by Chris Petit
Morgen thought. Five crucial months in which the garrison was transformed, without answering the vital question of how such an obscure spot became a death factory.
And perhaps we won’t know, he thought, beyond understanding nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum. Perhaps because it was a dump.
He still wondered what he was hoping to prove, beyond satisfying his own bloody-minded curiosity.
He went out of the stifling office and sat on the stairs by an open window, sweating into his shirt, smoking, staring at the bleached grass.
He considered Schulze’s memory important in the context of a secret world and its selective official record, that overabundance of useless, unread paperwork.
He was guessing. He thought: By the time of the July inspection facilities must have existed to show the garrison was already capable of killing large numbers on site. But where and on whose initiative?
It could only mean there had been some secret temporary solution.
He went back upstairs, wondering how to ask Schulze without compromising her because he wanted to think of himself as a decent man and she had done nothing wrong other than be a creature of the system.
He said, ‘I am vexed by one matter. Prior to the four new crematoria being commissioned what did they use? Just the one here in the garrison?’
‘Yes, but there was a crisis because that had to be shut down for most of the spring and summer of 1942 for the chimney to be replaced.’
Morgen doubted it would have been practical anyway, trying to undertake a big secret like that in the middle of a busy working area.
‘It’s fair to say that you knew the building programme inside out.’
‘I was familiar with it,’ she said cautiously.
‘Was no temporary facility built during that time?’
‘There were endless meetings between the commandant’s office, our office and the doctors addressing the problem.’
Morgen thought the matter would have been further complicated by the danger of epidemics and hundreds of dead Russians having to be dug up, making burial impractical on any level.
‘It was one thing after another. The reluctant decision reached was to construct open-air burning pits in woods at the far end of the new camp.’
Not what he was looking for.
‘And this was the work of your office?’
‘As a result of agreement between the different departments.’
‘A headache for everyone.’
‘Of course.’
‘What else do you remember?’
‘Well, there was a surveyor’s report on the laying of a narrow-gauge track whose work was contracted to us, and the area must have been screened because I remember an order for a considerable amount of brushwood fencing from the landscaping department for the construction office to assemble.’
‘And during that time no temporary morgue or crematorium was built.’
‘Some wooden barracks were put up near the pits.’
‘Like the ones you see in the new camp?’
Schulze looked ashamed. ‘Yes. They are converted horse stables.’
‘How so?’
‘We ran out of bricks and Dr Kammler did a deal with the cavalry, which had a surplus. They could be constructed with a minimum of skilled labour and just a handful of carpenters.’
Morgen thought. Such huts would be insufficiently sturdy to serve as any sort of gassing centre.
‘What would these huts have been used for?’
‘We weren’t told. I presume for holding bodies waiting to be burned.’
To be taken there on the little railway, Morgen supposed. He contemplated the irony of Dr Kammler’s vision of a brave new slave world reduced to medieval burning pits.
He found it impossible to say whether Schulze detected any ulterior motive to his questions. She seemed puzzled but unruffled. He suspected she was used to deferral, willing or not, and kept her own counsel. Maybe she was a good liar. It went with the place.
There were no lies because it was all lies. It was the kingdom of lies.
Schulze had seen what was happening to Schlegel too often, people losing themselves, not realising this so-called escape led to collapse. Garrison suicides, of which there were many more than the authorities admitted, were invariably listed as after a short illness.
She ran across him in the canteen where his late breakfast coincided with her early lunch. She noticed his dishevelment and said nothing, tried to talk normally, saying she had been tied up with a panic in the construction office.
‘People off sick and extra work.’
He asked what the matter was.
She decided to answer honestly.
‘I don’t know how much longer I can stay with you. I don’t know what I can do because I no longer know what you are doing. You have become so secretive.’
Schlegel mumbled, ‘It seems to be a condition of the place.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine.’
She placed a hand on his arm and said, ‘You don’t look it.’
‘What concern is it of yours?’
He didn’t mean to sound bitter. All he wanted was for her to leave her hand there.
‘This place drives most people crazy for a while.’
He asked if it had happened to her.
‘It happens to everyone,’ she said, removing her hand.
Schlegel nodded. The sly side of his brain was already calculating that night’s opportunities. Ilse said Canada was like a drug. He wondered if this addiction had become liberated and now floated like a contagion. Life seemed more purposeless than ever. No one had told them the charnel house was part of the bargain.
He asked her how he could meet officers’ wives.
‘Better avoided,’ Schulze said, trying to make a joke of it.
When she saw he was serious she suggested Krick, as he treated most of them.
‘He’s very fashionable.’
Schlegel wondered about her and Krick as he accompanied her to a telephone booth by the switchboard. She sat and he stood. When she spoke to Krick she sounded flexible and ironic, as if she didn’t quite trust him. She explained what she wanted. She put her hand over the receiver – a gesture that delighted him – and asked what it was about. He blew out his cheeks. She answered for him. ‘I think he fancies moving up the social ladder.’
