‘Where have you been?’ He was blinded by a strong flash lamp being shone in his face. ‘Why were you so long?’

  The first one barrelled past him, and the rest swarmed inside behind him: four secret policemen, two schupos and a great slab of a man from the SA, who had hold of a terrified Frau Kempowska. Alyosha could hear doors being hammered on the floors above his.

  ‘Is this Ida Kempowska?’ someone asked Alyosha as the flash lamp waved in front of his eyes. ‘Have you seen Franz tonight?’ asked the voice.

  ‘Yes, it is, and no, I haven’t…’

  It was difficult to shelter under the shadow of lies: he felt an instinctive compulsion to confess the truth in order to get rid of them.

  ‘Where is he?’ the SA man bellowed into the old lady’s face.

  ‘And Hedwig Eisenberg?’ one of the others asked. ‘She lives here doesn’t she? The one the Reds call Vicky. Where is she? Do you know?’

  ‘I don’t have the slightest idea.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  From the corner of his eye he saw the bedclothes being tossed onto the floor and the mattress being lifted off the frame before being flung aside. He could hear crockery being smashed in the kitchen. And then, the sound of a cupboard being dragged, bumping along the floor. Clearly they were intent on maximum destruction and a thorough search. One of the secret policemen stood at the bookshelf, carefully leafing through every book. He threw most of them onto the floor, but put one or two on the table. There was so much noise and movement, and so many questions being fired at him, that Alyosha didn’t notice for a while the uniformed schupos were removing the pictures and tapping the walls behind them with little hammers. Whoever had been arrested from the block and questioned in the Vlasich Pesotski barracks at the top of the street had started to name names.

  ‘Who are you then?’ asked the SA man.

  Alyosha told him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Lodger.’

  So unknown and dark were they to each other, he thought. Strangers who wanted to know everything about him in a matter of minutes. But nobody believed a word he said. What was his full name? What was he doing in Berlin? How long had he been living there? How long had he been living here? Was he related to Vicky? Were they lovers? Was he a red? After a while, the schupos came over to the man from the SA to report that they hadn’t found any arms.

  The interrogation began again, and his papers were closely examined. Then, he was ordered to get dressed.

  14.

  There were three motor lorries with their engines still running outside the block, a few schupos in green sitting on the wooden benches guarding the tenants that had already been rounded up, who all had their heads down dejectedly. Alyosha was ordered to climb up and looked for somewhere to sit, but the back of the lorry was already full. Some more tenants climbed up behind him all the same, but it seemed Franz had managed to escape.

  They drove through Berlin in the winter gloom, the lamps reflected in the icy streets. He had been too harried to have time to dress himself in warm layers, and the cold was punishing, despite his coat and corduroy hat. Even some of the schupos and the SA were pulling the collars of their greatcoats up.

  Their destination was the inner courtyard of the police headquarters, from where the prisoners were escorted into the building, to a dimly lit corridor with yellowing walls, where there were already other prisoners waiting, mostly men. Everybody looked exhausted, with some of them practically sleeping on their feet.

  Alyosha saw one of the schupos who had ransacked the apartment go by with some of Vicky’s possessions in his arms. Many of the prisoners knew each other, and were talking quietly. Another lorry-load of men arrived, a rough-enough crew, dishevelled and down at heel. But they were all riff-raff as far as the police were concerned, and were treated as such.

  It was later, in the cell, that someone told Alyosha about the fire at the Reichstag. He dozed, dreaming about Ludwika. He re-lived his shock at seeing her there in front of him, in flesh and blood. His heart filled with disappointment all over again as he remembered how he had suffered because of her. It wasn’t that he wanted to have anything to do with her anymore, he told himself, it was just thinking about what could have been in place of this emptiness. That was the sadness. But then, who lives his life exactly as he would like? Sooner or later, what comes to everybody is disillusionment or disappointment.

