IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES
In the course of research for an upcoming novel set in 1942, I read Albert Speer’s memoirs, and also some of those left behind by the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto. Combining Speer’s-and Hitler’s- grandiose vision of the Berlin that would rise after Germany won the war with the desperate reality of Jewish life under Nazi rule led to this story. Thank God it’s fiction.
Heinrich Gimpel glanced at the report on his desk to see again how many Reichsmarks the United States was being assessed for the Wehrmacht bases at New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. As he’d thought, the figures were up from those of 2009. Well, the Americans would pay-and in hard currency, too; none of their inflated dollars-or the panzer divisions would move out of those bases and collect what was owed the Germanic Empire. And if they collected some blood along with their pound of flesh, the prostrate United States was hardly in a position to complain.
Gimpel typed the new numbers into his computer, then saved the study on which he’d been working for the last couple of days. The Zeiss disk drive purred smoothly as it swallowed the data. He turned off the machine, then got up and put on his uniform greatcoat: in Berlin’s early March, winter still outblustered spring.
“Let’s call it a day, Heinrich,” Willi Dorsch said. Willi shared the office with Gimpel. He shook his head as he donned his greatcoat. “How long have you been here at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht now?”
“Going on twelve years,” Gimpel answered, buttoning buttons. “Why?”
His friend cheerfully sank the barb: “All that time at the high command, and a fancy uniform, and you still don’t look like a soldier.”
“I can’t help it,” Gimpel said; he knew too well that Willi was right. A tall, thin, balding man in his early forties, he had a tendency to shamble instead of parading, and wore his greatcoat as if it were cut from the English tweeds some professors still affected. He tried to set his high-crowned cap at a rakish angle, raised an eyebrow to get Dorsch’s reaction. Willi shook his head. Gimpel shrugged, spread his hands.
“I suppose I’ll just have to be martial for both of us,” Dorsch said. His cap gave him a fine dashing air. “Doing anything for dinner tonight?” The two men lived not far from each other.
“As a matter of fact, we are. I’m sorry. Lise invited a couple of friends over,” Gimpel said. “Let’s get together soon, though.”
“We’d better,” Dorsch said. “Erika’s saying she misses you again. Me, I’m getting jealous.”
“Oh, quatsch,” Gimpel said, using the pungent Berliner word for rubbish. “Maybe she needs her spectacles checked.” Willi was blond and ruddy and muscular, none of which desirable adjectives applied to Gimpel. “Or maybe it’s just my bridge game.”
Dorsch winced. “You know how to hurt a man, don’t you? Come on, let’s go.”
The wind outside the military headquarters had a bite to it. Gimpel shivered inside his overcoat. He pointed off to the left, toward the Great Hall.”The old-timers say the bulk of that thing has messed up our weather.”
“Old-timers always complain,” his friend answered. “That’s what makes them old-timers.” But Willi’s gaze followed Gimpel’s finger. He saw the Great Hall every day, but seldom really looked at it. “It’s big, all right, but is it big enough for that? I doubt it.” His voice, though, was doubtful, too.
“You ask me, it’s big enough for damn near anything,” Gimpel said. The Great Hall, built sixty years earlier in the great flush of triumph after Britain and Russia had gone down before the guns and tanks of the Third Reich, boasted a dome that reached over two hundred twenty meters into the sky and was more than two hundred fifty meters across: sixteen St. Peter’s cathedrals might have fit within the enormous monument to the grandeur of the Aryan race. The wealth of a conquered continent had brought it into being.
The dome itself, sheathed in weathered copper, caught the fading light like a great green hill. Atop it, in place of a cross, stood a gilded Germanic eagle with a swastika in its claws. Atop the eagle, a red light blinked on and off to warn away low-flying planes.
Willi Dorsch’s shiver had only a little to do with the chilly weather. “It makes me feel tiny.”
“It’s a temple to the Reich and the Volk. It’s supposed to make you feel tiny,” Gimpel answered. “Set against the needs of the German race or the state, any one man is tiny.”
