Dark Tunnel Page 9

  Suddenly, I felt like a romantic boy. Six years is a long time. The six years from 1937 to 1943 were a very long time in Europe. Much water had flowed under the bridge, and much blood, and then the bridge was blown up. I had known her for one month and she had made no promises.

  I turned and walked out of the room and Alec followed me to the front door. It was locked but I turned the key in the lock and we stepped out onto the driveway. We had nothing to say to each other as we went down the road to the car. At least I had nothing to say, and Alec held his peace.

  We found the car and drove back into Arbana. My head was buzzing, not with ideas. Ruth Esch had changed all right. She had changed from my girl into Peter Schneider’s.

  Yet she had probably saved my life. It was pretty clear that she had been in Schneider’s house all evening: I remembered Dr. Schneider’s phone-call when I first mentioned Ruth to him in the German office, the lipstick on Peter’s face, the woman in the doorway who had shaken her head at Beau Sabreur. A queer thought dragged through my head and left a narrow slime of doubt: had she objected to my decapitation because an automobile accident is a less dangerous way to commit murder?

  “Drop me at my apartment, will you, Alec? I’m going to have a drink and go to bed.”

  “No more housebreaking to-night?”

  “Not for me. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Right.” He stopped the car at my corner and I got out.

  Before I slammed the door, I said, “Good luck.”

  He needed it.

  CHAPTER V

  THE STEAM HEAT WAS on and the apartment was stuffy. I took off my suitcoat and threw it on the chesterfield and went out to the kitchen. With boiling water and lemon juice and rum I made myself a large toddy to take the rasp out of the buzzing in my head. As I drank the toddy, the buzzing sank to a murmur like water lapping with low sounds by the shore. But my brain was not yet the complete blank I wanted it to be.

  I ran the water in the tub and took off my clothes and had a hot bath. Half-floating in the hot green water, I contemplated my navel like a yogi trying to forget the world. Pale navel I loved beside the Shalimar. For a few minutes I almost dozed. The telephone put an end to that.

  I wrapped a towel around me and left a trail of water across my livingroom carpet and caught the telephone on the fourth ring. “Hello.”

  The answer was very low but I recognized Alec’s voice. “Listen, Bob. I think I’ve found what I was looking for in Schneider’s office. Now get this—”

  “Where are you?”

  “M E Dic office. Don’t ask questions. I think there’s somebody in the building. Get this.” He spelt it. “T A I L L O U R. Write it down.”

  I put down the receiver, took a pencil and an envelope out of the breast pocket of the coat on the chesterfield, and wrote it down. Taillour. When I went back to the phone, the free signal was buzzing. I hung up and the buzzing went on in my head.

  I called the university number and asked for the Middle English Dictionary office.

  The operator said, “There will be nobody there at this time of night, but I’ll ring it if you wish.”

  She rang four times and nobody answered.

  I gave myself a few swipes with the towel and put on my clothes again. On the way out I passed the telephone stand by the living room door and saw the envelope on which I had written Alec’s word. I picked it up and looked at it. Taillour. There were two clicks in my brain like a billiard carom. ‘Taillour’ was a Middle English spelling of tailor. The German word for tailor is Schneider.

  So what? It was a roundabout way of telling me what I already knew, that Alec had something on Schneider.

  Two smudged words on the envelope caught my eye. It was postmarked Kirkland Lake, Ontario. What the hell? I had had no letters from Kirkland Lake. Then I noticed that the envelope had not been opened: it must have been one of the letters I had picked up in the English office when I went there to get the flashlight.

  I looked at the address:

  Dr. Robert Branch,

  English Department …

  The black script shimmied under my eyes like highly trained fleas. It was Ruth Esch’s handwriting. I looked at the postmark again. September 20. To-day was September 22. Or was it the twenty-third? I looked at the clock on the mantel. No, not midnight yet.

  I ripped open the envelope and saw the signature “Ruth” and started to read. It was a long letter but I read it standing up. I forgot to sit down.

