Second Violin by John Lawton Read Free Book Online Page A

touched a German. He thought for a moment that Trager might carry the
pretence of protocol to the point of hitting him just to save face in front of the Germans. He didn’t, he snarled, ‘What?’
    Hummel took a few steps closer to the river and pointed down.
    ‘The boat is not a boat. It’s a raft.’
    Trager looked.
    ‘Nothin’ I can do about that.’
    ‘Herr Trager, it is a couple of dozen logs and planks and old car tyres lashed together, with a makeshift rudder at one end and a dog kennel for a cabin. Frau Bemmelmann is supposed to
live in a dog kennel? On this they are supposed to reach the Black Sea?’
    One of the Germans called out, ‘What’s the problem, Joe?’
    Trager yelled back, ‘You know kikes. Nothing’s good enough for the chosen race!’
    Bemmelmann said, ‘Joe, it doesn’t matter. It floats. We will go. Anything is better than staying. Now, I urge you one last time . . . come with us.’
    A piece of his life, a piece of his childhood was breaking off in front of him.
    ‘I cannot.’
    Bemmelmann hugged him silently.
    Hummel watched as they drifted out into the flow. Herr Bemmelmann struggling with the rudder, Frau Bemmelmann sitting on the bags. Lost and awkward, miserable and terrified. Weeping. And the two
Germans hooting with laughter. Hummel watched until they were lost in mist and darkness and all he could hear was the occasional splash, soon smothered by the night.
    ‘C’mon, Jew-boy. Back the way you came.’
    Trager prodded him in the small of the back with the barrel of his rifle. Hummel went up the steps, turned, looked downstream one last time and could see nothing and hear nothing of the
Bemmelmanns. The Germans’ laughter echoed in his mind, but not half so loud as the weeping of Frau Bemmelmann. Schuster was gone, Hirschel was dead. Now Bemmelmann had gone. There was only
him and Beckermann left of the old street. Another piece of his childhood had broken off and drifted away – off into the night and the fog.
    Out of sight of his comrades, Trager shouldered his rifle, said ‘Fuckem’ and strode out for Leopoldstadt.

 
§ 21
    Walking back it seemed to Hummel that they must look an odd couple to anyone they passed, but it was as if they passed no one. Vienna had become a city in which everyone
averted their eyes and made no contact. Trager and Hummel walking side by side, a miscegenous version of Laurel and Hardy. Hummel the lanky Jew, much the taller; Trager the brick shithouse of a
soldier, dumpy in his grey uniform, his rifle slung from his shoulder as casually as a fishing rod. What they did not look like was captor and captive.
    Neither spoke. Only when they reached Hummel’s shop did Trager have anything to say.
    ‘You should have gone with the old boy, Joe.’

 
§ 22
    30 September 1938
    Informed by his office that the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain – the first Prime Minister to fly to a foreign conference, and thus, arguably, the inventor of shuttle
diplomacy – had arrived back from Munich, from a meeting with Hitler which had carved up Czechoslovakia without so much as a word from any Czech, as none had been invited to the meeting, and
was now waving bits of paper in the air and bleating about peace and honour, Alex Troy decided to break the habit of many months and to hear the idiot in person. He had the chauffeur drop him in
Horse Guards Parade, walked the back way into Downing Street, stood behind a crowd of hacks and listened.
    ‘We, the German Führer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognising that the question of Anglo-German relations is of
the first importance for our two countries and for Europe.’
    The man looked, as an odd but fetching English phrase had it, ‘like death warmed up’.
    ‘We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
    We are