The Constant Man

by Peter Steiner

  ‘But how could it happen?’ she said again. ‘Did we do this? Did we let this happen?’

  ‘I think we did,’ said Benno. ‘If we didn’t bring it about, at least we stood by and let it happen. We watched as lies took the place of truth. And we stood by and let power take the place of justice. We were content …’

  ‘No, Benno! No! We were never content!’ said Margarete. ‘I wasn’t content. I don’t accept that.’

  ‘But, Gretl, look here. As a people we let it come to this. We saw it coming, didn’t we? We talked about it. We’ve known for a long time who Hitler is. And if we didn’t know, we should have.’

  ‘But could we have stopped it? How could we have stopped it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Benno. ‘Maybe we couldn’t have. There’s something in people. A man like Hitler, he can find the vein of evil in people, and mine it. He follows his basest instincts, and when he does, we give ourselves permission to do the same. He tells us his malevolence is strength, and we believe him because it is convenient, and we follow his lead.’

  ‘Remember what Goethe said about the Germans?’ said Margarete.

  Benno knew exactly the quote she meant. ‘I have often felt a bitter sadness when I think of the German people; we are so estimable as individuals and so dreadful in the collective. But, you know, Gretl, I don’t think it’s just us Germans. I think every people on earth gets their chance at collective evil. And history tells us very few can resist.’

  And It Didn’t Stop There

  Willi went for an early supper with Margarete and Benno Horvath. They met at a small Gasthaus some distance from their homes where they would be unknown. Benno was an old friend of Willi’s father. Before his retirement he had been a senior police official and had become young Willi’s mentor when Willi had decided to become a policeman.

  Willi got to the Gasthaus early and leaned his bicycle against a small maple tree at the curb where he could see it. The edges of the tree’s leaves were showing the first fall colors. It was only five thirty and he was the only customer. He chose a corner table beside the door leading to the kitchen. ‘A beer, please,’ he said. The waitress brought it. She was young and pretty.

  Willi stood as the Horvaths came in. It had been several months since he had last seen them, and they had both aged in that time. Benno seemed less steady on his feet, and Margarete was thinner. She had white, almost translucent skin, the lightest azure eyes, a cloud of silver hair, and the erect posture of a dancer. A pale blue vein ran across her temple. She had an ethereal, almost otherworldly quality, as though she already had one foot in the great beyond.

  Summer was almost over, but the evening was warm. Margarete wore a light sweater and a scarf around her shoulders. She kissed Willi’s cheek. ‘Willi!’ she whispered, as though his name were a secret, which in fact it was. Benno kissed him too, then grasped his hand.

  Benno held the chair for Margarete. You could see from his face how he adored her, and it seemed to Willi for an instant that he should warn Benno. Even showing love so openly seemed like a dangerous thing to do these days. Willi sat on the bench against the wall.

  ‘Lola says hello,’ said Willi.

  ‘She’s recovered?’ said Margarete.

  ‘She has mostly,’ said Willi. ‘She’s doing well.’

  ‘They haven’t caught the man?’ said Benno.

  ‘They haven’t really tried,’ said Willi.

  ‘Why not? Is it somehow political?’ Benno said.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Willi. ‘But, if it is, I haven’t figured out how. The cops on the case have good reputations. They’re supposedly conscientious and thorough investigators, so someone must have taken them off the case.’

  ‘Leave it alone, Willi,’ said Benno.

  ‘That’s what Lola says.’

  ‘I’m glad she’s recovered,’ said Margarete. ‘You both deserve to be happy.’

  Willi was a little afraid to name his happiness, as if doing so might cause it to disappear.

  They studied the menu, ordered their food, and then sat for a long time in silence.

  ‘What’s new?’ said Willi finally, an ordinary question in ordinary times, but not any more.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Benno, and then described all the ways that wasn’t true. Seven hundred Protestant pastors had just that week been arrested by the Gestapo for refusing to integrate their Confessional Church into the Nazified Evangelical church. Another Munich newspaper, the Courier, had been forced out of existence by the Propaganda Ministry. Otto Bierbaum, its publisher, was a Jew, and so had been forced to give up control. The paper had closed the following week.

