Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

by David Downing

  Walter woke us both up and pointedly asked why we’d come all this way if we were just going to sleep. Suitably shamed, we allowed ourselves to be talked into a rowboat. I rowed us down the lake, but Walter insisted on rowing us back and sat there facing the two of us with what looked like a matchmaker’s glint in his eyes.

  While walking back down through the woods to the station, I felt, for a few minutes, an almost overwhelming sense of loss. With the late afternoon sun still pouring down through the trees and Anna’s blonde hair dancing on her shoulders in front of me, I needed all my discipline to keep from crying. Nothing tears the heart like a glimpse of happiness.

  Monday, June 20

  The first name on my list belongs to an inveterate drinker. Hans Derleth is always sober at work, but the reddened nose and bloodshot eyes raised my suspicions, and after taking time to follow him home on three occasions, I no longer have any doubts. He stops for drinks at the first bar he comes to and again at the second and third. He drinks spirits rather than beer, and he drinks them at a punishing rate. By the time he gets home, he can hardly walk straight, and on two of three occasions, I watched him fall up the stairs. He may be sober again each morning, but a functioning drunk is still a drunk. Another one crossed off my list.

  Wednesday, June 22

  There’s hardly ever any South American news in the German papers, but this morning’s Völkischer Beobachter carried a lengthy article about those fresh travails of German immigrants in Argentina and Brazil that one man had raised at my Social Club talk. After reveling in their original homeland’s resurgence, these German expatriates are now finding that their new countrymen expect them to abandon old allegiances, and behave more like Argentinians and Brazilians than Germans. Setting up German-speaking schools and filling their children with love of a distant Führer has not gone down well with the locals, and “transparently reasonable” objections by the German foreign ministry to the resultant protests have caused a “storm of unwarranted criticism.”

  Ruchay’s indignation rose as he read out the article, and he concluded by turning to me—the supposed South American expert—with an accusatory “What do you think of that?”

  I shook my head, as if I were just as appalled by such ungrateful behavior. I explained that the governments over there were incredibly intolerant of anything they thought posed a threat to their authority. They were of course mistaken in this case, and would probably realize as much before too many weeks had passed.

  “I should hope so,” Ruchay retorted, and returned to his paper in search of better news, leaving me to my coffee and memories of that continent. My years there had been among the happiest and most rewarding of my life. True, I had spent a third of them in prison—six months in Buenos Aires for “sedition,” eighteen in Rio for my small part in organizing the failed Prestes rebellion—but the conditions had been relatively benign by contemporary European standards. I was seldom hungry and rarely beaten—and then not badly—and you do eventually get used to being bitten by every species of insect and spider under the sun.

  During the four years I was free, I did useful political work in several countries, setting up presses, helping to organize slowdowns and strikes, establishing parties and courier networks. And the sheer beauty of the Andes and Altiplano are hard to exaggerate: picture a line of distant volcanoes leaking wispy trails of smoke into a cornflower-blue sky. Maybe the thin air at three thousand meters does something to the brain, but rolling along a Bolivian mountain road with a bunch of comrade miners in the back of an open truck sometimes felt like happiness defined.

  Speaking of mountains, the papers are full of one called Nanga Parbat. I had never heard of it, but Walter filled me in before he set off for school. He told me it’s at the western end of the Himalayas and at 8,126 meters is the ninth-highest peak in the world. Many have tried but no one has ever reached the top, earning Nanga Parbat its “Killer Mountain” nickname.

  The current German expedition is the fourth in six years. The 1932 one wisely turned back; the next in 1934 was caught in a storm and perished almost to a man. In 1937 an avalanche did the damage, burying all but one of the seventeen-strong party. Walter’s class at school is painting a mural of the current attempt, and Walter himself seems excited by it all, so I bit back the comment that came to mind about turning an Asian mountain into a German cemetery. Even as a child, I could never see the sense of doing difficult things just because they were there to be done. I still can’t, though these days I am willing to concede that those who enjoy such challenges are not necessarily idiots.

