Berlin: A Novel

by Pierre Frei

  'Shut up, you goddam Kraut!' Donovan barked, and put his hand on his Magnum. Then he swung himself into his jeep and raced away, tyres squealing.

  'What are we going to do with her?' asked Franke, a little helplessly.

  Dietrich pointed to the luggage rack on the car roof. 'If we strap her firmly in place we can get her to Waldfrieden hospital in one piece.'

  'It's all the same to the lady now,' muttered Franke, lending Dietrich a hand.

  Dr Mobius set to work with the wire-cutters. And regards from the caretaker,' he said. 'The old boy wasn't best pleased when Nurse Dagmar woke him and asked to borrow these.' It was four in the morning. The power had been back on at the hospital for the last half-hour. All in the course of normal surgery,' said the doctor sarcastically, beginning to cut through the barbed wire. He bent back coil after coil until the dead woman lay exposed before them. She was wearing a simple, grey dress with a white collar. Her stockings were torn. With the nurse's help, he undressed her. The police officers stood back a little, the sergeant shifting uneasily from foot to foot. In spite of the surgical mask he wore, the smell of formalin and decomposition bothered him. 'No panties, just like the other one,' said Dr Mobius in matterof-fact tones. 'Come closer, would you?' Only Dietrich came forward.

  The dead woman was well built, with full breasts and stretch marks on her stomach. 'Strangulation marks from a chain on the throat again.' Mobius went on examining the body. 'Traces of blood in her pubic hair and on her thighs. The murderer tortured this victim with a sharp object too. Do we know who the woman is?'

  'Helga Lohmann, aged thirty-five. Works for the Americans. That's all we have so far. When did death occur?'

  'Subject to an autopsy, I'd say two to three hours ago.'

  The inspector worked it out. 'Between ten and eleven, then. It was still raining at the time. That would explain the trench coat. What do you think, Franke?' But he received no answer. His colleague, green in the face, had collapsed on the floor.

  HELGA

  THE BUILDING WAS on the outskirts of the Onkel Toms Hiitte, in Sophie-Charlotte-Strasse: six spacious apartments occupying the ground floor and the two floors above. Helga Lohmann had inherited it from her parents when they died on a skiing vacation, buried under an avalanche. The Lohmanns lived in the ground-floor apartment on the right, where Reinhard Lohmann also had his tax adviser's office. Down in the cellar he had set up a small-bore rifle range for his Sturmabteilung group. Once a week the sound of shots echoed through the apartment building. The attitude of its inhabitants to these SA Brownshirts, family men who were no longer as slim as they had been, was one of amused tolerance.

  'Your husband doesn't care for target practice?' Helga asked her tenant, pretty black-haired Frau Salomon from the second floor, one Wednesday evening in the entrance hall. She learned from his wife that Leo Salomon was a good shot himself. He had often gone deer stalking with his late father. and so he had applied to join the Brownshirts' rifle squad.

  All our big boys like to play with guns, don't they?' said Helga cheerfully.

  'They turned him down,' Frau Salomon confided. 'We're Jewish, you see.'

  'Such nonsense,' said Helga firmly. 'I mean, you both go to church at Easter and Christmas, just like us, and you give to the Fi hrer's Winter Aid fund. I'll have a word with my husband.'

  'They're nice people, and they pay their rent on time. Herr Salomon's not a novice either. I mean, he often went shooting with his father.' Helga said to her husband at supper.

  Reinhard Lohmann carefully put three slices of sausage on his bread and butter. He was a powerful man of thirty-six, with thinning hair and moles on his forearms. He had married Helga, a nurse ten years his junior, in 1930. Until then Helga Rinke had worked on the children's ward of the Charite hospital, where she became pregnant by a doctor. Lohmann knew about it, but her ownership of the apartment building and the rental income it brought in promised security. He was not a particularly successful tax adviser.

  'No, not Salomon, can't be done.' He put a fourth slice of sausage on his bread, although there was really no room for it. It hung over the edge.

  'Why not? You could do with another good marksman for the next regional match, you said so yourself.'

  'Yourself-yourself,' babbled little Karl, bringing his spoon down vigorously on his semolina, which his mother had decorated with swirls from a jug of raspberry syrup.

