Wheeler looked at me as if he really had become lost in my confused thoughts, and didn’t answer me at once; indeed, he seemed to be taking me at my word and ignoring me.
‘In one of his volumes of autobiography,’ he said, ‘I can’t recall whether it was Trail Sinister or Black Boomerang (I read them when they were published in the sixties, partly to see if Valerie was mentioned or alluded to at any point; she wasn’t, nor was the affair in which she played the largest part, the leading role), Sefton Delmer described traveling to Germany towards the end of March 1945 and seeing the spectacle with his own eyes, the same spectacle he had seen before in Spain during the final days of your War (he had been there too, as a correspondent) as well as in Poland and in France: people aimlessly fleeing, trudging through a series of ruined landscapes, dragging with them all that remained of their possessions or that they had been able to pile into their broken-down vehicles, or walking along roads and across fields with very young children on their backs, their eyes empty or terrified, sometimes with dead children whom they couldn’t bring themselves to bury at the roadside or whom they didn’t dare to abandon, but continued pointlessly to carry as if they were effigies … And Sefton Delmer said that he didn’t stop to ask anyone if, by any chance, what had first impelled them to set off along the roads and begin their aimless wanderings had been the messages broadcast on Radio Cologne or Radio Frankfurt, whose frequencies he had taken over. I remember that he wrote: “I didn’t want to know. I feared the answer might be ‘yes.’” So he did know. But he had done those things and would have done them again, just as almost everyone else was driven to do such things, just as almost everyone else does in time of war. During a war, very few ideas, even the most unlikely, fail to be put into practice. Almost anything that occurs to anyone as a way of harming the enemy finds an outlet, although it might not be publicly acknowledged afterwards. The trick we played with those radio broadcasts was so effective and had such grave consequences that the Nazi authorities were obliged to abandon the airwaves altogether as a way of issuing orders or instructions to the population. They had to fall back on the Drahtfunk, a wired diffusion network on which we could not intrude but which was much more problematic and restricted in scope. Yes, Delmer and his black game made a huge contribution. I don’t know if he won the War for us, but he certainly contributed to our winning it more quickly.’
Wheeler really did seem weary now. At any moment, he might abandon his story, leave the rest for another day, fall silent or perhaps bring it to a definitive end. He might even regret having started, something I didn’t want to risk, because I might never again find him in the same talkative mood, given that he normally kept himself to himself. ‘Who knows, I might never find him again in any kind of mood,’ I thought,‘if I’m going to leave here soon and go back to Spain. It’s quite likely that I’ll never see him again.’ And so I decided to insist and even hurry him along.
‘So what happened to Valerie?’ I didn’t mind pronouncing her name now. ‘What was this affair in which she played the largest part? The leading role you said.’
Wheeler leaned forward slightly, rested both hands on the handle of his walking stick, which he had positioned upright between his legs, with his chin resting on his two hands, and I had the feeling that this was a way of gathering momentum or of preparing himself to make a major effort. His eyes shone and his voice sounded stronger, for it had grown weaker as he talked. It occurred to me that he might never have told, or only a long time ago and to very few people, what he was probably about to tell me. For I was still not certain that he would.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure how familiar you are with the Nazi racial laws.’
‘Not very,’ I answered at once; I didn’t want there to be any more pauses. ‘Like everyone else, I have a vague general idea.’
