Paul gave him a grown-up look, as if he knew full well that his father was talking as much about himself as his son.
After taking Paul home, Russell took the long tram ride back down Ku’damm, spent a couple of hours over dinner in a bar, and then went in search of a movie to watch. The new U-boat drama was showing at the Alhambra, a Zara Leander weepie at the Ufa Palast, and an American Western at the Universum. He chose the last, and reached his seat just as the weekly newsreel was getting started. A rather beautiful piece on Christmas markets in the Rhineland was followed by lots of thunderous marching and a German volleyball triumph in Romania. Suitably lifted, the audience noisily enjoyed the Western, which almost made up in spectacle what it lacked in every other department.
Effi’s audience had gone home by the time he reached the theatre on Nurnbergstrasse, and he only had to wait a few minutes for her to emerge from the dressing rooms. She had forgotten to eat anything between the matinee and evening shows, and was starving. They walked to a new bar on the Ku’damm which one of the new Valkyries had told her served the most incredible omelettes.
They were indeed, but the male clientele, most of whom seemed to be in uniform, left a lot to be desired. Four SS men took a neighbouring table soon after their food arrived, and grew increasingly vocal with each round of schnapps. Russell could almost feel their need for a target take shape.
Effi was telling him about her sister Zarah’s latest neurosis – she was increasingly worried that her infant son was a slow learner – when the first comments were directed at their table. One of the SS men had noticed Effi’s Jewish looks, and loudly remarked on the fact to his companions. He was only about twenty, Russell thought, and when he succeeded in catching the young man’s eye, had the brief satisfaction of seeing a hint of shame in the way he quickly looked away.
By this time Effi was rifling through her purse. Finding what she was looking for, she stood up, advanced on the SS table and held the fragebogen up to them, rather in the manner of a schoolteacher lecturing a bunch of particularly obtuse children. ‘See this, you morons,’ she said, loud enough for the whole bar to hear. ‘Aryan descent, all the way back to Luther’s time. Satisfied?’
The manager was already at her shoulder. ‘Fraulein, please…’ he began.
‘I want these drunken pigs thrown out,’ she told him.
The oldest of the SS men was also on his feet. ‘I would advise you to be careful, Fraulein,’ he said. ‘You may not be a Jew, but that does not give you the right to insult members of the Führer’s bodyguard.’
Effi ignored him. ‘Are you going to throw these pigs out?’ she asked the manager.
He looked mortified. ‘I…’
‘Very well. You won’t get any more business from me. Or any of my friends. I hope,’ she concluded with one last contemptuous glance at the SS, ‘that you can make a living selling swill to these pigs.’
She headed for the door, as Russell, half-amused and half-fearful, counted out a few marks for their meal and listened to the SS men argue about whether to arrest her. When one of them took a step towards the door he blocked the way. ‘You did call her a Jew,’ he said mildly, looking straight at the oldest man. ‘Surely you can understand how upsetting that might be. She meant no disrespect.’
The man gave him a slight bow of the head. ‘She would do well to control her anger a little better,’ he said coldly.
‘She would,’ Russell agreed. ‘Have a good evening,’ he added, and turned towards the door.
Outside he found Effi shaking with laughter, though whether from humour or hysteria he wasn’t quite sure. He put an arm around her shoulder and waited for the shaking to stop. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘Let’s,’ she agreed.
They crossed the busy avenue and headed up one of the side streets.
‘Sometimes I wish I was a Jew,’ she said. ‘If the Nazis hate them that much, they must be real human beings.’
Russell grunted his agreement. ‘I heard a joke the other day,’ he said. ‘Hitler goes rowing on the Wannsee, but he’s not very good at it, and manages to overturn the boat. A boy in a passing boat manages to haul him out and save him from drowning. Hitler, as you can imagine, is overcome with gratitude and promises the boy whatever he wants. The boy thinks for a moment, and asks for a state funeral. Hitler says, “You’re a bit young for that, aren’t you?” The boy says, “Oh, mein Führer, when I tell my dad I’ve saved you from drowning he’s going to kill me!”.’
