The Vanishing Kind Read online

  The Vanishing Kind

  Copyright © 2016 by Lavie Tidhar

  All rights reserved.

  Published as an ebook in 2018 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., in association with the Zeno Agency LTD.

  Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July-August 2016.

  Cover design © copyright 2019 Sarah Anne Langton.

  ISBN 978-1-625674-13-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  Other Books by Lavie Tidhar

  1

  DURING THE REBUILDING OF LONDON in the 1950s they had erected a large Ferris wheel on the south bank of the Thames. When it was opened, it cost 2 Reichsmarks for a ride, but it was seldom busy. London after the war wasn’t a place you went to on holiday.

  Gunther Sloam came to London in the autumn, which is when I first became acquainted with him. He was neither too tall nor too short, but an unassuming man in a good suit and a worn fedora. He could have been a shopkeeper or a traveling salesman, though he was neither. Before the war he had been a screenwriter in Berlin.

  He came following a woman, which is how this kind of story usually starts. She had written to him two weeks earlier, c/o the Tobis Film Syndikat in Berlin, and a friend who was still working there eventually passed him her note. It read:

  My dear Gunther,

  I am in London and I think I am in trouble. I fear my life is in danger. Please, if you continue to remember me fondly, come at once. I am residing at 47 Dean Street, Soho. If I am not there, ask for the dwarf.

  Yours, ever,

  Ulla.

  The note had been smudged with a red lipstick kiss.

  It was a week from the time the letter was sent, to Gunther receiving it. It was another week before he finally departed Berlin, on board a Luftwaffe transport plane carrying with it the famed soprano, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and her entourage. She was to perform in London’s newly rebuilt Opera House. Gunther spent the short flight making notes in his pocket book, for a screenplay he was vaguely thinking to write. He was not unduly concerned about Ulla. His view of women in general, and of actresses in particular, was that they were prone to exaggeration. No doubt Ulla’s trouble would prove such as they’d always been—usually, he thought with a sigh, something to do with money. In that he was both right and wrong.

  He was flattered, and glad, that she wanted to see him again. They had carried on a passionate love affair for several months, in Berlin in ’43, before Gunther was sent to the Eastern Front, and Ulla went on to star in several well-received patriotic films, the pinnacle of which was Die große Liebe, for a time the highest-grossing film in all of Germany. Gunther had watched it in the hospital camp, while recovering from the wound which, even now, made him walk with a slight, almost unnoticeable limp. He only really felt it on very cold days, and the pangs in his leg brought with them memories of the hell that was the Eastern Front. He had never known such cold.

  “Don’t you see?” he said to me, much later. He was pacing my office, his hair unkempt for once, his eyes ringed black by lack of sleep. He’d lost much of his cool amused air by then. “Because we did it, we beat the Russians, and Ulla went on to star in Stalingrad, that Stemmle picture, but it was the last big film she did. I don’t know what happened after that. We lost touch, though there’d always been rumors, you see.”

  He’d told me quite a lot by then but I was happy to let him talk. I knew some of the story by then and, of course, I’d known Miss Ulla Blau. We had been taking an interest in her activities for some time.

  The plane landed at Northolt. There was no one there to welcome him and the soprano and her entourage were whisked away by my superior, Group Leader Pohl. I saw Gunther emerge into the terminal with that somewhat bewildered look that afflicts the visitor. He saw me and came over. “Where can a man get a taxi around here?” he said, in German.

  “I’m afraid I don’t . . .” I said, in English.

  His eyes, surprisingly, lit up. “You are British?” he said.

  “Yes. You speak English?”

  “But of course.” His accent was atrocious. “I learn to speak English in the cinema,” he explained. “Do you know the works of Alfred Hitchcock?”

  “His films are prohibited nowadays,” I said, kindly. He frowned. I was not in uniform and he did not know what I was until later.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “His death was most regrettable. He was a great maker of movies. I’m sorry,” he said, “I have not introduced myself. Gunther Sloam.” He extended his hand and I shook it.

  “Name’s Everly,” I said. “I was in fact on my way back into town now. Can I give you a ride?” My jeep was outside.

  “That would be most kind,” he said. “I am here to see an old friend, you see. A woman. Yes, I have not seen her since the war.” he laughed, a little sadly I thought. “I am older, perhaps she is older too, no? But not in my memory, never.”

  “You’re a romantic,” I said.

  “I suppose,” he said, dubiously. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “There is not much call for romantics in London,” I said. “We English have become pragmatists, since the war ended.”

  He said nothing to that; perhaps he never even heard me. He sat beside me in the jeep as we went past the ruined buildings left over from the bombings, but I don’t think he saw them, either.

  “Where do you need to go?” I said.

  “Soho.”

  “Are you sure? That is not a very good area.”

  “I think I can manage, Mr. Everly,” he said. He lit a cigarette and passed one to me.

  “Danke,” I said. Then again in German, “And who is this mystery lady you’re visiting, if you don’t mind my prying?”

  He laughed, delighted. “Your German is flawless!” he said.

  “I studied in Berlin before the war.”

  “But that is wonderful,” he said.

