The American reporters remained in their seats, which shook beneath them with the noise. To the right, beyond the glass partition of the box, a group of Italian air force cadets were whooping and whistling.
Hitler descended the monumental steps to the track, followed by an entourage of Olympic officials, military brass, and Party satraps. His left hand grasped the belt buckle of his uniform; the right acknowledged the rolling roar with a type of benediction-a limp, upturned palm, held at shoulder height.
Around her Eleanor saw faces twisted in the type of ecstasy she’d once seen among the Holy Rollers in Tennessee. Only the Italian cadets next to the box were laughing, not taking the moment seriously.
On the track, the dictator stooped to greet a small girl, who curtsied and held a bouquet towards him. Finally, he climbed the steps to his box and saluted with an outstretched arm. The crowds stamped their feet and began singing the Party anthem. Eleanor lit a cigarette.
‘Jesus H Christ,’ Gallico said. ‘Where’s the spirit of international harmony? Is there any song less appropriate?’
‘ “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” ’ said Eleanor.
The singing petered out as a great bell tolled, and sailors standing around the rim of the stadium synchronised the raising of each nation’s flag. It was the moment Eleanor had dreaded.
The French, in blue berets, were the first large team to emerge, marching from a tunnel beneath the Marathon Gate. As they passed Hitler’s box the tricolour was dipped and they gave the fascist salute, which he returned, to the crowd’s intense delight. The British were next, but gave him nothing but a brisk eyes-right.
‘Which hotel are you at?’ Gallico said.
‘Every hotel’s full. William Dodd and his wife are putting me up.’
The Italian team entered, shambolic, like the chorus of a comic opera, but the air force cadets next to the box swept off their caps and yelled, proclaiming them heroes of the patria.
‘William Dodd… our ambassador?’ Gallico was impressed.
‘He’s a college buddy of Dad’s.’
The Indian team passed by in their turbans. A single Costa Rican, carrying his flag, was given a tremendous cheer. The Australians, in cricket caps, waved at the crowd and ignored the Fuhrer. A large Bulgarian team marched in with a high kick, to much mirth in the stadium.
Soon, the crowd was reserving its biggest applause for those teams that saluted. Eleanor watched Gallico scribble: ‘… like Romans in the Colosseum of yore, condemning or reprieving chariot teams before their emperor…’
At last, the Americans. Seeing their sheer numbers, the largest team, beaming and relaxed, felt like a stab in the heart. She stood and waved, struggling to keep the quiver from her lip, but soon her shoulders sagged.
Eleanor, you damned fool.
As they passed Hitler they took off their straw boaters and held them to their hearts, and the crowd seemed to warm to their easy manner.
‘I guess we’re not too hot at marching,’ Gallico said, watching the athletes’ loose-gaited walk. ‘Apart from Brundage, that is.’ Even from this distance they could see the determination on the man’s face as his arms swung stiffly behind the Stars and Stripes. ‘Is that a goose step?’
Eleanor spoke through a loud sob. ‘His big head’s so far up his ass I think that puffed-up chest is his forehead.’
‘Hey, hey.’ Gallico put his arms around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, smelling cigarettes, Brylcreem, and bubble gum, and hugged him, starting to feel foolish.
‘I’m such a chump.’ Thick tears rolled down her cheeks, which he dried with his handkerchief.
‘You’re one of the nicest people I know,’ he said.
She linked her arm in his and tried to compose herself.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Me and the boys, we’re going to talk to Brundage. See if we can’t change his mind… He may not want to cross a unanimous US press corps.’
Eleanor’s breath quaked in her chest. ‘Paul, honey… I don’t deserve you.’
The team was still passing by on the track below. She spotted Glenn Morris and Lou Zamperini and waved at them with Gallico’s handkerchief. Towards the back she saw Olive and Marjorie, their faces flushed with pride. She called their names, and to her great surprise they spotted her and waved back.
Finally, a tumultuous roar greeted the home team. The Germans, dressed in white, marched in immaculate drill and executed a flawless salute.
All the teams now stood in formations behind their national flags, and a hush fell as an elderly Olympic official stepped up to the rostrum to begin a long speech. The crowd began to fidget, and Eleanor sat back, drained by tears.
Her eyes came to rest, vacantly, on the straw boater of one of the American reporters, and her mind drifted. She was remembering the long, hot family summers on Long Beach. Her father had worn a straw boater to work each day in the sweltering city. How had she forgotten that? In the afternoons her mother would drive her and her younger brother, George, to swimming lessons to keep them out of mischief-playing alone in the dunes or along the trolley tracks. When she was eleven George died of polio, but she carried on swimming, almost as an act in his memory. He was eight years old, and a really sweet boy.
She came out of her reverie to a heavy silence. All eyes were upon a tall blond runner, carrying the Olympic torch, who stood in the gap at the stadium’s western side. Gracefully he ran down to the track and cantered around the rows of athletes before sprinting up the steps of the Marathon Gate on the opposite side. The crowd held its breath. The runner paused, holding the torch high, then plunged it into the bronze brazier. Flames leapt into the air, and another huge roar shook the stadium.
Eleanor felt the noise cast her adrift, decoupling her from the existence she had known, and she was struck by a conviction that a chapter in her life had closed for good.
Chapter Eight
The warm weather made the whiff from the Schultheiss Brewery more than usually rank. Denham told the driver to stop on the corner of Kopischstrasse, and saw the man’s nose wrinkle in the mirror. A second smell, of paraffin, followed a dog that tore past with a burning rag tied to its tail. Some children on the corner were laughing.
‘You live round here?’ the man said, pocketing the tip. ‘It stinks.’
Denham got out and slammed the door.
Welcome to Berlin!
After a day riding the world’s finest passenger aircraft he couldn’t face the crowds on the Ringbahn and had treated himself to a cab home from the airfield. The drizzle of the afternoon had eased off, leaving the air heavy and the streets smelling malodorously sweet.
Kopischstrasse, in the Kreuzberg district of the city, was a row of Wilhelmine buildings standing in the shadow of a Gothic brick water tower. The solemn balcony facades with wrought iron work were relics of grander times, but now each monumental house was carved into small, run-down apartments.
In the sepulchral hallway of number five, radio music was coming from the ground-floor apartment of Frau Stumpf, his landlady. He put his head round her door, but saw she had company. At her kitchen table, back towards him, was the balding fat head of his downstairs neighbour, Reinacher. The man was a tireless bore. If he wasn’t collecting for one of the Party’s endless relief drives, he was knocking on doors, enlisting the tenants into some sort of activism. The red collection tin sat on the table. Frau Stumpf, hunched in her shawls, shot Denham a look that said, ‘I have to listen to this Quatsch,’ so he placed the bottle of schnapps he’d brought for her next to the door and closed it without Reinacher hearing.
He was fond of Frau Stumpf, a delicate, absent-minded woman who treated the tenants with an old- fashioned courtesy. She’d lost her only son at the third battle of Ypres and had led a kind of half life since. He’d sometimes keep her company and eat her terrible stollen cakes.
The two-room apartment he rented on the third floor smelled scorched and musty after his week away, and a jade plant had withered in its pot beside the tile stove. He opened a window onto the courtyard, with its lines of
