But will all this obvious discontent escalate into something really serious? If, as seems inevitable, the regime intends to keep depressing wages and lengthening working hours in a situation of labor shortage, then it will need either more coercion or a very persuasive diversion. War conditions, of course, would provide it with both. In the meantime, assuming that the regime doesn’t do anything too stupid, the workers will probably take noncooperation as close to confrontation as they can without actually challenging the powers that be.
Can we do anything to change this situation? Probably not, but I haven’t given up hope. Barufka and I have spent the last two Saturday evenings at the railwaymen’s Social Club, which would have been a stronghold of Social Democrat and Communist activity before the Nazi coup. Jakob knows practically everyone, and I have shared in several group conversations, all of them critical of the regime in one way or another. Yesterday, I shared a table with two men who were analyzing recent German developments in thoroughly Leninist terms, albeit without using Marxist terminology or mentioning the great man. These two ordinary workers understood that the Nazi economy is designed for war and that someone is eventually going to have to pay for the war machine Hitler is building. They can see that the regime will lose much of its popular support if it asks the German people to pay through taxation, that the money can come only from abroad through conquest, and that war is therefore inevitable.
There are probably millions like these two. The party had fifteen years to explain how societies work, and it will take longer than five for its teachings to be forgotten.
Still, understanding is one thing, daring to fight quite another. When I eventually have to approach people—and, of necessity, make my own position and loyalties clear—the responses are likely to cover a wide range. All will want convincing that I’m who I say I am and not a Nazi agent provocateur; beyond that the responses will range from an enthusiastic welcome to downright alarm that their world has suddenly turned upside down. And one or more of them may seek safety in betrayal. Men and women prepared to risk their lives for political beliefs are always in a minority—there are so many Ruchays and Gerritzens eager to be seduced, so many Barufkas who want a quiet life. Minorities can win if they are large and determined enough, but is this the case in Nazi Germany today? I doubt it. We lost in 1933, and life for most Germans was a lot worse in those days than it is now. There were no wonder trains then.
None of which guarantees a prudent response from my bosses in Moscow. The true situation in Germany is not the only thing they’ll bear in mind when coming to a decision—all those involved will also be mindful of their own status and safety in the shark-filled sea of Kremlin politics. As we discovered in China, the percentage required for successful action abroad comes down dramatically when someone in Moscow thinks he needs something to happen.
This morning Walter showed me the spread of photographs the local paper had printed to commemorate the wonder train’s visit, and I found myself remembering a very different train, almost twenty years before, in a small Ukrainian town. We arrived one afternoon in our agitprop-instruction train, and handed out desperately needed food. Our medics gave treatment and medicines to those in need, and that evening we set up our screen in the local church and showed our film about the revolution. I can still see the light as it flickers across the upturned faces, and the hope that shines in their eyes.
The train that Walter and I saw last Sunday was beautiful to look at, powerful and efficient, a miracle of modern technology. The one in Ukraine had a heart.
Monday, May 9
I walked to work with Ruchay this morning. Usually he’s several minutes ahead of Barufka and me, but today, either by accident or design on his part, he managed to arrive at the front door at the same time as we did.
Outside it was another cold, dry day, but Ruchay was more interested in the Italian weather—rain had spoiled the open-air opera Mussolini had laid on for the last day of the Führer’s stay in Rome. Still, Ruchay thought the Italians had put on an excellent show, all in all. The Axis was clearly bringing out the best in them.
He nodded in agreement with himself and then pointed out, as if it had just occurred to him, that there were a lot of Italians in Argentina. And, of course, a large German community. It seemed like the ideal situation for National Socialist success, a nation with a homegrown Axis, so to speak. He hoped that I would be exploring this possibility in my talk on Thursday.
I made an encouraging noise, and resisted the temptation to point out that the Germans in Argentina, who were mostly upper-class, and the Italians, who were almost all workers or peasants, had as much in common as exploiters and exploited anywhere. This, I guessed, was Ruchay’s way of making it clear that I was supposed to deliver an uplifting message.
Having done his duty, he returned to what passes for gossip in Nazi Germany. “The Führer’s in Florence today,” he told us, as if he were sharing an important secret. “Visiting the famous galleries. He returns to the fatherland tomorrow.”
We parted company outside the office in which I work. Inside, a shock was waiting for me. I was hardly in my chair when a figure loomed above me, hand outstretched. A tall man around forty with closely cropped black hair, large brown eyes, and a badly misshapen nose, he introduced himself as “Dariusz Müller, your section boss.” I had been told that Herr Müller was in Berlin for a fortnight on a military transport–planning course. I hadn’t been told that his first name was Dariusz, making him one of the men on my list. The last time I’d seen his face was in the dossier Moscow had sent to our New York office.
Worse still, in the moment of meeting, I realized I’d seen the face long before that. Not close up and not to talk to, but I remembered it from somewhere. Sitting here writing this, I’m still certain of that but no nearer remembering where or when. Given his age and my long absence from Germany, it must have been back in the early twenties, in a party office or at a demonstration. Among comrades.
