Lara’s silence was disturbing. She had let go of his wrist, and had put her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown. Hiding the hands in that way is to hide the mind. She wished he would stop talking, wished she had not heard right. She drew herself away from him and drifted, faster and faster, out of the room, out of her house, back into the snow, to the time when there was only a village, a breathtaking view, no future, no past, no time. Away from him as he held forth, piling one excuse on top of the other in his blinding fear for his daughter. Fear corrupts. No-one will know what I know, Lara, no-one sees what I see: my child at the hands of the Gestapo.
Lara’s shoulders said enough. The way she recoiled, between despair and outrage, between anguish and resignation. She knew that talking was not going to help, he had it all worked out, he had the whole chess game in his head, there was no way of getting through to him, not even for her. Or was there?
“Remember the Norwegian house at the Hunnenfluh?”
A voice from the light, an angel from the Berner Oberland. It sounded more like a statement than a question. What was that about, why did she mention that house? They had seen it and talked about it, a dream house, an unattainable Viking fantasy with small dragons guarding the drainpipes and brightly coloured ornaments on turrets and balconies, a work of art for the benefit of lone mountaineers, who would watch in wonder as the elfin occupants flitted from one window to the next. Imagine living there, Lara, with no-one to disturb us – he had said something like that to her once.
“I would have loved to go there every winter of our lives.”
He had heard what she said; I
Emma pressed Wapenaar’s doorbell a second time. In her impatience at finding every available wall covered with roses, she had dropped her bicycle on the ground. The wheel was still spinning when Wapenaar opened the door. They recognised each other immediately. He was delighted to see her, an opportunity at last to have a chat with the daughter of his good friend Verschuur. Was there anything he could do for her? Please come in, he would begin by making them a cup of coffee.
She was struck by the silence in the house. Where was his wife? The room he showed her into was a riot of cosiness, with lace doilies on the tables, an upright piano, walls covered in framed watercolours and photographs of gentlefolk in nineteenth-century poses. There were lamps with pastel-coloured shades, flower-filled vases, a fireplace with neatly stacked logs alongside, all of which she remarked without taking it in. She had no time to waste. She was afraid she was too late.
The days had passed in unbearable suspense and vacillation. She had not said anything to Carl. He had likewise avoided the subject. How odd not to breathe a word about what was going through your mind all day and all night. Carl Regendorf, on secondment to an organisation involved in Radio Free India: broadcasts of freedom fighters in folk costumes seeking to undermine the British Raj. Their leader, a dark-skinned Indian who had shaken hands with Ribbentrop during a press conference, was in good cheer and excellent health, loudspeaker at the ready for the rant against the British oppressor. Carl had been present, fascinated by the zealotry, but above all disillusioned by the banal distortions of the truth. Over at the ministry, secret meetings were being held all the time to discuss the impending massacre and how to inveigle a way into international acquiescence. Encroaching on the edges of a redrawn map of Europe was the dawn of a new, everlasting empire. Russia, Africa, India, it would not be long now.
As long as Trott stayed put, so would he, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to stick by his resolve. The hypocrisy had assumed such proportions that he took to dropping in at Trott’s office from time to time, to regale him with a mime show. Using a range of crazed grimaces and gesticulations, he imitated the antics of the regime’s top dogs and ridiculed the insanity of everyday reality. Trott was highly amused by this, and communicated his responses in basic sign language, mindful of any microphones that might be concealed in lamps or ceilings. It was resistance in miniature, a scuffle in a soap bubble. But it allowed them to breathe.
In the early morning of that Thursday, as every Thursday, the bells of the nearby church rang out. Practice runs by the carilloneur, who favoured a slow, penetrating rhythm. Emma loved hearing the peals that reminded her so strongly of her schooldays in Leeuwarden.
