"You're a reporter?" asked Irina. She sounded afraid.
"As you just heard," I said. "Does that bother you?"
"No, of course not." She laughed, but it didn't ring true. "Why should it bother me?"
"It bothers a lot of people," I said, "especially when I want to write about them."
"Well, there's nothing—Hello? Yes?" She listened. "I see," she said, then, "thank you," and put down the receiver. "The number is busy. The operator's going to try again."
"Patience," I told her.
"Yes, yes. I know."
"Why did you flee?" I asked.
"Because of him."
"What do you mean?"
"When they found out that he'd fled, they came to see me. The State Police. Czech and Soviet. They held me for two days and questioned me for hours, day and night."
"What did they want to know?"
"Everything about my fianc6."
"What sort of things, for instance?"
"What department he'd worked in. What files he'd been in charge of. His position, his private life, our affair. They were interested in everything. But there was very litde I could tell them. I didn't know what department Jan had worked in, nor what his position was, nor what files he had access to. I realized then that I really knew very little about him, and that shocked me. Can you understand that?"
"Perfectly. Go on."
"They didn't believe me. They let me go but they kept coming back. Every day. My landlady got terribly nervous and wanted 60
me to move out, but she was afraid. Terribly afraid. So was I."
"You didn't give them the Hamburg address or the name of his German friend, did you?"
She said indignantly, "Of course not!"
"It was just a question. Don't get mad. And then what?"
"Then they called me back for more questioning. It took days. Always the same questions, but different officials. They wouldn't let me go back to the university, but I wasn't supposed to leave Prague either. I had to report to the police station nearest me twice a day. And the questioning went on and on."
'They must have been extremely interested in your fiance," said Pastor Demel.
"Yes," said Irina. "But why?"
The pastor and I looked at each other but didn't say anything. "Then," Irina went on, "last week, on Thursday, all Jan's friends and colleagues were arrested, at the same time. Oh, I forgot to say, I was constantly confronted with these people during the questionings. I knew a few, most of them by name only, but some I didn't know at all, not even their names. But I knew when they were arrested."
"How did you know?"
"I got a telephone call. Anonymous. I don't know who it was, but after that I got away as fast as I could. I was terrified. I couldn't stand any more. I was sure that next thing, they'd come and get me. I wanted only one thing—to get to Hamburg, to Jan."
"And now you're safe, absolutely safe, so calm down, please."
"Yes, you must calm down," said Pastor Demel, and then, obviously to distract me, he said, "Look, the coil has been flattened. Somebody must have hit it with a hammer." He looked straight at me. "All right, not another word about your books. Would you give me a hand here? The thing keeps slipping."
I went over and held onto the hot plate while he tried to interlock the broken parts. "Never mind, I'll have to take the thing apart or 111 never be able to fix it." He snapped a corkscrew out of a slot in his pocket knife, and went on working. "But may I give you a piece of advice, Reporter Roland?"
"Please do."
"Very well. You're interested in the Czech children. Naturally. They're very topical. But while you're at it, take a look at the fine ladies and gentlemen outside, the pimps and madams in those Cadillacs and Lincolns, coming to get our girls."
"To get our girls?" Irina was looking at him wide-eyed, and I
thought how innocent she looked, and then I thought how a lot of girls Td seen here looked like that—refined, beautiful, and very very innocent. And Irina had had an affair for two years with a much older man—
"They want them for their cabarets," said Pastor Demel. "Strippers, bar girls, or for the street. A few years later the poor things come back, broken, finished—more often than not, sick. We help wherever we can, but once they're out of the camp, they can do what they like. And those who have been here a long time are let go anyway."
"How long have you been here?" I asked Irina.
"Since yesterday."
"That's much too short a time," said Pastor Demel. "You can't possibly have been to all the offices yet—the Labor Bureau, Security, and all the rest. And before you've been through all these formalities, you can't leave. But after that the boys and girls your age may leave, and what do they do? They go the village, to the Skull and Crossbones Tavern."
"Where?"
