He sighed contentedly. “Good.” After a while, he asked, “Do you need some?”
“What do you mean?”
“Pervitin. I can get it without a prescription. Military service members get their own ration. Did you not know that the stuff is in our tank chocolate?” Vogler had to laugh.
Oppenheimer shook his head. Then he also started to laugh.
“My superior at the front always called Pervitin Hermann Göring pills,” Vogler said, chuckling.
“That’s a good one,” Oppenheimer panted. Even though it wasn’t particularly funny, there were tears of laughter in his eyes.
“There’s another term,” Vogler gasped. “Dive bomber pills!”
They both snorted with laughter. Soon Oppenheimer’s diaphragm was hurting.
“I’ll get you some if we manage to get out of here. How many do you need? A thousand?”
Oppenheimer grew serious. A thousand pills—an unfathomable amount to him. “Well, if you would…,” he stammered.
“But of course. We have to stick together, after all.”
Oppenheimer looked around. “Apart from Pervitin and the radio, we have almost everything we need down here. Canned food, alcohol. We could last awhile. Maybe they won’t dig us out until after the war is over.” He had to laugh once more.
“Then I’ll finally get to see Germania,” Vogler said. Oppenheimer initially thought he was joking, but the Hauptsturmführer’s shining eyes said he meant it. “Perhaps. If they dig us out only in a hundred years’ time … I wonder what we’d get to see then.”
Oppenheimer saw a new facet to Vogler’s character: deep down, he was a dreamer. “Do you know, my cousin works in Speer’s design office,” Vogler said. “There is a drawing. Speer designed it to show the führer what would remain of Germania. What the ruins would look like in a thousand years. Our legacy to those who follow. I’ve seen the drawing myself. I’ve never seen anything more sublime. It almost looks like”—he struggled for words—“like ancient Rome.”
“So we’re living in a new Rome?” Oppenheimer said skeptically.
“There are definite parallels,” Vogler insisted. “The German greeting, which the Romans adopted from our Germanic culture, even the SS. Hitler’s personal protection squad has exactly the same role as the praetorian guard back in the day,” he said proudly. “So which Roman emperor do you think Hitler resembles?”
Taken by surprise, Oppenheimer answered, “I actually only know Caesar and Nero.”
Vogler laughed. “In that case, the parallels are more pronounced to Nero, who unfortunately is misjudged nowadays. In reality, he was a good politician. He trusted in the praetorians, understood that you have to rule by force. That the old has to be eliminated to make room for the new.”
“I read somewhere that Nero wanted to have his capital turned into Neropolis to consolidate his fame. That’s why he had ancient Rome burned down.”
Vogler thought about this for a moment, a smile on his lips. “Of course, there is one important difference between Nero and the führer,” he then said. “Nero was mad.”
Then he laughed again, almost a little too late. Was Oppenheimer imagining it, or had he shot him a confidential look? He was baffled. Was there another side to this SS man? What did Vogler really believe?
“I need to pee,” Oppenheimer finally said.
Vogler pointed to a corner of the room. “I think there’s a bucket over there.”
Oppenheimer relieved himself into the bucket, and Vogler mustered his circumcised penis with interest.
“How do you know so much about Rome?” Oppenheimer asked.
“My father was a Latin teacher. It’s about the only thing he taught me.”
“You speak in the past tense. Has he passed away?”
“I don’t think so,” Vogler answered curtly. When Oppenheimer had sat back down again, he said in a confidential tone, “What I don’t understand, in your file, it says that you have a daughter, but according to my information, only you and your wife are registered in the Jewish House.”
For a few seconds, Oppenheimer said nothing, then he answered, “It was so—unnecessary. She got the measles, like so many other children. We weren’t particularly worried. But her body was weak, and then she caught pneumonia. It was simply too much for her. She died at the age of six. She would have come of age this April.”
“What’s it like when your own child dies?” Vogler wanted to know. Oppenheimer was unsure whether it was sympathy or curiosity he saw in the Hauptsturmführer’s eyes.
