Space

by James A. Michener

  At a later meeting she asked Funkhauser about the little man her husband had been seeking, and the general said expansively, “I saved that one’s life. A minor mechanic at the rocket base.”

  “Could I meet him, please?”

  “Your wish is my command,” Funkhauser replied, using a phrase he had learned at the cinema, and when he returned with Dieter Kolff walking respectfully behind, she found the latter to be a quiet man approaching forty, who spoke sadly of his wife wandering somewhere in Germany. He was the first prisoner to mention his wife, and he did so with such obvious affection that Rachel asked her husband, “When will the Germans be allowed to bring their wives over?” and it was then that she discovered that these scientists existed in a legal no man’s land.

  “They have no papers,” Stanley explained. “None of any kind.”

  “How did they get in the country?”

  “We slipped them in.”

  “A hundred and ten! Some slip.”

  “No one knows officially that they’re here. The records say simply ‘With the knowledge of the President.’ ”

  [141] Why does he want them here?

  “That I am not free to say.”

  So she went back to General Funkhauser, and he was eager to talk: “You watch the railroad yards. Soon great trains of stuff will begin arriving. I suppose you know what.”

  “No, I don’t. My husband is more military than most military. He simply will not tell me anything.”

  “Proper. Highly proper. I demanded the same of my troops.” He caught himself. “I was an engineer, mostly.”

  “What will be in the trains?”

  “Things,” and he would say no more, for he suspected that in his enthusiasm he had said too much.

  Rachel developed a considerable respect for the care with which the Germans protected and advanced their intellectual interests. Like good men of all societies in all ages, when they found themselves in forced constraint and forbidden to carry on their normal occupations, they organized themselves into a kind of university in which each man taught, without books, the subject he knew best. The Fort Bliss university was exceptionally rich in that most of the Germans in the barracks were highly trained specialists: mathematics classes were brilliant; physics the same; and mechanical engineering, some of the best in the world. The humanities were more difficult, although two men did organize a good course in German political thought which attempted to explain German history from Bismarck through the Weimar Republic and down to the collapse of the Third Reich.

  Preeminent among the students was Dieter Kolff, the farm boy with a rudimentary education and magical fingers that could mend machines. Grasping the empty months as an opportunity to catch up with the trained men about him, he delved into mathematics and science with such a dogged persistence that he caused chuckles: “There goes Dieter with his trigonometry notebook like it was a Bible.”

  Curiously, he learned the big words of his new-found knowledge in English rather than German, and he began inserting phrases like reciprocal ratio and level of minimal return in his long German sentences. History, philosophy and literature were non-essentials whose vocabulary he avoided; calculus, astronomy and physics were his delight, [142] so that by the time he graduated from Fort Bliss University (Pragmatic) he was going to be lopsided but very solid.

  He did cultivate one intellectual diversion. At Peenemünde he had learned to enjoy symphonic music, borrowing records from Von Braun, and when he learned that Mrs. Mott had a supply, he asked if he could borrow some. “No,” she said. “My records are precious and they must not be abused on bad machines. But you’re welcome to come listen.” She arranged informal concerts, which were attended by many of the Germans, and in this way Dieter became familiar with the classical music of his native land.

  It was because of this university that Rachel was drawn more deeply into the German orbit. When Dieter Kolff told her that a frail handsome man named Ernst Stuhlinger was instructing those who were interested in radical new principles governing an ion ramjet, she said, “These must be some of the brightest men in the world,” and Kolff replied, “They are.” Then he added, “But if...” He could not phrase his thoughts in English and had to depend upon her faulty knowledge of German. “What we need most is someone to teach us English.”

  So she became an instructor in the German university. The scientists liked her teaching, and General Funkhauser volunteered to serve as her assistant, correcting her now and then when she used the wrong word for some scientific principle.

  As she worked she became worried about the bleak lives which most of her Germans were leading. They seemed not to be used in any constructive way; only the top men ever got to the testing range at White Sands. The others moped in the barracks, perfecting their scientific education, but little else. Once when she asked one of the Germans to give a little talk, he astounded her by saying, “At night we study the stars. There is a hole in the fence that keeps us in. We slip through that hole and wander on the prairie, looking at the stars and feeling the free wind on our faces. We think the soldiers know about the hole in the fence, but they also know we need space to move in, as if we are not prisoners. I go through the fence every night. Even in the rain.”

  When she asked another prisoner to give his talk, he said, “Better I speak German,” and before she could protest [143] this waste of the educational period, he indicated that General Funkhauser could interpret for him. “Every day we study hard to make our rockets better, so that when the United States wants seriously to catch up with the Russians, we will be ready to help. Kolff here has new machines to make the engines. Bergstrasser has a new fuel system. I have, in my own modest way, a new plan for inertial guidance.”

  “What is inertial?” Rachel asked.