  Almost the only professors remaining in universities these days were those who had sworn allegiance to the Führer. The new rector of the University of Berlin, a storm trooper and veterinarian by trade, instituted courses in Racial Science. The new director of the Dresden Institute of Physics had proclaimed, ‘Modern physics is an instrument of World Jewry for the destruction of Nordic Science. True physics is the creation of the German spirit. In fact, all European science is the fruit of Aryan thought.’ Meanwhile Germany’s great thinkers, artists, scientists – Einstein, Thomas Mann, dozens of them, hundreds of them – were long gone, scattered to the four winds and erased from the pages of German culture.

  ‘And it didn’t stop there,’ said Benno.

  ‘We were at the theater,’ said Margarete. She didn’t want to talk about politics. ‘Kleist. The Broken Jug. Wonderful. We laughed and laughed.’ They stopped talking when the food arrived.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out about the investigation,’ said Benno, taking up the topic of Lola’s attack again.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Willi. ‘I don’t think you’d find anything, and it’s not worth the risk. I may ask Bergemann to look into it, although …’ Hans Bergemann’s connection to Willi was necessarily more and more tenuous, and his access to information was more and more limited, so looking into it wouldn’t be easy for him either. The police were ruled by the SS now. A culture of suspicion prevailed. Just seeking information could signify treachery.

  ‘It’s like an infection, isn’t it?’ said Benno. ‘And not just at police headquarters. Suspicion is a virus that has infected the whole society. The very words we speak are dangerous. You have to think of all possible meanings before you say anything out loud. And you have to pay attention to how you look, where you look, how you stand or sit or pick up a mug of beer. Nothing is beyond suspicion.’

  At that moment, as if to underscore Benno’s point, the door opened and a young couple came in and took a table by the front door. They cast a vague unfocused look in the Horvaths’ direction, then sat down and never looked their way again. And the Horvaths never looked in their direction either. They were strangers to one another, and the safest thing for everyone was to keep it that way.

  Tullemannstraße 54

  Deutsche Reichspost regulations required that all mail deliveries be placed inside locked mailboxes. No exceptions were allowed. And Trude Heinemann always delivered the mail in accordance with the Reichspost requirements. She could get in trouble if she didn’t.

  A keyring hung from a long chain at her side. She drew it up, found the right key, opened the metal panel above the boxes, and slid the letters in. She had more than forty buildings on her route, with over five hundred and fifty individual mailboxes. So her work required efficiency and dispatch.

  Heinz Schleiffer was the fly in the ointment. Heinz Schleiffer waited by the door of 54 Tullemannstraße each morning – outside when the weather was nice, inside when it wasn’t – for the mail to arrive. Heinz lived in the small apartment off the lobby of number 54, a brick and concrete block structure of five stories and of no discernible style. Most of the building’s thirty-six apartments were inhabited by working-class tenants. There were two staircases leading up from the lobby, with landings on each floor. Each landing had a porcelain sink for the use of the tenants. The landlords had promised to install running water
in each apartment by year’s end, but there was no sign that they actually intended to do it. So a few tenants had run pipes and put in sinks at their own expense.

  A highly polished metal sign with the word ‘Guardian’ was attached to Heinz’s front door. Heinz took his duties as guardian very seriously. ‘My job,’ he had said to Trude the first time she encountered him there, wearing the well pressed, if ill fitting, brown uniform of the SA. ‘My duty’ – he corrected himself – ‘is to a greater authority than the Reichspost.’

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ said Heinz, and saluted as Trude mounted the three steps to number 54.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ she said. You were required to greet others that way. A few people said nothing or said ‘Heitler’ or something like that, something that sounded like Heil Hitler. But they were tempting fate. Trude’s teenage son Dieter had told her that he had once said ‘Ein Liter!’ (one liter) and given a snappy salute to the leader of the Hitler Youth at school. Trude was horrified. She shook her finger at him. ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ she said. ‘People end up in Dachau for less. You’re playing with fire.’

