The Song Before It Is Sung

by Justin Cartwright

  'Was Mr Mendel well known?'

  'He was one of the most famous men in Oxford.'

  They sit silent for a moment in the flickering, underwater light of the sun through the tall, unruly trees. Only the workman's wheelbarrow makes a noise. This wheelbarrow is a leftover of East German times, a long, unwieldy cart with an iron wheel.

  Then Fritsch asks him a strange question.

  'Did you love Mr Mendel?'

  'Yes. Yes, I loved him like a father, perhaps a grandfather.'

  'In this time I was a young man working for the Wochenschau. I am eighty-nine years old. My family home is not far from here. My mother died when I was young. I was not known to be a Jew, although I was informed on - informiert worden war (Conrad remembers the phrase from his reading) - and my boss at Wochenschau protected me. When I was ordered to go to Plotzensee Prison for this work, I wanted to kill myself. But I could not refuse my boss.'

  The conversation is halting and they have to stop many times for clarification, but in retrospect Conrad remembers it running unhesitatingly and directly, because neither of them is able to elaborate or explain. Instead they have the simple narrative:

  I am a Jew; I had to film the hanging of the resisters.

  I loved Mendel; he asked me to write about his friendship.

  And so the narrative proceeds: Fritsch filmed three of the nights of hanging. His boss, Mr Steuben, was preoccupied with the technicalities; he brought in many lights so that the place looked like a film set. The night that von Gottberg was hanged it was said that the Führer wanted the film sent to the Wolfschanze in East Prussia so that he could see it before he went to bed at 3 a.m. A plane was standing by at Tempelhof. The rolls of film Fritsch shot on B Camera were processed but never given to the editor; Fritsch's boss, the chief cameraman, said that it would not be necessary; all the executions had been covered in a technically satisfactory way on his camera, A Camera.

  'So, I have kept this film for sixty years.'

  'Why, Mr Fritsch?'

  'I believed it was necessary to remember.'

  'But you never told anybody?'

  'No, I could not. The problem was very simple: I was a Jew and I had taken part in this terrible (schreckliche) crime. With the Stasi it was dangerous for me and my family. But I could not destroy the film or tell anyone about it. Only my daughter knows about it. After the end of the GDR I wanted to do something, but my wife was dying and my daughter came to live with me and we never discussed the matter until I saw the notice in the Filmarchiv.'

  Fritsch suddenly reaches for his hand.

  'If I give you this film, you shall promise me that you will never tell anybody where it is from.'

  The soft, gel fingers hold the back of his hand insistently: Conrad thinks of a chameleon's grip. As a boy he used to catch chameleons and take them into the house to help his grandmother's war on flies. Proximity to a fly, even if the chameleon was perched warily on Conrad's finger, always caused its long tongue to shoot out.

  'No, I will never tell anybody where I got this film, I promise. I make an oath to you now.'

  'I have never looked at the film again. I cannot look at this material.'

  He releases Conrad's hand. His frail shoulders are hunched: his back is toppling and as he leans forward silently for a full minute Conrad sees a disturbing round lesion on his throat.

  'Here my mother is buried,' he says. 'She died in 1934. After that no more Jewish burials were allowed here. I was no more a Jew until 1989. Now I go on Shabbat to the synagogue to remember my mother and her family. All gone. You shall take this film and you must do what you want with it, but please do not tell anybody where it comes from.'

  'I promise.'

  The light in the cemetery is flickering steady so that there is an aquarium background to their conversation.

  'Do you have children?'

  Conrad finds it difficult to answer, such is the awful intensity of his feelings.

  'No. Not yet.'

  'You must have children.'

  'OK.'

  'I believe you are an honest person, Mr Senior.'

  'I hope I am.'

  'I have one more thing to say.'

  'Yes.'

