‘No, some go to France. We had a boat leave Marseilles not long ago.’
Russell leant back in the chair. ‘Why do they want to go to Palestine, rather than America?’
Mizrachi smiled. ‘You’ll have to ask them that.’
‘But how do you feel about the ones who want to go to America? Or the ones who want to stay in Germany? Do you think of them as traitors?’
‘Traitors, no.’ He shrugged. ‘The ones who want to stay in Europe… it’s their choice, but I don’t believe it’s a tenable one, not in the long run. Have you heard what’s happening in Poland?’
‘What, lately?’
‘A lot of Polish Jews thought they’d go home after the war, but they soon discovered what a bad idea that was. There have been anti-Jewish riots in Cracow, Nowy Sacz, Sosnowice… there was one a few weeks ago in Lublin. The murderers may be different, but Polish Jews are still being killed.’
Russell just shook his head — sometimes there seemed no hope for humanity. ‘So, what are the arrangements?’ he asked after a moment.
‘I’m waiting to hear when the next party is crossing the border. If it’s soon, you should take the train to Villach — it’s the quickest way. If they’re waiting for another group from here, then you can travel with that, by the usual route.’
‘Which is what?’
‘The train to St Valentin, then across the Ems River by boat — the river’s the border between the Russian and American zones. Then south to Villach and the Italian frontier. That takes two or three days.’
‘Okay,’ Russell agreed reluctantly. He told Mizrachi the name of his hotel, and the Haganah man promised to be in touch the moment he heard anything. ‘There is one other thing,’ Russell added. ‘I’m looking for two people, a man and a woman. For personal reasons. And I know a man with the right name was travelling this way from Silesia. Is there anyone here keeping records of the people who pass through?’
Mizrachi smiled. ‘Indeed there is. And he’s very proud of them. Let me take you to him.’
They walked back through the basement, and up to the reception area, where a door behind the desks led through to several offices. In the last of these a middle-aged man in a yarmulke was bent over a ledger. ‘This is Mordechai Landau,’ Mizrachi said. He explained what Russell wanted, and left the two of them to it.
Once apprised of the names, Landau began searching the filing cabinets that lined two walls. ‘The records are all alphabetised,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘We have Jews from sixteen countries here,’ he added proudly. ‘8,661 of them since July.’
An indictment in itself, Russell thought.
‘Ah, I have an Otto Pappenheim. And you’ve just missed him — he left for the American zone a week ago.’
‘Do you know when he arrived here?’
‘A week before that,’ Landau said triumphantly.
The date fitted, Russell thought. This had to be Isendahl’s Otto. A week ahead of him.
‘You don’t have any more details?’
‘See for yourself,’ Landau said, handing him the paper.
He skimmed through it, and found nothing to rule the man in or out.
‘But no Miriam,’ Landau reluctantly concluded. ‘Four Rosenfelds, but no Miriam.’
Not for the first time, Russell wondered if she’d changed her name. If she had, they’d never find her.
He thanked Landau and walked back out to the crowded pavement. Above the broken skyline to the south the sun was trying to break through, but it seemed, if anything, colder than before. He put up the collar of his coat, tied the scarf a little higher round his throat, and started back towards the city centre at a hopefully warming pace. It wasn’t yet noon, but he already felt hungry, and when an open restaurant presented itself on Wahringerstrasse he took the opportunity to grab some lunch. The proprietor seemed pleased to see his dollars, and he was pleased to see the food, which seemed better than anything Berlin had to offer.
It seemed the Austrians were getting off lightly, which Russell found less than fair. He remembered the scenes after the Anschluss, the Viennese Jews forced to clean unflushed toilets by their laughing tormentors. And those had been the lucky ones. No one had filmed the Jewish pensioners’ involuntary high-speed ride on the city’s scenic railway — an experience that had given several of them fatal heart attacks.
The Austrians were hardly innocents.
But then who were?
He decided he would walk to the Danube. He had always liked big rivers, ever since seeing the Thames as a boy. And the Spree’s lack of real width had always seemed a major shortcoming. Though it would make the bombed-out bridges cheaper to replace.
Once a convenient tram had carried him back to the Stephansplatz, he walked north to the Danube Canal, whose crossings seemed mostly intact. He was now moving into the Russian sector, but there were no signs to tell him so, and no obvious military presence on the streets. Praterstrasse offered the straightest route to the river, and he headed on up past the entrance to Prater Park, where the famous Ferris wheel was in the early stages of post- war reconstruction. Russell had written about it once, in an article on European funfairs that some American magazine had commissioned, and he could even remember some of its history. It had been built to celebrate the Habsburg Emperor Franz-Josef’s Golden Jubilee in 1897, and the following year one of his subjects had summed up Franz-Josef’s reign in spectacular fashion — hanging by her teeth from a gondola to protest against the treatment of the Empire’s poor. Twenty years later another woman had gone full circle while seated on a horse, the latter standing, no doubt nervously, on a gondola roof. That stunt had been staged for an early silent film, and Hollywood had been back on several further occasions. Everyone loved the Vienna Wheel.
Ten minutes later, he was gazing out across the wide Danube. There was nothing blue about it, and no sign of the once busy traffic — the wharves away to his left stood empty and apparently abandoned. The dark, heavy current rolled remorselessly past, like a conveyor belt with nothing on it. Over on the northern shore the hulk of a burnt-out Panzer had its gun barrel dipped in the water, and looked like an animal taking a drink.
Russell stood there for several minutes, stray thoughts hopping in and out of his mind, then turned abruptly on his heels and started back towards the city centre.
Once in his hotel room, he spent a couple of hours sorting through notes and ideas, then closed his eyes for a nap. Awoken by coughing heatpipes, he was thrilled to find the water running hot, and was only slightly deflated by the absence of soap. A long soak in a full bath might be a luxury in much of post-war Europe, but it still felt like a human necessity. Feeling suitably restored, he sallied out in search of alcohol and food.
There would be an American Press Club, he realised — it was just a question of finding it. The hotel desk clerk thought it was on Josefstadterstrasse, which was only a five-minute walk away. Once there, a convenient passer-by directed him, with rather an envious look, towards a nearby side-street. The Press Club was open, well-lit and warm. As an added bonus, his old friend Jack Slaney was propping up one end of the bar, one hand wrapped round a half-empty stein.
Slaney had come to Berlin for the 1936 Olympics, and stayed on as the resident correspondent of the Chicago Post for almost five years. He had sailed pretty close to Goebbels’ wind on several occasions, and had finally been asked to leave in the early summer of 1941, allegedly for calling Barbarossa an overgrown version of the Charge of the Light Brigade. He and Russell had spent many a happy hour trying to out-cynicise each other in the Adlon Bar, contests which Slaney had usually won. Russell hadn’t seen him since the summer, when the American had spent a few days in London en route to the Potsdam Conference.
‘So what are you doing here?’ Russell asked, sliding himself onto the neighbouring bar stool and signalling for two more drinks.
‘The bar or the country?’
‘The continent.’
Slaney considered. ‘A valedictory tour, I suspect. A sort of “now that they’re gone, was it all worth it?” What brings you to Vienna?’
Russell told him about the illegal Jewish exodus to Palestine, and how he’d been asked to tell the story.
Slaney nodded his appreciation. ‘If I wasn’t leaving tomorrow, I might follow along at a respectable distance. Not that I have the knees for mountain-climbing anymore.’
‘Neither do I. I’m assuming trucks — it must be too late in the year for walking.’
The beers arrived, and tasted as they should.
