by Adam Thorpe
‘Or even better,’ said Bendel, ‘you could use the vaults.’
‘The vaults?’
‘Full of rats and very damp, apparently. That’s what you told me, once. The old castle vaults. But better rats and damp than getting blown to bits, I’d say.’
‘I hate rats,’ said Herr Hoffer, opening his eyes.
The bombardment seemed to have paused, or perhaps they were trapped between two moments for ever and ever. Bendel was standing very still in the middle of the gallery, his gun slung in front of him, across his chest. Its metal grip had frayed towelling cloth wrapped round it, like a tennis racket, and the fat barrel-nut was badly dented. There was no wood anywhere on the gun, not even on the stock. It had really been through things, from the look of it.
‘Why are you here, Bendel?’ asked Herr Hoffer, looking up at the ceiling. ‘There’s not a lot to admire, now.’
He was smiling, but Bendel didn’t smile back; he had his head lowered. Actually, he was a frightful sight: his trousers were torn in two places, his crumpled camouflage jacket was spotted with filth, a stain darkened the SS runes on his collar-patch. His eyes were rimmed in red and the dirty skin had folded into those bags beneath them, but he was not unshaven. In fact, it looked as if he had just shaved, from the nicks on his chin. Or perhaps he didn’t need to shave! There were men who didn’t need to, although otherwise quite normal – one-hundred-percent men, otherwise. His haversack and his satchel were frayed and soiled, like a tramp’s bags.
Bendel said nothing, almost as if he hadn’t heard. Perhaps he was partly deaf from the noise of fighting.
‘Have you been fighting on Kreiburg Hill?’ asked Herr Hoffer, in a louder voice.
Bendel shook, as if he had just woken up.
‘All the way from the Meuse,’ he said.
‘You look like it,’ said Herr Hoffer.
The bench appeared to be rocking slightly.
‘These are wop trousers,’ said Bendel. ‘Autumn camouflage. Leopard spots.’
‘You can learn a lot from Mother Nature,’ murmured Herr Hoffer, who felt really sick, now. He tried sitting up, his head lolling back. Better.
‘Too tight,’ said Bendel. ‘Wops have small bones. A wop sergeant dragged himself to the first-aid tent until his guts plopped out, so I got his jacket. No time even to clean it. Hasn’t been cleaned since December. Couldn’t get his trousers, because he hadn’t got any legs. All I did was sew on the epaulettes. I’m not so good at sewing.’
He flicked the epaulette that was hanging by its threads and it fell off. He laughed and kicked the epaulette away, which shocked Herr Hoffer. The jacket’s ragged blacks and browns were overlaid with coppery patches, as were the pink and green and brown camouflage spots, like thumbprints, on his trousers. Herr Hoffer swallowed.
‘Reversible,’ Bendel went on, pulling at the jacket. ‘White for winter on the inside. This is summer. He was wearing it winter out, so that side’s not as stained.’
‘That’s lucky,’ said Herr Hoffer, with a great effort.
‘But I can’t go prancing about in white when it’s not snowing, can I? Anyway, nothing ever stayed white for more than a day, not in all that filth, so they could always spot you anyway. Sun filtering through the leaves, this. I’m a walking Impressionist painting, Herr Hoffer. Trousers by Seurat.’
Herr Hoffer smiled, feeling too sick to speak.
‘You won’t believe this, but it was designed by Professor Schick. My old professor. Fancy that, eh, Herr Hoffer?’
Bendel had begun to pace up and down the empty gallery.
‘Old Schick,’ he repeated. ‘Fancy that, eh?’
‘Well, dear fellow,’ Herr Hoffer murmured, ‘it appears to be all over for us, now.’
‘Eh, Ingrid?’
‘I’m not Ingrid.’
Bendel laughed his loud, sharp laugh. Herr Hoffer adjusted his glasses and felt really annoyed through his nausea. He focussed on the dingy spider’s web, where Jacob Marell’s Blumenstück in Vase had hung for all those years. The crack in his lens was annoying, he kept thinking it was dirt, but he could see the painting’s wonderful flowers quite clearly in his imagination – right down to the carmine red of the fallen tulip petal. The spider was no longer on its web. Maybe it had eaten enough.
What the hell was Bendel doing here, anyway?
