The Foreign Correspondent

“Think I’ll skip those,” McGrath said. “Let’s get the hell out of this.”

They did, but it wasn’t so easy. Outside the hall, thousands of Hitler Youth filled the streets, waving flags and singing. As the three journalists worked their way across the boulevard, Weisz could feel the fearful energy of the crowd, intense eyes, rapturous faces. Now, he thought, there will surely be war. The people in the street would demand it, would kill relentlessly, and, in time, would have to be killed. These children would not surrender.

Christa was true to her word. When Weisz arrived at the apartment that evening, she made him wait-he had to knock a second time-then answered the door wearing only a modestly depraved smile and clouds of Balenciaga perfume. His eyes swept over her, then he ran his hands up and down before pulling her to him, for, even though it was no surprise, it had the effect she wanted. As she led the way down the hall to the bedroom, she swung her hips for him-his very own merry trollop. And so she was. Inventive, hungry, flushed with excitment, starting over again and again.

Eventually, they fell asleep. When Weisz woke up, he had, for a moment, no idea where he was. On a table by the bedroom door, the radio was tuned to a live broadcast of dance music from a ballroom in London, the orchestra faint and distant amid the crackling static. Christa was sleeping on her stomach, mouth open, one hand on his arm. He moved slightly, but she didn’t wake up, so he touched her. “Yes?” Her eyes were still closed.

“Should I look at the time?”

“Oh, I thought you wanted something.”

“I might.”

She made a kind of sigh. “You could.”

“Can we stay here tonight?”

She moved her head sufficiently for him to understand she meant they could not. “Is it late?”

He reached over her to the night table, retrieved his watch, and, by the light of a small lamp in the corner, left on so they could see, told her that it was eight-twenty.

“There is time,” she said. Then, a moment later: “And, it seems, interest.”

“It’s you,” he said.

“Now, if I could move.”

“You are very tired, aren’t you?”

“All the time, yes, but I don’t sleep.”

“What will happen, Christa?”

“So I ask myself. And there’s never an answer.”

He didn’t have one either. Idly, he trailed a finger from the back of her neck down to where her legs parted, and she parted them a little more.

At ten, they collected their clothes, from a chair, from the floor, and began to get dressed. “I’ll take you home in a taxi,” he said.

“I would like that. Let me off a block away.”

“I wanted to ask you…”

“Yes?”

“What’s become of your friend? The man we met at the carnival.”

“You’ve been waiting to ask me that, haven’t you.”

“Yes, as long as I could.”

Her smile was bittersweet. “You are considerate. What’s the French? C’est gentil de votre part? They put it so nicely, a kindness of you. And also, I think, and not so nice, you sensed what I would have to say, and left it for our last night.”

He had, and showed it.

“That he’s gone. That he left for work one morning, a month ago, and was never seen again. Even though some of us, the ones who could, made telephone calls, talked to people, former friends, who might be able to find out, for the sake of old friendship, but even they were unsuccessful. Too deep, even for them, in the Nacht und Nebel, night and fog, Hitler’s very own invention-that people should simply vanish from the face of the earth, a practice dear to him for its effect on friends and family.”

“When are you leaving, Christa? What date, what day?”

“And, worse, much worse, in its way, is that when he disappeared, nothing happened to the rest of us. You wait for a knock on the door, for weeks, but it doesn’t come. And then you know that, whatever happened to him, he didn’t tell them anything.”

The taxi stopped a block from her house, in a neighborhood at the edge of the city, a curving street of grand homes with lawns and gardens. “Come with me for a moment,” she said. Then, to the driver: “You’ll wait, please.”

Weisz got out of the taxi and followed her to an ivy-covered brick wall. In the house, a dog knew they were there and began to bark. “There’s one last thing I must tell you,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t want to say it in the apartment.”

He waited.

“Two weeks ago, we went to a dinner party at the house of von Schirren’s uncle. He’s a general in the army, a gruff old Prussian, but a good soul, at heart. At one point in the evening, I remembered I had to call home, to remind the maid that Magda, one of my dogs, was to be given her medicine, for her heart. So I went into the general’s study, to use the telephone, and on his desk, I couldn’t help seeing it, was an open book, with a sheet of paper he’d used to make notes. The book was called Sprachfuhrer Polnisch fur Geschaftsreisende, a guide to Polish for the business traveler. And he’d copied out phrases to memorize, ‘How far is it to,’ put in the name, ‘Where is the railway station?’ You know the sort of thing I mean, questions for the local population.”

Weisz glanced back at the idling taxi and the driver, who’d been watching them, turned away. “It seems he’s going to Poland,” Weisz said. “And so?”

“So the Wehrmacht is going with him.”

“Maybe, it’s possible,” Weisz said. “Or maybe not, he could be going as a military attache, or for some kind of negotiation. Who knows?”

“Not him. He’s not the attache type. A general of infantry, pure and simple.”

Weisz thought about it. “Then it will be before winter, in the early summer, after spring planting, because half the army works on farms.”

“That’s what I think.”

“You know what this means, Christa, for you. In two months, at the latest. And, once it starts, it will spread, and it will go on for a long time-the Poles have a big army, and they’ll fight.”

“I will leave before that happens, before they close the borders.”

“Why not tomorrow? On the plane? You don’t know the future-tonight you can still go, but, the day after tomorrow…”

“No, not yet, I can’t. But soon. We have one more thing we must do here, it’s in progress, please don’t ask me to tell you more than that.”

“They’ll arrest you, Christa. You’ve done enough.”

“Kiss me, and say goodby. Please. The driver is watching us.”

He embraced her, and they kissed. Then he watched her walk away until, at the corner, she waved to him, and disappeared.

Forever.

On the twelve-thirty flight to Paris, as the plane taxied down the runway, Weisz stared out the window at the fields bordering the tarmac. His spirits were very low. He’d worked his way around to the belief that Christa’s passionate lovemaking had been her way of saying farewell. Remember me as I am tonight. She was certainly capable of that. Just as she was capable of pursuing whatever clandestine business had hold of her until the operation collapsed and she, like her friend at the carnival, vanished into the Nacht und Nebel. He would never know what happened. Could he have said something that would have persuaded her to leave? No, he knew better than that, there were no words in the world that would change her mind. It was her life to live, her life to lose, she would stay in Berlin, she would fight her enemies,