"The Skull and Crossbones Tavern. The children from East Germany gave it the name."
"Why?"
"Oh, years ago they found human bones in the area. You can imagine the excitement that created in the camp. The peasants told us that during the Nazi era executions took place where the tavern now stands. They don't like to talk about it. We had quite a time getting it out of them. Well, there you are. They come to an agreement with the girls here at the fence, then they wait for them in the Skull and Crossbones, and off they go. This Herr Concon was, certainly in a hurry to get hold of you."
"Yes," I agreed. "It's very odd." I still felt hot. "So why don't you lock up the camp and let nobody out?"
"That would be illegal," said Demel. "Restriction of freedom. Besides, those types out there at the fence would get their girls after we'd found work for them through our labor bureau and closed our files. So there isn't any point in shutting off the area in front of the camp. They'd just wait for the girls in Zeven or catch them on their way there."
"What sort of people are there out there, anyway," I asked, "besides the crooks from the Reeperbahn? The ladies, for instance."
"You live in the West, don't you?" he asked. "Do you have a maid?"
"A cleaning woman," I said, "twice a week."
"Well, then you're lucky," he said.
"Why doesn't the call come?" Irina's voice was a whisper. She paced up and down, biting her lip.
"There are no more servants," said Pastor Demel, "but here at the camp you can hire as many as you like. You don't have to promise a room with a bath and television and a fur coat for Christmas. They're thrilled if one of those fine ladies will bail them out and go through all the red tape with the authorities for them."
"Where do they come from?" I asked.
"Diisseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich—surprised, aren't you? Yes, from so far away. The fine ladies from the Bundesrepublik," he went on. "But they're not looking only for servants. A lot of them are in business—hosiery, fashions, pharmaceutical products. They want assembly-line workers. The men, too—mining, electronics, dock workers: everything from pasta to steel. Germany needs workers. The boys make a deal at the fence, and off they go. Or the press I Forgive me, Hen-Roland, but I'll bet you that at least two men from the press are out there at the fence."
"What could they possibly want?"
"Newsboys. Subscription salesmen. Even the poorest students won't do it today with the pay they offer. But our boys will do anything. So that gives you some idea of the circus we're running here."
The telephone rang. Irina rushed to answer it. "Hello? Hello? Jan?" Then her face fell with disappointment. "Oh ... I see. Yes. Thank you." She hung up and turned to me. "It's still busy."
Suddenly, and this time totally unexpectedly, there he was, close to me—the jackal. I got up. I sat down again. I got up) again.
"There!" said Pastor Demel. "You let go and it snapped out."
"I'm sorry."
"What's the matter with you?" He was looking at me. "You don't look right. Your lips are blue."
I didn't care anymore. I got out my flask, unscrewed the top, and held it out to the pastor. "Woul
d you like some whiskey?"
"No, thank you," he said. "Never during the day. Bad for my nerves."
I drank.
"Sometimes I feel dizzy," I said. "It comes over me just like that. And sick." I drank again. "I find it terribly depressing here. For instance, your Fr&ulein Louise. Is she—?"
"You're going to ask if she's mentally sound." He looked down at the hot plate. "I think it'll hold. Now all I have to do is get the two coils—"
"Hen Pastor!"
"Yes?"
"She's strange. She listens and there's no one there. She talks and there's no one there."
"Yes." He sighed. "It's a great pity. Such a good woman. A valuable woman. How she loves her children I But, unfortunately, people keep talking about her behavior and provoking her. They really should retire her; and, in all honesty, I can't put in a word for her. But when it happens, when she has to leave her children... it'll be the end of her. She'll hang herself. No... she'll walk out onto the moor."
"But who is she listening to? And talking to?"
"Her friends."
"What friends?"
"Well...," said Pastor Paul Demel, "her dead."
