The Road to Italy

0:00 A Caller Who Stops at the Mat

0:04 Narrator: Vienna, the autumn of nineteen forty-five. Brenner and I had a caller at lamp-lighting, up the mezzanine stair off the Herrengasse, and she would come no further than the mat. Come in, Fräulein. Herr Brenner's by the stove — take the good chair.

0:20 Hedi: I'll stand. You're Brenner? They say you're not police.

0:25 Brenner: I'm not. Neither is Fuchs here. What brings you up my stairs?

0:30 Hedi: My name is Hedi. It's my brother. Anton.

0:34 Narrator: Then sit, Hedi, and tell it from the start. Hedi: Three weeks ago Anton went— he went away. He was afraid of the Russians. Of what they'd do to a man like him.

0:44 Brenner: A man like him? Hedi: He traded. Coffee, cigarettes, stockings. That's why I won't go to the police.

0:52 Brenner: Because if he comes home to a police file— Hedi: —he comes home to a cell. So I look myself. Every night, the Resselpark, bench by bench.

1:02 Narrator: The Resselpark after dark? They'd sell you your own shoes there, and charge extra for the laces. Hedi: They know me now. They hate the sight of me. Nobody tells me anything.

1:14 Brenner: Yet tonight you came here instead, so something has changed. You've kept your left fist shut since the door opened. There's paper in that glove.

1:24 Hedi: It isn't for a stranger's table. Narrator: Whatever it is, Hedi, you've carried it a long way. Hedi: Not here. Come to the Porzellangasse.

1:34 Up a Stairwell That Had Lost Its Windows

1:38 Narrator: We climbed behind Hedi through a stairwell in the Porzellangasse that had lost its windows, past a brass plate where a doctor was locking up. Lindauer: Hedi! Home before midnight, for once — and with company.

1:53 Hedi: Good evening, Doctor Lindauer. These are friends of Anton's. Lindauer: Friends of Anton's are welcome on my stair. Hedi, you're thinner than you were on Tuesday.

2:03 Hedi: I'm well enough. Lindauer: You're grey as the plaster. And I've not heard your sewing machine through my ceiling in three weeks.

2:11 Hedi: I've taken no work since Anton went. I can't sit still long enough to tack a hem. Lindauer: Then eat something, for my sake if not yours. Still no word from—

2:21 Hedi: None. Lindauer: The post is a disgrace these days. It'll come. Good night, gentlemen.

2:27 Narrator: Good night. Brenner: You told him there's been no word. Yet you carried paper across the city in your glove.

2:35 Hedi: He's kind. But a doctor's waiting room hears everything and repeats it. Narrator: A doctor who notices a pound gone since Tuesday? I'd trade mine for him. Mine wouldn't notice if I came in short a leg.

2:49 Brenner: You've had news, Hedi, and you won't tell a kind neighbour. Why not? Hedi: Not this news. Come in. Mind the step.

2:58 Narrator: Good Lord. A bride with no head. Hedi: A wedding dress for a girl in the Liechtensteinstraße. Half finished. I haven't put a needle in it since he left.

3:10 Headless Dummies in Pinned Muslin

3:14 Narrator: Her workroom was crowded with headless dummies in pinned muslin, and among them, beside her brother's crates, Hedi unfolded the paper at last. Hedi: Four days ago this was under my door when I got up. No envelope. No stamp.

3:31 Brenner: Then nobody posted it. Someone stood on your mat in the night and didn't knock. Hedi: I told myself it was a friend of his. Back from the border. Too shy to— I don't know. Too shy to wake me.

3:44 Narrator: Read it to us, would you? Hedi: "Dear Hedi. I am safe in Italy. Don't worry for me, and don't go to the police." Then more of the same. It's signed "Anton".

3:57 Narrator: Safe in Italy. Hedi, that's the news you've been praying for. Hedi: Look at his crates first. He marked every one himself.

4:06 Narrator: "Coffee." "Candles." "Not for sale." Great square capitals, like a railway sign.

4:14 Hedi: He always printed. A nun cracked his knuckles over joined writing at school, and he never joined a letter again. Not on a crate, not on a birthday card.

4:24 Narrator: Ah. Brenner: And the note? Hedi: It slopes. It runs. It's pretty. That isn't Anton's hand, Herr Brenner, so who — who's telling me he's safe?

