her skin. He brought them to his lips and blew on them. Then he touched her arm, and let his fingers rest there. He didn’t dare touch her face. The questions that Erika Gelber would ask him were already whirring in his mind: Did you kiss her goodbye? Were you afraid of her dead body?

At last he gave a wild shout, shook off his fear and in one movement he leaned down, kissed her forehead and straightened up. Then he retreated until his hand felt the doorhandle. He went out, shut the door and stood in the dark corridor. There he stood until dawn with his back to the closed door of her room.

In the morning he hired the services of Clarissa Engelhardt, and placed the reorganisation of the house in her hands. Plump Clarissa agreed to his proposal even before asking her parents’ permission, ‘out of respect for Frau Heiselberg’. He moved into a hotel near the Milton offices. When he returned to the house two weeks later, not even a hint of that night remained, except for the space that yawned in his mother’s room where the window had been. He had ordered Clarissa not to repair it, and she reluctantly obeyed.

No official contacted him regarding the events of that night. About a hundred acquaintances and the entire staff of Milton attended the funeral. Some clients also attended, as well as representatives of government offices, the Four Year Plan, the Berlin municipality, and the French and Italian embassies. Georg Weller, the fellow from the Foreign Office, and two SD agents who worked with Carlson Mailer also came. Rudolf Schumacher showed up with a telegram from Walther Funk, the Minister of Economic Affairs. Schumacher had doubtless managed to boast to him about his connections with Milton, Thomas thought irately. The man was an amateur. The way people like that got on was what Thomas’s father called ‘wriggling through’.

The presence of people from the government alleviated his anxiety. It had apparently been decided to erase any memory of the incident. He heard that savage criticism in the foreign press of the attack on the Jews had irritated the government. Words like ‘unnecessary’ and ‘stupid’ were used openly amid claims that people had acted behind the Führer’s back and betrayed the trust he had placed in them. Nevertheless, Weller, who called him up a few weeks after the funeral to find out how he was, told him that in December the Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop had been warmly received in Paris, that the French Foreign Minister had made anti-Jewish remarks and that everyone understood that what happened that night was merely a temporary glitch. After all, very few Jews had been killed. Weller, who, to Thomas’s surprise, knew all about the event in his house, did not believe any action would be taken against him: the Foreign Office would not allow anyone to harass a protégé of Jack Fiske. How many friends like Fiske did Germany still have in the United States?

The only surprise at the funeral was the absence of Elsa, his ex-wife—if it was possible for anything disgraceful she did to surprise him. But he had expected her to come, if only to part once and for all from the woman she had loathed so much; in his opinion, the years they had all lived under the same roof should have been enough to temper her loathing with some sadness. Her condolence letter reached the office a few weeks later, and it would have been hard to call it heartwarming. Still, they hadn’t seen each other for more than ten years, and had scarcely written after she remarried. Now she gave her former husband some advice: ‘I hope that apart from your sadness this will be a day of liberation.’

‘If Friedrich Nietzsche and a Hollywood starlet sat next to Elsa in a café, she would turn her back on the philosopher,’ his mother declared the day she met her. A few years later she boasted to Frau Stein that she and her son had got rid of their spouses at the same time.

None of the mourners mentioned that night. ‘What a cursed sickness,’ one of the SD men said. Thomas silently agreed with him; his mother had died of her illness. No one had injured her. Of course the invasion of her house would have terrified her and hastened her death, but, to tell the truth, it also shortened her suffering.

He had not seen Hermann since. Sometimes the question gnawed at him: why had he done it? But, instead of letting it get to him, Thomas started planning how he could retaliate. He remembered that when they sold off Hermann’s father’s possessions or food stolen from hotels, Hermann was embarrassed and would complain about their damned country that forced him to act like a criminal so that his sisters wouldn’t starve. Hermann never concealed his distaste for Thomas’s practice of ‘swindling people’ (though he didn’t turn up his nose at the fruit of the swindles), and the moment came when their friendship began to leach away. That didn’t worry him: lots of boys swore fidelity to one another and got bored after a month. But even if Hermann now saw him as someone who had ‘sold his soul to the Americans’ and nonsense like that, it was still hard to understand the hatred in his eyes or that he had violated a house where he had played as a boy.

One day Thomas decided there was no point in thinking about the kinks in Hermann’s soul. Taking revenge on an SS officer might lead to his own destruction. Perhaps Hermann felt that they were even now and wouldn’t see each other again. But Thomas had to keep an eye out: he wouldn’t let Hermann take him by surprise again, make him stand in the street, trembling, humiliated and ignorant. Next time he would land the first blow.

