Silesian Station (2008) jr-2

by David Downing

  They had made it up. Some Party hack had consulted an atlas, picked on a village near the border, and made the whole story up. Choosing a real village - one that could be checked - was more arrogant than stupid. They had simply assumed that no one would bother to check. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred they would have been right.

  'We're going back,' he told the taxi driver.

  The Rathaus in Beuthen was a substantial affair, the officials suitably sure of themselves. They had also had time to sort out their answers. When Russell complained about the newspaper story, one of his two interviewees asked him what more he needed to know - surely the articles had facts enough to make German blood boil? When Russell pointed out that he had been to Blechowka, the other man asked him if he realized that unaccompanied foreign nationals were not allowed access to the border area.

  'I didn't know that,' Russell admitted, 'and I apologise for doing so. But I still want to know why no one in Blechowka noticed this terrifying Polish intrusion.'

  The first official pursed his lips in frustration. 'You can't expect local people to know everything that is happening in their area. I can assure you that such incidents are becoming more and more frequent. As are attacks on innocent Germans on the other side of the border. Why are you not investigating them?'

  'I intend to,' Russell said with a smile. 'The border is open, I assume?'

  'We have not closed it. I cannot speak for the Poles.'

  His taxi driver was waiting hopefully in the square, but declined the offer of a paid jaunt into Poland. 'They might take the car,' he explained. 'And I don't have a passport,' he added crushingly.

  'The station then,' Russell said, more in hope than expectation.

  As it happened, there was an international train due, and it was scheduled to stop at Kattowitz. The good news ended there, however. The train was an hour late, and took almost three hours to complete the fifteen kilometre journey. Most of this time was spent at the German and Polish border posts, which glared at each other across a weed-strewn no man's land. The Germans were only interested in contraband, particularly goods smuggled out for German Jews by misguided aryans. The Poles were only interested in people, regarding every German as a potential fifth columnist. It was all very time-consuming, not to say intensely irritating. For the second day running Russell found himself arriving in a strange city with darkness falling.

  A Polish railway official with a few words of English pointed out the nearest hotel, which stood almost opposite the station entrance. It had the same name as his hotel in Breslau, but Russell rather doubted whether Hitler would ever patronize this Monopol - the rooms seemed designed for a race of dwarves, or perhaps Propaganda Ministers. The bed was a carpet of springs, the wall dotted with recently slain mosquitoes, and the bathroom was fifty metres away down a barely-lit corridor. 'Welcome to Kattowitz,' Russell muttered. 'Or even Katowice,' he corrected himself.

  Russell's morning interview at the old Rathaus was instructive. His interviewee, a skeletal old man with wispy grey hair and weary eyes, was Tadeusz Jedrychowski. He announced himself as Commissioner for the Silesian District, but left the nature of his responsibilities undefined. He was in civilian clothes, an open white shirt and grey suit as faded as the eyes.

  His German was as good as Russell's. He responded to the first question about Polish incursions into Germany with a tired shrug. 'It's all nonsense,' he said. 'Sheer make-believe. I mean, you must ask yourself - why would we give them the excuse they are looking for?'

  When Russell asked about German incursions into Poland, Jedrychowski invited him into the next room, where a huge map of the border area was festooned with pins. 'Each of these represents a violation of our border. Most have not been serious, it is true - a few hotheads with too much to drink. But some have been. Men in uniform, whether army or Hitler's private goons. And more than twenty of our people have been killed in the last six months.'

  'What about the Germans who live on the Polish side of the border?'

  'Some get involved, but most just want to get on with their lives.'

  Russell took care with his next question. 'Those who do get involved - it would be understandable if their Polish neighbours sought to punish them.'

  'It would. And it happens. But not on the scale the Germans claim. Or anything like it.' He ushered Russell back into his own office. 'We want peace, you know. We have nothing to gain from war.'

  'And can it be avoided?'

  Jedrychowski managed another weary smile. 'I don't think so.'