  'These Junkers who died were very brave. Von Gottberg was brave. That was one man (Es war ein Mann) but please do never forget that six million Jews died also. Sometimes I see that nobody in Berlin wants to remember that. They want to make themselves feel good with the expensive memorials from famous architects, but the reality is now forgotten. And I think that only those people who experienced those times can truly understand. We are fewer every year. My life has been very difficult. Can you understand?'

  'I can.'

  Now, as Fritsch speeds up, Conrad is able only to follow his story in segments. But the gist of it seems to Conrad overwhelmingly clear: an ordinary man, a film technician, has had his life utterly destroyed by people who believed that spirit operated in the world.

  Eventually Fritsch stops, as if he has run dry.

  'Tomorrow I will meet you here at 10 a.m. and give you the film.'

  From his airline bag he produces a brown padded envelope.

  'In here is a letter to E.A. Mendel of Oxford. It was given to me by Pastor Schonborn at Plotzensee. He asked me to send it after the war. But it was not possible and then it was too late. The Russians came and . . . you know what happened.'

  'Now I understand why you asked me about Mr Mendel.'

  Fritsch smiles briefly, a smile from the forgotten depths. The small red veins move about and then settle back.

  'Yes. I must be sure you are, as you say, honest.'

  He says 'honest' in English. He has it written in his notebook.

  'Honest. Yes, you will keep it. I have not read the letter.'

  They leave the cemetery, replacing the kippa in the box at the gate. Conrad makes a small donation for the restoration fund. Seventy years after the place was destroyed by Brownshirts in one night it is still a long way from being restored. And the whole monstrous Third Reich, which destroyed this old man's life, lasted only twelve years.

  They part at the gate. Fritsch walks with difficulty: over the years, his back must have moved upwards and it is threatening to crush him. It is looming. More and more you hear people discussing their backs, blaming them for their problems, as if backs have a malign intention for the rest of their bodies. They seek help from people who manipulate and placate or propitiate their recalcitrant backs. But Fritsch's problems seem to belong to another order, something with mythical significance. From Grimm's Illustrated Fairy Tales, Conrad remembers an illustration of two trolls knocking their heads on a spike in order to make a rich soup from the chunks of dislodged flesh that fell into a large pot. He watches Fritsch as he walks stiffly across the road and past the park.

  He feels light-headed, as though he has emerged from under water. He and Francine once went scuba diving; emerging from the cemetery is a strangely similar feeling. All the while he was in there with Fritsch he was submerged in another country and now it is a surprise to find Berlin outside the gates of the cemetery, just as it was.

  Back in his room, he opens Fritsch's package. A makeshift envelope, of folded paper stuck down, is addressed to:

  E.A. Mendel Esq.,

  All Souls College,

  Oxford,

  England.

  He stares at the envelope. God knows what state von Gottberg was in when he wrote this letter. The pastor must have provided him with a pen and paper. Conrad cannot open the letter. For five or ten minutes he stares at it or out of the window to the church spire. Von Gottberg's familiar, impeccable handwriting is intact, despite everything that has happened to him. It is as though handwriting is immortal. A man's last letter should only be read by the intended recipient, but then Mendel has passed all his papers to him to make what he can of them. He opens it finally. Outside, the spire of Zionskirche is, apparently for his benefit, lit by the dying sun. Conrad's hands are shaky. Until he engaged on
Mendel's task, he was unaware that his hands could shake uncontrollably or that he could sit bolt upright at night from the depths of sleep. The paper is brittle.

  26 August 1944

  My dearest Elya,

  I am soon to be hanged. One of the things that I have missed most since we were together in Oxford is our talks. Walking in the English Garden here I have often thought of Addison's Walk and I thought how we must have looked to any passing stranger, arguing and laughing as we strode along. They would have heard you say, 'Whenever you are in a corner, you turn to Hegel.'

  My dear Elya, I loved you and it is one of the great regrets of my life that I shall never see you again. Please, if you can, make contact with my family when this is over, which it must be soon, and try to talk to the children and help them to understand. I shall also miss our friends; as you know I loved Elizabeth. Earlier this year when we met, just a few months ago, although it seems like years, we talked of you.