4:36 Narrator: Hedi. Here, sit. Hedi: Three weeks I've said it to myself. Italy, Italy... and somebody else knew to say it too. Why can't he write it himself? Why can't he—

4:48 Brenner: Somebody who knows you've been asking for him every night. Somebody who wanted you to stop. Hedi: Stop. Please...

4:57 Narrator: It's written on the back of something official, Brenner. A printed form. "Form forty-one-oh-six," and a little serial number in red.

5:07 Brenner: Paper's scarce. Half the letters in Vienna go on the back of some form. Hedi: Keep it. I can't have it in the house. Find who wrote it.

5:17 Anton's Room, Smelling of Coffee Beans

5:21 Narrator: Anton's room lay at the back, narrow and smelling of coffee beans, and Hedi held the lamp while we looked. Brenner: When did Anton go? Not "three weeks". The day.

5:34 Hedi: He went before dawn on the thirteenth of September. I'd swear to it before a priest. Brenner: You're very sure.

5:41 Hedi: It was my birthday. I heard the door and came out in my nightgown. He kissed me on the stair and said, "Don't wait up."

5:49 Narrator: "Don't wait up." As if he were off to the Heuriger. Brenner: The blanket's thrown back on one side only. He slept, rose in the dark and went. The packing was done long before.

6:02 Hedi: A week before. Two suitcases under the bed. I pretended not to see them.

6:08 Brenner: Mm. Narrator: His razor's still on the washstand. His books.

6:14 Hedi: Everything's how he left it. Only the cases went, and what he stood up in. Narrator: Then he'll have sold the coat off his back by now. Fur buys a lot of bread on the road.

6:25 Hedi: His grey coat, the fur collar. He'd not go without it.

6:30 Whispers Among the Resselpark Benches

6:34 Narrator: Coffee and cigarettes changed hands in whispers among the Resselpark benches, and Hedi took us to one whose owner had no wish to see her. Yvette: Oh, no. Not you again. Hedi: Yvette, please. Two minutes.

6:51 Yvette: Two minutes of you and my customers walk to the Naschmarkt. Who are the gentlemen — coppers? Brenner: Brenner. Not police. You traded with Anton.

7:01 Yvette: Everybody traded with Anton. Best coffee south of the Ring. Narrator: Is it, now.

7:07 Brenner: And trade's gone poor since Hedi started asking after him. Yvette: Poor? It's dead. The run worst of all. Nobody'll touch it now.

7:17 Narrator: The run? Yvette: The Grauwand run, darling. Over the pass to Italy. Seven hundred dollars a head, no papers, no questions. Anton bought it.

7:27 Narrator: That's— you could buy a house for that! Yvette: And never see a Russian again. That's what they're paying for.

7:35 Brenner: Who sells it? Yvette: A man nobody's seen. You ask on the benches, somebody tells somebody, a time comes back. That's all.

7:43 Brenner: Hedi's questions didn't kill it. Nobody who bought it ever sent word back, did they? Yvette: Who sends postcards from a run like that? Still... not one cousin has had so much as a card. Not one.

7:58 Hedi: Where did Anton meet him? Yvette, where did he— Brenner: Tell us, and Hedi stops coming to your bench.

8:04 Hedi: I promise. Yvette: Rossauer Lände. The bombed house. You— you pass the caretaker's gate.

8:11 A Locked Iron Gate Beside a Lodge

8:15 Narrator: Above the Danube canal, the three of us stood at a locked iron gate, a lodge beside it and a gutted house behind. There's a plate on the lodge. "Pospischil. Caretaker."

8:29 Brenner: Frau Pospischil? A word — through the gate, if you prefer. Pospischil: Through the gate is how I prefer it. What do you want at this hour?

8:39 Brenner: The house behind you. We'd like to look inside. Pospischil: Then go to the building office. They've nailed it up. There's the notice, if you can read in the dark.

8:49 Narrator: "Entry forbidden. Danger of collapse." Stamped and signed.

8:55 Hedi: But— Pospischil: There. I'm not opening up for three strangers to break their necks.

9:00 Hedi: I'm looking for my brother. This is him. Anton. He'd have come this way, with two suitcases.

