The House of Rumour A Novel

4

the emperor





I know too much. My thoughts are dangerous to others. I read somewhere once that radio waves are never lost but fly up from the world and travel forever through space. Maybe thoughts do this too. Maybe these dangerous thoughts will somehow transmit themselves and you will receive them, whoever you are. So I call upon you, witness from some other time and place: my name is Hans Brauer, remember me. I offer you this precious information for your safe keeping. Do not let it fall into the wrong hands.

Where to begin? There is so little time. The whole story of how I first became involved with the Circle would take too long. I will start from the morning of 28 April 1941. Three days ago.

White blossom was falling from the trees in the park as I walked to the university. I recall a sense of indignation that spring would dare show its face in this godforsaken country. And a feeling of dread. Even nature has its propaganda, its scattered leaflets of lies and deceit. I knew the truth then: that white flowers are flowers for the dead.

I met Kurt in the atrium and we discussed our essays set by Professor Dietrich on the great romantic Heinrich von Kleist. I, like most of the class, had concentrated on his epic play Die Hermannsschlact with its depiction of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the glorious historical victory of our German race. I had written an appallingly crass tract on national destiny and the sacrifice of the individual in the service of the Volk. But then I needed to appear to be a good student and a diligent National Socialist. Kurt, on the other hand, always seemed determined to be reckless.

He had instead chosen an obscure work for his critique and one not on the official reading list. ‘On the Marionette Theatre’, Kurt explained to me as we made our way to class, was a curious philosophical treatise by Kleist in the form of an ironic dialogue. In it one of the interlocutors asserts the astonishing notion that grace appears in a purely bodily form only in a being that either has no consciousness at all or an infinite one: that is to say, either in a puppet or a god.

In class, after a brief and sombre discussion on the romantic tradition, Kurt began loudly to argue Kleist’s strange observations on the excellent quality of ‘lifeless, pure pendulums governed only by the laws of gravity’. Mankind’s fall from grace, he went on, was in its consciousness, and the effect of eating from the tree of knowledge has made us clumsy and full of self-doubt. I felt sorry for Professor Dietrich as he attempted to steer the debate into more orthodox waters. He has already been denounced for allowing ‘degenerate’ ideas to be discussed in his department and it seemed obvious to me that Kurt was using this obscure work as a satire on the vain ideals of classicism. But most of the class appeared merely confused by his arguments.

They imagined him as a harmless fool but I knew Kurt to be fiercely intelligent (though he always tended to get carried away with wild imaginings). He had become my closest companion since my brother Ernst was taken from us.

‘Behold our puppet utopia, Hans,’ he said to me afterwards as we watched a squad of the National Socialist Students Association march out to the playing fields.

‘You should be more careful, Kurt,’ I chided him. ‘Talk like that can get you into trouble.’

‘Only a god can be equal to inanimate matter,’ he told me. ‘That’s what Kleist was really getting at, that we need to go all the way. We’ve left the Garden and the door is barred behind us, but if we make the journey all the way around the world maybe we will find an entrance at the back of Paradise. We must go on to absolute understanding.’

‘You mean that we must eat again from the tree of knowledge to regain our innocence?’

‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Kleist says that when that happens it will be the final chapter in the history of the world. And “On the Marionette Theatre” was his last work. A year later he shot himself and his lover on the banks of the Wannsee.’

‘Kurt.’ I lowered my voice and with a nod beckoned to my friend to bring his face close to mine. ‘Do you really believe that we live in a puppet’s utopia?’

He grinned, as if relishing a sense of intimacy and intrigue.

‘Oh yes!’ he whispered, his eyes darting to and fro.

‘And what if there were people secretly working against it?’

Kurt giggled.

‘Not you, Hans, surely?’

‘What if I was?’

His face froze into a solemn mask.

‘Hans,’ he muttered, ‘I hate this wretched state of life. I wish I could find the back door to Paradise.’

‘Then join us.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll explain tomorrow. I’ll come to your apartment.’

