“This morning shortly after daybreak, the Bismarck, virtually immobilised, without support, was attacked by British battleships that pursued her,” Churchill was quoted as announcing to the House of Commons. “And I have just received news that the Bismarck has sunk.” Applause. Hear, hear. Shortly after daybreak, Oscar mused. The bleak morning sky over a stormy sea. And then sinking, sinking to the bottom fast. Ears and eyes aflame, throats parched in terror and rage. How did such a calamity proceed, he wondered. The newspaper provided no answer, all was rumour and speculation. There were reports of hand-to-hand fighting in Crete, meaning the fixed bayonet, pistol in hand, grenade-packed belt, possibly even a knife between the teeth. Fighting and falling. Blown to bits, mown down, lost and destroyed. Headlines for polite discussion over a lakeside dinner. Shortly after dusk. Music.
Despondency crept up on him as he realised yet again how relentlessly things took their course, how simultaneously and obscurely, and how the significance kept eluding him of so many contradictory events taking place just a stone’s throw away. Nevertheless, he appeared unmoved as he pored over Die Nation, the only Swiss newspaper to persist in its anti-Nazi stance. On the whole the press took a back seat, leaning a little this way, then that. Shilly-shallying. Nothing new about human misery, sir, we have to put our foot down, we’re being inundated by refugees and it can’t go on; watch out, folks, let’s not rub our bad-tempered neighbour the wrong way; careful now, steady on. The hirelings of the press were forever glancing over their shoulders, unless holed up in their bunkers of shrewd impartiality. The journalists of Die Nation were the exception. Oscar had great respect for the editor, whom he had met in Berne. A driven man, who despised most of his fellow Swiss. He had visited the border crossings, had seen Jews being turned away without mercy. Anyone having witnessed that would never again rest easy, he had said. Murder at one remove: Death in a Swiss customs officer’s cap. His newspaper stood alone in daring to attack the government. Oscar did not always see eye to eye with the editor, although he too was critical of Swiss politics on various counts. In spite of the border restrictions, however, people still managed to get into the country. Oscar knew this; he worked closely with the people who smuggled them in, he knew the routes, the dangers, and the courage of certain Swiss men and women. On many a moonless night he had stood waiting for a small group to come over from France. Often in vain. Waiting was hardly a heroic activity, but each time just a few of them made it over the border it felt like a major victory.
His ruminations came to an abrupt halt. Something had stirred in the periphery of his vision. Then he recognised him. It was the way the man was lighting his cigarette, his head bent low as though scanning the ground at his feet. The same gesture had struck him at the restaurant in Geneva, during his lunch with Emma and Carl. He had been unaware of the man with the newspaper until that curious ducking of the head to light a cigarette. And so here he was again, on the far side of the terrace, engrossed in a magazine, a man like any other taking a rest after a stroll.