“At first, you think it’s a bad dream, that you’ll wake up the next morning and everything will be back to normal. You wake up, and the next day you wake up again, and again and again, but the bad dream never ends. There is this mystery. No matter what you do, you’ll never get over it. You can only accept it. I think I’ve managed to, over time. And yet there will always be an emptiness in our lives that reminds us of the dead. Especially when”—Oppenheimer’s eyes filled with tears, he had to clear his throat—“when you loved them. I never talked much about it when she was still alive. I can only hope that Emilia knew that she was loved. I won’t get the chance to tell her anymore or to prove it through action. I miss her every single day. Maybe I’ll get to see her again soon.”
Silence filled the room. For a moment, the air raid appeared to have stopped as if by magic. But it was just an illusion. When Oppenheimer slowly took in his surroundings again, the noises returned. Metal and explosives continued to hail relentlessly from the sky.
* * *
Oppenheimer thought he must have slept. A metallic knocking sound filled the room. He looked over to the candle in the menorah. Only a burning stub remained. Quite a bit of time must have passed, but Oppenheimer couldn’t estimate how much, as he had no idea how quickly a candle burned down. Maybe he should have paid more attention in school. With difficulty, he sat up and lit the wick of the next candle. The effect of the Pervitin had worn off. His insides were gripped by a bad feeling once more. But Oppenheimer also felt something else. His stomach was rumbling. When he looked around, he discovered Vogler, who had dragged himself over to the water pipes and was banging against them repeatedly. He was signaling that there were people buried down here, in case someone was searching for them.
When he caught Oppenheimer’s gaze, he explained, “My radio controller knows where we are. Maybe he’ll send someone when they realize we haven’t returned.”
Oppenheimer examined the tin cans. It was time to start on their stores. While searching through the rows of tins for a tasty meal, he came across canned salted pork leg. It was quite unlikely that the Jewish owners of the house kept provisions that weren’t kosher. This meant it was Reithermann who had bunkered the canned goods in the cellar. Oppenheimer wondered where he had gotten so many tins from; there were at least two cupboards full. He reached for the tin with the pork leg. He still had a score to settle with God anyway. He didn’t understand why God had allowed all this to happen, not only what happened to his own people but also the suffering that this war brought. This could only mean that he simply didn’t care or that he didn’t exist. Oppenheimer felt furious with himself, with his childish superstition that had come over him at the sight of the menorah. He finally decided to defy God by flouting the kashruth and eating nonkosher pork.
Oppenheimer extracted his old pocketknife from his breast pocket and repurposed it into a tin opener by stabbing the metal lid numerous times until he could bend part of it up.
While he cut the pork into pieces and ate, he realized that he hadn’t eaten such good food for a long time. It had taken him to be buried alive to do so. What a mad world. “Do you want some?” he asked Vogler, who shook his head.
In a dark corner, Oppenheimer spotted a gramophone. Eating was a good thing in itself, but dining to music was much, much better.
“I’m going to make a bit of noise so they can hear us better,” Oppenheimer said and reached for the next best record without paying a
ttention to the cover. He expected to hear military marches or perhaps an operetta. But the sounds that blared from the gramophone horn were something completely different. Kurt Gerron and Willy Trenk-Trebitsch sang “Cannon Song.” Oppenheimer had almost forgotten The Threepenny Opera. The party considered Kurt Weill’s music to be abhorrent, deemed it degenerate. And as the lyrics were written by Bert Brecht, who openly sympathized with the communists, the work inevitably landed on the index. It was a pity, as Oppenheimer liked the music. Its hectic rhythm reminded him of Berlin in the 1920s. Back then, the city had been loud, vulgar, dirty, daring, and enticing. Although its glittering appearance was probably just cheap tinsel, it had shone far beyond the state borders. At that time, people lived in the fast lane and hurtled at full throttle toward the chasm of the Great Depression. Now Berlin was just a shadow of its former self. The feeling of having one’s finger on the pulse of time, of being at the hub of the world, had disappeared. At best, the city was now the hub of the Third Reich, and there was only one color in this gray monotony: swastika red.
