Untitled Robert Lautner

by Robert Lautner

  Etta’s movements in the kitchen broke my haze. I went and drank the last of the coffee with her. Sunday morning small talk a past thing. Only possible to talk of the war that was once distant.

  ‘They would not bomb on a Sunday would they?’ she asked. ‘Not Sunday? We can relax today can’t we?’

  I agreed, but didn’t know. We were all Christian weren’t we? And that thought amused. The definition of Christian, even the definition of religion an oddment of another time, for another time, a peculiarity of a childish mind, as when you saw a group of nuns walking the streets for the first time and gripped your mother’s hand and asked her what the strange wraiths were. And the answer didn’t help your fear.

  My thoughts of the morning, of my doubts, needed Etta’s validation. She had taken Paul’s death like women in war endured everything, absorbed everything. Men write poetry about it. But the women make sure there is a place to sit and write the poetry. There was nothing that could be bombed that could not be loaded onto anything with wheels and rebuilt somewhere else and biscuits and apples would appear from coat pockets while men carried only brandy, tobacco and woe. Paul’s death as ridiculous as everything else.

  ‘Of course it is worth it, Ernst,’ she said. ‘Do you think that plan would survive the war? They will burn all. Everything they have done is criminal. And you talk as if it is all over already. How many times have we thought that? And then another year gets pulled out of a hat.’ The rattling and washing of the percolator and its pieces, another pot prepared as she chided me. No. Not that. Not chiding. A debating campaigner. Campaigning for reason and for what her man needed to be told on a Sunday morning when just about everything else to him seemed a better idea.

  ‘If you think it is done what point to send me to my parents? Or are you suggesting that is not important now? That we stay here like mice and keep quiet, work as normal, pretend they did not ask you to clarify monsters’ ovens that could kill thousands? Or that perhaps they do not concern themselves with Jews any more?’ The whistling kettle did not stall. ‘You know what, Ernst? The only thing I ever truly understood in the KPD, the only thing I learnt, was that the Jew was the only thing they ever concerned themselves with. Trains, slaves, camps, pits and ovens. That is all they ever dreamed of.’

  She caught the kettle before it screamed.

  ‘And they will not want the world to know. And if you think it does not matter then go tell your Klein tomorrow that your wife is a Jew. See what happens. I am sure they will spare the time!’

  Always ‘my Klein’.

  ‘And what if your plan for that monstrosity is the only one that survives their purge? What if no-one ever knows because Ernst Beck never told anybody that Topf built ovens for the SS and not just that but that they wanted to build one taller than a house that could burn hundreds an hour?’

  She busied with the percolator, her back to me, last night’s love forgotten. ‘Maybe Bernie was right. Maybe you are as much a baby-killer as them.’

  I rolled a cigarette. I wanted confidence from her. To give me some virtue I was lacking.

  Sometimes talking to your partner is like climbing to the top of a helter-skelter with your piece of carpet. Five exhausting minutes to climb round and round, wondering the worth of it as your legs and chest burn. Five seconds to come down again, out of breath with carpet burns, and the boy behind you kicks you in the back.

  ‘The telephone needs adjusting,’ I said, walked to the parlour, sat and smoked in my armchair for time enough to calm then shuffled the chair to the telephone’s table.

  I concentrated on the contraption, my hands cooling my anger. She was right. And damn that. I had wanted a virtue, her to tell me I was doing the right thing or even some thing. One person in the maps they lorded over doing something. Instead I was a monster for thinking otherwise. I was not Paul. Not even Bernie KPD. Maybe she wanted the romantic end. Maybe we were supposed to end up in a ditch with bullet holes and a piece of paper in my pocket for an oven design never built. I had no father now. I could only picture hers cupping his cognac, listening to jazz on his long-wave radio, picking her up from the station in his Mercedes and shaking his head. I told you to never marry that boy.

  The mouthpiece unscrewed easily enough, its own thread, no screws. I figured this was the offending piece, pulling the other end up somehow, breaking the connection.