  It is past one in the morning, but I can’t go to bed—like everyone else in the house, I am expected downstairs in front of the wireless when the big fight begins at 3 a.m. Max Schmeling, Germany’s finest boxer, is taking on the American Negro Joe Louis for the second time, having beaten him two years ago when Jim Braddock held the heavyweight crown. Since then Louis has beaten Braddock, so the crown is at stake in this second fight. As with the “Killer Mountain,” most of my information comes from Walter, who has read every inch of the papers’ fulsome coverage and whom Anna has promised to wake in time for the actual fight.

  Schmeling has been in America for seven weeks, blowing the Nazi trumpet, telling all and sundry that Germany has never been so united and that the reports of ill-treatment of Jews have been wildly exaggerated. Until recently Goebbels and his editors here have been careful not to stake the Reich’s reputation on Schmeling—fearful, no doubt, that he might lose—but as the excitement has mounted over the last few days, they haven’t been able to help themselves. I don’t suppose it’ll make that much difference. After all the Nazis have said about race since they came to power, their credibility was bound to be on the line. A Schmeling victory will prove them right; a Louis triumph will be a resounding slap in the face to all they hold dear.

  Ruchay has been swinging between bluster and nerves all day, and I imagine half the country is in a similar state. It’s going to be an interesting hour or so.

  Thursday 23 June

  An interesting two minutes, as things turned out. There we all were—Ruchay, Gerritzen, Barufka, Anna, Walter, and I—still settling in for a long and grueling battle when the whole thing was suddenly over.

  The fight seemed briefer for the overlong buildup. By the time Walter fetched me downstairs soon after two, the broadcast had already been underway for over an hour. According to Walter, the excerpts from a book by the famous boxing commentator Arno Hellmis had been really interesting, the pieces of music considerably less so. Soon after I sat down, the German commentators in New York began to describe the stadium setup, weather, and crowd, none of which they liked. There was chaos where there should be order, fearsome heat, which might sap their hero’s strength, and as for the people . . . well, Americans were certainly different. Exactly how was never spelled out, but we were left with an impression of unruly children or animals, unschooled in self-discipline, a rung or two lower than Germans on the evolutionary ladder.

  When Barufka and I went out for a short walk, we found more windows lit than not—the nation was certainly listening.

  Shortly before three, Hellmis himself appeared on air, sounding, I thought, slightly hysterical. Soon after that the two fighters made their appearances, Schmeling getting the louder cheers. It sounded as if much of the white American crowd was putting race above nation, and Hellmis duly said as much in a suitably gloating manner, before noting how serene Schmeling looked amid all the chaos.

  The German again got the bigger cheer when the fighters were introduced, and Ruchay’s smile was almost ecstatic. According to Walter, Joe Louis had been disappointing in his last few fights, and it felt like he was up against it here.

  How wrong can one be? The fight lasted 124 seconds and, from what we heard, could well have been stopped even earlier. I know little about boxing, but I didn’t need to know any more than I did. Hellmis started off describing
punches, but barely ten seconds had passed before his commentary unraveled, turning first into strangled cries of disbelief—Schmeling was down!—and then to despairing pleas—“Stop him! Hold on! . . . Get up, Max!”

  Looking around at my companions, I noticed that all but Anna had their mouths open. She was trying to hold back a smile.

  And then it was over. “The towel!” Hellmis shrieked in despair. “Max Schmeling is beaten!” he shouted twice, as if he needed to convince himself.

  The words seemed to echo around our room. Ruchay’s face was grey, Gerritzen’s mouth an angry pout. Barufka looked shocked, Walter confused. “Is it over?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” I told him, but I think he was more surprised than disappointed.