I left Kurt and made my way to the Mühlbergers for my violin lesson. I brooded on Heinrich von Kleist’s suicide pact. I think I mused on how sweet it would be to find someone whom one loved so much that one could die with them. I certainly feel that now. With somebody else to go with, death might not be such a cold and lonely business.

Heinz Mühlberger was a teacher and an amateur-theatre director, his wife Elsa a musician. It was my brother Ernst who first got to know them before the war, when he was in their drama group. Ernst served in Poland and came back on leave with terrible stories that he could not tell our parents as they simply would not believe him. So he discussed what he had seen with the Mühlbergers and, as he confided to them his growing sense of anger and disaffection, it soon became clear that the couple were part of a clandestine network of resistance known as the Circle.

‘Imagine a pebble dropped in a pond,’ Elsa told him. ‘It might make only a ripple but its circle expands and communicates with others.’

Ernst joined them and soon recruited me. He arranged violin lessons for me with Elsa Mühlberger as a cover so I could be used as a courier, with a false compartment in my violin case to carry messages, even anti-government leaflets. Ernst was killed in action in France last spring.

When I arrived at the Mühlbergers they were preparing a surprise for their son Melchior’s sixth birthday the next day. In a corner of the living room they were arranging a collection of tiny painted wooden animals. With green felt they had fashioned fields dotted with little trees of coloured paper. A hand mirror served as a pond for a family of miniature ducks, above which hung a mobile of the moon and stars attached to the ceiling.

The Circle had been in crisis since last summer. Every new German victory proved us wrong. All of our secret protestations against fascism seemed useless as it marched on in its unending parade of success. We had all but given up producing anti-government leaflets and instead concentrated on developing communications within our own group and with other anti-fascist networks that were supposed to exist. We were also gathering intelligence that we might pass on. Heinz Mühlberger made contact with a man connected to the Russian embassy with the code name Nebula. There were even rumours of approaches to the Circle from the British Secret Service. But the possibility of involvement in espionage only accelerated the sense of fear and desperation among us.

The Mühlbergers argued in whispers as Heinz painstakingly herded model pigs into a cardboard farmyard. How can we trust the Soviets since Stalin made his devil’s pact with Hitler? What if the British are secretly negotiating a peace with Germany? Heinz looked up at me.

‘Hans, we need you to run an errand.’

‘We shouldn’t involve him in this,’ Elsa protested. ‘He should be trying to organise the students. They’re the future.’

‘I think I’m about to recruit one of my fellows,’ I told her.

‘That’s good.’

‘But I’m not scared of carrying out actions for the Circle.’

‘Elsa, you know we can’t go ourselves.’

‘But—’

‘What is this errand, anyway?’ I asked.

Heinz beckoned me closer and told me of a woman with a message from British Intelligence, who wanted to work with the Circle and its contacts. She had information to prove that this proposition was genuine.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Elsa murmured as she carefully placed in position a farmhouse fashioned from a box that had once contained sugar lumps.

‘Her name is Astrid Nagengast.’ Heinz gave me an address to memorise for the following evening. ‘Be careful.’ He smiled. ‘She’s a fortune-teller.’

When I got home my stupid parents were huddled around the wireless, the cheap little ‘people’s radio’ with its dial restricted to approved stations and its big round speaker that every household secretly knows as the ‘Goebbels-snout’. Fanfares preceded the announcement of the German army’s march into Athens. As I crept past, my father stood up and grabbed my arm.

‘Hear that?’ he declared, a fat tear rolling down his face. ‘England is finished! We’ll soon have vengeance for our Ernst.’

Next day when I told Kurt that I had to postpone our meeting until later that evening he became suspicious and provocative.

‘Are you on a secret mission?’

‘Please, Kurt, don’t make foolish jokes.’

‘Maybe you just don’t want to see me.’

‘Of course I do. We’ll talk later.’

