Christmas.’
His suite at the Adlon, the Bismarck Suite — and there he was, in a gold frame on the wall, heroically painted with heavy white moustache and Pickelhaube spiked helmet — had all the luxuries and all the conveniences; for example a telephone in every room. These, Wilkinson had warned him, had microphones that were always alive, sending conversation in the room back to some technician wearing headphones as he sat in front of a console with dials and a wire recording machine. Best, if you had to speak privately, to disconnect the phone from its receptacle in the wall. Stahl’s suitcase had been taken from the plane and driven quickly to the Adlon and it had already been unpacked — and no doubt searched. His evening clothes, for that night’s banquet, then the party in his honour on the following evening, were hung carefully in the closet, his brush and comb and toothbrush laid out by the shining porcelain sink. He undressed, stretched out on the bed in his underwear and worked to calm himself down. So far, so good, he thought. It surprised him — how much he wanted to do this work, and do it successfully. Getting out of the Mercedes at the entry to the Adlon, as the chauffeur held the door, he saw a few civilians passing by and one of them, a rather elegant woman of some age, her chin held high in a near desperate attempt at preserved dignity, wore a yellow star on the breast of her woollen coat.
Stahl dressed for the banquet, then transferred the money and ten-reichsmark note to his evening clothes. As Wilkinson had put it, in the still, musty air of the library stacks, ‘If you leave this money in your room, you won’t be coming back to Paris.’ On the day before he boarded the plane, the resident seamstress at the Claridge had sewn a large inner pocket into the lining of his tuxedo jacket, much roomier than the one on the left side. He was now more than glad he’d had this done, for there was only a small back pocket on the trousers. Even so, he had to stash a few thousand Swiss francs in the back of his cummerbund. So I will not be dancing the polka tonight. Precisely on time, he made his way down to the Adlon’s grand ballroom.
Splendid it surely was. Vast chandeliers glittered above, the white tablecloths were dazzling, endless ranks of silverware marched away from the side of every golden service plate, the satin draperies were blood-red, and the centrepiece on the elevated centre table held an exceptional display of marzipan tanks and fighter planes.
Very carefully, to avoid a shower of Swiss francs, Stahl withdrew his typewritten speech — written in Paris with Mme Boulanger’s help — from his inner pocket. Herr von Somebody, the official host, spoke first, welcoming the bejewelled ladies and beaming gentlemen to the Reich National Festival of Mountain Cinema, ‘and tonight’s banquet in honour of Herr Fredric Stahl, who is to select the festival’s winners.’ There followed a flowery tribute to the Fuhrer, ‘who has made all this possible.’ Stahl was then introduced, and gave a short speech, thanking everybody in sight, citing the importance of cinema to all the world’s cultures, and looking forward to choosing the best mountain film of 1938, ‘though I expect, given the general level of excellence, that will be an extremely difficult task.’ When he was done, the guests — there must have been at least a hundred — rose to their feet and applauded.
The banquet began with a thin, and absolutely delicious, potato soup. It had been a long time — back in his days in Vienna — since Stahl had tasted good German food, and he made himself hold back on the soup, sensing there were perhaps even better things to come. Wild boar from Karinhall, the Goering estate, said the giant, both- hands-required menu. Leaving the soup, Stahl turned to the lady on his left, Princess von Somebody, with diamonds dripping down towards the cleft of a snowy bosom.
With the arrival of the wild boar, Stahl turned to chat with the director of the festival, who sat across from him, the German film producer Otto Raab. Stahl had never met him, but as Raab talked about himself Stahl realized that he knew this man, knew him from experience. Likely he’d started his artistic career in the provincial theatre, a local genius who had, driven by ambition, gone off to the great city — Berlin in this case — there to discover he was no genius at all, at best a worker bee, so that his passion to succeed soured and turned to bitter resentment. How did it happen that these people, many of them Jews, communists, sexual deviates, were set above him? They were snobs, arrogant and sure of their talent, this so-called elite, but they were no better than he was. They succeeded because they knew the right people, they hobnobbed, they worked their insidious magic and rose to the top, where they looked down their noses at the struggling Otto Raabs of the world.
But with the Nazi ascent to power in 1933, the Otto Raabs of Germany perfectly understood what it meant for them. Now it was their turn. They joined the Nazi party, and success inevitably followed. Now look! A respected producer of films, wholesome films, German films, a powerful man snubbed no longer. Raab had weak, watery eyes, and in the way they fixed on Stahl as Raab recounted various triumphs, there was the purest hatred. Stahl was careful with him, gently encouraging, keeping condescension at bay. After he’d had all he could stand of Raab, he turned to the woman on his right, the highly acclaimed film actress Olga Orlova.
Stahl knew something of Orlova, who had a complicated history. She was said to be a descendant of the Russian novelist Lermontov, had trained in the great Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavsky, had fled with the White armies from the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, landed on her feet in Germany, become a film star, and a great favourite of that madly passionate film buff Adolf Hitler. Who made sure that photographs of the two of them together appeared in newspapers and magazines.
Orlova was, like many actresses, not so much beautiful as striking, memorable, with plain, strong features, upswept dark hair parted to one side, and animated eyes. She may have been over forty but looked younger — smooth skin, a well-tended body in a lime-coloured evening gown that revealed the bare shoulders of an athlete. She wore a necklace and earrings of small emeralds and, as she talked, Stahl noticed she had slim, delicate hands. Her voice was low, and sensual in a way that Stahl couldn’t precisely define — she spoke intimately, but she was no coquette.
She admired him, she said, she knew his films. How on earth had they managed to lure him to this incredibly boring event?
‘I’m living in Paris now, making a film for Paramount, and my studio thought it would be a good idea.’
‘Ah yes,’ Orlova said. ‘There’s more to this business than the screen kiss.’
‘That’s true.’
‘It’s certainly true for me. I started out in the theatre, acted my little heart out, Chekhov, Pushkin, Shakespeare in Russian. But the Bolsheviks put an end to that, so now I am in movies.’
‘And a celebrity.’
‘That I am. I work at it, and important people here seem to like what I do.’
‘Surely one very important person,’ Stahl said.
Orlova’s smile was ever so slightly grim. ‘One is chosen, sometimes, it’s not up to you. But it’s not bad to be adored, and he is infinitely polite.’
‘To you.’
‘Yes, to me.’ She shrugged. ‘We have no intimate life, though the world is encouraged to think otherwise.’
‘And you don’t mind?’
‘Mind gossip? No, do you?’
‘Now and then, but it comes with the profession.’
‘And makes private life difficult. Still…’ For a moment, her eyes caught his in a certain way. ‘I find you, for example, quite interesting.’
‘I’m flattered,’ Stahl said. ‘But for people like us, privacy is almost impossible.’
‘Almost,’ she said. ‘But not quite.’ She paused for a moment, then said, ‘Where are they keeping you?’
‘Here.’ He pointed upwards. ‘In the Bismarck Suite.’
‘Well, well, the Bismarck Suite. Then you’re just down the hall from me.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I’ve taken the Fuhrer’s suite for tonight. I don’t believe he’s ever been there, but the hotel keeps it exclusively for him.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Just down the hall. The number one hundred is on the door.’
‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘No reason to, but now you know. I’ll leave the door ajar.’
From behind them, a waiter cleared his throat. Startled, Stahl and Orlova turned to face him. He was a wiry little man with oiled, slicked-back hair and a smug, almost triumphant smile on his face. ‘Excuse me, meine Frau, mein Herr, may I take your plates, please?’ The words were commonplace but the tone was just insinuating enough to let them know their conversation had been overheard.
