The opening 3 chapters of a conspiracy style novel ‘A Singing Dancing Thing’ written by the author to try and tell the story:
A SINGING DANCING THING
CHAPTER 1 COMRADE ANGEL. 1st May 1945.
The sombre ritual had become very familiar. Day and night it was played out slowly and at random along the two rows of beds in the long barrack ward. Now it was Dmitri’s turn. Piotr watched the routine with the detachment expected of an experienced partisan comrade. The nurse called the doctor over to Dmitri’s bed. The doctor held Dmitri’s hand for a few moments and like a priest giving a blessing, nodded at the nurse. Then he walked away. The nurse tucked Dmitri’s arm back in, lifted the sheet over his head, called an orderly and then she too walked away to write in the big book on the table at the end of the ward. The orderly came, wrapped the sheet around Dmitri’s fragile little body, lifted him onto the trolley, wheeled him down the aisle to the large door at the end and out into the bright day.
These Ami’s, how could they waste good sheets like that? What was the point? Just like all the others Dmitri would end up on the Moorexpress, just one of a pile of corpses and he’d be buried. Of course the SS had used the crematorium but he’d heard the man in the next bed saying that the Ami’s were burying them, with their sheets still on, and did some prayers! And what on earth was the point of praying?
He couldn’t be bothered with it. He was very tired and his head ached like crazy and he thought of sleeping but when he was asleep he had his dreams; funny dreams about the past, the farm, his family. Some of them were frightening and then there were some that were about things, small corners of rooms, or the points of pencils which would be very small and then get very big like massive grey stone and he’d wake up and be sick. He tried to stay awake as much as he could.
He lay there looking up at the ceiling thinking and remembering, thinking most about the excitement of the last few days. He wondered about Gumface. Now that would be funny, if Gumface were still alive since Dmitri and Yevgeny were dead. Gumface had been their sort of pet. He’d fascinated them because of how he looked. The three of them had adopted him and had decided that helping him stay alive would be their special project.
They were a good crew, him and his two comrades. They’d met while fighting with the partisans around Smolensk near where his parent’s farm was. They’d all been captured and ended up here about a year before. They’d been a team in the camp. Like in the partisans they’d run messages for the camp seniors, block fuehrers, and the SS as well. They’d learned to beg, borrow and swipe, they’d been pro’s. They’d sometimes got tips of food and stuff from SS men who’d taken a shine to them, like Eisner. They’d known which SS men and prisoner trustees they could get around and so could wheedle and dodge their way in and out of the kitchens on most days. It’d been tricky. Some of them had been right cunts and could change from one moment to the next but that’s how it was and the three of them had made it. Well, Yevgeny nearly had. Dmitri and he had made it to the liberation and he was fairly sure Gumface had.
‘Run my darling, run Piotr, run like the wind.’ His Mother was screaming as the fascist half-track pulled up in front of their farmhouse. He turned back towards the safety of the woods that he’d just left and started to try and run but his legs wouldn’t move, he couldn’t run, it was slower than walking. He looked back and saw his little sister, confused, having gone to welcome the visitors and now walking hesitantly back as his Mother beckoned her to her side. The soldiers leapt down into the yard. One of them grabbed his Mother’s headscarf as she fled. It came off and for a moment her dark hair streamed out behind her as she ran. The soldier chased her, grabbed her hair and pulled her roughly to him.
As he woke the nurse was smiling down at him and saying something he didn’t understand. As she sat him up he automatically looked over for Dmitri but then remembered that he’d gone. The nurse started to help him with his soup. There was bread with it and when she turned away he was able to quickly hide a piece under his pillow without her seeing. He had tried his best to eat the soup but he was still sick straight after he’d finished.
It had been the day after an air raid on Munich that Eisner had given them the tennis ball for running an errand. It had been old and pretty hairless but it’d been really good and it had been thanks to the tennis ball that they’d met Gumface. One morning they’d gone up to the top of the Lagerstrasse intending to go out to the Bunker area in front of the crematorium to have a kick about before school. Something had been going on though, probably a special execution and so the Moorexpress hadn’t gone out to the crematorium. It had still been by the gate in their way so they’d decided to play ball-he instead.
Dmitri had buzzed the ball at him, Piotr had ducked and the ball had hit this corpse’s bald head and had rebounded heading towards the death line. This had been serious. If it had gone over the line that would’ve been it. They’d never have got it back. Dmitri had run after it for all he was worth, him and Yevgeny urging him on.
It had only been then that they’d noticed the man running, as if he’d been trying to get the ball as well. But then, you could tell, it had been only as he’d got nearer to the line that he’d seen Dmitri and the ball and he’d slowed down and then stopped, shoulders hunched and head down. Dmitri had overtaken him and the ball just a metre or so short of the line. But it had been a close thing and Dmitri and they had all known how dangerous it still was. The guards had been known to shoot people the safe side of the line just if they thought they were taking the piss. They’d all looked up and waved cheerfully at the guards in the tower who had been edgy and ready, Dmitri making the most of it as he’d made purposefully back to proper safe ground.
As Dmitri had done so he’d come up towards the man who’d by now sunk to his knees with his head buried in his hands. Piotr and Yevgeny had approached and just as they’d made a group of four the man had looked up at Dmitri.
Dmitri had let out a startled cry and dropped the ball.
The man had then looked round at Piotr and Yevgeny. They too were stopped dead in their tracks.
‘Yuck!!’ said Dmitri who’d recovered first.
‘Urgh. Fucking hell.’ Yevgeny had said.
