‘A little,’ I said. ‘You don’t believe in him, then?’
‘He frightens me,’ said Oskar, and I understood this because he frightened me too. But then of course my younger brother and I were Jewish, or a quarter Jewish anyway, and the purges against the Jews had already begun. By now it had been more than three years since Jews had been stripped of their citizenship entirely and I knew of at least two couples whose engagements had been cancelled after the law had come into place banning Jews from marrying non-Jewish Germans. Only four months earlier, the city had descended into chaos after a boy my own age, a Jew, had shot a Nazi diplomat in the German embassy in Paris. Days later the SS had run riot through the city, destroying Jewish shops and synagogues, desecrating graveyards and arresting tens of thousands for deportation to the camps. Running home that night, desperate to escape the violence, I witnessed an elderly man being beaten to death by an officer some forty years his junior, another emerging from a jewellery store with blood pouring down his face after the glass in his shop window had been shattered and, near my home, I saw a girl being raped by an SS Sturmbannführer in a sidestreet while his colleague pinned her father to the wall and forced him to watch. I had not been a victim of any of this for I did not share any of the typical physical characteristics of the Jew, nor were we an observant family so we did not live with other Jews or attend synagogue. But the fact remained: I, and my brother, were Mischlings.
‘They say that he will restore Germany’s power,’ I remarked carefully.
‘And he may succeed,’ said Oskar. ‘He has charisma, it’s true, and his oratorical skills incite the crowds. The people are behind him for now. He has infected them with his hatred. He demands absolute loyalty, and when anyone dares to criticize him, they lose their position. I think he will lead a great army, but what will be the result?’
‘A thousand-year Reich,’ I said. ‘At least that is what he says.’
‘And is that what you want?’
‘All I want is to live in peace,’ I told him. ‘I want to read books and perhaps one day write some of my own. The future of the Fatherland is not something that concerns me.’
He smiled and reached a hand across the table, placing his atop mine in what was certainly intended as a fraternal gesture but sent sparks of electricity through me nevertheless. No boy had ever touched me like that before. ‘I want the same,’ he said. ‘Only with my paintings.’
‘Do you think I might find inspiration in Paris too?’ I asked.
‘For your novel? Of course! Great writers have lived there. Hugo, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. Many classics of literature have been written in the city. It encourages creativity, or so I’ve heard.’
An image came into my mind of the two of us sharing a flat on the top floor of some decrepit old building near Notre-Dame, he painting in his studio, me writing in my study, the two of us coming together as one in our shared bedroom at night. The idea was almost too glorious to imagine. Before I could embarrass myself by suggesting it, however, he stood up and excused himself to use the bathroom and while he was gone I looked across at his sketchbook, telling myself to leave it alone, not to intrude on his privacy, but I could not resist and pulled it towards me, opening it at the first page. It was brand new, containing only one drawing so far, and as I stared at it my heart sank in my chest as waves of disappointment poured over me. The sketch was of a young girl with long black hair, very beautiful, turned to a left profile but with her back to the artist as she sat on an ottoman. Her right hand was touching her cheek and she was naked. A hint of her breast was given towards the left of the picture and there was something in her eye that suggested desire. I wondered whether she was a creature from his imagination or a girl who had posed shamelessly for him and, if the latter, did that mean that she was his lover? Closing the sketchbook, I returned it to his side of the table, placing the charcoal pencil on top of it, and when he returned a moment later he told me I had a sad expression on my face and the only way to conquer that was for the two of us to stay there and drink until our money ran out, a suggestion I agreed to immediately.
‘Did he know that you had looked at his drawing?’ asked Maurice, and I turned to him, shivering a little as I dragged myself back from a lost Berlin to a living Rome.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I think it would have disappointed him if he’d caught me and perhaps our incipient friendship would have ended at that moment. Anyway, we got very merry and by the end of the evening I was certain that I was in love with him, but every time my eyes fell to that sketchbook I felt the impossibility of a romance and then I would drink some more to numb the pain.’
I glanced at my watch, it was time for us to move on, and we stood up, talking of other things as we made our way back to the hotel. I sat alone in the bar later, lost in my thoughts, and when Maurice rejoined me he had taken a shower and smelled of soap, his hair a little damp on his head, and this was exhilarating to me. We spoke some more of Maurice’s own writing and he told me how much my stipend had meant to him for he had moved to a small flat closer to the Savoy where he found it easier to write.
Later, as we walked along the corridors towards our bedrooms, he paused outside my door and I reached for his hand, to wish him goodnight, but to my surprise he leaned forward and offered me a hug. Like an inexperienced performer on a stage, I was uncertain what to do with my arms, whether I should leave them hanging by my side or wrap them around him too. I breathed in the musk of his scent, and my lips, so close to his neck, longed to find a place to call their own. But before I could embarrass myself any further, he pulled away.
‘Your advice is so helpful to me, Erich,’ he said. ‘I’m lucky to be able to learn from you. I hope you know how grateful I am.’
And with that he was gone and I let myself into my room, knowing that I would lie awake for hours yet.
4. Madrid
I didn’t see Maurice again for more than a month after this. He returned to Berlin and I to Cambridge. I longed for the trip to Madrid and, when it came, I waited for him in the foyer of the Hotel Atlántico, pretending to read while keeping a close eye on the door for his arrival. I did my best not to look in the direction of the receptionist, with whom I had engaged in an earlier altercation upon discovering that Maurice’s room would not be adjacent to mine but located on the floor below. I had pleaded with her to make the necessary changes but she had proved intractable and I may have disgraced myself with a childish tantrum. When he finally appeared, however, my spirits lifted and we embraced like old friends, before repairing to a local tapas bar, where he ate like a healthy young horse and I simply sat and watched him.
The following day, a lunch was held in my honour in a private room at the Museo del Prado and, although we arrived early to immerse ourselves in the Titians, I lost track of him at some point and was forced to make my way alone to the reception, where I found myself standing next to the American writer Dash Hardy, with whom I shared a Spanish publisher. As he was spending a semester in the city, teaching at the university, he had been invited to attend the gathering but, anxious about Maurice’s disappearance, I found it difficult to concentrate on his conversation. I remember, however, that he congratulated me on my recent success while informing me that, while he had not read my book – because he did not read non-American writers – he had been assured by our mutual editor that it was a work of some merit.