Puzzled, Szara stared at the window, watched the snowflakes drifting slowly downward on the still air. “How could he do that? ” he asked. “Can a Jew, like Dr. Baumann, walk into one of the better hotels in Berlin and just have lunch? “
“I think not. These waiters have a sense of propriety, alone he would not have been served or there might have been a scene. But he was with his protector, you see, and so everything just went along in the normal way.”
“Protector?”
“Naturally. Though my father stands ready to help him, to take over the ownership of the mill, Dr. Baumann remains in charge. Baumann Milling does defense work, as you may have guessed, and so Dr. Baumann is protected.”
“By whom?”
“It seemed strange to me, these two men having lunch. Dr. Baumann and some very tall, reedy fellow, almost bald, with little wisps of blond hair. An aristocrat, I thought, that’s what they look like: late thirties, no chin, and that hesitant little smile, as though somebody were about to break a priceless vase and they’re afraid they’ll let on that they’re brokenhearted.”
Szara shifted his weight on the couch. “I hope you don’t describe me to anyone,” he said with mock horror.
She clucked. “I don’t tell secrets,
“Who do you suppose he was?”
“I asked Herr Hanau. ‘Don’t meddle,’ says he. ‘That’s Von Polanyi from the Foreign Office, a clever fellow but not someone for you to know.’ “
“He sounds Hungarian.”
He felt her shrug. “During the Austro-Hungarian time the noble families moved around, we have all sorts in Germany. In any event, don’t be too concerned for Herr Doktor Julius Baumann, for it turns out he’s rather comfortably situated.”
Szara was silent for a long time.
“Are you asleep?”
“No, dreaming.”
“Of me?”
He moved closer to her.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
And in the morning, when the light woke them up, after the Victorian novel, the affection, the honest talk in darkness, and, well, some condition of absence that at least imitated sleep, Marta Haecht tied the little silk robe at her waist and stood before the stove and made blini, thin ones like French crepes, then spread them with strawberry jam from Berlin’s finest store, folded them carefully, and served them on pretty plates and Szara realized, just about then, that had he been able to taste anything at all they would have been, as he’d imagined on the train to Berlin, delicious.
5 November.
A telephone message at the Adlon desk requested that he stop by the press office at the embassy. On the Unter den Linden, in a light, dry snowfall that blew about like dust, thousands of black-shirted Nazi party members were marching toward the Brandenburg Gate. They sang in deep voices, roared out their chants, and threw their arms into the air in fascist salutes. Amid the sea of black there were banners denouncing the Comintern and the Soviet Union, and the men marched by slamming their boots against the pavement; Szara could actually feel the rhythm of it trembling beneath his feet. He pulled his raincoat around him and pretended to ignore the marchers. This was what most Berliners did-glanced at the singing men, then hurried on about their business-and Szara followed their example.
The embassy was extremely busy. People were rushing about here and there, clerks ran by with armloads of files, and the tension could be easily felt. Varin, the second secretary, was waiting for him in the press office, rather pointedly not watching the parade below his window. He was a small, serious man, determined, and not inclined toward conversation. He handed over an envelope; Szara could feel the waxy paper of the folded flimsy inside. A radio was playing in the press office and when the news forecast came on at noon, all talk stopped. “They have a big mess over at Zbaszyn,” Varin said when the commentator had finished. “Fifteen thousand Polish Jews penned up in barbed wire at the border. Germany’s thrown them out, but Poland won’t let them in. There’s not enough water, hardly any shelter, and it’s getting colder. Everybody’s waiting to see who gives in first.”
“Maybe I should go up there,” said the journalist Szara.
Varin closed his eyes for an instant and just barely moved his head to indicate that he should do no such thing.
“Is that what the parade is all about?”
Varin shrugged, indifferent. ” They like to march, so let them. It’s the weather-they always feel spirited when the winter comes.”
Szara stood to go.
“Watch yourself,” said Varin quietly.
For just a moment, Szara had been tempted to lay his troubles at Varin’s door, but it was a temptation instantly dismissed. Still, as he walked back to the Adlon, the word
Suddenly there wasn’t a choice, he had to be an intelligence officer like it or not. If Baumann was under German control, all the traditional questions bobbed up to the surface: From the beginning? Or caught, then turned? How accomplished? By coercion, clearly. Not money, not ego, and not, God forbid, ideology. A frightened Jew was appropriate to their purposes. Which were? Deceptive. In what way deceptive, toward what end? If the swage wire figures were high, that meant they wanted to scare the USSR into thinking they had more bombers than they did, a tactic of political warfare, the same method that had proven fatal for Czechoslovakia. If they were low, it was an attempt to lull the USSR into false strategic assumptions. And that meant war.
At the Adlon he knocked, harder than he meant to, at Vainshtok’s door. The little man was in shirtsleeves, a cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the air, and a sheet of paper protruded from a typewriter on the desk. “Szara? It better be important. You scared the shit out of my muse.”
“May I come in?”
Vainshtok beckoned him inside and closed the door. “Don’t knock like that, will you? Call from the lobby. These days, a knock on the door …”
“Thank you for the Mutter Kummel story.”
“Don’t mention it. I thought you needed all the excitement you could get.”
“Do you know anything about the Reich Foreign Office?”
Vainshtok sighed. Went over to an open briefcase, dug around inside for a time, and emerged with a thin, mimeographed telephone directory. “Oh the forbidden things we have here in the Adlon. I expect the Gestapo will set fire to it any day now. That’ll be something to see-a hundred firemen, all wearing eyeglasses.” He cackled at the idea. “What do you want to know? “
“Do you find a man called Von Polanyi? “
It took only a moment. “Von Polanyi, Herbert K. L. Amt 9.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But then, that in itself is informative.”
“How so?”
“When you don’t know, chances are they don’t want you to know. So, they’re not the people who keep track of the Bulgarian bean harvest.”
Back in his room, Szara drew the blinds, set out pencils and paper, propped up the railway timetable against
