Otto's Phoney War

by Leo Kessler

  Together the two Gestapo officials started to run heavily after the cripple, their leather coats creaking audibly as they did so, crunching over the dark beans which a dying Wurm was leaving in a trail behind him as he tried to reach his Gerda before it was too late.

  He reached the corner. There was the truck. Gerda was staring at him through the glass, cross-eyes wide with horror. ‘It’s all right, Gerda … all right,’ he tried to say. But the words wouldn’t come; his mouth was too full of blood. He reached out his little hand. Like a child parodying an adult, Gerda did the same. ‘That’s right,’ he said to himself happily, the red mist in front of his eyes growing ever thicker. ‘Touch my –’ abruptly his knees gave way completely. He slammed to the floor face-first, his glasses shattering. Then his head lolled to one side and he was dead.

  ‘Poor crippled shit,’ the older Gestapo man said, turning over the dead clerk with the toe of his boot. ‘All for the sake of a couple of kilos of bean coffee.’

  ‘A black-market parasite, all the same,’ his assistant said.

  The other man looked at him. ‘We’re all parasites, Schmitz,’ he sneered. ‘Didn’t you know that?’

  Schmitz flushed and wondered whether one could denounce a Gestapo-man to the Gestapo. Aloud he said, ‘What now, sir?’

  ‘You’d better get up to that labour camp and see where the cripple was getting the stuff from. And Schmitz.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Give that big-mouthed Army shit who denounced him a right royal rocket from me. Understood?’

  ‘Verstanden Herr Oberkommissar!’

  Twenty-four hours later Gestapo-Kommissar Schmitz arrested Otto Stahl.

  CHAPTER 7

  The heavy-set judge strode resolutely into the court, his choleric, crazy man’s eyes bulging from a coarse, heavy face, his hard jaw and cheek criss-crossed with scars from his student duelling days. Without ceremony he plumped himself in the largest of the three chairs set on the dais decorated with the swastika flag and flung back his silken robe with an imperious gesture to reveal the black uniform of an officer of the Allgemeine SS beneath.

  A little hesitantly, as if they wondered whether they ought to ask for permission first, his two assistant judges stole into their places on either side of him. Behind the prisoner and his guard, the handful of spectators shuffled their feet and sat down too. At Otto’s side, his fat warder Heinz tugged the handcuff-chain and whispered, ‘All right, lad, you can rest your weight too now.’

  Otto sat down and stared back at the Chief Judge boldly, though he had never felt less brave than he did at that moment. He knew the type well enough. He was one of the new National Socialist judges; brutal, harsh, uncontrolled men, who shouted a great deal and hammered on their desks with their fists, enjoying the almost limitless new power given to them by the autocratic Third Reich. As his mother, the Witch, who had been up before them more than once in Berlin in these last few years, was wont to comment: ‘That kind’ll say “off with his turnip” as quick as your average husband says to his woman – “off with your knickers!”’

  For a whole thirty seconds, the Chief Judge made a play of searching through the pile of papers before him on his desk, though he didn’t even take his hard-eyed gaze off Otto’s tense face for one instant. There was a murmur in the court: everyone knew what the Judge was up to. What an idiot, thought Otto, bored with the act. Then, finally:

  ‘Accused!’ the Judge barked in a high-pitched, surprisingly feminine voice.

  The warder Heinz dug Otto in the ribs and rose hastily to his feet himself, dragging the prisoner with him by the chain that linked their wrists together. Otto stood there and waited, feeling very exposed and lonely.

  ‘Accused,’ the Chief Judge announced again, sounding like an alarmed schoolmistress and glancing down at his papers now. ‘You have to answer to the following charges. One. You committed adultery by bedding with your husband's dog trainer. Blast!’ he cursed, realising he'd picked up the wrong papers. The small audience was tittering openly now. There was another flurry of papers as the Chief Judge's face became pinker and pinker, until, ‘One! You stole government property, namely from Sector Four of the so-called … er … West Wall. Two, you did, knowing well that this was government property, sell the same property illegally to a citizen of a foreign country in that same foreign country. Three, you journeyed abroad without the legal and proper exit-visa. Four, in recompense for your illegally sold stolen property in a foreign country, you imported into the Third Reich coffee illegally and sold it, also illegally, on the black-market in the city of Aachen.’