It had been horrible. Half the man’s face had been missing, all red and he’d had no lips. You could see his teeth and everything. It had been disgusting.
It was only now that they’d realised he’d been a runner. He’d been on his death run across the line. It was a contest. It was a point of honour for the guards to shoot a runner down before he got to the wire while the runner had to make it to the wire and fry himself.
They’d never been that close to a runner before. It was the kind of thing you heard about after or always just missed. It could have been a really big deal.
The man had wiped some tears away and mumbled some things to them but he could hardly speak properly, it was sort of like animal noises and they hadn’t understood him. As he’d walked off they’d just automatically started to follow him at a distance. As they’d followed they’d seen the effect that he’d had on the other prisoners. They’d all stood aside to let him pass, averting their eyes. He’d reached his block and had turned to go in. It was only then that he’d noticed his escort. He’d gestured violently and had managed to convey ‘Fuck off.’ in German, which they’d understood.
As they’d sloped off they’d wondered about him. How he had come to get in such a mess? Yevgeny had figured he wouldn’t live very long, one way or another. They’d decided to see when he died. They’d check the ‘express each morning. He’d be easy enough to spot! They’d worked out the nickname for him. They’d tried Half face, Scar face, and Scab face but his exposed flesh looked pasty or gummy and you could see his gums so they’d settled on Gumface.
They’d started to see him quite a lot. He hadn’t been in a Kommando. He’d been excused work. He’d noticed them too and since they’d been so curious they’d decided to talk to him. One afternoon they’d taken a corner crust of bread and offered it to him. He’d smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth and had checked himself before trying to eat it and then put it carefully away in his pocket. He started to speak. It was slow and laboured and he had to repeat himself a lot but they managed a conversation in the camp’s broken German.
‘I’ll eat it later. Thank you.’
‘I’m Dmitri and these are my comrades, Piotr and Yevgeny. We’re partisans from Smolensk.’
‘I’m Guillaume. I’m also a resistance fighter, from Lille in France.’ His speech had improved a bit. They got along.
‘So were you wounded in the resistance then? Was it shrapnel?’ Yevgeny had asked.
‘No. I was wounded here. Over there in Block 5 by the SS scum.’
The boys had all blown long whistles. They’d been impressed. Block 5 was the medical experiment Block. No one ever came out of there alive.
‘You must have been surprised when you woke up and saw yourself. You must have wondered what had happened.’
‘I didn’t wake up. I was never asleep. They just tied me down and started to cut my skin off. They did the whole thing without anaesthetics.’
‘Fuck me. That must have hurt.’
‘Your language is shocking, comrade. Yes it did and still does. Sometimes it’s very bad….like when you first saw me.’ He’d said tailing off.
‘So what was the experiment then?’
‘There was no experiment. The two men who did this to me, before the war one of them was a waiter, the other an engine driver. They fancied the idea of dressing up in white coats and playing surgeons. They were just bored, doing something out of cruel curiosity. The whole place is a madhouse and the real doctors, the ones with their Herr Professor this and Herr Doctor that, they are no better. They’re all just doing whatever they please and getting away with it like naughty kids. They’re like you lot!’
‘Us? We’re partisans.’ Dmitri had protested. Gumface had laughed.
‘Yes, I’m sure you are but you’re still also naughty kids.’ They wouldn’t normally have let anyone talk to them like that but they’d just sort of understood that with him it was OK.
They’d been very pleased with their new friend. He’d been special. There’d been no one like him in the camp. And he’d had time for them and had talked to them. They’d even cut down on their swearing when he’d asked them. He’d been a bit like the schoolteacher but nicer. They’d obviously not really liked having to go to school anyway but on top of that although the teacher had been a good socialist comrade and had been in Dachau for years he’d been German and they’d been guarded with him.
Gumface had told them stories and given them advice and in return they’d brought him bits of food. After a while he would eat with them. It had been yucky to watch to begin with but they’d got used to it. He would explain things, about the War and other things and would talk to them about what they wanted to be when they grew up.
One cold winter’s day after a very heavy air raid over Munich he’d addressed them quite formally.
‘Well comrade partisans I have to tell you that the War is coming to an end and that however bad things are here now they will get worse. You’re going to have to be on your top form for the next few weeks or months, only the smart, the strong, the very determined and the lucky are going to survive until this place is liberated.’
The weeks had passed and although it had got warmer things had deteriorated in the camp. There had been more and more people. They’d been from camps in the East. A lot of them had just died straightaway. The crematorium had been going flat out. There’d been tents put up in the alleys between the blocks for the newcomers to sleep in and the three of them had had to give up the bunk they’d shared and sleep on the floor. People had left as well including the schoolteacher so they’d had nothing to do except work their little schemes and wangle extra food, which had become more and more difficult. And then they’d all started to itch like crazy because the lice had come back.
There’d been more women in the camp but they weren’t like the Sonderbau women. Spying on those women in the camp brothel had been one of their best entertainments. But these new women from the East had been all skinny like the men and a lot of them had died too. One day out on the bunker there’d been four women on the ‘express who’d been shot, politicals or spies or something. They’d been healthier and they’d still had their hair. One of them had been dark, like a gypsy and she’d had long black hair, which had hung down and waved in the breeze. That had upset him and he’d felt like crying, something he hadn’t done since that first night alone in the woods.
