Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

by David Downing

  As I walked, I saw lots of families out enjoying the sunshine. Most looked happy and healthy enough. The saddest face I noticed belonged to a pastor standing outside his church, and seeing him slip back inside, I was curious enough to put my head around the door and catch a glimpse of his meager congregation. If, as the Comintern hopes, there are thousands of Germans seeking an organization that is willing and able to take on the Nazis, then the church doesn’t seem to be it.

  After walking back toward the lodging house, I ate my lunch by the canal. Fishermen punctuated its banks at regular intervals, most of them probably railwaymen enjoying their day off. Behind me, the yards and workshops where they worked were mostly silent, and by this time the sun was shining out of an almost cloudless sky. Sitting there, eating simple liverwurst sandwiches and watching the lines arcing out across the dark water, I discovered a painful awareness of the Germany inside me, and of how at home I feel here. Later, watching Gerritzen and his fellow marathon marchers manfully trying to strut their way down Ritterstrasse—many seemed to be suffering agonies from their shiny new boots—I was reminded of the Germany I had rejected, the Germany of flags and uniforms, of caste and obedience.

  Sunday dinner followed the pattern of the previous day, a pattern that I presume will be repeated ad nauseam. The food was tasty enough, if a trifle bland after my years in Latin America. Ruchay lectured; Gerritzen bubbled—leaving Barufka and me to murmur approval or disapproval as required. I asked Frau Gersdorff if she and Walter had enjoyed their trip, and she said they had, volunteering the additional information that Walter was doing his homework. Ruchay interjected that he supposed the boy would be joining the Hitler Youth this coming summer. I saw anger flash in her eyes, but only for a moment. “There’s plenty of time to decide about that,” she said, as if it were a matter of little importance.

  Ruchay was unabashed. “It would not look good to have two sons at odds with the new Germany,” he told her pointedly. She looked as if she wanted to slap him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  After dinner Barufka and I walked across to the local bar, mostly to escape Gerritzen’s endless bleating about his blisters and the overwhelming smell that seemed to be seeping out of his boots. Over a couple of beers, I asked what had happened to Herr Gersdorff. He was dead, Barufka told me. He had died a long time ago, when Walter was only an infant. He had been much older than Anna and had left her the house.

  Erich, however, was not his son. Anna had been married twice, and her first husband—Erich’s father—had died in the war. Locals had told Barufka that she had married Walter’s father during the Great Inflation, mostly for Erich’s sake. Those had not been good years for raising a small child on your own.

  When I asked him what Ruchay had meant by his comment about two children at odds with the new Germany, Barufka looked at me, weighed me up, and apparently decided that I could be trusted. Erich was involved with one of the youth gangs, he said. The Traveling Dudes. Despite having a regular job at the works—and he was a good worker, Barufka said—Erich had had several run-ins with the local police. “They go into the hills and start fights with Hitler Youth groups,” Barufka said, a small smirk lurking at the corners of his mouth. “So it’s important that Walter is a good National Socialist. Otherwise they will start to think the family has faulty genes.”

  Wednesday, April 27

  My intention of writing something every evening has quickly come to grief: a full day’s work, as I should have remembered, makes a bed look so much more welcoming than a desk. Tonight, though, my brain seems too active for sleep. I should probably have refused the second cup of coffee, but there have been too many days when I hungered for one.

  At 8 a.m. on Monday morning, I presented myself at the Reichsbahn offices, and I emerged a half hour later with a job as an assistant dispatcher. The labor shortage is as acute as everyone said it was, and I had the pick of a dozen jobs that needed filling. The man who interviewed me seemed so overwhelmed by the fact of an applicant that he barely glanced at my meticulously forged qualifications. He was more interested in why I had chosen Hamm for my reentry into German life, and for a second I was tempted to tell him I’d stuck a pin in a map. But I didn’t. I stuck to my script: an Argentinian friend who had grown up here before the war had told me it was both a railway center and a nice place to live. My interviewer shook his head rather sadly at that and asked me what I thought of the new Germany. I told him that so far I was impressed, but that I’d been here only a few days.