  Dieter just laughed. ‘That idiot Herbert?’ he said. ‘He’s an asshole.’

  Now Heinz, standing with his legs apart and his arms folded across his narrow chest, held out his hand. ‘Give it here,’ he said. He blocked her way every day now and had made it clear he would not budge until he inspected the mail. She handed him the small stack of letters for the building and waited while he leafed through them, making sure every letter belonged at 54.

  ‘There are more important things at stake than efficient postal delivery,’ he said.

  That’s easy for you to say, thought Trude. You never get any mail. And it was true: no one had ever written to Heinz Schleiffer, at least not since Trude had been delivering the mail.

  ‘Wait,’ said Heinz. ‘What’s this?’ He held up a letter toward Trude.

  ‘Herr Karl Juncker, Tullemannstraße 54,’ she read the name on the envelope. ‘What about it?’

  ‘The return address,’ said Heinz, ‘and the postage stamp?’

  Trude leaned in and looked more closely. ‘What about it?’ she said again.

  ‘American,’ said Heinz. ‘I’ll deliver this one in person.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Trude.

  ‘I’ll deliver this one,’ said Heinz again. He handed her the other letters and stepped aside so Trude could unlock the panel and drop the other mail in the boxes.

  Trude did not move. ‘Postal regulations … Reich postal regulations require that I deposit the mail in the appropriate boxes.’

  Heinz took a small step toward Trude and examined her as though he hadn’t quite seen her until now. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. ‘I see,’ he said. His voice was suddenly quite calm, and the beginnings of a smile flickered around the corners of his mouth. ‘Let’s ask Ortsgruppenleiter Mecklinger at SA headquarters what he thinks of postal regulations when the security of the Reich is at stake, shall we?’

  ‘The security of …?’

  ‘I’m talking about official Party business’ – he pretended to read her name tag – ‘Frau Heinemann. Suffice it to say that there is official interest in this Karl Juncker, and I have my orders to investigate.’ This was a lie. ‘So, if it is your intention to impede an investigation, by all means, take the letter. Of course, I’ll have to report your obstruction of a legitimate and important investigation, and we will see where it goes from there.’ He handed the rest of the letters back to her. She stood looking at him. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’

  Trude sighed, stepped forward and unlocked the panel above the mailboxes. She dropped the letters into the various boxes as quickly as she could and closed the panel.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ said Heinz with a smart salute.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ said Trude. She wanted nothing more than to get out of there.

  Heinz Schleiffer

  After the Great War had ended, Tullemannstraße 54 had been mostly vacant and without a guardian for several years. Without anyone in residence who could see to the maintenance, the building had slid into decline, until it had come under new ownership and Heinz Schleiffer had been engaged to fill the guardian slot. Heinz drove a beer truck afternoons and evenings, which gave him a flexible enough schedule to assume the duties of building guardian. This office required him to make small repairs – he was a handy carpenter and passable with plumbing and electricity – and perform regular maintenance: unlocking the entry door in the morning and locking it in the evening, sweeping the stairs, cleaning the lobby floor, washing the front windows, and, of course, polishing the brass plaque on the door of his lodgings. In exchange for fulfilling these duties – and he was assiduous in their fulfillment, you had to give him that – he got the use of the apartment rent free.

  His guardian duties did not require that he be a storm trooper or that he wear the uniform. Nor did they include harassing the mail lady or investigating his neighbors. But the Führer had inspired in Heinz, as he had in many others, a newfound love of a particular sort of authority. The Führer’s own abusive ways were liberating. He gave people like Heinz, people who felt that they had been abused or mistreated or cheated or taken advantage of – whether they actually had or not – license to become abusive to others.

  Heinz had first heard Hitler speak five years earlier when word had started spreading about him and his movement. Hitler promised that when he came to power, the little people, the forgotten ones, people just like Heinz, would have their day in the sun. ‘The socialist government has sold you out, has sold Germany out. But we will give you back your country.’