You could see that the SS had become jumpy, like the scum trustees and the worst Block fuehrers. There had been more alerts and during these everyone had been confined to the Blocks. The Ami planes had started to drop leaflets and the SS and the trustees had had to go round picking them up which had been quite funny when it was windy. Some of the SS had got meaner but most of them had started to try and make friends with the prisoners. Eisner had got embarrassing. The prisoners had started getting jumpy too. Gumface had explained that for some of them, for the first time in years they were allowing themselves to hope. They had become desperate to live. But they’d all known that they were witnesses to the Fascist’s crimes and they were terrified that the SS might try and kill them all before the Allies arrived.
A few days later they’d started to hear the muffled explosions of artillery and tank shells going off. These had started coming nearer and nearer as the days had passed. The three of them had decided to see who would see the first Ami soldier and one day they’d tried to sneak up on the Block roof to look out. Some men had screamed at them to get down if they didn’t want to get themselves and everyone else in the Block shot.
Then around the same time all three of them had got to be very tired and then they’d all got really bad headaches which had just got worse and worse. Gumface had told them they probably had typhus and it would be safer to stay in the Block if they could and avoid the Revier. The SS would probably try and dispose of the Revier’s patients first.
They didn’t tell anyone but after a couple of days at the evening inspection the Room Senior had seen how bad they were and had ordered them to the Revier for quarantine the next morning.
That night the explosions had kept waking Piotr up and he’d had weird dreams. He’d seen the farm, Mama and Papa, his sister and people from Smolensk and the partisans. But the weirdest was when his sister had been calling him to hurry quick to eat his cake that Mama had made and when he’d got inside Gumface had been eating it all-that was why he couldn’t run away, he’d wanted his cake.
In the morning everything had been strange. As he’d woken his head had ached worse than ever. He could tell from the light that it had been past the time for Appell but everyone had still been inside. He’d slowly lifted his head and returned Dmitri’s headachy smile. Like he’d normally done he’d reached in front of his face and tugged at Yevgeny’s feet, but they’d been stiff and cold. Yevgeny had died.
He and Dmitri had roused themselves enough to sit up against the wall together. They’d looked down at their comrade in silence. Dmitri had drawn his legs up and rested his brow on his knees. Piotr, with his legs out straight and his arms lank beside him had just stared ahead seeing nothing. The door had opened. A man in the Block who’d reported for work with the kitchen Kommando had been sent back to the Block instead and had explained that there’d been a large white flag on the Jourhaus. This could only have meant that the Nazis were surrendering. There’d been tremendous excitement. Everyone had poured out of the Block to see. Dmitri and Piotr would normally have been the first to go but they’d both been too tired and their heads had been throbbing. They’d stayed where they were in the deserted barrack block looking at Yevgeny and the other half dozen or so who’d died that night and had been piled in the corner by the door.
Soon people had started drifting back. The discussions had been animated. The exquisite prospect of being liberated had been voiced as intensely as the fear that the SS would kill them all first. They’d soon had orders from the prisoner committee and the SS to stay in their Blocks. No one had dared leave to be shot now.
Through all this Piotr had drifted in and out of sleep with more strange dreams, one about angels and then one about Dmitri shaking him…no, it had been Dmitri shaking him to wake up. Someone had just heard a tank over by the SS barracks. The shooting had been really near. Everyone in the Block had now been very restless. Someone at the window had said they could see an Ami tank coming down towards the main gate. This had been the trigger. It’d been too much. The doors had opened and again everyone had rushed out.
Then Dmitri had said,
‘We must go to be liberated before we die.’ They’d got up and made unsteadily for the door. The Lagerstrasse had been a sea of people. They’d let the surge carry them and then by weaving and dodging had finally reached the Appellplatz. Piotr had felt very faint from this exertion but even now he’d known that to cross the Appellplatz would be death. That same fear had made the whole tide of yearning anxiety hold the invisible line.
But then there’d been a tank pushing in through the main gate. This had been too much for one man and he’d run towards it and had been shot from one of the towers. The tank had burst through firing at the towers. Groups of Yankee soldiers had run past it heading for the towers, shooting as they’d gone. Another two tanks had followed. The towers had been quickly taken. There’d been cheers at the sight of dead SS men being thrown out of the towers to the ground.
Then, as the shooting had died down and the crowd had seen a couple of SS men dragged out, defeated, weak; the SS now prisoners, the noise had stopped. There’d been complete silence. In this still quiet the reality of their liberation had finally struck them.
After what seemed like a long time the hatch on the second tank had opened. The spell had broken. An ecstatic yelling and shouting had erupted from the crowd as it had surged forward towards the tank. Piotr had gone with it.
Then he’d been dreaming about an angel again. The angel had had a black face. He’d known he’d had to touch the angel. He had and the angel had looked down and smiled at him. And then when he’d woken up he’d been here in the Ami hospital with women nurses with round faces and soft hands
CHAPTER 2 EMBARRASSED SILENCE. January 1954
Isabella Pflanz was doing the cleaning in her best attempt to make the shabby, cramped apartment look its best for their important visitor. Excited but also anxious she paused to listen to the little recital coming from the room along the hall. Reassured she smiled, glowing with pride at her daughter’s talent and application. After so much effort and the trial of so many rebuffs and insults they finally looked like they had made it. She stopped work, sat down on the old sofa that was also her bed and for the hundredth time read again the letter from Dr Kahn, director of the Hamburg music academy. She smiled and hugged and shook herself like an excited child. Yes, yes it was all going to happen, it was all going to be OK.
