Free The Eye of the Abyss by Marshall Browne Page B

couldn’t always quite cope. A tiny splinter of steel was still lodged there. Blinding headaches came frequently, the
triggers of his war memories.
    â€˜God help us,’ he whispered. He turned a corner and was gazing at the city centre’s electric lights.
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    Three pm: coming into Dresden. Juddering over junctions of points, each increasingly complex, Helga watched the familiar suburbanscape rolling out through the window: the minutiae of domestic and commercial life, unaffected by the structures of the Third Reich. Trudi, absorbed in endless plaiting of her doll’s blonde locks, kept her tiny face as serious as her father’s so often was.
    Helga had been going over and over the same questions. The Order was at the heart of his ‘other world’. Throughout their marriage it had aroused in her various emotions: curiosity, exasperation … She’d resented the interminable hours of research at the Municipal Library special reading room. Following in his father’s footsteps. And, his unwillingness to discuss it. As far as she knew he hadn’t discussed it with a single soul; he even kept himself anonymous from its mysterious headquarters in Vienna. She couldn’t understand these things.
    In the early days, half teasingly, she’d asked him what part of the cosmos he went away to. Clandestinely, she’d dipped into certain books, searching for a point of entry. She’d entered a labyrinth. She’d roamed blindly, knowing he was mining at much deeper levels.
    She’d chided him: ‘What does it say about our marriage, your love for our child?’ He’d come from these bouts of study in a daze. ‘Returning from the cosmos?’ she’d ask.
    She’d been putting behind her the eye. He’d seemed quiescent. But that had changed in the past month; she could sense it.Was it conscious or unconscious? Would his thraldom to the Order’s fantastic ideals, archaic lore, bring
them all into deadly danger?
    God! What was he doing, what was he considering at this moment? The concert was tonight. Her lips tightened, making her pretty face severe. ‘Forget the Nazis, Franz,’ she whispered. ‘Let them do what they must.’
    She must quieten down. Be her usual pragmatic self. She took deep, steady breaths.
    Trudi stood at the window, the doll clasped to her heart, watching Dresden’s platform drift by, looking for her grandmother, her aunt. There they were!
    A few years ago Helga’s mother’s friends had still called the mother and her daughters the three sisters. Now she took in at first glance the new frailty in the woman who stood arm-in-arm with her elder sister, and thought: No longer. Everything’s changing.
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    Schmidt gave it a look: a nondescript building wedged between two small streets looking like a mean slice of cake. He had left work early due to the pain in his mouth. He went up the narrow stairs to the first floor, aware of why the dentist had been reluctant to accept the appointment. But his jaw had settled into a throbbing ache, and he’d been Dr Bernstein’s patient for many years.
    The waiting room was empty and the door to the surgery open, and the auditor heard the clatter of instruments on marble. ‘Come in, Herr Schmidt,’ the doctor called.
    Schmidt removed his hat and coat and went into the surgery. The nurse was absent. ‘Good evening, Herr Doctor. Herr Wagner sends his regards.’
    The Jew smiled slightly. ‘I’m glad to have them.’ He gestured at the chair. In a moment, he was gazing into the auditor’s mouth. He probed the tooth, causing Schmidt to flinch. ‘Aha,’
he sighed. ‘A wisdom tooth. Decay. It should come out.’
    â€˜Do it,’ Schmidt mumbled. In turn, he was gazing up into Dr Bernstein’s pebble-thick glasses, his puffy white face, black slicked-down hair. Wagner had once said the doctor was also a skilled