  He paused for much needed breath, the rich colour slowly draining from his cheeks. Clearing his throat, he continued. ‘Five, it might well have been possible from the quantity of the property you stole for agents of a foreign power, known to be unfriendly to our Fatherland, to have made some estimate of the number of our brave soldiers manning the so-called – err West Wall.’ The Chief Judge took a quick drink of water from the glass in front of him. ‘Accused, how do you plead – guilty or not guilty?’ The man’s bulging eyes bore into Otto, who stood there a little helplessly, overwhelmed by the apparent magnitude of his crimes.

  ‘But sir,’ Otto stuttered finally, ‘I mean it was only sh – ’

  ‘How do you plead, Accused?’ the Chief Judge interrupted him brutally.

  ‘And it wasn’t really abroad, only down the road.’

  The Chief Judge’s face flushed a frightening crimson and his eyes seemed about to explode out of his head.

  ‘How do you plead?" he screamed, foam flecking the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Not guilty, sir,’ Otto answered miserably, knowing that he was not going to be given a chance in this particular ‘People’s Court’.

  He slumped into his seat as the Chief Judge dismissed him and nodded to the waiting prosecutor, a fat and oily balding lawyer, who had been rubbing his paws together all the while the Chief Judge had spoken, as if he were warming them on the other man’s fiery words.

  ‘Herr Kollege, you have the floor.’

  Otto let his shaven head fall and the flood of words descend upon him, not caring much now, knowing that his fate was probably already sealed.

  ‘Criminal audacity to steal valuable Reich property … transport illegally across the Belgian frontier using government conveyances … purchased by a large number of Belgian nationals who might well have been working for French or British intelligence … possibly have gained valuable information … about our glorious Wehrmacht and our latest fortifications, so generously provided by our Führer, Adolf Hitler … ’

  On and on the legal jargon went and in the end Otto whispered in disgust to Heinz, ‘You’d think I’d stolen the Prussian crown jewels or something, Corporal … After all, it was only shit!’

  ‘Silence, Accused!’ the Chief Judge rasped.

  Otto gave up.

  The defending lawyer, provided by the Poor Law Regulations, a nervous bespectacled young Catholic, whose sole claim to legal fame would be that in late 1944 he challenged the notorious Justice Freisler on a legal point at the great Assassination Plot Trials, before Freisler had him sentenced to be garrotted to death – slowly – did his best. He attempted to minimise Otto's offence by trying to explain the exact nature of the ‘Reich property’ which had been stolen.

  He didn’t get far in the attempt. After giving the pale-faced young Catholic the full benefit of his invective and sarcasm, with much blind shuffling of papers, the Chief Judge had cried as if he were before some film court in one of those melodramatic UFA trial movies: ‘Germany is fighting for its very life. We must be self-sufficient. Everything that has to be imported costs the Reich precious foreign currency. Has not Reich Marshal Goering stated time and time again that it is guns before butter for us? Has not the Führer himself said that the humble German rhubarb is better than the costly decadent foreign lemon?’

  He raised his index finger and thrust up his jaw like the Führer addressing a million-
strong audience at the annual Party Rally in Nuremburg. ‘That humble manure, as you deign to call it, Mr Defender, could have been used to cultivate German food, saving valuable foreign monies needed now to import artificial products.’ He flung his head from side to side, like a cow trying to shake off flies on a hot summer’s day, spittle everywhere. ‘That shit, as you have seen fit to name the stolen property … that shit … could have filled German bellies!’ He glared at the audience, tittering to themselves. After a little while they quietened down and he turned his gaze once again to the embarrassed young lawyer, who lowered his eyes in defeat.

  At 11.30 that September morning as the prosecuting lawyer was half through his final summing-up, the Chief Judge started to look at his gold watch with ever-increasing frequency, as if he wanted the fat lawyer to get it over with. Otto saw the looks and told himself that all of them had made up their minds. He hadn’t a chance. Now it was only a question of just how high his sentence would be.

  For a few moments Otto reflected on fate’s quirks; how poor old Wurm had been shot to death for a few kilos of coffee; and how he was going to land behind bars for, probably, several long years, just on account of a little human manure. There seemed little logic or reason to it.

