Page 88 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Boeuf sur le Toit had moved to new premises in the rue de Penthièvre, but it was still the best place in Paris to listen to jazz.
It had always been an avant-garde gathering place, frequented by famous names like Picasso, Diaghilev, Milhaud, Cocteau, André Gide, Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Charlie Chaplin.
On a jolly evening, Artur Rubinstein might play the piano, with Milhaud on drums, or Maurice Chevalier might sing Gershwin; later on, Josephine Baker, tired from a performance, might come in, and sing something slow and sad.
Above all, it was about the music. Virtually founded by the group called Les Six, it attracted leading composers, like Stravinsky, Poulenc and Satie, but James and Emil went there for the jazz.
It was such a magnet for talent, jazz musicians from other Paris clubs would turn up after hours and play long into the night for the joy of it.
In Paris, to have a jam session was called faire un boeuf .
It was also a well-known meeting place for homosexuals, but James and Emil had no beef with that.
‘It’s just a pity they don’t come here for the jazz,’ James said one evening, when he and Emil, accompanied by Florence – the affair was still going well – and a fellow Folies dancer called Huguette, were at a favourite table.
The girls were tired and hungry after the show, but scrambled eggs and champagne perked them up.
‘Look at them , for instance,’ James went on.
At the next table, a very handsome young man, with large eyes, a tender mouth and a dimple in his chin, was entertaining an extremely swarthy youth, who seemed to be in a bad temper. Neither of them was paying any attention to the music – in fact, it looked as though a quarrel was brewing.
Emil shrugged. ‘As long as they pay for the drinks,’ he said. ‘You can’t legislate for taste.’
‘No, but he’s in here a lot, using up a seat that a music-lover might like,’ said James.
‘You know who he is?’ said Emil.
‘He works at the German embassy in some lowly capacity,’ James said. ‘German nobility by birth, apparently – it’s odd how they can become Nazis.’
‘Oh, I know who you mean,’ said Emil. ‘Vom Rath. He’s a rising star in the Sturmabteilung, and a bit of a pet of Ambassador Welczeck. I didn’t know he was that way inclined. He’d better not let his superiors find out. I believe the beloved Führer is rather down on that sort of thing.’
‘I’m surprised he’s got this far without being found out,’ James said, looking across at vom Rath’s current surly interest. ‘He seems to like the rough trade.’
Huguette interrupted, bored with the conversation: ‘Can’t we dance? I’m tired of talk about Germans. They’re so dull.’
‘I was only sitting still out of respect for your feet,’ James said. ‘I’ll dance with pleasure, if you’re rested enough.’
It was a good session, and the four of them didn’t leave until two, and then James had to see Huguette back to her lodgings, and walk back to his own. So he was fast asleep the next morning when Emil woke him up with intemperate banging on the door.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ James asked, strangling his waist with his dressing-gown cord as he opened the door. ‘Can’t you sleep?
‘Sleeping at night is a waste of time. And Florence was very lively,’ Emil said, walking past James and into the small kitchen.
‘I don’t wish to know that,’ said James, following.
‘Are you alone? Still not sleeping with Huguette?’
‘I have no wish to follow any more closely in your footsteps. Especially when it means being this energetic first thing in the morning.’
‘It’s nearly noon, old man. Coffee is the order of the day, I think. And then I’ll tell you the news, since you evidently haven’t heard it.’ He filled the kettle and put it on to boil.
James slumped at the table. ‘Tell me, and then leave me to die.’
Emil turned, leaned back against the kitchen cabinet, folded his arms, and said, with barely suppressed excitement, ‘Who do you think has been assassinated?’
‘Someone we know?’
‘We were sitting next to him last night. Pretty little Ernst vom Rath.’ James stared.
‘Yes, apparently a swarthy youth walked into the German embassy in the rue de Lille this morning, asking to speak to the ambassador, saying he had a most important document to hand over. Welczeck had just left, so the duty clerk asked vom Rath to see him. He was shown into vom Rath’s office, and the youth pulled out a pistol and shot him five times. ’
‘Oh, my God. You don’t think it was the same person we saw him with last night?’
‘Couldn’t say. Might be. But his taste seems to run that way so it might be an entirely different swarthy youth.
In any case, it seems he didn’t ask to see vom Rath by name, so it might not be personal at all.
He didn’t make any attempt to escape. From what I’ve heard he’s an illegal, a Polish Jew with no papers – on the run from the police, who want to deport him.