He was still groggy after washing. Thomas stood in the bathroom and wiped his chest with a damp towel. He hung it up, dressed and went to light the fire. How unfortunate that the ugly Delft tiles around the fireplace had survived Hermann’s visit. He glanced at his watch: in a moment Erika Gelber would ring the doorbell. Since November they had been meeting in the morning at his house. He sat on the new sofa. There was something that he wanted to bring up in their session: since his episode at the New Year’s Eve party, he occasionally lost his sense of time. He would wake up and grope for memories of the previous evening. Was that a symptom of the illness that had attacked him? The doctors told him everything was fine, and to anyone who expressed concern at his appearance, he would say, ‘No, I’m not sick. I’ve had a check-up. Everything’s okay,’ but he was certain that an illness was incubating in his body: dissolving his muscles, trampling on his chest with its heels, tightening the black veils over his eyes.

The doorbell rang at exactly eight thirty. She stood before him with her face reddened by the cold, and, with the demanding casualness typical of her, said she hoped that the fire was lit and that the coffee was steaming the way she liked it.

‘Of course, Frau Gelber,’ he answered, bowing like a servant and leading her into the parlour. She sat in the armchair. He couldn’t lie down here and stare at the ceiling the way he did in her clinic. That would seem affected. So he sprawled on the sofa, leaning on an elbow, and stared at the fire. The shutters were closed, and the flames cast a weak glow. After some small talk, Erika said, ‘We devoted the last two sessions to being an orphan. That’s something we’ve spoken about quite a bit. In 1930, after your father’s death, you came to me with a complaint about frightening attacks that left you feeling weak. Aside from that, as you told me with earnest amusement, you were curious about certain psychoanalytic ideas that had become fashionable.’

‘Let’s be precise, Frau Gelber. I said that it was the fashionableness of those ideas that made me curious.’

‘I stand corrected,’ said Erika, who looked surprised by his petty obstinacy. ‘You must remember that after two years of therapy I told you that your refusal to admit grief was nothing more than stubbornness. You answered—and here I am quoting my notes—“Frau Gelber, I didn’t come to you for lessons in mourning. I give you my word as a gentleman, my father’s death caused me dreadful suffering. But, in all sincerity, right now I’m less bothered by his death than by my own.”’

‘I can’t explain things I don’t remember,’ he stated drily. ‘I also don’t understand what you’re driving at. Whose death troubles you now? My father’s or my mother’s?’

Erika was silent. He detested her silences. Recently he had become convinced that she wasn’t happy with his answers.

‘What kind of woman was your mother?’ she finally asked.

As if she didn’t know, he thought. They’d been discussing her for years. ‘Imagine the proprietor of a superbly furnished and detailed hotel upon which time imposes its decrees. For example: it might be possible to clean the spots on the tablecloths, but you can’t restore their whiteness, can you? All over the hotel, time eats away at its former glory, but the proprietor locks the doors, closes the shutters, sits in her empty office in her pretty dress and waits for the wind to blow it down. Imagine a sailor on the seven seas who hears that his city has changed unrecognisably. He decides not to go back, to remain on the high seas with nothing but his nostalgia for the beautiful days he had at home, now lost.’ He offered as many images as he could conjure up, and sweet warmth crept into him as they multiplied, as if he were sending bright balloons into a dark sky, performing a flamboyant dance against his petrified awareness of loss.

‘Thomas, for several sessions now you’ve only been talking about your mother in metaphors,’ Erika complained. Her voice sounded imploring. ‘And they’re all amazingly similar.’

Her coy tone struck him. He suddenly understood that Erika didn’t say the first thing that came into her head, but replaced it with something different. He felt he could read the shifts in her thinking—a tiny manoeuvre, partially conscious, that might shatter years of trust.

She’s trying to appease me, he thought, prevent me from getting angry. And it had been Erika’s blunt candour that captured his heart when he started seeing her. She always demanded memories of things that had happened and scolded him every time he used the images he liked so much. For a long time he had sensed her weakness, but he still hoped that in their sessions they could ignore the noise of the outside world and keep things the way they used to be. In the past few months he had glimpsed stirrings of a change even in the way her body moved. Her gestures lacked the poise of a person who knows her place.