  Now Elya, I must pass to something painful. It was clear to me in Washington in 1940 that you and Lionel had told Michael Hamburger that I was a Nazi, or at least a conservative nationalist. Elya, whatever I did was for Germany, certainly, but also for us, for our deep friendship and for a belief that a new world must be born and that people like us should be the midwives. I could have escaped Germany many times, right up to the last, Elya, but I believe that the true nature of a man is revealed when he is prepared to lay down his life for his beliefs. I tried to prevent what was coming, but I have failed. We have all failed. But I go to my death with this consolation: at least I tried to show that there was another Germany. It was always in my mind that I must demonstrate to you, Elya, that my principles are not, as you put it as we walked in Oxford, vaporous nonsense.

  Goodbye, my dear, dear friend. Think well of me. I will for ever think well of you, day and night, if such a thing exists where I am going. Don't grieve for me; I am calm.

  A

  Conrad reads again: My dear Elya, I loved you and it is one of the great regrets of my life that I shall never see you again.

  The letter, possibly the last words he ever wrote, is unbearable to Conrad. He has read what Mendel never could, that von Gottberg knew his friend had betrayed him, but still declared his love and forgiveness. And Conrad remembers painfully that earlier today he was wondering if von Gottberg was reminded of Oxford as he walked in the English Garden. And Fritsch said to him that only those who were there could truly understand, but Conrad believes that he has heard the dead speak, if only in whispers.

  To calm himself, he decides to go walking. The night porter hands him his key without speaking to him. Conrad walks the city, preparing himself for what is to come. The city is curiously expectant; despite all the building works and projects, he sees that it is waiting for the dead to rise from the cemeteries.

  He remembers walking in Jerusalem and seeing in an upstairs room the wild flailing shadows of Jews, who were waiting for the same thing.

  23

  CONRAD WAITS OUTSIDE the cemetery. Fritsch has decided he is a just man. In these surroundings he feels like a character in a thriller waiting for a drop; it is surprisingly difficult to be nonchalant and inconspicuous. Perhaps the passers-by are inspecting him to see if he is Jewish. Fritsch appears unexpectedly behind him, from within the cemetery, carrying his antique Lufthansa bag. He has been to his mother's grave, he says. Perhaps he has been praying for guidance. He reaches within the bag and produces a neatly wrapped parcel, which he says contains three rolls, the negative, the positive and the sound. The running time is twenty-four minutes. Even now Conrad sees traces of the meticulous technician in the toppling, frail figure of Fritsch. They have little to say this morning. They shake hands and Fritsch bows his head briefly. They both act as though they are in some way guilty.

  'The smell was awful,' says Fritsch. 'I cannot forget it.'

  Now Conrad is waiting once more, outside the Imperial War Museum. He has asked to see the show trials again. In his bag he has the rolls of film given to him by Fritsch. It is a damp morning. Summer is ending in a few soft, apologetic wet days and the leaves, for no obvious reason, get the message and start to fall. Nothing dramatic, just a sort of surrender. They are already lying, diseased, on the forecourt of the museum.

  Yesterday he called Francine and told her he was home. She sounded more cheerful. Even as she says hello he is always able to tell from the timbre of her voice how she is. Sometimes he asks her, 'What sort of day have you had?' and she reads a little list of things that have gone well, or badly. It's as if every day must be assessed and marked. It's a habit of mind, he thinks, inculcated by the life of science or the belief in progress and order.

  'Hello, darling,' she answered.

  'Good day?'

  'Yes, I got the job.'

  'Brilliant. Wonderful. When do you start?'

  'In two weeks. How did you get on in Berlin?'

  'I have found some unseen film footage.'

  'Of what?'

  'Of von Gottberg in Berlin.'

  'Anything more specific?'

  'No, I haven't viewed it yet.'

  'I'm glad the trip was worthwhile.'

  He detects a note of scepticism, but he decides to ignore it.

  'It was. How are you about, you know?'