He showed no sign of remembering any previous meeting. He welcomed me to the section, hoped I was happy with the way things were going, and told me to come to him with any difficulties or complaints. “I expect things are run differently in Argentina,” he said with a grin, “but no doubt you’ll be telling us all about that in your talk.”
I watched him walk away down the aisle between the dispatchers’ desks, conscious of my heart thumping inside my shirt. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Dariusz Müller had been the deputy secretary of the local party organization in Hamm, and he had, according to Moscow’s dossier, played a leading role in the desperate struggles that followed. In April of that year, he had disappeared from view. Moscow had received no notification of his capture or death but had concluded that one or the other must have befallen him. And now, five years later, here he was, a shift boss in one of the most important yards in Germany.
His survival implied betrayal but not necessarily a change of allegiance. Had he really changed sides or just pretended to do so? And if he had bought his position with the names and blood of former comrades, had he intended the bargain to serve the future needs of the party or only himself? I had no way of knowing.
He showed no sign that he had recognized me, either then or later in the day. He had brought new tasks back from his meetings with the military, and whenever a gap appeared in our normal duties, two other dispatchers and I were set to work on a timetabling exercise, clearing paths for west-moving military trains with minimal disruption to the regular flow of industrial freight. No dates or contingencies were specified, but it seems to me that such dispositions must have something to do with strengthening the French frontier in case of a military confrontation with France’s ally Czechoslovakia.
My co-workers don’t seem that concerned. Like most of the men I’ve talked and listened to over the last two weeks, they seem to have abdicated all responsibility for their fate to the Führer. If he can save them from war, then o
f course he will. If he can’t, then no one could. Ruchay isn’t the only one—I heard two other apparently sane men talking of Hitler’s return from Italy as if it really mattered to them.
I suppose Stalin has acquired a similar hold over the Soviet Union, but he never goes anywhere.
Tuesday, May 10
This evening I had another visit from Walter. Our last joint homework pleased his teacher, and Anna had given him permission to enlist my assistance again. “But only if you don’t mind,” Walter added, poised over the upright chair by the small table.
I said I was happy to help.
This time, believe it or not, he was supposed to write two hundred words on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “It sounds convincing,” Walter said, “but it doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s a forgery,” I said without thinking. “At least, some people think it is,” I added, in an almost comically inadequate attempt to repair the damage. “What makes you think it doesn’t make sense?”
“Well, Herr Skoumal says that the Jews have been blowing people up and trying to take over the world for at least fifty years, but there’s no sign of them succeeding, is there?” He gave me an owlish look. “If they’re so dangerous, you’d think they’d have taken over more than one country by this time. I know the party is stopping them from getting anywhere in Germany, but there are lots of other places.”
The logic was hard to dispute, but I wasn’t sure agreement was the wisest course. Instead I asked him which country they had taken over.
“Russia, or at least that’s what Herr Skoumal says. He calls it the ‘Jewish-Bolshevik world conspiracy,’ but that doesn’t make sense either. I mean, Jews love money above everything, don’t they? But the Bolsheviks abolished money when they had the Russian Revolution. Why should they and the Jews be partners in a conspiracy? It doesn’t make sense.”
Sometimes the Third Reich feels like a cross between Kafka and Alice in Wonderland. “Maybe they’re not partners in a real sense,” I said, “but if they’re both enemies of the Reich, then I suppose they might join forces out of convenience.”
“But that wouldn’t be a conspiracy,” Walter argued. “And what about the Protocols—who thinks it’s a forgery?”
Some people in America and Britain, I told him.
“But America is run by Jews, isn’t it? Herr Skoumal will say that they’re bound to think it’s a forgery.”
“I’m sure he will.”
“So what can I say?”
I told him to say that many people believed it was true and many didn’t. That if there was a conspiracy, it seems to have failed.
“But I shouldn’t say it’s just a load of nonsense?”
“No.”
He gave me the sort of earnest look that only a preadolescent can manage. “Because it’s not true or because I’ll get in trouble if I do?”
“Because you might get in trouble,” I answered just as seriously. My superiors in Moscow would be astonished to know that I’m putting honesty to a boy I barely know above the security of the mission, but then I’m pretty astonished myself. Sometimes I think that there’s something about Walter that demands nothing less, sometimes that something has happened to me, that years of living lies has finally made me desperate for some truth.
“Sometimes I almost want to,” Walter said, as if the idea had just occurred to him. “But I know I mustn’t.” He looked down at the carpet and changed the subject. Had I ever been married? Did I have any children?
Thinking of Lin, I told him no.
“Why not?” he asked. “Did you ever meet anyone you wanted to marry?”
I said yes, wondering if it was true. “But she died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Walter said, staring at his feet. “My father died,” he added, as if in compensation.
“I know. Did you know him?”
“Not really. I don’t remember him. But I do miss him.” He raised his head and looked out of the window. “I worry about my brother. I worry about my mother too.” He turned to me. “She says what she thinks, no matter who’s listening.”