  Karl was six. He had been born after the Lohmanns married, and Reinhard Lohmann had unhesitatingly acknowledged him as his son. That was before the baby showed signs of mongolism: a large round head, slanting eyes, small, podgy, deep-set ears, a flat nose and a thick tongue. After that Lohmann avoided being seen with the boy in public.

  To Helga, her son was the most normal child in the world. She simply ignored stares or tactless remarks, and there were not many of those in her small world between the U-Bahn station and the Riemeister Eck. People had long ago become used to the child's looks, and they liked his blonde young mother.

  'Why not?' Helga repeated, mopping a few splashes of semolina off the waxcloth table cover beside Karl's plate. 'Eat properly,' she told her son.

  'I did try to recruit Salomon.' Lohmann defended himself. 'But there was a query from higher up - was I crazy, trying to sneak a Yid into our ranks?'

  'You mustn't call him that - he's a good German citizen. You should have a word with your school friend Olbrich.'

  Gunther Olbrich and Reinhard Lohmann had both volunteered for the army in the last year of the Great War, while they were still at school. They never got as far as the Front, and were soon sent home to take their schoolleaving exams. Olbrich studied law and became a legal adviser to the National Socialist party. After Hitler came to power, the Party leadership appointed him head of the legal department in the administrative region of the Berlin Gauleitung. He had excellent connections with senior Party members, and had even once been a guest at the Obersalzberg.

  Lohmann joined the Party as soon as the Nazis won their electoral victory, hoping for professional advantages which somehow never came his way. With his friend's help, he made it to Deputy Sturmfdhrer in 'that comic band of warriors,' as Helga called the SA, but such a position was hardly a profitable career.

  He changed the subject. 'Giinther's given us two tickets for the Olympic Games. We could get the car out on Saturday.' Helga had inherited the Brennabor along with her parents' apartment building, but she got behind the wheel only when Reinhard insisted. He couldn't drive.

  Helga was radiant. 'Oh yes, let's take a picnic. We can leave Karl with the Salomons. He'd be happy, wouldn't you, Karl? You like little Ruth.'

  'Little Ruth,' the boy echoed her. His eyes shone.

  They drove out to the Reich Sports Stadium on Saturday morning. Beautiful weather contributed to the festive mood. Everyone seemed happy and carefree. Several swastika banners fluttered in the summer breeze, but the flags of the guest countries were in the majority, and the scene was dominated by the elegantly clad ladies of Berlin rather than brown uniforms.

  The newly built stadium was an impressive architectural achievement. 'This really shows the world what we can do!' said Helga, focusing her grandmother's opera glasses on the government grandstand. She saw the Fiihrer, in good spirits and wearing his white uniform jacket, and Goring gesticulating with animation, his round face gleaming in the sun. She could identify Hess, the Deputy Party leader, by his thick eyebrows. The other Nazi grandees were unknown to her.

  She looked down at the arena. 'That American, Jesse Owens - doesn't he look just fabulous? Such a lovely brown. Wow, they're off! See how fast he runs! Yes, yes, yeeees! He won!' She jumped up in delight.

  'If our colonies hadn't been stolen from us it'd be a German black winning the medals now,' muttered Lohmann in annoyance.

  Helga opened the picnic basket. 'Like a sausage sandwich and a beer? The bottles should still be cold. I wrapped them in the Morgenpost down in the cellar.'

  'Do we get a beer too?' It was
Gunther Olbrich. He introduced his companion. 'Meet Ulla Seitz.' The young woman with the dark bob greeted them with some reserve. 'Have we missed much?'

  'The hundred metres,' said Lohmann, pouring the beer. 'You're late.'

  'Couldn't make it any earlier,' explained his friend. A final fitting at my tailor's. White tie and tails are compulsory at the Staatsoper tonight. The Reich Government is giving a reception for the Games. The King of Bulgaria and the Crown Prince of Italy will be there - think of that!'

  'What colour is your evening dress?' Helga asked Ulla Seitz with interest. The question earned her a nasty look and the sharp answer, 'I'm not invited.'

  'You could have been a bit more tactful,' her husband reprimanded her when they were home. 'Ulla Seitz is Olbrich's secretary and his mistress.' They were listening to the latest results of the games on the radio. Helga had fetched her son from the Salomons on the top floor, and he was nestling close to her, listening open-mouthed to the words he didn't understand coming from the Bakelite box. Now and then he gurgled happily. Automatically, she wiped the dribble from his lips.