She looked down at the tea service on the little coffee table in front of her. Nothing matched but it was all spotless and anyway who but who had anything that matched these days? But then she had managed to get proper real coffee. It had been a sacrifice, a whole session’s pay but it would be worth it. Will he like coffee? Oh, of course he’ll like coffee. Realising she was going into a spin she pulled herself up short, got up and went over to the mantelpiece with the duster.
She went through her routine. She took everything down, stacked it all in the armchair and wiped the mantle. She then took up and wiped each framed photograph in turn, putting them back in their places. She worked from side to side and dead centre at the back was a large picture. In this picture the young Isabella stood on the sweeping steps in front of her Mother’s house beside a Luftwaffe pilot. They were both smiling broadly. He was holding up a little medal presentation case. A step above and between them stood her Mother, stern and correct. To the right of this picture was a smaller formally posed picture of the same Luftwaffe pilot with the medal, the Iron Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster at his neck. There was a black ribbon across the top left hand corner of the frame. To the left was a picture of Isabella’s Father with her Mother taken in 1937 just before her Father had died. The last one to go up sat in front in the middle. It was a small picture of Isabella with Mike McKenzie arm in arm in front of a jeep, happy and clearly very much in love.
Isabella’s apartment was on the first floor of a three storey terraced apartment building in one of the city’s old squares. With a knowledge of history and a good imagination it was possible to see how this had once been a triumph of early 19th century design, an elegant and much sought after address for Hamburg’s social elite. Tired at the turn of the century the convulsions of the Great War and the Great Depression had left it a slum by the beginning of Hitler’s war.
Having then shared the rest of Hamburg’s fate the square’s once neat, regular terraces were now like the teeth in an old crone’s mouth, mostly missing. A few like Isabella’s were intact but chipped and broken while others were delicate facades, shored up by scaffolding or their dead neighbours. Isabella’s was the middle one of three still intact on the North side. In a couple of blocks at the West side of the square there was some desultory building activity but it would still be some time before this place came to the top of the list of any co-ordinated reconstruction plans.
A short walk from the old business district the square also bordered the notorious Reeperbahn although to say bordered was to suggest a world of clear boundaries. It was on the edge.
The square had seen it all through several cycles. Mature and worldly wise it was a place without pretensions. Its inhabitants still lived daily with the pain of their own pasts and so had the consideration not to delve uninvited into the pasts of their fellows. They ached with loss and bereavement for people and for the way life had once been or else the way they allowed themselves and others to believe it had once been. Unable to forget, properly remember or escape they endured, grinding out their lives by determined daily application. They were the labour reserve, the building blocks of German renewal. To them there would be nothing miraculous about it at all.
Life’s vagaries had brought them here and had given them the wit to know how to make the best of things as they were. They knew how to enjoy simple pleasures, the only ones they were afforded and they knew how and when to comfort one another. These were the lessons of the War and the terrible winters of the late 40’s which striving mainstream Germany, anaesthetised by its economic miracle was going to chose to forget to remember. That Germany would not just forget what some of its men folk had done during the war but also what so many of its women had had to do after it.
The square was a cut through to other places. No visitor ever stayed too long. To commuting office workers it was simply a faded old eyesore which they crossed diagonally as they walked between the railway station and their offices. To others, some by day but most by night some of its apartments and its ruins offered inadequate locations for their inadequate liaisons, brief communions; their fleeting relief from the anaesthetic and the strain of forgetting.
It was just before midday and from the direction of the station and his morning pitch came a man in a raggedy-patched clown’s costume with a large board. Finding a spot on the pavement and in the sun he put the board down on the firm, pressed snow and prepared himself with a few slow stretches.
He looked up to the first floor window searching for something. He didn’t have to wait long. He started to smile and returned a wave. The little girl up at the window was to him far more than just pretty. Her determined, curly brown hair was gathered up into twin coils behind her with bows in the end. Her large brown eyes were predisposed to the easy smile which her mouth turned up to the left. That lop sided smile and the scatter of freckles across her mid-brown cheeks and her button nose made her look cute but knowing and in a child growing up here that could bring trouble. But he knew her and her Mother. The child had the same rare self-possession and strength of mind, the same class and she’d never be reduced to that sort of a life.
She lifted the window,
‘Good morning Herr Beppo.’ Beppo lifted his hat and swept it down to give her the most elegant bow.
‘Good morning Fraulein Pflanz, and how are you on this bright and beautiful winter’s day?’ Their speech was elaborate and formal, out of place and out of time, which they both knew and enjoyed, it was their little cameo.
‘I am perfectly well Herr Beppo as I trust you are also.’
‘I am in the rudest health, Fraulein, thank you.’
‘Herr Beppo as you may recall Mama and I will be receiving a distinguished guest today and so I’m afraid I will not be able to provide the usual accompaniment.’
‘Yielding to a man of such distinction as the good Herr Director is an honour, Fraulein.’
As he concluded he bowed again and as he did he heard Isabella calling her daughter. He straightened and waved as Tina smiled and waved, ducking back into the room and closing the window.
‘Tina. Tina. Tina! Have you remembered the cakes?’ Tina turned and gasped as Isabella came into the room.
‘Oh gosh.’ Tina rushed past Isabella at the door and ran down the passage to the kitchen and opened the oven.
Paused at the living room door Isabella monitored the situation.
‘Are they all right? Can you manage?’
‘Yes, Mummy they’re fine.’ Tina took the tray of cakes out of the oven and left it on the draining-board for them to cool.
‘Dr Kahn will be here soon so you’d better get yourself ready while they cool so you can have them on a tray for when he arrives.’ Tina left the kitchen and went back into her bedroom. She drew her curtain and started to change.
