‘So naturally if I am to spend time with one of their highest employees I should like to know the cut of him. See the future and advantage of our association. Good business, Hans, no? Anyway, Ernst – if you would know – it transpires that Hans here is the son of a drunken farmer. Not even cattle. A crop farmer. A farmer who has sold half the land his family once owned just to keep him in drink. Hans’ own mother walked out on them when he was just a boy. His father has disowned him. That was after you joined the Youth was it not, Hans? Your father paid you to leave his house?’
Klein braked hard. A dust cloud all over us. Paul lurched. Klein faced him. The engine running.
‘You know a lot about me, Herr Reul. And what do you suppose I know about you?’
Paul relaxed back to his sofa.
‘As much as I permit,’ he said. Said nothing on the treatment of his car.
Klein gave his grin, turned back to the gears and started off again. Slow.
‘As you say, sir.’
I made myself small in my seat. Looked out the window, did not know what was going on. Not my world. I studied my throbbing hand.
Klein breathed deep.
‘I am sorry that I have to work for a living, Herr Reul. But I have risen to become the head of my own department. I see no shame in that.’
‘Shame. You do not know the meaning of the word. I work for a living also. But head of the “Special Ovens” department? What exactly are “Special Ovens”, Hans? Would they improve my business? That is my interest.’
‘I thought you, Herr Reul, understood the nature of the camps? Did not your crematoria handle the ashes for the SS?’ Another deflection. Klein dealt them as easy as cards. His tone never changing from anything more than banter over a Martini.
‘Ah, yes. But they stopped asking for my assistance years ago. When do you think they will stop asking for yours?’
I watched Klein. I could see his thoughts shuffling the deck. Deal an ace, a witty retort, a blank dismissal. His knuckles white on the wheel. His face straight as ever. He threw out a card from the bottom of the deck.
‘When it comes that there is no more room in Hell,’ he said. And we were in Erfurt. And Paul stopped asking questions.
Chapter 28
I went home for lunch. Paul and Klein to lunch with the Topfs at their villa. I could tell her that Paul had failed, his morning a failure. I had been there when he went into Buchenwald. No Thälmann. No wire-cutters. My part done. Our part done. Be normal now. Forget about communists, forget about being Jewish. Nothing to do with us. Her husband had done what she asked of him. Sure that it was her turn now. Do as he asked.
The front door was unlatched, as always for my return, our summer lunch of potato salad, beets, poppy-seed bread and half a bottle of Eiswein laid on a blanket in the garden. The last few days tense. Etta would not let our stomachs be so. The tension had come from outside our walls, the worst kind for husband and wife. The world in their bed. But keep it outside if you could. Food a part of that.
We’d had sleepless nights, loveless nights, our new fortunes tinged with dirt and secrets. But the first thing an Austrian woman packs when the Huns are at the door is the food and pickle jars. Whatever was happening in our lives, whatever was at the door, it would be settled around a plate. A simple plate. If you see a feast before you when you come into an Austrian home something terrible has occurred.
‘You are early,’ she said, her legs under her knees. She saw my lightened face. ‘Did …’ and she said nothing more as I sat.
‘Everything is fine,’ I said.
‘What about … what about Thälmann?’
‘That did not happen. Paul never saw him. I think we have done our part now.’
‘Is he safe? Is Paul safe?’
I did not mind her concern about another man. She did not ask about me.
‘He is lunching with the Topfs. All is fine.’
‘It is not fine! What about Thälmann?’
I forked through the food, made a plate. I have a garden. I can eat outside for lunch. It is summer. Bees work around me, her birds waiting for us to leave. My desk a five-minute walk across the street. I could work from home if I wanted. It was fine. A communist imprisoned in Buchenwald the last thing.
‘We can relax, Etta. He wanted to get into the camp and that has happened. He can expect no more from us.’
‘You think that was all this was about?’
‘What else?’ I said, popped a pickled beet into my mouth.
‘It is about our country, Ernst! Did Paul not see anyone?’
