“If you could talk to him as well. He trusts you.”
I probably winced at that.
“It’s for his own safety,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “I understand. I think you’re right. And of course I’ll talk to him. When will he start?”
“I’ll put his name down this week, but he can start in September when he goes back to school. I’m hoping to send him to my aunt’s family at the end of July for a month, so there’s no point in starting now.”
I was taken unaware by the pang of emptiness this announcement provoked. “Walter hasn’t said anything about this,” I said.
He didn’t yet know. She’d only just written to her aunt’s daughter Sofie—a farmer’s wife in the East—and wasn’t planning to tell Walter until everything was finalized. “It’ll do him good to get away, to get out of this house, see a different sort of life,” she added. Sofie and her husband, Harald, ran the family farm, and Sofie and her sons, aged eight and six, were Walter’s only cousins. “It’ll be exciting for him—the train rides, summer in the countryside. He’ll love it.” She smiled ruefully, a smile that turned into a sigh. “But what can I say to Verena?” she asked. “Walter’s right—it is a betrayal. I just can’t see another way.”
“You tell her the truth,” I said. “That Erich’s sins have put Walter at risk. She’ll understand. And it might even help her and Marco. Walter galloping to Marco’s rescue certainly won’t. Not the way things are.”
She stood. “I do think Verena will understand,” she said. “I would in her place. But I still feel as if I’m letting her down.” She gave me a fierce, challenging look. I surprised myself by opening my arms, and I think she surprised herself by letting them enfold her. We embraced for what seemed a long time but was probably only a few seconds. As we pulled apart, she kissed me lightly on the cheek.
I set off on my Sunday morning walk in a state of some confusion. The news that Walter would be gone for a month had upset me more than I would have thought possible. And the fact that I found it so upsetting was upsetting in itself—what sort of Comintern operative in the field allowed himself the luxury of forming an emotional attachment to a twelve-year-old boy? For one thing, it was dangerous for both of us. For another, I was letting Walter become emotionally dependent on someone he was bound to lose. I was promising something I couldn’t deliver.
And—I must be honest—the embrace with Anna had also upset me. There was nothing sexual in it—Anna’s an attractive woman, but I’ve never felt any spark between us, or felt more than a flicker of desire for her. I tried telling myself that the physical pressure of another body is always slightly shocking, particularly for those of us who live deep within our own skins, but I knew it was more than that. Anna’s embrace was a demonstration of trust, and it was that which unnerved me. In another world I might be worthy of the faith Walter and his mother seem eager to place in me, but in this one I seem fated to let them down.
What choice do I have? I shall talk to Walter and do my best to keep him safe. From everything but his faith in me.
At least last week’s rumors of imminent action against the Czechs have proved groundless. Hitler has either suffered a momentary loss of nerve or is simply toying with his opponents, rather like a cat with an injured bird. I think he’ll make his move in the early autumn, when the rivers are low and before snow blocks the mountain passes.
Monday, June 13
Monday is usually a hard day at work, but not today. Today everyone but the drivers and signalers were told to down tools and listen to Herr Goebbels for almost three hours. I was in the canteen when he began and sat there with around two hundred others listening to a diatribe on the “Beauty of Work” campaign. This government has verbal diarrhea—if there’s a war, they’ll end up talking the enemy to death.
We were treated to an endless list of achievements—sports fields and gardens laid around factory walls, swimming pools next to ironworks, cleaner facilities—he couldn’t bring himself to say “toilets”—for just about everyone. He had a neat line for everything—“Good lighting means good work” was my favorite. He obviously hadn’t seen the scrawled response in our own newly lit workshop: “now we can really see the crap we’re working with!” At one point I found myself staring at the “germany needs colonies” poster on the canteen wall and imagining this lot rigging all of Africa and Asia with their loudspeakers. A vision of hell.
