[32]

On Friday I drove off right after breakfast, hoping that no one would notice. I took the longer faster route: into Bavaria on the Autobahn, past Bad Reichenhall, past Traunstein, past the Chiemsee, until I reached the bridge across the Inn. There I left the Autobahn, headed straight for the mountains and crossed back into Austria at Kufstein. As I followed the river up into the Tyrol, I tried to keep wrenching my mind away from Paola and back to my moot court problem. The idea was to set up some kind of a demonstration trial, to show the European lawyers how an American jury trial works. Freddie Minto and I were to be the lawyers, Steinberg would be the judge. We were to draw witnesses and jurors from the faculty and student body. We needed a case, a story line, a script. That was my job, and I hadn't done it. I had put it off, distracted by all the other things that had happened, and now it was upon me, only a few days left, and I had not come up with anything. I had fiddled around all week with different ideas, spending hours every evening on the dimly lighted balcony above the dining hall, where the Fyrmian's musicians had once played dinner music and where, for some reason, the Academy typewriters were now installed. Should it be a civil or a criminal case? Should it be simple or complicated? I stared at the little framed Guardi, a drawing of a clown or harlequin in masked comnwdia dell'arte costume, which somebody had carried up from the Venetian Room and which now stood, forgotten, on the windowsill behind my table. Should it be a negligence case? Some kind of traffic accident? Too boring. But any other civil case would take too long . . . . The real trouble was that I could not concentrate. I tried to keep my eye on Brockaw and Pressburger, although I never caught them together again. Letters and telephone calls from Ellsworth Boyle kept the Boatwright situation in my mind: the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania had denied our motion to dismiss Fleischer's complaint; a routine expectable loss but a loss nevertheless. Boyle was becoming more and more irascible. And so was Freddie Minto, who took to badgering me in his seminar, using me as a foil, getting me to take positions just so that he could destroy them in demonstration of the most childish law school "Socratic method" -something he had always scorned before. And Rosanna Lombardi, who had apparently never seen a man using a typewriter, came in and leaned against my back breathing, "Gray-ham, why you work so hard all the time?" And there was no mail from Siasconset, Mass. And on Friday I would see Paola again.

A winding road, hay fields blazing with poppies and cornflowers, pine forests, mountains towering into the hazy blue sky. Spotted cattle clanging along the highway attended by husky sunburned girls in blue smocks and babushkas. Ancient country towns: Wörgl, Kundl, Rattenberg, Schwaz. Entrances to narrow misty valleys: Brixental, Zillertal. Solbad Hall (Innsbruck 10 km. Brenner Pass 47 km.). I gave up trying to think about anything else. Flat-out now, gas pedal on the floor, I passed a logging truck in a cloud of dust and diesel exhaust, narrowly missing a head-on collision with a wildly honking Porsche coming the other way.

Easy does it. Kaltes Blut. I crossed the wide green rolling river: Innsbruck.

A Renaissance city. Narrow streets so jammed with tourists that another car could hardly get through. A wall of glittering mountains above the rooftops, omnipotent, blocking the sky. I parked near the railroad station and wandered around. Archways, shop windows, cooking smells, chattering tourists. I asked directions.

In the cool darkness of the Hofkirche, a few old women were praying. I found the passage leading to the Mausoleum of the Emperor Maximilian, but the iron grille was closed and locked. Mittagspause 12:00 - 14:00 said the sign. A moment of panic. Would she have known that? Would we wander around the crowded streets, searching for each other? But then I noticed another old woman back there on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. She rose to her feet and limped over to unlock the gate. I offered her a coin but she smiled and shook her head, pointing into the crypt.

A long dark chamber. Marble columns. Narrow shafts of sunlight passed through the high leaded windows, cutting the gloom but making it hard to see the other end. The tomb itself was in the middle of the room, enclosed with ornate wroughtiron grilles. Between the columns, watching the tomb from both sides, two rows of ghostly black figures: knights in elaborate armor, women in coronets and court attire.

I heard her heels on the marble before I saw her. She was at the other end, walking toward me. She wore a raincoat, open, over some kind of gray silk suit, open at the neck. Suntan. Pearls. Silver barrette. Diamond ring.

"Hallo, Graham. I'm happy to see you."

