The One from the Other

THIRTY-SEVEN

It seemed somehow appropriate that Ruprechtskirche on Ruprechtsplatz should be the contact point in Vienna for old comrades who were on the run from Allied justice. Ruprechtsplatz lies just south of the canal and Morzinplatz, which was where the Gestapo had had its headquarters in Vienna. Perhaps that was why the church had been chosen. There was very little else to recommend it. The church was the oldest in Vienna and somewhat dilapidated. Unusually this was not, according to a sign inside the door, the result of Allied bombing, but because of the negligent demolition of a neighboring building. Inside, it was as cold as a Polish cowshed and almost as plain. Even the Madonna looked like a milkmaid. But there is a surprise in store for anyone visiting the church. Under a side altar, preserved in a glass casket, lies the blackened skeleton of Saint Vitalis. It’s as if Snow White had waited much too long for her prince to come and rescue her from a deathlike slumber with love’s first kiss.

Father Lajolo—the Italian priest named by Father Gotovina as someone who was connected to the Comradeship—was almost as thin as Saint Vitalis, and not much better preserved. As thin as a coat hanger, he had hair like wire wool and a face like a billhook. He was quite tanned and as gap-toothed as a Ming dynasty lion. Wearing a long black cassock, he looked very Italian to me, like a face in a crowd scene in a canvas by some Florentine old master. I followed him into a side apse and, in front of an altar, I handed him a railway ticket for Pressbaum. As in Munich, with Father Gotovina, I had crossed out all of the letters on the ticket, except the ss.

“I was wondering if you could recommend a good Catholic church in Pressbaum, Father,” I said.

Seeing my ticket and hearing my carefully worded question, Father Lajolo winced a little, as if pained by this meeting and, for a moment, I thought he would answer that he knew nothing at all about Pressbaum. “It’s possible I can help, yes,” he said, in a thick Italian accent. It was almost as thick as the smell of coffee and cigarettes with which it was coated. “I don’t know. That all depends. Come with me.”

He led me into the sacristy, which was warmer than the church. Here there were a holy-water font, a freestanding gas fire, a closet for various vestments in all the latest liturgical colors, a wooden crucifix on the wall, and through an open door, a lavatory. He closed the door through which we had come and locked it. Then he went over to a small table with a kettle, some cups and saucers, and a simple gas-ring.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Please, Father.”

“Sit down, my friend.” He pointed to one of a pair of threadbare armchairs. I sat down and took out my cigarettes.

“Do you mind?” I asked, offering him a Lucky.

He chuckled. “No, I don’t mind.” Taking a cigarette, he added. “I think most of the disciples would have been smokers, don’t you? After all, they were fishermen. My father was a fisherman, from Genoa. All Italian fishermen smoke.” He lit the gas and then my cigarette and his own. “When Christ went aboard the fishing boat and there was a storm, they would have smoked then, especially. Smoking is the one thing you can do when you are afraid that doesn’t make you look like you’re afraid. But if you’re in a bad storm at sea and you start praying or singing hymns, well, that’s hardly something to inspire courage, is it?”

“I think that would depend on the hymn, don’t you? I asked, guessing that this was my cue.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Tell me, what’s your own favorite hymn?”

“‘How Great Thou Art,’” I answered, without hesitation. “I like the tune.”

“Yes, you’re right,” he said, sitting down on the chair opposite. “That’s a good one. Personally I prefer ‘Il Canto degli Arditi,’ or ‘Giovinezza.’ That’s an Italian marching song. For a while we did have something to march about, you know. But that hymn of yours is a good one.” He chuckled. “I have heard a rumor that the tune is very like the Horst Wessel Song.” He took a little puff on his cigarette. “It has been such a long while since I heard that song, I’ve almost forgotten the words. Perhaps you could remind me.”

“You don’t want me to sing it, surely,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “If you don’t mind. Humor me, please.”

I had always detested the Horst Wessel Song. And yet I knew the words well enough. There had been a time in Berlin when, just walking around the city, you would have heard it several times a day, and I could easily remember when it was almost impossible to go to the pictures without hearing it on the newsreels. I remembered Christmas 1935, and some people had started singing it in church, during a carol service. But I myself had sung the song only when not to have done so would have been to have risked a beating at the murderous hands of the SA. I cleared my throat and began singing the words in my almost tuneless baritone:

“Flag high, ranks closed,

The SA marches with solid silent steps.

Comrades shot by the Red Front and Reaction

March in spirit with us in our ranks.

“The street free for the brown battalions,

The street free for the Storm Troopers.

Millions, full of hope, look up at the swastika,

The day breaks for freedom and for bread.”

He nodded and then handed me a small cup of black coffee. I wrapped my hands around it gratefully and inhaled the bittersweet aroma. “Do you want the other two verses as well?” I asked him.

