Etta had her friends from the café but I had never met them. They would still meet once a week to catch up but during the day now, which I preferred, instead of after work, as it had been. Sometimes, after hours, they had gossiped and drunk until the day became tomorrow, in a blacked-out café.
I was usually asleep when she returned and was pleased that she maintained society besides myself. I have always been a loner. More than four people in a room and I become withdrawn. Etta always the more gregarious of us and I would use her as a shield at times for this nature. She insisted this was because I had no siblings. I grew with only my parents as guides and parents prefer quiet children if they cannot pass them off to an elder brother or sister. I can spot a man who was a lone child in an instant and probably he I, but we do not talk for the same.
As long as Etta was laughing and talking at a gathering no-one minded the quiet husband in the corner pretending to peruse the bookshelves and drinking too quickly. And I would always hate the question, ‘So what do you do, Ernst?’
‘Nothing,’ I would have to say. ‘Nothing.’
I would be quiet and let her to it. That might change soon. I was a career man now. And no brothers or sisters meant that all my parents’ pride could be for mine alone. I did not have to hear how well my brother might be doing. The opposite also true. All their shame could be mine also. But not now. Not today.
*
My mother had made her Jaeger Schnitzel with spaetzle but only one pork fillet, so spread thin between the four of us, but with more than enough of the pasta to make up. I would not have been able to get hold of a pork fillet. It helps if the butcher is your neighbour on the bridge and your father went to school with him. That is how people get through war.
I was given the cut in the middle, the thickest, and my father brought out his Bavarian beer.
They were more ecstatic than us with our news but quickly my father came down to odd practicalities, as fathers do.
‘You will have to have your post redirected. Who pays for the light? You will have to be careful with that. Your coal ration will probably not heat such a place.’ But this was his way of showing he was pleased, and my mother could only talk of grandchildren.
I wondered if it was my father’s stubbornness to stay in his father’s house on the bridge that had kept them to only me as their offspring. I had never thought before that perhaps my father could not afford to move. He was forty years older than me but lived in a house that was already hundreds of years old. The walls bulged with age and no part of it was straight and this antiquity had spread to its occupants. The knots in their hands the same as the knots in their house’s corners. Everyone on the bridge was ancient. Their bones creaked with their stairs. They say people come to resemble their pets. I say they grow to resemble their homes. Look for yourself. You will see this now I have said it so.
We left after only a few hours, Sunday lunch with one’s parents always an hour too long, the evening for us. And I felt tall. Admired and loved. I was not like my father on his Sundays of my youth. Grinding his teeth and dreading the alarm clock to be set.
I would run to work if the stragglers in their homburgs would not object so.
And then he came.
There before me, before I arrived on Monday morning. With Prüfer and Sander when I was summoned first thing. I had not had time to change my coat from black to white.
Chapter 16
I had never seen a man with one leg before. He did not move as if he had only one. Moved as if it was merely invisible, that only we could not see it, his crutch a decoration for us to admire along with his uniform. His cap on Prüfer’s desk. Klein not in the room.
‘Ernst,’ Sander said, ‘this is Senior-Colonel Voss. From Berlin.’ Only Voss seemed pleased with the introduction. He came at me before I had finished my respectful nod of acknowledgement and his hand went out for mine.
You expect one-legged men to hop. You have imagined it. I had seen Wallace Beery in Treasure Island do so. Voss swept across effortlessly in a single movement.
‘It is good to meet you, Herr Beck.’ And our hands shook. The second SS man I had done this with. You expect flash-bulbs to go off; they do it so emphatically. ‘I will say how pleased Berlin is with your … deciphering.’
‘Thank you, Senior-Colonel. I have done my best.’ I began to blush, from nervousness rather than modesty and his thin lips crawled into a sympathetic smile. I am sure he was used to the effect of uniform and rank to the citizen. The pinned flap of his right leg provoked less. Only children do not know to resist gaping at such things.
He was balding, fine grey hair above his ears only, and the sharp intelligent face that one might find on a philosophy professor.