  It was impossible to sleep properly, as there wasn’t enough room to lie down. During the night, sixteen men were squeezed into that one cell. They were mostly communists, but one was a SDP member of the Reichstag. Without mincing his words, he said that, whatever they printed in the press, they should know it was the Nazis who were responsible for lighting the fire, of that he had no doubt. Keen-eyed Carl von Ossietski was another, and the rest of them were surprised that a prominent pacifist like him had been brought in. They all shifted along to make room for the old philosopher Hermann Duncker when he was thrown in with them. He leaned heavily on his stick but, undaunted, he refused to stay silent, and started protesting loudly, though to absolutely no effect.

  All through the night, more men were brought in to the corridors, and later, they learnt that several hundred, if not thousands, had been arrested all over the city.

  It was mid-morning before Alyosha was brought out to be questioned. The same type of table, the same type of chairs, the same bare soulnessness, he thought to himself as he entered the room – he could easily have been back in Poland. He stuck to his story. Stuck to what he and Vicky had agreed they would say if either of them was ever arrested.

  Although they had no evidence to counter his claims, they were very unwilling to believe him. He was exhausted and desperate for them to let him go, so he decided to try and win their sympathy by telling them his life story.

  He did so, emphasising how much he loathed and despised communists and all their works. He surprised himself at how readily a tear sprang to his eye as he told them that they had been responsible for killing his father, stealing his house in Petrograd, his dacha in Crimea, his armaments factory, forcing the family to flee to Europe, to scratch a living in foreign cities. As he continued with his account, he felt some genuine emotion, and a hard lump growing in his throat.

  He went on to tell them of his longing to return to Russia – that he often dreamed of being able to walk down Nevskii Prospekt with his mother tongue being spoken all around him, of tasting Russian food on his tongue again, and breathing in those unique smells of his old home. More than anything, he wanted to see the fall of Stalin and his gangsters, and that’s why he’d been drilling with the SA in the ranks of the Russian Auxiliary on Rittmeister Gunther von Kunz’ estate. It would give him an unparalleled satisfaction to cross over the border in the military uniform of the New Germany to fight the communists and the Jews, and restore Russia to its former glory. To cap it all, he told them that Oberführer Karl Krieger, who worked for Doctor Joseph Goebbels, would be happy to vouch for him. If they still had any doubts about him, the best thing would be for them to lift the telephone. It was a bravura performance.

  When he returned to the apartment, he saw that there were hours of work ahead of him restoring some sort of order. Before facing the chaos, he made himself some tea and listened to the wireless. It seemed Berlin was holding its breath, waiting for the communists to rise as one.

  As the hours ticked by, nothing happened. The burning of the Reichstag was having all the attention, and some communist from the Netherlands was being blamed – although there was a strong suggestion that Ernst Torgler, Chairman of the KPD, and the leader of the communist faction in the Reichstag, was also implicated. According to the Nazis, this was on the basis of some highly incriminatory evidence which had been found in Karl Liebknecht Haus. Hence, the arrests had unfortunately been necessary, so that they could establish the truth about the fire.

  As the days went past, still nothing happened, apart from the odd slogan painted on a wall here and there. They didn’t even call for a general strike.

  One night, Alyosha happened to drive past the Reichstag. The building didn’t look too badly damaged, not on the exterior at least.

  The arrests and imprisonments continued. Torgler was one of the first they locked up. Ernst Thälmann was on the run. Heinz Neumann and his wife succeeded in avoiding capture, and found refuge in the Soviet Union. Willi Münzenberg retreated to Paris to continue fighting the Nazis from there. Those who could, got out of Germany as quickly as possible.

  15.

  Captain Malinowski was a rabid anti-communist, and hearing of the persecution of the Reds following the burning of the Reichstag was music to his ears. He would often voice his pleasure at these developments when Alyosha was driving him somewhere. Stamping out Stalin’s riff-raff was entirely a good thing. Communism was a disease of the heart, one which had given a nasty and unforeseen turn of events in the countries of Europe. Marxists were the scum of the earth, and hanging them slowly was far too good for them. He was delighted that Hitler was locking them up, and so much the better that he’d caught so many of them, he’d had to put them in a new prison outside Munich, a place called Dachau. Colonel Flezar, who was sitting at his side, murmured his agreement and then asked, not for the first time, ‘Why do the working classes have to smell so badly?’