——————–
On the tram Dr Kahn was not a happy man. Because it was packed he couldn’t sit down and he had to clutch his music briefcase to him with one arm as he stretched the other to the full to hold the overhead handle. He was a short man and he was uncomfortable crushed up against working class women loaded with shopping and their scruffy children. He didn’t want to be going to this part of town, even in daytime and he really didn’t want to do what he had been told to do. He’d spent the whole journey simply wishing he was somewhere else.
The tram driver announced the stop,
‘Reeperbahn. Reeperbahn.’ As he squeezed off the tram Kahn felt as if they were all staring at him. He set his hat and got his bearings with a little map. He had prepared himself, he didn’t want to have to stop and ask anybody anything.
——————–
Isabella was fluffing up the last cushions as Tina came in to present herself. As she looked up Tina twirled.
‘Very smart. Ten out of ten. Now you must put on the apron to do the cakes. He should be here any minute now.’
——————–
Kahn had entered the square and was making a slow progress looking for the right number. He made his way around the square and past Beppo who was tap dancing on his board. Kahn avoided eye contact and went up to the front of Isabella’s apartment building. Pausing to check he mounted the steps and checked again. Avoiding the bell marked ‘Fraulein Fifi’ he rang the bell marked Pflanz.
Kahn was startled as the door opened almost immediately and a middle-aged man came hurriedly out. Equally surprised the man tipped his hat curtly as he went. Instinctively Kahn responded awkwardly to the awkward courtesy. In his confusion the stranger had left the door open. In his confusion Kahn stood stock still before it, apprehensively peering into the gloomy hallway, anxious that Fifi or anyone else might take him for a client. Isabella came down the stairs and looked a little quizzically at him standing there.
‘Dr Kahn, good morning.’ Kahn tipped his hat.
‘Good morning, Frau Pflanz.’
‘You found us all right then?’ Kahn smiled thinly, nodded, removed his hat and made a show of stamping the snow from his shoes as she ushered him in. He followed her up stairs. She went into the apartment. He followed. Tina greeted him with a curtsey, which he acknowledged with a smile.
‘Good morning, Christina.’
‘Good morning, Dr Kahn.’ Isabella took his coat and hat, hanging them on a stand in the tiny hall before showing him in to the sitting room. Tina went to the kitchen.
‘Dr Kahn, will you sit down? Would you like some coffee?’
‘Yes, thank you. So, your students come here?’ He found he’d said with rather more feeling than he’d intended. Pouring the coffees Isabella replied.
‘Oh no. Mainly I teach them at their own homes. Some come here if I know them very well and their own piano isn’t good enough.’ Tina arrived with the cakes and offered one to Kahn.
‘Oh, how nice, thank you.’
‘We were both so happy to get your letter. The scholarship will mean so much to Tina.’
‘Yes… Frau Pflanz, may we talk?’
‘Yes, of course. Tina, would you like to go and practice for a while please?’
Tina smiled and went back to her room. As she started to play Kahn stood up and wandered towards the fireplace, trying to find the right way to start. Looking at the mantelpiece he opened with,
‘Ah, Luftwaffe. Is this your family, your brother?’ A little bemused Isabella answered,
‘Yes. Ulrich was a night fighter pilot. He was killed.’ Kahn nodded as if to pretend he hadn’t just been playing for time. He wasn’t thinking as he then said,
‘So Christina’s Father, American. You knew him well?’ He just couldn’t help himself.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m sorry. What I meant was..I..er..’
‘Dr Kahn, I made it clear right from the start what my situation was.’
‘Yes, yes I…please forgive me this is very difficult for me. Frau Pflanz I’m afraid there is a problem with the scholarship. You see the award is for ability, which of course Tina has, you have taught her very well. But the Trustees also assess financial need and your family, your Mother…your family is very wealthy.’
‘But Dr Kahn, what are you saying? I told you this. We discussed this from the first interview. We had these problems in Vienna and in Cologne. You said you understood. Your letter here….’ Isabella picked up the letter making to read it to him. Kahn sighed.
‘I am the director of the school. Usually the Trustees would accept my recommendation without question. I wrote to you on that basis. However a member of my staff saw Tina at the examination and told a Trustee about her. The Trustee recognised your name from Vienna, the Conservatory. These two made enquiries, confirmed your family background and persuaded the other Trustees to refuse the scholarship. Frau Pflanz, please it was my hope that the Trustees would see how good Tina was and accept that your relationship with your family was broken.’
The piano had stopped playing.
‘Dr Kahn the last time I saw my Mother she cursed me and wished me dead. I left Munich with Tina. I was in fear for what she might do. The only thing I have ever wanted from home was my piano.’
‘I hear what you say and I can see your situation. But there is so much hardship. If we gave Tina the scholarship and later it came out about your family…Well you see how it would look. I tried even to suggest that we could make a loan which you would repay but…attitudes were hard.’
‘But this was our last chance. I will never manage the fees. Herr Kahn you have deceived us.’ Kahn was angered by this accusation.
‘You know better than I that there would be fewer questions if..well if she didn’t stand out. There is resentment.. about Americans.’
‘And especially Negroes, you mean.’ Kahn shrugged and after a silence sighed.
‘Have you not spoken to the American military authorities? You.. could trace her Father?’ He offered carefully. ‘They might finance her studies. We would be pleased to have her. I, we, all the music staff were very impressed by her.’ Isabella sighed,
‘The American authorities are… out of the question. I went to see them once. Adoption. They wanted to take her. I will never be treated like that again. Dr Kahn I think you should leave.’ Isabella got up and went to the door. Kahn followed and as she opened the door for him in on herself Kahn caught a glimpse of Tina disappearing into her room, silently closing her door after her.