  I was childishly pleased at seeing the inside. The soldering, the magnet and microphone. I had taken the back off my parents’ radio as a boy, looked and prodded inside as if I was journeying into space. The delicate complication of it. The magic. The endless world of a boy with a screwdriver and prying hands. Then the endless red beat of your father’s palm on your backside.

  Such a simple device, the Bakelite just a decoration to conceal only a corded wire running inside to the receiver and the discs of magnet and speaker in the other end. Perhaps the base held the magic. I plied out the speaker, confident I could understand it, sure that it sat wrong, that was all. The machine had to be balanced correctly. The fitting slightly off. I would put it back firmer. Announce it was fixed. Regain some pride.

  Putting it back together I noticed a smaller copper and rubber wire attached to the others. Not soldered. Clipped to the others. I held the speaker and the Bakelite in my hand. Two wires I could understand. Voice, receiver. The working of the third lost. Then perhaps I did not know telephones enough.

  I screwed the mouthpiece back, put the bone to the cradle. And then the child poking inside the radio followed the bite of curiosity.

  The third wire travelled with the braided cords to the rear of the telephone. It wound round them as tightly as a tapeworm, innocuous in daily use, hiding with its brothers. Hiding. Hiding to the fool who had never owned a telephone before. One wire to hear, one to speak. A third wire.

  I stood and stepped away from the black of the telephone, backed away from the thought forming. A third wire. A neighbour with a glass to the wall. Invisible behind the wall.

  Etta came in with coffee, began to apologise for her speech then questioned the ridiculousness of the man horrified in an empty room. She put the coffee down gently, gently to not shock the maniac backing from a telephone.

  ‘Ernst?’

  I gave her my dismay. In a look. From her, to the device on the little table. The device they had put in our home. Put there before we moved in. Not there when we looked at the house.

  ‘Etta?’ I whispered. Instinctive to do so. ‘Etta, do you think they can record telephones? I think there is a wire in the phone that shouldn’t—’

  It rang. In reply to me.

  It rang. On a Sunday.

  Chapter 41

  It rang five times before the bell finally echoed off while we stared at it. When they made these things did they intend for the ring to be so aggressive, a deliberate thought?

  Make it loud and assertive. It is what they are used to. They will answer and do what it says. Germany embraced the telephone like no other country.

  Before we could speak it started again. We held each other. Foolish. Held each other as if the thing were about to spit bullets.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Etta said, pulled away.

  ‘No,’ I said. A terror in me. I could only think that they knew I had tampered. The dial on the base an all-seeing eye. A voice on the other end about to yell at me, call me in, admonish me for touching, for questioning. But if we did not answer? Would the rap on the door follow, the jackboot to the frame, the rifles and helmets, the cap with the skull? We lived in a country that feared men who walked in pairs with leather coats and fedoras. Caps and badges at least meant arrest, records. You disappeared when the others came.

  ‘I will get it,’ she said. ‘You do not have to be home. I’ll say you are not here. But we have to know.’

  The fourth ring, louder I was sure, but I knew she was right. Always right. Her husband ready to hide behind curtains. A telephone. I was afraid of a telephone. My plan for the next few days a fantasy. I had i
magined myself. The worst trick a man can play to his mirror. Paul was the man for it. Bernie the man for it. Ernst Beck would put his head down as if he were in a barber’s chair. Thank them for the striped suit. Build his own oven. His wife picked up the telephone.

  ‘Hello? Etta Beck speaking.’

  I watched her relax, a handkerchief I did not know she was clutching fell to the floor and she looked brightly at me as she spoke.

  ‘Yes, Papa!’ she said. ‘We have a telephone. You got my letter! How are you?’

  Of course. She had given her parents our number. Who else on a Sunday?

  I fell into my chair. Relieved, but something had gone from me. I did not listen to her conversation. I had come to a wall I did not know was in front of me. I was Ernst Beck. Only Ernst Beck. I was good in school. I went to university. I craved a good job, a life where I could have a good woman, security, and a country to look after me. I did not see Ernst Beck riding through snow on a motorcycle to an American general with a posse on his tail, bullets over his shoulder. I was the man Randolph Scott punched, not even the man that followed him. I was the townsman they did not make the movies about. A background player. The man in the apron with no lines to speak. The man who held the horse. Waved the hero on.