‘No.’ I did not say about the man at the fence, or the prisoner with the wheelbarrow and I thought on this. On the wheelbarrow. Perhaps not an accident.
‘I do not see what Paul hoped to gain. We had an SS escort. There was no way he was going to get close to anyone, let alone this Thälmann.’
‘You are wrong. There are communist committees all over the camp. SDP and KDP. A Buchenwald resistance. Christians and Jews with them.’ She rocked on her knees. ‘He must have achieved something. He must have.’ Not a question. Her inner thoughts vocal.
‘Is it not better for us that he didn’t?’ I stopped eating. Her concern for Paul and political prisoners unpalatable. I had become nothing more than her inside man. Her radio news.
‘No!’ Annoyed, a child scolded. ‘What is wrong with you? You think you are safe? That we are safe? Ernst, my parents fled the country they were born in, that their parents were born in. Your wife had to have a forged life just to stay alive! What world is that? You helped draft an oven that serves no other purpose than to kill hundreds a day!’
‘Ovens do not kill,’ but knew I was burying myself in her argument as I did, her logic. I used the deflection of all monsters, of the Kleins of the world. I had learned how to use them, how to deal them.
‘I only draw them. It is my work. How I pay for this food. Your dress.’
She shot up. Pulled the dress over her head, naked before me. She threw it to me. I could not help but smile. I did not want to, an automatic reaction, a blush. Her statement lost on the husband who only ever sees his wife naked in the dark.
‘This is how I would be in one of their showers, Ernst! Take your dress. This is how they would put me in one of your ovens! You will have a wardrobe full of empty dresses soon enough. And not because I would leave you. Or maybe I am just pretty enough that they would keep me alive for a while. What do you think about that? How many wives and daughters have been fated to that?’
She stormed into the house. I heard her run up the stairs. I stayed on the grass. Long enough to drink most of the Eiswein, long enough to let her cool. There was the contradiction in her, in both of us, that I was sympathetic to. We were similar, as I said.
I worked for Topf. I had a career, money, promise. A real home. We had gained much. But she declared guilt when other wives would sigh with relief and I understood this. I had been to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I helped people in Berlin understand the workings of ovens for their prisons. I got paid to do this. Nothing more. And whereas we survived before, we lived now. Lived in the way that as a student you always imagined you would. A good wife, good work, content. Reward for the studious life you endured. But that was how the corporate world worked, must work. It was its own world. Worked on different rules.
Here is the expense account, here is the company automobile, here is the house, here are the shares.
It is not enough to work and work well. It is to aspire. But the whole world cannot be aspirational. Just the privilege of a select few, and it has to be few, only the illusion that it can be for all. Someone has to sweep the streets. And some of us have to build ovens.
Professor Litt had told us that the Greeks’ democracy only worked in the hands of a select few. Not everyone deserves a chance, a vote. When that happens dictatorships follow. And succeed. Always.
‘It is flawed,’ he said. ‘A voter will only vote for that which benefits him, not for the treasury. And t
he elect work only on this premise. To satisfy the voter. But the elect know they have to work for the treasury. They cannot do both. And then it doesn’t work. Eventually you run out of other people’s money. And then the dictator emerges telling only his system will correct. And it does. The biggest fraud perpetuated on us all is that we live in a democracy. It does not work. People have no control. Every successful country is run by silent men you did not vote for. Their names not on the paper. That works. Or else you have dictatorships, and the horror to those select men who run us all is that the dictatorship works better.’
I remember him slamming his desk, to wake those of us at the back, or to rage at something he saw coming.
The SA still carried him out by his elbows a month later. It did not matter about his economic theories and his support. He had been born wrong. He had forgot that part of dictatorships.
I did not go back to work that afternoon. I did not want Etta to be alone. Besides, I was only across the street, they could call me if they wished. I worked from home more days than not as far as my floor knew and Prüfer and Sander were away. I was sure the Topfs would not call me directly and Klein was in their company. It seemed a day for an afternoon off work. A prison visit in the morning, an August sun, all the bosses at play or out of the city. Truancy expected.
