LITMIR.BIZ

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      Peter nodded his agreement and said, ‘What will you do when it ends, Pauli? Will you stay in the army?’

      ‘What else am I fit for? I have no head for banking or business and even if I did have, I’m not sure that I’d get along well enough with Father to be working alongside him every day. What about you?’

      ‘No more piano playing.’ He held up his gloved hand. ‘I’ll go to college. If Father wants me to study law, I’ll do it. Then, if I don’t get along with him, I can go into a law practice somewhere.’

      ‘Tell me about dear Mama…. It’s such a long time.’

      ‘She still has the awful American accent, but her German is much better now. She found people would be rude to her, thinking she was British. It made her improve her German in a way that nothing else ever did.’

      ‘Rude to Mama? Who would be rude to her?’

      ‘People standing in the food lines.’

      ‘Mama standing in the food lines?’

      ‘Mother has changed, Pauli. Just as the Jews have become so determined to prove their patriotism, so Mama and other foreign-born Germans feel that they must outdo everyone else in the struggle to win the war. She helps the wounded soldiers to write letters home, she rolls bandages, and even makes speeches at War Loans rallies.’

      ‘But she was so sick.’

      ‘Then the war has cured her sickness. When you go back to Berlin, you will not recognize her, Pauli.’

      ‘And what of Father?’

      ‘Work, work, work. Did you hear that Hauser joined the army?’

      ‘Old Hauser? Father’s valet? But he must be at least forty years old.’

      ‘Thirty-eight years old. I’m surprised they took him, but he shaved off that awful beard and gave a false age to the recruiting officer. He’s now a driving instructor at a transport school in Frankfurt. And from what I hear from Father, he’s lording it with stories about how he used to drive Papa’s old Itala.’

      ‘How does Father manage without him?’

      ‘It’s amazing. Father drives himself almost everywhere.’

      ‘And women?’

      His brother hesitated. It was a taboo subject, or had been until now. ‘He goes to Vienna a great deal,’ said Peter finally.

      ‘I thought that was finished.’

      ‘So did poor Mama, I think.’

      ‘I wish Father could see how ridiculous it makes him look,’ said Pauli. He loved his father and respected him to the point of reverence, but now he’d reached the age at which he judged him, too.

      ‘Does it make him look ridiculous? Most of his friends seem to admire and envy him. We are the only ones who think him ridiculous, and that’s just because we feel sorry for Mama.’

      ‘Perhaps she would have been happier with the Englishman.’

      ‘Which Englishman?’

      ‘Surely you guessed that the Englishman, Piper, wanted her to go away with him.’

      ‘Mama?’

      ‘Mama had a love affair with the Englishman. At Travemünde, when we lost the Valhalla.’

      ‘Are you crazy, Pauli?’

      ‘It took me a long time to understand what had happened between them. But now I look back at it, I can see how desperately unhappy she was for years afterwards.’

      ‘The Englishman? The spy?’

      ‘He was no spy. That was just Papa’s way of attacking him.’

      ‘Are you saying that Mama had a love affair with the Englishman and that Papa knew about it?’

      ‘I found his wristwatch under Mama’s bed….’ There, he’d said it. A thousand times it had been on the tip of Pauli’s tongue to reveal the secret, but now he’d said it. And now he regretted it.

      Peter closed his eyes. ‘It’s incredible,’ he said at last.

      ‘Incredible or not, it’s true. I think Mama was afraid I would blurt out something that would betray her secret.’

      ‘But you never did?’

      ‘I didn’t understand the significance of finding the watch there until years later. But then, when Mama took the chloroform in the summer of 1914, and Frau Wisliceny came round to look after her…That night, when I went in to kiss Papa good night, I noticed that he was piecing together torn fragments of a letter. It must have been a letter to Mama from the Englishman.’

      ‘I wish you hadn’t told me,’ said Peter. ‘I feel besmirched by it.’

      ‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Pauli. ‘Does Mama have no right to be with someone who loves her?’

      ‘She has Father.’

      ‘And Father has half a dozen other women. He has no real, deep love for Mama. Sometimes I think he might have married her only for the Rensselaer money.’

      Peter was affronted. He could hardly believe that Pauli had changed so much. Pauli had always been in awe of father. ‘If you were not my brother I’d call you out for saying that.’

      ‘A duel?’ Pauli laughed. ‘You think I’d care about losing my life in a duel? Where I am, I see men maimed and dying every day. I stood next to a sentry last week while a shell splinter trepanned him. His brains spattered into my face. You complain about my dirty uniform. Do you know what the stains on my jacket are? Blood; the blood of boys who forget to lower their head at the right time, or make too much noise mending the wire at night. Would you like to know about the stains on my trousers, Peter? Faeces! I shit myself with fear every time I hear the whistle of a mortar bomb or shell, or hear at night the movement of a few rats, which might in reality be a British raiding party coming to bury a trench knife in my throat. It’s quick and quiet, the throat, you see. You learn how to cut a man’s throat while holding a hand very tightly over his mouth so that he doesn’t scream.’

      ‘You did this, Pauli?’ His elder brother’s eyes were wide and his face had gone pale. ‘Killed with a knife?’

      ‘Half a dozen times. I have a superior officer – a contemptible cad – who thinks young Lichterfelde graduates like me should be exposed to maximum danger. He tells us that. He also told me that I mustn’t come here today. I suppose that shocks you, too. I came here today – in this dirty uniform of which you so disapprove – having defied the lawful orders of a superior officer. And I shall do it again whenever it suits me.’

      ‘You are insane, Pauli.’

      ‘No, I’m not insane, but sometimes I think His Majesty must be insane to continue with this mad war.’

      ‘Pauli, you must see a doctor. You are insane.’ Peter looked round fearfully, astounded to hear such treasonable talk from his young brother.

      ‘Perhaps you’re right. Then come to the front line with me, Peter, and perhaps you’ll become insane, too. But I promise that you’ll lose all fears of death, disgrace or anything else that fate has waiting for us.’ Pauli reached forward to take the glass of schnapps that the captain had sent to them, and he downed it in one swallow.

      When Peter spoke again, his voice was soft and low, his tone more conciliatory. ‘Whatever may be the truth of it, Pauli, I beg you, for your own sake and for that of the family, to leave such thoughts unspoken. It can be very dangerous. People might even think you are mixed up with these crackpot radical groups who are so outspoken against the war.’

      ‘After this war I want things to be different, very different, but I’m not a Spartacist,

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