Effi started laughing again, and he did too. For what seemed like minutes they stood on the sidewalk, embracing like lovers, shaking with mirth.
Next afternoon Thomas and Joachim were waiting in the usual place, sitting on a low wall with cartons of half-consumed frankfurters and kartoffelsalat between them. Russell bought the same for himself and Paul.
Once inside the Plumpe they headed for their usual spot, opposite the edge of the penalty area, halfway up the terrace on the western side. As their two sons read each other’s magazines, Russell and Thomas sat themselves down on the concrete step and chatted. ‘How’s business?’ Russell asked.
‘It’s good,’ Thomas said, unbuttoning his overcoat. He’d been running the family paper business since his and Ilse’s father died a few years earlier. ‘It’s getting harder to find experienced staff, but other than that…’ He shrugged. ‘There’s no lack of orders. How about you?’
‘Not too bad. I’ve got the opening of the new Chancellery tomorrow, and there should be a decent piece in that – the Americans like that sort of thing.’
‘Well that’s good. How about Danzig? Did you get anything there?’
‘Not really.’ Russell explained about the stamp wars.
Thomas rolled his eyes in frustration. ‘Like children,’ he muttered. ‘Speaking of which, Joachim’s been called up for his arbeitsdienst.’
‘When?’
‘The beginning of March.’
Russell looked up at Joachim, engrossed in his magazine. ‘Ah,’ he said, glad that Paul was still six years away from the year of drilling, draining swamps and digging roads which the Nazis imposed on all seventeen-year-old boys. ‘How does he feel about it?’
‘Oh, he can’t wait,’ Thomas said, glancing affectionately up at his son. ‘I suppose it can’t do him any harm. Unlike what’ll probably follow.’
Russell knew what he meant. When they’d first become friends almost ten years ago, he and Thomas had talked a lot about their experiences in the war. Both had friends who’d survived the war in body, yet never recovered their peace of mind. And both knew that they themselves had been changed in ways that they would never fully understand. And that they had been the lucky ones.
‘Happy days,’ Russell murmured, and then laughed. ‘We had a run-in with the SS last night,’ he said, and told Thomas the story.
He wasn’t as amused as Russell had expected. ‘She’ll go too far one of these days. The fragebogen’s just a piece of paper, after all. One day they’ll take her in, tear it up, and the next thing you know her parents will be getting a bill for her burial.’ He shook his head. ‘Being right doesn’t count anymore.’
‘I know,’ Russell said. ‘She knows. But she does it so well.’
A chorus of catcalls erupted around them – Viktoria Berlin were on their way out. As the two men got to their feet, Hertha emerged to a more affectionate welcome. Casting his eyes over the towering grandstand and the high crowded terraces behind each goal, Russell felt the usual surge of excitement. Glancing to his left, he saw Paul’s eyes mirror his own.
The first half was all Hertha, but Viktoria scored the only goal in a breakaway just before the interval. Joachim seethed with indignation, while Paul yo-yoed between hope and anxiety. Thomas smoked two cigarettes.
The second half followed the same pattern, and there were only ten minutes left when Hertha’s inside-left was tripped in the penalty area. He took the penalty himself. The ball hit both posts before going in, leaving the crowd in hysteric
s. Then, a minute from time, with evening falling and the light swiftly fading, Hertha’s centre-forward raced onto a long bouncing ball and volleyed it home from almost thirty yards. The Viktoria goalkeeper hadn’t moved. As the stadium exploded with joy he just stood there, making angry gestures at his team-mates, the referee, the rest of the world.
Paul was ecstatic. Eyes shining, he joined in the chant now echoing round the ground – ‘Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC! Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC!’
For an eleven-year-old, Russell thought fondly, this was as good as it gets.
It was dark by the time he dropped Paul off. He took a 76 back into town, ate supper at a beer restaurant just off the Potsdamerplatz, and walked the last kilometre home. Reaching his street, he noticed what looked like the same empty car parked across from his apartment block. He was on his way to investigate it when he heard the scream.
