Zoo Station

by David Downing

‘Okay.’

  They walked the rest of the way in silence.

  The conversation with McKinley – or, more precisely, the sense of letting himself down that it engendered – lurked with annoying persistence at the back of Russell’s mind over the next few days. He finished his first article for Pravda – a paean to organized leisure activities – and delivered it himself to the smiling blonde at 102 Wilhelmstrasse. He received a wire from his US agent bubbling with enthusiasm for the two series. And, by special delivery, he received the letter he had asked Sturmbannführer Kleist for. It was typed rather than written, which was something of a disappointment, but the content left little to be desired – John Russell, it seemed, had full authority from the Propaganda Ministry and Ministry of the Interior to ask such questions ‘as would widen the foreign understanding of National Socialism and its achievements’. Those shown the letter were ‘asked and expected to offer him all the assistance they could’. All of which would have felt much better if he hadn’t seen the disappointment in McKinley’s eyes.

  The weekend gave him a welcome break from worrying about his journalistic integrity. On Saturday afternoon he and Paul went to the Zoo. They had been so many times that they had a routine – first the parrot house, then the elephant walk and the snakes, a break for ice cream, the big cats and, finally, the pièce de résistance, the gorilla who spat, with often devastating accuracy, at passers-by. After the Zoo, they strolled back down the Ku’damm, looking in shop windows and eventually stopping for cake. Russell still found his son’s Hitler Youth uniform slightly off-putting, but he was gradually getting used to it.

  Sunday, a rare treat – an outing to the fair at the end of Potsdamerstrasse with both Paul and Effi. Getting them together was always harder than the actual experience of their being together – both worried overmuch that they’d be in the other’s way. It was obvious that Paul liked Effi, and equally obvious why. She was willing to try anything at least once, was able to act any age she thought appropriate, and assumed that he could too. She was in fact, most of the things his mother wasn’t, and had never been.

  After two hours of circling, sliding, dropping and whirling they took a cab to Effi’s theatre, where she showed Paul round the stage and back-stage areas. He was particularly impressed by the lift and trapdoor in mid-stage which brought the Valkyries up to heaven each evening. When Russell suggested that they should build one for Goebbels at the Sportspalast, Effi gave him a warning look, but Paul, he noticed delightedly, was unable to suppress his amusement.

  The only sad note of the weekend was Paul’s news that he would be away for the next weekend at a Hitler Youth adventure camp in the Harz Mountains. He was sorry not to be seeing his Dad, and to be missing the next Hertha home game, but Russell could see he was looking forward to the camp. It was particularly annoying because he would be away himself the following weekend, delivering his first oral report to Shchepkin. And on that weekend he would also be missing Effi’s end-of-run party – Barbarossa had apparently raised all the national consciousness it was going to raise.

  Early on Monday morning, he took the train to Dresden for a one-night stay. It was only a two-hour journey, and he had several contacts there: a couple of journalists on the city paper; an old friend of Thomas’s, also in the paper business; an old friend of his and Ilse’s, once a union activist, now a teacher. Ordinary Germans, if such people existed.

  He saw them all over the two days, and talked to several others they recommended. He also spent a few hours in cafés and bars, joining or instigating conversations when he could, just listening when that seemed more appropriate. As his train rattled northwards on Tuesday evening he sat in the buffet car with a schnapps and tried to make sense of what he had heard. Nothing surprising. ‘Ordinary Germans’ felt utterly powerless, and were resigned to feeling so for the foreseeable future. The government would doubtless translate that resignation as passive support, and to some extent they were right. There was certainly no sense that anyone had a practical alternative to offer.

  When it came to Germany’s relations with the rest of the world, most people seemed pleasantly surprised that they still had any. The Rhineland, the Anschluss, the Sudetenland – it was as if Hitler had deliberately driven his train across a series of broken points, but – thanks be to God – the train was still on the track. Surely, soon, he would pull the damn thing to a halt. Once Memel and Danzig were back in the fold, once the Poles had given Germany an extraterritorial corridor across their own corridor, then that would be that. Hitler, having expanded the Reich to fit the Volk, would rest on his laurels, a German hero for centuries to come.