She pulled a face and he remained enchanted. Perhaps the answer was to treat life like a drawing-room comedy. He sensed depression lurking.
Krick called straight back to say he could see a woman now. Schlegel overheard him say most of the wives had nothing to do other than fritter their time on social activities.
Schulze said it was a bit of a walk. She was drawing a map when he asked on impulse that she accompany him.
She surprised him by agreeing. She had an errand to run in that direction. He found himself wanting to tell her about Sybil.
Instead they walked in silence until Schulze said Krick had just been to Switzerland for a psychiatric conference.
‘He was a guest speaker, so he got dispensation to travel.’
Schlegel wondered what on earth he lectured on. Counselling those taking part in mass shootings? Applied psychological thinking on how to depersonalise the process by principles of industry? The process of death took much longer than they made out, starting with being shoved into trucks, an unwitting rehearsal for the terminal chamber.
They reached a fork. Schulze said, ‘I go this way,’ and pointed to his direction. They had walked the last part in silence, not uncomfortable this time, thought Schlegel.
The officer’s wife was smartly turned out, her house a smaller version of the commandant’s, its fittings distinguished by choice items. She offered proper coffee in a smart drawing room, saying it was cooler than the conservatory. Her husband had been away and managed to bring back some beans. She didn’t say what he did.
The coffee was served, tasted and appreciated. The woman had honeyed hair
and a pert air. Schlegel could hear servants and children upstairs. She seemed very young. She was informal. ‘Call me Kirsten,’ she said after he had addressed her properly.
Schlegel made appropriate small talk. The woman struck him as not stupid but so wrapped up in herself it amounted to the same thing. He thought: As if I can talk.
She didn’t ask about him. Krick’s endorsement seemed enough.
‘So handsome,’ she sighed.
Schlegel presumed she was a client of the man and wondered what on earth she found to talk about; she gave no sign of any interior life. He watched her cross her legs. She appeared faintly libidinous. Another characteristic of the garrison was the constant possibility of sex. He supposed she was available, in principle. He admired her blouse and asked if it was silk. She wore pearls and a brooch, not jade. He noted plain expensive rings and diamond earrings, tiny studs, so discreet the overall image remained wholesome.
‘I am new here, finding my feet,’ he said. ‘The thing is, perhaps you can advise me. I found this and was wondering what to do with it.’
He produced Tanner’s jade brooch and saw the woman’s eyes widen. He handed it over and watched her finger it greedily.
‘I don’t have a fiancée or I would give it to her. Do you think it worth anything?’
She seemed undecided and returned it, saying it was beautiful.
He asked, ‘I say, do you have any drink? I know it’s early but I have a terrible hangover.’
The woman giggled in a way that said she did too. She offered plum brandy.
‘I don’t make a habit of it but some of us girls had a get-to last night.’
Schlegel made a point of admiring the furniture. As he suspected, the curtain material was courtesy of Groenke, as were the leather covers used to hold magazines.
‘Your shoes look French.’
‘Belgian, in fact. Quite a good make. Not couture but not high street. I’m glad you like them.’
Schlegel stuck to surfaces and watched the woman glide expertly. Maybe she was smarter than he was. Anything remotely unpleasant she dismissed, as when he asked if the epidemic had made life difficult.
‘We don’t want to think about that.’
A genteel burp was followed by the offer of another brandy. The glasses were tiny and crystal. It turned out she had been at the commandant’s party.
‘I knew I had seen you before. Tall men are quite unusual here, and then there’s your . . .’
She stopped in embarrassment. Hair, he finished for her.
A cat came in the room. ‘Ah, diddums. This is Tiger.’
Schlegel took the plunge.
‘You look a bit sad.’
‘Do I? Not really.’
She seemed flattered by the observation.
He made a point of stroking the cat even though he was allergic. Sure enough, he started to sneeze. Sneezing, he realised, while convulsed, was the publicly acceptable version of all those private unsocial noises people made, and strangely intimate for it. The woman stood and brushed his shoulder, saying she would fetch water. She told him to drink out of the glass backwards. He said that was for hiccoughs and she replied, ‘It works for this too.’
They laughed. He did as he was told and the fit passed. Their eyes met and he thought: The merciless sun beats down on her as it does on the young man bouncing his football.
She said it was a pity the children were around. The air grew thick with expectation. It had nothing to do with him or her, Schlegel knew. Fegelein said they were puppets controlled by a superior force, an absence of will almost, as they staggered unseeing towards the abyss.
He asked how long she had been there. A couple of years, she said.
‘When was the best time?’ he asked politely.
Her face brightened. ‘Oh, last summer. Such beautiful clothes, the likes of which we had never seen.’
She went coy on him and he had to tease out the details. She wanted to be considered risqué but not easy.
The bare facts were: the officers’ wives held daytime fashion parties, wearing borrowed or stolen clothes, with modelling parades, while their husbands were at work.