He was filled with disgust, apologised and rushed to the bathroom. He rinsed his burning face in cold water and considered whether to bring the matter up in the session. The problem was that, if he spoke about it with her now, she would revert to her earlier style in order to appease him. One thing was clear: it would never again be the way it was. For a long time he had been yearning for the hours they had had together, years ago: for the mournful light of the setting sun, lengthening the shadows of the cacti on the shelf; for her too-colourful dresses, all of them suspended on hangers in his memory; and for her attentive expression with its calm tolerance even of his worst deceptions.

He was a man who respected restraint, but Erika was the only soul for whom he felt a fondness that he couldn’t restrain. Around her he became childish, inventing affectionate nicknames for her that he only used to her after pretending they had come to him in his dreams. Damn it, for years he had been passing by shop windows and choosing presents for her.

‘Thomas?’

He took a breath and left the bathroom. ‘Sometimes it’s hot here,’ he cheerfully observed.

The session became buried in worthless verbiage. Most of the time he stared at the vase of crocuses that Clarissa had picked in Professor Bernheimer’s abandoned garden.

When it was finished Erika smoothed her trousers and passed her fingers over the carnation on her lapel. He wondered whether he should tell her that in the Foreign Office they made fun of the English ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, calling him ‘the carnation with a man’. In the past few years, inspired by Thomas, she had stopped wearing those old-fashioned, unflattering dresses and decked herself out in a wardrobe that he called ‘more up-to-date’: straight skirts almost to her ankles, buttoned blouses with sheer fabric and thin mesh, and hip-length jackets.

Erika told him she wanted to talk about something personal, and that of course he should stop her if he felt this would not be proper. He didn’t know whether to stand up—he wanted to stand now, as he did in his office—but in the end he remained on the sofa, leaning on the armrest.

Erika repeated that perhaps the matter was inappropriate.

‘You’ve said that already, Frau Gelber.’

Erika added in a low voice—his comment had apparently weakened her resolve—that the times weren’t appropriate either. Then she asked him directly if he could help her and her husband and their two children obtain visas to another country. Someone had informed on them to the Gestapo, and they were being constantly harassed.

In his heart he thanked her for not mentioning the children’s names; at least she had spared them both that kitsch. She hadn’t specifically mentioned the United States: a vain effort not to show that the idea had occurred to her after hearing his stories about the negotiations with the Bamberburg Bank and Jack Fiske’s connections in the State Department. Maybe he should offer her a job in Italy? A wicked thought poked its head up. If anyone was really capable of making a deal with the German government, it was Federico, the man who had gone to parties with the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano.

‘It’s strange that you’re asking me in particular, Frau Gelber,’ he said. ‘After all, there are psychoanalytic societies in Europe and the United States, and they’re filled with Jews. Can’t they help you?’

Erika recounted in detail the tribulations she had undergone: in the early 1930s therapists in the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society wanted to help her emigrate to the United States, but she and her husband chose to remain in Germany. In the past year, when dozens of Jewish analysts from Austria joined the race for visas, she realised that her chances were slipping: the British Psychoanalytic Society refused to sponsor her and she had received no reply from New York. There were rumours that a movement against immigration was spreading among analysts in America, and a handful of friends in other countries, who had made generous efforts on her behalf, had achieved nothing.

‘I understand,’ he nodded. ‘You’re putting me in a delicate situation. We’re talking about an illegal action.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He must have looked like the most sanctimonious person in the world. He was always tempted to make the worst impression possible at the beginning. When he came home from school with a good report, he used to inundate his mother with terrible stories about failures and fights, just so that he could see disappointment crease her forehead and her eyes close as though she wanted to sleep. Then, just as she was about to reproach him, he would pull out his report—indisputable proof that refuted his own testimony. Erika once asked him why he did it, and he answered that it still happened sometimes, for example, he once told Schumacher that Milton had been hired to consult for a euthanasia project. ‘We have to root out the degenerates, don’t we?’

It simply amused him, he explained to her, that people, even your mother, would believe whatever you told them, if you made it sound credible, even if it didn’t fit in with your personality and everything you’d ever done—the dopes would adjust whatever ideas they had about you to accommodate this new information. We are only silhouettes in the minds of others. ‘Don’t be sad. Of course I’ll help you,’ he told Erika, and he rose from the sofa as a sign that the session was over. ‘If I succeed, it’ll be because there’s a law somewhere—or, rather, there is no law, and this fact can be used.’

The next morning he met with Carlson Mailer and Frau Tschammer in the office. They met once a week to discuss their negotiations with the Bamberburg Bank. It was clear that the governmental agencies were committed to the order to remove Jews from the economy. Wohlthat told Thomas that in fact the Bamberburg was the last remaining large Jewish bank not yet transferred to German hands. Before Schacht had been forced to resign as the Minister of Economics, he defended the Jews, but now the office of the Four Year Plan wanted everything resolved.