His sickness started to subside and he closed his eyes. Really, he thought, I ought to be with my darling wife and daughters, as Frau Schenkel had said. Sometimes she was right. Sabine had been so difficult. He had not told anyone how difficult she had been, recently. He knew he wasn’t perfect, but he had done his best. She had had fits and thrown china cups at him. They had broken against the wall. He felt a pang of worry in his chest, as if a cup had broken against it. His hand smelt dense, densely of mice. Ingrid! What a thing to call me! The bloody cheek!
He felt the bench jolt violently.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bendel said, slumped now on the green leather next to him, his legs wide apart, his neck resting on the bench back. The gun straddled his lap. He was very smelly. ‘It’s all over and that’s that. You know what? It doesn’t matter. Nobody really gives a shit. Either you’re dead, or too hungry to think straight, or you’re in the Waffen-SS and you’re both. And they never even gave me another stripe.’ He laughed. The bench shook. The empty room echoed with his high-pitched laughter. That hadn’t changed, at least.
‘You went away,’ murmured Herr Hoffer. The reek of sweat and oil had revived his nausea.
He had realised that, whatever else might happen, Bendel must not go down to the vaults.
‘I shifted jobs in ’43, early ’43. Bauer und Kompanie. Art restoration.’
‘Ah, yes. So you left the SS.’
‘Bauer is part of the SS, Herr Hoffer. I even went to Poland.’
A lorry tipped out a load of rivets nearby. That’s what it would have been in peacetime, at least.
‘I think we should go to the Luftschutzbunker, Herr Sturmführer.’
‘Part of Amstgruppe W, our Economics and Administration Department, run by SS-Obergruppenführer Pohl. The tight bastard.’
‘I see,’ said Herr Hoffer. ‘Maybe we should be moving to the Luftschutzbunker.’
He had the key. They wouldn’t even have to go to the janitor.
Neither man moved. The rumbling sounded complacent, as if it had all the time in the world.
‘I went to France, mainly,’ Bendel went on. ‘Cataloguing. A lot of private collections in France that Vichy had overlooked. Then Poland.’
Herr Hoffer nodded. He remembered how Bendel had dreamt of visiting the places where van Gogh had painted, wondered if he should ask, decided against it, then asked anyway.
‘Provence?’
‘Yes, for a while. And Languedoc. The Pyrenees. Bordeaux.’
‘How very nice. As Max Friedlander once said, The true artist loves nature, not art.’
‘Ah, Friedlander. Netherlandish Primitives. Have you read the great work?’
‘Of course,’ Herr Hoffer lied.
‘Overrated, I thought. He scarpered very early on, didn’t he?’
‘Not that early.’
‘Listen, I had the time of my life in France. Fancy old chateaux, a chair and table on the lawn, a secretary with a typewriter, a few burly types in flat caps and the odd armed guard pour encourager les autres. To encourage the others.’
‘I do speak French,’ Herr Hoffer lied, again.
‘Oh, and a furniture lorry backed up to the main doors. All I had to do was note down what came out through the main doors and into that lorry. You should have seen the size of some of those paintings, Herr Hoffer. Massive. Like theatre sets. Poussin, Delacroix, David – Rubens, even. You name it. Massive.’
‘I really think,’ said Herr Hoffer, feeling the bench tremble under his buttocks, ‘we should make for the Luftschutzbunker.’
Bendel ignored him.
‘They came out vertical and replaced real scen
ery for a moment and you thought: that’s a lot better than real scenery. Lots of nudes, too. A fuck of a sight better than real nudes, you thought. Excuse my French, Ingrid. And lots of vintage champagne in the cellars. Jews’ chateaux, most of them. You wouldn’t think Jews had chateaux, would you? Luxurious villas, yes, but not bloody whole chateaux. Centuries of craft and guile, that is. Wisteria out, bees bumbling over the stonework. Cicadas singing. Pastis and champagne. Oh God. I thought: what a lucky bastard I am. Then off to Poland for a few months, under Haupsturmfuhrer.’
‘Poland?’
‘Cracow, the SS art-restoration workshop in Cracow. Great reputation, Ingrid. God, the works we handled: Raphael, Rembrandt, Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine –’
‘Good God.’
‘Antoine Watteau, you name it. The Lubomirski collection with all those Dürer drawings, the Lazienski palace, the Czartoryski family’s stuff. And then I was sent back to Berlin, to type it all up.’
‘How nice,’ said Herr Hoffer, not really listening now, picturing the Leonardo.
