Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

by David Downing

  It was probably my imagination, but she seemed to grip my arm a little tighter as she said it. I almost asked if she’d obey the summons and realized that meant I wasn’t sure I would.

  We parted with another cursory kiss, like a brother and sister used to such separations. I watched her walk away across the station concourse and saw the male heads turn to follow her progress. I wondered if sex appeal would save her in Moscow and decided it probably wouldn’t. Her bosses might be tempted, but there was too much independence in her eyes.

  I was back in Hamm by three, and as I walked back home through the town, I found myself noticing how familiar so much of it was. The lettering on the signs, the meats in the butcher’s window, the faces and tones of speech. Things like the color of light that you notice only when you’ve lived outside northern Europe. This is where I’m from, but that’s all it is—it brings no warmth to my heart.

  I looked for changes, and there were plenty of them. So many flags, so many women in pigtails, so many buildings boasting loudspeakers, which for once had nothing to say. And, I have to admit it, the people seem fatter, fitter, happier, than they did in the early twenties. Or at least less miserable. I suspect the eventual cost will surpass their worst imaginings, but for the moment it’s easy to understand why few feel the need or desire to stick their heads above the parapet.

  And sometimes it all just seems too ludicrous for words. One of Walter’s weekend homework assignments requires him to provide evidence of Nordic racial superiority, and earlier today he turned up at my door with the pages of mimeographed quotes his teacher had helpfully provided to assist him in the task. Walter read one through, and if I had it in front of me, I would quote it in full. The gist, as I remember it, was this: Nordic peoples’ mouths have a better shape, allowing them to talk and sing more clearly, whereas inferior races have inferior mouths, with which they can make only clumsy and indistinct sounds, like barking, snoring, and squeaking. The proof of this theory is found in birds, which have beautiful voices because they have Nordic-shaped throats and mouths.

  “It can’t be true, can it?” Walter asked doubtfully after he’d finished reading the passage.

  No it couldn’t, I thought, but that’s what they rely on—that smidgen of doubt. Anyone who’d listened to a Negro gospel choir or an Italian opera diva would know such ideas for the rubbish they were, but few had been so lucky, especially in a place like Hamm. When most people here saw an argument like this in print, delivered as fact in such relentless detail, their instinct would be to believe it.

  No, I told Walter, it couldn’t be true, because I’d heard beautiful singing everywhere I’d been, from every racial group under the sun.

  Walter nodded. He’d come to the same conclusion from another direction. Both he and Erich had Nordic throats, and when either burst into song, someone would tell him to stop.

  “You do know how to write this essay?” I asked.

  He did. He would list all the good things about Germany—the bullet train, the zeppelins, Nobel Prize winners, Beethoven, Bismarck, and Goethe—and simply ignore all the bad stuff.

  I suggested it might be wise to include the Führer in his list.

  “Right at the top,” he said with a grin.

  Tuesday, June 28

  Jakob and I went to the Social Club this evening, and the pair of us had an enjoyable time, drinking slightly too much and even winning a few pfennigs at the skat table. None of the men on my list were present, so for once I was able to forget why I’m here.

  The last few days have been unusually hot, but the spell seems to be ending—sitting here by my open window, I can see forks of lightning on the western horizon and occasionally hear a faint roll of thunder. After all last week’s excitement, the house has felt much calmer in recent days. Gerritzen has been the only one showing any animation—a new girl, I suspect, whose distant ancestors his father will surely be double-checking. Anna has seemed less anxious since finding out where Erich is, and her newfound optimism has rubbed off on Walter. Ruchay, like any true believer, has found a way of turning Schmeling’s defeat into victory—according to him, given that everyone knows Louis cheated, the refusal to lodge an official complaint shows how superior Germany actually is.

  And I of course feel that much calmer after the treff in Barmen. I have another month to gather information and impressions, and no immediate need to put my life at risk.

