In the Evil Day

thoughts had often turned to his great-aunt Pauline. His first memories of her were when he was eight or nine. She was always very old in his mind, thin, wiry, always in grey, a shade of grey, high collars, strong grey hair, straight hair, severely cut. She smoked cigarillos in a holder. He had no memory of making the recordings. They had come from San Francisco, four tapes in a box with other tapes.

He pressed the Play button. Hissing, then the voice of great-aunt Pauline.

Of course this house has seem terrible arguments.

Then his young voice.

What about?

Oh, business, how to run the business. Times were difficult before the war. And about the Nazis, Hitler.

Who argued about Hitler?

Your grandfather and your great-grandfather. With Moritz.

I don’t know anything about Moritz.

There was a long silence before Pauline spoke again.

Moritz was so foolish. But he looked like an angel, lovely hair, so blond, he had the face of Count Haubold von Einsiedel, you know the portrait?

No, I don’t know it.

The von Rayski portrait? Of course you do, everyone does. I remember one particularly awful evening. We were having a sherry before dinner, we always did, I was fourteen when I was included, just a thimbleful of an old manzanilla fino. Hold it to the light, my father said. See pleasure in a glass. I did. I went to that window, it was summer. They seemed to last much longer then, summers, we had better summers. Much better, much longer.

Another silence.

When was that?

When?

The awful evening.

Oh, I suppose it would have been in ’35 or ’36. Soon after Stuart’s death. Stuart never wanted to be in commerce but he had no choice. Eldest sons were expected to go into the firm. I don’t know what he wanted to do. Except paint and ski. But his family, well, they were like ours. Two weeks in Garmisch, they thought that was quite enough relaxation for a year. Anselms had dealt with Armitages for many years, more than a hundred, I suppose. Many, many years. My father used to say we were married to the Armitages long before I married Stuart. He was at Oxford with Stuart’s father. They all did law. That was what you did. Of course, the families had almost been joined before. My aunt Cecile was engaged to an Armitage, I forget his name, Henry, yes. Henry, he was killed in the Great War.

The awful evening.

What?

The evening of the terrible argument.

What did I say about that?

Nothing.

Yes. Let’s talk about something else.

She talked about her childhood, about rowing on the Alster, birthdays, grand parties, dinners.

We always went to the New Year’s Eve ball at the Atlantic. So glamorous.Everyone was there. They had kangaroo tail soup on the menu on New Year’s Eve in 1940. That was the first time I went after Stuart’s death. Also the last year we went. I went with Frans Erdmann, he was a doctor. Much younger than I was.He died at Stalingrad.

After eight, he left for work, closed the massive front door behind him. The temple of memory, he said to himself. The only memory missing is mine.

6

…HAMBURG…

ANSELM WALKED along the misty lake shore carrying his running gear in a sports bag. His knees were getting worse and his right hip hurt, but he ran home on most days. The long route on good ones, the slightly shorter one on others. The number of others was increasing.

Today, Baader was coming from the opposite direction, every inch a member of the Hanseaten: perfect hair, navy-blue suit, white shirt, grey silk tie, black shoes with toecaps. They all dressed like that, the commercial and professional elite of the Hansastadt. They met at the gates to the old mansion on Schone Aussicht.

‘Christ,’ said Baader, ‘I was hoping that thing was an aberration.’

Anselm looked down at his windbreaker, a nylon garment, padded, quilted, red. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It’s football hooligan wear, that’s what’s wrong with it,’ said Baader.

‘I aspire to be a football hooligan,’ said Anselm. ‘Engage in acts of senseless violence.’

‘Join the police,’ said Baader. ‘That way you get a uniform and they pay you.’

They walked up the driveway.

‘What’s this walking?’ said Anselm. Baader drove a Porsche, a new one every year, sometimes more often.

‘Being serviced.’

‘I didn’t know you did that. I thought you bought a new one when the oil got dirty.’

‘Lease,’ said Baader. He had a long thin face, long nose, and a near-continuous eyebrow, just a thinning in the middle. ‘Lease, not buy. Deductible business expense.’

‘A joke, Stefan,’ said Anselm. ‘A very old joke. But on the subject, Brinkman’s in a state of panic. He says the kitty’s empty.’

Baader stopped, eyed Anselm. ‘Brinkman is an old woman,’ he said. ‘An old woman and a bean counter.’

‘Well, he says there aren’t many beans to count and some of your expenses aren’t deductible. He’s worried about illegality. He doesn’t want to go to jail.’

Baader shook his head, started walking again. Anselm thought that he knew what was going through the man’s mind: I gave this sad, drunken, amnesiac, neurotic prick a job when he was unemployable, too fucked-up even to commit suicide properly. I’ve put up with behaviour no sane employer would countenance. Now he’s the voice of conscience.

‘How was the honeymoon?’ said Anselm. He should have asked earlier.

‘I’ve had better.’

At the front door, finger on the button, not looking at Anselm, Baader said, ‘When there were just three people and I did the books, I made money. Now we have to have fucking super-computers that cost as much as blocks of apartments. Maybe I should go back to three.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ said Anselm. ‘Of course, you had fewer ex-wives then and it was pre-Porsches and apartments in Gstadt.’

Baader pressed the button, waved at the camera. From his cubicle, Wolfgang, the day security, unlocked the door.

They went upstairs to the big rooms on the second floor of the grand old building that housed the firm of Weidermann amp; Kloster. There was no Weidermann, no Kloster and the firm was no longer the publishing house the two men founded after World War Two. Now W amp;K’s business was looking for people, checking on people.

The biggest room was lit by a dim blue light. It held six computer workstations clustered around a bank of servers, a 1000-CPU supercomputer, state-of-the-art equipment. Two tired, stale-mouthed, gritty-eyed end-of-shift people were in residence.

Anselm’s office led off the room. On the way to it, he passed a shaven-headed man in black sitting on his spine, his head back, eyes closed. He was chewing in a bovine, cud-shifting way.