  He directed me to the offices of the German Labor Front, the Nazis’ national union, where I was interviewed again, with rather more purpose, by a spotty-faced young man in a crisp uniform. So crisp, in fact, that I imagine it would have stood up on its own. He checked all my papers, asked me what he probably thought were probing questions, and reluctantly provided me with the official workbook I needed to start my new job. Having done that, he seemed to relax, and insisted on providing me with an exhaustive list of the Strength through Joy outings and holidays I could now apply for. He himself had recently been on the Baltic cruise, which he thoroughly recommended.

  An hour later I started work in an office with a dozen or so desks overlooking the yards. Over the last few days, I have discovered that three shifts keep these in permanent use, checking freight in and then checking it out in the right direction. It’s not difficult work, but the labor shortage means that there’s a lot of it, and there isn’t much time for thought. Tea breaks are taken outside if the weather is good, and for lunch we walk down the tracks to the locomotive works canteen. The food is cheap and plentiful, particularly by the standards I’ve grown used to over the last few years.

  Two of my fellow dispatchers have helped settle me into the job, one because he was told to, the other because he obviously enjoyed doing so. The former has yet to say anything of a remotely political nature. He has the air of an old Social Democrat, but he might just be uninterested in politics. The latter, Otto Tikalsky, is on my memorized list of former KPD members in Hamm. He is now wearing a swastika badge and making the most of every opportunity he gets to praise the regime. He might be a genuine convert or a frightened opportunist; he could be an undercover infiltrator. Finding out which is unlikely to be easy. But not doing so may well prove fatal if and when I tell him who and what I really am.

  Herr Ruchay—who is now one of my bosses, albeit a very distant one—represents another possible danger. For reasons best known to him, he has taken a liking to me, and seems intent on taking me under his wing. As we were walking home from work yesterday evening, he blithely informed me that he had given my name to the railwaymen’s Social Club committee, along with the suggestion that I give a talk on National Socialism’s appeal in South America. I expressed a modest reluctance to do so but was quickly made aware that refusal was not an option. It was left for him to fix a date, something he has now done—I face my audience two weeks from tomorrow.

  I should record that I have taken an almost violent dislike to the man. Not for his politics, anathema as they are, but for the way he treats everyone else in the boardinghouse. He never misses a chance to pour scorn on Barufka and endlessly patronizes the mostly oblivious Gerritzen. On one occasion a few days ago, I came across him and Frau Gersdorff talking in the hall downstairs, and had the distinct impression that he was bullying her about something. I think he would be a bad enemy to make.

  On another matter—over the last few days, I have had a few fresh doubts about the wisdom of keeping this journal, but have decided to ignore them. I have created the necessary hiding place in the window frame, and if I say so myself, it’s invisible to all but the closest scrutiny. Not that the Gestapo would probably bother to look. For one thing, everyone knows that Comintern reps are strictly forbidden to put anything in writing; for another, the men in black have much more fun extracting information through broken teeth.

  Thursday, April 28

  After this evenin
g’s supper Frau Gersdorff intercepted me at the bottom of the stairs. Walter had apparently decided that I was the perfect person to help him with a particular piece of homework; she didn’t want him making a nuisance of himself, but she wondered if I would mind. I told her I’d be happy to help.

  Walter arrived at my door about the same time I did, though rather more out of breath. I sat him down at the small table with his book and took the armchair. His homework topic was German “living space,” and he was supposed to explain the need for more of it.

  He already knew all the government’s arguments—overpopulation, the need for more farmland and raw materials to make the nation self-sufficient, the theft of Germany’s colonies in 1918, the basic right of the strong to subdue the weak—but seemed less than completely convinced by them.

  “If we have more living space, that just means other nations will have less,” he said, looking at me questioningly.

  “That’s true,” I said, “but maybe they don’t need all they have.”

  He thought about that, screwing up his mouth as he did so. “You mean we Germans can do more with it?” he asked.