“No, no.” He smiled. “There’s no need. It’s just one of the things I ask people to do. Just to help make sure who I am dealing with, you understand.” He fixed the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, screwed up his eye against the smoke, and took out a notebook and a pencil. “One has to be careful, you know. It’s an elementary precaution.”

“I’m not sure what the Horst Wessel Song could tell you,” I said. “By the time Hitler came to power, the Reds probably knew the words as well as we did. Some of them were even forced to learn it in concentration camps.”

He sipped his coffee loudly, ignoring my objections. “Now, then,” he said. “A few details. Your name.”

“Eric Gruen,” I said.

“Your Nazi Party number, your SS number, your rank, your place and date of birth, please.”

“Here,” I said. “I’ve written it down for you already.” I handed him the page of notes I had made while studying Gruen’s file in the Russian Kommandatura.

“Thank you.” He glanced over the paper and nodded while he read it. “Do you have any means of identification with you?”

I handed over Eric Gruen’s passport. He studied that carefully and then slipped it and the sheet of paper into the back of his notebook.

“I’m afraid I shall have to hang on to this for now,” he said. “Now, then. You had better tell me what prompted you to come and ask for my help.”

“It was my own stupidity, really, Father,” I said, affecting rueful-ness. “My mother died, more than a week ago. The funeral was yesterday. At the Central Cemetery. I knew it was a risk coming back here to Vienna, but, well, you’ve only got one mother, haven’t you? Anyway, I thought I might be safe, if I stayed in the background. If I tried to keep a low profile. I wasn’t even sure the Allies were actually looking for me.”

“And you came under your real name?”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “After all, it’s been more than five years, and one reads things in the newspapers about the possibility of there being an amnesty for . . . for old comrades.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Well, it turns out they were looking for me. After the funeral I was recognized. By one of my mother’s servants. He told me that unless I gave him some ludicrously large sum of money, he would tell the authorities where to find me. I thought I’d stalled him. I went back to my hotel, intending to check out and go home immediately, only to find that the International Patrol was waiting there for me already. Since then I’ve been walking around Vienna. Staying in bars and cafés. For fear that I couldn’t go and stay in another hotel or pension. Last night I went to the Oriental and allowed myself to be picked up by a girl, and spent the night with her. Not that anything happened, mind. But I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

He shrugged, almost as if he agreed with me. “Where have you been living until now? I mean outside Vienna.”

“Garmisch-Partenkirchen,” I said. “It’s a quiet little place. No one pays me any attention there.”

“Can you go back there?”

“No,” I said. “Not now. The person who told me to get out of Vienna also knew where I’d been living. I doubt he’ll hesitate to inform the Allied authorities in Germany.”

“And this girl you stayed with last night,” he said. “Can she be trusted?”

“As long as I keep paying her, yes, I think so.”

“Does she know anything about you? Anything at all.”

“No. Nothing.”

“Keep it that way, please. And she doesn’t know that you’ve come here today?”

“No, of course not, Father,” I said. “No one does.”

“Can you stay with her for one more night?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact I’ve already arranged it.”

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m going to need at least twenty-four hours to make some arrangements to get you out of Vienna, to a safe house. Is that all your luggage?”

“It is now. The rest is in the hotel. I don’t dare go back for it.”

“No, of course not,” he said, picking the cigarette out of his mouth. “That would be foolish. Meet me back here tomorrow afternoon at around four o’clock. And be ready to leave. Wear warm clothes. Buy some if you don’t have them. Also, between now and tomorrow I want you to have your photograph taken.” He scribbled an address on his pad, tore off a sheet of paper, and handed to me. “There’s a shop on Elisabeth Strasse, opposite the Opera House. Ask for Herr Weyer. Siegfried Weyer. He’s a friend and can be trusted absolutely. Tell him I sent you. He’ll know what needs to be done. I’ve put his phone number down there in case something happens to delay you. B26425. Keep away from the stations, telegraph offices, and the post offices. Go to the cinema. Or the theater. Somewhere dark, with lots of people. Have you much money?”

“Enough to get by, for now,” I said.

“Good. A weapon?”

I hesitated, slightly surprised to be asked such a thing by a man of God. “No.”

“It would be a shame for you to get captured now,” said Father Lajolo. “Especially now that we’re putting all the wheels in motion for you to get out of Vienna.” He opened the closet for vestments and removed the padlock from a little footlocker. Inside were several pistols. He took one out—a nice-looking Mauser—eased out the magazine with his clubby, nicotine-stained fingers, and checked that it was loaded before handing it over. “Here,” he said. “Take this one. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to.”

“Thank you, Father,” I said.

He went to the back door of the sacristy, opened it, and stepped into a small alleyway that led down the side of the church, underneath some scaffolding. “When you come back tomorrow,” he said, “don’t go through the main church. Come down this alleyway, and then use this door. It won’t be locked. Just come inside, sit down, and wait.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Until tomorrow, then.”