‘I understand you were a student before here, Ernst?’ he said. ‘Graduated almost three years now, yes?’
I nodded. His eye watching mine. To show he knew me.
‘Good. Excellent. Erfurt such a fine university. None of the hubris of that “White Rose” nonsense we had in Munich. True Germans here.’ The thin smile again. His hand dropped mine.
Students elsewhere had protested against the Party, against the regime, as students always do. But those that were of the ‘White Rose’ were almost a party in themselves. In number and passion. The movement ended, crushed, last year. The main protagonists beheaded. Guillotined. In the twentieth century. Guillotined. If they were married their widows were sent a bill for the execution. We did not hear much of protests from then on.
Sander and Prüfer looked at me. I was expected to reply.
‘Yes, Senior-Colonel. We are happy only to be studious in Erfurt.’
He swung away, his crutch inaudible on the floor. His boot made more noise. He set himself on the edge of Prüfer’s desk.
‘You are married, Herr Beck?’
‘Yes, Senior-Colonel.’ I felt uncomfortable in my suit. Without the white-coat it did not feel that I was at work. And now it began to feel that I was not to start work today. Waited for the other shoe to drop. But then he did not have one to do so.
‘And Topf have given you a house? Your wife must be pleased, yes?’
‘Extremely so. We are both very happy. We have not moved in yet.’
He wagged a black-gloved finger at me.
‘But we will expect you to work hard for it. That is the new way. It is a good world for men with clean backgrounds such as yours. Those who have studied to achieve rather than rest on union cushions. Is that not so, gentlemen?’
Prüfer and Sander agreed.
‘We have great hopes for Ernst, Senior-Colonel,’ Sander said. ‘We have suffered with unions in the past.’
‘As has all Germany.’ Voss took his cap, twisted his body to get it. His crutch never moved. ‘Their nature is revealed in their secrecy. But we get ever better at finding them, no? Now, we should not deter this young man from his work. I would like to inspect the barracks that you have for the Buchenwald prisoners.’ He stood from the desk. The death’s-head cap screwed to his head and Prüfer and Sander followed his stride. He stopped at me as I opened the door. Prüfer handed me my plans for the day without a word.
Voss bowed his head. To me. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Herr Beck. Having seen your work I wished to see your face.’
See my face.
‘I hope you and your wife – Etta, is it not? – are most happy in your new home.’ And he brushed past, Prüfer and Sander waiting for me to go through, to lock the door behind.
Klein was in the corridor, smoking a cigarette outside his door.
‘Hans,’ Voss said for hello to Klein as he bowled along with us at his heels. Heel.
‘Helmut,’ Klein’s grinning response, tipping his cigarette to his forehead. He winked only to me as we passed. Did not seem to worry about smoking in front of the SS. Knew a colonel’s first name. Deferred the title.
I did not tell Etta of the colonel. She had been upset enough by my ride with Captain Schwarz. I did not want to spoil our new home. No
t with talk of men from Berlin. A city even we had begun to fear.
Chapter 17
I had a dream. Of when I was a boy. A memory. No, not a boy, a youth, not yet thirteen surely. But in my dream I was younger. Seemed younger.
We were only allowed to take two books from the school library, but Dumas was too tempting for only two. I was D’Artagnan in my school-yard. My fist my sword. And there was Swift and Stevenson and Burrough’s Tarzan, and we had no bookshelves at home.
I, like all boys, was a natural smuggler, and with my satchel I strode out of the library every week with my dutifully stamped two books and another two hidden in my swimming towel. Oh, I returned them. I was not a thief in the traditional sense. A smuggler, as I said. And are you not supposed to borrow from libraries? Other children forced to take two books. Such limitations a rationing to me.
‘Will you show me your satchel, Ernst?’ Frau Meikel, our librarian, asked as I was leaving one day. She had become faded in my dream of course. She was now a blur of my mother and Etta but her glasses were the same.