  General Funkhauser started to explain, but it was obvious even to Rachel that he didn’t know what he was talking about, so a very young man rose and said in broken English, “A new system ... like the compass … no needle ... three gyroscopes.” Of this, Rachel could make no sense whatever, but after class Dieter Kolff stayed behind and said, “Me too ... I don’t understand inertial ... a better compass ... much better.”

  “But what’s a gyroscope ... three gyroscopes?”

  He whirled his right forefinger rapidly. “Give stability.”

  “Oh, yes! We had that in physics, I’m sure.”

  “When will come our wives?”

  She liked men who were hungry for their wives; she had been so terribly hungry for her husband. In subsequent days she saw a lot of Dieter Kolff, and once asked him why her husband had sought him so diligently.

  “Professor Mott ... I looking for him, too ... very good man, very sensible man.”

  “But why was he looking for you?”

  Kolff’s mustache twitched. He wondered if he dared speak. He wondered if this woman was an American SS planted in the fort to trap him. But then he concluded that from all that he had seen, she was remarkably similar to Liesl Koenig, and he said, at some danger to himself, “Do not speak husband. He is very secret. I work on some important weapon. Not important man like General Breutzl, but ...”

  “Is he here in Fort Bliss?”

  “Dead. I his helper. I know everything.” He stopped. “Please not to speak.”

  Those words were enough to clarify her husband’s two years of anxiety, and when she sat with Stanley that night, with their son between them, she felt an overwhelming appreciation for what he had been doing, and the manner [144] apparently in which he had done it: “I’m very proud of you. Stanley.”

  He reached across his son to embrace her, fervently. “I’ve been able to guess what you must have gone through. Alone all those months.”

  “When will the German wives be allowed to come over?” she asked.

  “We don’t even know whether the Germans will be staying in this country.”

  “Really, you ought to make up your minds. This isn’t human.”

  He leaned back and stare
d at her. “Has Dieter Kolff been talking with you?”

  “No, but in my class I talk with him.”

  Occasionally the German scientists were granted permission to shop in El Paso, and on festive days they were even allowed to cross the international bridge into Ciudad Juárez on the other side of the Rio Grande, provided they were accompanied by American soldiers. Some of the younger men used this as an opportunity to visit the Mexican brothels, where they were welcomed because of their good looks and their generosity with money.

  The serious scientists sometimes preferred to visit Juárez with their English teacher, and often Rachel led groups to the bazaars and the good food. She had grown to like chili and tamales, and especially the crisp tacos fried in deep fat. “It’s murderous food, really. But I think one can stand it from time to time.”

  Now things at Fort Bliss grew serious. A secret report arrived via Paris to the effect that the Peenemünde men who had been captured by the Russians were enabling the Soviets to make quantum leaps in their rocket program, and belatedly the American military began to appreciate the treasure they had in Von Braun’s group. The prisoners began to spend a good deal of time at White Sands, where Dieter Kolff supervised the assembly and testing of the A-4s which Professor Mott’s team had gathered from various storage sites in Germany.

  Much work was done on refining the engines and the guidance systems, and Baron von Braun was often absent from the fort, discussing potentialities with American military men in Los Angeles or Washington. Classes at the informal university met less frequently, except for Mrs. [145] Mott’s instruction in English, and even that was no longer urgently needed, since so many of the scientists were now speaking quite passable American.

  The Germans were startled when the fort authorities announced that they could now purchase automobiles and use them within restrictions. Twenty-two younger men banded together and bought a used Plymouth. General Funkhauser, with funds borrowed from five other older men, bought a large Buick, which he then used as a taxicab, earning substantial profits-which he shared, half to him as manager, half to the other five as owners. It was he who obtained permission to take six Germans and one American with a machine gun all the way to California. When he returned he told everyone, “That’s the land of opportunity. When they set us free, which will be any day now, we must all head for California.”

  There was still no news of when the German wives would be allowed into the country, but as a further measure to keep the scientists happy, Stanley Mott was designated to fly to Germany with greetings from the men and to ascertain how the women were doing and whether they were obtaining the meager funds their husbands were sending them from the allotments paid them by the United States Army. He located most of the wives in a barracks at the town of Landshut, northeast of Munich, but when he asked about Liesl Kolff, he was told she was not there, and the commandant said, after searching his files, “We have no record that Dieter Kolff was ever married.”

  And then the fortunes of the German scientists took dramatic turns for the better. The American military belatedly recognized that these brilliant men were sorely needed if the United States was ever to catch up with the Russians in rocketry, and it became apparent to everyone that the Germans would be required to stay in America for many years to come. But how to provide them with legal papers of immigration without disclosing to the world, and especially to the citizens of the United States, that America was using Hitler’s scientists, who were hiding in the country illegally?

  One part of the problem was rather easily solved: eventually the wives assembled at Landshut were quietly placed aboard military transports and shipped to Boston, where they were entered as ordinary immigrants with [146] provisional papers. In due time they would reach Fort Bliss.