Well, what does one say?

She began to chatter nervously. "Is this not a strange place? That is the tomb the Kaiser Maximilian built for himself. This was his favorite town, but he is not here, he is in Wiener-Neustadt, I forget the reason. And these big friends, they guard the empty tomb. You see, each one holds out an arm, to carry a torch at the funeral. This is Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan. Do you find her pretty?"

"I find you very beautiful."

"Still, you mean. Comparatively well preserved." She turned to look at me. "Why didn't you bring your wife?"

"She wasn't invited. I'm just a student, you know. They never invite students' wives, and she had to mind the children."

"Yes, the children. Tell me about them. How many have you?"

"We have two. A girl six, a boy three."

"Oh, that's nice, Graham. Will you have more?"

"Paola?"

She stopped walking.

"How is it that you don't have any children?"

She bit her lip and looked up at the cold bronze face of a knight in heavy armor. "This is Rudolph of Hapsburg," she said. "Do you think he looked like that?"

"Paola?"

"I had a child once."

"Not with Hans."

"Is this any of your business?"

"I want to know anyway."

"Perhaps we don't want to have children. Children are expensive, they are trouble." She turned away from me and began to walk along the line of statues again.

"The Freiherr von Schaumburg doesn't want a son? I don't believe it." I walked beside her, but she wouldn't look at me.

"So you don't believe it?"

"No."

"All right. Perhaps you believe this then: I cannot have children. I cannot have children because of something that was done to me. By a dirty old woman. In Salzburg, in an attic, somewhere behind the railroad yards."

"When was this?" I whispered. But I already knew.

"October '47," she said.

I had to sit down in the nearest pew. She came over and put her hand on my shoulder.

"It was not your fault. I found the woman myself." I was looking down at the floor, but I could hear that she was crying.

"You could have told me about it. You could have written."

"Oh, what nonsense!" She found a handkerchief in her purse and blew her nose. "What could you have done? Nothing at all, only worry and feel guilty. No, I was the older woman, the older woman who allows herself to be with a boy, I should have been more careful, and I was not, and God made me pay a price for that."

"And did Hans know---"

"Yes, yes, of course. I was in the hospital, St. Johann-Spital, for weeks, I had infections, the same old story -no penicillin, you remember!- and when I came home I was just a bag of bones. And all alone. It was winter again, snow and ice, and I was ready to die. I would have died, but Hans appeared--" She finished with the handkerchief and put it back in her purse. She took a deep breath. "Well, he saved my life, you know. He made me get up and do things. He made me go skiing again. And he made me leave Salzburg, all the bad memories. He gave me a new life. He is a good man and has been good to me."

I stood up and began to walk along the line of statues again. King Arthur. Every detail of his face, his beard, the hinges of his armored gauntlets, beautifully sculptured in bronze. I ran my finger along the cool flange of his naked sword.

"Tell me about your life," I said. "Do you live in Bonn?"

"Yes, well, in Bad Godesberg, nearby, we have a little house, but we have lived in many places, in Berlin and Paris, because of Hans's work."

"What does he do? What is his work?"

"Oh, he is a government official, you know. He studied Jura, law, in Berlin, at the Free University, he made his doctor, but he never practiced."

"Is he in the army?"

"Not exactly."

"Not exactly? What does that mean?"

"Well, he was in the army for some years, when they first established the Bundeswehr, he helped with that for a time, and then he was asked to take a civilian job, but he still has his reserve rank. Why does that interest you?"

"What is his reserve rank?"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"He's a general, isn't he?"

"Well, is that so strange? He is forty-six years old, his classmates, the few who are still alive, they are colonels, one or two generals. He works terribly hard."

"Doing what?"

"Doing what? I don't know exactly. He is called a Staatssekretär in the Foreign Ministry. He speaks for the military people with the diplomatic people. Do you use the French word 'liaison'? I don't know more I can tell you - but do you know, I am very hungry now, will you take me to lunch?"

After so many years it should have been different. It should have been like getting to know another person, a new person, a stranger. But it wasn't; it was exactly the same as it had always been. She took my arm and she walked beside me through the crowded streets and I was suddenly deliriously happy. just being with her made me happy. We found a place where we could eat outdoors, a simple Gasthaus right beside the river. We sat at an iron table underneath a chestnut tree and looked across the rushing water. SÜD-TIROL BLEIBT DEUTSCH!! announced the dripping whitewashed letters on the opposite levee.