Like all smugglers I had become complacent and gave up fair when the hand of justice came. Caught as sure as the pirates in my books.
She frowned as she pulled out the green- and brown- backed volumes.
‘I always bring them back,’ I said. ‘We have no books at home. I meant nothing. I just wanted … I am sorry. I—’ I had to stop. She had begun to cry.
She took a handkerchief from her cardigan, that cardigan that all librarians wear. She was a small Jewish woman, ancient to me and fearful. She, after all, controlled the books. To me they were hers. I had taken from her and this was why she was crying and I began to cry also. For the harm I had done her, and for my shame. She sniffed into her linen. Wiped her eyes under her glasses.
She slammed the books back into my satchel as if we were both late for something.
‘Take them, Ernst,’ and her voice was pleading. ‘Don’t bring them back. Be a good … a bright boy.’ And she stopped looking at me, pushed the bag from the desk and forgot I was in front of her. I did not dream of walking away.
I came back next Thursday as usual, to borrow and return my purloined books, sure that Frau Meikel had not truly wanted me to keep them. She was not there. I never saw her again. Half the books gone also. I do not think she took them with her.
I woke up with that memory. It was Tuesday. And Etta and I moved into our home.
*
Klein had arranged a lorry for us. I did not expect it to come with a soldier but then I did not expect it to come with three prisoners from Buchenwald either. But how else was Klein to move us? His attitude was if Topf paid the camp for the prisoners then they could do what work they required to be done. The soldier told me I was not to help but Etta insisted on carrying her own secret bags to the transport. You cannot begrudge a woman her privacy. No matter how smart your uniform.
It was not a difficult or long job anyway. Pitiful how little we owned. The beds and Etta’s lounger and my old armchair the most of it. The rest we could probably have walked round like refugees, like we had watched from our windows years before.
The soldier drove the lorry. He shook our hands in the morning but did not talk or look to us after we had thanked the prisoners for their help. Fortunately a short ride beside him. Etta and I huddled together away from his stern sinewy form. A perpetual anger about him. It came off his coarse uniform like static. The prisoners sat on our belongings in the open bed of the lorry and held back our mattresses from falling over the side as the soldier pummelled the gears around Erfurt like a train about to wreck. I do not think he was pleased with his task. After it was done Etta and I could only offer the prisoners a jug of water. The three of them shared only a cupful before nodding their thanks and being pushed back onto the lorry.
‘You should say something to him,’ Etta whispered. ‘Look how he treats them.’
‘They are prisoners, Etta.’
‘Imprisoned for being alive.’
‘You do not know that.’
‘And so you think your Klein would have sent murderers and thieves to help us?’
My Klein. He was of me now.
She walked away with the jug. Up her steps that she had already cleaned.
I waved to the soldier as he pulled away to go into the main gate across the road. I do not think he saw me. The prisoners did. One waved back and then the others joined. The gate opened and closed and they were gone. Back to making the muffles for the ovens.
There was a darker mood inside the house than I would have wanted, expected, for our first day in our home. The distasteful nature of the help that had assisted us. The word you did not want to say attached to their labour. The instinct to pay something to them meaningless. Worthless. We had become those that do not pay for worth. It was throttling me somehow and I had bowed my head in appreciation whenever I could at the men in caps and striped clothes who had helped us move into our home.
Etta was unfolding her curtains when I came into the parlour, her lounger and my chair the only furniture. They were cramped in our apartment. Now they were miniature. She nodded to a small table under the window.
‘We have a telephone,’ she said. ‘That was not there the other day.’
I walked over and picked it up, the receiver to my ear. Like an idiot. The number written in pencil inside the rotary dial. I had never had my own telephone before. It hummed in my ear and I put it down, terrified, before someone across the world picked up at the other end. It looked new, its black shone. My fingerprints the only mark on it. I had never possessed a new piece of machinery. I felt a sense of power, of maturity. A telephone had made me feel important.
‘Klein must have put it in,’ I said.
‘That is so you are on call. For him. And it means he has keys.’ She took her curtains upstairs.
