He let his words stall me, stall the air in the room.
‘My father was employing Jews on his farm. Probably too drunk to even know it. I turned him in. Years ago. When that all mattered. At least that stopped his drinking. So I did that much for him. Now get back to your desk. Do not think I have forgotten about your malingering injury. You have had a day off work for nothing.’
He picked up a pen, neglected to remove the top before he snatched and slid a sheet of paper under it.
‘I am sorry, Herr Klein. For your … loss I mean, not my hand … I—’
‘Out!’ He shouted, head down, a wavering arm to the door. ‘Get out!’ His roar the same as the SS officer with the pistol at the Little Camp.
I shut the door softly. Did not know what I had left in that room. It dragged behind me. Heavier as I moved along the corridor away from it.
The last week of August. Long for us all.
*
Etta was amused about my hand. I explained that I had become so accustomed to bandaging my hand I never noticed it was healed. I was not deceiving her. It was how I felt. I never mentioned about the pain. The pain that was not there.
I did not tell her about Klein’s telephone call. I could only think that it might stoke the wrong feelings, her old leanings. I told her I would be in trouble with Klein for arranging a day to see a doctor over it.
‘You are leaving anyway.’
‘I will have to give four weeks’ notice. If I am to be paid.’
She went quiet at this. We were in the parlour, sitting with the radio on low, a beer each, the smell of supper cooking from the kitchen, telling each other about our day. How it should be.
‘I suppose that cannot be helped.’
We did not speak of her getting her old job back. I would not say anything against, but silently we agreed. Too many associations that went with it.
I sat back in my old armchair thinking of Klein, no, not Klein, his father. No name for me to know. I put Colonel Pister’s face on him, merged them. Pister pulling bricks off his wife and daughter, finding Klein’s father’s face, looking into his own face smashed and broken.
He put his own father into Buchenwald.
All I could think of. I looked at Etta. If it came to it, if the other shoe dropped, would he concern himself with us as much. His own father. If he …
I got up to serve supper, to distract, did not want to think on it any longer. It was Friday. A week in August with a year’s devastation. I would accept with a shrug of mute acceptance, would not be surprised or concerned, if I was given the divine knowledge that by Monday the world would be over.
Chapter 32
I gave my notice in on Monday. Gave the envelope to Klein. Although I did not want to see him I could face Prüfer even less. It would feel like a betrayal to the man who had hired me, even if it was only because I was new, naive, and not because I was of any special talent. I was only local, available. New.
‘Why do you want to leave, Ernst?’ Klein not looking at me, reading my polite and grateful letter. The letter did not say my true reasons, but it could be detected, its truth hidden in its apology. But lying to Klein would be pointless. We knew each other now. Nothing went past him. In his singularity, his volunteered solitary, he had probably opened up to me more than anyone in his life. Nothing to be proud of. He probably did not have anyone else in his life. And he would not be judged for it. It was his choice, not his fate.
‘I do not believe I can work in the Special Ovens Department any more, sir.’ I watched the letter hit the desk.
‘What about another department? Topf has spoken highly of you. That sale with your friend in Weimar has raised your status. Or is it Topf particularly that you want to leave?’
This. This what he always did. I had begun to measure him over the months and even when I knew his tricks they still worked when other magicians will only show you a trick once. He could imply, innocently, authoritatively, that you were a fool, that you had made the wrong decision and here is a branch for you to reach out to and change your mind and we will say no more about it.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is not because of Topf. It is for myself. And … I do not think I can express why. Not adequately.’ If I did not say why I could not attempt to lie.
He watched me. Expressionless. Like listening to a recording of my voice.
‘So. You would leave good employ in wartime for reasons you cannot express. When your country has enemies on its borders, rather than assist, you would prefer to run. Is there a reason that you cannot tell me? Or am I not permitted to know why you are fleeing? Or does your not telling answer the question?’
Skill. An amazing skill. Marvellous. Unless you are the receiver. I would not stutter and gibber an excuse. Not rattled. I would deflect. As he would.
‘Four weeks’ notice is not running, sir. I will work on my commitments until then. I know the SS and Topf have been satisfied. I have let no-one down except myself.’
He cooled at this, moved to behind his desk, picked up my letter, folded it back into the envelope as he spoke.
‘I cannot accept your resignation, Ernst.’ He answered me before I could ask. ‘In your own words you have fashioned my reply. Your work is confidential to the SS. Contracts of national importance. If you were working on private concerns I am sure it would not be an issue. But, as it is not, you must remain.’ He sat down. Did not pass the envelope back.
‘I cannot leave?’
‘No. Conditionally illegal to do so. And the SS would need to know why. I’m sure they would be curious. Why a non-party member decided to give up his generous work and his funded home on some unforthcoming whim.’ Then lighter now. As he always did. Bees in one hand, honey in the other.
‘It is for your own good. Your own protection, Ernst. How would it look if I were forced to admit that my own top man feigned a day off work on the day that Buchenwald was bombed? A faked injury. And then he resigns. What would you think of that? Even if I could let you go that would not be the end of it. My hands are bound as much as yours.’ He pointed at my tie. ‘You still wear a pin that I gave you. How will that look? And are you not thinking of your wife? You think every man only works pleasantly? Do we not shovel shit to provide? I am sure that if I were married, had dependants, I would not just draft ovens to provide.’ He sat back. ‘I would fill them if I had to.’