Frau Tschammer was in daily contact with people at the Dresdener bank. She reported that they were worried, because apparently the Deutsche Bank had already made an offer to the directors of Bamberburg regarding the countries that would take them in. Carlson Mailer, as was his wont recently, stared out into space, and said little.

After the meeting, Thomas went into Carlson’s office and told him about a secret plan that he had been working on: he knew the therapist who was treating Blum, from the Bamberburg bank. ‘She has considerable influence on him,’ he hinted, as though sharing a secret, and it would be a good idea to use her services to coax Blum to move in the right direction. In response Carlson leafed through a colourful magazine. That weak man had lost any desire to do anything, and was now an obstacle, Thomas thought.

‘If it’s a matter of money,’ Carlson rumbled, ‘do what you think best.’

‘It could be that other considerations are involved.’

‘So find some stunt for them, too.’

‘I’d like to talk about the essence of the deal,’ Thomas insisted.

‘We’ve spoken about it enough.’ Carlson lit his pipe and puffed smoke. ‘And with you every bar of soap has some essence.’

Thomas decided not to say another word. It was clear that all Mailer cared about negotiating was the price of a villa in Nice, overlooking the Promenade des Anglais.

Was Mailer contemptuous of him for promoting the Bamberburg deal? Maybe he would respect him more if he also sat in his office like a scarecrow, doing nothing? There was no point in behaving like a child learning for the first time that history is filled with bloodshed and war: the spirit of the time weaves deals like these, the Dresdener Bank was Milton’s largest client, and that was the only important thing.

It was time for Plan B: he telephoned Jack Fiske in New York, presented his initiative and asked if it was possible to add Erika Gelber and her two children to the Bamberburg list.

‘It’s no secret that we at Milton don’t see eye to eye with the German government about the Jews,’ Fiske answered. Thomas was aware of the pause while the man’s tongue licked his upper lip, which was always dry. ‘Listen to this, but keep it to yourself,’ Fiske purred; no one loved revealing secrets more than he did. He regarded it as one of the pleasures of his position, which enabled him to fear no one. ‘One of the Milton partners is a friend of Henry Morgenthau, and Morgenthau told him that President Roosevelt once complained about the number of Jews at Harvard. In the end, thanks to him, they decided to limit the number. Cultured people solve problems wisely.’

‘And in the matter of the Jewish psychoanalyst?’ Thomas focused on the subject.

Fiske, who understood that he might have insulted him, answered cordially. ‘My good fellow, a request made by one of Milton’s most successful partners is sacred for me. But the State Department is under heavy siege. Yesterday I heard from our people in Berlin that their office has received a hundred and sixty thousand visa applications, and in Vienna there are around a hundred thousand—absolute madness! And I also saw a poll that said that more than fifty per cent of Americans think that Jews are avaricious and that Jewish immigration would damage American values. So tell me honestly—I’m very careful about asking for special favours in immigration matters—will a visa for that woman clinch the deal for us?’

Thomas hesitated. He wanted to say that he still had some doubts, but he immediately understood that that would be an amateurish answer. He should have resolved any doubts before speaking with Fiske. ‘In my opinion it could be critical,’ he said, keeping his voice steady.

‘Okay,’ Fiske said, ‘if people from Bamberburg ask us for that Jew, I’ll act on her behalf.’

‘They hinted to me that it would be better if I spoke about this delicate matter on their behalf. Psychoanalysis is a very secret matter,’ Thomas chuckled. He knew that this lie might cost him his career.

‘Don’t worry, my good fellow,’ Fiske said cordially. ‘It’ll be enough if Blum asks me, and I’ll take the next step.’

The upshot was clear: Fiske wouldn’t do a thing unless Blum spoke to him.

Plan C was pathetic: he met with Schumacher and asked him whether an appeal to the new Office of Jewish Emigration managed by Heidrich could help Erika Gelber.

Schumacher was horrified. ‘Apparently everyone but Thomas Heiselberg has heard the Führer’s warning to Funk to stop exempting Jews from restrictions. Anyway, as a friend, I tell you that your connection with that Jewish therapist of yours has become suspicious. Soon you’ll be identified as a friend of the Jews. Is she really worth that?’

Thomas struggled against the words, ‘Yes, she’s the last person left to me in this world. Except for her, there are only people like you,’ which, for some reason beyond his understanding, he wanted to say aloud.