The talk with Walter was easier than I expected. “I’m joining the Jungvolk,” he said by way of greeting, and I tried to look surprised. He didn’t seem that upset by the prospect. “It’s to help Erich,” he explained. “Mama says we all have to do things we’d rather not do. She says she’s going to be nicer to Herr Ruchay.”
“How about Marco?” I asked.
“Oh, I talked to him about it. He wants me to get him one of the daggers if I can.”
I was lost for words.
“We went to the toy shop after school,” Walter went on. “They’ve got a new set of infantry soldiers—there’s even two dead ones, and they look really real.” He must have seen the look on my face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Does that make you think about, you know . . . ? But it is more real, isn’t it? Soldiers are killed in war.”
I had to agree that they were.
He was quiet for a moment, thinking—I assumed about the soldiers. But he wasn’t. “What will happen to Marco?” he asked.
I told him I didn’t know, but that I thought Marco would have a hard time of it. Nothing worse, I added hastily, just a hard time. In every contact with officialdom, he’d be made to feel inferior, but as long as he had a mother and friends who knew he wasn’t, and who made him know that they knew, then he’d be all right. At least he wasn’t Jewish, I almost added, but had the sense not to.
“Maybe one day he’ll go to Africa,” Walter said. “That’s where his father lives,” he explained.
“And maybe one day people will accept each other for who they are and not which race they’re born to,” I said.
He gave me the classic Walter look, the one that says, “You may be the adult, but who do you think you’re kidding?”
Tuesday, June 14
Gerritzen hasn’t spoken to me since his drunken outburst on Saturday night, but if his occasional glances in my direction are anything to go by, he’s wishing the encounter had never taken place. He has seemed deflated at the dinner table but also harder, as if he’s seeking someone other than himself to be angry with. One anti-Jewish comment at breakfast seemed completely out of character. This, I think, is how political poison infects a whole culture—it enters the bloodstream through the cuts and bruises of personal disappointment and feeds on hearts wounded by feelings of inadequacy or rejection.
Ruchay has also changed, if only in the way he deals with me. There’s no overt hostility—he’s never less than polite, but there’s a coldness that wasn’t there before. I may have stepped across some line—particularly where Anna is concerned—that only he can see. Or it may just be that I’m not deferential enough. I’m torn between trying to improve matters and letting him stew.
He won’t be pleased to hear that I’ve been invited to go for a picnic next Sunday with Anna, Verena, and the two boys. Not that I care a jot for Ruchay’s feelings. A few weeks ago I would have worried about upsetting Jakob, but I think he knows by now that I have no romantic interest in Anna and that I’ve been invited more as Walter’s friend than hers. Anyway, it seemed such a nice idea when she asked that I accepted with barely a second thought, and the possible risk to my mission only occurred to me hours later. Marco’s mere existence is provocation enough in this country, and I will be seen as the responsible male if anyone chooses to challenge his right to be present wherever we happen to be. My old instructors in Moscow would be horrified. So, two months ago, would I have been.
Eleven days from now I’ll find out what
Moscow has in mind for me. Even dead men on leave deserve the occasional picnic.
Wednesday, June 15
If my writing seems a little shakier than usual, it’s because my whole body is still revolting against the inaction my brain forced on it a few minutes ago. Müller and I were on our way home from the Working Group—only a couple of streets away from here—when we rounded a corner and saw a bunch of SA thugs kicking a young man to death. There was no warning—there was no talking or shouting from the storm troopers, only the rasping breath of men doing hard physical work. Their victim had probably already lost the ability to produce sounds, and the houses that lined the streets were silent and still, despite the fact that the light had only recently begun to fade.
Müller and I looked at each other, realized we had reached the same conclusion—that intervention would result, at best, in our arrest—and shrank back into what shadows there were. It was, as my instructors would have said, the correct course of action, but that didn’t make it feel any better. And from what I could judge, it cost Müller as much as it cost me.
