by Thaisa Frank
While Lodenstein waited for someone to park his jeep, he watched officers walk up and down the steps. They looked as if they’d been ratcheted with screws and would fall apart if anything came undone. They often had expressions of awe because they’d just left, or were about to enter, the Great Mosaic Hall—a one-hundred-fifty-foot crimson corridor with a gold-rimmed skylight and mosaics of Greek battles. Lodenstein had never liked this hall. It made him feel drenched in red.
The officer at the desk didn’t recognize him and asked him to empty his pockets. He was glad he’d left his duffel bag in the jeep and sorry he’d taken Elie’s rose. He was led through more crimson halls and left in Goebbels’s antechamber.
Elfriede Heidegger must have waited here to meet Goebbels as well. Lodenstein imagined the overstuffed chairs and polished wood tables would have pleased her. There was a huge photograph of Goebbels and Hitler shaking hands, another of Hitler kissing a child. He leafed through some propaganda pamphlets—all about Germany’s victory.
After nearly an hour, he heard boots tapping on the marble. General-Major Mueller stood in front of him, looking prosperous.
My good man, he said, shaking his hand. How nice to see you in these winter months.
I thought you were going to the front, said Lodenstein.
Not a chance, said Mueller. There were more important projects. And Goebbels is always in the marketplace. Can I tempt you with lunch until he gets back?
Lodenstein didn’t want to spend a minute with Mueller, but he knew the offer wasn’t a choice. They went through more crimson corridors to the dining hall where tables were set with white cloths and crystal goblets.
Amazing news about the war, Mueller said after they’d ordered rabbit stew. Last week everyone celebrated in the Lustgarten. What a fest! Even in ice! He wiped his moustache and lowered his voice.
You’re lucky you got switched to the SS, he said, because Wilhelm Canaris is about to be put under house arrest. Maybe even sent to Auschwitz, so he can see who he’s trying to save before he’s hung.
I’m sure he’s a double agent, said Lodenstein.
It’s a pity you were ever in the Abwehr, said Mueller.
Thank God I was only there for a couple of years, said Lodenstein.
They finished their coffee—real coffee—and walked down winding stairs to a room with a hunter-green sofa and white walls.
It’s quieter here, said Mueller. Better than all that bustling. And here’s Goebbels’s latest pamphlet. I’ll get you when he comes back.
Mueller shut the door, and Lodenstein noticed a distinct quiet, as though the room were wrapped in swaddling. He touched the walls and discovered they were brick. The door was cold, metal, and locked. He opened the pamphlet, and the list of everything he’d surrendered at the door fell out. This made him sure he was in a cell, and Goebbels had ordered his arrest as soon as he arrived. The Reich would never jail an officer without giving him a list of his possessions.
Dear Leonie,
I have no paper so I’m writing this letter on a wall.
I must write quickly.
I love you,
Niklaus
Lodenstein listened more closely and heard clattering keys. This must mean other people were in this underground jail. He’d heard about such cases—officers in disfavor, thrown into cells and forgotten until they turned into bodies so bereft of food and water no bacteria was left to make them rot. The bodies were completely clean. They were folded a few times over like paper and thrown away.
Now he could see the cell was only thinly disguised as a waiting room. The sofa was a narrow bench. The brick walls were painted white. There was an overhead light and a cement floor—clean except for one dark drop he didn’t want to look at too closely. Now and then the rattling keys grew louder. Sometimes they sounded like knives. Sometimes they sounded like sleigh bells. Now and then an oblong-shaped slat in the door opened, he saw a pair of eyes surveying the room, and the slat shut as quickly as a guillotine: someone checking to see he hadn’t done himself in.
Lodenstein did fifty push-ups, avoiding the spot on the floor. He lay on the bench and played three games of solitaire in his head. He read the list of everything he’d surrendered and made up theories about why they hadn’t taken his belt or shoelaces. He read and reread the list until it began to float in front of him.
One map, one deck of cards, three cigarettes, one box of matches, one piece of white velvet.
His mouth was dry, and the room was cold. He started to shiver. He thought of how, during his training, the Abwehr had glossed over torture: they were a rarified group that ciphered codes. He wondered what he’d be able to endure. If he’d break quickly. If it would hurt. If they’d use Elie as a hostage.
His hands were in fists. He forced himself to unclench them. But he clenched them again when he realized it had been a while since he heard keys. Suppose he was the only person here? In that case he’d been singled out for inquisition, torture, and hanging. He played more solitaire in his head but couldn’t keep the different games straight. Royal Parade merged with Citadel. Citadel merged with Above and Below. Stonewall turned into Flea. The cards unfurled, the white bricks undulated, and the cracks between them assumed infinite depth. Inside the cracks, like jewels in crevices, Lodenstein began to see letters of the alphabet. He didn’t read them but looked at the floating list, which told the story of a man with a deck of cards, three cigarettes, a box of matches, and a velvet rose. This man set out for Berlin in mountains of snow, drove to a huge grey building, and was thrown into a cell.