There was no choice. He would have to manoeuvre Blum so that, first, he asked Erika Gelber to be included in the bank’s list, and, second, he made the Bamberburgs choose the Dresdener’s offer. Those two conditions had to be fulfilled in tandem.

So here was Plan D, which was a desperate measure. There was no reason why Blum should help Erika in particular. Quite likely he had other obligations. And even if Thomas explained to him that the place was reserved for Erika and for her alone, and that no other Jew could be preferred to her, Blum would probably not believe him. He was suspicious of Thomas. One of his acquaintances once told him that Blum had said, as a kind of joke, that Thomas Heiselberg was a talented person, but he was also the best possible proof for Hölderlin’s dictum that there were no people left in Germany, only professions.

Thomas decided that the time had come for a personal gesture towards the Bamberburgs. He convinced Carlson to host a friendly dinner where representatives of all the parties in the deal would sit together. But first he had to explain to Carlson that it was impossible to invite the Jews to one of the restaurants favoured by the Milton people. He felt it was unjust that he was the one who had to explain the country’s laws to Carlson: if he read a newspaper now and then, he would understand everything. He teasingly asked Carlson whether he had heard that in France—where Carlson had finally bought a house—a law against foreigners had recently been passed. ‘Really? Thanks for informing me,’ Carlson answered, but he invited everyone to an ‘American dinner’ in his luxury apartment on Rankstrasse. He defined the event as a ‘gesture of solidarity with the people from the bank who are in trouble’.

Carlson’s chef prepared meatballs and other roasted chunks of meat, wrapped in rolls dripping with sauce and embellished with lettuce. There were fine china bowls overflowing with fried potatoes. But, despite the cheer that Thomas tried to inspire in the guests, the atmosphere was gloomy: the Bamberburgs complained the whole time, and Carlson made some venomous remarks to the Dresdener people. Towards the end of the evening, Blum told Thomas that if the Dresdener people promised that, when conditions in Germany improved, the Bamberburgs could buy their bank back, the directors would regard this as a noble gesture and would accept Dresdener’s offer.

Thomas thought this was just another of Blum’s delusions, and mentioned it to Carlson, who backed Blum up. ‘That sounds fair,’ he declared.

At a meeting with the directors of the Dresdener bank he suggested they add a clause to this effect, explaining that in any case it was unenforceable, and could do nothing more than warm the hearts of the Bamberburgs a little. The directors refused even to consider the proposal.

He conveyed their answer to Carlson.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Carlson muttered. ‘Just take care of it.’

These days Carlson was sending everyone away with the response: decide for yourself. Carlson’s secretary told Thomas that in a letter to his wife he had cursed Fiske and boasted that he hadn’t lifted a finger ‘for that stinking Bamberburg Bank deal’. The days passed. Thomas was running out of ideas. Multitudes of Jews were looking desperately for countries that would accept them—one day they were all talking about Switzerland, and the next about Shanghai. New regulations were published every day, amid an aggravating buzz of whispers and plots, gossip and slander. Rumours circulated about agents who had obtained visas in return for the property of the fleeing Jews, about doctors, scientists and businessmen who had escaped Germany, which was shedding Nobel prize winners like someone who straightens a wrinkle in his cuff, and about embassies whose policies were about to change. But one fact remained: the supply of Jews exceeded the demand by thousands of per cent.

Thomas had another session with Erika Gelber. ‘I feel that my steps have been clumsy,’ he complained to her. ‘They lack my characteristic drive.’ He could feel the odour of failure wafting from his body. ‘You understand, I’m assailed by doubt, I take steps and then regret them, as if I were a foreigner in Berlin. And Frau Tschammer is getting in my way. For ten years I’ve been striving to get rid of that woman, and she’s still there. The trouble is that thousands of people are concentrated on this subject of the Jews: government people, private companies, businessmen, go-betweens, Jewish organisations all over the world. I’m looking for new areas, you understand, where I can act freely, areas that only exist because of me. I’m not one of those mediocre souls who opens another department store or restaurant in a city that already has a hundred like them.’

They would both have to ask Blum directly, he told her. He would host a dinner for them at his house. ‘Blum admires you, Erika. He says that therapy helped him to understand a lot of things.’

In the past Thomas had taken pleasure in sorting out tangled situations. He always believed that his most impressive ability was to grasp lots of strings—the source of a certain organisation’s power, people’s desires (sometimes contradictory), greed and a host of other weaknesses—and to wrap them up in a ball which only he could unravel. But now he was worried: the lack of time was forcing him to make imperfect plans.

