Now get out. You've had a nice leave, and it'll be up in two days anyway; go back to France and forget this.'
'I can't,' he said. 'I can't. I've got to talk to you. Any place you say. Any time.'
Two men came out of a shop on the other side of the street and walked swiftly, parallel to them, in the same direction as they were going.
'All right,' Gretchen said. 'My place. Tonight at eleven. Don't use the front door. You can walk up the back stairs through the basement. The entrance is in the other street. The kitchen door will be unlocked. I'll be there.'
'Yes,' said Christian. 'Thank you. That's wonderful.'
'Now leave me alone,' she said. He stopped and watched her walk away, without looking back, in her bright, nervous walk, accentuated by the boots and the belted rubber coat. He turned and went slowly back to his boarding-house. He lay down on the bed without taking off his clothes and tried to sleep.
At eleven o'clock that night he climbed the dark back stairs. Gretchen was sitting at a table writing something. Her back was very straight in a green wool dress, and she didn't even look round when Christian came into the room. Oh, God, he thought, it is the Lieutenant all over again. He walked lightly over behind her chair and kissed the top of her head, smelling the scented hair.
Gretchen stopped writing and turned round in the chair. Her face was cool and serious.
'You should have told me,' she said.
'What?' he asked.
'You may have got me into a lot of trouble,' she said. Christian sat down heavily. 'What did I do?'
Gretchen stood up and began to walk up and down the room, the wool skirt swinging at her knees.
'It wasn't fair,' she said, 'letting me go through all that.'
'Go through what?' Christian asked loudly. 'What are you talking about?'
'Don't shout!' Gretchen snapped at him. 'God knows who's listening.'
'I wish,' said Christian, keeping his voice low, 'that you'd let me know what's happening.'
'Yesterday afternoon,' Gretchen said, standing in front of him, 'the Gestapo sent a man to my office.'
'Yes?'
'They had been to see General Ulrich first,' Gretchen said significantly.
Christian shook his head wearily. 'Who in God's name is General Ulrich?'
'My friend,' said Gretchen, 'my very good friend, who is probably in very hot water now because of you.'
'I never saw General Ulrich in all my life,' Christian said.
'Keep your voice low.' Gretchen paced over to the sideboard and poured herself four fingers of brandy. She did not offer Christian a drink. 'I'm a fool to have let you come here at all.'
'What has General Ulrich got to do with me?' Christian demanded.
'General Ulrich,' Gretchen said deliberately, after taking a large swallow of the brandy, 'is the man who tried to put through your application for a direct commission and a transfer to the General Staff.'
'Well?'
'The Gestapo told him yesterday that you were a suspected Communist,' Gretchen said, 'and they wanted to know what his connection with you was and why he was so interested in you.'
'What do you want me to say?' Christian demanded. 'I'm not a Communist. I was a member of the Nazi Party in Austria in 1937.'
'They knew all that,' said Gretchen. 'They also knew that you had been a member of the Austrian Communist Party from 1932 to 1936. They also knew that you made trouble for a Regional Commissioner named Schwartz just after the Anschluss. They also knew that you had an affair with an American girl who had been living with a Jewish Socialist in Vienna in 1937.'
Christian sank wearily back into the chair. The Gestapo, he thought; how meticulous and inaccurate they could be.
'You're under observation in your Company,' Gretchen said.
'They get a report on you every month.' She grinned sourly.
'It may please you to know that my husband reports that you are a completely able and loyal soldier and strongly recommends you for officers' school.'
'I must remember to thank him,' Christian said flatly, 'when I see him.'
'Of course,' said Gretchen, 'you can never become an officer. They won't even send you to fight against the Russians. If your unit is shifted to that front, you will be transferred.'
What a winding, hopeless trap, Christian thought, what an impossible, boring catastrophe.
'That's it,' Gretchen said. 'Naturally, when they found out that a woman who worked for the Propaganda Ministry, who was friendly, officially and otherwise, with many high-ranking military and official personnel…'
'Oh, for God's sake,' Christian said irritably, standing up, 'stop sounding like a police magistrate!'
'You understand my position…' It was the first time Christian had heard a defensive tone in Gretchen's voice.
'People have been shipped off to concentration camps for less. You must understand my position, darling.'
'I understand your position,' Christian said loudly, 'and I understand the Gestapo's position, and I understand General Ulrich's position, and they all bore me to death!' He strode over to her and towered over her, raging. 'Do you think I'm a Communist?'
'That's beside the point, darling,' Gretchen said carefully.
'The Gestapo thinks you may be. That's the important thing. Or at least, that you may not be quite… quite reliable. Don't blame me, please…' She came over to him and her voice was soft and pleading. 'It would be different if I was an ordinary girl, in an ordinary unimportant job… I could see you whenever I pleased, I could go to any place with you… But this way, it's really dangerous. You don't know. You haven't been back in Germany for so long, you have no idea of the way people suddenly disappear. For nothing. For less than this. Honestly. Please… don't look so angry…'
Christian sighed and sat down. It would take a little time to get accustomed to this. Suddenly he felt he was no longer at home; he was a foreigner treading clumsily in a strange, dangerous country, where every word had a double meaning, every act a dubious consequence. He thought of the three thousand acres in Poland, the stables, the hunting week-ends. He smiled sourly. He'd be lucky if they let him go back to teach skiing.
'Don't look like that,' Gretchen said. 'So… so despairing.'
'Forgive me,' he said. 'I'll sing a song.'
'Don't be harsh with me,' she said humbly. 'What can I do about it?'
'Can't you go to them? Can't you tell them? You know me, you could prove…'
She shook her head. 'I can't prove anything.'
'I'll go to them. I'll go to General Ulrich.'
'None of that!' Her voice was sharp. 'You'll ruin me. They told me not to tell you anything about it. Just to stop seeing you. They'll make it worse for you, and God knows what they'll do to me! Promise me you won't say anything about it to anyone.'
She looked so frightened, and, after all, it wasn't her doing.
'I promise,' he said slowly. He stood up and looked around the room that had become the real core of his life. 'Well,' and he tried to grin, 'I won't say that it hasn't been a nice leave.'
'I'm so terribly sorry,' she whispered. She put her arms around him gently. 'You don't have to go… just yet…' They smiled at each other.
But an hour later she thought she heard a noise outside the door. She made him get up and dress and go out by the back door, the way he'd come, and she was vague about when he could see her again.
Lieutenant Hardenburg was in the orderly room when Christian reported. He looked thinner and more alert, as though he had been in training. He was striding back and forth with a springy, energetic step, and he smiled with what was for him great amiability, as he returned Christian's salute.
'Did you have a good time?' he asked, his voice friendly and pleasant.
'Very good, Sir,' Christian said.
'Mrs Hardenburg wrote to me,' the Lieutenant said, 'that you delivered the lace.'