9:07 Narrator: Hold the photograph to her lamp, Hedi. Pospischil: No. No, I've never laid eyes on him, nor any suitcases. Nobody comes past this gate but rats and the coal man.

9:18 Hedi: Look again, please. A grey coat with a fur collar— Pospischil: I looked. Jesus Maria, I'm hungry, Fräulein, not blind. Good night.

9:29 Narrator: Well! We could fetch a constable to open that— Hedi: No police. I came to you so there'd be no police.

9:35 Narrator: Then the house stays nailed shut. The poor woman's half starved, Brenner. She'd slam the window on anybody.

9:43 Brenner: She answered before she'd looked, Fuchs. Hunger doesn't make you that quick. Not if the face means nothing to you.

9:51 Hedi: Then what do we do? Brenner: One gate, one caretaker, and a window that sees everyone who comes. So why swear Anton never passed it?

10:02 Cold Cigarette Ends at the Commissariat

10:06 Narrator: Inspector Delago heard us out next morning at the Alsergrund commissariat, behind a desk drifted with files and cold cigarette ends. Delago: So the sister won't come to the police. She sends a private gentleman instead.

10:21 Brenner: She sent nobody, Inspector Delago. A nailed-up house wants a policeman, and Hedi won't have one. Delago: Because her brother sold coffee in the Resselpark. I don't care about coffee. I care about that caretaker.

10:35 Narrator: Frau Pospischil? We only ever saw her through a shutter. Delago: A starving woman with one gate, and a man walks up to it carrying his whole fortune. She took it, and swore blind to cover it.

10:47 Brenner: You want her badly, Inspector. Rather more than— Delago: I want her before the Americans take this off me. They'll grab every case with money in it and leave me the ration complaints. Show me the note.

10:59 Narrator: The tail of it, then. "When you're ready, ask on the Resselpark benches for the Grauwand man. Come after me the same way. Your Anton."

11:10 Delago: The Grauwand man. There's the road, and it runs past her gate. Narrator: Does it.

11:17 Brenner: Past it. But the house behind is nailed shut. If Anton went inside, someone drew those nails and drove them back.

11:26 Delago: Then I'll want the house too. But the building office won't pass my men without an engineer. Narrator: So you'll start with the woman who can't stop you.

11:36 Delago: Tomorrow I turn out her lodge. Bring the sister.

11:40 A Room No Wider Than a Tram

11:44 Narrator: Delago brought a constable and a crowbar to the caretaker's gate, Hedi beside us, and the lodge opened at last on a room no wider than a tram. Pospischil: That's my mother's cup, Inspector. Nothing in it but the crack.

11:59 Delago: Then you won't mind me looking, Frau Pospischil. Fräulein, stand by the stove. Pospischil: Mind the cup, then.

12:06 Narrator: One bed, one chair, half a turnip. She told us the truth about the hunger. Delago: Under the stockings. Something's—

12:15 Hedi: Let me see it. Inspector, let me see it! Delago: A silver watch. It rings when you press the stem.

12:22 Hedi: Father's watch, here in your lodge. Anton carried it out of the door. Father wound it every Sunday after Mass.

12:31 Narrator: Hedi. Sit down. Hedi: He'd never have parted with it. He'd sell the coat first, he'd... he'd...

12:38 Pospischil: Fräulein, I— Hedi: What did you do to him? What did you do to my brother?

12:44 Brenner: It's still ticking, so somebody here winds it nightly. Yet at your shutter you swore you'd never laid eyes on him. That was a lie, Frau Pospischil.

12:54 Delago: Lie enough for me. Frau Pospischil, I'm arresting you for the murder of this woman's brother. Pospischil: Murder. Jesus Maria. If I told you, Inspector—

13:05 Delago: Tell me, then. Pospischil: And you'd believe— you'd believe a caretaker holding a dead man's watch? Then I'll tell you nothing.

13:14 A Pipe Gone Cold Past Midnight

13:18 Narrator: Brenner let his pipe go cold past midnight in our rooms off the Herrengasse, while I sat across the stove with my notebook. Delago will sleep like a baby tonight. I'm not sure I will.

13:32 Brenner: Then say the two things side by side, Fuchs. Plainly. Narrator: Her father's watch in the caretaker's drawer. And under Hedi's door, a note in writing Anton never used.