  “That’s what the Führer believes,” I said. I realized I had no idea how much trouble boys his age could get into for questioning party dogma.

  “Do you think the Führer’s always right?” he asked, looking me straight in the eye. I was tempted to just say yes—and I should have. I had heard enough stories about children reporting their parents and other adults to the Gestapo—any other answer was asking for trouble. But I knew instinctively that the idea of reporting someone would never occur to him, that he simply wanted to know what I really thought. And that he would know if I lied to him. So I told him no, I didn’t think that anyone was right all the time. He nodded at that and asked me whether anyone could be wrong all the time. I laughed, and so did he. “My brother . . .” he started to say, but stopped himself. I think he was about to tell me that Erich did believe Hitler was wrong about everything. I told him that his brother sounded like an independent sort of lad. “I’m only his half brother,” he said, as if this were a weakness.

  We had strayed a long way from “living space,” but I had realized by this time that Walter was much more interested in making friends than in getting practical help. He examined the book by my bed—Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest—and asked me whether I’d heard of Tom Shark. I hadn’t, but my ignorance was about to end. Tom Shark, it turns out, is the “King of Detectives,” and I was treated to a lengthy exposition of his latest and—need I say it?—most dangerous case. I managed to avoid another plot by claiming, rather shamefully, that knowing it would spoil my enjoyment of the book itself, whereupon Walter promptly changed the subject to football. Apparently England are coming to play Germany in Berlin next month, with the World Cup to follow in Paris in June. I was at least able to say something intelligent about the latter, having studied reports of the riots that had recently taken place in Buenos Aires after the Argentine football authorities decided not to send a team. Any kudos I might have gathered from knowing that story promptly vanished when I failed to come up with a favorite club team in Argentina—I simply couldn’t think of one. Walter’s team is Schalke 04, which plays in nearby Gelsenkirchen. His favorite player is Fritz Szepan, who is the captain of both Schalke and Germany. “I have a signed photo in my room,” he said. “You could come and see it.”

  We went down to his room, which was much tidier than I expected. I was examining the photograph when Frau Gersdorff suddenly appeared, looking less than happy to find me in the family’s part of the house. I explained why I was there, agreed to Walter’s request for future help with his homework, and beat a hasty retreat up the stairs. On the way up, it suddenly occurred to me—and I have no idea why it took so long—that both Frau Gersdorff and Herr Ruchay may have taken me for a possible Gestapo informer. Which, I decided, was somewhat ironic. But perhaps usefully so.

  Sunday, May 1

  I suppose I must start with the train. The wonder train. Its visit to Hamm this afternoon was the sole topic of conversation at last night’s supper. Ruchay was full of it, and so was Barufka. For once, they were in perfect harmony, swapping facts about speed, fuel consumption, internal decor, and God knows what else like a pair of enthusiastic schoolboys. The line drawing in the local evening newspaper was passed around the table like some kind of sacred relic, and when Frau Gersdorff confessed under questioning that she was not taking young Walter to the station, I half expected Ruchay to call the Gestapo.

  This morning, circumstances—and perhaps Walter himself—conspired to change her mind. She was called away to look after a sick friend and left Erich—whom I’d previously seen only in glimpses—to ask me if I’d take Walter to the great event. Erich, a tall, rather gangly lad with dark hair flopping over his ears and collar, looked a less-than-willing messenger. He was wearing what I presumed was a gang uniform: a checked shirt with flower-emblazoned metal pin, dark shorts, and dazzling white socks.

  He gave me the message and waited, with an almost imploring look, for my reply—no doubt he had plans for the day that didn’t include babysitting his younger brother. I just looked at him, struck by the faintly ludicrous disconnect between young men in white socks who spent their weekends looking for Hitler Youth groups to beat up and the murderous war my party had fought against the brownshirts only five years earlier. For all I know, Erich and his friends are as serious about their politics as we are about ours, but he looks like an innocent, and innocence, in Nazi Germany, presupposes historical amnesia. The thought crossed my mind that Hitler had managed to slip Germany off its old moorings, to put clear water between the pre-Nazi past and the present. Which was not good news for the Comintern.