Isabella called to Tina and she came back out to join them. The three of them left the apartment and Kahn put on his coat as they trooped down the stairs in silence.
Tina understood exactly what was happening and why. She was the wrong colour. That was why her Granny didn’t like her Mummy and why they didn’t have enough money and why she couldn’t have the scholarship. But because she didn’t understand it in the way that an adult would she had no protection from its stark simplicity. She lacked an adult’s sophistication. She wasn’t able to take a measured view, to give it fine shading and euphemism. These are the capacities that adults acquire to endure the more intractable and oppressively unbearable facts of their lives.
But Tina did understand and because she could see that even her Mummy couldn’t make it right she was bewildered, disappointed and upset by it.
Isabella opened the front door for Dr Kahn and as he stepped out he turned to say goodbye. Tina thought that like in a story she would now try her very best to show Dr Kahn that she had the best manners possible. And then, at the last minute he would realise that although she was the wrong colour nobody would really notice because once she was at the music school she would be so well behaved.
‘Thank you, Dr Kahn. Goodbye.’ Tina didn’t quite understand why her Mother said thank you but this was her big moment. She did her prettiest and politest ever curtsey.
‘Goodbye. Goodbye Tina.’ It hadn’t made any difference. Not even that was good enough.
Kahn set off down the steps but then, just like she’d hoped, he stopped and turned round. He was going to change his mind!
‘Frau Pflanz I am truly sorry. If I can be of any help with references or introductions then please just ask.’
Tina shrunk inside. He hadn’t changed his mind. And worse he was suggesting that they should try all this again somewhere else. She never wanted anything like this to ever happen again. And she knew the way to make sure it didn’t. She turned inside and started to stamp back upstairs. Isabella closed the door and anxiously started to follow her up,
‘Tina, Tina! Oh Tina I’m so sorry my darling. Perhaps we can try in East Germany, Leipzig perhaps..’
‘No I’m not. No I’m not and you can’t make me!’ Tina started to run up to the apartment. Isabella ran up after her.
‘Tina, Tina my darling, it’ll be all right. We’ll find somewhere.’ Isabella followed Tina into her room and watched her daughter screaming at the piano, the stupid, stupid old piano. Tina lifted the fall, looked straight at her Mother and shouted,
‘I’m not going to play ever again and you can’t make me!’ And then gathering all her force in an emphatic final statement she slammed the fall shut over the keys.
The piano’s thousand frantic voices fled scolded into the grinning silence.
CHAPTER 3 A COILED COIL. 28th October 1980
It was a clear, bright, late afternoon in fall as the taxi slowly cruised down an affluent and exclusive road in one of Boston’s smartest suburbs. As the driver checked one side, looking for the right house so the passenger, Professor Robert Rendtorrf checked the other. Long and lanky Rendtorrf’s full, ripe lips sat almost too healthily in a face ravaged by acne. His wilful red hair proved his inner febrile alertness.
‘That was Vikings right?’
‘Yep.’ Replied Rendtorrf.
‘Here it is.’ The taxi turned into the drive. The drive swept in a semi circle around the front lawn. The cab stopped and Rendtorrf got out. The driver also got out and as they both went to the boot the front door flew open and three children rushed out to them. The children were a little girl Rachel, aged 9, and her two younger brothers David, aged 7 and Saul, aged 4.
‘Uncle Bobby!’ Cried Rachel as she ran up to him and clasped him round the waist.
‘Hello, hi, how are you all?’ Said Rendtorrf putting his arm around her and David who had also reached him. Saul was slower and since he couldn’t really remember who this Uncle Bobby was he just joined in with the general excitement. The two older children were swinging on Rendtorrf’s arms and generally creating when their Mother, Penny came out. Rendtorrf looked up as she came towards him. Her bright, green eyes shone in bright lively face as plain as the day. Petite and freckled a black headband hardly controlled the abundant, curly, strawberry blonde hair, which flowed down past her shoulders. With small breasts and great legs she was a lively, sensual, warm, and loving woman. After years as a roving playboy his friend Jack had a real prize for a wife.
‘Come on children settle down a bit. Poor Uncle Bobby’s got to get his bags and settle up with the taxi man.’ As she reached him Rendtorrf kissed her on the cheek. He paid the driver and as he carried two bags Rachel and David insisted that they and not their Mother could carry the other one, which they did together very slowly.
‘So you found us?’
‘Yes, eventually. What a lovely house.’
‘Yes, we’re very happy with it. Come on in.’ They all filed into the hallway. ‘Jack isn’t here yet.’ Bobby was surprised. ‘He decided to take a break in London and stay overnight. He’s due into Boston any time now.’
The children had settled down but an air of expectancy hung over them. Rendtorrf smiled at Penny.
‘Now then, who’s been good?’ This precipitated a lot of bouncing and excitement to a chorus of,
‘Me.. me.. I have.’
‘O.K. then, let’s see what we’ve got.’ On direction from Penny Rendtorrf, like a pied piper lead them into the sitting room carrying the biggest bag. He laid it on the sofa and opened it taking out three neatly wrapped parcels. He deliberately built the tension by carefully studying the labels.
‘So let me see. Here’s one for Rachel.’ He handed it over to eager hands.
‘Now what do you say?’ Asked Penny.
‘Thank you Uncle Bobby.’
‘And here’s one for David.’