  'I don't want to talk about that at the moment. But obviously I feel a lot more cheerful since I got the letter.'

  She can't talk about the lost baby and he can't talk about the poisoned film.

  He stands on the steps watching the leaves make their slow, despondent descent on to the wet pavement. He seems to be standing there for ever. He has a churning, sick feeling in his stomach. He thinks there is a connection between the termination - the death - of his baby (he's sure it is his) and the death of Axel von Gottberg. Of course the only connection runs through him, but it is the inexplicable nature of consciousness to make personal meaning and significance out of the random. Walking around Berlin in the night he looked for the site of the Romanisches Café which Freisler so detested, the place where the aristocratic traitor had met with his effete friends to plot the subjugation of ordinary, honest Germans. He couldn't find any trace of it. It's lost under the post-war reconstruction. But he has seen pictures of it, ornate, elegant, opening on to Tauentzienstrasse, the waiters in long aprons moving attentively between the seated dilettanti. And it was while he was walking that he realised that he had neglected, in the terror of reading von Gottberg's letter, that he had mentioned meeting Elizabeth. That could only have been in Stockholm, he sees. And now he understands her final, defiant statement from the grave: I loved Axel von Gottberg. Perhaps in Stockholm they discussed flight. As he wrote to Mendel, he had many opportunities to get away, but his duty was to die.

  The doors of the War Museum annexe open and he goes in. Upstairs he is shown to the same small viewing room and the rolls of film he has requested are brought out and laced up on the Steenbeck. He watches carefully how it's done. As soon as he is alone, he removes the film, takes Fritsch's film from his bag and laces it up, lining it up in the same way, film on one set of ratchets, sound on another. It's dark. He starts the film, afraid that after all these years it will disintegrate, but more afraid of what he is to see.

  24

  26 AUGUST 1944, 8 A.M.

  AXEL VON GOTTBERG and three other prisoners are taken from Haus III to the condemned cells on the ground floor, which is known as das Totenhaus, the House of Death. They are in shackles and wearing only their trousers.

  Since the Nazis came to power thousands have been executed here, half of them Germans. The House of Death is next to the execution block, which is an outbuilding, almost a shed, with large opaque windows at one end. From the roof of this building an iron girder was suspended in 1942. There are six meat-hooks attached to the girder. A guillotine also stood in this space, above a drain set in the floor, until it was destroyed in an air raid on the night of 3 September 1943. Three hundred prisoners were in Haus III that night. Al
l these prisoners were hanged in the next four nights, although some had clemency proceedings outstanding and some were awaiting trial. The order for execution was given by telephone, without waiting for the paperwork.

  Axel von Gottberg has been kept by the Gestapo for eleven more days, tortured and abused.

  In the execution shed, Wernher Steuben, the cameraman, and his assistant, Ernst Fritsch, set up their Arri cameras. Steuben is close to a breakdown. This work is appallingly stressful: on the one hand the film is to be shown to the Führer and must be technically perfect, and on the other the people he has to deal with at the prison are barbarians. They don't understand the demands of film - lighting focus, reel changes, sound. The hangmen themselves are usually drunk. A bottle of brandy stands on a small table to the side for their benefit. But worse for Steuben is the fact that none of the camera team at Wochenschau want to do this work, and who can blame them? He has been forced to do it because the Reichs Director of Film has told his boss that the Führer himself is insisting that these executions be filmed. And Steuben, without being specific as to the consequences, has told Fritsch that it would not be in his interest to refuse, although of course he has only to say that he has looked after him in the past, but he may not be able to do it for ever; things are very different now.

  Five or six times Steuben and Fritsch go through the plan. It's simple enough, but has one unpredictable element: the condemned take different lengths of time to die, depending on their weight and the hangmen's whims. Fritsch has to start running his camera, B Camera, three minutes after Steuben's camera, so that there is time to change reels as A Camera runs out, or between executions, whichever comes first. He could run longer magazines of film, but they are inclined to pick up dirt and hairs which blemish the film.