I made tea for us, and Etta calmed. We talked nothing more on our garden conversation. It had all been said, consigned. That is how marriages work, the chords of dissonance making a compatible tune eventually. You steam. You cool. Touch each other as you pass. And then, a little after five, as we warmed up the radio, the telephone rang.
It was Paul. I was relieved it was not Klein, then decided that Paul a worse call.
‘Ernst,’ he said. ‘Thank you for today. Is Etta well?’
‘What do you want?’ I was calm. Controlled the telephone in my own house. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No. Nothing.’ His voice went low, I imagined him looking around his room, peering round his curtains. His home? His office? Topf’s office?
‘I just wanted to say thank you,’ he said. The confidence had gone from his voice. ‘And advise.’
I looked over to Etta rigid in her chair. She turned off the radio.
‘Advise what?’
‘Go to work tomorrow. As normal.’
I needed to be told this? I could feel myself riling. Stood straight, was about to yell down the mouthpiece. He must have sensed my anger. Spoke quickly against it.
‘But be sick for Thursday,’ he said. ‘Or something. Feign something. Say you will not be in for Thursday. Make something up. Please.’
‘Why?’
Silence. Again I saw him at his curtains, or covering the telephone from Topf. He had not said where he was calling from.
‘It is not safe.’ Genuine concern. ‘Please. Do not be there, Ernst. And stay indoors. You and Etta. Do not go out. At all.’
‘What is this? Have you endangered us?’
‘No.’ Another pause. ‘There is nothing to worry. If I tell you I … I would not be confident in your approach to this. Trust me, Ernst. There is probably nothing to be concerned about but I do not have enough information. Do not go out on Thursday. Please, Ernst. As your friend. Trust me on this. And thank you again for today.’
The telephone went dead. No goodbye. No wait for my reply. I held the receiver out, did not put it back. Let Etta hear the tone.
‘What did he want?’ She leaned forward.
‘He told me not to go into work. On Thursday. To stay home. Both of us to stay home.’
‘What for? Why?’
‘He did not say.’ I put the telephone back to its cradle. I had admired it once. Hated it now. What did it ever bring but bad news? It shortened peace. Its prominence in the room not justified. The Pandora’s box of the modern. The new insistent knock on the door. The screaming mad aunt in the corner demanding attention just to listen to her admonishment of you. A machine that should never have been put into our homes. As wicked as the post had become. Once a means for news, for the beloved, for the distant, gently sewing together countries and families rent apart. Now for bills, for punishments, for government orders, for telling war widows that they have also lost their sons. The telephone worse for making families jump in their armchairs.
‘Ernst?’ Etta broke me from my statue. ‘What does it mean?’
I put my hands out to her. She took them as if we were about to dance. We hung there just the same. Waiting for the wedding clap to start us moving around the floor.
‘I do not know. I will tell Klein tomorrow that I am sick. We will stay in. Thursday.’
She held me. Felt like days since she had done this, and since I had responded.
‘Etta?’ I whispered to her ear. She said nothing, nuzzled into me. ‘I will quit my job. Take a reference and move on. If I can. It was not so bad before. Was it?’
She kissed my cheek. She smelled of a fair. Like our first day.
‘It was wonderful,’ she said. ‘Wonderful.’
That was all I had to do. Etta and I similar again. The husband protecting again. If there would be no ovens on my desk, in my work, there would be no KPD in camps, no SS looking for a Jewess. Just us. Surviving until the end of the war. Like millions. Waiting. That was what the world did, what we all did, the audience, the seats in the theatres. We waited. Popcorn, black and white screen, a bright light in the dark. Waited. For the show to start, and end with us only watching. Not a part of the drama. Safe from it. Looking at your watch. Almost waiting for the movie to end. Hand in hand as they raise the lights, drop the curtain, and you walk out into the light again.
*
I went to Klein’s office first thing. He at his window, staring out to the mountain and the smoke from the camp. Eight in the morning. Smoke from the camp. His own Camel smoke rising with it.