  They all said it, and some of them even believed it.

  Their own daily lives were getting harder. Not dramatically, but relentlessly. The economic squeeze was on. Most people were working longer hours for the same pay; many ordinary goods were growing slightly harder to find. The relief which had followed the return of full employment had dissipated.

  Children seemed to be looming ever-larger in their parent’s minds; the demands in time and loyalty of the Hitler Youth, the year-long exile of the arbeitsdienst, the prospect of seeing them marched off to war. If Ordinary Germans wanted anything, it was peace. Years of the stuff, years in which they could drive their people’s cars down their new autobahns.

  Only one man mentioned the Jews, and then only in a dismissive preamble – ‘Now that the Jewish question is nearing solution.’ What did he mean? Russell asked. ‘Well,’ the man replied, ‘they’ll all be gone soon, won’t they? I have nothing against them personally, but a lot of people have, and they’ll be happier elsewhere – that’s obvious.’

  The Wiesners would have agreed with him. The girls seemed subdued when he saw them on Wednesday morning, polite and willing as ever, but less perky, as if more bad news had just descended on the household. One reason became clear when Frau Wiesner asked for a word with him after the lesson.

  She wanted to ask him a favour, she said. She didn’t want her husband to know, but could he, Russell, have a word with Albert? He was behaving recklessly, just saying whatever came into his mind, associating with… well, she didn’t know who, but… he wouldn’t listen to his father, she knew that, and he wouldn’t listen to her, but Russell, well, he was outside it all – he wasn’t a Jew, wasn’t a Nazi, wasn’t even a German. He knew what was happening, how dangerous things were. They were working on getting visas, but it took so long. Albert said they were dreaming, they’d never get them, but he didn’t know that, and he was putting the girls’ future at risk as well as his own…

  She ran out of words, and just looked at him helplessly.

  Russell’s heart sank at the prospect, but he agreed to try.

  ‘I’ll make sure he’s here on Friday, after the lesson,’ she said.

  That evening, he was getting his Dresden notes in order when Tyler McKinley knocked on his door. ‘I’ve come to apologise,’ the American said.

  ‘What for?’ Russell said.

  ‘You know. The other night.’

  ‘Oh that. Forget it.’

  ‘Okay. How about a drink?’

  Russell rubbed his eyes. ‘Why not?’

  They went to their usual bar, sat at the same table. Russell thought he recognised the stains from the previous week. His companion seemed relieved that he wasn’t holding a grudge, and he was drinking dark beer for a change. The bar was more crowded than usual, with a population reaching towards double figures.

  McKinley got out his pipe and tin of Balkan mixture.

  ‘What got you started in journalism?’ Russell asked.

  ‘Oh, I always wanted to be one. Long as I can remember.’ The American smiled reminiscently. ‘When I was a kid I used to spend the summer with my mother’s folks in Nugget City – you probably never heard of it – it’s a small town in California. Grew up in the Gold Rush days, been shrinking ever since. My granddad ran the local paper in his spare time. Just a weekly. Two pages. Four if something had actually hap
pened. I used to help him with stuff. On print day we’d both come home covered in ink. I loved it.’ He picked up the tobacco tin, and put it down again. ‘Granddad and grandma both died when I was twelve, so all that stopped. I tried offering my services to the San Francisco papers, but they didn’t want kids hanging around in their print rooms. Not surprising really. Anyway, I got involved with my high school paper, and then the college paper, and eventually got a job at the Examiner. Three years in sports, three on the city desk, and I finally got myself sent to Europe.’ He grinned. ‘I still love it.’

  ‘What did your family think?’ Russell asked. He meant about coming to Europe, but McKinley, busying loading his pipe, answered a different question.

  ‘My father was furious. He has his own law firm, and I was supposed to sign up, start at the bottom and eventually take over. He thinks journalists are grubby little hacks, you know, like The Front Page.’ His eyes lit up. ‘Did you know they’re re-making that, with a woman reporter? Rosalind Russell, I think. And Cary Grant’s her editor. I read about it in one of Merle’s Hollywood magazines.’