  The next treff is on July 30, two days before Walter leaves for East Prussia. I know I will miss him greatly, but his being gone will make it easier to concentrate on the work I was sent here to do. A terrible admission for a veteran rep like myself, but undeniably true.

  Wednesday, June 29

  I spent most of this evening sitting outside with Andreas. He seems better lately. There’s more color in his face, and his mind is as sharp as anyone’s. The hot weather obviously suits the old man, and most days someone pushes him and his modified rocking chair out into the yard.

  It doesn’t get dark until after ten, and this evening was particularly pleasant, still warm with the slightest of breezes under a clear blue sky. I read to Andreas for an hour or so—a recent novel about the war that he obviously found entertaining, in spite of—or perhaps because of—its almost comic lack of authenticity.

  When I put the book down, he asked if I’d ever read The Good Soldier Schweik.

  I told him I had.

  “They banned it of course.”

  I wasn’t surprised—it mocks all those things the current leadership holds dear. Things like patriotic duty, unquestioning obedience, glorying in slaughter.

  “I loved it,” Andreas admitted cheerfully. “But probably better not to say so these days.”

  “Not to say what?” a voice said behind me.

  “Ah, our noble block warden,” Andreas said. “Have you two met?”

  We had. Herr Clauer had come to introduce himself the day after my arrival, and I’d been pleasantly surprised by his affability. Anna had later told me that they were lucky, that the warden was an old friend of her father’s.

  Andreas said we’d been talking about The Good Soldier Schweik and was willing to bet that Clauer had read it.

  “Not since it was banned,” Clauer said jovially enough. He asked how I’d settled in at work and joked that I might not have come back from South America if I’d known how many shifts I’d be working. “And then you have to spend your evenings looking after this old Red!”

  I must have betrayed my surprise, because he put a friendly hand on my shoulder and reminded me that the Duce had once been a Communist. It was what you did these days that mattered.

  Well, Andreas said, he just sat around, thanking his lucky stars that he was too old to go to war, and that at least one of his grandsons was too young.

  Clauer observed that the other one hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory.

  “He’s learning,” Andreas said.

  Clauer hoped so. He had come around to suggest a new flag for the front of the house. With Erich under a cloud, it wouldn’t do to look mean, and Clauer had guessed that with all her worries Anna might not have noticed how ragged the current one looked.

  Andreas thanked him for pointing it out, then suggested that any time Clauer fancied wheeling him down to the nearest bar, he might even buy him a drink.

  “Not tonight,” Clauer told him. “I’ve got a lot of people to see. But soon!”

  Once he was gone, Andreas filled me in on their history. They’d known each other in Essen before the war and had served in the same unit on the western front until Andreas lost his sight. More coincidentally, they’d both ended up moving to Hamm, and only a few houses apart.

  I said that Clauer seemed a decent man, and Andreas agreed. They’d always disagreed about politics, but in a friendly sort of way. Franz Clauer was one of those men who always thought the best of people, “whether it�
��s you or me or the Führer.” They were lucky to have him, Andreas said, because most of the block wardens just liked sticking their noses in and using whatever they found to make themselves look good. But Franz thought he was helping people, and sometimes he really was. If he hadn’t put a word in for Erich with the local Gestapo, it might have been more than six months.

  I asked Andreas if he thought Erich had the sense to keep his head down.

  The old man laughed. “Maybe, maybe not.” But Erich was tough; it was Walter that Andreas was worried about. The boy was “too decent for a world like this one.”

  He’d hardly finished saying it when Walter himself appeared, characteristically out of breath, sweater in hand. “Mama says you should put this on.”

  Andreas did as he was told, and for a moment I thought I saw tears in his eyes.

  Thursday, June 30

  I have worked at the yard for nine weeks now, and have, I hope, established myself as a fairly easygoing chap with an interest in workplace issues but no political ax to grind. I’m pleasant and undemanding company, who’s not going to upset anyone’s day by being prickly, intrusive, or particularly clever. A Barufka without the cloak of sadness.