June 5,1968, late afternoon. A Wednesday. Almost twelve weeks to a day after Karel's father had floated slowly downstream, shot by a guard. Fr&ulein Louise was standing far out on the moor on a firm little mound, and eleven figures were standing around her, forming a circle. She was talking to them excitedly, wringing her hands, waving them in the air, pacing back and forth as much as the space permitted. The wind swept wisps of fog across her and the figures; every now and then they disappeared from view. There was a full moon, its silver light diffused by the fog hovering over the moor. Small pools of water glistened in its light. The sounds of the nocturnal moor were eerie, its voices ghostly. Vast stretches of swamp grass gurgled, and in the distance the long, sad whistle of a locomotive faded into the night.
The fog floated away and Fraulein Louise became visible again, her white hair gleaming in the moonlight, surrounded by eleven figures. A meeting of ghosts. 64
The young woman who had been watching her for fifteen minutes shuddered. Her name was Hilde Reiter, and she was standing on the broad base of a cracked concrete pillar at the east end of the camp. Here the fence made a ninety-degree turn around the pillar from east to south.
Hilde Reiter had arrived at this spot in haste and great fear. She was wearing a coat and carrying a large suitcase. It was her intention to escape from the camp, for which she had a very good reason. Hilde Reiter knew that the camp director would take her to the police in the morning. That was why she had come here, to this cracked pillar. For fifteen minutes now she had been trying with all her might to topple it and drag the barbed-wire fence down with it. It was the only spot in the camp where one could have any hope of escaping.
Hilde Reiter was in a state of panic. If she couldn't get away, they would arrest her, make her stand trial, lock her up. The young woman hurled herself against the pillar and shook it until she was exhausted. The pillar remained upright. Hilde Reiter wasn't strong enough. Desperate, weeping tears of rage, she straightened up and caught sight of Fraulein Louise on the moor. I'm going crazy, she thought. I've gone out of my mind! How did the old bitch get out there? Nobody can walk on the moor.
She was shivering, although the night was warm, a warm night in what had been a rainy spring until now, the beginning of June. In fact, so far the whole year had been damp, with rain almost every day. The desolate moor was therefore swampier than ever and impossible to navigate on foot. The drainage ditches were filled to overflowing, their banks on both sides had crumbled and disappeared in the water. Scattered areas of high ground seemed to be floating. Old osier willows were growing on them, looking like crippled humans with their gnarled crowns, wild juniper around them, splintered moor pines, and birches everywhere, tall and thin.
Hilde Reiter clung to the pillar or she would have fallen off the base on which she was standing. Fascinated, her eyes wide, she watched Fraulein Louise talking excitedly to the eleven figures. "Dong-ka-chunk ... oong-ka-chunk" croaked the bittern. With the first cry the bird breathed deep, with the second it exhaled.
Hilde Reiter had been working at the camp for two years. She had come to Neurode because her friend, Gertrude Hitzinger, who had been a social worker in Neurode for three years, had written to her that the work was light and easy, with plenty of free time. Hilde Reiter was thirty-three years old. She was a
handsome Woman, but her expression was stern, and she had her peculiarities. It took Fr&ulein Louise a while to find out what they were—a year and a half, in fact. That was when Fr&ulein Louise caught her beating a small boy. Hilde Reiter had pulled down the boy's pants and was thrashing him on his bare behind with a bamboo switch. The boy was screaming. Fraulein Louise, who had suspected something of the sort for some time, was watching from behind a tree. Hilde Reiter said to the child, "You screamed. All right, then, you get three more. Every time you scream, three more."
The result was an uproar. Fraulein Louise was beside herself. Away with this sadist! She must leave the camp! Ranting and raving, she went to the camp director with Hilde Reiter. Dr. Horst Schall warned the woman: One more incident like this and she would have to go. Fraulein Louise said, "111 keep an eye on her, Herr Doktor. You can depend on me."
Keep an eye on her? It drove Hilde Reiter up the wall. So now she was going to be spied on, every step she took watched by this old bitch who didn't have all her marbles, who talked into thin air and heard voices... because sometimes she'd stand there in the middle of a conversation, her mouth open, and definitely be listening to what some invisible nobody was saying. And this nut was going to keep an eye on her?