Astrid Nagengast had a sharp face and bright eyes, with a mass of silver ringlets scattered across a high, proud forehead. It was hard to tell how old she was. Fifty? Sixty, even? What was certain was the striking elegance and vitality in her looks and demeanour. Age is life, the only real proof of it. Youth always seems closer to death, I thought, recalling the fallen blossom of the day before.

‘Do you know what you’ve come to collect?’ she asked me as she showed me into a small study cluttered with books and peculiar objects.

‘No.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s a simple thing, foolproof. It shouldn’t put you in any danger.’

There was an African mask on one wall, a chart of the zodiac on another. Above a desk littered with papers and curios hung an etching of some alchemical diagram. I looked around, wide-eyed.

‘Esoteric knowledge,’ she said with a smile. ‘Nothing to be afraid of.’

‘Are you really a fortune-teller?’

‘Well, one has to be careful. There’s been something of a clampdown in the past few years. It’s completely illegal in Berlin. I’m a voice teacher mostly. And a breath therapist, but I still have plenty of psychic consultations. If anything, there’s been a rise in demand.’

‘What?’

‘For astrologers, clairvoyants. The future has become a serious business lately. For example, so many people wanted to know when the time was right, you know, to leave.’

‘You mean Jews?’

‘Jews, yes, and others. Most of us left it too late.’ She sighed. ‘And there are the others who believe in it. I’ve had army officers as clients, worried about upcoming campaigns. It’s been amazing how many secrets they’ve let slip. Plenty of the higher-ups are superstitious too. We can use that against them. And they’ve had fortune on their side for so long, they’re scared that their luck is about to change. Well, it is.’

She opened a drawer in her desk, took something out and handed it to me. It was some strange kind of playing card. I looked at it. In profile a crowned and bethroned man held a sceptre and at his side was a golden shield emblazoned with an imperial eagle. The face of the figure was slightly smudged. At the top of the card was the number IV, at the bottom the legend: L’EMPEREUR.

‘That’s the message you’re to take to the Circle. It proves we’re acting in good faith.’

‘It’s a code?’

‘Yes. And if your friends are able to understand it, then it will in turn give us proof of the Circle’s operational status. In itself it’s a harmless token. If you get stopped and asked about it just say you found it in the street. Tell your friends that we need to pass something on to a contact in the Deputy Führer’s office.’

‘Another card?’

‘You’re a clever boy. There’ll be something else, too. But the cards are a good basic cypher. They’re a memory system. You’d better go now, you know far too much already.’

I called at Kurt’s flat on my way home. He lived in a fifth-storey apartment with a small balcony. Here we could converse freely, away from the anxious family table, far above the fear-haunted streets.

I talked about what had happened with my brother Ernst: how he had realised that the war was wrong, that everything the party said was a lie. I told him how Ernst had joined the Circle through the Mühlbergers and how I had become involved. Kurt shuddered when I told him about the atrocities Ernst had witnessed in Poland.

‘With so much of hell in the world,’ said Kurt, ‘there must be a heaven somewhere.’

‘We have to work for it,’ I told him. ‘For peace. For justice. There’s a group of us. Will you work with us?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can hardly believe it, Hans. Is this real?’

‘Of course.’

‘But this evening, for example. You said you had to go somewhere, some secret mission or other. How do I know that it’s not all some sort of made-up story?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘I don’t know. It could be a trick. Or a trap.’

‘Kurt, really.’

‘Look, Hans, this is treason you’re asking me to get involved in.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then trust me. Show me something so that I know this isn’t just a game.’

I took out the playing card from my violin case and held it up. I explained to him that it contained a message.

‘How marvellous,’ said Kurt. ‘A code. Have you worked out what it means?’

‘Of course not. I’m simply meant to pass it on.’

‘Let me see it.’

He took it from me.

‘It’s some sort of trump card,’ he said.

‘It’s a memory system.’

‘Yes,’ Kurt squinted at it. ‘Number four, L’Empereur. The clue could be in the number and the arrangement of letters. Or in the image itself. The Holy Roman Emperor.’

‘Kurt, I don’t think we should be doing this. I’m just the messenger.’