  ‘Your Dad still furious?’

  ‘Not so much. I mean, they’re happy enough to see me when I come home.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. ‘It’s funny,’ he added, ‘my sister seems angrier than my father.’

  ‘What does she do?’

  ‘Nothing much, as far as I can tell. She’d make a much better lawyer than I would, but… well, you know… Dad would never take a woman into the firm.’ He struck a match, applied it to the bowl, and sucked in. The bowl glowed, and a noxious plume of smoke escaped from his lips.

  ‘That’s enough to make anyone resentful,’ Russell said. ‘Not being offered something you want is bad enough; someone else turning it down just adds salt to the wound.’

  McKinley looked at him as if he was a magician. ‘You know, that never occurred to me.’

  ‘When did you last go home?’ Russell asked.

  ‘Oh, the Thanksgiving before last. But I write quite often.’

  Russell thought about his own family. His mother in America, his half-brother in Leeds. Bernard was well over fifty now, the single offspring of his father’s brief liaison with the army nurse who treated him – in more ways than one – after the Gordon campaign in Sudan. Russell hadn’t seen him in years, and had no particular desire to. There were a couple of uncles in England, one aunt in America, cousins dotted here and there. He hadn’t seen any of them either. It was time he took Paul on a visit to England, he thought.

  He looked at McKinley, happily puffing away at his pipe. ‘Do you never get homesick?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, sometimes. Days like today I miss the sunshine. I know everyone thinks San Francisco is always shrouded in fog, but it isn’t. It’s still the loveliest city I’ve seen.’ He smiled. ‘But this is where the story is.’

  ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Well, yes. I was wondering… I’m arranging this interview next week – I don’t know which evening yet – and I wondered if you’d be willing to come along. My German is pretty good, but yours is obviously a lot better, and the only time I met this woman I could hardly understand anything she said. And I really can’t afford to misunderstand anything she tells me.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  McKinley hesitated. ‘She used to work for the Health Ministry.’

  ‘This is the big story?’

  McKinley grinned briefly. ‘You could say that. You remember that story I did on asylums last year?’

  Russell did. It hadn’t been at all bad. The American had managed to raise quite a few awkward questions, and it was hardly his fault that no one else had demanded any answers. ‘I remember,’ he said.

  ‘Well, this woman was one of the people I interviewed. She told me a pack of lies, as far as I could tell. And then last week she contacted me out of the blue, said she was willing to give me some information about some of the other stuff I’ve heard.’

  ‘About the asylums?’

  ‘Yes and no. Look,’ he said, looking round. ‘I don’t want to talk about it here. Let’s go back to the house.’

  ‘Okay,’ Russell agreed. He was beginning to feel intrigued, despite himself.

  As they walked back to Neuenburgerstrasse he kept an eye open for possible shadows, and noticed that McKinley was doing the same. None crept into view, and the street outside their block was empty of cars.

  ‘The Knauer boy,’ McKinley said, once they were ensconced in Russell’s two armchairs. ‘I don’t think his parents gave him a Christian name. He was blind, had only one arm, and part of one leg was missing. He was also, supposedly, an idiot. A medical idiot, I mean. Mentally-retarded. Anyway, his father wrote to Hitler asking that the boy should be killed. Hitler got one of the doctors employed by the KdF to confirm the facts, which they did. He then gave the child’s own doctors permission to carry out a mercy-killing. The boy was put to sleep.’ He paused to re-stoke his pipe.

  ‘That’s a sad story,’ Russell said cautiously.

  ‘There’s two things,’ McKinley said. ‘Hitler has never made any secret of his plan to purify the race by sterilizing the mentally-handicapped and all the other so-called incurables. And the Nazis are always going on about how much it costs to keep all these people in asylums. They actually use it as an example in one of their school text-books – you know, how many people’s cars you could build with what it costs to feed and clothe ten incurables for a year. Put the two things together, and you get one easy answer – kill them. It purifies the race and saves money.’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘I know. But if the Knauer boy is expendable, why not the others? About 100,000 of them, according to the latest figures. Tell the parents they’re doing it to cut short the child’s suffering, give them an excuse not to have the problem anymore. In fact, don’t even tell the parents. Spare their suffering by saying that the child died of natural causes.’