‘Pure bloody tedium. Filing, filing and documentation. Thousands and thousands of artworks. Even great names can get boring. All those Dürer drawings and bloody prints. Did you know Dürer was half-Hungarian? I’ll bet you didn’t know that. And I didn’t even get promoted. Enemies, you see. Goering was pissed off with Mühlmann for taking back the Leonardo. The Führer reckoned he hadn’t had enough of the stuff, either. So I stayed filing. Big names, small names. No van Goghs allowed, though. Oh no. Vincent van Gogh was round the bend, wasn’t he? Nazis are not round the bend. Are they?’
‘No,’ said Herr Hoffer.
‘My call-up papers came in the middle of it. So I got rid of all that desk shit and started to live. You see, life goes in stages. Each stage is complete in itself. That’s my theory. You must never look back. No regrets. Life’s too short to regret. Only the sentimental idiots regret.’
‘I see.’
The shelling sounded further off again – someone making catarrhal noises in their throat. It might even have been the shale quarry at work on the other side of Kreiburg Hill.
‘So,’ sighed Herr Hoffer, ‘it really is all over, in your opinion.’
By breathing slowly, he had almost got rid of his nausea. He felt good about this, as one always does.
‘Eh?’
‘The war,’ said Herr Hoffer. ‘One can’t know for sure, unless one’s seen it.’
‘Seen what?’
‘The battlefront.’
Bendel chuckled. ‘What do you think I am? A reconnaissance plane?’
‘No, but –’
‘Were you in the last great balls-up, Herr Hoffer?’
‘Not quite. I’m only forty-two.’
‘And now?’
‘Member of the Volkssturm, but our officer has run away and we have no arms or uniforms. All we have is our dignity.’
He wiggled his toes in his socks, then thought better of it.
‘So you won’t know,’ Bendel said, ‘that the average soldier does not know the first shit about anything bigger than what he can see in his gunsights. Despite the maps.’ He patted the scuffed satchel slung over his right shoulder.
‘I see.’
‘Maybe we are winning on the Eastern Front, as the radio says. I don’t know, see? Personally, I think we’re fucked, all round. But that’s a subjective conclusion owing to my finding myself on the wrong side of the Rhine. However, the Americans are now pinned down on some fucking hillock out there.’
‘Kreiburg Hill.’
‘Probably. That’s the only decent hillock round here, isn’t it?’
‘Not quite, dear fellow,’ said Herr Hoffer, who felt quite defensive about it. ‘By the way,’ he went on good-humouredly, ‘Dostoevsky was specifically referring to Russian romanticism. He thought German romanticism was transcendental and stupid. Letters from the Underworld. I found the reference. I’ve been bursting to tell you, but you weren’t around.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘A discussion we had. Years ago, now. It doesn’t matter.’
Neither man said anything for a few moments. If only that noise were distant building work.
‘Why are you here, in fact?’
The fellow had his eyes closed, now.
‘To find you.’
‘Me?’ Herr Hoffer’s heart turned turtle.
‘I was happy here,’ Bendel said, quietly.
‘I’m glad.’
‘Are we the only ones?’
‘The only ones?’
‘In the building. Apart from that cretin of a janitor,’ Bendel added.
‘Herr Wolmer. Yes, I believe we are. Apart from the admirable Herr Wolmer.’
‘And he’s not exactly present, any more.’
Bendel had fished a loose cigarette out of his tunic pocket and lit it. The man’s nails were broken and filthy. Herr Hoffer found his voice at the bottom of his throat.
‘What do you mean, Herr Sturmführer?’
‘Who was the first girl you ever fancied, Herr Hoffer?’
‘What?’
‘The first girl you really fancied.’
‘That’s strange. I was just thinking about her. She was in a book. A book of my father’s on the Norse myths. A picture of Idun. She was lying naked by a pool.’
‘I don’t mean wank books, Herr Hoffer. I mean a real bird.’
Herr Hoffer couldn’t believe this was Klaus Bendel. He had been taken over by a Saxon prole.
‘Then I can’t remember.’
Bendel gave a sharp laugh and pulled on his cigarette.
‘How’s Sabine?’
‘Frau Hoffer? She’s very well,’ Herr Hoffer replied, too quickly. It shocked him to hear Bendel use her Christian name. It was quite out of order. His chest had well nigh exploded.
‘You left her with the kiddies?’