I took a step to the desk.
‘You have.’
I did not think I meant to say such. He could take any meaning he wanted from it. If I meant his father then I meant his father. A flush on his neck. Only the third time I had seen him flare. The first in the limousine with Paul. The next after the call from the camp. I the third.
I took the envelope, went to leave, less nervous than when I entered. The confidence giddying. The next words encouraged by it. A fool’s pride.
‘That is where we differ, Hans.’
‘You will be docked two days’ pay for your malingering,’ he said to my back. I paused in the doorway. He had stopped fuming.
‘My hand did hurt, sir. I wonder what part of you might.’
Not a question. I shut the door. Went to my board. I shivered for an hour. Used to my hands shaking. I expected to see Klein again but he did not show. I expected to see Gestapo appear at the open door of my floor. They did not show.
I walked home half disappointed that they had not.
I would have had some dignity then.
*
The first weeks in September the radio reported nothing but the screaming rant of victories throughout Belgium and Holland. I imagined the announcer standing at his desk, his sweat pouring over the microphone, arms flailing in salute after salute as the room burned about him. Even the most faithful souls, with black, red and white in their hearts must have found it clotting the same heart to map victories with an ever-shrinking defensive border drawing closer, enemies clawing at their chests. You put the map on your wall, drew the lines. And saw.
‘This
is where we’ll make our stand!’ A triumphant flatulence. A caged lion’s roar.
You take a pin. Stab it in the heart where the lines are circling. Like in all those Westerns He loves. When the settlers circle their wagons. Except we were the opposite, the Indians inside the wheeling wagons, the heroes without. A Laurel and Hardy Western. And the pin lands in Berlin.
I should never have gone to university. Would not have such thoughts otherwise. I should be my father now. Whistling across the bridge, buying what he could and only grateful. Grateful for surviving winter. Men like Klein eyeing new cars, old men whistling because they survived the winter. That should have been me. That should have been me whistling and swinging my shopping bag, tipping my hat to the men I went to school with. The ones still alive from the last time. Grateful to be alive. Permitted to live. I had to tell my wife that I could not leave my work because my company worked under SS contract. That sounded pathetic even as I said it. I wanted to be my father. To be simple and ignorant. Honestly ignorant. To celebrate surviving winter with my wife.
‘You have to stay?’ Her voice a whisper, an intimate sound. The sound of lips against ears.
‘I have no choice. The SS. Topf works under contract. Apart from the ovens there are the plane parts. Probably a dozen other projects. It is illegal to leave.’
‘So your Klein says.’
‘He is not my Klein. And he is right. I will stay until … it cannot be long now.’
‘People said that last year.’ She pulled her shawl around her. Not against the cold.
‘On the other hand if I cannot leave then I cannot be fired.’
I did not mean this to be flippant. It just came out. An obvious conclusion. Etta scowled, drew her shawl tighter.
‘There are lots of things they could do. If they wanted rid.’
*
September. A warm September. My favourite month. Despite the war. I think you always prefer the month you were born. Not because of your birthday. Just the season you were born in. You carry the memory of the moment your skin first felt the air. Uncomfortable in other seasons. Winter children embrace the snow. Spring daughters gather flowers. September sons stand and watch cool setting suns glow across red leaves.
Ash on the leaves. A greasy ash when you plucked them. We did not mark my birthday.
PART THREE
Chapter 33
January 1945
It was rumoured, in whispers, that we had lost more soldiers in the last year than the rest of the war combined. The whole of Europe a cemetery. As it was used to being. New men lay above the bodies of the fallen from the century before, from the last time a would-be emperor marched.
There was no good Christmas for any. Even the Merchants’ Bridge conceded. No lights strewn across the buildings which might guide in planes to bomb it. This the first year I had known it without. To not smell the hot chocolate and marzipan from the street sellers, to not hear the tubas and accordions jolly the market. The sounds and smells of my childhood taken, perhaps never to return. This is what prison is. It is not the walls. It is the absence. But a prisoner knows with each day his sentence becomes shorter. We had no calendar to count.
In the months before Christmas the grand idea of the ‘People’s Militia’ sprang up. Old men and invalids called to service, enrolled with an armband and archaic or captured guns with the wrong ammunition to protect their streets. Not unusual to see an old fellow walk the quarter with a medieval crossbow purloined from one of our museums. My father fortunately too old for this foolishness.
Erfurt under the jurisdiction of the Weimar administration, had no Party office for ourselves. Only those previously deemed unfit for service, now cured miraculously by a piece of paper, and those not involved in ‘essential’ works were called and sworn. Those of us at Topf exempt. Building ovens, maintaining them, essential to the war effort still. Paul Reul also exempt. No-one with pages left in his chequebook was marching anywhere.
Occasionally Paul telephoned, never spoke to Etta, asked how things were in Erfurt, told me about Weimar. He never visited. For whatever his politics he had the quality of manners to respect our wishes. Respect and discretion. Rare now.