Seconds, perhaps minutes, went by. The flurry of activity came to an end. One of the men said something; others laughed. They marched off, happily for us, in the other direction.
“At least we can take him to the hospital,” Müller said, as the boot steps faded. But there was no point. The victim, a man in his early twenties, was beyond help. There were bloody dents on one side of his head, and his throat had been comprehensively crushed. “I know who he is,” Müller said, almost in a whisper. “His name’s Rolf Hangebruch. He lives—lived—a few streets away. He was a homosexual. And not afraid to let people know it.”
We stood there for a moment just looking at him. “No point hanging around,” I said. Müller gave me a sharp look, but nodded. At the end of the next street, we parted without another word.
All my instincts tell me that Müller can be trusted, but those instincts have sometimes led me astray. I need a believable account of his last five years. How long was he in custody? How did he get his current job? Is he even the Dariusz Müller I think he is or someone else with the same name—a cousin, perhaps? Elise may have some answers for me at the end of the month. If she doesn’t, then I’ll have to do some digging of my own.
This evening’s meeting, like the last one, was held at Joachim Wosz’s house. At last Friday’s Labor Front meeting, the workers’ official representatives had given up their demand for an end to compulsory overtime in exchange for a promise of new gymnasium equipment, and most of our meeting was taken up with wondering whether we could make any political capital out of the resulting derision and discontent. The real answer was no, but it was decided that we should sound out the workforce over its willingness to undertake some sort of action. Looking around the faces, I could sense that everyone shared the same feeling, that we were just going through the motions, and we knew it.
There was one exception, however. Paul Giesemann, a chubby young worker with a Bavarian accent and an almost permanent smile, was apparently more frustrated than anyone else and never missed an opportunity to suggest bolder paths of action. The others, who have clearly known him for quite a while, seem more amused than concerned by Giesemann’s reckless suggestions, but he smells like an informer to me. Someone else for Moscow to check on.
It’s completely dark now, and I suppose the young man’s corpse is still lying in the street where we left it. Most of the time it’s hard to take Nazi Germany seriously—the ideology is so ludicrous and so utterly transparent to anyone who knows anything about the way societies work. And no one who has lived outside his own country for more than a few weeks could swallow the nonsense they talk about national and racial hierarchies. If Walter, a twelve-year-old so-called Aryan, can see through it all, then why can’t everyone else?
But they can’t. And watching those SA men kick that young man to death was like watching a rehearsal for the bigger spectacle, when bigger German gangs start kicking the rest of Europe to death. Absurd they may be, but not taking these bastards seriously will be the death of us.
Thursday, June 16
There’s a parade through the town center on Saturday, and Walter tells me that Ruchay has asked Anna to watch it with him. Much to Walter’s disgust she not only accepted the invitation, but also insists that he comes along. I now understand why Ruchay could hardly stop smiling over supper.
There’s been a reply from Anna’s cousin Sofie—her family is happy to have Walter for four weeks in August. Walter clearly has mixed feelings about it all. A month at the mercy of virtual strangers is a bit daunting, and I think he’s also worried about deserting his mother for such a long time. But he’s excited as well, particularly by the prospect of the journey itself. Anna will take him as far as Berlin, Sofie the rest of the way.
Walter says he will write to me once a week. He also says that if his mother marries Herr Ruchay, he’s not coming back.
I had a short chat with Otto Tikalsky this afternoon, when we both found ourselves scouring the stores cupboard for carbon paper. He asked me if I’d seen the early edition of the local evening paper and, when I said no, told me that a young man’s body had been found in Hamm that morning. According to the paper, Rolf Hangebruch was a hit-and-run victim, knocked down by some local youth gang members enjoying a nocturnal ride. “I knew him,” Tikalsky told me, sadness lurking in his eyes. “He lived on my street. Everyone knew he was queer, but everyone liked him anyway. He was always cheerful, and he went out of his way to help people. And I’ll bet you a million marks he wasn’t hit by a car.”