  Heinz was not political. He didn’t even vote in those days, but he was moved by what he had heard.

  Heinz was a little adrift and lonely. He wanted to be somebody, to be respected by other people. Hitler said that by joining their party you became part of a great German movement. That suited Heinz; he wanted to be part of something larger than himself, especially if it meant getting back at all those shitheads who had messed up his life.

  Heinz’s wife had run off with another beer truck driver years earlier. There were two shitheads right there. His son Tomas was another. He had gone away to university and was now too big for his britches – studying art history, of all things. He came home to Munich less and less, and when he did, he stayed with his mother and rarely came to see Heinz.

  ‘Stop whining,’ said Jürgen, another driver. He had a wayward son too and thought he knew just what Heinz needed to do. ‘Haul the little shit back to Munich and slap some sense into him.’ They were drinking with their buddies at the Stammtisch, the table at the Three Crowns reserved for the neighborhood regulars.

  ‘No, I can’t do that,’ said Heinz, pretending to be reasonable. ‘He should have the chance to make something of himself.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Jürgen snorted. ‘Well, you’re his father. He needs to show you some respect and gratitude. I’d knock some sense into him.’

  ‘How about Lechler’s header on Sunday?’

  Heinz was boring; his son was boring. So somebody brought up the spectacular last-minute goal by Lechler to win the match against Dresden.

  ‘Well, face it,’ said someone else. ‘Dresden has no defense. They threw that match away.’

  ‘Yeah, defense was always Dresden’s problem.’ The others nodded and muttered in agreement.

  When talk turned to soccer or money or jobs, Heinz could never think of anything to say. He didn’t like soccer and he had a boring job. And anyway, no matter what the subject, he was bad at banter. The more they drank, the livelier the others got, while Heinz went silent. He sat with his back against the tile oven, but the warmth did nothing for him.

  What warmed Heinz Schleiffer was putting on the brown shirt and tie, the brown pants, the boots of the SA. He had become a storm trooper not long after he had joined the Party. The uniform was like an exoskeleton for Heinz, supporting his insubstantial flesh, making his blood run hot,
giving him, in his own eyes at least, substance, strength, and authority. Hitler and the National Socialists meant to restore national pride and bring prosperity back to Germany. And for there to be pride and prosperity there had to be order, and for there to be order, there had to be those who enforced the order. And that was where the SA and Heinz Schleiffer came in.

  The purge, Operation Hummingbird, hadn’t bothered Heinz one bit when he heard about it. Röhm and his buddies had been trouble for the Führer and that was all that mattered. And they were perverts to boot. Hard measures were called for. The SA, the storm troopers, had been purified, and the new SA would be better than ever. There were still millions of them. End of story.

  Heinz had failed to keep order in his own family. He thought he should have beat up his wife when she was disobedient, and she might not have run off. And Jürgen was right: he should have summoned that little pissant of a son with his fancy ideas and slapped some sense into his silly head. But it was too late for that too.

  Now he had the building to look after. He was the guardian, after all, and now that Hitler was on his way to total power, Tullemannstraße 54 needed tending to. As Heinz saw it, Tullemannstraße 54 was a small version of Germany itself, a microcosm, his son would have said. The pissant liked fancy words. The building had fallen into disrepair and disrepute, and it was Heinz’s duty to restore and maintain order, to know, as best he could, everyone living there, to see that there were no malefactors among them, that everyone was living by the rules, living by German rules.

  Heinz made it a point to know who came and went. He spoke to them, inquired about their well-being in a sufficiently friendly manner to learn what he could about them. He helped old Frau Schimmel carry her groceries up to her apartment and managed to learn that her husband had died forty years earlier as a result of wounds sustained fighting in the Franco-Prussian War. She lived on her war widow’s pension. Or at least that was what she said. She invited Heinz in for a glass of schnapps and told him, with a little prompting, what she knew about the building’s other inhabitants. And she knew quite a bit – who did what for a living, who feuded with their neighbor, that sort of thing.