It was no ordinary scream. It was loud, lingering, and somehow managed to encompass surprise, terror and appalling pain. For a brief instant, Russell was back in the trenches, listening to someone who’d just lost a limb to a shell.
It came from further down the street.
He hesitated, but only long enough for his brain to register his hesitation as an essential corollary of living in Nazi Germany. All too often, screams meant officialdom, and experience suggested that officialdom was best avoided at such moments.
Still, investigating a scream of agony seemed legitimate behaviour, even in Nazi Germany. Not all crimes were committed by the state or its supporters. Russell walked resolutely on past the courtyard which his block shared with its neighbour, telling himself that valour was the better part of discretion.
The source of the disturbance was the further of the two blocks off the next courtyard. A couple of men were hovering in the entrance, obviously uncertain what to do. They eyed Russell nervously, and just looked at each other when he asked them what was going on. Both were in their forties, and an obvious facial similarity suggested brothers.
In the courtyard beyond, an open-backed lorry was parked with its engine running, and a single man in an SA uniform was walking towards them.
‘Keep moving,’ he told them, without any real conviction. His breath stank of beer.
‘But we live here,’ one of the two men said.
‘Just wait there then,’ the storm trooper said, looking up at the illuminated windows on the third floor. ‘You might get some free entertainment,’ he added over his shoulder as he walked back towards the lorry.
Seconds later, another blood-curdling scream reverberated round the courtyard.
‘What in God’s name…’ Russell began. ‘Who lives up there?’ he asked the two men.
‘Two actors,’ the older of the two replied.
‘Warmer brüder,’ the other added, using the current slang for homosexuals. ‘They’ve been brazen as hell. Someone must have denounced them.’ He didn’t sound too upset about it.
No other lights were showing in either block, but Russell could almost feel the silent audience watching from behind the tiers of darkened windows. He thought about calling the police, but knew there was no point.
One of the illuminated windows was suddenly flung open, and a man was silhouetted against the opening, looking out and down. A crying, whimpering sound was now audible, and just as the man disappeared another scream split the night, even more piercing than the last. There was a flurry of movement inside the lighted room, and suddenly a naked body was flying out through the window, dropping, screaming, hitting the floor of the courtyard with a sickening, silencing thud. The body twitched once and lay still, as desperate, sobbing pleas of ‘no, please, no’ leaked out of the open window. Another flurry, another naked body, this one twisting in flight like an Olympic diver who’d mistaken concrete for water. here was no twitch this time, no last-second adjustment to death.
The two bodies lay a couple of feet apart, in the thin pool of light thrown by the block’s entrance lamp. One man was face down, the other face up, with only a glistening mess where his genitals had been.
With a shock, Russell recognised the man’s face. He’d seen him – talked to him even – at one of Effi’s theatrical gatherings. He had no memory of the man’s name, but he’d been nice enough. With a passion for Hollywood movies, Russell remembered. Katherine Hepburn in particular.
‘Show’s over,’ the SA man was saying loudly. ‘You saw it. They must have cut each other’s pricks off before they jumped.’ He laughed. ‘You can go in now,’ he added.
Russell’s two companions looked to be in shock. One started to say something, but no sound emerged, and the other just gave him a gentle push on the shoulder. They walked towards their door, drawing a wide circle around the two corpses.
‘And you?,’ the SA man shouted at Russell.
‘I was just passing,’ he said automatically.
‘Then keep moving,’ the SA man ordered.
Russell obediently turned and walked away, his eyes still full of the mutilated bodies. The bile in his stomach wouldn’t stay down. Supporting himself against a lamp post he retched his supper into the gutter, then leaned against a wall, brain swirling with the usual useless rage. Another crime that would never be punished, another story that begged to be told.
And would he risk losing his son to tell it? No, he wouldn’t.
And was he ashamed of his silence? Yes, he was.