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  I listened as Etta faced me.

  ‘I am coming to see you and Mama. Erfurt is not as safe as it was. Did you hear that Weimar was bombed? Ernst was there. No he is fine. He is leaving work and—’

  I jumped up, mouthed a curse. Had I not told her? Not clear? They were listening. Had been listening for months. I had only ever answered the telephone. Etta used it. God knows what conversations she had conspired and now why not tell your father everything.

  She waved me down, ended the call, the way children end telephone calls. Yes Papa, no Papa, I will see you soon, Papa.

  ‘What is wrong with you, Ernst?’

  ‘The telephone! They are listening! And you tell them I am leaving. That you are going to Zurich. What are you thinking?’

  She went to the coffee as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Ernst. I can see it now even if you can’t. Forget the telephone. They gave us this house. If they can listen on that thing there is probably a device in every light-fitting.’ She passed me coffee. ‘What does it matter now?’

  There is a sane man in every madhouse. And he becomes the maddest of them.

  ‘How many conversations have you had on it? With your little group? Are you trying to kill us?’

  She took her coffee cup, took it from the room, left me with the telephone and the light-fittings, spoke over her shoulder in the doorway.

  ‘Yes, Ernst. I am trying to kill us. Again. And save our country. Maybe I should put you on a train? Give me the plan. Or what do you want to do?’

  Sunday. The day when as a boy I played quietly with my trucks beneath the table with the cherry tablecloth decoration while my father cursed Monday. The Sunday I promised I would not have when I became a man.

  Ernst Beck alone with the light-fittings and the telephone. Could they listen to the telephone? You knew the operator could if she wished but for your government to do such? Ridiculous. Paul’s death. A third wire in a telephone. Me riding into the sunset. Everything ridiculous now.

  I went for a walk. Did not look across to the factory. The park just a doleful path past the old ghetto. I left my coat and hat. Needed the sting of the cold, the wreath of tobacco about as I smoked, the halo of my breath. Tried not to understand the part of me that wished for planes to come, to return. To remove.

  Chapter 42

  Monday,

  12 February 1945

  No cars with runes and pennants in the yard. That to be thankful for. A weekend like a month but I did not expect such sympathy and interest from all of those around. From the reception to the third floor, everyone had an ear and an eye for Ernst Beck. Handshakes as if I was brave for just being alive. Brave. I put on my white-coat and Klein found me in the cloakroom.

  ‘Glad to see you back, Ernst.’ Hands in pockets, leaning on the wall. ‘Back Ernst Beck! A joke, eh? No? Anyway, good for you. I admire your ethic. A lesser man would have used such for a week off at least.’

  I thanked him, even if I did not know what for. An automatic reaction.

  ‘I am just glad I got out, sir.’

  ‘Of course. A tragedy. A crime. Those monsters will be hung when we win. Killing women and children. Come. To my office, Ernst.’

  I followed him. Nothing in his tone to suggest anything. Just my usual awkward morning moments in his office. I think he liked to have these talks before I had taken coffee. A power thing. As the professor with the dullest class keeps the most dulled students after hours.

  ‘Ernst,’ he took his seat, did not offer mine. ‘I am afraid there may be a question in the future about your keeping of the house.’

  Not the avenue of conversation I was expecting. I was thrown. I thought some discussion of his father’s ‘ashes’, or of worse. My concern only for my lunch hour. The walk into town, to the bank. The first stage.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘It was discussed Friday. Sander and I. It seems there will be a drying up of SS contracts. Temporarily. Hopefully. Your work has moved to more “normal” operations. There may be some resentment. On the floors. About your keeping of the house. It is not of immediate concern. I have vouched for you. In your interest. Based on the fact there could well be a resurrection of the SS work, we have agreed not to take your home from you. For the present. You understand, Ernst?’