…

Clarissa blushed. Too much rouge, he was disappointed to see. This girl—you could give her the most expensive cosmetics in Europe and she’d still look like she was plastered in cheap paint from some discount shop in Wedding. She appeared in the parlour in a blue dress she’d bought with his money especially for the occasion. It was a bit too tight and emphasised the roll of fat on her lower abdomen. Her steps wobbled, and it looked as if she was going to stumble.

‘Dear, do you need help?’ Erika Gelber asked.

‘Thanks, I’m all right,’ Clarissa laughed.

Clarissa poured wine into Blum’s glass. He leaned back in his chair. He was clearly ill at ease. Thomas studied her: rounded face, tufts of blonde hair, tied in a ribbon, curled around it. An expression of gentle puzzlement, trying to look severe and thoughtful, along with the solid evidence of a decent home, respectable parents and a model education. Girls like Clarissa were sheltered by a deeply rooted knowledge that in the end the puzzlement would fade away to their satisfaction, and they would find their place in the world.

Thomas waved his wine glass—a cheap purchase, he grumbled to himself. At least she had remembered to remove the labels. He was seized by the urge to explain to the guests that these common articles had entered his house after it was trashed by the savages who had killed Frau Stein, their beloved Jewish housekeeper. But he clung tightly to that card, their shared fate, to be played only if there was no choice. He hadn’t told Erika about Frau Stein’s death.

‘This morning I accompanied Wohlthat to a meeting with some Japanese businessmen,’ Thomas said. ‘I reported to him that the negotiations for the sale of the Bamberburg Bank were proceeding with great purpose and would soon conclude.’

Blum sipped his wine and nodded. He was a broad man whose body terminated in a huge skull, which was now jutting out of a rough, grey sweater. Carlson once said that Blum ‘dressed like a Communist’.

‘I believe the decision is close,’ Blum said. ‘We also spoke with Wohlthat yesterday. Naturally he once again expressed reservations about the role he is required to play.’

‘What impression did Dresdener’s latest offer make on the bank’s board?’ Thomas asked. If Blum wanted to flaunt his connections with Wohlthat, let him. ‘We worked hard to convince them to raise the price.’ ‘The offers we are examining are very similar,’ Blum answered. ‘I watched our colleagues from the Warburg Bank sell their splendid institution for pennies. We’re smaller, and we have no illusions. After the tax and all the government’s other tricks, we’ll be left with less than fifteen per cent of its real value.’

Clearly Thomas was not the person to whom such complaints should be addressed. Blum was stuck in a world where his bank was worth another eighty-five per cent. Some people hovered between this world and another one that once existed or that they imagined, and afterwards they bargained with this world with the logic of their imagination.

‘No, that’s definitely not enough,’ Thomas agreed. Restrained anger grated in his voice. Once again, as in Carlson’s office, it was incumbent on him to convey the spirit of the time.

‘Some people on the board argue that it would be better not to sell the bank at that price.’ Blum’s right shoulder leaped up, and he pinched it with the fingers of his left hand. ‘If Germany wants it so much—let her confiscate it.’

‘Listen, Blum,’ said Thomas. It annoyed him that Blum had hissed the word ‘Germany’ like a curse. ‘To be honest, the country is in trouble. And, aside from that, there isn’t a single Germany. Germany is this way now, and once it was different, and in a few years maybe it will be something else. The company I work for is taking a heroic stand against the pressure to leave Germany. The economy is moving away from the world, and I believe that this is bad for all of us.’

Now he looked at Erika Gelber for the first time in some minutes. She gave him a puzzled look in return. Blum sipped again and exhaled a gloomy breath.

Clarissa’s approach interrupted his thoughts. A plate of cutlets sprinkled with silver grains of salt and breadcrumbs was laid on the table. ‘Please, veal cutlets such as are served only in the finest restaurants in Germany…’ Her clear voice filled the parlour.

‘Fräulein Engelhardt is from the educated bourgeoisie of Hamburg. In my opinion, they produce the most remarkable young women in the country,’ said Thomas.

‘Young lady, it looks delicious,’ said Blum, waiting impatiently for Clarissa to serve him. Blum liked cutlets.

Clarissa minced around the table, returned to Blum, and topped up his glass. Thomas wondered whether she might be laying it on too thick. She had told him that she excelled at every task she took on, and stuck to her agreement to play the role of cook and waitress even after he let her know that the guests would be Jews. But they knew that she wasn’t a servant, and hamming it up might give them the impression they were being made fun of. Jews were on the lookout day and night for changes in every glance from a friend or acquaintance. That was completely logical: the shattering of their status as Jews had modified all their human connections. They were forced to scurry about to discover how everyone they knew was responding to the new spirit. Clarissa hummed a tune when she leaned over them, withdrew and straightened up. Now he was reconciled to her little exaggerations—the thick make-up, the clumsy movements, the twisted collar of her dress—the play-acting of a young thing who had disguised herself as a servant and as a woman.