‘What is it, Ernst?’ Did not turn from the glass.
‘Sir. With Herr Prüfer not back I am unsure what I am to work on today. I have no oven work. Should I go to the third floor? Help with other projects?’
He still did not turn.
‘I have Prüfer’s keys,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could work on another copy for the continuous oven. I am sure other camps would have need. One copy just for Berlin would slow things down if another is wanted elsewhere. We could pre-empt that. You and I.’
‘Would Herr Prüfer not mind?’ I deflected instantly. Klein’s pupil. ‘I would have to work from home as per his instruction, sir.’
‘Or his office,’ he said. ‘He has an ISIS board.’ Still only the back of his head and the slow draw of his cigarette.
‘I do not think I would be comfortable working in Herr Prüfer’s rooms, sir. He may not approve.’
He half-turned.
‘I am the head of the Special Ovens Department, Ernst. I am sure he would not mind. You would be under my order.’
‘Of course, sir.’
He put out his Camel, returned to his desk.
‘Ernst,’ he said. ‘Your friend. Herr Reul. What he said about me yesterday. In the car. You remember that?’
‘I was not paying attention, sir.’
‘Thank you, Ernst.’ Appeared to mean this. ‘And thank you for telling him that you did not wish to hear it.’ He smiled at me. Not his puppet smile. ‘I will remember that, Ernst. He is your friend after all.’
‘Only a school friend,’ I said quickly. ‘We have barely seen each other since.’ Lying easy to me now. Lies as long and empty as the streets.
‘Really? Yet you told him about the ovens you were working on?’
He was still, studied me.
I did not flinch.
‘For advice. And to bargain a sale. For the company.’
‘Yes.’ He stood over his desk, still smiling. ‘Of course. Well done.’ He looked to the files and papers on his desk, rested his hands on the edge of the wood.
‘You know, what he said – about me – was true. You know this?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It is,’ he said. Just two words. ‘It is.’ Expressed years in them. You dread to hear men speak so. You look down at your feet, smile at corners. Then meet their eyes.
‘Yesterday Herr Reul had lunch with Ernst and Ludwig Topf. The widow Topf also there. They ate in the garden. On lawn chairs with gin cocktails. Laughed and talked of things I do not understand. Familiar only to them. I served them. I brought the drinks and the food from the kitchen. They talked and laughed to themselves each time I went into the house carrying my tray. Laughed at my back. They talked of operas and books. I was not even there to them. And you know something, Ernst?’
His face was friendly to me now, as if it was he and not Paul and I that were childhood friends.
‘I am glad they did not ask me to join in their talk.’ His voice rose. ‘I would not have known what to say.’ He sat down, pulled another Camel from his personal packet not the chrome orb. Offered me one and his onyx table-lighter. He bid me to sit opposite him.
‘When I was a boy my father was drunk every day. I was not educated at home. That was not true. No private schooling. He just did not take me to school. My mother left with my sister when she got fed up of clearing bottles. I did not stay by choice. She just did not take me with her. Our fields would become overgrown and my father would pay locals to do the work for him and take half for their efforts. He was devouring the estate left to him. And you know what I sometimes think? I think that – now that I am older – it was because he never wanted to do this with his life. It had been put upon him. And he paid me to leave because he did not want the same fate to be put to me. Not because he hated me.’
I smoked nervously. Not a conversation. I was a man’s audience. Sometimes you do this. Usually you are sober, the other drunk. This was morning. I imagined he had already told this speech to himself in his empty house the night before. In smoking jacket and Martinis. Shouting at his walls.
‘Yes, I joined the Youth.’ He waved this away. ‘You know why? The radio was all I had. Everything He said spoke to me. Every problem I had He told me was happening all over our country. Dispossessed men like my father, like your father, men who fought for our country, were suffering due to the betrayal of the Bolsheviks and the Jews and laws imposed by those who sided with them. We were the victims. And if we were to succeed, to persevere, it would be through us. From the youth. It was hope, Ernst.’
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