‘They were very precise, almost complex and, more than that, from 1933 onwards, they kept changing. Their application also varied depending on the people and organizations who interpreted them. The Ministry of the Interior was less strict in applying them than Dr. Adolf Wagner, the Nazi Party’s chief authority on the subject, and he, in turn, was less rigorous than, for example, the SS. However, the relevant point here is this: you were considered to be a Jew if at least three of your grandparents were Jewish, regardless of any other factors; a person with two Jewish grandparents and who either belonged to the Jewish religion or was married to a Jew at the time the Race Laws came into effect was also legally Jewish (and, apart from a few very rare exceptions, “half-Jews” ended up being treated as Jews); then there were Mischlinge of the first degree, crossbreeds, who had two Jewish grandparents, but who neither professed the Jewish religion nor had a Jewish spouse; lastly, there were Mischlinge of the second degree who had only one “contaminating” Jewish grandparent and three grandparents who were “gentiles,” that is, “Aryans” or what the Nazis termed “Germans.” The difference was crucial, because, generally speaking, Mischlinge of the second degree were left in peace, and some were even able to obtain a German Blood Certificate, once the application had been studied by Hitler himself, who apparently judged the matter to be of sufficient importance to merit his spending time poring over each and every file and deciding whether or not the applicant should be “reclassified,” as several thousand were. He did so at his own pace, of course, and I imagine that, unlike the applicants, he was in no particular hurry to make those judgements: some were “Jews” asking to be promoted to first-degree Mischlinge, or first-degree Mischlinge wanting to be recategorized as second-degree Mischlinge, with those in the second degree aspiring to “Aryanisation” and the Certificate. Not a few committed suicide when they were relegated to “Jewry.” People deemed to be doubtful cases were so panic-stricken that they often attempted, sometimes successfully, to forge, substitute, conceal or destroy their grandparents’ birth certificates, especially between 1933 and 1939, after which this became virtually impossible. Many officials in town halls and registry offices, or wherever the documents were kept, removed compromising documents in exchange for outrageous sums of money or even property, sometimes even making use of convenient fires that broke out in certain parts of their archives or of plagues of highly selective mice. Or, if the forgery brought to them was perfect, written on old paper and everything, they would agree to do a swap and convert a Jewish grandfather or grandmother into a Catholic or a Protestant, with a change of surname included. This was a frequent occurrence in smaller towns and cities, where it was much easier. Of course, these officials almost never actually destroyed the document that had been replaced or removed, unless the payer demanded that it be handed over so that he or she could take personal charge of its disappearance. This wasn’t usually the case, Jews not being in a position to lay down many conditions, and so the official would then keep the document just in case things changed in the future. The evidence, then, only vanished temporarily. Pour me a glass of sherry, will you,’ added Wheeler, as if telling me all this had cheered him up. Talking about history often does have a cheering effect on the old.
“Do you have any preference?’ I asked, pointing to a high shelf to my right, full of bottles.
‘Any of those will do,’ he said. I got up, poured him a glass and handed it to him; he took two sips and continued (and now I had no fear that he might stop): ‘When, in time, a “quarter-Jew” was revealed to be a “Jew” or a “half-Jew” in disguise or else a second-degree crossbreed, or when an “Aryan” was shown to be a first-degree Mischling in disguise, it mattered little what the Laws said: their fate depended, above all, on who found them out and on what those people decided to do with the information and to whom they chose to give it. Taking the story to the local police or mayor wasn’t at all the same thing as going to the SS or the Gestapo. It might be that nothing happened, the officials involved might turn a blind eye, or the guilty party, as punishment for his deceit, might be despatched to a concentration camp along with all his family. Apparently Goring or Goebbels—I
can’t remember which now—said: “I will decide who is a Jew.” And when he said this, it wasn’t in order to “judaize” someone, but because, on that occasion, it suited him to declare a particular person to be a non-Jew. Contrary to popular belief, and contrary to Nazi propaganda, there were many Mischlinge and even “half-Jews” who served the Reich loyally, even in the army and in positions of responsibility, both administrative and within the Party. A few years ago, a book came out entitled Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, by someone called Bryan Rigg—have you read it?—which gave an account of some of the more remarkable cases. The photo of a blond, blue-eyed “half-Jew” called Goldberg was used in the propaganda press as an example of “The Ideal German Soldier.” Can you imagine? There were colonels, generals and admirals who were “half-” or “quarter-Jews,” although Hitler conveniently declared them to be “Aryans.” However, a Major General, Ernst Bloch by name, like the philosopher, and a veteran of the First World War, had to be discharged after Himmler made a personal protest. I don’t know or can’t remember what happened to him after that: perhaps he went from commanding troops to wasting away in a concentration camp, perhaps he fell from grace entirely. Much depended on chance, or on having the friendship or favor of someone high up. Field Marshal Milch, for example, was a “half-Jew,” and his friend Göring provided him with false (forged) evidence that he was not, in fact, the son of his official “fully Jewish” father, but of his mother’s “Aryan” lover; nobody knows, of course, what his mother, if she was alive at the time, would have made of this extraordinary revelation, or if she actually had such a lover. Milch was reclassified as “Aryan” and awarded the Ritterkreuz for his actions during the campaign in Norway. As you see, in the Germany of the time, it was a blessing to be a bastard.” And Wheeler laughed again, in the mocking tone that always reminded me of his brother Toby’s very characteristic laugh. “But how did we get on to this, Jacobo? I’m sorry about these memory lapses, it only happens with the immediate present. What with them and my moments of aphasia, pretty soon, I won’t be able to tell anyone anything.’