Then you have reason to worry, I thought.
“She doesn’t like Herr Skoumal, but I don’t think she particularly likes Jews or Bolsheviks either,” Walter went on. “I tell her to be careful,” he added, and suddenly smiled. “Just like she tells Erich.”
He sighed and stood. “I must go and write this.” Halfway to the door he turned and asked if I’d take him around the depot one weekend. “Herr Barufka took me last year,” he said, “but I think I was too young to appreciate it. And he was afraid all the time that I’d hurt myself. I think he did it more for my mother than me. No, that sounds ungrateful . . .”
“This Sunday,” I told him, “if you’re here.” With my talk coming up on Thursday, I wanted something to look forward to.
The room felt empty after he’d gone. I sat in the chair he’d vacated and opened the window, despite the chill of the evening. I followed the pinpricks of light into the distance, over the horizon, and around the spinning world, just the way I used to from my bedroom window as a boy. According to Ruchay at supper, Florence station had been lit by three thousand candles for Hitler’s farewell, and the words were no sooner out of his mouth than I was back with Lin and Chu, by the lake in Canton’s Yuexiu Park, surveying the myriad floating candles lit to celebrate the Lantern Festival.
They say you can never go back, but sometimes I feel as if I’m running a race with my past, and am about to be overtaken.
Wednesday, May 11
It’s almost midnight, and I’ve finally completed a rough draft of my lecture for tomorrow. The whole business is a complete pain in the behind, and I can’t believe I let Ruchay talk me into it so easily. It shouldn’t have been that hard to find an excuse. I have often heard Comintern comrades say they had to guard against carelessness in the first few days of a foreign mission and wondered why I seemed immune. Now I know that I’m not.
The situation would make a good exercise for the Comintern school. Question: How do you give a talk about political matters to a politically diverse audience without irritating or angering half your listeners? Answer: by playing the innocent. If I sound even remotely left wing, Ruchay and co. will be appalled and probably suspicious to boot. If I sound as right wing as that lot would like, then half my fellow workers—the ones I need to talk freely in my presence—will be afraid to do so. So I’m stuck with middle-of-the-road naivety—lots of local color and railway stuff. I can please everyone with a few swipes at the English, who, in Argentina at least, are both antiworker and anti-German. And if I welcome the Argentinian Fascists’ promise to break down class antagonisms and unite the nation, Ruchay and his friends will share my joy that Argentina looks set to follow Germany’s example, and any secret Communists in the audience will pity my naive idealism. I shall, I hope, be all things to all men.
Before I stop writing, I must note down something I saw in Der Stürmer this morning, something that stayed with me all day. It was a photograph of Baron Ludwig von Rothschild, and the words beneath it seemed to sum up the people who run this country. “This photograph was taken seven days after his imprisonment,” the caption read. “Here he still looks confident of success. Since then his assurance has left him.”
It sounds like gangsters gloating over a victim in a cliché-ridden movie. If only that were all it was.
Friday, May 13
Yesterday evening was, to say the least, interesting. Ruchay escorted me to the Social Club after supper and, once we got there, insisted on buying me a drink. “To help with the nerves,” he said. Of course he wasn’t to know how many hundreds of workers’ meetings I’ve addressed over the years. Once we were settled with our beers he seemed unusually devoid of anything to say, perhaps because he had only one listener. I tried to break the ice by asking him how long he’d been at Anna’s rooming
house but received only a curt “several years” in reply. And when I followed this up by saying how well I thought she ran the place, he looked almost angry.
I was saved by the sudden appearance of the club secretary, telling me it was time. We walked through to the adjoining sports room, which had been crammed with upright chairs for the occasion. To my astonishment most of them were occupied. I had expected an audience of between ten and twenty, but there were at least fifty workers present. Almost all were men, and most were drinking and smoking—the far end of the room was already obscured by a tobacco fog, despite the wide-open windows.
While the secretary was introducing me, I studied my audience. Many of the faces were familiar from the canteen, and most of my fellow dispatchers were there, including Dariusz Müller. When I caught Barufka’s eye, he gave me a grin and a thumbs-up. Looking around, I could see no sign of the earnest, out-to-make-a-point faces I had feared—this audience, I decided, had come to be entertained, not educated. I was still taking comfort from this conclusion, when I heard the secretary promise a question-and-answer session at the end of my talk. It seems quite incredible to me now, but the thought that I would be questioned by people who knew Argentina better than I did had never crossed my mind.
I talked for about forty minutes, rambling on about the country’s geography, peoples, railways, and general economic development. I stressed the manly virtues of the open frontier and explained the new “tango” style of dancing with what I hoped was a finely judged blend of slight disapproval and repressed lust. It was, I thought, quite a performance.
The first question, asked while half the audience members were still refilling their glasses, concerned my opinion of Buenos Aires, and enhanced my false sense of security. The second destroyed it. A worker I didn’t know—a gangling man in his late forties or early fifties—asked what I thought about the current tension in Argentina between the German community and the national government.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave Page 3
