I stoke the pit with firewood and work up the temperature with the bellows.
After some minutes the chloride is a glowing orange, it loses form, collapses in on itself and melts.
‘Now,’ I tell her, and she removes the crucible from the fire, steadies herself for a second before lifting it over to the bricks and pouring the gold into the holes.
‘Again,’ I say.
The sweat pours from us.
‘Again.’
_ _ _
She rolls firewood to the pit, hampered by her plaster cast, she keeps stepping on the hem of her dress, her face is black with soot. I maintain the temperature, furnishing the fire with blasts of air, we fill the last of the bricks with the molten gold.
We sweat, and the work makes us blind.
I go inside and fetch the schnapps while the stones cool. We sit in the moist grass in silence. The fir trees sway as the flames crackle. I hand her the bottle, she drinks and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. I see the smear of make-up and soot drawn across her face. She looks nothing like Zarah Leander. She looks nothing like Eline. Her teeth are dreadful.
I realise I have not thought this through.
I have no plan.
I have no idea what is supposed to happen.
I get to my feet and pick up the hammer. I bring it down on the bricks and break them into pieces. I remove the small, ribbed ingots and pile them up.
One hundred and twenty-two of them.
‘I’m hungry,’ she says, and rises. ‘Is there anything to eat?’
_ _ _
She sits in the living room. I empty my pockets in the kitchen: two curled-up sandwiches, blackcurrants wrapped in a paper napkin, pork crackling, lint, some squashed berries. I go down into the basement, find the key above the door of the larder and discover pickled vegetables and preserves, a rusting, dented tin of fish balls, some soft biscuits. My hands are full, a jar of pickled cucumber under my chin.
When I come back into the living room she has put on her trench coat again, knotted the belt tightly and wiped her face with a cloth.
She is smoking.
I put the food on the table and go over to the gramophone. I put on the Diabelli Variations again and sit down.
I nod at the food and indicate that she can have what she wants. She takes one of the sandwiches and lifts the bread.
Egg, butter, cress.
‘You needn’t be scared,’ I tell her, and smile when she hesitates. ‘It’s not poison.’
She does not smile back.
Beethoven fills the room, Kempff’s subtle phrasing.
She devours the sandwich, gulping it down.
She eats noisily.
‘Diabelli … was that a random choice?’ I ask after a while.
‘What?’
‘Just before … the Diabelli Variations.’
‘Before what?’
‘Before … earlier …’
‘No,’ she says, and licks her fingers. For the first time, she looks me in the eye. ‘It was one of the first pieces I learned.’
I take some crackling.
‘Did you know,’ I say, suddenly cheerful, the roasted pork rind popping inside my mouth, ‘that in his Harmonielehre Schoenberg calls it Beethoven’s most adventurous work?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘It was just there, that’s all. I hoped perhaps you would hesitate if I chose something you liked.’
I stop chewing.
‘Did you think I … was going to kill you?’
‘Yes. And I was right.’
She looks me in the eye as she speaks, articulating the words quite calmly, now twisting slightly to her left and rummaging for something in her pocket, something she finds.
She puts my PPK down hard on the table.
‘Tell me how to be her … Eline.’
‘And if I won’t?’
‘You will. You want to.’
Her fingers latch onto the gun. ‘You so want to be forgiven.’
She has fine hands, I notice now, as she nurses the magazine.
A burnished light has come to her eyes.
Was that a smile, as the needle reaches the end and idles harshly in its groove?
She gets up and lifts the tone arm.
She has her back to me as I speak.
‘We were engaged to be married. This is her house.’
‘Just tell me what to do,’ she says and turns to face me, the gun still in her hand. ‘Date of birth, education … information to get me through the checkpoints.’
‘Don’t you want me to tell you about her …?’
‘No. Do you want me to tell you about my dead sister, my daughter …? Elsa, Marion …?’
‘No.’
‘About how it felt when you broke my hand? If it hurt?’
‘No.’
‘Before … when you were going to rape me? How that felt …?’
‘No.’
‘Did it thrill you?’
‘No.’
‘Did you like me being scared of you?’
‘… Yes.’
Now she has no response. She sits down again, engages the safety catch of the PPK and puts it back in her pocket.
I pick up the bottle of schnapps and take a good swig. I am prickling with shame.
‘The whole of Hamburg is being evacuated,’ I say, and put the bottle down on the table again, only to change my mind and gulp down another mouthful. ‘Hundreds of thousands of people. No one will give you a second look. All they’re going to look at are the most superficial features …’
‘Like a Colles fracture?’
‘Colles fracture, short hair … and tell them who your brother is if you get into trouble. Manfred Schlosser.’
‘The man in the gold?’
‘The man in the gold, yes. He was a Hauptsturmführer, SS. There must be a photograph of him here somewhere. Hang on a minute.’
I get to my feet and go into the other room in search of photo albums, but find none. And then I remember, there was one of him in uniform in his mother’s bedroom on the first floor.
_ _ _
When I open the door of the bedroom I hear a record being put on the gramophone downstairs. It is no longer the Diabelli Variations, I know the piece, but cannot recall what it is. I go to the window and open the curtains, look out at the garden as I hum the tune. There is a thin