‘Thank you Uncle Bobby.’
‘But now who are you?’ said Rendtorrf to the slightly anxious Saul.
‘I’m Saul.’
‘Then this one must be for you.’
‘Thank you Uncle Bobby.’
‘OK now off you go to the playroom and open your presents.’ The children sauntered off tugging at the wrappers. Rendtorrf and Penny smiled as they watched them go to end of the room and down a stairway to the playroom. ‘And Rachel, please help Saul?’
‘Yes Mummy.’
Rendtorrf and Penny went back into the hall.
‘Do you want a coffee? Or would you like something stronger?’
‘Coffee’s fine for now thanks. I’ll take my bags…up?’
‘Oh yes. Erm, up the stairs, left and it’s the second on the right. You have a bathroom en suite.’ He picked up his bags and went upstairs, while Penny went on across to the kitchen. As she filled the grinder and ground the beans the T.V on the bar in the centre of the kitchen silently showed a trailer for that night’s televised debate between President Carter and his challenger Ronald Reagan, the first of the campaign. She filled the percolator at the sink by the window. As she turned back to the bar a car pulled past the window behind her. It stopped by the front door and sounded its horn. She turned and smiled, finished setting up the coffee and made her way out to the front door where she was nearly run over by the children rushing to let their father in.
Professor Saul ‘Jack’ Jackson quickly hugged and kissed his wife and then bent down to be mobbed by his children.
‘I wasn’t expecting you so soon.’ Said Penny. From within the scrum Jack explained that they’d got favourable winds. As he was explaining Rendtorrf came down the stairs.
‘Bobby! You’re here.’ Jack got up, straightened his horn-rimmed glasses and embraced his old friend. As he stepped back so Bobby took him in. A little short, Jack was dark and handsome, with a boyish face full of charm and mischief. A raffish sophisticate, a near chain smoker of cheroots with the contented roundness of a bon viveur.
‘Daddy, look what Uncle Bobby brought me.’ Rachel showed him a Russian doll.
‘This is just the outside one. There are littler and littler ones inside it.’
‘Wow that’s lovely.’
‘He got me a car.’ Said David.
‘And I got a blue one.’ Saul said and then added, ‘Did you bring us some toys?’
‘I sure did, and you can have them for Thanksgiving. But for now here’s something for all of you to share.’ He picked up a large box, a compendium of board games and handed it to Rachel.
‘Take it down to the playroom. I’ll help you with it later.’ They scurried off with it and David declared,
‘It’s for all of us to share, even Saul.’ The adults laughed and repeated the ‘Even Saul’ to each other.
‘So you found Chateau Jacobovitz then? How d’you like it? Modest it isn’t.’
‘No less than I was expecting. But I’ve only just arrived. I haven’t had the full tour yet.’
‘Good. I’ll just get the map and be right with you!’
‘I’ve got coffee on. Would you like some?’ Asked Penny.
‘I’m gasping.’ And then as the two men followed Penny into the kitchen Jack went on,
‘Remind me. Those noisy, little people, who are they?’
——————–
Later that night in the calm of the children tucked up quietly and amid the debris of a good meal the three of them were chewing the fat over coffee and a large tin of Indian candies.
‘They’re yummy but no, Jack, no! I’m not going to have another one.’ Penny said.
‘They are delicious. And they go so well with the coffee.’ Said Bobby reaching for the tin.
‘From the finest sweetmeat emporium in Delhi.’
‘All that way for candies. How this man loves his wife.’
‘Now don’t be bashful, you know I had you in mind too and I stopped over in London just to get you the Glenfiddich.’ They all smiled and fell silent. This pause was a familiar signal to Penny.
‘Well I’ll leave you two to talk.’ Jack smiled up at her,
‘If you can make some more coffee and then come on back to join us? ‘Bout half an hour?’ It was as long as Bobby had expected their debriefing to last. Penny gathered coffee cups onto the tray and left.
‘So how was Moscow?’ Jack asked. Before Bobby could answer Jack declared on his friend’s behalf. ‘In the land of Lysenko they still have nothing themselves and continue to accept our phoney baloney as the wisdom of heaven. Am I right or am I right?’ Bobby smiled his agreement.
‘So what’s to know?’ Jack flourished. ‘What’s to know is this.’ He went on, dramatically. ‘The Indian guy Vettath Kalanathan stood up at this seminar and delivered a paper on?’ He paused for effect, ‘Supercoiling!’ With intrigued surprise Bobby asked.
‘You mean supercoiling as opposed to supercoiling….’
‘I mean first rate, well argued, right handed, left handed, just like ours, completely secret, Pentagon classified linear supercoiling. Rigid Watson-Crick B DNA? Out the window, thank you and goodbye.’
‘Well I’ll be damned. So what did you do?’
———————-
At the same time on the other side of the world in a science lab in Bangalore, India it was mid morning. The young scientist Dr Vettath Kalanathan was shaking his head in frustration and anger as he read a letter. Behind him were several models of the DNA molecule. One was the well-known Watson-Crick model labelled ‘Classic B DNA’ while the others were variations called, Type I, Type II etc. The strangest looking one was wound like a snake along its stand with two sharp bends in it. It was labelled ‘Linear Supercoil.’
The door to the lab opened and in came his supervising Professor, Professor Somasekhar.
‘So how did the seminar go Vettath?’ Vettath looked at him sourly and handed him the letter.
‘They didn’t waste any time. This got here this morning. I only got back yesterday.’ Somasekhar read the letter shaking his head. Finally he looked up.
‘But this is terrible. I don’t understand.’