He levered himself off the wall and walked slowly on towards his own courtyard and block. As he reached the entrance he remembered the empty car. It was gone.
As usual, Frau Heidegger seemed to be waiting for him. ‘What was all that noise about?’ she asked, then noticved his face. ‘Herr Russell, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!’
‘The SA came for a couple of homosexuals in the next block,’ he said. There seemed no point in giving her the gory details.
‘Oh,’ she said, shaking her head in involuntary denial. ‘I know the men you mean. They… well… it’s not our business, is it?’ She ducked back inside her door and re-emerged with two envelopes, only one of which was stamped. ‘These came for you this morning,’ she said. ‘A policeman delivered the one in the plain envelope.’
He opened the stamped one first. It was a reply from the Soviet press attaché, reiterating the terms of Shchepkin’s original offer.
He opened the other, conscious of Frau Heidegger’s interest. The Gestapo wanted to see him. Within three days.
‘They just want a chat,’ he reassured her. ‘Something to do with my accreditation, I expect.’
‘Ah,’ she said, sounding less than completely convinced.
Russell shared her misgivings. As he climbed the stairs, he told himself there was nothing to worry about. They’d read his letter to the Soviets, and just wanted to clarify his intentions. If it was anything else, they wouldn’t be delivering invitations and letting him pick the day – they’d be throwing him out of the window.
A frisson of fear shot across his chest, and his legs felt strangely unsteady. Suddenly the photographic book seemed like a very bad idea.
‘Ha ho bloody he,’ he muttered to himself.
The Knauer boy
The Gestapo’s invitation to dance was still on Russell’s desk when he got up the following morning. One Sturmbannführer Kleist was expecting to see John Russell in Room 48, 102 Wilhelmstrasse within the next seventy-two hours. No explanation was offered.
It wasn’t actually the Gestapo – 102 Wilhelmstrasse was the headquarters of the Party intelligence organization, the Sicherheitsdienst. Though both were run by Reinhard Heydrich with a cheery disregard for legal niceties, the SD had a reputation for more sophisticated thuggery – same pain, cleaner floors.
He read the letter through again, looking for a more sinister message between the lines, and decided there was none. Shchepkin had said they’d want to talk to him, and they did. It was as simple as that. A friendly warning was waiting in Room 48, and nothing more. Sturmbannführer Kleist would turn out to be a Her
tha supporter, and they would chat about what had gone wrong this season.
Still, Russell thought as he shaved, there was no reason to hurry down there. He couldn’t afford to miss the new Chancellery opening at noon, and there was no telling how long the various ceremonies would take. Tomorrow would do. Or even Wednesday.
Back in his room, he picked up the Leica and took a few imaginary photos. It had no flash, but Zembski had said the lens was good enough for indoor shooting as long as he held the camera steady and used the right film. And he could always ask the Führer for the loan of a shoulder.
Cheered by this thought – feeling, in fact, unreasonably buoyant for someone with an appointment at 102 Wilhelmstrasse – he headed downstairs and out into the grey January morning. As if in response to his mood, a tram glided to a halt at the stop on Friedrichstrasse just as he reached it. Ten minutes later he was ensconced in a Café Kranzler window seat, enjoying a first sip of his breakfast coffee as he examined the morning papers.
Foreign Minister Ribbentrop had been talking to the visiting Polish leader, Colonel Beck – now there were two men who deserved each other. The new battleship Scharnhorst had been commissioned at Wilhelmshaven, complete with nine eleven-inch guns, two catapults and four planes. The captain’s main claim to fame was his shelling of a Spanish seaside town in 1937, while commanding the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer. On the home front, Pastor Martin Niemoller’s brother Wilhelm had delivered a sermon attacking government policy towards the churches. He had read a list from the pulpit of all those churchmen – including his brother – currently enjoying the state’s hospitality. The newspaper was not sure whether this constituted a crime: ‘It has recently been established in certain cases,’ the editor wrote, ‘that to read the names of persons in custody may itself be an offence.’
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