At some point the list detached from the paper, and the letters flew into the bricks. The room assumed a dreamlike radiance. And Lodenstein flew up to the ceiling. He could see the entire room—including a man who looked just like him, lying on the hunter-green bench.
The man he saw knew a secret: namely that writing to the dead wasn’t the Thule Society’s idea but a clairvoyant’s. The clairvoyant was the extraordinary Erik Hanussen, who was also a mind reader and hypnotist. He had predicted Hitler’s rise to power and taught him to mesmerize crowds just by raising his hand. But he’d also disguised the fact that he was Jewish, lent too many officers money, and knew about their affairs. And when he predicted the Reichstag fire days before it happened, it was clear he knew the Reich wanted an excuse to erect the very building where Lodenstein was jailed now. In the winter of 1933 Hanussen was shot and left in a field.
Through a series of accidents (or was it the prescience of Lodenstein’s father, who was still in the Abwehr?) Lodenstein, who was reading for law in Berlin, had a seat in the audience when Erik Hanussen revealed his secret key to the Reich’s world domination. The year was late 1932, months before Hanussen was shot. The place was Hanussen’s black and gold Palace of the Occult in Berlin, a ghoulish cabaret attended by members of the Nazi Party every night. The cabaret had a crooner, a chorus line, a strongman who lifted stones—and Hanussen, who appeared at the end of every show in a tuxedo. He called women in furs and diamonds to the stage, put them in trances, branded their hands with burning coins and was triumphant when they didn’t feel pain. Once he told a Party member to send fire trucks to his house because of a faulty electrical system. The trucks arrived and saved the house from burning.
In addition to the cabaret, the Palace had a gold and black marble room for séances. It was in this room that the meeting about Hanussen’s secret key was held.
Lodenstein sat in the back, surrounded by smoke and members of the Nazi party, and looked at the stage where Hanussen held séances. It had a round marble dais with a round marble table where black triangles pointed to an empty center. This was where Hanussen focused his mind so he could travel to realms other people couldn’t see. His travels had served him well: a judge once pardoned him from a swindling case because he knew where a criminal was hiding.
More Nazi Party members crowded the hall. When Himmler and Goebbels arrived, everyone stood. The lights went out, and Hanussen appeared in a tu
xedo. There was a moment of silence when he looked at the audience with eyes that seemed to know everything they hid in their pockets, as well as their souls. Then he unveiled a picture of an enormous globe filled with cracks. The cracks oozed letters and envelopes.
Unsightly, he’d said. But real.
Hanussen then explained that the letters stood for all the unanswered correspondence in the world, and the dead who’d written them were still waiting for answers. Every unanswered letter, he said, was like a brick in a building without mortar. They left perilous seams and created dangerous gaps in history. To ensure that the mortar was firm, all letters written by the dead must be answered down to the very last query from a haberdasher.
And why was this situation urgent? Because the dead would be upset unless they got answers. Indeed, they were already agitated in their pale green cities, able to penetrate this very room, demanding answers to their letters. Hanussen himself had to turn many away. And if the Reich wanted absolute power, they should answer all possible letters to fill in these seams. Then Germany would seal the globe and gain world domination.
While Hanussen talked, Lodenstein had a distinct sense of the world falling out of itself. The stolid officer to his left asked him for a piece of paper and drew a duplicate of Hanussen’s globe—as though he could stuff every crack with letters. Other people took out paper and wrote down names of the dead who might be waiting for answers. The amphitheater was filled with scratching pens and rustling paper. Lodenstein’s legs began to twitch—a sure sign that he wanted to leave. But he realized someone might report him; so he took out paper and looked as though he was trying to remember the dead in their pale green cities. When Hanussen turned on the light, the room was full of questions.
If the dead don’t have an address, how can we send them letters?
The letters don’t have to be mailed, said Hanussen. It’s enough to store them in boxes. The dead will know when they’ve been answered.
Where can we find the letters?
Everywhere. In attics, old ships, offices, museums.
But it’s impossible to find all of them.
An astrologer will tell you when you’ve found enough.
Can we confiscate these letters?
When the time is right.
The last question came from a short, heavy man in front of the amphitheater, sitting between Himmler and Goebbels. He held two glasses of water, and every few minutes one or the other snapped his fingers, and the heavy man handed him a glass. At one point he stood up, and Goebbels jerked his sleeve—but it was too late. Hanussen had noticed him.
Can we answer all the letters in German? he asked.
Only if they’re written in German, said Hanussen. The dead can read, but they cannot translate. Never forget this. Like Answers Like should be your motto. And answer faithfully.
There was loud applause. Every member of the Reich, including Himmler, Goebbels, and the short, squat man went to the dais to greet Hanussen. Lodenstein had watched, fascinated by the folds in the heavy man’s face. Later, when he met Stumpf, he recognized him as the same person.
Dear Marek,
Letters are being passed all the time and prisoners have managed to bribe pens from guards. Even in this unspeakable place people write to each other constantly. God willing, I’m going to see you soon.