Blum didn’t look at or speak to Erika Gelber. Thomas, though he wanted nothing more than to bring the evening to an end, was drawn to Erika. She seemed so lost, with her dishevelled cinnamon hair, her light make-up emphasising her dark eyes: here was Erika Gelber, greeting the night. The same woman but not exactly.

Both of them were looking at him now: Blum was waiting for an explanation of why he had been invited, and Erika for her signal to speak to Blum.

But perhaps they were demanding something more. What were they demanding? That he would take responsibility, curse the homeland, explain to them how it had all happened? Blum coughed, Erika said something to him in such a self-effacing tone that it didn’t even sound like German. As if she were trying to curl up in his lap like a little girl.

Clarissa wasn’t the only one in disguise tonight.

He decided to address them both together to strengthen the closeness between them: ‘Herr Blum, Frau Gelber,’ he said, ‘I understand that these are difficult times for you. I don’t believe that it’s really possible to console someone whose world has changed so much for the worse. With all sincerity I’ll tell you that even in the hard times that I have endured recently, like the horrible night a few weeks ago when, in this parlour, our devoted and beloved housekeeper, Hannah Stein, was cruelly murdered—even then I clung to the faith that Hegel was right, that in the end history and reason progress, despite the most dreadful events. Naturally, of course, being trapped in the moment, we cannot judge its future purpose, but sometimes what’s rational hides its highest qualities inside irrational mischief.’

‘That’s small consolation, to see our suffering as a tool in the hand of reason.’ Erika gave a twisted smile. She showed no surprise at the news of Frau Stein’s death, and was entirely concentrated on Blum.

Blum nodded gloomily to show he’d heard her, but he was leaning away from Erika, revealing his reservations about being bound up in the same group as her. Unlike Erika, who was regarded as completely Jewish, Blum was defined by the regime as a mischling of the first degree. Blum had never seen himself as Jewish. His father had converted to Christianity after the war, and his mother came from a Protestant family in Heidelberg. Blum hoped to assimilate into the German nation. He was exempt from most restrictions, but he still complained that his senior position in a Jewish-owned bank was driving him into the bosom of Judaism and ‘all those Jewish organisations’.

‘I’m not a big expert in the irrational!’ Blum hissed, and the creases on his forehead deepened and turned red like cuts. ‘I’ve worked in the bank for forty years. We built up an excellent institution from zero, an institution that has garnered nothing but praise, and now they’re robbing us of it!’

The smile faded from Erika’s face. Thomas gave Blum a warning look. How dumb could the man be, to shout nonsense like that at eight in the evening in a private home, in an apartment that SS people had recently destroyed?

‘Herr Blum, a little patience.’ He couldn’t restrain himself. ‘We’ve all taken a risk to get together here. It would be a shame to allow bitterness to lead us to a dead end.’

Blum fixed his eyes on his plate.

Clarissa appeared again and cleared the table. Now her movements were stiff, and her cheerfulness was gone. If the things she had heard here were not supposed to be said, she might tell her parents about the dinner, or her friends at the university, or the NSP, the National Socialist welfare organisation where she volunteered. But she wasn’t the informing type. Thomas had already ascertained that.

‘Despite recent events, I expect, indeed I demand, that you regard me as exactly the same friend I have always been to you,’ Thomas declared solemnly.

‘Don’t you like cutlets?’ Blum said to Erika Gelber, staring at the meat on her plate.

‘If you want it, please.’ She returned the cutlet to the platter.

‘We’ll share it,’ Blum concluded.

Before dessert Thomas offered Blum a cigar, and Erika saw her chance. She turned to Blum, and told him that she wanted to talk to him about something. Blum shrank into his chair. Erika told him that her husband had been arrested in November, had been detained in Buchenwald, and now he had been released. He had been ordered to emigrate without delay. Her two children, Max and Eva, had been expelled from school. They were sitting at home now, after some hooligans had forced Max to weed the football pitch with his teeth. They were being evicted from their apartment. They were looking feverishly for a country to take them but there was nowhere. No one was helping them.

Blum nodded from time to time, and puffed smoke. Thomas wondered whether he should leave them; after all, Blum had been in analysis with Erika, and maybe he was keeping his distance from her because there were three people in the room. In any event, Thomas was tired of hearing about their distress.