"Nothing ever ends," sighed Paola. "They have been fighting over that since 1919."

A mushroom omelet with "Frisolen" and tomato salad. A pitcher of cool white Kremser. I don't know exactly what we talked about: my life, her life, the places we had been, the things we had done. Sunlight through the chestnut leaves made a shifting pattern on the tabletop. The wine seemed stronger than I had expected; it made me see everything with extraordinary intensity and color, in sharpest focus: the sky was bluer and the leaves were greener and her face across the table seemed to glow.

"You know what?"

She looked up, still eating her tomatoes. "No. What?"

"I'm still in love with you."

She swallowed and reached for her glass. "Don't be silly, Graham." She looked at me while she drank.

"It may be silly, but I am."

"It's too late for us." She put the glass down on the table, and began to slide it back and forth. "It was always too late for us."

I said nothing.

"I'm an old woman."

I just looked at her. And smiled,

Finally the dimple appeared. "Well, I am, Graham."

"Three years older."

"Four years."

"Four years. One foot in the grave. A horrible old crone. Glad I don't have to go to bed with you."

Her eyes flashed. "You certainly will not!"

"That's right We came down here to eat an omelet and look at the Tomb of the Kaiser Maximilian."

"Graham, I don't like you to be so cynical! One moment you tell me you love me, the next you make me feel. I don't know, somehow dirty!"

"You think I've changed?"

"I think a little, yes. Too many girls, perhaps. I think you are a little spoiled. You want to have your way all the time. I came here to meet you, to see you and to talk with you, to be with you again, and now you sit over there and think nothing except to jump right into bed!"

"Don't be mad at me. I'm just so happy to see you again."

"All right, I'm happy too, but just behave yourself. Come along now, pay the bill and we will look at the town."
 
 

"Haven't you finished yet?" demanded Freddie Minto.

I was typing away, hearing the type bars striking the paper, forming words, forming lines, forming sentences, slamming the carriage back when the bell rang at the end of each line, but I could not seem to think of anything. I tried to read what I was typing, but her face was beside mine and her hair was in the way, so I could not see the words, nor could I hear them. I've got to think of something, I thought, I've put it off too long and now there are only two days left and I can't think of anything and way down in the next block, in front of the Mozarteum the motorcycle made a U-turn and came back up the Schwarzstrasse, driving fast, bouncing on the cobblestones and the fellow in the sidecar was the Guardi harlequin in a black-and-white checkered suit and a mask but when he pushed the mask up on his helmet and pointed the machine pistol right at me I saw it was Hans von Schaumburg and he shouted, "You are the one who did it!" and I tried to tell him I didn't know but he began to shoot at me and I ran into the Mirabell Gardens through the arbor and into Don Giovanni's banqueting hall, gilt mirrors all around me, up on the gallery the little string ensemble playing "Non piu andrai" from Figaro, but the telephone was ringing and Ellsworth Boyle and Armistead Devereaux, both in dinner jackets, climbed up on the stage, their faces red with anger. "Get out of here," shouted Boyle. "You don't belong here, you're on the outside now!" and I tried to tell them that we had no telephone but they would not listen to me so I picked up the bottle and
 
 

"Oh, Graham, please wake up." She was brushing a cornflower over my lips. "I think you are having a nightmare."

I sat up, breathless, befuddled, my muscles cramped, feeling the sun and the cool wind in my face. She was lying in the grass beside me, one arm propping up her head, chewing on the stem of the cornflower.

"I think you have had too much wine," she said.

I nodded, rose stiffly to my feet, and walked over to the parapet. Beneath me, at the foot of the crumbling wall, a field of hay and wild flowers slanted three hundred yards down to the road, to the clump of trees where her black Mercedes and my red Volkswagen were parked. just down the road, behind us, was the Gerlos Pass, the watershed between the Inn and Salzach rivers, the border between the provinces of Salzburg and Tyrol. From these overgrown ruins we could see a world of mountains in all directions, the Kitzbühler Alps to the north and the Hohe Tauern to the south, an ocean of rocks and pale blue glaciers and glittering snow, rolling endlessly to the horizon.