‘See? The face has been marked. There’s a blot of red ink. Maybe that’s been deliberately added. It’s around the chin. The emperor with the bloodstained mouth. The bloodthirsty emperor?’

‘I’d better put it back.’

‘Of course!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘It’s the beard. See? The beard was white but it’s been coloured in. The emperor with the red beard. It’s Barbarossa!’

Of course we knew of Barbarossa, Emperor Frederick I who reigned in the second half of the twelfth century. We had often been told by our history teachers that it was Barbarossa who first established the German people as the true heirs of Roman imperial power. And there were many legends about him.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Is it true that he sleeps with his knights beneath Mount Kyffhausen?’

‘How can he be there when he drowned in a river in Asia Minor on his way to the Third Crusade?’ Kurt retorted. ‘But it’s said that it was not just a crusade that took him east. He was looking for the land of Prester John.’

‘Prester John?’

‘Yes, you know, the mythical Christian ruler of a lost kingdom beyond the infidels. There had long been rumours of him, but then Emperor Barbarossa actually received a letter from this Prester John, telling of his enchanted land with many wonders and strange creatures in it. Dog-headed men, boar-tusked women, giants and griffins. A wondrous fantasy world, beyond known space and time!’

Kurt was becoming quite animated, waving his hands around as if conjuring up a vision.

‘It was like a report from another planet. Full of monsters and miraculous devices. Most wonderful of all was the promise that beyond the realm of Prester John lay an earthly paradise. That Eden yet exists as a Garden of Earthly Delights. One legend of Barbarossa has it that Emperor Frederick did not die but found his lost paradise and lived on for many years in a luxurious palace surrounded by beautiful gardens. As in Kleist’s essay, he went around the world and found a way back to Eden.’

‘To utopia.’

‘Yes!’ His eyes were wide and bright. ‘Wouldn’t that be precious? Oh! What could be better than imagining strange new lands, to forget the dreadful one we live in?’

‘Oh Kurt, you’re such a dreamer.’

‘So? Isn’t this Circle of yours supposed to be fighting for a dream?’

‘Yes, but not a fantasy.’

‘Why not?’

I took the card from him.

‘I’d better be getting back.’

‘You think I’m silly, don’t you, Hans?’

‘No. Why do you say that?’

‘Oh, everybody does. And I can see it in your face, too. I’m sorry if you think that I’m silly. I want to be serious. I want to get involved.’

‘That’s good. But, you know, we mustn’t draw attention to ourselves.’

‘I know. I wish it was just our secret, Hans.’

‘That wouldn’t be much good.’

‘Our own private conspiracy. We could become blood brothers. We could do it now. I’ll get a knife and we can swear an oath to each other.’

‘That’s enough, Kurt!’

I snapped my violin case shut and stood up.

‘Please don’t be angry with me, Hans.’

‘I’m not,’ I protested, even though I was. ‘It’s just that what we are doing is so dangerous. If any of us get caught it means the People’s Court. The guillotine.’

I noted the look of fear in Kurt’s eyes at this, and at that moment I was glad. I felt then he needed to be shocked into reality. I wish I hadn’t done that now.

I left his apartment and made my way back home. As I crept upstairs the radio howled in the living room. A broadcast of a party rally, waves of applause like the drone of a swarm. I felt that I really didn’t understand people at all. I felt a lonely desire to get away, to be on my own on some wide and desolate plain.

The following day I looked for Kurt at the university but I couldn’t find him. I wanted to talk with him, to apologise for losing my temper. Elsa Mühlberger was right: it was essential to find a way of making contact with more students willing to be part of a resistance network. I was thinking of the future, though I had grim forebodings about it.

When I arrived at the Mühlbergers’ to deliver the message, I knew something was wrong. Their front door was open and I could hear strange voices coming from their apartment. I turned on my heel and headed back to the staircase but a man in a leather coat blocked my path.

‘Not so fast, son,’ he told me as he grabbed me by the arm. ‘I think you’d better come with me.’