  He was telling me that my home was in jeopardy. That he had spoken up for me. Even without coffee I could see through it. With his tutelage of me he either forgot how he had taught me to discern or still labelled me the Ernst Beck in short trousers, the boy who knew nothing about automobiles, could not even drive or realise the importance. Even if I had the same car he would still mock me for cleaning it myself, to not pay a man to do it for me. But I read this, saw through this. There had been a cheque after all. A cheque from a dead man for thousands of marks for work that now would not need to be carried out. The cheque banked. The paperwork lost in the mess that was Weimar. Perhaps years before anyone questioned, decades.

  Do you want to keep your house, your home, your future, Ernst Beck? To be a conspirator, if even a low one?

  It struck me then. Too few of these moments. Some never to be seen. Never taken up if you were not quick enough. I became him. Saw how it was done. How this world turned. Against the turning of the other. Keep up, keep up.

  I would not need the leverage I had stumbled on, that Paul Reul had poured across a table, that I had poured into Etta’s palm. Nothing so vulgar. I would not have to threaten going to Gestapo leather coats with tales of a dead man’s ashes full of diamonds. Two cards up my sleeve. One he had dealt to me. The audience could fool the magician.

  ‘Of course, sir. I understand.’ I took a seat without invite. ‘But may I make a request?’

  He sat back. His next words unsettled the confidence I thought I had.

  ‘Do I need a witness?’

  ‘No.’ My incredulity not false. ‘No. It is a personal request.’

  He sprang his chrome orb of cigarettes, offered me first, lit mine for me as he rose to sit on the edge of his desk.

  I drew deep, exhaled away from me, absently looked to the windows. The smoke from Buchenwald still visible.

  ‘What with Weimar so close I would think it safer – prefer it – if my wife could go to her parents. They are in Zurich.’

  I explained it all. A travel permit, for Etta, not I. Ernst Beck would stay and work. But please afford him the chance to get his wife to safety.

  ‘She does not work for Topf, Ernst,’ he said. ‘And I doubt we could get it signed off in Weimar. Their desks are covered in rubble. More important things to concern than getting your wife to her mother’s skirts.’

  I went to speak, he swung off the desk to ignore me.

  �
�However, let me talk to Sander and the Topfs. In light of your work over the year – and with my praise for you – it may not be so impossible. After all …’ He went to a desk drawer, pulled out a wad of travel permits. ‘It is not as if they are rare.’ He dropped them back to the drawer. Locked it. Key to his pocket. ‘There would of course be the concern that your wife also knows something of the Topf trade with the SS. That she knows something that would perhaps not be … “safe” to know.’ He took his seat. ‘Only in innocence of course, Ernst. What a husband might say to his wife. You agree?’

  ‘I have never spoken untoward about my work.’ The same tone as his. I thought of the telephone, the third wire, tried to recall every conversation I had taken on the thing, had thought on it all night, sure that nothing I had said to the device was against me.

  ‘I understand that my wife does not work for Topf. But a permit is a permit. She might at least get on a train with one. To Stuttgart at least. She could make her own way from there. Buy her own way from there. Just to get her out of Erfurt. That is all.’

  He put out his cigarette and I rubbed out mine on top of it. Better than a handshake.

  ‘I will see what I can do for you, Ernst. Come see me at the end of the day.’

  The teacher with the dullest class.

  *

  The bank was in the Anger, the Reichsbank. I took a tram for speed. Even so, out of breath when I got there.

  A bank from the last century. An image they wanted to maintain. Old. Established. Safe. All dark wood and wide desks, red ropes and brass so that you would think that everyone who worked there was richer because they worked there. Richer than you, that they washed their hands after handing you your money, that they had these grand desks and chandeliers because they knew what they were doing, never urgent until you are at the counter wasting their time. And then they disappoint like second dates.

  ‘I am sorry, Herr Beck. You may only withdraw two hundred marks a week.’ He was not sorry, and explained before I could ask. ‘There is a shortage of paper marks. You can have coin. Or stamps of course.’