Saturday, June 18
I spent some of the afternoon sitting out in the yard at the back of the house with Andreas. It was a hot, sunny day, and I rolled him out in the makeshift contraption Erich constructed from an old rocking chair and some rusted wheels last year. Andreas loves the heat and says that he can feel the brightness even if he can’t see it.
It was the first time I’d been out back. There’s not much in the way of garden, only a few window boxes with flowers and one climbing plant. Walter, and sometimes Marco, use the space for football practice, and there’s a chicken run up against the end wall.
In the course of a long and rambling conversation, I learned a little more about Andreas’s life. He grew up in the Ruhr and worked there until the war as a local government administrator. After the war he lived with his wife until she died, and then with Anna. “I could have gone to my sister, Meta,” he said, “but death will be more exciting than East Prussia.”
I read to him for a while—something both Anna and Walter do every day. The current book is Dickens’s Great Expectations, which both of us have read before. After about ten minutes, he fell asleep, and I sat there in the sunshine wondering how Anna and Walter were getting on with Ruchay. When the breeze was in the right direction, I could hear the distant music of the band.
They came back an hour later. Walter looked relieved, while Anna’s face was an absolute mask. Ruchay seemed rather pleased with himself.
Sunday, June 19
Marco has a bad summer cold, so he and Verena missed out on the picnic. Anna, Walter, and I took a special hikers’ train south to the Sauerland and got off after about an hour at a small village station. Another train arrived from the opposite direction at the same time, and it seemed for a moment as if half of Germany’s youth was milling around the station area. There were enough bronzed limbs and blonde pigtails on display to keep Goebbels’s propaganda artists at work for weeks. I caught Walter staring at a well-shepherded troop of Hitler Youth, half-fascinated, half-contemptuous. They marched off singing the “Horst Wessel Song,” and I wondered whether any remnants of Erich’s old gang would be waiting for them in the forest.
We took the same path at a slower pace, and their voices soon faded. A mile or so up the valley we could have been alone in the world, surrounded by sun-dappled trees and a tapestry of birdsong
. After two miles, the path emerged from the trees by the side of a mountain lake. There were lots of picnic tables, many of them already filled with families, and canoes for hire. We picked a place to lay our rug and unloaded our bags. Anna suggested that Walter and I take a turn on the water while she organized the food.
The lake was about a kilometer in length and never more than two hundred meters wide. I wondered why so few people were swimming until I felt the water—it was freezing. We paddled to the far end and back again, managing to keep a reasonably straight course. The last person I had shared a canoe with was my brother, Jens, on a lake like this one, several years before the war. I sometimes wonder what he would have made of my life these last twenty years.
It wasn’t even noon, but we fell on the feast as if it were midafternoon. There were cold sausages and ham, potato salad and sauerkraut, tomatoes and rye bread, and a heavenly blackberry tart for dessert. Much to his delighted surprise, Walter was presented with a bottle of Coca-Cola, leaving Anna and me to share a bottle of Riesling and a thermos of coffee. I haven’t enjoyed a meal so much for years.
Afterward, Walter announced that he was going to walk around the lake. Anna stretched out on the grass, eyes closed, mouth set in a half smile. She looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen her and, with her thin blue dress molded to the shape of her body, more desirable too. I imagined her as a young woman, undoubtedly beautiful, and alive with those enthusiasms and passions that the succeeding years have dulled or forced into hiding.
I wanted to ask about her earlier life—it is, after all, something people usually do as they get to know someone—but I didn’t. I didn’t want to spoil the day, to overload it with the weight of the past. And it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t tell her the truth about my life, so how could I ask for the truth about hers? I thought about giving her half the story—admitting my Communist career in postwar Germany, keeping quiet about my subsequent work for the Comintern—but a half-fictional life seemed no better than one that was wholly false. I solved the problem by falling asleep.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave Page 9