“We serve them, not they us,” Willi agreed. He pointed across the Adolf Hider Platz toward the F?hrer’s palace on the far side of the immense square. “When Speer ran that one up, he was worried the size of the building would dwarf even our Leader himself.” And indeed, the balcony above the tall entranceway looked like an architectural afterthought.
Gimpel’s short laugh came out as a puff of steam. “Not even Speer could look ahead to see what technology might do for him.”
“Better not let the security police hear you talk that way about one of the Reichsvaters.” Dorsch tried to laugh, too, but his chuckle rang hollow. The security police had to be taken seriously.
Still, Gimpel was right. When the F?hrer’s palace was erected, another huge Germanic eagle had surmounted the balcony from which the Germanic Empire’s leader might address his citizens. The eagle had been moved to its present position on the roof when Gimpel was a boy. In its place went an enormous televisor screen. Adolf Hitler Platz had been built to hold a million people. Now when the F?hrer spoke, every one of them could get a proper view.
A bus purred up to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht building. Gimpel and Dorsch filed aboard with the rest of the officials who greased the operation of the mightiest military machine the world had known. One by one the commuters stuck their account cards into the fare slot. The bus’s computer debited each rider eighty-five pfennigs.
The bus rolled down the broad avenue toward South Station. Berlin’s myriad bureaucrats made up the majority of the passengers but not all. A fair number were tourists, come from all over the world to view the most wonderful and terrible boulevard that world boasted. Blas? as any native, Gimpel normally paid but scant attention to the marvels of his home town. Today, though, the oohs and ahhs of those seeing them for the first time made him notice them also.
Sentries from the Grossdeutschland division in ceremonial uniform goose-stepped outside their barracks. Tourists on the sidewalk took photos of the Fuhrer’s guards. Inside the barracks hall, where tourists would not see them, were other troops in businesslike camouflage smocks, assault rifles in place of the ceremonial force’s obsolete Gewehr 98s, and enough armored fighting vehicles to blast Berlin to rubble. Visitors from afar were not encouraged to think about them. Neither were most Berliners. But Gimpel reckoned up Grossdeutschland’s budget every spring. He knew exactly what the barracks held.
Neon lights came on in front of theaters and restaurants as darkness deepened. Dark or light, people swarmed in and out of the huge Roman-style building that held a heated indoor pool the size of a young lake. It was open at all hours of the day and night for those who wished to exercise, to relax, or simply to ogle attractive members of the opposite sex. Its Berlin nickname was the Heiratbad, the marriage baths, sometimes amended by the cynical to the Heiratbett, the marriage bed.
Past the pool, the Soldiers’ Hall and the Air and Space Ministry faced each other across the street. The Soldiers’ Hall was a monument to the triumph of German arms. Among the exhibits it so lovingly preserved were the railroad car in which Germany had yielded to France in 1918 and France to Germany in 1940; the first Panzer IV to enter the Kremlin compound; one of the gliders that had landed paratroops in southern England; and, behind thick leaded glass, the twisted remains of the Liberty Bell, excavated by expendable prisoners from the ruins of Philadelphia.
Old people in Berlin still called the Air and Space Ministry the Reichsmarschall’s Office, in memory of Hermann Goring, the only man ever to hold that exalted rank. Willi Dorsch used its more common name when he nudged Gimpel and said, “I wonder what’s happening in
the Jungle these days.”
“Could be anything,” Gimpel answered. They both laughed. The roof of the ministry had been covered with four meters of earth, partly as a protection against aerial bombardment, and then planted, partly to please Goring’s fancy (his private apartment was on the top floor). The old Reichsmarschall was almost half a century dead, but the orgies he’d put on amid the greenery remained a Berlin legend.
Willi said, “We aren’t the men our grandfathers were. In those days they thought big and weren’t ashamed to be flamboyant.” He sighed the sigh of a man denied great deeds by the time in which he chanced to live.
“Poor us, doomed to get by on matter-of-fact competence,” Gimpel said. “The skills we need to run our empire are different from those Hitler’s generation used to conquer it.”