13:44 Brenner: One was hidden. The other was delivered. Two different instincts.

13:50 Narrator: And that watch is a silver repeater. The Dorotheum would lend three months' bread on it. She's living on turnips.

13:58 Brenner: Yet she wound it. A thief sells first. She's been keeping it.

14:03 Narrator: But the note wants Hedi quiet— away from the police. Well, a thief would want that too. Surely.

14:11 Brenner: A thief takes a watch. Why would he write letters?

14:15 A Knock Upstairs, and No Answer

14:19 Narrator: Brenner and I knocked upstairs in the Porzellangasse next day and got no answer; on the landing below, the doctor's surgery stood open, smelling of ether. Lindauer: You've missed her, gentlemen. Hedi went out at nine.

14:34 Brenner: Good morning, Doctor Lindauer. Out where? Lindauer: The Resselpark, I'm afraid. As every day.

14:41 Brenner: Then the arrest hasn't settled her. A woman who believed it'd stay home and sleep. Lindauer: She told me about it at breakfast. I sat her down in my surgery and made her eat an egg. She cried into the yolk.

14:54 Narrator: An egg! There's a house call worth having. Doctor, you'd know official paper. Brenner, show him the back.

15:02 Brenner: Only the printed side, Doctor. The other side is Hedi's business. Lindauer: Forty-one-oh-six. Why, that's one of mine. The Health Office prints them, I sign for them. Typhus inoculation.

15:15 Narrator: There's a red number in the corner. Three thousand, eight hundred and twelve. Lindauer: Every sheet numbered. They count them like sugar.

15:24 Brenner: Then how did one of yours end up in Hedi's hands? Lindauer: Anton. He knocked on my door early the morning he left, wanting his typhus shot for the road. He begged a blank as well.

15:35 Narrator: A blank? What for? Lindauer: To write on, I suppose. Paper's— well, paper's like gold.

15:42 Brenner: Thank you, Doctor. That answers one question. Lindauer: Glad to be of use. Tell Hedi she eats supper with me tonight. Good day.

15:50 Carbolic Down the Embankment

15:55 Narrator: Delago had the caretaker brought to the bars of the police cells, down the embankment from her own gate, and they reeked of carbolic; Hedi stood in the corridor beside us. Delago: Hear the charge properly, Frau Pospischil. This lady swears her brother left before dawn on the thirteenth. By the night of the thirteenth he'd reached your gate, and you robbed and killed him.

16:18 Pospischil: The thirteenth. Nobody told me which night. Delago: What does the night matter to you?

16:25 Brenner: It matters. She went straight to that bench before the turnkey pointed. She's slept in this cell before.

16:32 Pospischil: Once. Ask your own sergeant. Brenner: Your patrols keep a night book, Inspector. Read us the thirteenth.

16:40 Delago: My patrols pull in half the Rossauer Lände every week— Brenner: Then it's a short walk to the shelf. Delago: Thirteenth of September. Patrol at the caretaker's gate after curfew. "Caretaker Pospischil abusive, held for questioning."

16:56 Pospischil: Hah. Hedi: That night? You had her that very night?

17:02 Delago: "While she was held, a man slipped off toward the canal. Grey coat, fur collar, two suitcases. Not pursued."

17:10 Hedi: Grey coat... fur collar. That's Anton. That's— he walked right past her.

17:17 Brenner: With both suitcases in his hands, while your sergeant had the caretaker by the arm. Whoever robbed Anton met him past that gate, not at it. Delago: Then she went after him at first light.

17:29 Brenner: A man fleeing the Russians travels by night, Inspector. By first light he was far down the road south, or he was never going anywhere again. Read the last line.

17:40 Delago: "Released at seven in the morning." And underlined beneath it: Held all night.

17:48 Smoking Beneath a Sign Forbidding It

17:53 Narrator: At the Lindenfeld Health Office a clerk left Brenner, Delago and me among the issue ledgers, and the inspector smoked beneath a sign forbidding it. Delago: One caretaker turned loose, one sergeant I'll skin, and now I'm counting paper. Get on with it, then.

18:11 Brenner: Numbered and signed for, Inspector. The note's paper has an owner on record. Narrator: Here's the page. The same typhus form. Red numbers three thousand eight hundred to three thousand eight hundred and fifty.