We had walked through the streets of Innsbruck for a while, along the river, through the Hofgarten. and up the Maria Theresienstrasse, and then she suggested that we drive back to Salzburg through the mountains. The weather was splendid, and she wanted to show me something. So we bought another bottle of wine and some cheese, and I drove behind her, back out along the dusty Landstrasse through Solbad Hall and then into the Zillertal winding up and up through woods and fields and chicken-cluttered villages, following the Ziller into higher and higher country, finally high enough to see the massive white peaks of the Gross Venediger and the Grossglockner, now almost directly above us. Shortly after we crossed the pass and started down into the Pinzgau and the valley of the Salzach, Paola turned abruptly off the road and parked her car beneath some dark firs. "Come along," she said, and when we were out from under the trees we started up the steep pasture, hay sprinkled with poppies and cornflowers. She had left her shoes and stockings in the car. Her bare legs flashed as she climbed ahead of me, holding her arms out to balance herself. At the top of the hill we found a complex of ruined towers, parts of walls and battlements, ghostly steps leading nowhere, everything overgrown with bushes and grass. She turned to me, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes shining. "Have you ever seen such a view? Back there, in that mist, that is the waterfall at Krimml. There is the Grossglockner, the highest mountain in Austria. Down there in front of us, that is Mittersill, the ski place . . . No, Graham, please . . . I did not bring you up here for that. . . . Yes, of course I've been here. . . . No. With Rainer. Some ancestor of his built this, oh very long ago. To guard the pass, the border, for the Archbishop. Against the Count of Tyrol. . . . Graham, please don't do that. Why don't you open the wine? Let's drink some wine and look at the mountains. Graham? That mountain there, that is the Reichenspitze . . ."
 
 

She came and stood beside me on the parapet. "Look, the valley is in shadow. We had better go, we have a long, long drive, all the way down the river--'

"Paola, I smashed a mirror in the Venetian Room."

She frowned. "You smashed a mirror? What do you mean, was it an accident?"

I shook my head. "I threw a whiskey bottle at it. just after I saw you. I was drunk and I blew up. Would you like to know why?"

She waited, frowning. The wind blew her hair.

"I did it because I found out what Hans is doing in the Schloss. Or anyway, some part of it. I just can't believe it, Paola. I mean I do believe it but it just seems incredible--"

"I know nothing about Hans's work."

"You must know about this, he's doing it in your place. He came down to see Pressburger--"

She stared at me. "What do you know about Pressburger?"

I told her what I had heard.

She looked away from me, across the mountains. "It had to be done."

"Why? What had to be done?"

Suddenly, inexplicably, she turned away and walked along the edge of the parapet. I watched her until I realized that she was crying. Then I followed her and tried to put my arms around her, but she would not let me.

"Paola--"

"Oh, just leave me alone for a minute!" She was sobbing.

"Can't you tell me--"

She turned around, her face wet and contorted. "Oh, Graham, I cannot stand another war, with everybody getting killed and everything bombed and burning and children with nothing to eat--"

"What do you mean 'another war'? Who said anything--"

"There may be another war this summer."

"Who says so?"

"Well, Hans, for one."

"Oh, for Gods sake! Hans started saying that in '47. The German theme song: 'The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. . . '"

She shook her head. "Graham. don't you read the newspapers? The situation in Berlin is . . . it is impossible, for the German Communists. All their people are running away. They cannot maintain their government, and the Russians cannot let this go on, this situation. They cannot let it go on!"

"Well, what are they going to do?"

"Well, what are they going to do? That's the whole question. Oh, give me your handkerchief, Graham, I am a fool, I have drunk too much wine too! And I should never have come to meet you!" She wiped her face and blew her nose. "Give me a cigarette, please."

She sat down in the grass. The old stone wall shielded her from the wind, and she leaned back against it, frowning forward as she concentrated upon the flame I held for her, then leaning back again, smoking quietly, her eyes upon the grass.

I waited.

"You know the name Gehlen?" she asked. "Reinhard Gehlen?"

"No. Should I?"