  An international train was due soon after eleven, and Russell decided to catch it. A conscientious journalist would have checked out one of the pins on Jedrychowski's map, but an afternoon roaming Polish dirttracks and another night on a broken trampoline were far from appealing. Besides, he believed the Poles. When you looked at the overall situation, and the interests of those involved, the Polish claims made sense. Unlike those of the Germans.

  The train was on time and the border rituals shorter, at least on the Polish side. As the afternoon wore on, pit wheels, slag heaps and sidings gave way to forests and fields, mining towns to market towns. Russell sat in the half-empty dining car, nursing a glass of schnapps and writing out his Silesian story for dispatch from Breslau. It was not an easy one to write, but over the years he'd grown quite adept at exposing the Nazis as shameless liars without actually saying so.

  They reached Breslau soon after six, too late, Russell guessed, for catching Josef Mohlmann at work in the Direktion Reichsbahn building. He walked across on the off -chance, and was directed up to a room on the third floor, just in time to intercept a young parasol-wielding secretary. Yes, Herr Mohlmann was still in his office, she said, clearly keen to be on her way.

  'I'm an old friend,' Russell lied helpfully.

  'You know where he is then,' she said cheerfully, giving him the clue he needed with a slight flick of the head.

  'Thanks,' he said, walking in the direction indicated. The first door he came to bore Mohlmann's name under the job description Deputy Director of Operations, South-East Germany. Without hesitating, he opened the door and walked in.

  A man of around forty looked up from what looked like a sheaf of time-tables, light flashing off his spectacles as he did so. His short brown hair was combed straight back, his face carved in the sort of angles a cubist would have admired. Elastic arm-bands held up his sleeves, red braces his trousers.

  His response to Russell's precipitate entry belied the sternness of his features. 'Good evening,' he said questioningly, when most men so confronted would have spluttered something along the lines of 'Who the hell are you?'

  'Good evening,' Russell replied, advancing with hand extended, his brain working overtime. He'd expected a lowly cog in the Reichsbahn's administrative machinery, not a Deputy Director of Operations. 'Your secretary told me to go straight in,' he lied. 'I have a message for you,' he said as they shook hands. 'From Franz Boyens in America.'

  Mohlmann's eyes lit up. 'From Franz? He is well?'

  'He's fine.'

  'When did you see him?'

  'A few weeks ago. In New York. Look, do you have time for a meal or a drink somewhere?'

  Mohlmann looked down at his timetables, and his hand jerked slightly, as if he was checking a sudden desire to sweep them from his desk. 'Of course,' he said. 'I work too many hours in any case,' he added jokingly, taking his suit jacket from the back of his chair.

  The building seemed almost empty as they walked down the wide central staircase, but Russell hadn't wanted to risk a real conversation in Mohlmann's office - there was no knowing how thick the walls were or who was on the other side.

  'Where shall we go?' Mohlmann asked. 'I have a car,' he added almost apologetically.

  'It's your city,' Russell said.

  'The Biergartenstrasse then. It's the local name for the promenade above the Stadtgraben,' he explained. 'And not too far away.'

  His car, an Opel Kapitan, was parked behind the building
. They drove round the station, under the bridge carrying the westbound tracks, and up towards the city centre. Biergartenstrasse was aptly named - a series of beer gardens overlooking the waters of the ancient city moat - and doing a brisk business with after-work drinkers. 'This is the furthest garden from the loud-speakers,' Mohlmann said, pushing through a particular gate. He steered Russell to a tree-shaded table and insisted on buying the first round. 'So tell me about Franz.'

  Russell did. The Americans had actually introduced him to Franz Boyens, a serious man in his thirties who yearned to do something for what he called the real Germany. He had been a signalling engineer in Breslau until 1934, when someone had informed the Gestapo of his involvement in a local strike. After six months in a concentration camp Boyens had smuggled himself into Poland on a freight train, walked all the way to the Baltic, and worked his passage to America. The New World had provided him with rewarding work and a loving wife, things that would have caused many men to forget their anger and sorrow for the old country, but Boyens' success had just made him sorrier for those he'd left behind. Men like Mohlmann, whom he'd known in the final years of the Weimar Republic.

