arms a few minutes later.’
Eleanor was too shocked to speak. They sat still, hearing the tick-tack-tick of the duel being waged on the piste down below. The old man seemed stoic, beyond grief, as if he were ready to leave this world, too.
Applause rippled up from the amphitheatre to acknowledge the victory of the Austrian over the Hungarian.
She managed to say, ‘And you can’t go to the regular police…?’
‘There’s nothing to be done except to bury him.’
‘We can fight for him,’ she said, drawing some quick looks from the people in front.
Herr Liebermann dropped his eyes to the large wrinkled hands splayed on his knees. He had told her yesterday something about acceptance being the route to wholeness, and she imagined he was seeking solace in this dictum even now.
‘Naked I came into the world,’ he murmured, ‘naked I shall leave it…’
‘No,’ she said, putting her arm around his shoulders.
‘… the Lord gives and the Lord takes away…’
‘Not even Job would have stood for this.’
‘… Blessed is the name of the Lord.’
The piste was being prepared for the next bout, and Eleanor remembered that Hannah was sitting down there.
‘Hannah came here to compete today?’ she said, amazed. ‘After what’s happened?’
‘That’s why I’m here. I’m worried about her and want to watch over her. We thought she’d stay in her room, but she came down this morning very pale and said she was going to fight today. The chance of beating some Austrian Nazi seems to have sealed her decision. The Austrian girl who won the last bout, in fact.’
Eleanor watched in disbelief as the judges returned to their seats and the loudspeakers announced, ‘Hannah Liebermann, Deutschland; Kerstin Bruckner, Osterreich.’
‘This is it. The final,’ Herr Liebermann said, still staring at his hands.
A tremendous cheer went up as the two opponents stepped onto the piste.
The wire mask was pulled down before Eleanor could see the expression on Hannah’s face, but she got a good look at the Austrian, a mouse-haired girl with a pointed nose. Pinched and mean, thought Eleanor. I hope you saw the fury in your opponent’s eyes. The two women acknowledged each other with their foils and the bout commenced.
Hannah lunged into the attack, to a surprised ‘ooh’ from the audience, and from there on gave the Austrian no respite. She used none of the cautious probing and testing Eleanor had seen earlier that week, in which she had even permitted herself to lose the first round in order to learn her opponent’s strategy. Now, she attacked without remorse. Her footwork was light, like a ballerina’s, making the Austrian’s movements appear pigeonlike and dull. Hannah won the first bout.
The Austrian staged a brief rally in the second bout, pushing Hannah back over the centre line, but again Hannah gave no quarter; she was fighting as though to kill. Towards the end of the three minutes her opponent’s chances were doomed.
In the final bout, Hannah’s moves lost all their stylised elegance. They became impassioned with violence, a chaotic, overwhelming onslaught. The Austrian was helpless in a hail of steel, having scarcely landed a single hit, and the crowd erupted, rising to their feet to applaud for Hannah before the bout had even finished.
She’d won the final.
A first warning bell was ringing in Eleanor’s mind: Hannah had been forbidden to win the gold. Now a second warning rang. The Austrian, who had removed her mask to reveal her tight, stunned little face, had proffered her hand for Hannah to shake, but Hannah ignored it. She also ignored the applause, strode away from the piste, and pulled off the mask, giving her head a shake so that her chestnut hair fell in silky coils around her shoulders.
As she left, a man in a cream suit sitting behind the judges’ table sprang up and followed her. Eleanor recognised him. It was Greiser.
‘What happens now?’ she asked Herr Liebermann.
‘There will be a podium ceremony in the stadium,’ he said. Their eyes met. She could tell the same thought had just occurred to him, too.
N ot a seat was to be had in the stadium. Every row was rammed with spectators, so Eleanor led Herr Liebermann up the stairs to the press box, where they arrived just as the women’s fencing podium ceremony was about to begin. The old man didn’t seem to want to hurry, as if nothing was in his power to shape or change anymore.
She introduced him to Gallico.
‘Congratulations, sir,’ he said, giving the old gentleman’s hand a hearty shake. ‘You must feel very proud.’
The poor man, thought Eleanor, watching him take Paul’s hand politely. That must be the worst possible thing he could hear today.
‘Damned movie crew,’ Gallico said to her. ‘I was standing by the track eating my hot dog when I get handed this.’ He showed her a pink slip. ‘It says, “Remove yourself from where you are-Riefenstahl.” Listen,’ he continued in a low voice, ‘your rosebush story. John Walsh and I are going to confront Brundage.’
‘When?’
‘Press conference at the Kaiserhof Hotel tomorrow morning.’
In the arena the three women fencers were being awarded their medals. In third place was the Hungarian, who beamed and waved after accepting her bronze. In second place the Austrian received the silver, smiling with her thin lips, if not with her eyes.
‘… und auf dem ersten Platz: Hannah Liebermann, Deutschland!’
The crowd applauded with a great cheer. Hannah bowed her head to receive the gold medal around her neck and a wreath of oak leaves that was placed upon her head. Still she did not smile. Watching through the opera glasses, Eleanor saw the wild look in her eyes.
They took their places on the podium, with Hannah on the highest step.
The first trudging note of ‘Deutschland uber Alles’ sounded, a chord from an accordion, and the entire stadium heaved to its feet and sang, half a beat behind the band, right arms raised. The sound slurred through a great forest of Hitler salutes.
Slowly a giant swastika rose above the scoreboard on the western rim of the stadium and fluttered in the breeze.
And Hannah Liebermann’s right arm stayed firmly at her side.
Even over the singing Eleanor sensed the crowd registering her defiance. The prickling hairs on her neck told her.
‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ said Gallico at Eleanor’s side.
‘A courageous woman with nothing to lose,’ said Eleanor. ‘Shame A-dolf’s not with us today.’ She cast a look at Herr Liebermann and thought she saw a grim pride in his eyes.
The anthem finished and the crowd sat.
‘I’m going down there before they do God-knows-what to her,’ said Eleanor. But just as she said this Hannah jumped from the podium before anyone could reach her and darted to an exit near the foot of the western gate.
Eleanor stared after her for a second. And then she realised. ‘The radio car,’ she said, grabbing her handbag and running from the box.
She sprinted into the gallery surrounding the upper tier, round the curve of the stadium towards the western gate, and flew down the steps. Just outside, near a solitary oak on the Olympic plaza, she spotted Hannah surrounded by a large crowd accompanying her in the direction of the Deutscher Rundfunk mobile radio car. Her crown of oak leaves and her all-white fencing garb added to the strangeness of the scene, making her seem like a sacrificial virgin, or a divine being walking among believers. How many in the crowd knew of her astonishing defiance a moment ago wasn’t clear, but they seemed excited by the famous face moving among them.
Just then, running out of the western gate, face shining with sweat, came Greiser, frantic, looking left and right, but in his haste he did not at first notice Hannah surrounded by the crowd. It was a few seconds later, as she was climbing the short ladder into the radio car, that he spotted her and pelted towards her, shouting and waving