  Lohmann was making notes with a pencil. If this goes on we'll have more gold medals than the Americans.' Karl moved away from his mother to clamber up on his father's lap, but Lohmann pushed him away. 'Time to go to sleep,' he said brusquely.

  'If only you could love him,' Helga sighed later in bed.

  On 10 May 1940 German troops marched into Holland. Belgium and Luxembourg, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain, and the German authorities in occupied Poland sent the first prisoners to a new camp called Auschwitz. The war was nine months old, and it was Karl's tenth birthday.

  In the morning, mother and son went to the shopping street near the Onkel Toms Hiitte U-Bahn station. Helga was making for Frau Gerold's bookshop. She sometimes went there to borrow a book from its lending library department.

  'I think I have something for you - you like historical novels, don't you?' The bookseller's assistant took a large tome off the shelves. 'Try this - The Queen's Physician. The story of Dr Johannes Angelus Weiss, physician to Queen Christine of Prussia. Frederick the Great's wife. Very exciting, lots of love interest.'

  'Yes, thanks, I'll borrow it.' Helga smiled shyly. 'We've been meeting here for years, haven't we? And I don't even know your name.'

  'Jutta Weber. And you're Frau Lohmann. aren't you? Your name's in the card index. You can keep the book for three weeks without extra charge because it's so long. And what do you like to read?' Jutta Weber stroked the boy's bulky head. She had known him since he was in his pram, and was used to the way he looked.

  'It's Karl's birthday, so I brought him to choose something for himself.'

  'Happy birthday, Karl.'

  Karl gurgled, and stuck the Walt Disney version of The Three Little Pigs under his arm.

  They had a birthday party in the afternoon. Helga made coffee, and milky cocoa for Karl. She lit the ten candles round the birthday cake, and Karl enthusiastically blew them out. Again!' he demanded. Helga humoured him and lit them again.

  And now for some shooting.' Reinhard Lohmann had bought his son a simple airgun. They took it down to the cellar. After a little instruction Karl, shrieking with delight, handled the gun with unexpected skill. He had been making a certain amount of progress since he started at a special school. The lead projectiles were shaped like tiny hourglasses and struck the tin target with a dry click. Lohmann took the airgun and immediately hit the bull'seye, but Karl scored an eight. There was more of a bond between father and son than ever before.

  'Come on up, you two!' Helga was waiting impatiently. 'Now for Mama's present.' She took Karl into the bedroom, and ten minutes later they reappeared, Karl in black shorts and a brown shirt, with a belt, shoulder straps and a cravat. It was a uniform copied from the Boy Scouts, and was worn by the Hitler Youth boys aged ten to fourteen, who were known officially as the Jungvolk and affectionately as Pimpfs, 'little squirts'. Karl looked grotesque.

  At first Lohmann was speechless. Then he managed to utter a strangulated, 'Out of the question.'

  'What's out of the question?' asked Helga defiantly. 'They all join the Jungvolk at ten. I want our son to join in and be a Pimpf like everyone else.'

  'Join in!' Karl said eagerly. grimacing because he couldn't control his facial muscles. 'Pimpf,' he added.

  'Think of his condition,' said Lohmann, trying again.

  'He's strong and healthy. Come on, Karl, let's blow those candles out again. And on Monday we'll go and register you with the Jungvolk.'

  Lohmann disappeared into his office without another word. When Helga went to ring her sister, she heard his voice on the phone: '. . . got up as a Pimpf, would you believe it? That little monster will make us a laughing stock.'

  'No, no, of course that won't do,' Gunther Olbrich agreed. 'We'll find some solution, don't you worry.'

  She quietly put the phone down. He will be a Pimpf, she thought.

  On Saturday Helga Lohmann visited her sister, who was pregnant and in her ninth month. She stayed overnight and went home on Sunday afternoon. Reinhard was waiting for her. He had Gunther Olbrich with him.

  'Dr Olbrich, how nice! I'll make coffee. Would you like a piece of birthday cake? Where's Karl?'