  Russell had liked Boyens. He told Mohlmann about his job with the Pennsylvania Railroad, about his expectant wife Jeannie and their house in suburban Trenton with its big garden backing onto the tracks. He told him that Boyens was active in the union, and a campaigner against the pro-Nazis who dominated the German-American Bund. All of which was true, at least in outline.

  'I'm really happy for him,' Mohlmann said. 'I didn't know him for long, but, well, it was a time when you found out who your friends were. When the Nazis were arresting anyone who'd ever said a word against them.'

  'I was here,' Russell said. 'In Berlin, that is.'

  Mohlmann gave him a shrewd look. 'So you know then.'

  This was the moment to talk about potential American help for resisters, but Russell held back. He simply nodded, and signalled the waiter to bring them more beers. 'Have you always lived in Breslau?' he asked.

  'No. I was posted here in 1920. I was called up in the last week of the war,' he added, 'and my father had a job waiting for me when I was discharged. He was a Station Manager in Hamburg, and he wanted me as far away as possible, in case anyone accused him of nepotism. And my wife liked it here.' He looked away, as if gazing out across the water, but not before Russell had seen the hint of tears in his eyes. 'She died not long ago,' Mohlmann said, as if he still had trouble believing it.

  'I'm sorry.'

  'It takes some getting used to.'

  'Do you have any children?'

  'Two daughters, both married to Party members. One in Dresden, one in Berlin.'

  'Ah.'

  'At least they're safe,' he said wryly.

  'I've been down to the border for my newspaper,' Russell told him, 'but I had another reason for coming to Breslau.' He told Mohlmann the story of Miriam Rosenberg's probable trip to Berlin, and studied the other man's face as he did so. He wasn't disappointed.

  'That's disgusting,' was Mohlmann's verdict on the Berlin Kripo's refusal to investigate.

  Russell showed him his picture of the Rosenberg family.

  Mohlmann studied it closely. 'You know, I think I saw this girl. A month, six weeks ago - I can't be sure. I was on my way to lunch with a friend in the station and a girl like this was sitting on the seat outside. She was with a young man. I remember thinking what an odd couple they looked - she was so dark and Jewish, and he had this tousled blond hair. Perhaps they went off together. A Silesian Romeo and Juliet.'

  'I'm afraid not. She was seen on the train to Berlin. Alone.'

  'Just one life,' Mohlmann murmured, unconsciously echoing Thomas. 'But that's all any of us are.' He drained the last of his beer. 'Were you ever in the SPD?' he asked Russell.

  'I was in the KPD until 1929. After my son was born it seemed sensible to leave. Although that wasn't the only reason.'

  'Social Democrats and Communists - we should have fought together,' Mohlmann said. 'That was the one big mistake.'

  They talked for another half an hour, mostly about Germany's problematic history, but Russell's mind was already made up. Mohlmann dropped him off at the Monopol, after extracting a promise from Russell to share an evening on his next visit to Breslau. A lonely man, Russell thought, as he trudged upstairs to a new room. And an angry one, with no distracting responsibilities. He would make a wonderful spy, but not for the Americans. What use would a knowledge of train operations in south-east Germany be to them? For the Soviets, on the other hand, they might be the difference between life and death.

  Looking round the Monopol's breakfast room the following morning, Russell could understand why Hitler had stayed there. It was the first time he had seen it in daylight, and it was impressive in a Fuhrerish sort of way. Huge brass chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, which was held up by enough dappled marble columns to support a small Egyptian temple. Portraits of earlier German megalomaniacs featured on all but one panelled wall, which carried a mirror large enough to encourage serious delusions of grandeur. Rolls and coffee hardly did the setting justice.

  The hotel receptionist told him that the Polish Consulate was a fifteen- minute walk away, on Oderstrasse, a small street between the Ring and the river. Or at least it had been. She couldn't remembering anyone mentioning it for several years.