  At 11.45, the Chief Justice couldn't hold himself any longer, for he suddenly interrupted the prosecutor full flow with a curt, ‘Genug! Court will be recessed till fourteen hundred hours when sentence will be passed.’

  He stood up abruptly and put his square judge’s cap on. The prosecutor stopped immediately and everyone rose to his feet. In a great hurry the Chief Judge bolted for the door, undoing his robe as he did so, followed by his two assistants.

  Next to a miserable Otto, Heinz sighed with relief. ‘Can’t get to the pissoir quick enough that one,’ he commented. ‘Come twelve o’clock and dinnertime and he’d sentence Christ to the Cross in double-quick time so that he wouldn’t be late for his toilet break. All this talk of excrement and I'm sure he couldn't keep his mind off it.’

  Otto nodded and turned to watch the handful of spectators file out, just in time to catch a quick glimpse of a strange figure pose for an instant at the door and survey him with eyes that gleamed white like hard-boiled eggs. Otto felt those eyes bore deep into him. And then the figure was placing a large, broad-brimmed black hat of the kind favoured by the older generation of German actors on his silver-grey hair with a theatrical flair. Next second he had vanished.

  Otto frowned and then dismissed the spectator as Heinz grunted, ‘Come on, son, let’s get back to your residence. I’ve ordered us Sauerkraut and pig’s knuckle and it would be a pity to let it get cold.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Otto asked, toying with the great mound of gleaming pink meat surrounded by a marsh of cooling Sauerkraut.

  Heinz wiped ends of cabbage from his moustache and levered a piece of meat from his teeth with his thumbnail. ‘You ain’t eaten much, son,’ he commented and raised, ‘What do I think – about what?’

  ‘What I’ll get?’ Otto ventured by way of explanation.

  ‘It all depends on what the Dutch serve him in the way of his banquet,’ Heinz answered and belched into Otto's shocked silence. ‘Pardon the warden, son. His manners aren't au fait.’

  ‘You mean the Chief Judge is in Holland?’ Otto said incredulously.

  ‘Of course,’ Heinz said easily. ‘You don’t think big animals like that eat our common German grub. Every time he comes down here from Dusseldorf for a trial, he’s off like a shot at dinnertime over the Dutch border at Vaals to fill his face with cheese head grub.’

  ‘But where does he get his visa from … and foreign currency as well?’ Otto said hotly.

  Heinz smiled at the young man’s outraged look benignly. ‘I thought you was from the big city, son? You should know how these things are. There’s one law for the rich and one for the poor – us.’

  ‘And he’s gonna give me years behind Swedish curtains for selling a load of shit over the border!’ Otto moaned.

  Heinz clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t think about it, lad. Just get your biters into that pig’s knuckle. Where you’re going after this afternoon, they only serve you grub like that the day before the executioner lops off your turnip … ’

  At 1.50, his pig’s knuckle still only half-eaten, Otto began to get uneasy. Two o’clock came. No summons to attend the court. 2.30 came and went. ‘Perhaps, his nibs has gone and choked on a bone of one of them fancy carp-fish he likes to eat,’ Heinz commented and Otto could see that he, too, was puzzled by the fact that they were still waiting.

  When at three o’clock they had still not been summoned, Heinz decided to go and find out what was happening up above in the court-room. He did not return.

  Another thirty minutes passed and by now Otto was pacing the narrow cell nervously and urinating ever more frequently into the enamel bucket in the corner. It was while he was thus occupied that there was a soft tap on the door of his cell, Otto swung round, penis still in his hand, mouth open stupidly.

  ‘May I come in?’ a cultivated voice asked quietly.

  Otto was too surprised to answer. The next instant, the key turned in the door. It creaked open to reveal the stranger in the broad-brimmed hat and ankle-length cloak who he had glimpsed leaving the court at midday. His white eyes fell on Otto’s hand holding his penis and he said conversationally, ‘Passing the time away, I see, Herr Stahl. As a young man, I used to find it a great comfort too.’

  Angrily, going red in spite of himself, Otto stuffed the organ back into his trousers. ‘No, I was just taking a piss,’ he snorted.