I made tea for us and cleared dead flies from the windowsills. The house had been cleaned and swept. Prepared, Klein had said. But I suppose no-one had seen these little corpses. Not important enough for concern.
PART TWO
Chapter 18
I did not expect to see the colonel again on the Wednesday. But I would imagine one does not come from Berlin for just one day. I started my day as always. In Prüfer’s office. Eight in the morning now I lived opposite – my decision. But Prüfer already there. The colonel not present. Klein was. He sat, clipping his nails in an armchair I had never seen anyone sit in. Prüfer standing when I entered with my knock. Klein only looked at me with his grin as greeting. Prüfer and himself wearing their Party pins.
‘You have finished the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ernst,’ Prüfer said.
I missed this was not a question.
‘Not entirely, sir. There are some—’
‘You have finished the plans, Ernst. We have something more pressing. For you.’
I put my hands behind my back, straightened, still tired from rebuilding the beds in our new home last night. I thought only of the coffee pot on my floor.
‘Yes, sir.’ I looked to the sound of Klein catapulting one of his chips of nail. He put the clippers away, brushed his knees. Prüfer ignored.
‘Myself and Herr Sander are to Auschwitz today. Herr Sander himself would work on this otherwise. But we both deem you competent to the task.’ He unlocked his safe.
‘It is not your usual work. This is a patent only. You must draft this one. Yourself. Alone. Scale from the patent drawing. And annotate it as usual.’
‘My draft, Herr Prüfer?’ My voice leapt. I coughed my exuberance away as if it were just an accident of my body not yet awake.
‘The patent is crude,’ he said, ‘it has the Alphabet but it is not correctly scaled. We designed it two years ago. Patented at the request of the SS. It has now become a priority.’ He handed me the single sheet of paper. One drawing and the patent. Stamped by the patent office in Erfurt. The drawing not a good one but the detail was in the script beneath. I had worked on such translations at u
niversity. You needed to turn the writing below the drawing into a draft. Textbook. Final year. I had dreamt of this moment. The drawing did not look like an oven. It looked like a building. A tall, narrow building.
‘There is some urgency to the draft.’ Prüfer picked up his briefcase. ‘I will return Monday. Herr Sander will expect it by Tuesday. You will have to work from home.’
I agreed. Glad to. I had always hoped to be the man working under a lamp in his own comfort. His wife bringing him tea and sandwiches, hushing the children because Daddy is working. And then pulling the bevelled gold chain of the green lamp, to darkness, when the job was done. Pencils and tools away. And satisfied to bed.
But only imagination. Forward in its thinking. The house empty. I do not even have the lamp. Not yet.
‘Tuesday,’ Prüfer reminded. ‘And, Ernst.’ He was firmer now. ‘Show that plan to no-one.’ He left Klein and me alone, did not close his own door on us. It was the first time I had ever seen him not lock his door. Klein saw my thoughts as always.
‘I have the keys,’ he said. ‘Come. Sit, Ernst.’
He in his armchair, me in the wooden swivel in front of him.
‘How is your new home?’ he asked.
‘Very good, sir. Thank you. You have no idea what difference this makes to Etta and I. She is used to richer homes but I have never lived in such a large place. We have so little to fill it.’
He brushed at his lap again.
‘I hope you will have many years to make it yours.’
‘We do not seem to have any neighbours?’
‘Topf owns most of that street. Homes for our best workers. A lot of those families have been gone for years. Early casualties. We do not give them to widows.’ He looked over my shoulder to the door and beamed. ‘Helmut! So good to see you again.’
I turned my head and then stood at the sight of the one-legged colonel filling the door-frame. Klein did not stand until the man swung into the room.
‘Hans,’ he said, looking at me. ‘And Herr Beck. It is good to see you are early to your work.’ His uniform was crumpled, not as pristine as the day before. That is what hotels in Erfurt will do to princes. He took the seat at Prüfer’s desk. Kept his cap on. We sat after him.
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