“I suppose so.” Dorsch clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I envy you your contentment here and now, Heinrich. I almost joined the Wehrmacht when I was just out of the Hitler Jugend. Sometimes I still think I should have. There’s a difference between this uniform”-he ran a hand down his double-breasted greatcoat-”and the one real soldiers wear.”
“Is that your heart talking, or did you just all of a sudden remember you’re not eighteen years old anymore?” Gimpel said. His friend winced, acknowledging the hit. He went on, “Me, I’d fight if the Fatherland needed me, but I’m just as glad not to be carrying a gun.”
“We’re all probably safer because you don’t,” Dorsch said.
“This is also true.” Gimpel took off his thick, gold-framed glasses. In an instant, the street outside, the interior of the bus, even Willi beside him, grew blurry and indistinct. He blinked a couple of times, returned the glasses to the bridge of his nose. The world regained its sharp edges.
The neon brilliance of the street outside dimmed as the bus passed by the theaters and shops and started picking up passengers from the ministries of the Interior, Transportation, Economics, and Food. More uniforms that don’t have soldiers in them, Gimpel thought. The buildings from which the new riders came were shutting down for the day.
Two of those ministries, though, like the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, never slept. A new shift went into the Justice Ministry to replace the workers who left for home. German justice could not close its eyes, and woe betide the criminal or racial mongrel upon whom their omniscient gaze lighted. Himself a thoroughly law-abiding man, Gimpel still shivered a little every time he passed that marble-fronted hall.
The Colonial Ministry was similarly active. Much of the world, these days, fell under its purview: the agricultural towns of the Ukraine, the mining colonies in central Africa, the Indian tea plantations, the cattle herders on the plains of North America. As if picking that last thought from Gimpel’s mind, Willi Dorsch said, “How many Americans does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
“The Americans have always been in the dark,” Gimpel answered. He clucked sadly. “Your father was telling that one, Willi.”
“If he was, he sounded more relieved than I do. The Yankees might have been tough.”
“Might-have-beens don’t count, fortunately.” Isolation and neutrality had kept the United States from paying heed as potential allies in Europe went down one after another. It faced the Germanic Empire and Japan alone a generation later-and its oceans were not wide enough to shield it from robot bombs.
Just ahead lay another monument to German victory: Hider’s Arch of Triumph. Gimpel had been to Paris on holiday and seen the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs Elysees. It served as a model for Berlin’s arch and was a model in scale as well. The Arc de Triomphe was only about fifty meters tall, less than half the height of its enormous successor. The Berlin arch was almost a one hundred seventy meters wide and also a one hundred seventeen meters deep, so that the bus spent a good long while under it, as if traversing a tunnel through a hillside.
When at last it emerged, South Station lay not far ahead. The station building made an interesting contrast to the monumental stone piles that filled the rest of the avenue. Its exterior was copper sheeting and glass, giving the traveler a glimpse of the steel ribs that formed its skeleton.
The bus stopped at the edge of the station plaza. Along with everyone else, Gimpel and Dorsch filed off and hurried across the plaza toward the waiting banks of elevators and escalators. They walked between more displays of weapons that had belonged to Germany’s fallen foes: the wreckage of a British fighter, carefully preserved inside a Lucite cube; a formidable-looking Russian tank; the conning tower of an American submarine.
“Into the bowels of the earth,” Dorsch murmured as he reached out to grab the escalator handrail. The train to Stahnsdorf boarded on the lowest of the station’s four levels.
Signs and arrows and endless announcements over the loudspeaker system should have made it impossible for anyone to get lose in the railway station. Gimpel and Dorsch found their way to their commuter train almost without conscious thought. So did most Berliners. The swarms of tourists, however, were grit in the smooth machine. Uniformed youths and maids from the Hitler Jugend helped those for whom even the clearest instructions were not clear enough.
Even so, the natives grumbled when foreigners got in their way. Dodging around an excited Italian who had dropped his cheap suitcase so he could use both hands to gesture at a Hitler
Youth in brown shirt, swastika armband, and lederhosen, Dorsch growled, “People like that deserved to be sent to the shower.”