  The group of Polish aristocrats living in Berlin seemed, to Alyosha, to be a sybaritic lot. Many of them were attached to the embassy, but their conversations were mostly inconsequential and superficial, full of accounts of visits to spas at Marienbad, Bad Freienwalde or Carlsbad, jaunts to Venice or Paris, or to Vienna for the balls. Alyosha heard so much about the Kiel regatta, he felt he’d been there himself, and knew all the gossip about the tennis tournament in Dalmatia, the swimming in Corsica and the croquet in Prague.

  Alyosha was nowadays expected to divide his time between driving Captain Malinowski and tutoring Amelia, Ludwika’s six-year-old daughter, in German and French. He had discovered that the Captain was, in fact, Ludwika’s cousin. But every Wednesday, he was still expected to drive to the villa at Wannsee, returning to the Hotel Adlon with the white envelope from the silent girl. One time, he tried to talk to her, but she only gazed at him for a moment with her mute eyes, before turning and walking away.

  Alyosha had heard nothing from Vicky, and was anxious about her. She was on the run, of course, moving from one hiding place to another, no doubt. But his thoughts were also full of Ludwika. He was still astonished at the coincidence of them meeting once again, and, of all places, in his father’s old suite at the Hotel Adlon.

  He had gone over that first meeting often in his head.

  ‘Hello, Alexei.’

  ‘Hello, Ludwika.’

  Her bearing had been confident and relaxed, and she’d been beautifully dressed. With a half-smile and mischief in her eyes, she had turned to her cousin, and told him calmly that the two of them had known each other in Paris, known each other rather well.

  ‘Didn’t we Alexei?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to tell us how you met then?’ Baroness Kosub had asked playfully. She liked nothing better than finding out about people’s sexual peccadilloes, and passing it all on to Colonel Flezar.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ludwika had smiled. ‘What do you say, Alexei?’

  Her words had sunk into his skin.

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  As he’d stood gazing at her, some old emotion had clenched at his stomach, something painful and primitive. With something between joy and dread, he’d realised he was feeling exactly the same as when he saw her for the very first time, back in Paris. Nothing had changed. She had hardly changed either. A little older, and her hair was shorter, but she was every bit as beautiful as before, her smile just as lovely. From the second he’d kissed her blue glove, he was defenceless against her.

  16.

  Larissa was already waiting outside for her when Margarita left Aznefttrust. She said she didn’t have long, as Bruno would be home within the hour.

  Over a cup of coffee, the two sisters caught up on each other’s news.

  ‘How safe are you?’ Larissa asked her sister.

  Margarita tried to reassure her sister but Larissa said doubtfully, ‘But Bruno was savage about the communists after the Reichstag business.’

  ‘If they’d wanted to arrest me, they’d have done it by now.’

  ‘And Kai-Olaf?’

  ‘He’s still free.’

  ‘Is he keeping his head down?’

  ‘He’s working in a bakery.’

  Margarita, however, would be out of work by the end of the month, as Aznefttrust were closing their Berlin office. She told her sister how the SA had paid them a visit one morning. They’d all been questioned, and a few of them had been arrested. After that, they heard officially from Moscow that every contract was terminated, and the company would shut its doors.

  ‘What will you do?’

  Margarita had already had a word with the her boss, Osip Nikitich, and he was going to try to transfer her to the Amsterdam office.

  ‘Amsterdam! Is this definite?’

  ‘As long as they give me a visa.’

  The same old problem.

  ‘What does Kai-Olaf say?’

  ‘With things as they are, he thinks it’s for the best.’

  ‘It’s awful to think you’re being forced to leave Berlin.’

  Larissa said this with a certain innocence, and added sadly that it would mean they’d see even less of each other.