‘I saw them all safe and sound into the shelter, this morning, with three suitcases full of the essentials. In case.’
There was an awkward silence between them. Herr Hoffer’s heart was slapping behind his nose, now, like someone dealing cards.
‘One day I realised I was the only one,’ Bendel said, suddenly. ‘All my comrades, they’d swapped their brains for shit. And I hadn’t even been fucking promoted. We’d got back over the Rhine and there was no one left. I hitched a lift on a Tiger tank, all the way down the motorway, sitting on the front by the barrel and getting a bruised arse and mud on my face. Where else to go but Lohenfelde?’
‘I can think of lots of other places.’
Bendel gave an amused grunt and sucked hard on his cigarette, his cheeks going remarkably hollow. He blew the smoke out steadily and nodded his head. It was like a moving exhibit. Kinetic sculpture by Naum Gabo. Construction for After the End. It made Herr Hoffer want a cigarette. He was surprised he hadn’t been offered one.
‘Not me,’ Bendel said. ‘I’m from lovely Leipzig, if you recall. I can’t go to Leipzig, can I, to see my folks? It’s Bolshevik, now. Taken over by the barbarians. Too beautiful for barbarians, for savages. Don’t even know if my folks are alive. Anyway, I was happy in Lohenfelde. I had some very good times here. Very good. Extremely good, in fact,’ he added, smiling distantly.
Herr Hoffer thought: I must not think what I am thinking. The air between them – just a few centimetres of empty space – seemed to thrill with suspicion and disaster.
‘Leibniz was born in Leipzig,’ he said, involuntarily swallowing on the last syllable.
‘And Richard Wagner.’
‘And Vollerdt,’ Herr Hoffer continued. ‘In 1708.’
‘Ah yes. Where’s your Vollerdt now, then?’
‘In the salt-mine,’ Herr Hoffer said, briskly. ‘Actually, it was only a copy, if you remember. The original’s in Magdeburg. Unfortunately.’
It was almost like old times, he thought.
‘You sure it’s in the salt-mine?’
‘Oh yes. Unless it was
appropriated en route. By the way,’ said Herr Hoffer, ‘wouldn’t it be a good idea to drop the – the uniform?’
‘When I no longer need it.’
Something about this statement gave Herr Hoffer a cold feeling in his spine.
‘I suppose we should be moving to the shelter,’ he said, getting to his feet with an effort.
He stood there, waiting, in his socks. He didn’t want to be next to Bendel in Waffen-SS uniform when the Americans burst in. If only he was in some obscure little village in the middle of the forest, with its church smelling of manure!
‘Herr Sturmführer?’
Bendel said, not even looking up at him: ‘Where’s the van Gogh?’
‘The van Gogh? Oh, it’s safe.’
‘Where is it?’
‘With the rest of the collection.’
‘Come on, Ingrid, you know it isn’t.’
‘Please stop calling me Ingrid.’
‘Sorry. Private joke. You know it isn’t with the rest of the collection.’
‘What?’
‘You know it isn’t, Herr Acting Acting Director. It’s here. It never left the building. You’re a shifty bloke, underneath the charm.’
Herr Hoffer flushed. ‘Sturmführer, please stop insulting me. It’s not fair.’
Bendel covered his face in his hands, the cigarette smoking between the knuckles. His eyes glimmered between his spread fingers. He was smiling.
‘I meant to tell you, Herr Hoffer,’ he said, from behind the fingers. ‘I’ve been to the salt-mine at Grimmenburg. The van Gogh is not even on the inventory. Neither is the fucking Vollerdt, I don’t suppose. But I don’t care about the Vollerdt, fake or no fake.’
‘Copy, not a fake,’ murmured Herr Hoffer. ‘Possibly by one of his pupils.’
‘What I care about is the Vincent van Gogh. It’s right here, in this building. It never left the museum.’
‘You went to Grimmenburg, to the salt-mines?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘And the van Gogh’s not in the Luftschutzbunker, because I checked.’
Bendel’s face re-emerged and he sucked on his cigarette, still smiling. He reached into his top pocket and pulled out Herr Wolmer’s set of keys on their brass ring. He shook them. Herr Hoffer had never seen anyone but the janitor shake them. ‘Empty heads have the most to say, Herr Acting Acting Director. There’s nothing at all in the Luftschutzbunker. Just the usual smell of fucking toilets.’