She turned the tables. She and her friend, Gertrude Hitzinger, began to spy on Fraulein Louise, and they did it so cleverly that she never noticed. Again and again they were able to report Fr&ulein Louise's strange behavior to the camp director. He had known Fraulein Louise for years as a faithful worker, ready to lay down her life for her children if necessary. So he did nothing about the reports. Once, when he was talking to FrSulein Louise and she was in good spirits, he mentioned the invisible people.
"Me? Talk to people who aren't there?" she cried. "I never heard of such a thing! I never did such a thing! Never! It's a lie, a horrible lie! And I know where you heard it! From Hilde Reiter and her friend, Hitzinger!"
When Hilde Reiter saw that she was getting nowhere with her reports, her hatred for Fraulein Louise grew. She and her friend went on spying on Fr&ulein Louise. They discovered that she left the camp frequently and no one knew where she went. The two women followed her. Usually she walked along the sandy road in the direction of the village, through the village, then between high reeds and bushes and—was suddenly gone! Disappeared! Every time!
Hilde Reiter and Gertrude Hitzinger told the other social workers about it. At the time, Fraulein Louise was still living with them, and their words fell on willing ears. None of the other social workers really liked Fraulein Louise. She was too blunt, too harsh, too suspicious and odd. She gave all her love to the children; there was nothing left, not even sympathy, for anyone else. She didn't take any interest in the petty intrigues of the other social workers; she hadn't made friends with any of them. So all of them were only too ready to believe Hilde Reiter and Gertrude Hitzinger. Fraulein Louise was given two nicknames: "the kook" was one, "the witch" the second. And the tension between her and the others grew. Dr. Horst Schall was unhappy; things couldn't continue like this. He tried to smooth things over. It didn't work. He talked to Fr&ulein Louise. In vain.
"Lies! It's a pack of lies, Herr Doktor, I assure you," she cried, turning pale, then a fiery red.
In the first week of June, Hilde Reiter couldn't control herself again: A pretty, dark-haired, wild young boy from Greece was brought to the camp. He was fourteen. He broke a window with a football. The sun was shining, all the children were outdoors. Hilde Reiter took the boy to her room, t
old him to take off his pants, took a ruler, and so that she would not get dirty—so she said—she pulled her skirt up to her crotch. The boy had to lie face down across Hilde's bare thighs. He didn't utter a sound as she hit him. Her breathing became labored, she felt a pulsation in the pit of her stomach, her blood felt hot. She didn't notice the door of her room opening slowly. Now she was panting. When she looked up, her eyes veiled with excitement, it was too late. Camp director Dr. Schall was standing in her room.
He didn't say much. "You are dismissed. You are suspended from all duties immediately. I shall report you. Tomorrow we will go to the police at Zeven. Until then you may not leave the camp."
13
"Still busy," said Irina Indigo, putting down the receiver. She was terribly upset. She hadn't felt the slightest interest in what the
pastor was saying. All she could think of was hearing the voice of her fiance.
"Must be a long conversation," I said curtly, because I was absolutely fascinated by Pastor Demel's story, "or several long conversations. The operator will keep trying. You'll just have to be patient."
Irina shrugged and sat down. "Go on, Herr Pastor," I said, "go on, please."
a 4
"Gertrude! Gertrude! Wake up!" Hilde Reiter was kneeling at her friend's bedside, shaking her. Gertrude Hitzinger woke up slowly. "For God's sake... yes, yes—who wants—what is it?"
Hilde Reiter spoke so fast the words were almost unintelligible. Suddenly Gertrude Hitzinger was wide awake. "And the old bitch is still out on the moor?"
"Yes. I'm telling you—yes."
"But she can't be! There's no path out to it! That's impossible!"
"But she is out there! And there are people with her! And she's talking to them!"
"Men?" Gertrude Hitzinger's eyes narrowed.
"They look like men. Yes, they are men!" cried Hilde Reiter, and as she said it, she really believed it. Men! Of course those had been men standing around the old witch! If she was going to be punished, she'd see to it that the old bitch got thrown out, too.
The Traitor Blitz Page 7