  ‘100,000 of them?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but…’

  ‘Okay, it sounds feasible. It sounds like the Nazis, for Christ’s sake. But are they actually doing it? And if they are, do you have any proof that they’re doing it?’

  ‘There are all sorts of indications…’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘Plans then.’

  ‘On paper?’

  ‘Not exactly. Look, will you come and see this woman with me?’

  Russell knew what the sensible answer was, but McKinley had him hooked. ‘Okay,’ he said, checking his watch and realising that he’d be late for Effi.

  Once out on Lindenstrasse he decided to spend some of his anticipated earnings on a cab. As it swung around the Belle Alliance Platz and headed up Königgrätzerstrasse towards Potsdamer Bahnhofplatz, he watched the people on the sidewalks and wondered how many of them would protest the mercy killing of 100,000 children. Would that be one step too far, or just another milestone in the shedding of a nation’s scruples?

  Russell didn’t expect to find many similarities between Tyler McKinley and Albert Wiesner. On the one hand, a boy from a rich family and country with a rewarding job and instant access to a ticket out of Nazi Germany. On the other, a boy without work or prospects of any kind, whose next forwarding address was likely to be a concentration camp. Russell, however, soon realised he’d been wrong. The characters and personalities of both young men had been formed in successful families and, it seemed, in reaction to powerful fathers. And both seemed blessed with enough youthful naivety to render them both irritating and likable in turn.

  Frau Wiesner produced her son at the end of Friday’s lesson. For his mother’s and sisters’ sake the boy made a token effort to mask his sullen resentment at this unnecessary intrusion on his time, but once out of the door he swiftly abandoned any pretence of amiability.

  ‘Let’s get some coffee,’ Russell said.

  ‘No cafés will serve us,’ was Albert’s reply.

  ‘Well, then, let’s go for a walk
in the park.’

  Albert said nothing, but kept pace at Russell’s side as they strolled down Greifswaldstrasse towards the northern entrance of the Friedrichshain, the park which gave the whole district its name. Once inside the main gates Russell led them past the Märchen-Brunnen, a series of artificial waterfalls surrounded by sculptured characters from fairytales. He had brought Paul to see it several years ago, when Hansel and Gretel – the figures in the foreground – could still conjure up night-time terrors of wicked witches. As Ilse had bitterly complained on the following day.

  Albert had a more topical agenda in mind. ‘The witch must have been Jewish,’ he said.

  ‘If she wasn’t then, she will be now,’ Russell agreed.

  They walked on into the park, down a wide path through the leafless trees. Albert seemed unconcerned by the silence between them, and made a point of catching the eyes of those walking in the opposite direction.

  Russell had mentally rehearsed a few lines of adult wisdom on the U-bahn, but they’d all sounded ridiculous. ‘Your mother wanted me to talk to you,’ he said at last. ‘But I have no idea what to say. You and your family are in a terrible situation. And, well, I guess she’s frightened that you’ll just make things worse for yourself.’

  ‘And them.’

  ‘Yes, and them.’

  ‘I do realise that.’

  ‘Yes…’ This is a waste of time, Russell thought. They were approaching one of the park’s outdoor cafés. ‘Let’s have a coffee here,’ he said.

  ‘They won’t serve me.’

  ‘Just take a seat. I’ll get them.’ He walked up to the kiosk window and looked at the cakes. They had mohrenkopfen, balls of sponge with custard centres, chocolate coats, and whipped cream hats. ‘Two of them and two coffees,’ he told the middle-aged man behind the counter.

  The man was staring at Albert. ‘He’s a Jew,’ he said finally, as if reaching the end of an exhaustive mental process. ‘We don’t serve Jews.’