He pulled me along into the Mühlbergers’. Their flat was being ransacked, books pulled off the shelves, papers scattered everywhere. A tall, sad-eyed man stood in the corner watching. I was dragged over to him.

‘What do we have here, Krebs?’ the man asked in a soft voice.

‘Found him outside, sir.’

‘Inspector Glockner, Geheime Staatspolizei,’ he announced, showing his identity badge with a flourish. ‘Let me see your papers, young man.’

I handed them to him.

‘And what is your relationship to Heinz and Elsa Mühlberger?’

I explained about the violin lessons, holding up my case for him to see.

‘Open it. Ah, yes! What a beautiful instrument. Frau Mühlberger taught you, yes? You know that the Mühlbergers have been taken into protective custody? Hmm, why not play us something?’

‘What?’

‘A little demonstration. Something you’ve been learning.’

I took the violin out and put it under my chin. I tightened the bow, tuned the strings. I felt sick.

‘Please,’ Inspector Glockner entreated with a smile.

I played ‘Song of the Morning Star’ from Tannhaüser, an appropriate piece that I had up my sleeve for such an eventuality. I scraped the first notes badly. Then I tried to relax, remembering what Elsa Mühlberger had told me about not exerting too much control, of letting go of the bow action. As if any of it mattered. But fear had this strange effect, giving me just the right balance between concentration and surrender. I was in a trance, as the words of the aria whispered in my ear: like a portent of death, twilight shrouds the earth. The soul, which yearns for those heights, dreads to take its dark and awful flight. A star points the way out from the valley.

‘Wonderful,’ said Glockner, when I finished. ‘Don’t you think that was wonderful, Krebs?’

His henchman grunted. Glockner had gone to stand in the corner where the Mühlbergers had made the model farm for little Melchior. He beckoned me over.

‘Rather pretty, isn’t it?’ he said, picking up a model cow and holding it up to a mournful eye.

The Gestapo had by now turned the Mühlbergers’ place upside down. Order remained only in the toyland they had lovingly constructed for their son. Perhaps they had made it for themselves, too. Knowing that they were doomed, they had regained a moment’s paradise, a tiny world hidden in the vast and cruel universe.

‘Did you know that the Mühlbergers were communists?’ Inspector Glockner demanded, his voice at once harsh and official.

‘No.’

‘Traitors, subversives, enemy spies. And are you one of them?’

‘No. No, sir.’

‘What do you think, Krebs?’ He shot a glance at his man.

Krebs shrugged. Glockner smiled.

‘I think we should let him go,’ the inspector went on. ‘For now. On your way, young man.’

He handed me back my papers. I went down to the street, breathless, my heart fluttering like a trapped bird in my ribcage. Thoughts came quickly, stacking up in my mind. The Mühlbergers interrogated, tortured. Names named. How long before mine came up? Did they already know? I kept looking over my shoulder, feeling the shadow of something behind me. Now I was imagining that I was being followed. I was going mad. I looked back again. But yes, there really was somebody after me. That was the game. Cat and mouse. The Gestapo would let me go and have me tailed to see who I’d lead them to. I’d already thought of Kurt, that I should warn him. Poor Kurt, caught up in all this, scarcely knowing what he was getting into. Yet I was the only one who could implicate him. How much could I bear before I betrayed him? I tried to clear my head, to stop thinking these horrible thoughts. I would go home. Home, yes. A moment of calm. Home. But what then? What would happen when they came for me there? What would my parents think? Their own son a traitor. It would kill my mother.

Footsteps were close behind. I picked up my pace.

‘Wait,’ came a voice and a hand clawed at my elbow.

I tried to shake him off. I’d had quite enough of being manhandled. But he clung on to me tightly.

‘Wait, you little fool,’ came the voice again, a harsh whisper at the back of my neck. ‘In here.’

He pulled me into an alleyway. He seemed terrifically strong and agile, though in the shadows I saw that he was shorter and thinner than I was. He looked me up and down as if trying to decide something.