  Meanwhile, at the fort, some high shenanigans were under way, and it was due largely to the wit of Rachel Mott that the logjam about the paper work was broken. On her frequent trips to Ciudad Juárez she had made friends with the customs officials, whom she persuaded to be lenient with the Germans when they brought back armfuls of cheap Mexican purchases, and in these negotiations she had also come to know the chief immigration authority.

  One afternoon she went to him and placed her problem honestly before him: “We want to regularize our Germans. It’s very important for the nation’s security.”

  “I’ve been wondering what we ought to do about them. Clearly, they’re here illegally.”

  “Illegally, yes. But with the knowledge and approval of the President.”

  “I’ve been told that, and I’m damned if I know what it means.”

  “It means we need them, badly.”

  “Why?”

  “Top secret.”

  “Then why are you meddling in it?”

  “Because no official wants to deal with this through ordinary channels.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Tomorrow morning, at nine forty-five, we want you to be here, but to be looking upstream. At ten sharp we also want you to be here, inspecting every bus that comes in from Mexico.”

  “And then?”

  “You make all the Germans get out, one by one, and you give them ordinary visitors’ passes. In three months they can exchange these for permanent permission, and in however many years it takes, they can apply for citizenship.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  So on a bright Thursday morning one hundred and ten German scientists who had never been in the United States, officially, climbed into buses at Fort Bliss, entered the international bridge at 0945 and drove into Mexico. Once in Ciudad Juárez, the buses circled about a statue of some [147] Mexican general and came immediately back across the bridge, where they were halted peremptorily by the chief of immigration. The scientists filed out of the buses and marched into the immigration offices, where they solemnly swore that they had, for some months, been living in Mexico City. They petitioned for entry permits, which were granted, after which they filed back into the buses and drove to the prison at Fort Bliss, legally entitled to be there.

  One scientist, looking at his stamped paper with the silver eagle, said, “It was so very German, that whole arrangement.”

  A few days later the wives arrived, and when Rachel watched them disembark she burst into tears, for their patient, aging faces reminded her of her own, and of the years of absence, and of the endless journeys back and forth. When the women embraced their husbands she had to turn away, and she was weeping when Dieter Kolff came to her: “My wife did not come. What can I do now?”

  In that chaotic spring of 1945 when Stanley Mott had wandered into yet another German village, searching for scientists, and had stumbled upon one of the men he sought most avidly, he carried with him memorized instructions as to how he must handle Dieter Kolff and any unnamed men, like General Funkhauser, who might be fleeing with him:

  Because there is a strong likelihood that Himmler’s SS Troops will seek to machine-gun the entire Peenemünde cadre to prevent them from bringing their secrets to us, speedy efforts must be made to move any captives to the secure area which will be established near Munich.

  But these careful plans had made no provision for handling wives, especially those with no legal proof of their marriage.

  So Liesl Koenig Kolff was left stranded in central Germany, with no papers, no wedding license and no knowledge of where her husband might be, her only consolation being that she had escaped the Russians. When stories began to filter out concerning conditions in East Germany, [148] she was grateful that Dieter’s resolve had saved her at least from that fate. Rumors circulated that men from Peenemünde were being kidnapped right off the streets of West German towns, so highly did the Russians value their knowledge, and for some months Liesl trembled with fear, convinced that she was about to be snatched because she knew that secret papers regarding future rockets existed.

  She became one of the millions of women of this period who had no meaningful past that could be
certified, no papers to prove her identity, no sensible hope for the future. In her wanderings she became much like Elinor Grant and Rachel Mott in their years of ceaseless travel without their husbands. Men went away to the excitement of war; women were left to meander with ration books and babies, and neither would ever understand the miseries of the other.

  When Liesl learned that the scientists’ wives were congregating at the barracks in Landshut, she traveled across much of Germany to join them, but since none of them had known her as Dieter’s wife and since she had no papers or anyone to certify her, the American guards would not permit her entrance, and she drifted off to Hamburg, where city-wide rebuilding provided opportunities for almost anyone who would work.

  Even so, she found it difficult to land a job of any kind and had to be content with a frowzy night club near the waterfront, not as an entertainer or a hostess, for she was neither pretty enough nor young enough for such glamorous work. She did not qualify even as a waitress or a kitchen helper; the best she could get was a job as a cleaning woman. She reported seven days a week at nine o’clock in the morning, and worked till ten or eleven at night; in time the new German government would halt such exploitation, but in this time of crisis she was glad to have a job of any kind and did not complain.

  She, roomed with two other girls, much like herself, whose husbands had either died or absconded, and because Liesl knew how to hoard pfennigs and buy always at the cheapest places, they managed. When she tried to correspond with her parents at the farm, she received no reply, and this worried her, but when one of the girls suggested that she cross over into East Germany to see what had [149] happened to the farm, she shuddered.

  She had better luck with her husband. Through authorities with the American occupation forces, she learned with difficulty where the German scientists were imprisoned. “That’s altogether the wrong word,” a major from California said. “They’re being kept together because they work well as a team.” He gave her the address of Fort Bliss, to which she sent a stream of letters advising her husband of her plight as a displaced person with no documentation.