“Oh, come on, Willi, let him live,” Gimpel answered mildly.
“You’re too soft, Heinrich,” his friend said. But then they rounded the last corner and came to their waiting area. Dorsch looked at the schedule board on the wall, then at his watch. “Five minutes till the next one. Not bad.”
“No,” Gimpel said. The train pulled into the station within thirty seconds of its appointed time. Gimpel thought nothing of it as he followed Dorsch into a car, he noticed only the very rare instances when it was late. As the two men had in the bus, they put their account cards into the fare slot and then took their seats. As soon as the computer’s count of fares matched the car’s capacity, the doors hissed shut. Three more cars filled behind them. Acceleration pressed Gimpel back against the synthetic fabric of his chair as the train began to move.
Twenty minutes later the engineer’s voice came over the roof-mounted speakers: “Stahnsdorf! All out for Stahnsdorf!”
Gimpel and Dorsch were standing in front of the doors when they hissed open again. The two commuters hopped off and hurried through the little suburban station to the bus stop outside. Another five minutes and Dorsch got up from the local bus. “See you tomorrow, Heinrich.”
“Say hello to Erika for me.”
“I’m not sure I ought to,” Willi said. Both men laughed. Dorsch got off the bus and trotted toward his house, which was three doors down from the comer.
Gimpel rode for another few stops, then descended himself. His own house lay at the end of a cul-de-sac, so he had to walk for a whole block. It’s healthy for me, he told himself, a consolation easier to enjoy in spring and summer than in winter.
The snick of his key going into the lock brought shouts of “Daddy!” from inside the house. He smiled, opened the door, and picked up each of his three girls in turn for a hug and a kiss: they ranged down in age from ten by two-year steps.
Then he lifted his wife as well. Lise Gimpel squawked; that was not part of the evening ritual. The girls giggled. “Put me down!” Lise said indignantly.
“Not till I get my kiss.”
She made as if to bite his nose instead, but then let him kiss her. He set her feet back on the carpet, held her a little longer before he let her go. She was a pleasant armful, a green-eyed brunette several years younger than he who had kept her figure very well. When he released her, she hurried back toward the kitchen. “I want to finish cooking before everyone gets here.”
“All right,” he said, smiling as he watched her retreat. While he hung up his gre
atcoat and took off his tie, his daughters regaled him with tales out of school. He listened to three simultaneous stories as best he could. Lise came out again long enough to hand him a goblet of liebfraumilch, then started away.
The chimes rang before she got out of the front room. She whirled and stared indignantly at the door. “I am going to boot Susanna right into the net,” she declared.
Gimpel looked at his watch. “She’s only ten minutes early this time. And you know she’s always early, so you should have been ready.”
“ Hmp,” Lise said while he went to let in their friend. Meanwhile, the girls started chorusing, “Susanna is a football! Aunt Susanna is a football!”
“Heinrich, why are they calling me a football?” Susanna Weiss demanded. She craned her neck to look up at him. “I’m short, yes, and I’m not emaciated like you, but I’m not round, either.” She shrugged out of a mink jacket and thrust it into his hands. “Here, see to this.”
Chuckling, he clicked his heels. “Jawohl, meine Dame. “
She accepted the deference as no less than her due. “Fraulein Doktor Professor will suffice, thank you.” She taught medieval English literature at Humboldt University. Suddenly she abandoned her imperial manner and started to laugh, too. “Now that you’ve hung that up, how about a hug?”
“Lise’s not watching. I suppose I can get away with that.” He put his arms around her. She barely reached his shoulder, but her vitality more than made up for her lack of size. When he let go, he said, “Why don’t you go into the kitchen? You can pretend to help Lise while you soak up our Glenfiddich.”
“Scotch almost justifies the existence of Scotland,” she said. “It’s a cold, gloomy, rocky place, so they had to make something nice to keep themselves warm.”
“If that’s why people drink it, your boyfriend is lucky he didn’t set himself on fire here a couple of years ago.”
Departures Page 25