"The newspapers have written about him, he's not a secret any more. He was a general in the Wehrmacht, in the General Staff. FHO his branch was called. Fremde Heere Ost. It was military intelligence. In the East, against the Russians. He had people, agents, all over eastern Europe. When the war ended, he kept his records, he hid them up here in the mountains somewhere, in Bavaria or Austria, and then he made an arrangement with the American intelligence, they set up a headquarters for him at Pullach, near Munich, they gave him money, and they used his information. When the Bundesrepublik, the Federal Republic, was established, the Gehlen group was turned over to it. That was the arrangement he had made with the Americans. But of course they still work closely with the Americans." She paused.

"Does Hans work for Gehlen?" I asked.

She shook her head. "More the other way around."

"Oh."

"I should not tell you these things."

"I still don't see what all this has to do with the Schloss, with the Academy?"

"They can't find out about Berlin! Gehlen's people can't find out what the DDR (German for German Democratic Republic) intends to do, what Ulbricht wants the Russians to do, what the Russians will permit Ulbricht to do - Will there be another blockade? Will that help them if the Americans just fly the people out in airplanes, the way they did in '48? And they know now what can be done with airplanes. Will they interfere with the airplanes? And maybe they don't know themselves what to do ..."

"Pressburger--"

"Pressburger, yes. If he does not know, he can find out when the decision is made, he is close enough to find out, and we must know, the Americans must know, so we will know how to act. To react."

"Does Pressburger want to defect?"

She shrugged. "Maybe."

"For political reasons?"

"For money."

"For money? This guy is a dedicated Communist, been a Communist all his life, a hard-core Stalinist. Why would he suddenly be interested in money?"

"I don't know. Maybe he is in trouble over there, or maybe he has never had such an opportunity before. They have offered him a great deal of money."

"The Germans?"

"The Americans. Also an American visa."

"Mr. Devereaux set this up, didn't he?"

No answer. She picked at the grass with her fingers.

"Didn't he?"

She looked up at me, and nodded.

"But why the Schloss, Paola? They could play this game at any hotel in Berlin or Vienna."

"No, they thought not."

"Why not?"

"Oh, Graham, don't ask so many questions! I am not on trial here. They didn't ask me. In Germany they don't ask women their opinion about such things. They thought it was a good idea. The Schloss is far away from Berlin, it is far enough even from Salzburg, it is a private place, no tourists, they could talk there, make their arrangements, and Pressburger would be just like the other students."

"But that's crazy!" I exploded. "You know how we live there, we're in close quarters, it's like a cruise ship, everybody gets to know everybody else, and they're sophisticated people from all over Europe--"

"Well, they were wrong then," she said. "It is not the first time a mistake has been made, in this work."

"But in the meantime they just casually wreck the Academy," I said. "These people. the students, they'll go back home saying the Academy's a cover for intelligence operations, the very goddamned thing that people were claiming back in '47, the very thing that got me sent home when I wanted to stay with you!"

I stood up again. The wind was blowing harder, and the mountains were beginning to glow as the sun dipped toward the valleys of Tyrol. Paola came and stood beside me.

"Graham? Tell me why you care so much about this business. Why does it make you so angry?"

Why indeed?

"You think of Peter Devereaux?"

"Yes . . . I guess so. I don't know. I haven't thought so much about him lately, but coming back here. . . He wanted so much to leave something behind. Not a monument, but a living thing, something that would bring people together, make them understand each other, make them understand our country. And he did it; hundreds and hundreds of people have come to the Schloss and learned about each other, about the United States . . ." I couldn't really explain it, even to myself. "And now to have his own father just casually destroy it--"

"I don't think he meant to destroy--"

"For one lousy intelligence mission, a mission he could just as well have set up in a dozen other places, better places." I had to stop.

"I'm sorry, Graham. You are probably right, for another reason. The Austrian government would be very unhappy about this. They are supposed to maintain strict neutrality under their peace treaty, and they have never liked my renting the Schloss to a foreign group for such a long time, it is a protected monument.... But I don't think they will find out about it."

"They're bound to find out. Some of the students already know that this is the other Pressburger. How long will it take before everybody knows?"

"But they don't know what he is doing there."

"They have a pretty good idea. They've guessed it has something to do with Berlin."