  The letter said:

  Dear Robert Branch:

  I know you must be the Bob Branch I knew because you are a professor of English as you said you were going to be, and took your first degree in 1934.

  Please don’t expect a coherent letter. My nerves have been shaken, and I’m so excited. For a long time I felt like an old woman and now I’m feeling young again. I am in Canada, and I’m coming to the United States. I have been appointed to teach in your university. Isn’t that a remarkable coincidence? It will be so good to see an old friend again.

  Dr. Herman Schneider, the head of your German Department, but of course you must know him—and oh, Bob, he has been so kind to me!—sent me a university catalogue. Just to-day I was looking through it, and I found your name in it. And you are a professor already! You are advancing very rapidly.

  This is frightfully confused, isn’t it? I haven’t done any writing for so long. For months I hadn’t even any paper to write on. I made up things in my head and forgot them again. You know, I almost forgot my English when I was in prison. But during the last few weeks in England and Canada, it’s been coming back again.

  What a mooncalf you must think me! Here I’m chattering away and I haven’t told you anything. But I sat down to write to you as soon as I came upon your name. I should have waited a little.

  I wrote the above nonsense in the morning just after I found your name in the catalogue. It’s terribly silly but I’m going to let it stand. At least it shows I still have some spontaneity of feeling—for a long time I thought I had no feeling left. Does it seem strange to you that anyone should be proud of possessing human feelings? It is not strange in Germany. But I’m talking cryptically like a heroine in melodrama.

  I’m feeling more composed now, and I wish to tell you what has happened, so that you will know what to expect when we meet again. To think that I shall see you and Dr. Schneider in a few days!

  Perhaps it will revive painful memories in you, but I must tell you these things. I wrote you letters from Köln, but they could never have reached you. I know my father intercepted some of them, for he tore them up before my eyes. But I’m wandering again. I must begin at the beginning.

  You have not forgotten that terrible night in München when you and Dr. Wiener were attacked on the street. One of the four SS men who attacked you was my brother Carl. I can make no excuses for Carl. He was—I hope he is no longer—a fool and a knave. But perhaps I can explain him partly. My father is no better. Sometimes I have thought that all Germany was populated by fools and knaves. It is not true, but there is much truth in it.

  Once my brother was a fine student and a liberal, a leader in the Youth Movement. But Hitler took over the Youth Movement and Carl went with it. He never had a strong character and the Nazis caught him young and made him an officer and corrupted him. He became a Nazi and a Jew-baiter long before I met you, and I refused to see him any more.

  Carl was stationed in München when you were there in 1937. My father set him spying on me because I was a disgrace to the family. I had dropped the “von” from my name. I had been a pupil of Dr. Schneider, who had been forced to leave his chair at München on account of his liberal opinions. I had been removed from my lectorship at the Institut. It was even said that I consorted with Jews and democrats and revolutionaries. My father was afraid that the Nazis might make him suffer if I got into trouble, that the sins of the children would be visited upon the fathers. But he dared not speak to the Gestapo directly. Accordingly
, he sent Carl after me.

  You know part of what happened then. The three SS hoodlums knocked you senseless. Carl told me later that you were forced to leave the country, but I never learned what happened to Dr. Wiener. They kidnapped me, and Carl took me by automobile to my father in Köln.

  My father locked me up in one of his houses in Köln with a servant to guard me. He said I must stay there until I came to my senses. I remained locked up in the house for four years, but I did not come to my senses. I tried to escape many times. Only when I tried to escape was I mistreated. I had books to read, and writing-materials, but I could not send the letters I wrote and I could not leave the house except to walk in the courtyard under guard.