18:25 Brenner: Ours is three thousand eight hundred and twelve, inside that run. Whose block? Narrator: One block only, issued the twenty-fourth of September to Doctor Lindauer, Porzellangasse. Signed for at the counter.

18:39 Delago: The doctor? On the sister's stair? Doctors hand out paper like priests hand out wafers. Half his waiting room could've pocketed a sheet.

18:48 Brenner: All right. So the paper tells us where it was written. Not who wrote it. Your sergeant tells us more: Anton went toward the canal, with a bombed house between the gate and the water.

19:01 Narrator: A house the building office keeps— Delago: —nailed shut, I know. Building office be damned. My patrol saw suitcases make for the canal. I'll dig there.

19:11 A Few Sticks Burning in One Room

19:15 Narrator: The caretaker was home again by noon, a few sticks burning in her stove for once, and she let Hedi, Delago and the two of us crowd into her one room. Delago: Held all night by my sergeant, Frau Pospischil, and then locked up again by me. I owe you coal.

19:33 Pospischil: You owe me more than coal, Inspector. Hedi: And I— I owe you more than that. I saw Father's watch, here in your lodge, and called you a murderer.

19:43 Pospischil: You'd the right. I'd lied to you. Brenner: Then tell her how it came to be in your drawer.

19:50 Pospischil: Your brother came to my gate at dusk, two cases, grey coat. He wanted a chair by my stove till it was proper dark. Narrator: And these days a chair costs a silver watch?

20:02 Pospischil: It's what he offered. He'd not open the cases. Sat in my heat with that coat buttoned to the chin.

20:09 Narrator: In this lodge? He must have roasted. Pospischil: Heavy as a coal sack, that coat. It clinked when he sat.

20:18 Hedi: Oh... Brenner: Because that's where his money was. Whatever he owned was sewn into the lining.

20:26 Narrator: Then why swear at your shutter you'd never seen him? Pospischil: A man gives me silver and never comes back. Who'd— who'd believe the caretaker didn't help him on his way?

20:36 Hedi: But you kept it wound. Pospischil: Every night. For when he came back for it...

20:42 Brenner: And when the patrol took you by the arm? Pospischil: I gave them a mouthful, and he picked up both cases and walked out behind them, cool as you like. Brenner: So he walked off alive. Where to, Frau Pospischil?

20:56 Pospischil: Into the bombed house by the canal, from the water side, where there's no notice and no nails. I saw it over my shoulder as they marched me off: a lamp waiting on the cellar steps.

21:11 Our Backs to the Black Water

21:15 Narrator: On the embankment below the bombed house, Brenner and I kept our backs to the black water while police labourers went at a cellar wall above us. An hour of that. If there's nothing behind the wall, Delago will have our heads.

21:30 Brenner: Listen to it come down. Whole slabs, not crumbs. Old Viennese mortar crumbles. That wall is new.

21:38 Narrator: New brickwork, in a house nobody's allowed into. Brenner: Read me your notebook. The doctor first, then the ledger.

21:47 Narrator: The doctor, on his landing: Anton knocked early the day he went, wanting his typhus shot, and begged a blank besides. Brenner: The very day Hedi swears to. And the ledger?

22:00 Narrator: The block, ours among them, signed over to Doctor Lindauer eleven days after Anton walked out. Brenner: You've done the sum. Narrator: Three times. Then when did Anton ever hold that form?

22:16 Delago Climbing the Stair

22:20 Narrator: We were on Hedi's landing in the Porzellangasse, the doctor talking up to us from his door below, when Delago climbed the stair with canal mud to his knees. Lindauer: Inspector! You look as if you've been down a sewer.

22:34 Delago: A cellar, Doctor. Fräulein, you'd better hold the rail. Hedi: You found him.

22:40 Delago: A false wall behind the coal bins. Men bricked up inside it, one beside the other. One wore a fur-collared grey coat.

22:51 Hedi: No. No, there's more than one coat like that in Vienna, it's— Narrator: Hedi. Here. I've got you.

22:57 Hedi: Anton... you fool, you stupid — I let you go down the stair. I let you kiss me and go. Lindauer: Let me take her, gentlemen. I've something in the surgery to help her sleep, if—

23:09 Brenner: She'll stay with Fuchs, Doctor. And you'll stay a moment yourself. Lindauer: Of course. Anything.

