‘You moved in successfully, Herr Beck? Good, good. I hope Hans has not been calling you day and night yet, eh?’
The telephone. Did he mean that? Knew of that?
‘Does he have the plan, Hans?’
Klein confirmed for me. Voss approving.
‘So. You will commence directly on it, Ernst. Good. I must meet with the Topfs this morning at their villa before I return to Berlin. With the plan.’ He looked at me. Confirmed. ‘It is to be back here for Tuesday.’
‘Yes, Senior-Colonel,’ I said.
He leaned back.
‘Have you looked at it yet?’
‘No, Senior-Colonel. I will study it at my table.’
Voss looked to Klein.
‘He means he will work on it at home. Not on the floor,’ Klein corrected.
This was now my understanding. I did not comprehend that Prüfer had meant that. To totally work from home.
Show that plan to no-one.
Fool. Idiot.
‘I understand.’ The paper in my hands.
Voss comfortable in Prüfer’s chair. His crutch beside him, taller than him, and his hand never left it, like it was his bride as they posed for their wedding-day photographs, pretending to sign the register as they make you do.
‘Do you understand, Ernst?’ He drew me to look at him. ‘Let me explain something to you. Something that I hope will help. How you will save lives.’
I raised in my seat. The coffee pot still in my thoughts, my throat dry. I was the only one still drowsy. I blinked and sniffed to concentrate. This was significant. I could tell. Could tell that something of great importance was about to be imparted. And I was about to be departed from the norm of my work.
These moments are rare. The knock at the door late at night that I still feared. A policeman and his handcuffs, a soldier’s open holster through Klein’s open car window. The stand in a courtroom. When a new life starts. A physical feeling. And you change in a heartbeat. I was between them. One in an armchair. Relaxed as listening to a radio. The other in cap and uniform in a leather chair that was not his.
‘Ernst,’ Voss said my name. Almost dubious of it. His use of it like a gunshot to me when it did not come with the formality of ‘Herr Beck’. I think he knew this when he spoke to civilians. The uniform does this.
‘Some years ago it began to concern the Party that our internal work was having a detrimental effect on our soldiers. The police have managed many successful cleansing operations of criminals throughout the Reich, but our soldiers were not bred to be … monsters. They are German sons. Good men. With experience we have learned that soldiers do not appreciate being burdened with the execution of criminals. We are slowly making brutes. Did not anticipate this. We cannot send men home to their families so. We did not perceive that there would be so many criminals against. And who could have foreseen the typhus to its extent? And that leaves us with a problem.’ He could read the questioning in my face, as if it were a question he had already expected to answer not from me, a draughtsman in a factory, but from on high, from other chambers.
‘One would think that the typhus is so virulent we would quarantine those infected into their own camps. And that would be the way. But camp commanders hide the numbers of the infected. We move prisoners based on age, race, religion. Those that can work, those that cannot. To put them where they can be of most use and where they can be with their own. The disease becomes secondary. No commander wants to admit that he has typhus in his camp. But they move them anyway. And then it is the other’s problem. But we are trying to prevent this.’ He paused to remove his cap to the desk, made sure I was paying attention.
‘So. We have the problem that we require our soldiers to be executioners. Force this upon them. To kill the sick and the criminal. A good soldier would accept that he might, in his duty, have to execute criminals. But nothing like in the numbers now. It is our concern for the mental state of our men, for now, for the future, that alternatives must be sought.’
I looked at them both.
‘But this is an oven, yes?’ I said. ‘It has nothing to do with … as you said … executions … I mean—’
Voss finished my thoughts.
‘Yes. It is an oven. The SS would never consider involving any of its contractors in internal procedures. What we need is something to help us dispose of the consequences of our increased output. Something which does not put further strain on our men.’ He looked to Klein then back to me. His lips tight. Words held back. New ones forming. Ruminating on what to tell a civilian.