Even Vogler’s generation had already lost all knowledge of this young, impetuous Berlin that Oppenheimer remembered. But the music from this era seemed to please him. Smiling, he knocked on the pipes in time with the beat. He called over to Oppenheimer. “What is this? I’ve never heard that before! Ha ha!”
Oppenheimer almost choked on his mouthful of pork. Come to think of it, he was in an interesting situation, buried under tons of rubble with an SS officer, listening to the music of a Jewish composer and a left-wing songwriter. Could this be construed as subversion of the war effort? Well, at least Oppenheimer could claim that he hadn’t found any other records down here. “The troops live under the cannon’s thunder,” the lyrics echoed in the room. It wasn’t long before Vogler joined in the chorus.
Once Oppenheimer had finished the pork, he inspected the other records, but even with the best will in the world, he wasn’t able to find anything that would not have undermined the so-called proper German sentiment. Oppenheimer began to take an almost perfidious pleasure in exposing Vogler to nonconformist music. He switched from one Threepenny Opera song to the next. “Pirate Jenny” was followed by “Ballad of the Pleasant Life,” which was then followed by “The Useless Song.” Vogler did not seem to pay much attention to the lyrics. He only bellowed along to the chorus of the “Cannon Song.” Oppenheimer had the uncomfortable feeling that Vogler intentionally refused to understand the satirical intention of the song.
After a few hours, they took turns. While Oppenheimer knocked on the water pipes, Vogler handled the gramophone. He was just raising the tone arm when the lead pipe beneath Oppenheimer’s hands vibrated and a light knocking sound could be heard. Both men started. Someone outside had noticed them.
“Hello!” Oppenheimer shouted and banged against the pipe. Then he listened. Once more, someone knocked at the other end.
Oppenheimer knocked twice.
Two knocks sounded from up above.
“They’ve found us,” Oppenheimer whispered. Vogler pushed himself over toward the water pipe and also listened closely.
“We’re down here!” Oppenheimer called out. He hoped that the pipe would conduct the sound waves.
He heard something very quiet that sounded like “Hello?”
“In the cellar!” he shouted. “The entrance is closed off! Near the stairs!”
This was followed by a sound he couldn’t identify. Then there was nothing.
“Hello?” Vogler shouted.
Nothing.
“Hell and damnation, they can’t just bugger off again!” Oppenheimer said angrily. He struck the pipe again. Nothing.
“Wait,” Vogler said. He took a large piece of stone in his hand and hit the pipe with the pointed end. After a few strokes, a hole appeared in the pipe.
“Hello!” Vogler shouted into the pipe.
No answer.
“It can’t be…,” he started to say but didn’t finish the sentence.
A scraping noise could be heard from the blocked doorway. They both stared toward it, mesmerized. Slowly the sand began to move, the debris loosened.
Vogler flinched. “Someone is digging!” Then he shouted loudly, “This is Hauptsturmführer Vogler! We’re down here!”
An indistinct voice replied from the other side.
“Quick, let’s shift things,” Oppenheimer said and started to move the stones away from the entrance. Most of them were wedged in, and he needed a lot of strength to pull them out. He didn’t pay any attention where he threw them but worked all the more doggedly. Vogler had also started to pull away at the boulders.
Finally, they heard the voice again. It was so close that they could understand it properly now.
“Hello! You got enough air down there?”
“Yes, more or less!” Oppenheimer called out. “But get us out of here!”
“It’ll take a while!” came the muffled reply in a thick Berlin accent. “Backup is on the way!”
They spent the next two hours removing the stones. Oppenheimer’s shoulder joint began to ache, and his muscles protested, but he didn’t stop, kept digging in the rubble, scraping the stones aside until his fingernails were torn and his palms grazed. The air was soon full of dust, but Oppenheimer and Vogler were not bothered by the urge to cough, just continued to dig into the pile of rubble.
Suddenly, stones tumbled toward them. A beam of light cut the shadows, and a gust of wind entered the room, clearing the dust. Oppenheimer saw someone. Through half-narrowed eyes, he recognized the old man they had met outside the villa, who was now grinning broadly.