  Then he spent fifteen minutes telling me all about Fräulein Ulla Blau; her film career; their passionate affair (“But we were both so young!”); his new screenplay (“A Western, in the Karl May tradition. You know how fond the Führer is of these things”); Berlin (“Have you been back? It’s a beautiful city now, beautiful. Say what you want about Speer but the man is a gifted architect”); and so on and so on.

  At one point I finally managed to interject. “And you know what your friend is doing these days?” I asked him.

  He frowned. Such a thought had not entered his head. “I assumed she was acting again,” he said. “But I hadn’t really thought . . . Well, it is no matter. I shall find out soon enough.”

  We were driving along the Charing Cross Road by then. The few approved bookshops stood open, their wan light spilling onto the dark pavement outside. I remembered the book purges and burnings after the invasion—after all, I led one such group myself. I did not like doing it, yet it was a necessity of the time. Gunther did not seem to pay much attention. His eyes slid over the grimy frontage of the shops. “Where are your famed picture palaces?” he said. “I have long desired to ensconce myself in the luxuries of the Regal or the Ritz.” His eyes shone with a childish enthusiasm.

  “I’m afraid most were destroyed in the Blitz,” I said apologetically.

  He nodded. We were in Soho then, a squalid block of half-ruined buildings where the lowlifes of London made their abode. It was a hard place to police and patrol, filled with European émigrés of dubious loyalties. But it was useful, as such places inevitably are.

  Along Shaftesbury Avenue, the few theatres were doing meager trade. The big show that year was Servant of Two Masters, an Italian comedy adapted to the English stage. It was showing at the Apollo. Dean Street itself was a dark thoroughfare that never quite slept. Business was conducted in the shadows, and red lights burned invitingly behind the second-floor windows. I saw doubt enter Gunther’s eyes and I almost felt sorry for him. I had my own interest in his well-being or otherwise. My men were already stationed unobtrusively in the street.

  “This is the place,” I said, stopping the jeep. He stepped out and extended his hand.

  “Thank you, Everly,” he said. “You are a gentleman.”

  I could see he liked that word. The Germans are a peculiar people. Having won the war, they were almost apologetic about it. I said, “If your visit does not go well, there is a transport leaving for Berlin tomorrow night. I can ensure you have a seat on it.”

  His eyes changed; as though he were seeing me for the first time.

  “You never said what you do,” he said.

  “No,” I agreed. “Goodbye, Mr. Sloam.”

  I left him there. I did not expect him to be so much trouble as he turned out to be.

  2

  GUNTHER STOOD OUTSIDE 47 DEAN STREET for some time. Perhaps, already, he began to have second thoughts. On receipt of her letter, he had expected little more than a fond reunion with Ulla. Perhaps he saw himself as a sor
t of Teutonic white knight, riding to the rescue of a helpless maiden. He never really knew Ulla, or what she was capable of, though he didn’t realize that until it was too late.

  The address she had given him had been a theatre before the war. Now it was a sort of boarding house, with a hand-written sign on the door saying No Vacancies! in a barely-legible scrawl. The windows were dark. The front of house, once-grand, now looked dowdy and unkempt. Gunther looked about him and saw two shifty characters in the shadows across the road. They were smoking cigarettes and watching him. He gathered his courage and knocked loudly on the door.

  There was no reply. The whole house felt silent and empty. He knocked again, louder, until at last a window overhead opened and an old woman stuck her head out and began cursing him in a mixture of English and gutter German. Almost, he wanted to take out his pen and note down some of the more inventive swearing.

  “I’m looking for Ulla Blau!” he called up, when the old woman finally stopped, momentarily, for air.

  The old woman spat. The spit fell down heavily and landed at Gunther’s feet.

  “The whore’s not here,” the old woman said and slammed the window shut.

  Now angry, Gunther began to hammer on the door again. The two observers watched him from across the street. They, too, had an interest in Fräulein Blau’s whereabouts.

  At last the window opened again and the same old woman stuck her head out. “What?” she demanded crossly.

  “I need to see her!”

  “I told you, she’s not here!”

  “Well, where is she?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know!” the old woman said and slammed the window.

  Gunther stood in the street. He was tired now, and hungry, and he wanted a drink. He had hoped for a fond embrace, a night spent in a comfortable bed with a bottle of good Rhine wine (which he had brought) and a willing companion to murmur sweet nothings into his ear. Instead he got this, and besides the street smelled, from uncollected garbage gathered every few paces on the broken pavement.

  “Open the damn door or I’ll break it down!” he said.

  Then he waited. Presently, there was a shuffling noise and then the door opened a crack and the old woman stuck her head out. “What are you, Gestapo?” she said.

  “If I were the Gestapo,” Gunther said, reasonably, “you’d already be answering my questions.”

  The old woman cackled. She seemed to have no fear of this strange German on her doorstep. “Do you have a drink?” she said.

  Gunther brought out the bottle of wine and the old woman’s eyes widened appreciatively.

  “Come in, come in!” she said. “The night is cold and full of eyes.”

  Gunther followed her into the building.

