Once upon a time.
Have you been to Russia?
Yes. I met my wife theremy ex-wife, I should say. At a Comintern youth conference in 1924. Lenin had just died and Trotsky hadn't noticed that the rug was gone from under his feet. It was a strange time, a sort of revolutionary cuspnot the moment it all went wrong, but the moment a lot of Party people realized that it already had. Does that make sense?
I suppose. Im hoping to go in March. The nineteenth Congress is being held in Moscow and Im trying to persuade the paper to send me.
Thatll be interesting, Russell said, though he doubted it would be.
Neither of them wanted another drink, and the nuts were all gone. It was raining outside, and they stood for a moment in the doorway, watching the neon shimmers in the puddles. As they passed under the elevated tracks a Warschauer Brucke train rumbled across, its sides streaming with water.
At the bottom of Lindenstrasse McKinley took a look back across the Belle Alliance Platz. I think Im being followed, he said, almost guiltily, in response to Russells inquiring look.
I cant see anyone, said Russell, staring into the rain.
No, neither can I, McKinley said, as they started up Lindenstrasse. Its more of a feeling. . . . I dont know. If they are following me, theyre really good.
Too many
Oh, the Gestapo, I suppose.
Moving like wraiths isnt exactly the Gestapo style.
No, I suppose not.
Why would they be following you?
McKinley grunted. That story I told you about. That story I was going to tell you about, he corrected himself.
Im not sure I want to know anymore, Russell said. I dont want them following me.
It was meant as a joke, but McKinley didn't take it that way. Well, okay. ...
Russell was thinking about the car hed seen outside their block. He couldn't imagine the Gestapo being that patient, but there were other sharks in the Nazi sea. Look, Tyler. Whatever it is, if you really are being stalked by the authorities I should just drop it. No storys worth that sort of grief.
McKinley bristled. Would you have said that ten years ago?
I dont know. Ten years ago I didn't have the responsibilities I have now.
Maybe you should ask yourself whether you can still be an honest journalist with those sorts of responsibilities.
That made Russell angry. You havent cornered the market in honest journalism, for Gods sake.
Of course not. But I know what matters. That once mattered to you.
Truth has a habit of seeping out. Russell wasnt even convincing himself, which made him angrier still. Look, there are seventy-five million people out there keeping their heads down. Im just one of them.
Fine. If you want to keep your head down, wait until it all blows overwell . . . fine. But I cant do that.
Okay.
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
THE CONVERSATION WITH MCKINLEYor, more precisely, the sense of letting himself down that it engenderedlurked with annoying persistence at the back of Russells mind over the next few days. He finished his first article for
The weekend gave him a welcome break from worrying about his journalistic integrity. On Saturday afternoon he and Paul went to the zoo. They had been there so many times that they had a routinefirst the parrot house, then the elephant walk and the snakes, a break for ice cream, the big cats and, finally, the
Sunday, a rare treatan outing to the fair at the end of Potsdamerstrasse with both Paul and Effi. Getting them together was always harder than the actual experience of their being together: Both worried overmuch that theyd be in the others way. It was obvious that Paul liked Effi, and equally obvious why. She was willing to try anything at least once, was able to act any age she thought appropriate, and assumed that he could, too. She was, in fact, most of the things his mother wasnt and never had been.
After two hours of circling, sliding, dropping, and whirling they took a cab to Effis theater, where she showed Paul around the stage and backstage areas. He was particularly impressed by the elevator and trapdoor in mid- stage which brought the Valkyries up to heaven each evening. When Russell suggested that they should build one for Goebbels at the Sportspalast, Effi gave him a warning look, but Paul, he noticed, was mercifully unable to suppress his amusement.
The only sad note of the weekend was Pauls news that he would be away for the next weekend at a Hitler Youth adventure camp in the Harz Mountains. He expressed regret at not seeing his dad, and particularly at missing Herthas next home game, but Russell could see he was really looking forward to the camp. Russell was particularly upset because he would be away himself on the following weekend, delivering his first oral report to Shchepkin. And on that weekend he would also be missing Effis end-of-run party
EARLY ON MONDAY MORNING, he took the train to Dresden for a one-night stay. It was only a two-hour journey, and he had several contacts there: a couple of journalists on the city paper; an old friend of Thomass, also in the paper business; an old friend of his and Ilses, once a union activist, now a teacher. Ordinary Germansif such people existed.
He saw them all over the two days, and talked to several others they recommended. He also spent a few hours in cafes and bars, joining or instigating conversations when he could, just listening when that seemed more appropriate. As his train rattled northward on Tuesday evening he sat in the buffet car with a schnapps and tried to make sense of what he had heard. Nothing surprising. Ordinary Germans felt utterly powerless, and resigned to feeling so for the foreseeable future. The government would doubtless translate that resignation as passive support, and to some extent they were right. There was certainly no sense that anyone had a practical alternative to offer.
When it came to Germanys relations with the rest of the world, most people seemed pleasantly surprised that they still had any. The Rhineland, the Anschluss, the Sudetenlandit was as if Hitler had deliberately driven his train across a series of broken points, butthanks be to Godthe train was still on the track. Surely, soon, he would pull the damn thing to a halt. Once Memel and Danzig were back in the fold, once the Poles had given Germany an extra-territorial corridor across their own corridor, then that would be that. Hitler, having expanded the Reich to fit the
They all said it, and some of them even believed it.
Their own daily lives were getting harder. Not dramatically, but relentlessly. The economic squeeze was on. Most people were working longer hours for the same pay; many ordinary goods were growing slightly harder to find. The relief which had followed the return of full employment had dissipated.
Children seemed to be looming ever-larger in their parents minds: the demands in time and loyalty of the Hitler Youth and BDM, the years exile of the