‘He’s not so bad yet that he doesn’t realize it,’ I thought,‘which is some consolation, but he wouldn’t have suffered such blanks a year or even a few months ago. It’s as if he and my father were marching to the same drummer, at the same speed, although Peter is in better shape. Despite being a year older, he’ll probably last longer. How sad when neither of them is here any more. How sad.’
‘You’ll know better than I,’ I said, ‘but I think it had to do with your wife, with her death. At least I believe so.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘it has a great deal, indeed, everything to do with my wife. Yes, yes.’ And as he repeated that word, he seemed once more to pick up the thread. ‘As I said, in the black section of the PWE, there were people who didn’t even know they were working for it, who didn’t even know of its existence. Valerie, of course, had no idea. However, there was a fellow who probably knew very well just who and what he was working for; he only turned up at Woburn or Milton Bryan occasionally, with a whole battery of ideas and, it would seem, enjoyed complete autonomy, even from Delmer. His name was Jefferys, almost certainly an alias, and he had a truly diabolical mind, or so Valerie told me when I returned from Jamaica or the Gold Coast or from Ceylon or wherever I’d been posted, and we were able to spend a couple of weeks or a few days together. Jefferys’ mission was to create disruption, to invent problems which, however secondary or outlandish, couldn’t be ignored by the Germans, who would be obliged to try and find a remedy. And he got the staff all fired up too, something he excelled at apparently.’
‘To spread outbreaks of cholera?’ I couldn’t help asking. But he didn’t pick this up as an allusion to himself, perhaps because he no longer remembered saying it.
‘Exactly. Or even chicken pox. We were all convinced, in all the divisions, sections, units and groups, in the SIS in general, in the SOE, in the PWE, in the OIC, as well as in the NID, the PWB and, of course, the SHAEF, that any setback that might distract the Germans from what was really important, anything that hampered their war-time activities or took them away from or made them neglect their tasks, that even minimally diminished their efficiency, would be hugely to our advantage, and would help us to gain time while we waited for the Americans to make up their mind to enter the War (how tedious and hesitant they were; and then they have the nerve to boast about their contribution). It was a matter of keeping the largest possible number of men occupied with bothersome or seemingly dangerous minutiae. Each time the Nazis had to send a soldier or a member of the Gestapo to tackle some unexpected task that had nothing to do with the War proper, it helped a little and gave us some advantage, or that was our feeling, which, up until December 1941, after more than two years of resisting on our own, was one of absolute desperation. Anyway, this Jefferys fellow would arrive—a whirlwind of energy—and stay for a week, issuing all kinds of instructions and urging the people there to come up with their own tricks and dodges, all intended to cause the maximum amount of damage. He was an enthusiastic, hyperactive, febrile, infectious kind of man, who raised spirits simply because he treated everything as if it were really important. According to him, the smallest obstacle could prove useful, anything to make them trip or stumble. A city in Germany or occupied Europe, for example, might be plagued with murders or burglaries, with fires in buildings and hotels, or else an epidemic, even if it was only flu, might be declared, or the supplies of electricity, gas, coal or water were cut off; there might be a shortage of medicines in hospitals or foodstuffs left to rot; all those things could help. The accumulation of problems and calamities and crimes breeds insecurity, distrust and anxiety, and having to worry about many things at once is what most exasperates and wears people down. The more off-balance the Nazis were, the more burdened with nonessential tasks, the more chance we had of landing them a blow in the solar plexus.’