  Russell walked north up Schweidnitzer Strasse to the Ring, the market square at the city's heart. The six-hundred-year-old Rathaus which occupied the square's south-eastern corner was famous throughout Germany, and it wasn't hard to see why - the gable at the eastern end was both huge and elaborate. Walking down the swastika-draped southern side he came to the square's open space, a long cobbled rectangle flanked by classic five-storey houses in pastel shades. At the north-western corner the soaring spire of a shadowed church glinted in the morning sunshine.

  The entrance to Oderstrasse was beside the church, and Russell was nearing its far end when he found a plaque announcing the Polish Consulate. A typed notice in a small glass case beside the door gave opening hours of 10am to 3pm, which left him with at least two hours to kill. Assuming the place was still in business. He looked up at the windows for any sign of life, and found none. There was still glass in them, though, which might mean something.

  It was worth coming back, he decided. There had been five thousand Poles in Breslau in 1918, and it would be interesting to know what had become of them. In the meantime, another coffee.

  He walked on to the Oder and across its southern channel, then stopped to watch two lightermen manoeuvre two fully-laden coal barges into the lock on the canalized section. Away to his right a cluster of spires rose out of the trees on the far bank, a picture of peace until a clanking tram drove across it.

  Retracing his steps to the southern bank, Russell walked east past a row of university buildings, and finally found an open cafe close to the Market Hall. Music was playing from the loudspeaker on the street corner, and Russell just had time to order his coffee before a voice started droning. It was the Chief of the German Police, giving a speech on the perils of alcohol in the workplace. The authorities' answer, needless to say, was 'sterner measures'. Like all his Nazi buddies, the Chief was not given to moderation in thought or language. 'Pitiless proceedings' would be taken against canteens where workers got drunk.

  Pitiless, Russell thought, was the word that characterised the bastards best. They just loved the concept.

  He gulped down his coffee and tried to leave the voice behind. It was easier imagined than done - Breslau seemed unduly blessed with loudspeakers, and only the smallest streets offered areas of relative immunity. Russell suddenly remembered that Breslau had been officially designated 'Adolf Hitler's Most Faithful City' during the previous year's Sportsfest. A future badge of shame if ever there was one.

  He reached a crossroads which had been spared an outlet for the regime's rantings. Not by accident, though - the loudspeaker was there, but two lonel
y lengths of wire hung down beside its host pole. Someone had got fed up with listening. Russell had a mental picture of a figure creeping out under cover of darkness, wire-cutters at the ready.

  A small church occupied one corner of the crossroads, and a boy was sitting outside its gate, a rough pile of books beside him. Intrigued, Russell walked across. The books were all the same - a twenty-year-old collection of Johann Scheffler's poems.

  'Angelus Silesius,' the boy explained. The Silesian Angel.

  Russell knew who the poet was, and he recognized the book. Ilse had been reading it in the Moscow canteen when he first spoke to her.

  'He's buried inside,' the boy said helpfully. 'The books are two marks.'

  The church door creaked and groaned as Russell opened it, and even in high summer the interior felt chilly and damp. It was beautiful, though, the stained glass-filtered sunlight throwing a kaleidoscope of colour across the pews and walls.

  He found Scheffler's tomb and portrait in a patch of sunlight and sat down in the nearest pew. He remembered wondering on that day in 1924 why an ardent young communist like Ilse Schade would be reading religious poetry, and he also remembered teasing her about it after they had become lovers. How could she take such nonsense seriously?

  'Easily,' she'd told him, and showed him one of Scheffler's epigrammatic verses:

  In heaven life is good:

  No one has aught alone.

  What one possesses there

  All others too will own.

  'See,' she said. 'He was a communist.'

  Russell had expressed doubts.

  'It's how you read them,' she told him. 'Look at this one -

  The nearest way to God

  Leads through love's open door;

  The path of knowledge is

  Too slow for evermore.'

  'Yes, but...'

  'Just substitute socialism for God, and apply the rest to our Revolution. We need love and a socialist spirit more than we need science and organization.'

  It had seemed a stretch at the time, but Scheffler and she had been right, Stalin and Trotsky wrong. 'Believers,' he muttered to himself. They had all been believers then - or had aspired to be. But the world had caught up with them.