  I have now had—or overheard—several conversations involving the seven men on my list whom I’ve managed to meet. I’ve also brought their names up in various settings and listened to any opinions that others were willing to offer. I’ve followed a few of them home and chatted with their neighbors. I have done what spies do, and I know as much about these men as any stranger could. It’s not enough of course, but then it never can be. People do stupid things for sensible reasons, and vice versa. All I can do is play the odds and try to minimize the risks.

  And today I finally met my eighth man. Gunter Schulte is a tall, thin, dour-looking individual who works in the locomotive repair shop. He nearly always eats alone, reading a paper as he forks in the food, but today he was sharing a table with an engineer named Weber whom I slightly know, and I wasted no time in joining them. Weber seemed put out, but Schulte was more welcoming than I expected and almost immediately asked my opinion about the subject they were discussing, which turned out to be the “Jewish problem” in general, and the regime’s treatment of German Jewish war veterans in particular. “I am saying that a man who fights bravely for his country—bravely enough to win an Iron Cross First Class—should be honored in that country,” Schulte said, his obvious anger just about under control. “Honored for life. Forever. If you have a problem with too many Jewish bankers and lawyers and doctors, fine. Introduce quotas; redress the balance. But don’t try and rewrite history. Those men were every bit as brave as your so-called Aryans.”

  Weber was unabashed. “An enemy is an enemy,” he said. “We can’t afford to make exceptions.”

  I thought Schulte might hit him, but Schulte simply shook his head and laughed. “Have it your way,” he said. “I suppose we must assume the Führer knows best,” he added with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  “Yes, we must,” Weber said, getting up. “And you should be more careful what you say, Gunter,” he added, with a glance in my direction.

  Schulte watched him walk away, then turned a calm face to me. “My late wife was Jewish,” he said. “And both her brothers won Iron Crosses.”

  Friday, July 1

  The Anschluss is fewer than four months old, but already it seems clear that Hitler has no intention of resting on his laurels. Having swallowed his native Austria whole, he now seems intent on nibbling away at the German-populated edges of Czechoslovakia. The wireless this morning carried news of the latest outrage and German protests—teachers in Czech schools are apparently encouraging their pupils to sing rude songs about the Führer. In revenge, the announcer characterized the entire Czech population as an “urchin-like rabble.”

  He also described the situation as “untenable,” which is probably close to the mark. Hitler and his wrecking crew won’t be happy until every last German is under their control. The Czech Sudetenland looks certain to be next on their list, and after that who knows? There are sizable German populations in most of the neighboring countries.

  Not that extending Germany’s borders to bring them all inside the Reich would satisfy Hitler. And he has never pretended it would. Anyone who wades through Mein Kampf—as I did ten years ago when his ravings still seemed more crazy than real—will read that Germany’s eastern border should follow the Ural Mountains. All the land now occupied by Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and others is earmarked as “living space” for the more-deserving Germans. Add to that his hatred of Communists and Jews—whom he bizarrely conflates into a single enemy—and its clear that the Soviet Union is his prime objective.

  This “living space” can’t be taken peacefully, so building up German military strength must be Hitler’s top priority. Which brings us back to Czechoslovakia, and not just the parts where Germans live. The Czech heartland has large and efficient arms and motor industries, both of which the Wehrmacht badly needs. If and when the Sudetenland goes, the rest won’t be far behind.

  If I can see all this, then surely Stalin and the Western leaders can see it too. If they can find a way of stopping Hitler in his tracks and thereby prevent him from keeping the Reich economy afloat with the bounty of serial conquests, then the whole Nazi project should start to fall apart. But first they have to stop him, and I see little sign that they’re even willing to try. The Soviet Union has no common border with Czechoslovakia, so even if he wanted to, Stalin would find it hard to provide any meaningful help, and I don’t think he’ll stick his neck out that far. As for the British and French, they seem to be hoping that the Nazis either belatedly learn to behave or—in the likely event that this proves beyond them—take out their resentments on others. The Soviets, say.