  The stranger smiled but said nothing and for a few moments they stared at each other in silence.

  Otto saw a flamboyant, middle-aged man with his grey hair a little too long, who made even the business of standing still seem somehow theatrical, and who smelled of expensive perfume. The stranger saw a keen eyed, intelligent young man with a handsome determined face, which, although it had a ‘slight working-class hang’ (as he phrased it to himself), still could mix with every class and type without causing comment.

  ‘Stahl, eh?’ the stranger broke the silence finally, ‘nomen est omen, what?’

  ‘I seem to have heard that particular Latin phrase before,’ Otto said sourly.

  The stranger smiled winningly. ‘Of course, I’m sure you have. Truth is a thing which is hard and dangerous – like steel,’ he said mysteriously.

  In years to come Otto would learn that this gentleman would always have some such mysterious sayings at the ready. Always, that was, until one day in early 1945 when the Gestapo hangman put an end to those ready phrases – with a short length of chicken wire at Flossenberg Concentration Camp.

  ‘But I am forgetting. Let me introduce myself, my dear Stahl,’ the stranger swept off his broad-brimmed hat and bowed solemnly like an actor in an eighteenth century costume drama. ‘Dr Rantzau, alias William B. Harper, Mynheer van Elst, Monsieur Le Comte de deux Eglises, Señor Angelo, Xavier de Dos Santos … ’

  Otto regarded him in open-mouthed amazement as he reeled off the long list of foreign names, changing his accent to fit each new one, stumbling a little with his Russian alias until finally choking for breath, he gasped: ‘In truth, all aliases for Graf von der Weide, my humble self, presently code-named ‘Meadow’. English, you know?’ He beamed at an absolutely bewildered Otto, ‘I wonder now that introductions have been made, if I could sit down, Otto? You don’t mind if I call you Otto, do you, my dear chap? Time is a too precious commodity to waste on the trivia of formality, don’t you think?’

  Speechless, Otto waved his hand at the latrine bucket and then when he saw the sudden worried look on the Count’s fleshly handsome, middle-aged face, he indicated the cot hurriedly.

  The Count sat down on the hard bench and sighed gratefully. He smoothed a pale, carefully manicured hand across his long grey hair and said, ‘Already the first snow has fallen, as you can see. One tires readily these days.’

  ‘Y
es, yes,’ Otto agreed, hardly knowing what he was agreeing to.

  The Count took out a little box of gold, decorated with small, fire-red rubies. ‘You care for a pinch?’ he enquired.

  ‘A pinch?’ Otto echoed stupidly.

  ‘Snuff. One of my many vices.’

  Hastily Otto shook his head and watched how, in that theatrical manner of his, the Count went through the ritual of applying delicate pinches of snuff to each nostril and then, when he had sneezed and his eyes were full of tears, he jumped up and stared at his face in the cell’s little steel shaving mirror; as if he saw there a tragic but romantic figure: the face of a man of destiny, its pallor coming from the coldness of fate itself.

  Suddenly the Count smiled and his man-of-destiny face vanished immediately. ‘I look at myself often in mirrors and shop windows,’ he said. ‘I sometimes think there is a streak of the homosexual in me, though I have always been very much inclined towards the ladies. They say, don’t they, those clever Jewish doctors from Vienna, that we all have elements of both sexes in us, though I suppose in this particular place one shouldn’t express that kind of sentiment too loudly, what?’ He gave a melodramatic shudder.

  ‘Now Otto, why am I here?’ he said, his voice business like at last. ‘I am sure you are asking yourself that question?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Otto said, finally recovering from the shock of meeting this strange, overwhelming aristocrat.

  ‘Well, I can’t tell everything at once. After all, caution is the mother of the china cabinet, as they say. But in essence I am here to make you a proposition.’

  ‘A proposition?’

  ‘Yes, I am offering you a chance to get out of this place before that monster of a judge has his way with you. God knows what he would do with you, if you had committed a real crime. I shudder at the very thought! At all events, he’s talking of ten years’ hard labour for you, in spite of Mynheer de Smits’s best culinary efforts in Vaals which, according to my informant has already cost the German state one hundred Reichsmarks of illegal Dutch guilders.’