‘You’re not telling me that ordinary murders were committed that weren’t ordinary at all? You’re not telling me that you and your group planned and committed random murders of civilians?’
Wheeler made an ambiguous gesture with his open hand at forehead height, as if he were raising the brim of an imaginary hat.
‘No, I don’t believe so. Sefton Delmer may have been a bon vivant and a pragmatist, with few scruples about the subversive techniques used to undermine and destroy the enemy, a man who, in the middle of all this, was seen blithely eating, drinking and laughing as if entirely unaffected, but he did have a remnant of conscience. According to Hemingway, who met up with him in Madrid during our War, when both men were correspondents, he looked like ‘a ruddy English bishop.’ Others thought they saw a resemblance to Henry VIII, because he was a big man verging on the obese, with rather bulging eyes and a florid complexion. And since razors were in short supply during the War, he had let his beard grow too. Jefferys, on the other hand, did advocate encouraging or even actually carrying out nonpolitical murders: nowadays, this would be termed terrorism. I’m sure they took no notice of him in that respect, and besides, the SOE, with its local collaborators in every country, had quite enough objectives of its own, in particular, military ones. When it came to acts of sabotage and torpedoings, most of his exuberant ideas were well received. And Valerie gave him an idea of her own. Yes, Valerie had an idea.’ And Wheeler’s tone, as he spoke those last two sentences, grew suddenly much more somber. He took another couple of sips of sherry, again rested his walking stick on the arms of his chair, gripped it with one hand, as if it were a bar to hold on to, and continued without further hesitation: he had decided to tell me this story and he was going to. ‘Everyone wanted to help in those days, Jacobo. It was incredible how the whole country rallied round, first to endure, and then to destroy the Nazis. For those of us who lived through those times, what happened later on, in the Thatcher era, with the ridiculous Falklands War, when people got so fired up and cocky, was utterly shameful, a fake, a farce, a grotesque imitation of that o
ther War. During the real War there was no cockiness and no vaudeville patriotism.’ Wheeler pronounced ‘vaudeville’ with a French accent, as my father would have done. ‘People simply resisted, but never bragged or boasted about anything. Everyone did what they could and, with a few rare exceptions, no one gave themselves a medal for it. They were real times, not phony, not sham. Jefferys was a stimulus, a spur during the days he spent in Woburn, or, rather, Milton Bryan, and Valerie wanted to help as much as she could, to make a real contribution. She worked hard. Anyway, her Austrian friend’s older sister, the one who was some ten years older, Ilse by name, had had a boyfriend in the days when Valerie still used to spend her holidays in Melk with the Mauthner family, and so she got to know him over several summers. The boyfriend was already a convinced Nazi by then—I’m talking about the period from 1929 or ’30 to 1934 or ’35, which was when Valerie stopped going to stay with them and her friend stopped visiting her at Christmas, when they were both fourteen or fifteen. The older sister and the boyfriend finally got married in 1932 or ’33 and moved to Germany, and the younger sister, Maria, with whom Valerie corresponded during the rest of the year and up until shortly before the War, had told her how worried the family were about that entirely expected marriage. The Mauthners always hoped it would never happen, that Ilse would break up with her boyfriend, as often happens with couples who meet very young. The man, whose name was Rendl—’
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