‘Do you know who squealed on your friends?’ he asked me.

I shook my head.

‘Maybe they gave themselves away,’ he went on. ‘Bloody amateurs. You’d better come with me.’

‘Who are you?’ I asked him.

‘You can call me Nebula.’

We took a tram to a shabby district of warehouses and run-down tenements. I followed him into a boarding house that smelt of carbolic and boiled cabbage. We came to a door on the first floor and he rapped a swift tattoo on it with his knuckles. It opened an inch or two. I thought I spotted a pair of eyes surveying us from the gloom. Nebula murmured something and all at once the portal opened wide to swallow us up.

‘Who’s this?’ the man demanded as he slammed the door behind us.

‘One of the Circle,’ Nebula replied.

The blinds were drawn and it took me a while to adjust my vision to the half-darkness. The occupant of the room was thickset with a pudgy face. He made a derisive sniff in my direction, pouting his lips.

‘Christ, a schoolkid,’ he muttered.

‘This is Starshine,’ Nebula told me. ‘He’s a comrade.’

‘Are you part of the Circle?’

Starshine laughed.

‘No, kid, we’re with the band.’

‘The band?’

‘The Orchestra. That’s what Fatherland calls us. The Red Orchestra. Speaking of which, what’s in here?’ Starshine took my violin case from me. ‘Let me guess, you use this to carry messages, right?’

‘You work for the Soviets?’ I asked them.

‘Well, since Motherland made this cosy little pact with Fatherland we’ve been on short time,’ said Nebula.

‘Watch what you say in front of the kid,’ said Starshine.

He had put my case on the bed and taken the violin out of it. He pulled out the bow, checked the little compartment for the chin-pad and rosin.

‘Here.’ I took it from him and pressed the bottom lining until it came away, revealing a small space with the playing card in it.

‘Nice,’ said Nebula, taking out the card. ‘What’s this?’

‘Is that a message from the fortune-teller?’ Starshine asked me.

I nodded.

‘See?’ Nebula held it up for his comrade to squint at it in the gloom. Starshine studied the card for a moment.

‘They know the code word then,’ he said.

‘That’s proof that British Intelligence know about Directive 21.’

‘What are they telling us for?’

‘They’ve cracked Fatherland’s codes and want to pass on information to Motherland through our channels.’

‘Yeah, but why would they want to do that?’

‘So that Fatherland won’t know that the British have broken their cyphers. They’ll think that Motherland got this information from its own sources.’

‘Yeah, but maybe it’s not information at all. Maybe it’s disinformation.’

‘Oh for f*ck’s sake! Enough of this. Everybody knows what’s going to happen. There’s been one intelligence report after another, all with the same conclusions; now this, and still the bastard won’t believe it!’

‘Careful what you say, comrade.’

‘I bet even this little f*cker knows.’ Nebula turned to me and held up the Emperor card. ‘You. What does this mean?’

I shrugged. ‘Er, Barbarossa?’

‘See? Even this amateur resistance cell knows.’

‘Yeah but they’re rife with bourgeois tendencies, they can’t be trusted.’

‘All hell is about to break lose in the East and Stalin does nothing.’

‘Whatever happens, the Red Army will hold.’

‘Hold what? Its bollocks? Its entire officer corps has been purged out of existence. And, not content with that, he’s dismantled what was left of our intelligence network. Just to keep Fatherland happy.’

‘I’m telling you, all this talk of invasion could be British counter-intelligence,’ Starshine insisted. ‘They want to drag us into their imperialist war. There was something else that was to come with this message, wasn’t there?’

He turned and grabbed hold of my collar.

‘What?’ I protested. I was having trouble keeping up with what they were saying. It seemed some strange game and yet I somehow knew that it was all concerned with something cataclysmic.

‘What else did the fortune-teller say?’ Starshine demanded, giving me a little shake.

‘I don’t know. Something about a contact in the Deputy Führer’s office.’

He pushed me away. ‘Well, we know what that means.’

