‘Very substantially. I am probably paying your salary, my dear,’ he said.
There’s something here that I’m missing, thought Alice, and said, ‘Why would you invest in a film studio? It’s a risky business at the best of times.’
‘I was curious about you,’ said Leo Dreyer, and Alice thought, nonsense. You never possessed such an emotion as curiosity in your life!
After a moment, she said, politely, ‘Weren’t you content with merely spreading rumours that I spied for the Nazis?’ and saw him smile slightly.
‘What a hell-cat you are,’ he said softly.
‘You did spread them though, didn’t you? Those stories?’
‘Things have a way of getting out,’ he said, off handedly. ‘Did you know that Nina died last year?’
‘I didn’t know. I’m very sorry,’ said Alice after a moment.
‘She committed suicide.’
‘That’s extremely sad. A very great waste of a life.’
‘You were the one who caused the waste,’ he said. ‘You began it – you and Conrad.’ The smile was suddenly and eerily the one from Auschwitz and from Kristallnacht, and Alice stared at him in dawning horror. Leo Dreyer had not come to England – to Ashwood – for her; he considered that he had redressed the balance with her in the camps. And although he had sent Conrad – the faithless lover, the betrayer – into Dachau, Conrad had spent the years with his beloved music, and Dreyer had known that. And now Conrad was out in the world again, and looking set to become successful all over again. Dreyer must have felt cheated; he must have felt that Conrad had in some way eluded the punishment he had intended. A tiny part of Alice’s mind wondered why Dreyer had not taken the opportunity to deal with Conrad while he was held in Dachau, but the Nazis had worked on the closed-cell principle – each camp had been a unit unto itself, and unless Dreyer had had friends in Dachau as he had had in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, he might have found it difficult to penetrate the bureaucratic regime.
Had Dreyer known Conrad would be here today? Had he fixed the date of this visit deliberately? But whatever the truth, the two of them must not be allowed to meet, and Dreyer must be got out of Ashwood as quickly as possible. Alice began to say that they could not talk here where anyone might burst in unannounced, when, as if in response to this, the door was pushed open. Alice and Leo Dreyer turned to see Alraune standing in the doorway.
His appearance ought not to have been so startling and so instantly frightening, and the room ought not to have filled up with such choking menace.
But Alraune’s face was sheet-white and his eyes – monstrous, swollen insect-eyes, like demon’s eyes staring out of hell’s caverns – blazed with hatred. Alice saw at once that he knew who Dreyer was: that he recognized him as the man who had dragged the two of them out of the stone wash-house that day, and who had carried Alraune across the compound at Auschwitz and sat by him in Mengele’s grisly surgery. Of course he remembers him, thought Alice, horrified. If ever Alraune was to remember anyone from those years, it would be Leo Dreyer.
Hatred and fury were pouring into the room: Alice could feel them, and she could feel Dreyer’s fear, as well. He’s afraid of a child, she thought incredulously. He’s not afraid because of what Alraune knows about him: he’s afraid of the black malevolence in Alraune’s eyes. For a dreadful moment something she had not known she possessed gripped her, and she thought: let him suffer that fear. Let him experience sheer stark terror, just for a few moments, and let him have a taste of what we all endured during those years.