  It sounds like a story of the Middle Ages, doesn’t it? The cruel father and the girl shut up in the tower. But there are worse things than that in the Dark Ages of my country. My lot was really an easy one. I fared better than some of my friends. Do you remember Franz? Years after it happened, I heard that he was concentrated and gradually cut into little pieces over a period of weeks until he died. He died but he did not speak of his friends. Many of them are still active in Austria and Bayern. Their time is coming soon, when the Gestapo will be the underground and the honest men that are left will walk in the open air and speak their thoughts.

  I told you I would never leave Germany until the Nazi insanity was over. I never would have left if I could have done anything at all. But as the years went by, I came to feel as powerless as a mummy or a ghost. I could see the Rhine far off through the barred windows of my room and the barge-trains moving up and down on the river, but not once in four years could I get so far as to dip my hands in the water. I was shut up in a dim old house in Köln, while Austria and Czechoslovakia were swallowed up and Poland and France fell and Germany invaded Russia and decency was blotted out in Europe.

  My chance came at last when the R.A.F. bombed Köln. The house was partly destroyed and my guard was killed. I got away while the bombs were still falling and took refuge with friends in the underground. They helped me across the border into Occupied France—I can’t tell you how—and eventually I got into Vichy France. For months I worked with the French underground, helping refugees from occupied Europe get from France into Spain and Portugal. After four years of uselessness, I was finally doing something to fight the Nazis. It was the best time in my life, but it didn’t last long.

  The Vichy police got on my trail and I went to Marseilles and escaped to French Africa on a cargo-boat. But they caught me in Algiers and put me in prison. I don’t like to think of that prison. Have you read Koestler’s Dialogue with Death? I have just been reading it these last few days—it is so good to be able to read again, whenever and whatever I wish. Anyway, the prison in Algiers was something like Koestler’s Spanish prison. Some day I will tell you about it.

  When the British and American forces invaded North Africa, I foolishly expected to be released from prison immediately. So did the other political prisoners, at least all that I knew—we were not allowed to talk but we had means of communicating with each other. But it was months before any of us were released. When democracy compromises with fascism, the result is a hybrid which looks more like fascism than democracy.

  Finally, through an American officer who inspected the prison, I got in touch with Dr. Schneider, who I knew was at Midwestern University. I believe that it was through his efforts that I was released, though he has said very little about it in his letters. I can never repay him—he has even secured me a position at the university. I didn’t tell you I have a contract all sealed and signed. And just this week I received permission from the Department of Justice to live and work in the United States.

  I am anticipating myself again. You must have patience with my narrative style.

  I was released in June of this year and taken to England by airplane. I spent weeks there trying to obtain permission to come to the United States. Then I was advised to come to Canada and try to make arrangements from there. After more weeks of waiting, I secured passage from England to Canada. Several weeks ago I reached Toronto and got in touch with Dr. Schneider again. Through his good offices I have now at last been given permission to come to the United States. I expect to leave here for Arbana very soon.

  You must wonder what I am doing in a gold-mining town in Northern Ontario. Perhaps my reason is rather foolish but if there is any risk it is my own. Dr. Schneider’s son, Peter, who is here with me—a charming and intelligent young man—thinks that my reason is sensible. I will tell you when I see you rather than in a letter, because my letter may be opened by the censor.

  Auf Wiedersehen, Bob Branch. I am looking forward to seeing you. And please do not be embarrassed if you have a beautiful wife and three pretty children. I am not a romantic any longer—I am nearing thirty and sometimes I feel much older—and I would love your wife and children.

  Indeed, I will love them; because, of course, you are married. I want so much just to live for a while in a peaceful place with good people who are my friends. Ruth Esch.

  When I finished the letter I stood and thought for a minute without moving, if the kind of circles my mind was moving in can be called thinking. Peter Schneider had been with Ruth in Canada, perhaps for a couple of weeks. Even then he was a fast worker. I had not been overwhelmed by his charm, but then he was my rival. If I was a competitor at all, and I didn’t feel like one. She must have been very willing, to be corrupted so quickly. I remembered what Dr. Schneider had called her, and had a sudden vision of two white German bodies grappling in darkness. I felt sick with a moral sickness I had felt once before: when I was four or five I walked into a little wood and found a small snake trying to swallow a large toad.