23:15 Brenner: You told us Anton begged that blank the morning he left. Hedi's date. The thirteenth.

23:23 Lindauer: So he did. Early. I'd hardly opened up.

23:27 Narrator: The Health Office ledger has your block issued the twenty-fourth of September. To you, and to nobody else. Lindauer: Then I— I misremember the sheet. I've had a dozen blocks through my hands.

23:40 Brenner: Its red number is that figure. Fuchs read it to you on this stair, and you called it yours. Lindauer: Then a patient pocketed one. My waiting room is full of—

23:50 Delago: A patient, now? A moment ago it was Anton at your door. Lindauer: I— no, I meant...

23:56 Brenner: No blank of that block existed when Anton left, Doctor. It sat in a Health Office cupboard. You never gave him that form. You gave us a story to tie him to it.

24:08 Delago: Doctor Lindauer. Your wrists.

24:11 One Bulb and One Table

24:16 Narrator: Delago's interrogation room held one bulb, one table and the doctor, with Brenner across from him, and Hedi and me against the whitewashed wall. Delago: Seven hundred dollars a head, Doctor. And whatever they'd sewn into their coats.

24:32 Lindauer: You make me sound like a till. They came to me. They begged me to take it.

24:37 Brenner: And in the cellar, a typhus shot, like the one you said Anton wanted for the road. Only yours was poison. Lindauer: I told them the British demand one at the Grauwand. Every one rolled up his sleeve and thanked me.

24:51 Narrator: Good Lord. Delago: Anton too. Lindauer: Anton too. Pleasant young man. He talked about his sister all the way down.

25:00 Hedi: Don't. Don't put his name in your mouth. Brenner: Then the note, Doctor. Was that written to comfort her?

25:08 Lindauer: I heard her through my ceiling. No machine. Out every night, every bench, asking for him. My clients began to shy, and—

25:16 Brenner: And so you wrote her the road: "Come after me the same way," and the way went down your cellar steps, not over the Grauwand. Lindauer: It was kinder than it sounds. She'd have been with him, she'd have—

25:27 Narrator: Kinder! You'd have bricked her in beside him and called it a family reunion. Delago: Then why didn't she come?

25:34 Lindauer: I've wondered. She read it, surely. Yet she kept asking every bench for Anton. Never once for the Grauwand man.

25:42 Brenner: She read it once, beside his crates, and said: That isn't Anton's hand. After that, Doctor, nothing in it could lead her anywhere. Hedi: It wasn't his writing, so I never even... I'd have been next.

25:59 Sweeping Glass Off the Pavements

26:03 Narrator: Vienna, the week the trial was set, was still sweeping glass off its pavements, and Hedi sat at last in the good chair by our stove. Committed for trial this morning, Hedi. Every man in that canal cellar laid at the doctor's door.

26:20 Hedi: And Anton's in the Zentralfriedhof under his own name. A priest, and a stone when there's stone to be had. Brenner: And your father's watch?

26:29 Hedi: Delago brought it round himself. Called it evidence, then said he'd mislay the paperwork. Brenner: One link, Fuchs, and we heard it on Hedi's stair the first night. She told the doctor there was no word.

26:44 Narrator: And he said the post was a disgrace, and it would come. Kind enough. Why look twice?

26:51 Brenner: No post ever brought that note: no stamp, no envelope. He'd pushed it under her door himself. "It will come" was a man waiting for her to act on it.

27:03 Hedi: And I thought he was being kind. Brenner: He was patient, Hedi. On a dark stair, patience passes for kindness.

27:12 Hedi: I took Frau Pospischil a sack of coal. She says the chair by her stove is mine whenever I want it. Narrator: Then the caretaker's the one soul in Vienna with a chair to spare.

27:23 Hedi: The girl in the Liechtensteinstraße still wants her dress. I brought it, and hung it on your door when I came in. Narrator: Our headless bride again. Here, bring the lamp nearer.

27:35 Hedi: Threaded first time. Anton always said I'd go blind before I'd miss. Narrator: Doctor Lindauer went to the gallows at the Landesgericht the following spring, still calling it kindness. What was sewn into those coats was never found. And Vienna went on sweeping up its glass and digging out its dead, and giving back a name wherever it could.