by Dennis Bock
On one such trip into the hills of the Black Forest, the boy Elser and his father had watched brook trout holding in the stream they’d stopped to drink from. In the heat of the summer’s day he’d stripped off his clothes and slipped into the water, scattering the trout. He was for that moment fully and simply happy, he remembered. His father sat back against a tree and opened the rucksack and rooted around in there for the bottle he’d brought, then called the boy over and asked him where it was. The boy stood before him, naked in his shame. He’d thrown the bottle away, he said. His father nodded and rose to his feet and led the boy back to the stream and told him to look at himself in the water’s surface, for he was a thief and needed to recognize the wretch that he was. When Georg did as he was told, his father pushed his head into the water and pressed his face hard against the streambed. With the other hand he beat the boy’s bare arse until his son broke free and rolled over, gasping for breath.
From that time on the hatred was always there, as were the beatings, and he imagined his father dying by his hand, practising it over and over in his mind. The man beat all of his children, but Georg seemed to be his favourite target, and this all-consuming hatred for despots became the long preparation for the project that awaited him now.
For years afterwards he did nothing when he saw a man beaten in the streets—a labour unionist or Jew or someone who’d spoken out against the regime. He’d turn away in shame, mortified for the direction this new Germany seemed so eager to follow. It could not last much longer. The Social Democrats and the Communists would unite against the National Socialists and a wave of common decency would wash over the country. The madness would end.
But it didn’t, and wouldn’t, he saw now, until the nation rose in defiance.
He offered his hand to the insurance man at the end of their meal together, tipped his hat, and wished him luck.
ELSER LOOKED FOR OTHER distractions until he was able to slip unseen into the banquet hall. He found it in the kindness of his waitress and the pleasure he took in her smile and her backside, which moved like two Christmas plum cakes beneath her bright dirndl. Despite a nervous stomach, he enjoyed the meals she brought him and the half-mug of beer he allowed himself on these nights. When he paid his bill and thanked her, he wanted to believe she knew about the brave secret in his heart and that she admired him and wished him Godspeed, though he understood this was just one of the many small fantasies he allowed himself. He imagined returning here one day to tell her how he’d watched her these lonely weeks as he moved towards the end of his long project. The war would be over, stopped by him. She would thank him, as the entire nation would, and she’d seat him as the returning hero he was and serve him a meal fit for a king. Without you, she’d say . . .
And then his imagination floundered and it was just him again as he sat waiting for his night’s work to begin.
It was a test of his resolve to walk with anything resembling composure through the restaurant while men in uniform spoke in loud voices or weaved drunkenly as they returned from the restroom.
One of these men, a sergeant with a large stomach, pushed his chair out as Elser passed behind him one evening. The chair caught the satchel strung off Elser’s shoulder, causing it to fall to the floor. The man laughed and apologized and bent to pick it up. He held it in his hand a moment, as if weighing its contents, then passed it back to him with a backslap and guffaw.
He didn’t enter the banquet hall that evening. His courage failed him. He’d never come so close to being found out. For the next three nights he stayed away, wondering if he should abandon the plot.
WHEN HE RESUMED HIS work the following week it seemed nothing had changed. After his meal at the restaurant-tavern he waited for the right moment, then walked down the hallway to the banquet hall and pushed through the heavy doors. Inside it was pitch-black and silent, as it always was. He felt along the walls as he proceeded, the geography of the space learned by touch and the counting of footsteps. He took his place where he always did, in the storeroom, and tried to sleep for an hour or two until it was time to get to work.
He learned to choreograph his labours to the automatic flush of toilets that echoed out from the corridor at the north end of the hall. It came every ten minutes and lasted thirty-three seconds, covering the sound of his intermittent work. The glow of the flashlight he carried in the satchel was softened by the blue rag he tied over its face, casting a melancholy hue over his slow, steady progress.
It took him six nights to construct the panel in the wainscotting that encased the brick pillar. The panel would cover the cavity he dug there, in which he would place his bomb, and be fitted back into place after a night’s work, its vertical edges slotted tightly into the existing jointing in the wainscotting. On the sixth night the panel was finished. He examined it closely in the blue light of the beam. It was an invisible perfect fit.
On the seventh night he began carving out the inside of the pillar’s brickwork. He chipped away at the mortar one toilet flush at a time, his elation building when a brick was about to give, and finally when it came away he leaned back on his heels and placed the brick in the open satchel beside him. With the successful removal of each new brick he permitted himself a sip of water from his canteen.
At the end of a night’s work, often still two hours before first light, he covered the hole with the panel, collected his tools, cleaned and dusted the area, and slipped back into the storeroom. Here he waited for the sound of the adjacent tavern to begin its day’s trade before stepping out into the alleyway by the service entrance and turning left onto Kellerstrasse, just another early riser on his way to work. He took various routes back to his room, emptying the satchel of its night’s worth of broken brick and mortar, never in the same place twice, and then got himself back to his room to sleep for an hour or two before rising again to continue building the bomb he’d place inside the pillar.