“Thought you’d be down here,” he called. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have left the car outside!”
They cleared a few more stones, and then they could be pulled through the gap. Strong hands grabbed hold of Oppenheimer’s wrists. It was two men in firemen uniforms. Freed from the cellar, Oppenheimer realized that those two didn’t even have any facial hair yet. He guessed them to be between twelve and fifteen years old. Their fathers were probably fighting, and so they had to take their places.
“Thank you so much,” Oppenheimer said, exhausted, and brushed the dust from his coat.
“What day is it today?” Vogler asked as they sat on a pile of rubble in the corner of the destroyed staircase.
“Saturday,” the old man said. “Tomorrow is Whitsun. You made it out in time for the public holiday. You’ve been buried for fifty hours.”
Fifty hours, Oppenheimer thought in dismay. More than two days lost. Maybe the crazy murderer had struck again and they hadn’t been able to stop him because they were fighting for their lives under this pile of stones.
“You need to get to a doctor,” Oppenheimer said to Vogler. “I will get on with the investigation. Can you stand?”
Vogler tried. Supported by the two young firemen, he managed to get over to the car. After they had maneuvered him into the passenger seat, Oppenheimer got behind the wheel and put the key into the ignition.
“Do you think you can drive?” one of the boys asked.
“Do either of you have a license?” Oppenheimer asked.
They both lowered their heads in embarrassment.
“I can only ride a bike,” the old man said.
“Then I don’t really have a choice,” Oppenheimer said. But before he started the engine, he had a thought. “Well, actually, I don’t know if I’m allowed to,” he mumbled.
“What?” Vogler wanted to know. “What are you not allowed to do?”
“Drive a car. The thing is, my license was taken away because I’m a Jew. Officially, I’m not allowed to drive this vehicle.”
Vogler groaned, annoyed, and said, “Just get on with it and drive!”
While they drove to the nearest hospital, Vogler whistled the “Cannon Song.” Oppenheimer grinned to himself, thinking that you had to hand it to the enemies of what was considered proper German sentiment: they could certainly write a good tune.
1
3
SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1944–SUNDAY, MAY 28, 1944
When he had taken Vogler to the municipal hospital on Landsberger Allee, Oppenheimer felt an element of restlessness. He didn’t want to be idle, so he’d cajoled the Hauptsturmführer into letting him have the car over the bank holiday. This meant he would be mobile without needing Hoffmann. If a traffic policeman or a party loyalist stopped him, which was unlikely given the SS registration number, he should give Vogler as reference. Oppenheimer knew that he couldn’t fill the car up anywhere. Petrol was scarce; private individuals had no chance. But the tank was still half-full, which would have to suffice for the next few days.
Oppenheimer had become painfully aware of the fact that he lacked driving experience. So he drove a little more slowly and hoped he wouldn’t cause an accident. He was already on his way to Zehlendorf when he changed his plans and drove to the Jewish House. Lisa hadn’t seen him for two days and would be worried. But when he got home, she wasn’t there. He stood in the kitchen, unsure what to do. Then he tore a piece of paper from his notebook and left a short message that he was fine and would be back in three hours. That was enough time to at least inspect the site where the second victim had been found in Kreuzberg.
* * *
The stone giant’s right hand was clenched to a fist and rested on his thigh, while his left hand was pressed to his chest. He stared down at the ground from his pedestal, his gaze fixed on the exact spot where the mortal remains of Julie Dufour had been found nearly fifteen weeks ago. It almost seemed to Oppenheimer that the grim expression the shadows bestowed upon the statue’s face was a comment on this barbaric act, but the inscription on the pedestal clarified that the giant was in mourning for those who had fallen in the First World War. In former times, grass had probably grown at his feet; now carrots sprouted there. The food supplies for the city’s inhabitants were so low that every little space of green had been appropriated to grow vegetables, and here, too, green carrot leaves sprouted from the ground. One could no longer imagine a dead woman had been lying here just a few months ago.
Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin Page 16