Blum peered down the hallway, as though expecting dessert. Really, where was Clarissa with the cake?

Erika said something about the United States, that because of the children there was no point waiting until things changed here. Blum nodded again, a sign that significant things had been said, and closed his eyes.

‘It’s cold…’ Thomas rubbed his hands together and hurried over to stoke the fire.

As its heat warmed them, he realised that Blum wouldn’t help Erika. He couldn’t understand how he hadn’t admitted his failure earlier. Maybe Blum couldn’t help. He had obligations to many people, his partners would be likely to reject the idea and maybe—a hair-raising suspicion—they had already decided to sell to Deutsche Bank instead. One thing was clear: Blum wasn’t going to help Erika.

The statement tormented him, yet he could not stop repeating it to himself, as though wanting to have his punishment at once. His head hurt, and he closed his eyes. A minute or ten passed. The wind howled outside, and he imagined it surrounding the house, ripping down the walls and the ceiling as though they were made of paper. When he shook off these visions, Erika was still talking to Blum in the same caressing tone, and Thomas was horrified: how could she not understand that all was lost? He apologised and announced that he had to check the dessert.

‘At such a late hour?’ Blum said, looking at the front door.

‘We were supposed to have had, as it were, a cake,’ Thomas said, babbling.

Where was Clarissa?

Erika gave him a pleading look not to leave her alone with Blum. But he couldn’t stay and watch her clinging to a vain hope that he himself had planted in her. He gaped at a blank spot on the wall, announced that they would be serving dessert immediately and hurried out.

As he wandered among the rooms, half-listening to Erika’s voice, he realised how fateful this struggle to get her out of Germany was for him: in part he was struggling to erase the things he had said to her about ‘losing the magic touch’, seeking desperately for proof that Thomas Heiselberg was still a master tactician in the corridors of Berlin. Maybe not like in the past, but he still knew how to arrange deals and astonish people with his ability to cut through the most complicated issues.

Erika was saying something about her driver’s licence and a law that forbade her to walk in certain streets. How many damned stories did she have left? All he wanted now was to escape her voice. In the background Blum was cursing the Jews from Eastern Europe. From the moment they had began to show up here, en masse, something bad was going to happen.

Clarissa wasn’t in his room or anywhere else. Now he understood where she was. He rushed back to the parlour again, taking care not to look at Blum and Erika, and walked through it and then down the corridor to that room. A freezing wind blew through the broken window. Clarissa lay in her dress and shoes on his mother’s bed. A heavy blanket was spread over her lower body. How many times had he spread that blanket over his mother, exactly there? There was the sound of hoarse breathing, and he saw the slow movement of her chest. The dress was pressing on her. Maybe he should undo a button or two. And if she woke up? To his surprise, he was not irritated by her disappearance or her invasion of his mother’s bed. He was not the kind of man to build a shrine to a dead woman. Every time he heard women gushing over the rumour that Göring had built a temple for his first wife, he felt shame that a man like that could rise so high in Germany.

Maybe Clarissa’s boldness promised a change for the better. If his most alarming capacity, the quality that defined him during an attack, was to snuff the life out of things, perhaps this young woman would lead him in another direction. Even in a room containing only a bed and a shattered window she made a youthful spirit glow in him. He suddenly wanted this sleeping beauty, wanted to have her, to keep her in his possession. It appeared that he had finally met with something that he couldn’t dispatch to death with a single gesture.

…

The next morning there was a commotion when he got to the office. The receptionist greeted him in tears, and Carlson’s young assistant sneaked away, pretending not to see Thomas. He went to Carlson’s office, and was astonished to find Frau Tschammer sitting in his chair, shuffling through his papers. It was clear that disaster had struck.

‘Thomas!’ She stood up. There was a ripple of panic in her voice. ‘Mailer has gone to New York. He didn’t say when he was coming back.’

She was staring at him. In the end, even Frau Tschammer believed in his talent, in his storied reputation: if the staff at Milton encountered an abyss, before anyone could even think of moving, Thomas would have already have leaped into it and, God knows how, landed on his feet. He would blaze a trail across it, and everyone would follow.

Thomas didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t summon the strength to trade barbs or make toxic small talk with Frau Tschammer. It was all pointless now. After all, collapse was a simple matter.

‘Frau Tschammer,’ he said, ‘the Milton Company is liquidating its business in Germany. And if we had been brave enough to examine things as they truly were, we would have seen it coming long ago.’