  Hellmis had recovered some of his own composure by this time, but still seemed half in shock. He praised Schmeling’s honesty and courage and put the result down to “the meanness of fate.” He still hadn’t mentioned Louis when the broadcast suddenly came to an end, and the sound of the New York crowd gave way to the wretched “Horst Wessel Song.” A rendition of “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles” was followed by a single spirited “Heil.”

  And then we were sitting in silence.

  “Well, he did his best,” Barufka said.

  Ruchay gave him a contemptuous look and stood. There would be reasons we knew nothing of, he said. He couldn’t believe it had been a fair fight—Louis had cheated on the previous occasion, and we would doubtless find he had done so again.

  Ruchay, as I discovered today, was far from alone in his suspicions. The late-morning editions were full of dark hints, and during the course of the workday, I overheard several men voicing their feeling that there’d been something crooked about Schelling’s defeat, but by evening someone in Berlin had decided that acting the good loser was the better option, and the later editions followed that line. Walter at least was pleased—as Joe Louis’s representative in Hamm, his friend Marco had a day of being bullied by teachers that was only partly offset by the newfound admiration of several fellow pupils. Now that Goebbels has given the result his blessing, Marco should be less of a target.

  Friday, June 24

  Right after work this evening, I went with Anna to see the Gestapo. She braved their lair a couple of days ago to inquire about Erich’s whereabouts—after the trial they had promised to let her know within days—and was offered an appointment with one of their “overworked” officers. Thinking she might be taken more seriously with a man in tow, she booked a time when she knew I was free and then asked if I would mind going with her. I should have made an excuse—why give them a face to remember?—but I just said yes. I knew I was putting an individual’s immediate needs above the probable needs of the party but felt no real regret.

  We hardly shared a word on our walk into the town. I had no real reason to feel nervous, but no one takes the Gestapo lightly, and a lion’s mouth is a lion’s mouth. Anna was clearly anxious: mostly, she admitted as we neared our destination, about losing her temper. If I thought she was getting too aggressive, she said, I should give her a gentle nudge in the side.

  The police building in Hamm was tucked just behind the town hall, and the Gestapo had a small suite of four offices right at the front. There were, I guessed, no more than eight or ten men involved, and the man in charge—if the plaque on the only closed door could be trusted—was Kriminalinspektor Herbert Jagusch. We, it transpired, after a lengthy wait in the reception area, would have to make do with one of his underlings, a portly young man with thin blond hair and glasses. He didn’t offer his name, and when Anna asked him for it, he pulled out a warrant card and crisply informed us that was all we needed to see. After that, I expected him to question my right to be present, but being a “friend of the family” turned out to be good enough. And, I have to admit, he was much more willing to help than Anna or I had expected.

  Despite our having an appointment, he had no information to hand, but an exhaustive search ensued, which gave us time to marvel at the sheer volume of paperwork even a small Gestapo office could generate in a little over five years. And ten minutes later we had the information we had come for: Erich was in Work Camp 37, close to the Belgian border, about forty kilometers south of Aachen. He might be moved at a later date, but six-month sentences were usually spent in one place.

  Anna asked if she could write to him and was told that Erich could neither receive nor send letters. “He is being punished,” the Kriminalsekretär reminded her, as if she had forgotten.

  “But so am I,” she told him, “and I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  He gave her a look that suggested her lack of mothering skills might have played a part in Erich’s fall from grace, but merely repeated that these were the rules. She took a deep breath, and I readied myself to apply the requested nudge, but in the end none was required. Anna simply asked to be informed if Erich was moved, thanked the Kriminalsekretär for all his help, and even held out a hand. He looked surprised but shook it anyway. Three Heil Hitlers later we were on our way out.

  It had, I thought, gone better than we had hoped it would. Anna thought so too. She knew it was foolish but felt much better just knowing where Erich was. And Walter would too. They would look up the place in his atlas together.

