The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson Page A

regions of his body. He was very dark and his thick black eyebrows joined over his nose. He had a large, full-lipped, sensual mouth and his cheeks, razored that morning, already needed to be reshaved.
    ‘I would understand,’ said Voss, ‘if you needed to make some inquiries about me before we talk.’
    ‘We’ve already made our inquiries,’ said Giesler.
    Voss thought for a moment.
    ‘In Rastenburg?’
    ‘We know, for instance, how you felt about the…the death of the Reichsminister Todt,’ said Giesler, ‘and your…disappointment with the way in which good soldiers died needlessly at Stalingrad and, of course, you have an impeccable pedigree.’
    Voss frowned, replayed some reels in his mind.
    ‘Weber?’
    Giesler opened his hands, reclasped them.
    ‘Weber disappeared,’ said Voss. ‘What happened to him?’
    ‘We didn’t know he was a homosexual. There are some things that even the deepest of inquiries will not unearth.’
    ‘But where is he?’
    ‘He is in very serious trouble, which he brought on himself,’ said Giesler. ‘He behaved recklessly in a climate where scapegoats were eagerly sought.’
    ‘He must have been under pressure…’
    ‘Drinking is one thing.’
    ‘How do you know I’m not homosexual?’
    Giesler looked at him long and hard, that sensual mouth becoming unnerving.
    ‘Weber,’ he said after some time, as if perhaps that source hadn’t been as reliable as he’d have liked.
    ‘Well, he should know, although I’m not sure how. Women were not abundant in Rastenburg and those that were available…’ he drifted off, disheartened by the turn the conversation had taken; this dip into the ignoble was not what he’d had in mind. This was supposed to be a courageous act and here they were parting the dirt.
    Giesler had his answer. He didn’t need to pursue this discussion further. He gave Voss an address of a villa in Gatow with a meeting time for the next day and stood. They shook hands and Giesler hung on, which at first Voss thought was another sexuality test but, no, it was a sincerity hold, a brotherhood clasp.
    ‘Weber won’t talk,’ he said. ‘It’s possible he will survive, although he will never get back into Rastenburg. But it is something for you to think about before you come to Gatow tomorrow. It’s not easy to be an enemy of the State – not, I hasten to add, an enemy of the nation, but this State. It is dangerous and lonely work. You will be lying to your colleagues every day for perhaps years. You will have no friends because friends are dangerous. Your work will require a mental fortitude, not intelligence necessarily, but strength and it is something you may feel you do not have. If you do not come to Gatow tomorrow nobody will think any the less of you. We will go our separate ways, praying for Germany.’
    Voss slept badly that night in a torment over his part in Weber’s arrest. At four in the morning, the death and debt hour, he found his mind crowded with thoughts of hisfather and mother, Julius and Weber, and it was then that he had a sudden perception of the power of words, of the business of communication. Once words are said nothing is the same. His father didn’t have to tell his mother about Rosemarie Hausser, but he did. It must have established an unrecoverable distance, instilled a lifelong sense of disappointment in his mother with a short line, some words and a name. In his own crucial conversation with Weiss, which he had not been prepared for, he realized that it was not physics that had alerted him but the words ‘physical’ and ‘women’. It had been a confirmation. It made him think that in talking to people you never know what they know, you never know what they think, and innocuous words can take on huge importance. He stopped writhing in his bed – he hadn’t served up Weber, he’d just handed Weiss the spoons.
    He went to Gatow the following afternoon, nervous as if it was a visit to the doctor, who might find a mild