‘You would if you had been there.’
‘I couldn’t. You kno……’
‘I know. I didn’t mean it like that. I mean that the whole time I was there, everything, everybody was against me.’ Looking down at the letter again Somasekhar shook his head,
‘Oh I can’t believe it. You must write to them and at least ask for an explanation.’
‘There’s no point. There’ll be no explanation. Look here.’ Vettath read from the letter, ‘ “…for reasons of editorial consistency we will not.. etc” This is just bullshit. All this is about is that the Watson-Crick molecule is established, that everybody likes it and that no one but no one can presume to question it or criticise it or offer an alternative. There can be no explanation. They simply won’t publish my seminar paper because the great Professor Jackson has told them not to.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘I know because seeing how he behaved at the seminar it just made sense of everything, all the problems we’ve had getting published and getting international funding, everything. Until now I had still felt that maybe we were just not explaining things properly or we were overlooking something so basic that, well.. perhaps they were all too embarrassed to tell us. But now I know that they simply don’t want to hear it.’
‘But this is crazy. I mean why?’
‘I just don’t know. You know the sort of dismissive stuff they’ve been writing about our work. Well it was just the same. They, well Jackson, he was the leader he didn’t criticise he just tried to ignore me. Then finally when I insisted on presenting my paper you should have seen the way he behaved. He didn’t bother to listen. He even started talking to other people while I was speaking. And then at the end in the time for questions he was the first to talk. But he didn’t ask questions. Instead he just gave his own presentation. He used up the whole session. It was mostly the same old rubbish, the standard Watson-Crick model. The limited flexibility of the backbone, and the overwhelming favourability of right-handed stacking. And to support the right handed stacking he added something new. He said that the right-handedness was a function of the ribose being dextro ribose! It was pathetic. But everybody just accepted it. And then as well he got them laughing; he was funny. I didn’t have a chance.
‘Finally he ended on supercoiling. He dismissed our model for “topographical reasons” whatever that means and instead offered this!’ On the chalk board Vettath drew something like the carriages of a train going round a sharp bend. Somasekhar muttered,
‘That’s ridiculous.’
Pointing in exasperation at their own model of supercoiling Vettath angrily declared,
‘It’s ludicrous!’
——————–
‘OK so I had to mess him up a bit. Well I didn’t enjoy doing that. Actually I hated doing that. But I don’t think it’ll make much difference. Sure, he was pissed off and he’ll be upset for a while but Bobby he’s not only very bright, he’s driven. I wasn’t sure until I saw him but now I know what he’s done. He’s repeated all our work, on his own with God knows what in the way of resources. Can you imagine? I mean. It nearly killed the both of us. He’s not gonna quit.’
‘No. I’d reckon not but he’ll need funding and he’ll need to publish in the international journals and I mean we know we can hold all that up almost indefinitely.’
‘C’mon Bobby. It’s getting too hot. It’s not sustainable in the long term. I reckon Porter’s gonna have to give it up. And I just can’t wait to see that prick’s face when I tell him.’ Jack stood up arms raised and declared dramatically to the ceiling, mimicking a newsreel announcer. ‘And then…we’ll be free! The nightmare will be over!’
There was a knock on the door and Jack went over to let Penny back in.
——————–
‘Even at the end when it was all over he wouldn’t stop. I was waiting for the bus to the airport and Jackson came up to me and said, “Look into Chandrasekhar’s Dark Stars.” and then just walked off without giving me a chance to say anything. I’m not interested in astrophysics. I mean the man was just goading me.’
‘Chandrasekhar?’ Somasekhar pondered. ‘That’s funny. I was thinking about him when you were talking. Do you know about Chandrasekhar?’ Vettath shrugged.
‘Not much.’ He said.
‘Well you can read about it now but Chandra’s Uncle, Professor Raman the former Director here told me the story years ago.
‘Chandra’ got a Government Scholarship to do Post-Doctoral work at Cambridge under Eddington, the world’s most eminent astronomer, one of the greatest physicists of his time. Chandra’ had also been working on stars but his work contradicted Eddington’s. Chandra’ described a phenomenon he called Dark Stars. His theories and calculations worked using either classical physics or quantum mechanics. Even so, Eddington wouldn’t accept his findings.
‘When Chandrasekhar was still only 24 years old he was invited to address the Royal Astronomical Society in London. He only found out the day before that Eddington would also be speaking. Eddington spoke after Chandra’. He delivered a humiliating and derisive rebuttal. Even though he offered no substantive arguments or equations, just hot air, his reputation was so great that it finished Chandra’s career in England. He had to go to America.
‘Years later, in the mid ‘60s the world had changed, people were ready to accept the possible existence of what became known as Black Holes. They were Chandrasekhar’s Dark Stars. His equations fitted and his contribution was recognised. A year or two back he got the Nobel Prize for work he originally did in 1930, 50 years ago. Chandra’ and Raman both Nobel Prize winners, uncle and nephew, it’s unique.’
‘So what’s Jackson saying? That I’ll have to wait for 50 years? That’s crazy!’ Vettath paused,
‘But then from that story he seems to be saying he knows I’m right, that the work is good. So why’s he still trying to destroy me? It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘No. It doesn’t,’ said Somasekhar thoughtfully, ‘The whole thing’s a puzzle.’ He paused a while. ‘You’ve written this paper up for publication?’
‘Nearly, I’m just waiting for the photographs to come back.
‘Good. I don’t know what to make of it. But you must keep going. Whatever’s going on you have to keep plugging away.’