Love always,
Urajsz
Before Lodenstein came to the Compound, the SS officer who evaporated in Denmark told him the idea of answering letters from the dead had been the object of conversation for days after the meeting at the Palace of the Occult. But when Hanussen was shot, anyone who mentioned his name or referred to his ideas was shot too. It was mere luck that no one made a connection between Hanussen’s vision and the Thule Society’s obsession with answering letters written by the dead. Maybe Hitler had forgotten. But Lodenstein doubted Goebbels had: Goebbels remembered everything. And Goebbels condoned Stumpf’s post, knowing Stumpf was driven to answer the dead and didn’t care about keeping records. Stumpf’s appointment must have been Goebbels’s concession to the Thule Society, in spite of his disdain for the occult. And the motto Like Answers Like had come from him.
Now the man on the hunter-green bench retrieved every detail of Hanussen’s speech at the black and gold Palace of the Occult. He retrieved them from the jewel-like letters between the bricks, which he could now read. After he’d read everything, the walls stopped undulating, and Lodenstein came down from the ceiling and slid inside the man who looked just like him. He put his hands in his pockets and realized the letters of the alphabet weren’t in the wall but on a piece of paper. He stood up and felt his legs, his arms, the cramped enclosure. And when the little hatch opened again, he cleared his sandpaper throat and shouted the name HANUSSEN! in a hoarse voice—so loudly the face stepped back, and he heard keys drop to the floor.
HANUSSEN! he rasped again. Tell Joseph Goebbels that Lodenstein remembers Hanussen.
The hatch closed, the sound of the keys grew fainter, and Lodenstein was alone. He wondered whether he’d be shot for mentioning Hanussen, or grilled about the meeting at the Palace of the Occult. By the time the keys jangled again he was trembling, but the officer bowed and gestured toward the winding steps that led to the Mosaic Hall, and once more he was enveloped in crimson marble. He heard an accordion in the officers’ cabaret. It must be evening.
The officer led him back to the antechamber and opened an enormous door. Goebbels sat behind a desk, still propped up by books to look taller. He was exactly the way Lodenstein remembered him—a thin face with dark, heavy-lidded eyes—circles Elie once called bizarre, almost romantic eyes. The desk was piled with pamphlets, two copies of Mein Kampf, a tin of biscuits, a bottle of wine, a pitcher of water, and fluted glasses.
Goebbels waved away any mention of Hanussen and listened to Lodenstein talk about Stumpf’s visit to Heidegger. After he finished, Goebbels speculated whether he should kill Heidegger as well as Stumpf and every single Scribe, since who really cared about records concerning people who died? But what if, he continued, Heidegger was exonerated after the war and no one could find him? Then his murder might be discovered, and the Compound of Scribes would be brought to light.
While he talked, he drank water from one of the fluted glasses. After his third glass, he lit a cigarette.
I should have Stumpf hung, he said.
When the right times comes, thought Lodenstein.
Heidegger, too, said Goebbels. I have no idea why that woman bothers with him.
Lodenstein supposed he meant Elfriede Heidegger but didn’t ask. He folded his hands, which felt like dry wood, and waited while Goebbels looked to the left, to the right, at a fresco of Hercules on the ceiling, and at his desk. He shuffled papers and picked up a photograph of his wife and five children—a perfect family and a perfect wife. He drank more water and pushed a glass toward Lodenstein, who lunged for it. It hurt to swallow.
Goebbels watched him drink with a look of contempt. Then he said:
People have visited Auschwitz before. And Heidegger won’t talk because of his wife. He’s a ludicrous country bumpkin, and I’m sure she knows it.
Lodenstein stared at the glass.
Never mind, said Goebbels, who’d once hugged Frau Heidegger at a meeting for housewives and had been delighted to see her again when she’d come to his office.
He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, stared at Lodenstein, and looked away. Then he slapped a hand on his phone, called Auschwitz, and asked if the Jew named Asher Englehardt was still alive. Ten minutes passed while someone looked up his number.
These are strict orders, Goebbels said into the phone. Have him make glasses for the officers. And give him enough food and a place to rest during the day. What do I mean? I mean he’s a lens grinder, and the officers’ clinic has made a mess of that. Better for them to have new glasses than pick through piles of Jew-glasses. And be careful of his son. Heil Hitler!
He hung up and looked at
Lodenstein for the first time.
You can take Heidegger to Auschwitz, he said. And deal with the consequences. But you’ll have to stay here—no getting a room at the Kaiserhof or messing around. And you’ll go to Auschwitz with Heidegger in the dark—I mean true dark—on a night when there isn’t a moon.
Lodenstein pointed out that every month there was only one night with no moon, and a trip to Auschwitz took two days.
Don’t split hairs with me, said Goebbels. And not a word about Hanussen.
Then he crawled to the top of his desk and looked down at Lodenstein. His eyes became slits, and if pupils could manipulate the world, they would have flattened everything in the room, including Lodenstein.
Blackmailer! he said. Naval scumbag! Pervert! Asshole head of a hovel!
His voice rose to emphasize his point, creating a circle of dramatic air. Lodenstein let him go on. He had no choice. He also hoped that if Goebbels spit out his venom, he’d never take revenge, and the Compound would remain a strange, safe haven in the middle of a failing war.