‘Do we?’ asked Nebula.

‘Peace feelers. They’re everywhere. In Lisbon, in Madrid. In Switzerland. There are Abwehr reports that the British government is on the verge of collapse and is ready to make terms in secret.’

‘Well, that’s more likely to be the work of British counter-intelligence, isn’t it? To persuade Fatherland that the war in the West is nearly won and that it can turn its attention elsewhere.’

‘Perhaps.’ Starshine nodded. ‘Perhaps. But what if the British really do want to make peace?’

Nebula sighed.

‘Then we’re f*cked.’

‘Well, we’re finished here,’ said Starshine. ‘Looks like this Circle is being wiped up. What do we do with this one?’

He made a terse nod in my direction.

‘I don’t know,’ Nebula mumbled, as if to himself.

‘We can’t leave him behind. He knows too much.’

The two men exchanged a glance of some shared and dark meaning. In the gloom I saw it as a combination of a grimace and a tilt of the head. Starshine touched his throat gently.

‘No,’ said Nebula.

‘It’s a security matter.’

‘F*ck that.’

‘Remember your training.’

‘My training?’ Nebula retorted scathingly. ‘Listen, comrade, I’ve been working underground for nearly twenty years. My school has been the life of a militant. Organising in Poland in the twenties. Fighting the colonialists in Palestine. Setting up fronts for the party all over Europe. That’s been my konspiratsia, chum. Experiences worth more than all of the espionage courses in the world. Solidarity: it’s what the struggle’s all about. I say we take this one with us.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. The Corridor can take one more. Who knows, he might come in useful.’

‘Then he’s your responsibility. You organise it.’

‘Fine.’

Starshine lit a cigarette and lay on the bed blowing smoke at the ceiling. Nebula explained to me that they were going to take me over the Swiss border with them.

‘How?’

‘Let me worry about that.’

He walked over to a dresser by the bed, pulled out a drawer, took something out and put it in his pocket.

‘I’ll go and see Schmidt,’ he told Starshine, who grunted in acknowledgement. ‘You stay here,’ he said to me.

I found a chair and sat down. Starshine stubbed out his cigarette and rolled over on to his side. All the light slowly bled out of the room. I took off my jacket and rolled it up for a pillow. Curling up on the floor I tried to sleep.

I was prodded awake by Nebula’s foot sometime around dawn. A pale light leaked around the edges of the blinds. Starshine was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking.

‘We’re moving this afternoon,’ said Nebula.

I yawned and rubbed my face.

‘What about . . .’

‘Your family?’ Nebula read the thought. ‘You can’t go back. Even to say goodbye. Your name might have come up by now.’

‘I could see a friend.’

‘Someone in the Circle? Forget it. It’s too dangerous.’

‘No. He’s not even connected.’

I was thinking of Kurt, that I should warn him. When I explained to Nebula he sighed.

‘Be quick about it, then. And make sure nobody else sees you.’

It was still early so I decided that the best thing to do was to lie in wait for Kurt as he left his apartment to go to the university. There was a wild look about his eyes when he saw that it was me coming after him.

‘Hans!’

I put a finger to my mouth.

‘Keep quiet, Kurt. Please.’

‘I didn’t know what happened to you,’ he whispered.

‘Quick. We need to find a place to talk.’

‘Then come back to my place. Mother and Father have already left for work.’

I sat on the couch in the living room as Kurt brewed tea and made toast in the kitchen. I tried to relax, but my whole body seemed twisted up from my night on the floor. I stood up and stretched. I caught my reflection in a gilt-framed looking-glass over the mantelpiece. My face was ashen, one side of my hair flattened into an absurd crest. Kurt entered and, laying the breakfast things down, came to stand next to me in front of the mirror.

‘Dear Hans,’ he said, putting an arm around me. ‘Try not to look so gloomy.’

‘I came to warn you, Kurt.’

I told him about the Mühlbergers and that I was leaving the country. I didn’t say where I was going.

