floor. All hail to caution, yes, but with Lena he shared a secret life—would she perhaps be amenable to a secret tryst? Did he dare to ask? She was colorless and plain, somewhere in the middle of her life, quite heavy, and thoroughly bound in corsets, her iron bulk, in his imagination, tumbling free, prodigiously sweet and plentiful, as they were—only God knew how—dismantled.
No, he did not dare. Life had taught him one lesson: trust nobody. If only he had learned that in time, he would not be in this city, in this woeful room with curtains where green knights rode across a yellow field. In the Austrian city of Lenz, his father had worked as a clerk in a bank, and the young S. Kolb, on finishing secondary school, had been installed as a junior clerk in that same bank. Where he was, a year later, found to be embezzling money, moving a small portion of the funds into an account in his own name. He was confronted, humiliated, discharged, and threatened with prosecution. His family, with terrible effort, had managed to make good on the missing money, and the police were never notified.
He had, however, not stolen the money. Someone else—he suspected a senior officer of the bank—had done it, and left a trail that led to him. This he told his parents, and they wanted to believe him, but, in their hearts, they couldn’t. Thus he learned the brutal lesson: life was governed by deceit, and by power. Not the Golden Rule, the Iron Rule. Kolb had to leave his hometown but managed, by persistence, to find a job as a clerk in one of the government ministries in Vienna. The armaments ministry, it so happened. And soon enough, in a caf on the elegant Krntner Strasse, he met a genial young woman who, in time, introduced him to a rather less genial foreign gentleman, who taught him a clever method by which he could supplement his meager salary.
That was many foreign gentlemen ago, he thought, nostalgic for his youth, those long-gone days of Mr. Hall and Mr. Harris and Mr. Hicks—tubby old Brown was a recent incumbent, having materialized, the way they did, only last January. Pleasant and mean, all of them really, explaining nothing but what was required.
In the long hallway that led past his room, Kolb heard footsteps, a heavy tread, but they passed by his door and receded down the corridor. Kolb looked at his watch and saw that it was after midnight. Not that it mattered—women came to men’s rooms in these places, at any time of the day or night.
Frulein Lena, meine Schatze, meine kleine Edelweiss, where are you?
Perhaps he’d been abandoned, simply left to fend for himself. For a time, he dozed, then woke, startled, to three discreet taps at the door.
9 May. Off Kenitra, French Morocco.
The dog watch, four to eight in the evening, was traditionally split in two, so everybody could eat dinner. DeHaan stood the first half, on the ninth, and, in fine rain and mist, squinted through droplets on the windows as
Noordendam
butted north, beam on to a short, steep sea, with the northern trade blowing spray over the bow. Out on the wings, the lookouts’ oilskins ran streams of water. Major Sims came up to the bridge and said, “Filthy weather, out there.”
DeHaan looked for a tactful answer—Sims had obviously not been at sea in filthy weather, because this was far from it. “Well, tomorrow we’ll be going east,” he said. “In the Mediterranean.”
Sims was clearly pleased with the answer, and nodded emphatically. “One tries, of course, to keep one’s people occupied,” he said. “But, you know how it is, the way they feel now, the sooner the better.”
They stood in silence for a time, then DeHaan said, “There’s one thing about this, mission, Major, that I really don’t understand.”
“Only one?”
“Isn’t a commando operation usually done with a submarine?”
“Ideally, it is. And it started out that way, I believe, but we only have so many, and they’re mostly up north. In
No, he did not dare. Life had taught him one lesson: trust nobody. If only he had learned that in time, he would not be in this city, in this woeful room with curtains where green knights rode across a yellow field. In the Austrian city of Lenz, his father had worked as a clerk in a bank, and the young S. Kolb, on finishing secondary school, had been installed as a junior clerk in that same bank. Where he was, a year later, found to be embezzling money, moving a small portion of the funds into an account in his own name. He was confronted, humiliated, discharged, and threatened with prosecution. His family, with terrible effort, had managed to make good on the missing money, and the police were never notified.
He had, however, not stolen the money. Someone else—he suspected a senior officer of the bank—had done it, and left a trail that led to him. This he told his parents, and they wanted to believe him, but, in their hearts, they couldn’t. Thus he learned the brutal lesson: life was governed by deceit, and by power. Not the Golden Rule, the Iron Rule. Kolb had to leave his hometown but managed, by persistence, to find a job as a clerk in one of the government ministries in Vienna. The armaments ministry, it so happened. And soon enough, in a caf on the elegant Krntner Strasse, he met a genial young woman who, in time, introduced him to a rather less genial foreign gentleman, who taught him a clever method by which he could supplement his meager salary.
That was many foreign gentlemen ago, he thought, nostalgic for his youth, those long-gone days of Mr. Hall and Mr. Harris and Mr. Hicks—tubby old Brown was a recent incumbent, having materialized, the way they did, only last January. Pleasant and mean, all of them really, explaining nothing but what was required.
In the long hallway that led past his room, Kolb heard footsteps, a heavy tread, but they passed by his door and receded down the corridor. Kolb looked at his watch and saw that it was after midnight. Not that it mattered—women came to men’s rooms in these places, at any time of the day or night.
Frulein Lena, meine Schatze, meine kleine Edelweiss, where are you?
Perhaps he’d been abandoned, simply left to fend for himself. For a time, he dozed, then woke, startled, to three discreet taps at the door.
9 May. Off Kenitra, French Morocco.
The dog watch, four to eight in the evening, was traditionally split in two, so everybody could eat dinner. DeHaan stood the first half, on the ninth, and, in fine rain and mist, squinted through droplets on the windows as
Noordendam
butted north, beam on to a short, steep sea, with the northern trade blowing spray over the bow. Out on the wings, the lookouts’ oilskins ran streams of water. Major Sims came up to the bridge and said, “Filthy weather, out there.”
DeHaan looked for a tactful answer—Sims had obviously not been at sea in filthy weather, because this was far from it. “Well, tomorrow we’ll be going east,” he said. “In the Mediterranean.”
Sims was clearly pleased with the answer, and nodded emphatically. “One tries, of course, to keep one’s people occupied,” he said. “But, you know how it is, the way they feel now, the sooner the better.”
They stood in silence for a time, then DeHaan said, “There’s one thing about this, mission, Major, that I really don’t understand.”
“Only one?”
“Isn’t a commando operation usually done with a submarine?”
“Ideally, it is. And it started out that way, I believe, but we only have so many, and they’re mostly up north. In
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