  The old woman’s apartment was surprisingly comfortable. A fire was burning in the fireplace and Gunther sat down wearily on a red velvet sofa which sagged underneath him. The walls were covered with old photographs and playbills. The old woman herself reminded him somewhat of an old, faded revue actress. She bustled about, fetching glasses. They were good crystal, and when she saw his enquiring look she cackled again and said, “From Marks’s, the filthy Jews. Now that was a fire sale!”

  Gunther accepted the glass, his loathing for the old woman growing. He let her open the bottle, which she did deftly, then poured two glasses. The old woman drank hers rapidly and greedily, then refilled the glass. Her eyes acquired a brittle warmth.

  “You have come from Germany?” she said.

  “Berlin.”

  “Berlin! I have often wished to visit Berlin.” She spoke a bad but serviceable German.

  “It is a great city.”

  “Not like this place,” the old woman said. “London is a shithole.”

  Gunther silently agreed. He took a sip of his wine, mourning the loss of its planned usage. The taste brought back memories of warmer, happier times.

  “I am looking for—” he began, and the old woman said, “Yes, yes. Ulla Blau. I told you, she is not here.”

  At this time he was not yet unduly concerned.

  “This is the address she’s given me.”

  “She was here,” the old woman said. “She hires a room from me, at 30 Reichsmarks a month. I do not ask questions, Mr Sloam.”

  “Has she gone away, then?” Gunther said.

  “She is always coming and going, that one,” the old woman said.

  “Is she still acting? In the theatre, perhaps?”

  The old woman snorted a laugh, then wiped it away when she saw Gunther’s face. “Perhaps,” she said. “Yes, perhaps. What do I know?” She took a long shuddering sip of wine. “I am just an old woman,” she said.

  Doubts, at this point, were finally beginning to enter Gunther’s mind. “Well, what does she do, for money?”

  “I am sure I don’t know,” the old woman said huffily. Her glass was empty again and she refilled it with unsteady hands. “You should have seen this place before the war,” she said suddenly. “The theaters all alight and the public flowing on the pavements all excited and gay. The men handsome in their suits and the women pretty in their dresses. I saw Charlie Chaplin play the Hippodrome once.” Her eyes misted over. “I don’t blame you Germans,” she said. “I blame the Jews, but there are no more Jews to blame. Who can we blame now, Mr. Sloam?”

  “Can I see her room?” Gunther said.

  The old woman sighed. She was coming to the realisation that Gunther Sloam could be very single-minded.

  “I’m sure I can’t let you do that,” she said; but he saw the speculative glint in her eye.

  “I could perhaps rent it, for a while,” he offered. “I am a stranger in this town and the hour is getting late.”

  His hand, which he had dipped in his pocket, returned with a handful of notes. The woman’s eyes tracked the movement of the money.

  “When you put it like that . . .” she said.

  Ulla Blau’s room was an almost perfect square. It had once been a dressing room of some sort, or perhaps, Gunther thought a little uncharitably, a supply closet. The old woman, whose name, he had learned, was Mrs. White, stood in the doorway watching him with her bright button eyes. She swayed, from time to time, and hummed a tune under her breath. It sounded a little like the Horst Wessel song.

  There was nothing of the personal in Ulla Blau’s room. There was a bed, perfectly made up; a wardrobe and a vanity mirror; a small gas ring and a kettle; and that was about it. Gunther’s imaginings of their reunion plunged further into doubt, for this was not the romantic abode he had perhaps envisioned. There were no clues as to Ulla’s employment or whereabouts. Beyond the wall, the noise of hurried sexual congress could be clearly heard. He glanced at Mrs. White, who shrugged. Gunther began to have an idea of what the majority of the rooms were used for.

  Mrs. White moved aside to let him out. The corridor was long and dark and the communal bathroom was at one end of it. Gunther was, at this point, beginning to feel concern.

  “And you do not know where she is?” he demanded of Mrs. White.

  The old woman shrugged. She didn’t know, or didn’t care, or didn’t care to know. Gunther dug out Ulla’s note. If I am not there, she had written, ask for the dwarf.

  I shall interject, at this point, to say that this dwarf was a person of considerable interest to us. We were anxious to interview him with regards to some matters which had arisen. This dwarf went by the name of Jurgen, and was of a Swiss nationality. He had come to London six months previous and was, moreover, the scion of a wealthy Zurich banking family with connections high up within the party.

  “Where can I find,” Gunther said, and then felt silly, “the dwarf?”

  He said it quite light-heartedly. But Mrs. White’s reaction was the opposite. Her face turned a crimson shade and her eyes rolled in her head like those of a grand dame in a Christmas pantomime.

  “Him? You ask me about him?”

  Gunther was not aware of the reputation the dwarf had in certain circles. Mrs. White’s reaction took him quite by surprise.

  “Where can I find him?” he said mildly.

  “Do not ask me that!”

  Good wine, missed plans, and bad company do not mix well. Gunther at last lost his patience.

  “Listen to me, you silly old bat!” he said. He had done terrible things to survive on the Eastern Front. Now that man was before Mrs. White, and she cowered. Gunther jabbed an angry finger at the old woman’s face. “Tell me where this damned dwarf is or by God I’ll . . .”