NEARING THE END OF his project, after thirty-one nights in the banquet hall, he worried through the problem of the two metronomes—the timing devices—that required a true surface. The bottom of the chamber inside the pillar was rough and uneven. He’d been unable to purchase a spirit level small enough to fit inside the cavity.
His anxiety grew as Germany pushed deeper into war. There was word of British forces in France now, a hundred thousand or more. Polish access to the Baltic Sea via the Danzig Corridor had been cut. A German U-boat had sunk the British battleship Royal Oak at Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands. The world was coming apart, and time was wasting for the problem of a spirit level.
One night he watched his waitress as she moved through the crowd between tables, serving tray raised above heads, while he puzzled over this latest challenge. She was an attractive woman, the one whose shapely behind allowed him a moment of fancy in the midst of his work. Unerringly pleasant when she set his meal before him, she called him Georg and asked after his day, though she didn’t pry either, or really care, for that matter, he imagined. This was simply a social pleasantry, a welcoming disposition that he appreciated as he sat here doing his calculations.
That’s when he saw the man at the next table place a small handful of coins on her tray. The coins rolled in riot and tumbled from the tray to the floor.
He purchased the bag of marbles at the toy shop two blocks over from the Baumanns’ flat the following day, and after the restaurant-tavern closed that night he selected a serving tray from the shelf in the storeroom and placed it at the bottom of the hole he’d created in the brick pillar. The marbles told him where and by how much he must adjust the height of this corner or that, a bit lower, a bit higher, depending on the direction the marbles rolled. He shone his torch on them like a boy at play, knees and back aching, delighted that he’d solved the problem with the help of this simple game.
He set the two timers for nine-twenty the following night, the second a failsafe for the first. They were powered by a zinc electrode battery, the clock movements connected to the detonatin
g caps he’d taken from the Waldenmaier warehouse. Kneeling, torch in hand, he studied his work with satisfaction. He was pleased with its ingenuity and workmanship, and the stealth and cleverness that it represented. The nerves that had assailed him at the beginning of his work here weeks earlier had been quieted. On this last night he was practised, calm, and perfect.
He adjusted his position and lifted the torch’s beam away from the bomb and traced it up the back of the support pillar of the low balcony above. It would come down with the blast. He directed the light into the chamber once more and fought the urge to reach in again to check that the battery was live and the timers level and balanced, that its wires were properly connected and the cork soundproofing secured properly against the interior brick. It was after four in the morning, time to move. He’d wait in the storage room until those footsteps arrived, and then make his way to Konstanz, connecting via Ulm and Friedrichshafen. By eleven the following night he’d board the ferry that would deliver him across the lake. There he’d adopt the leisurely stride of a tourist as he moved in the direction of the park at the Wessenbergheim, where he’d find the border crossing into Switzerland.
Setting in place the access panel for the last time, he felt it snap into position. He collected his tools and dusted away the loose debris—crumbs of brick and the clippings of wire casing, like a razed colony of black ants. With his handkerchief he polished the panel and the stone floor. Everything was clean and ready again for the coming day. He stood and arched backwards to correct for the difficult posture he’d held for too long, knees burning, then stepped away and moved the beam of light over the door and the base of the pillar. He saw nothing that didn’t belong, nothing that would be noticed. At last satisfied, he carried the satchel and suitcase to the storeroom and quietly shut the door.
He cleared his head of the business at hand and invoked some distracting memory. It was no use. Tonight sleep would not come. He visualized the plan as he’d constructed it; only steps away, where the orators would address the gathering, the clock movements steadily ticked down. He’d be long gone by the time the hall filled. But he was tempted now to stay in the city to watch events unfold. Here would be witnessed the beginnings of a new life for the country, and from this point on he would be the father of a new Germany. The anxiety ran through him again as it had in the early days of this work. It was too early to dream of a new era. Nothing was sure. There were still too many points at which his intricate plan might fail. He feared that the serving tray—the base on which the contraption sat—might have shifted under a pebble of mortar that he might have missed. A true and even foundation was crucial. He fought the urge to check it again as he sat there in the dark storeroom. Finally, nearing six-thirty, the sound of the first employee entering the adjacent room caught his ear. Soon after that the man entered the hall and unlocked the rear door through which Elser slipped moments later.
It was still cold and dark out but he felt the elation of freedom take hold. He was almost done. Now, just to leave. The concern he’d felt over the timing device burned away in the promise of daylight. He filled his lungs, and half a block on when he turned the corner he tipped his hat and smiled at an old woman peeling potatoes she took from a basket as she sat on a front step.
He enjoyed two cups of coffee in Isartorplatz and afterwards made for the train station. He bought his ticket and stood waiting on the platform among the crowd of travellers, his suitcase already packed and at his side. He was prepared, everything was in place. Nazi banners and flags over the street flapped in the wind. The day looked like any other. A stiff breeze blew from the north, causing men to grip the hats on their heads. Businesses carried on, motor vehicles and bicycles and trams clattered, and the movement of the timing wheel housed in the hollowed-out pillar at the beer hall marched down to the moment that would usher in a new Republic.