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this.’
Schlegel said he had heard jade was all the rage. That was why he was wondering about his brooch.
‘Yes. Diamonds became common. Opal and topaz were fashionable but nothing like jade.’
‘And now?’
‘Hardly anything.’
‘Why?’
The woman looked torn. Schlegel urged her to continue.
Eventually she said, ‘If you want a price you need to take it to the commandant’s wife.’
The answer to his next question: the commandant’s wife had a monopoly.
It was a perfect evolution, starting with the girls helping themselves, then the officers’ wives barging in. Accessories became an extension of fashion parades, then the whole lot was picked up by the commandant’s wife, who decided to make it more commercial.
As she had cut out the other wives this became a source of jealousy.
It only required him to ask if the commandant’s wife was popular to know she wasn’t.
‘I hear she runs a sweatshop in her attic using materials from Canada.’
The woman pulled a face. ‘That’s not all. She keeps open accounts with different parts of the camp for which no payment is made.’
Schlegel persuaded her to take another brandy and listened to her run on. All Frau Hoess’s daily and entertainment needs, including official functions and the formal parties which were part of the commandant’s social calendar, though less so these days, were met by the prisoners’ kitchen, via a shopping list given to household staff. Meat came from the slaughterhouse, milk and cheese from the dairy, five litres of milk when her family ration card entitled her to not much more than one. None of it paid for.
‘Yugoslavian cigarettes,’ said Schlegel.
‘For so-called odd jobs.’
‘Do you smoke?’
‘Only socially.’
‘Then take these. I don’t.’
He passed her a packet from Frau Hoess’s stash.
‘Are you sure? I mean, a whole packet.’
She would go to bed with him for half that.
‘I’m feeling generous.’
Perhaps thinking she was being bought off, she volunteered how in a desperate effort to claw back some favour the commandant’s wife had established a tailoring shop in the garrison and was letting other wives in on a share of the profits.
‘How recent?’
‘Brand new.’
‘Are you part of it?’
‘I have my pride.’
She knew it fell somewhere under Erich Groenke’s control but not its location. Each prisoner had to produce two outfits a week, everything from everyday to evening wear, which was collected on Saturday afternoons and rewarded with an extra ration at the discretion of the client.
How developed it had all become in its deviant ordinariness; most things could be shown to connect. Schlegel could imagine Frau Hoess, in one of those conversations held outdoors, complaining to Groenke about the huge amount of storage clothes and fabrics took up, and was wondering if he could satisfy her desire for something smaller and more manageable. Jewellery, perhaps. Jade.
‘Do you know anything about the seamstress the commandant and his wife fell out over?’
‘She can hardly talk.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She was screwing that stud from the Bata factory long before he got his soppy crush, so it hardly seems fair to fire the woman to spite him after he found her in the greenhouse with lover boy.’
Schlegel said, ‘It has been a most entertaining interlude.’
He kissed her on leaving, their lips sticky with plum brandy. The possibility of meeting later was left floating.
‘You know where I live.’
They kissed again, open-mouthed.
Outside the soupy air was
so still he could see all the dust particles and midges. The sky was green.
Schlegel found Morgen pacing the office, the room full of smoke. He was told he looked awful. Even Morgen, the least punctual of men, now complained about Schlegel’s timekeeping.
Schlegel thought Sybil was perhaps even working for Frau Hoess’s new concession, if the quarrel had been patched up. Maybe her firing had been about getting her out of the way of her husband. Schlegel had a lot to tell but Morgen seemed barely interested in Sybil these days.
‘What are those?’
Morgen said they were architect’s drawings from the garrison archive, which duplicated ones held in Berlin and the construction office.
‘They are the closest we have to a history of the place.’
Schlegel wanted to shout there was nothing to solve. The moment would never come when anyone admitted Morgen was right and what was being done must stop. It was too late anyway.
His hangover persisted. The awful woman’s plum brandy had only made him feel worse.
Morgen threw down his glasses and sat blinking at Schlegel.
‘They have drawings for crematoria going back to 1941. Revision. Revision. Revision. But nothing to say what is really going on. Look. Morgue. Morgue. Morgue. No mention of changing rooms or showers. The only possible clue, 4 May 1942, annotations to plans for the new crematorium. Technical drawing 1311 proposes in-house facilities for melting gold and casting into ingots.’
Morgen growled in exasperation and said Scholz’s thesis was in circulation, so the amendment was probably standard to every crematoria, death factory or not.
For a second Schlegel saw through his fog into a vast secret universe, visible only in its surface organisation, involving the continent’s rail networks and all the logistics of roundup and deportation. They had witnessed the big Berlin clear-out earlier that year.
Morgen went on, ‘The point is there might be a case to answer. We know corners are cut on an epic scale. The security police and doctors have their own unsanctioned programmes. What if the rest is an escalation?’
‘Meaning?’