Only one time did his tone change to the serious Paul. It was mid-January.
‘Maybe Etta and yourself should consider getting out. To Switzerland. Go to her parents.’
‘I cannot leave the factory. I told you.’
‘Would it matter so much if you just did not turn up? You could be on the train before they noticed.’
‘What train? What are you talking about?’
He explained it as if the map was in his hand and he was reading it to me over the telephone. A ticket to Stuttgart. From there a transfer to Zurich. Eight hours to change your life. Buy the tickets as returns and only in those stages. Stuttgart. Zurich.
‘I do not think that would be allowed,’ I said.
‘You said that about my getting into Buchenwald.’ And he was right. The chequebook. You could buy anything now. Did not have to beg mercy at the ticket office. A hundred marks could get you to the moon. I had six hundred.
I put down the telephone.
*
Prüfer and Sander were always at Topf now. No more visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau, or any camp. The second and third floor were working together. No more SS ovens. Silos, malting equipment, brewing furnaces. Commercial and private work, Paul’s new crematoria. How I expected my work to be when I joined. The normalcy I craved. The factory floor since the bombing of the works at Buchenwald turned over to aircraft parts and munition casings. Anything metal that could be used to assist something to fly or crawl or fire. I was not requested to work from home any more. Nothing secret for Ernst Beck to work on. Finally happy at work. I even began to share jokes with my colleagues and even Klein had stopped seeking me out especially. The shine gone from him. I would sometimes see him from our floor, standing in the car park, smoking slowly, his back to us. One hand in a pocket lifting the back of his jacket, contemplating like Bogart on the number of Johns coming through his nightclub’s doors. I would smile to that back. Actually missed talking with him.
On January thirtieth we were ordered to stay late. He was giving an address on the people’s radio. The twelfth anniversary of his coming. Speakers were wired up from windows to blare over the courtyard and we assembled below, outside the barracks that had been for the camp prisoners. They had all gone now. No-one had questioned this. With the extra work for metal parts we could have used them. No-one questioned this. They had just stopped coming.
It was a good January. Cold, Erfurt cold, which is crisp and dry. We only ever had dusts of snow but always a precipitation in the air, draping the trees and their hills in a perpetual mist that old men believed to be the heated breath of young women anticipating spring.
A screech of electricity before the voice. A whine we were used to. We stared up at the speakers as if they were his eyes, the windows below his moustache and teeth, the roof his black hair. A giant’s face.
The voice calm but sounding like an old man’s throat. A good speech. No rhetoric. A confidence in us as long as we followed his will. He called on the children to fight, on all of us to fight. The old and the sick. And to work. We must work. Was someone not then? Who was he asking?
The only time I looked to my side, looked quizzically for someone doing the same, was at the mention of the Bolshevik Jew, the Jew Russian. Something contradictory always in his speeches. How can they be capitalists and communists? I never understood that. All these years. I had studied economics but knew nothing about its sociology. Maybe they could play both hands and we were just too small to understand. Just accept his word.
Klein was the only one who met my gaze. Standing on the edge of us next to Prüfer, the Topfs and Sander. The cigarette smouldering in one hand, the jacket lifted by the hand in the pocket in his Bogart pose. The look enough to make me salute with the others as the speech ended with the speakers whining like trapped dogs. I slunk
home like the same. Not bolstered by the words. Admonished by them. By Klein’s stare.
And it was the last time we heard His voice.
Chapter 34
A blue cardboard tube no larger than a tin of soup. It sat on Klein’s desk, in the centre of it, the columns of papers and files surrounding like seats in the Colosseum, waiting for it to orate.
‘My father’s ashes.’ He pointed his cigarette at the tube.
I said nothing, hands behind my back. He had called me to his office. Not by appearing at my shoulder or crackling from the speaker on the wall. He had positioned himself at the door and bellowed my name down the rows. All heads to me, followed me as I walked out of my row. Klein gone before I reached the door. Walked to his office alone.
Empty save for him behind his desk. A relief at this. He drew on his Camel like pushing a needle into his veins.
‘I wondered,’ he said, ‘if your friend could arrange to have these placed in Weimar. No service. I do not need that. But there are relatives who might be interested in … in where he is. Just keeping them in the crematoria will be enough.’
‘If you have names I am sure Paul would contact them for you, sir. That is what he does.’
‘No.’ Picked up the tube. ‘That will not be necessary. Get me a bill for what is required to store them. A cupboard will do.’ He came around the desk, gave the tube to me. I took the ashes as softly as I could. Heavier than I imagined. ‘I cannot do it myself, Ernst.’
I took that as he said it, not as I might have interpreted it. Nothing in his voice.
‘I would appreciate if you could do this for me. Next Friday. February ninth. I will pay for your train. Go there first thing. My warrant. I will forget about docking your pay if you do this service. For me.’ He walked back to his desk. The ashes with me. To keep the ashes. ‘Thank you, Ernst.’
Maybe he asked because he did not want to see Paul again. That was it. Why he was asking me. As simple as that. I would hold his father’s ashes in my home for a week.
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