HE WAS ALREADY MORE than a hundred miles west of Munich when the bomb spread its chaos and shards of brick and mortar through the banquet hall. He heard nothing that announced the arrival of a new era, of course—no explosion, no heralding trumpet blast, no hallelujahs—only the soothing clatter of the train that carried him. It was odd, though, the shift he felt in the coach compartment at that instant. The man seated opposite him seemed to notice it too. He raised his eyes from his reading and stared at Elser with a curious look on his face, as if at that moment the stranger sitting across from him became a different man from the one who’d sat there since boarding two hours earlier. When the lights of the Meersburg Bahnhof finally appeared, Elser felt but could not be certain that the culmination of his yearlong project had been a success.
Once detrained, he passed through the echoing halls of the Bahnhof and hailed a cab that would deliver him to the ferry terminal two miles distant. There he purchased his ticket for the crossing and waited in a dockside tavern for the boat to put in.
At a table for two he sat alone and warmed his hands on a pot of tea and watched the snow begin to fall outside the window. From here he could see men at the foot of the pier with their ropes and lanterns beating their arms against the cold as they prepared to bring the ferry in. Most of the patrons in the tavern were waiting for the crossing, though a few locals, drawn perhaps by habit and not travel, huddled with their mugs of beer by the fire that crackled in the hearth set in a stone wall hung with hunting trophies. Voices around the room were desultory and muted, a deep contrast to the riot that sounded in Elser’s head. He felt the terrible unease of not knowing what had happened, if the timers had stalled out or a detonating fuse had burned down to nothing. These were distinct possibilities. Word should have come by now. He wondered if he shouldn’t return to the city to see the job through. It was an agonizing interlude, the fire and hope that had risen in him while on the train dimming darker by the minute as he sat waiting.
When the telephone at the bar rang, he watched the bartender pick it up and talk and listen, the expression on the man’s face changing slowly from one of confusion to disbelief to alarm. His brow darkened, and as he finally returned the receiver to its cradle, Elser understood that news of the events he’d been waiting to hear about had finally arrived.
The man came around from the bar and pulled the waitress aside and spoke into her ear. She was a small, unhappy-looking woman of perhaps thirty who might have felt more at ease on a milking stool than she did tending to travellers at this lakeside tavern. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand when he spoke to her, then leaned heavily against a nearby table, as if these whispers had delivered a crippling blow.
The man reading a book at a corner table looked up. He watched the woman for a moment before rising from his seat to ask if he could be of assistance. He was a doctor, he said. As word of the events in Munich spread, the sullen mood that had presided over the tavern grew animated. Debate regarding the merits of the rumour intensified and continued when the boarding call came. The room emptied. Travellers made their way in small groups across the road to the slip and slowly came aboard. In the passageways, on the upper decks, and in the lounge people huddled in conference. When the ferry put in at Konstanz forty-five minutes later, past eleven o’clock, the snow was heavier now as Elser disembarked and made his way up from the harbour into the village in the direction of the Swiss border. It drifted on currents of air in the glow of the street lamps lining Schiffstrasse.
In the light of a sandwich-shop window he stopped and watched three men listening to the radio placed between them on a table. Word was spreading. His work had been of some consequence, at least; his labours had shaken the country. He couldn’t know the final measure of his efforts yet, but he’d shown that it was possible to get this close to the heart of the monster. Even if the top leadership had not been killed, this action would inspire others; the people would rise and finally return the government to the Republic.
He found a crowd collecting in the main square, drawn into their small cheerless groups by the wireless updates that were coming in every few minutes now
. An act of villainy had been perpetrated in the Bavarian capital, the bulletins stated, and its full consequences were still unknown. The nation was awaiting further information. Sorrow and disbelief and stifled sobs filled the snowy square. He didn’t stop to listen for details, eager though he was for confirmation. Instead he continued west out of town up into the foothills where, ten minutes later, he saw the crossing gate that was the border.
He didn’t alter his pace when the man, cigarette in hand, emerged from the guardhouse set off to the side of the road. He’d been rehearsing this moment for weeks, the name Feuchtelhuber ready on his lips—the friend he was visiting on the other side of the border, he’d say, in the next town just up the hill. The guards would see an ordinary traveller, perhaps, or a restless insomniac prone to walking the lonely hills at night.
The simplicity of the lie emboldened him. He ran through it one last time, like a magician rehearsing his deception moments before meeting his audience. He was not a threat, after all—not anymore—so he waved and called a greeting to the guard from twenty paces and opened his coat to show that he had nothing to hide. As he approached he saw the second man seated in the guardhouse and heard the strains of music coming faintly through the night. The man stepped out to join his colleague as the music grew louder. It was a song by Schubert that his mother had often sung to him while he drifted to sleep. He handed his papers to the first man.
The falling snow caught the light of the guardhouse and shimmered like silver waves against the night. Elser attempted to appear at ease, imagining himself safely on the other side of that crossing gate, seated perhaps in a comfortable hotel lounge contemplating the news of the events he’d set in motion, his part in all this now settled.