  'That's what we want to talk to you about.' Olbrich cleared his throat. 'You see, your husband has volunteered for an officers' training course. After completing it he'll be commissioned and go to the Front as a lieutenant, so he decided that Karl would be better off in a home than here with only one parent.'

  'Lieutenant Lohmann - that sounds fabulous!' Helga said happily. 'You'll look really dashing in an officer's uniform! And you don't have to worry about me and our boy.' Then the full meaning of Olbrich's words dawned on her. 'You surely haven't ... I mean, Karl isn't ... ?'

  'He's been in the home since yesterday. Believe me, it's for the best,' murmured Lohmann.

  'What kind of home? I'm going to fetch him back at once.'

  'I'm afraid that's not possible without his father's permission,' Olbrich said. And in view of the medical records, his father has made a sensible decision.'

  'He's not Karl's father!' she screamed. 'He's a useless failure living on my money. Show your friend the account books, Reinhard, show him how little you earn. Decision? What kind of decision? Since when did you make the decisions?'

  Lohmann rose to his feet. 'We must go now. Gunther's driving me to Di beritz. After the course I'll be home on short leave. We can talk it over then.' He picked up his suitcase. He had planned it all down to the last detail, and now he was running away to avoid an argument.

  'You coward!' she shouted after him. 'Where's my son?' Her cries echoed through the stairway of the building until her voice grew fainter, and at last all she could do was weep inconsolably.

  The Salomons were taken away on Monday, in an open flatbed truck with some twenty other people crowded together inside it. Herr Salomon had his arms protectively around his wife and child. He wore the iron Cross First Class on his jacket, and his face was set like stone. Frau Salomon had her eyes lowered, as if she felt ashamed. Little Ruth waved. Helga waved back, indifferent. Only a few days ago she would have protested vehemently against such injustice, she would have said she'd write to the Fiihrer about it. Now all her thoughts were for her son who had been taken away from her.

  She sat down and dialled the next number in the phone book. An impersonal female voice answered, listened briefly, and then said what Helga had already heard a dozen times that morning: they had no ten-year-old called Karl Lohmann in that establishment.

  'This isn't getting us anywhere,' she murmured, and looked up the District Court. The District Court passed her on to the Family Court, where they listened to her patiently and put her through to the judge who dealt with such cases. He said, in reserved tones, 'When the father of the child has consulted a senior Party authority, and that authority has approved his decision, then under our new guidelines, that decision replaces al
l other legal factors affecting the child's commitment and admission to an institution.'

  'You mean that as his mother I don't have any say?'

  'You'd better talk to your husband, Frau Lohmann. Try to persuade him to change his mind. Bear in mind, above all, that he can tell you where your son is. Then at least you can visit.'

  That was it! She'd speak to Reinhard. He would cave in at once without Olbrich's support. An hour later she was on the S-Bahn train to Doberitz, where she made her way to the officers' training course.

  'Lady called Helga Lohmann,' the guard on duty at the camp gates announced by phone. 'Wants to see Reinhard Lohmann, an officer cadet on the training course.'

  Soldiers dressed in heavy cotton drill were doing pointless exercises among the huts, with an NCO shouting at them. Was Reinhard there? She couldn't make out the faces. A young officer hurried up to her. 'I'm Lieutenant Hartlieb. Please come this way. Colonel Marquardt is in his office.'

  The colonel was a grey-haired man in his fifties. 'We didn't expect you quite so soon, Frau Lohmann.'

  'You were expecting me?' Helga was puzzled.

  'Didn't our messenger reach you?' It was the colonel's turn to seem baffled. 'Well, never mind. My deepest sympathy, dear lady. A dreadful accident, and on the very first day of the course.'

  An exploding gun barrel had shot away half of Officer Cadet Reinhard Lohmann's head during target practice.

  'They sent us rifles captured from the Poles for training purposes. Poor quality arms. Your husband would have made a good officer. Of course we'll give him a military funeral. Again, let me express my condolences. If there's anything else I can do for you ... ?'

  Helga shook her head in silence. Relieved, the colonel escorted her out.

  On the way home she sat alone at the very back of the S-Bahn train. She imagined Reinhard's face before her, young and laughing, the way he was when she first met him. But the grief would not come. Her only thought was, now he can't tell me where Karl is.