He said his motive was to avenge persecuted Jews. ’
‘If it was a lover’s tiff, he might still have said he was avenging the Jews, since he is one.’
‘Point.’
‘Is he dead – vom Rath?’
‘In hospital, but not expected to live. Shots to the abdomen – not a nice way to go. One almost feels sorry for him.’
‘Well, there’ll be more room at the Boeuf now for a real jazz lover,’ James said, yawning. ‘Is that coffee nearly ready?’
On Tuesday, the 8th of November, Basil was greeted when he arrived in the newsroom by Jimmy Cutler, who said, ‘That embassy chap who was shot in Germany yesterday?’
‘What about him? He wasn’t anyone important, was he? Third secretary, or something.’
’He’s important now. The German government’s using it as an excuse to pass more anti-Jewish laws.
Our man in Berlin says they’re banning Jewish children from state schools, banning all Jewish cultural activities, and forbidding them to arm themselves.
Twenty years in a concentration camp if they’re caught in possession of any weapon. ’
‘More sinister than that,’ said Digbeth, overhearing them, ‘they’ve stopped the publication of all Jewish magazines and newspapers. Cutting off ordinary Jews from their leaders, stopping them finding out what’s going on. Fragmentation, you see. Divide and rule.’
‘It’s going to be the leader article,’ said Cutler. ‘I’ve suggested, “The move is intended to disrupt the Jewish community and rob it of the last frail ties which hold it together.” What d’you think?’
‘Shouldn’t it be “that”, not “which”?’ Basil said.
‘You’re missing the point, sonny,’ said Rosco, from his desk. ‘This won’t be the end of it. A Jew shooting a handsome, firm-jawed, promising young diplomat going about his lawful business? Have you seen the pictures of him? He’s an Aryan sweetheart. And you know what tomorrow is?’
‘The ninth of November,’ Basil said patiently.
Rosco rolled his eyes. ‘God help us! Don’t they teach any history in schools these days?’
‘I left school a long time ago,’ Basil muttered.
‘It’s the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch,’ Rosco enlightened him, ‘and they hold a big Nazi rally in Munich for it every year, with Hitler making a grand speech to round off the evening. Want to put money on what his subject will be this year?’
Vom Rath, who had lingered in hospital for two days, died the next day, the 9th of November.
Reports came in on the wire that the news had been brought to Hitler on the platform, that he had spoken briefly to Goebbels and abruptly left the hall, and that Goebbels had then made the closing address on his behalf, a vitriolic speech urging ‘spontaneous demonstrations’ by Party members and the German faithful of their anger against the Jews.
The hatred that had been carefully fed and nurtured for five years came to monstrous flowering.
All through the night the news came in to the Messenger ; no-one went home; the wires never stopped humming.
Across Germany, across Austria, in the Sudetenland, in cities, towns and villages, the windows of Jewish shops and businesses were shattered and their contents looted; the homes of Jews had their windows broken and were ransacked, some set on fire.
It was begun by the SA and the Hitler Youth – the uniforms were noted – but in an escalation of horror, the public soon joined in.
Synagogues and prayer rooms were invaded; prayer books, scrolls, ceremonial items, artworks and sacred texts were carried out to be burned on bonfires, and the buildings were set on fire.
Jewish cemeteries seemed a particular focus of hatred: tombstones were uprooted and smashed, graves violated, the remains dug up and scattered.
Warehouses were burned down. Jews unfortunate enough to be caught out on the street were beaten by the mobs, and many died; some were dragged out of their houses and killed.
And by a neat reversal of logic, the German authorities blamed the Jews for the riots, and during the night a huge number of Jewish men – it was estimated in the tens of thousands – were arrested and taken to concentration camps.
One English correspondent in Berlin wrote, ‘Racial hatred and hysteria seemed to have taken complete hold of otherwise decent people. I saw fashionably dressed women clapping their hands and screaming with glee, while respectable middle-class mothers held up their babies to see the “fun”.’
In the newsroom at the Messenger they received and collated the reports in unprecedented silence.
Outrage had gone beyond expression: there was nothing it was possible to say.
Newspapermen were accustomed to reporting on the worst aspects of human life, and grew thick-skinned.
But this seemed a different order of horror.
Phones rang, wires came in, typewriters rattled, sheets were passed up to be subbed, passed back to be rewritten, approved, sent to the comps for setting, and the individuals avoided each other’s gaze and did not speak.