  Sunday, July 3

  An excellent day. As promised, the heat wave abated overnight, and this morning I went for a walk by the canal. Out in the open countryside, the scene was positively idyllic, a hazy blue sky hanging above the golden cornfields, with only a distant song of church bells rising above the whispers and murmurs of nature.

  This afternoon I took Walter and Marco to see a Hollywood double bill at the cinema. The supporting feature, a Western called Outlaws of Sonora, had a ludicrous plot about swapping identities but was mercifully short. The German newsreel conspicuously failed to cover Max Schmeling’s humiliation in New York, giving over its sports section to the upcoming Grand Prix season, which started today in France. Walter’s favorite driver is Rudolf Caracciola, but Walter can list about half a dozen other German track stars, together with the makes and colors of their racing machines.

  The main feature was The Adventures of Robin Hood, which I must admit was highly entertaining. Walter and Marco loved it, and spent their first hour back at the house staging imaginary sword fights up and down the stairs with tightly rolled newspapers.

  Ruchay has been away visiting his mother in Hannover, and this evening Gerritzen was out with his new girlfriend, so dinner was a much more pleasant affair than usual. Verena and Marco ate with Anna, Jakob, Walter, and me, and it felt like a family occasion. A taste of how things should be, but so rarely are.

  It brought back memories of my own family at dinner, before the war in our Offenbach home. My mother in her pale blue apron, my father still in his foreman’s uniform. Jens making all of us laugh with an impersonation of one of his teachers.

  Monday, July 4

  When Jakob and I arrived at work this morning, the yard was swarming with uniformed Orpo, and two Gestapo cars were parked in front of the director’s office. I knew that if they’d wanted me, they’d have come to the house, but my heart beat a little faster nevertheless.

  So why were they there? Slogans in the toilet, an acquaintance I passed in the corridor told me with a contemptuous smirk. Whether the contempt was for the sloganeers or those who’d come to catch them wasn’t clear
.

  In the dispatch office, no one seemed to be working, but there was only the one topic of conversation. There was nothing new about political slogans on toilet doors—we had all seen the hammers and sickles and pleas to shoot Hitler sharing space with varied carnal ambitions—so we could surmise only that someone had finally thought them worth reporting. A few minutes later, Müller walked in, hushed the room with a rap on his desk, and told us that a new and particularly offensive slogan had been discovered on doors in several different buildings. These had been reported to the local police, who had promptly involved the Gestapo.

  When someone asked what the slogan was, Müller admitted that he didn’t know. I wondered what it could have been—what could the Nazis find more offensive than scribbled pleas to shoot their leader? The Gestapo, Müller added, had set themselves up in the canteen and would be questioning every worker in turn.

  One man remarked that lunch would be a cheerful affair. Others were more concerned about the toilets—were any still accessible?

  Müller went to find out, and returned a couple of minutes later with the welcome news that only one of our toilet’s cubicles was out of use, and only for the time it would take to paint over the offending slogan. And no, he hadn’t been able to see what it was, but no doubt we’d find out soon enough. In the meantime, we should all get back to work. The Gestapo would tell us when we were needed.

  An Orpo officer arrived with the first three names. The choice suggested alphabetical order, which told me I would be one of the following three. Once called, two of us were told to wait outside the canteen’s door while the other one was questioned. The Gestapo officers had taken the table farthest from the serving hatch and kitchen, where several women were already preparing lunch. It seemed that no one had asked them to keep the noise down, and the low murmur of my colleague’s questioning was interspersed with clanging saucepans and slamming drawers.

  My turn soon came. There were two men seated at the desk—the Kriminalsekretär I’d seen with Anna and a Kriminalinspektor whom I assumed was the Hamm chief, Herbert Jagusch. He was probably still in his thirties, with greasy swept-back hair that was starting to recede and a sharp-boned face beneath a wide brow. Two other agents hovered behind them, ready to fetch and carry if the need arose.