  I told Erich I’d be happy to take Walter and got a big smile in return. Walter, when I picked him up downstairs twenty minutes later, was as excited as Ruchay and Barufka the previous evening, and by the time we reached the station, I must have known as much about the train as the workers who made it. The station was packed—one platform was reserved for local party bigwigs, the other three overflowing with lesser mortals—but we managed to get a good vantage point on the footbridge at the western end, and were soon rewarded by an excellent view of the train entering the station from the east. The streamlined, blood-colored locomotive, its golden swastika glinting in the sun, came to a halt not thirty meters away from us, and like everyone else, we were struck dumb by its futuristic beauty. It was more like a rocket than a train. When it left a mere fifteen minutes later, there was a sense of wonderment and joy on the faces of the dispersing crowd. In those fifteen minutes, half a town had been persuaded that Hitler’s regressive nonsense of an ideology was really a glittering vision of the future. I could almost hear the wheels going around in Walter’s brain. Maybe Hitler is always right. Surely trains like this deserved a bigger country, more running space.

  Tuesday, May 3

  I read in this morning’s paper that the kaiser’s grandson has married a Romanov duchess. Both bride and groom were described as “throneless.” A progressive word if ever I heard one.

  Thursday, May 5

  I am not sure whether the cries woke me or whether I was still awake. There were several of them, rising to a climax of apparent panic, and then, suddenly, silence. I lay there for a few moments, wondering whether or not to investigate, until curiosity got the better of me. I slowly descended the two flights of creaking stairs and stood motionless at the bottom, listening.

  Anna Gersdorff’s low voice seeped out of the silence, reassuring and full of love, and I stayed where I was, drinking in the sound, as if it were I who needed comforting. The murmur ceased, and before I could retreat up the stairs, she had emerged from Walter’s room and seen me. “I heard a noise . . .” I began.

  “He was having a nightmare,” she said.

  I went back to my room but not to bed. Instead I sat by the open window recalling anoth
er night, on the other side of the world. Then it was Chu wailing up the storm, and Lin lifting him out of his cot and bringing him back to our bed. Lin, a party member’s widow who had been my amah for almost a year and my lover for only a fortnight.

  The dawn was sufficiently advanced for me to study the graceful lines of her back and neck, and it was only when Chu quieted down that we heard the gunfire in the distance. I remember the sudden turn of her head a few seconds later when someone knocked on our outside door.

  It was Chen Lu, sent to fetch me. I went back inside to throw on some clothes, and when I turned in the doorway to throw Lin a kiss, she laughed and did the same.

  I never saw her again.

  Eleven years have passed since then, eleven years of roaming the world as a Comintern rep. Eleven years in which, I must admit, I have been largely content to let my actions speak for themselves and to willingly function as an anonymous and inseparable part of something much bigger than myself.

  Sometimes, lately, I wonder if I’m reaching the end of that road. If I am, I’m not sure what it means or what it implies for my future. There is no other road I wish to travel or, indeed, know how to travel. Europe teeters on the edge of a precipice, and I have no intention of abandoning the job I was sent here to do.

  Sunday, May 8

  What have I learned in my first two weeks of work about the political state of the German proletariat? Quite a lot, but nothing particularly clear-cut. As was bound to be the case, the labor shortage has given the workers better cards to play, cards which, in any normal bourgeois economy, might add up to a winning hand. But this is not a normal bourgeois economy—it is Nazi Germany, and the political winners are already decided. So all the arguments have become workplace arguments—about conditions, hours, pay. Since full employment has been reached—a couple of years ago, I guess—the workers and the authorities have been banging up against each other. Wage rises have been ruled out, so the workers have tried to increase their pay by changing jobs. The authorities have now brought in new rules that prevent workers from doing this, and the workers retaliate by taking unofficial holidays and being generally less cooperative. They argue more—I’ve already witnessed several blazing rows—and take less care with their work, their tools, and their machinery. They are thoroughly pissed off.