Little White Lies Read Online Free PDF

them all, six-year-old Bettina – were playing cards. They rarely joined in these family discussions. Only his mother sat amongst the men, as she’d always done. She was more of a man than anyone he knew, he thought to himself suddenly, admiringly, watching her. For a second their eyes caught and held. She knew exactly what he was thinking.
    He turned away and looked back down at the street. Snowflakes swirled in ever more intricate flurries, drifting eventually towards the ground. On the spires and steeply sloped roofs around them, huge piles of white, fluffy
Stoff
had gathered, softening the city’s edges. It was December and Hamburg was in the grip of winter. He smoked quietly, his mind running ahead of itself, weighing up the options, thinking about potential destinations, contacts, people on whom he could call. They were running out of time. He’d lunched that afternoon with Uncle Sigmund and that dreadful friend of his, Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann was en route to New York, trying to persuade rich American Jews to support his vision of a Jewish state. Otto seemed charmed by him but Lionel was ambivalent. Emigrate? To where? Palestine? It meant little to him. For nearly three centuries the Harburgs had operated successfully in that lucrative, fluid area between the Jewish and Gentile worlds. They were on excellent, first-name terms with statesmen, politicians and business leaders across Europe. Of the great Jewish banking dynasties – the Rothschilds, Warburgs and Harburgs – the Harburgs were the smallest but they were by no means the weakest. Three centuries of slow but steady advancement – he saw no reason to give it up and flee halfway across the world to some barren, dusty patch of land and grow what . . .
oranges
? They were bankers, not farmers.
    He ground out his cigarette and pulled out his watch chain. It was nearly eight in the evening. From his parents’ elegant villa on Rothebaumchaussee it was a short walk to his own small apartment on Feldbrunnenstraße. The opulent home where he’d spent his childhood was a far cry from the cramped little apartment that was now his. Sara, though restrained enough in her outward emotions, was a woman of surprisingly rich, decorative tastes. She favoured the neo-Classical style of the German haute-bourgeoisie – dense, colourful patterns, heavy wooden panelling, ornate picture frames, potted plants, mirrors and pictures on every conceivable surface. Although he would never say it out loud, Lionel sometimes felt stifled by the surfeit of colours and patterns and textures that he’d grown up with. When his father and Uncle Abe (or the other way round, to be more precise) had made a gift of the bachelor apartment five minutes’ walk from the family home, he was relieved. He was drawn to the clean lines of the Modern movement, to the spare, elegant architecture of Gropius and the young Mies van der Rohe who’d taken over the running of the Bauhaus. But the Bauhaus too had fallen foul of the new regime. Lionel had heard, amongst other, more disturbing things, that the school was to be closed down the following month. None of it augured well.
    ‘Lionel,’ Sara called out, drawing him back to the dining table. ‘Uncle Abe is leaving.’
    Uncle Abe levered himself up from his chair, gripping each of his nephews by the shoulder in a gesture that was meant to bolster them after a Friday-night dinner shadowed by fear.
    Lionel walked over to him. ‘Uncle,’ he murmured, feeling the older man’s heavy grip on his own shoulder.
    ‘Chin up,’ Uncle Abe said in what he thought was a reassuring voice. ‘This will pass. You’ll see.’ Lionel was on the verge of telling him what he really thought but Sara’s eyes flashed a quick warning. Uncle Abe pulled on his coat and lumbered into the drawing room where the girls sat listening to Bettina play the piano. There was an outburst of laughter and squeals as he flirted with them, cracking jokes and playing the role of