‘Yes. You take action bravely. But what does your other self do?’

He pointed to the image in the glass.

‘There is a magic mirror in Prester John’s enchanted kingdom, in which distant objects and events appear. Other realities, too, so we see what might have happened. Here we all are, after all. The four of us together. You and me and me and you.’

Kurt let out a peculiar giggle. Dizzy with fatigue and hunger, I turned to look at him. There was an absent quality in his gaze; his eyes seemed to focus on something beyond.

‘Whatever we do as one person, it is as though all of us have done it. Do you think that paradise can really exist on earth, like the communists say?’

‘I don’t know, Kurt. You must be careful how you talk about things.’

I sat down and took a sip of tea. I began to devour the toast. I was ravenous.

‘I know now what the Emperor card meant, Hans. It was a sign.’

‘You really must forget about all that now,’ I mumbled through a mouthful of bread.

‘It is the token of earthly power,’ he went on. ‘We must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. In this life.’

I had soon finished off my little breakfast. I fell back against the softness of the couch and let out a long yawn.

‘In our other life,’ Kurt continued, ‘we render to God what is God’s.’

I rested my head and closed my eyes. I just needed a short nap. Then I’d be ready. As I drifted off Kurt came over and gently stroked my brow.

‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘Rest. Sleep. Sleep and have your dreams.’

I was in the court of Barbarossa, paying homage to the great Emperor. A scribe was reading out a list from Prester John’s letter, a bestiary of exotic species: hippopotami, crocodiles, methagallinnari, camethernis, thinsiretae, panthers, aurochs, white and red lions, silent cicadas, wild men, horned men, fauns, satyrs, pigmies, giants whose height is forty cubits, one-eyed men, a bird that is called the phoenix, and almost all kinds of animals that are under heaven. Barbarossa pointed down at me, demanding to know what kind of creature I was. ‘He is with the Red Orchestra, sire,’ it was announced. The Emperor stroked his crimson beard thoughtfully. Then he looked at his hand in horror. It was covered in blood.

I came to with a start, that sensation of a sudden fall. I knew at once that something was wrong. Footfalls in the hallway, muffled voices. Kurt was saying something hushed and urgent. As I stood up he came into the room. Behind him was Inspector Glockner, the Gestapo officer I had met at the Mühlbergers’.

I called out Kurt’s name.

‘I’m sorry, Hans. But you did warn me.’

‘What?’

‘When you talked of the People’s Court, the guillotine. I couldn’t let that happen to us. They said they wouldn’t punish me, Hans. If I told them all I knew. It’ll be the same for you. They promised.’

‘It’s true, young man,’ said Glockner. ‘Work for us like he has. It’s the only way.’

I looked at Kurt.

‘You informed on the Mühlbergers?’

‘At first I was just scared out of my wits. Then I realised that by betraying them here I would be setting them free in the other world. I’m just a puppet after all, Hans. But we have to go all the way. Through the whole world and all its secrets. Know everything. Tell everything. Absolute understanding. Maybe the way to heaven is through hell. And there we’ll find the back entrance to paradise.’

I let Kurt approach me. As he came close I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pushed him hard. He fell back against Glockner and in a tangle they toppled to the floor. I turned and made for the French windows that led out onto the balcony.

So these are my last thoughts. I’m on the ledge. Glockner approaches, a look of professional concern on his face. For a moment I imagine that I see something more: true compassion in those sad eyes of his. I remember the words of the song that I played for him.

‘Be sensible,’ he implores me. ‘Please. You’re a young soul, led astray by degenerates. Listen to your friend and save yourself.’

But I know too much. My thoughts are dangerous to others. I entrust them to you, witness from the future. Take care of my memory.

Five storeys up, I conjure thoughts of escape, of being lifted up somehow. An aria. The soul, which yearns for those heights, dreads to take its dark and awful flight. The evening star might point the way. But I think of the fallen blossom in the park. A brief shoot of life, of youth, of death. That is enough, surely. In a moment it will all be over.