‘We should all be concerned for our young men’s well-being. We cannot afford the time, the distraction, to shoot every criminal. The morale, and the morals, are not good.’ He swept his hand across the table, sending an imagined mess to the floor. ‘If you find the Devil you must kill him quickly. I believe that is an old Russian saying. Hans can explain further.’ Done with me. ‘I know nothing of ovens.’ He sat back. Looked at neither of us. Klein cleared his throat.
‘You see the drawing, Ernst?’
I opened it out. Klein held it with me, leaned forward so that I could smell his cologne and his cigarette breath.
‘This is a four-level oven design. It will require a major construction or adaptation. For Auschwitz first of all. You have a friend in Weimar who is a crematorist, yes? He will understand that when you have an oven,’ he started to use his hands to visualise, ‘if you put more bodies in the same oven they burn not as one, but as many. If it takes one hour to burn one unfortunate it takes four hours to burn four. No matter the fuel. That is just the rules. What we have here, what you have here, is a design that will revolutionise the process.’
We went through it together. Voss watching.
A brick-built oven. Still using coal. Single furnace. Four stations above the furnace, a single muffle. One door. One door in.
Beyond that door grates going downwards, angled, would convey the corpse to the next section and the next conveyor, and free the muffle for another corpse to enter and, when that was cleared, another would go in. And then another and another.
By the rollers under their backs the bodies would trundle down all four floors, being consumed all the while by the raging furnace below and, using their own bodies as fuel, the heat could be maintained. Reducing the demand for coal.
The burning bodies moving down each level would begin the cremation of the body that entered above and so on. One door in. One furnace at the bottom filled with ash and the fuel of the burning fat. One door out. Dozens, maybe hundreds an hour. The rules vanquished.
‘They will be cremated by the motion of them, Ernst,’ Klein said. One special unit at the top. One special unit at the bottom. They will not have to wait for the bodies to be cremated and removed before they can enter more. It will be a continuous oven. The only problem I conceive is one of blockage. But that is why it is on four levels. Each station will have a door accessible by ladder. One floor at the top, ground level, so no chutes, and then the furnace in the basement. All other access is by ladder. Make that clear.’
‘Do you understand now, Ernst?’ Voss said.
I took the draft, my draft, from Klein’s hands and smiled. My possession.
‘Yes, Senior-Colonel,’ I said. ‘I understand.’ But not true. I understood the efficiency. But also understood what Paul had told me about all the ashes. About how he no longer received the urns with the clay plaques. One furnace. Ashes mixed. The ashes of a bonfire. An oven to consume hundreds a day. A conveyor belt of the dead producing a mass of limbs and torsos and heads with no memory reduced to a sludge. A slag pile of teeth sifted as if from a tremendous beast.
‘Excellent,’ Voss said. ‘But you will need to visit Auschwitz to understand the scale of your work.’ He stood, replaced his cap. His morning and lunch with the Topfs to come. My visit done. Checked off.
‘We will arrange for yourself and Hans to visit Monday. At Auschwitz you can see the building for which it is intended. A surveyor wil
l attend. If you see any problem with the plan you can discuss it with him.’ A smile as he shook my hand. ‘At least you will not need a coat, Ernst. Auschwitz is quite pleasant at this time.’
*
I had my tools from university, my portable set, and I could work on the kitchen table. The kitchen almost larger than our whole living-room in our old place and I would not get in Etta’s way. So no matter that there was no desk or green lamp in a study with children at my feet. That would come. This work the first step to that. I had passed my studies in the shrunken rooms of my parents’ house. A kitchen table was a plain in comparison.
‘It is good to have you at home to work.’ Etta touched my shoulder as she passed to fill a jug with water and lemon slices. ‘I get lonely in this big house.’
‘Or broody,’ I said, not lifting my eyes from the paper. ‘But I must have this done for Monday, Etta. I will stay in for the weekend.’
‘Could you not join me in the garden for an hour today though? It is such a beautiful day. You have not been in the garden.’