  Sunday, June 26

  This month’s treff was yesterday. The train was a fast one, stopping only in Unna and Hagen before it reached Barmen, which these days forms part of the new urban aggregation that stretches down the Wupper valley. My destination was the old Elberfeld station, now christened Wuppertal-Elberfeld.

  The train was close to full, mostly, it seemed, with middle-class families out for the day, but the weather was poor for summer, with a dull leaden sky and clinging damp air that never quite turned into rain.

  Elise was sitting in the buffet, nursing the last of a coffee. She was wearing a dark raincoat over the same cream dress but without the last occasion’s matching shoes. The low-heeled ankle-high boots she wore instead had a decidedly Parisian elegance, reinforcing her disguise and, I suspect, providing an element of guilt-free pleasure.

  After greeting each other like affectionate siblings, we left the buffet and station, and as we started down toward the river, she reached inside her handbag for a packet of cigarettes. When I asked if that was wise, she gave me a look and said, “Probably not,” but lit one anyway. “If we see a uniform, I’ll pass it to you.”

  The Wupper, with its famous overhead monorail, was only a couple of minutes away, and as we approached it, a train slid past on the framework of girders that straddled the river. Had Walter ever been here? I wondered. I’d been well into my twenties when I first rode on one of the underslung trains, and I’d still found it exciting.

  There weren’t many people on the paths on either side of the river, and for once in Hitler’s Germany, there wasn’t a uniform in sight. I told Elise that Engels had grown up nearby, which brought forth the dry rejoinder that a pilgrimage probably wouldn’t be wise. I told her the Nazis had probably torn the house down.

  She leaned against the bankside railing and gazed gloomily down at the fast-running water. After one last drag on the cigarette, she tossed the butt into the wet bushes below and pulled herself upright. “So, Dariusz Müller,” she said, taking my arm and steering me westwards along the path. “He joined the Spartakusbund in 1917, and was an active member until 1933. According to comrades in Moscow, he was involved in a lot of street fighting both before and after the Nazis came to power. In fact, right up until the moment he was arrested. His wife was too, and she was killed that spring.”

  So the current wife was his second, I thought. “Did they have children?” I asked.

  “Not that anyone recalls. Müller was released in December 1934 and back at his job a week or so later, which looks suspicious. But according to Moscow, no one who knew him believes he would turn traitor.”

  Which wa
sn’t a great help. I asked if she knew where Müller had been during 1921 through 1923, my two years in Germany.

  “He’s always lived in this general area,” she said. “First Essen, then Gelsenkirchen, then Hamm.”

  “I must have run into him during those years. I’m sure he remembers me.”

  Elise shrugged. “So tell me how you’ve been doing.”

  The first things that came to my head were Erich’s imprisonment and Walter’s travails at school, but they weren’t what she needed to hear about. I told her about Müller’s group for discussing workplace issues and what I thought it really represented. It might be a gift, I told her, a ready-made unit that needed only Moscow’s direction. But if, as I suspected, at least one of its members was a Gestapo informer, it might serve us better as a stalking horse, distracting attention away from a newly created group.

  “If Müller’s a traitor, then his group must be flypaper,” Elise said. “What about the list you started with?”

  There was no one behind or ahead of us, so I handed over the preliminary reports I’d written on the seven I’d met who were still working at the yards, and asked her to let Moscow know how grateful I’d be for any further information that the German comrades in exile might have. I’d used numbers rather than names, so we spent ten minutes sitting on a bench crafting a mnemonic out of the names for Elise to remember. This proved strangely enjoyable, and as we were completing the task, a line of red balloon-bearing children hurried past, causing Elise to smile for the first time.

  It was only briefly. “I guess that’s it,” she said, looking up at the grey sky. “The next treff will be in Essen, same time, at the Café Hummel on Frohnhauser Strasse.”

  I told her I knew it but added that I hadn’t been inside it for fifteen years.

  “But you won’t be meeting me,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “I’ve been called back to Moscow.”