That seemed to impress her. I could not tell what she was thinking, though. Then she said, "Graham, what did you mean, what you just said, about being sent home when you wanted to stay with me?"

I told her. She listened quietly, biting her lips. Then she turned, walked away a little distance, came back to me.

"What's the matter, Paola?"

"Nothing, my dear, but I am getting cold now, we really have to go, we still have a long way to drive. - If we get separated, you will find the way, won't you.

"Oh sure, I'll find it."

"Just stay along the river, all the way around the bend. Don't turn off at Zell. Go straight ahead. St. Johann im Pongau, up over Pass Lueg, Golling, Hallein, then you are beneath the Untersberg, almost home."

"I'll get there. Paola?"

She had already turned on the engine. She looked out the window.

"Will I see you?"

"I don't know."

"When is Hans coming back?"

"I don't know that either."

"Whereare you staying in town?"

"Graham, please don't make it harder ... I can't see you in Salzburg. I'm so confused now, I don't know really what to do, I just want to think. I promise you will hear from me. But now I must go. Servus, my dear, it has been a very strange day." She moved the gear lever and the Mercedes rolled forward over the dried pine needles, rocking gently across the lumpy roots. When it reached the edge of the road the brake lights went on. She leaned out of the window. "Graham, come here please."

When I got to the door, I saw that she was crying again. She looked at me with brimming eyes.

"That was not the reason you were sent home, you know. That story about being a spy for the Military Government. Major French sent you home because he knew that I was pregnant."

A roar, a screech of tires, a spray of pebbles. The Mercedes shot out into the narrow mountain road and disappeared around the bend.
 
 
 

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Map
Summary

Preface

BOOK I
1961 - A Point of View
[1] The annual meeting of the stockholders of the Boatwright Corporation
[2] What are you going to do about Boatwright and what are you going to do about yourself?
[3] Have we learned anything this evening, Doctor?
[4] Producing results?
[5] Alexander's Feast
[6] How'd you like to go over to Salzburg for a month with me?

BOOK II
1947 - An Island
[7] You're not going to Berlin. You're staying here.
[8] All right, we're the Military Government.
[9] The Americans are teaching us to be democratic instead of fascistic.
[10] Well, this is Fasching.
[11] Letters after Ash Wednesday
[12] Say Boris is at Schloss Fyrmian.
[13] THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN EUROPE - Prospectus for the First Session
[14] Learn to think of people as individuals.
[15] Parlez-moi d'amour, redites-moi des choses tendres.
[16] Not one thing left to show that you've ever been on earth? - "Sources of Soviet Conduct"
[17] A Countess, a Prussian Officer and a Ländler
[18] Now this part of your life is over and I'm sending you home.
[19] A father who's too busy to watch his son die. - The Spring of 1961
[20] I cannot sell Schloss Fyrmian to the Academy.

BOOK III
1961 - A Change of Air
[21] The first thing I saw was the Festung Hohensalzburg far in the distance, silhouetted against the shadowy curtain of the high mountains.
[22] Next day at the Academy we got to work - Graham, you know what Fleischer did?
[23] Im weißen Rößl am Wolfgangsee
[24] Brockaw writing a thesis on Austrian baroque architecture? - Boatwright Corporation and Boris Fleischer, plaintiffs
[25] You know there a Mr. Devereaux? Mr. Armistead Devereaux?
[26] I think always of Peter Devereaux.
[27] It sounds like an act of desperation, and it won't hold up in court.
[28] In those Oklahoma Hills WHERE AH WAS BOW-AHHHN!
[29] ... that we should meet again like this . . . I think perhaps there is a reason.
[30] "Is there here an American by name of Brockaw?"
[31] This is Boris Fleischer!
>[32] "Does Hans work for Gehlen?" Paola shook her head. "More the other way around."
[33] Won't you please come home? Everybody needs you, I most of all.
[34] With this Waffenstillstand you have time now.
[35] You're going to regret this for the rest of your life!
[36] We Europeans would not do it. None of us. - People think you need medical attention.
[37] Will they trust you?
[38] Some things about the U.S.A. are perhaps rather important, and to us impressive.
[39] You're going to need a good lawyer.


version: March 2, 2004
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Arthur R.G. Solmssen, Joachim Gruber