‘You mean you want me to work on the garden.’
‘It is very overgrown. It could be so nice out there. What are you working on anyway?’ She came to my shoulder.
Show that plan to no-one.
But she would not understand it.
‘It is for a new oven. For large abattoirs.’ I drew my finger down the sliding levels. ‘It works on a conveyor system. In at the top. Out at the bottom here. Much more fuel efficient and faster.’
‘How is it faster?’
‘You do not need to have to wait for one animal to be cremated before putting in the next. They burn as they move down each stage. The one below is fuel for the one above.’
She screwed her face. ‘That sounds gruesome.’
‘Everything more efficient usually is. That is all engineers do. Improve on the gruesomeness of the generation before.’
‘You must finish this by Monday? Can you do that?’
One of our courses at university was to estimate work in advance and calculate your charge on hours taken to complete. I had done this the moment I had seen the patent.
‘It is only eight hours’ work in all. But my best work. So I am aiming for three o’clock Sunday. With annotations.’
She leaned by my ear, still looking. Covering it, hiding it would be unfaithful. There are husbands like that. Not I.
‘This is not for the camps? Is it? Ernst?’
I took my hands away from it. Pushed it and the table away an inch. Just to make space to reach into my waistcoat for my cigarette pouch.
‘It is an improvement. Over the current system. I am just drafting it, Etta. I have no say where it operates.’
She straightened, her hand off my shoulder. Put down her water jug.
‘It is, isn’t it? You’re drafting this thing for corpses. Not for pigs. For hundreds of corpses. Aren’t you?’
‘The typhus, Etta. An epidemic. The old ovens can’t cope.’ Did not mention the colonel. His speech about the soldiers not returning home as brutes. That they did not want to shoot or hang people any more.
‘You still believe this? That typhus is the reason? Or dysentery? Or criminals, or whatever it will be tomorrow.’
‘What do you want me to believe? I work for a company that makes ovens. For use. What if I designed light bulbs for political prisons, would that be wrong? Am I to be out of a work for … for choosing what I am to work on? Do you think those lemons in your water are free? That’s a day’s wage for some.’
‘Then lemons should not cost so much. Whose fault is that?’
She slammed down the jug. Went to the cupboard for some peanuts. Bird peanuts and crumbs. For pigeons in the park. A beggar on the street sold them for any coin given, for a paper bag of sweepings from the bars. Legal begging. Like the match-seller, or the shoelace man. No-one needed the half-empty match boxes or the frayed shoelaces plucked from the lost shoes of the ghetto, sold from an old cigar-box tied around the neck with string. You bought a licence to sell junk on the street, licence to beg. The way some people in the maps lived now. Most people ate the nuts themselves. Etta bought them for their original purpose.
She had made a table for the birds in the garden. Just a wicker tray on a post. I followed her out, apologised. Apologised for nothing. What was right in her was wrong in me. A man doesn’t work if he does no wrong. I watched her as I smoked. Spoke across the garden. To ease. To be us again.
‘You like feeding them, don’t you? Even in spring. They can feed themselves in spring.’
She sprinkled the food.
‘They’ve fed themselves for millions of years. I don’t do it for that. It’s like I’m God.’ She closed the bag, stepped back from the tray, watched the finches twitch in the bushes, eye her suspiciously.
‘I can watch them eat. Or I can leave. It doesn’t matter that I’m here. They’ll do the same. Hoard the food, fight over it, feed their families or just themselves. They’ll never eat from my hand. When it’s empty they might wonder where I am. Stand on the handle of the door. Tap on the window. They do that. Either way, whether I watch them or not, the outcome is the same. They eat whether I watch them or not. Impartial as God. And he is. Impartial. He has to be. Or none of this would happen.’
She smiled, as if in a mirror at her reflection, walked past me, put the bag to the cupboard and took up her jug. ‘If I died tomorrow they would go somewhere else. Would not miss me. I don’t do it for them.’ Took her water and sat in the garden, her back to me. Watched the birds.