  My mind veered away from this and went on travelling in circles. A day or two before, Kirkland Lake had been in the news. Twenty or so German prisoners had escaped from a Canadian prison camp near there. Most of them had been caught again, a few had been killed resisting capture. What was the errand which Ruth had been afraid to mention in her letter and of which Peter had approved? Had the two of them gone to Northern Ontario to help German prisoners to get away?

  But even in a state of emotional bewilderment I saw that this logic was a bit hysterical. The sincerity and pathos of her letter flooded back into my mind and confused me more. I couldn’t believe that letter was an exercise in literary deceit. Perhaps she knew even less than I did about Peter Schneider, perhaps he had fooled her completely. Then I remembered that she was an actress. Perhaps she had fooled me. My feelings ran hot and cold, and the snake and the toad grappled amorously in the underbrush, eating each other behind the bedroom door.

  The toll of the tower bell made me start and look at the clock on the mantel. It was midnight, and I had been on my way to McKinley Hall to find Alec. I cursed myself for a dawdler and went out the door, stuffing the letter in my pocket.

  I lived on the north side of the campus, ten minutes from McKinley Hall, which is on the south side. I covered the distance in five minutes by trotting and cutting across the dark campus, and approached the building from the rear.

  There was one light on in its block-long length. It seemed to be on the fourth floor. Of course, the Middle English Dictionary office. Alec must be up there again. I looked for a light on the fifth floor immediately above the Dictionary office, but the fifth-floor windows were all dark. No light in Alec’s office second from the end.

  The walk that ran along behind the building was unusually dark. The flood-light on the corner must have burned out, I thought, and I looked up as I passed it.

  As I raised my eyes, a light flashed on in the second window from the end on the fifth floor, Alec’s office, and a man leaped at me from the lighted window. He howled like a dog and stretched out his arms as he leaped outward and I cowered against the wall in terror, quivering like a beaten animal. No human being could make that leap to the bare pavement.

  The howling man dived headfirst to the sidewalk in front
of me and I heard his skull break with a sound like an egg dropped on the floor. One leg thrashed in a convulsion and the body crumpled and lay still. Blood spattered and glistened darkly on the dim pavement, and I moved sideways along the wall to avoid it.

  Then I remembered the flashlight still in my pocket. I turned it on the upturned face. There was no face. Dark blood was flowing from the head like oil in steady, wormlike streams. I felt the pulse. No pulse. I straightened the twisted body and the ruined head moved limply sideways like a pumpkin on a string.

  I knew by the hair and the clothes that it was Alec. I said to myself, I’m going to kill Schneider, and I heard the words said aloud by someone. I must have said them because there was nobody else there.

  My mind began to function again after the shock, and a sudden thought jerked me upright and accelerated my heartbeat ready for action: whoever had pushed Alec out of the window must still be in the building. Before I could move I heard the faint sound of a woman’s shout from somewhere high up in the building, and then something that sounded like a door being shaken violently in its frame.

  I looked up at the lighted window from which Alec had fallen and saw that it was half-open. Again the woman’s shout came keen and distressed out of the dark building, and then there was the crash and tinkle of broken glass. Somebody was breaking into Alec’s office. My heart pumped faster but I stood where I was and watched the window.

  I heard the woman’s shout again, louder and more anguished now. She was calling, “Alec!”

  The woman’s head appeared at the window dark against the light. I couldn’t be sure but it looked like Helen Madden. She leaned far out and looked down at me and the dead man with the flashlight beam on his face. She screamed. Her scream ended in a tearing sigh like the last vomit of despair, and her head and shoulders fell out of the light and left the window empty.

  I let myself into the building and ran up the west stairs, turning on the lights at the ends of the corridors as I went. So far as I could see the corridors were empty. I waited too long, I thought, I’ve given the Schneiders time to get away.