  ‘We can write, Lala, and visit. It’s not so terribly far.’

  ‘I suppose, but it won’t be the same.’

  Margarita certainly didn’t hold out much hope of finding any kind of other work in Berlin. The prejudice against foreigners – Russians, Poles, Slavs and especially Jews – was deepening. Germans now had the first refusal for any job, no matter how big or small it was. Besides, the thought of having to work in an office from nine to five every day, where everybody was heil-Hitlering each other, made her feel quite sick. ‘Heil Moscow!’ was her greeting every time.

  ‘How are things between you and Walter?’ Margarita asked her sister.

  ‘He’s wants to leave his wife, but he feels guilty.’

  Margarita considered this for a moment.

  ‘It’s a big decision,’ Larissa said, ‘I know that. But we feel so… We love each other. I know he’ll come to me.’

  ‘What about the little girls?’

  That remained her greatest worry.

  ‘I just know that Bruno will be completely vile. He’ll do everything he can to keep Ella and Clara. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.’

  ‘You have a difficult time ahead of you.’

  ‘Yes, I know. To be honest, I don’t know what will become of me.’

  17.

  When Ludwika came to collect her daughter, she turned her head at an angle, touching the brim of her new hat lightly.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Alyosha dropped his gaze from the hat to the rest of her, enjoying the sight of her until he felt his appreciation turn to something more carnal, and felt the faint stirring of an erection. He swiftly turned his attention back to her hat.

  ‘Suits you.’

  It did, too. Ludwika smiled. She lifted Amelia in her arms and gave her a light kiss on her cheek.

  Initially, Alyosha had been in two minds whether he should refuse to have anything to do with her, or to confront her with her behaviour towards him after she left Paris. But she had said to him in that direct way of hers, ‘I want you and I to spend some time together. What are you doing tonight?’ And that was that.

  She introduced Alyosha to everybody as ‘an old friend’.

  ‘You and me,’ she said, smiling, as they sat in her box at the opera. Ludwika told him her marriage had been unhappy almost from the start, and after barely two years, Mateusz had left her for an actress from the Rozmaitości Theatre. He’d used to meet her every lunchtime in an obscure little hotel, but it had not been obscure enough, and their entire circle in Warsaw had soon been enthusiastically discussing the affair.

  Ludwika hadn’t wasted many tears on him, but she’d been far more anguished when her Catholic parents had refused to countenance a divorce. Mateusz’s family had been just as intransigent, insisting that, if the young couple couldn’t reconcile, then they must come to some civilised ‘understanding’ which would preserve the good name of both families.

  With her mother and daughter, Ludwika had taken a vacation on the Baltic coast, spending a month in Jurmala, near Riga. There’d been nothing very charming about the place, but it had been a chance to escape the gossip and clear her head. They’d hired a beach hut by the sand dunes, and Ludwika had become friendly with the couple from Prague who’d had the adjoining hut, a successful lawyer and his charming wife. They’d been a liberal couple, staunch believers in the rights of women, and over a glass of port one evening, the husband had told her he’d be prepared to fight her case. He’d been as good as his word, and Ludwika had been duly divorced, but she’d lost her family, and very nearly lost Amelia, though after months of tense negotiations, her ex-husband had finally relented, and she’d been allowed to keep her.

  Captain Malinowski was related to her on her mother’s side, and it was he who’d persuaded her to move to Berlin. He’d felt she needed a change of scene, and that it would be beneficial to put some distance between her and her family, especially her father, who was even more of a heavy-handed patriarch in his old age than before. According to Captain Malinowski, he had ruined his wife’s life for years, and it was no wonder her health was so bad. When the visit to Berlin had been broached, her father had withheld his permission unless she went with an escort. Ludwika had complied with all his terms for the sake of peace – though she’d had every intention of ignoring every one of them once she was safely away – and Baroness Kosub had agreed to be her chaperone, although they’d both laughed at such old-fashioned nonsense between themselves.