I went back to my work. Did not tell her I would be taking the design to Auschwitz. I would wait until she went shopping tomorrow, then tell her I had received a telephone call from Klein while she was out, that way it would only be one night for her to concern herself. Wives never understand we lie only to protect. All work, and all marriage, has little, little lies alongside huge truths. Every beautiful serene painting hides the noise and coarseness of hammer against nail behind its frame.
*
We had taken the exit for Klettbach. Klein could open up his super-six. Get rid of some frustration. He was not happy to be going to Poland, to the camp. He had expressed such before, preferred to allow Prüfer and the engineers such opportunity.
‘We will luncheon in Dresden,’ he said. ‘Another two hours.’ He had to shout over the engine’s roar or he just wanted to shout at me for dragging him into this rupture from his country house. Eight o’clock he had picked me up, intending to get the work done at the camp before nightfall and then overnight in a hotel in the town. I had packed my bag with Etta cursing.
*
‘Auschwitz now is it? What next? Berlin? For Christ’s sake, Ernst!’ She paced the bedroom. The sparse bedroom gilded by only her curtains stained with my tobacco.
‘It is my job, Etta. What else can I do? Colonel Voss insisted.’
I did not tell her about the one leg. The conjured image of the comedic pirate not suited. Or the horrific one of a body without form below. A body that never had two legs. How could I give that image to my wife sleeping alone tonight?
Was it fact now or rumour still about the lorries of disabled and mentally affected in the basements of manse houses or never leaving the covered vans while the slow carbon monoxide came? How many other SS officers were there from the first war and this one with one leg or one arm, one eye, limps and stutters, metal plates over their skulls? Clearly not disabled enough.
‘What else am I to do?’ I repeated. ‘What choice?’
She slammed the door. She had other bedrooms to sleep in now. Even if there were no beds in them.
*
Klein mellowed with the eating of the road by his Opel. He pointed to the towns as we sped.
‘See, this is the problem, Ernst. We have so many cities, such a population. We do not have the land or resources to feed us all. It is the fault of the treaties forced upon us from the last war that has driven us.’ He nodded to himself, approved his own
words. ‘It is only economics. A fellow wrote a book about it. The same year our leader’s book came out. And the other sold more than his.’
‘Sir?’
He rapped the wheel, rapped out his words.
‘We need more land. The only way a race can expand is to expand its frontiers. Like the Americans, no? They displaced the Indians, the Mexicans, pushed the French and English up north to freeze. Everyone accepts that as history. Are we doing more? Wait until you see Poland. Endless fields. We could feed for a thousand years. We are at war over carrots and pigs. They want us to starve out of existence. So we turn the tables. We will starve them instead. No bullets. And then we will win. And it has always been about the east. Every war for a thousand years. It starts with the great cities but it always ends in the east. That is where the land is, the ports, the middle hub everyone wants. For trade. Oil. That is why the Jew chooses it as his promised land. No-one has ever wanted to trade with the West. All the world wants the East and where it leads. Everything is there. It is all there. Where civilisation comes from. That is where you conquer. The rifles will become shovels. You cannot farm Paris and the only oil is on their bread. The Russians want the same. They do not want to beat us. They want what we want. Thousands of years and the world has not changed. We are all following the emperors before us.’
I looked out the window. I had studied the wrong books. Goethe not a farmer. Klein’s wing-tips clearly farm boots and I had only observed them wrong. His Opel a tractor. Or someone else was to till his fields and bring him his bounty. Who would that be? But this not a discussion for a junior draughtsman.
I could not wait to reach Dresden. One thing it is impossible to explain to the man who will drive hundreds of miles in his automobile rather than rub shoulders on a train is that at least a train has a convenience, an eating car that will sell you a tea or a soup. But then it would not be under his own power. His control. I still did not see the need to own a vehicle in a city other than for show.
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