The next day, Thursday, I continued collecting statistics for Brandt. Walser still hadn’t reappeared but I wasn’t too worried. To make up for the lack of telephone lines, we now had a squad of Hitlerjugend on loan from Goebbels. We sent them all over, on bikes or on foot, to send or get messages and mail. In town, the hard work of the municipal services was already yielding results: in some neighborhoods, water had come back, electricity too, sections of the trolley lines were put back in service, along with the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, where it was possible. We also knew that Goebbels was contemplating a partial evacuation of the city. Everywhere, on the ruins, chalk messages were proliferating, people trying to find their parents, their friends, their neighbors. Around noon, I requisitioned a small van from the police and went to help Asbach bury his mother-in-law in the Plötzensee cemetery, alongside her husband who had died of cancer four years earlier. Asbach seemed a little better: his wife was recovering her senses, she had recognized him; but he hadn’t told her anything yet, either about her mother or about the baby. Fräulein Praxa accompanied us and even managed to find flowers; Asbach was visibly touched. Aside from us there were only three of his friends, including a couple, and a minister. The coffin was made of coarse, badly planed boards; Asbach kept saying that as soon as possible he would ask for a permit to exhume the body to give his mother-in-law a proper funeral: they had never gotten along well, he added, she hadn’t hidden her scorn for his SS uniform, but still, she was his wife’s mother, and Asbach loved his wife. I didn’t envy his situation: to be alone in the world is sometimes a great advantage, especially in wartime. I dropped him off at the military hospital where his wife was, and went back to the SS-Haus. That night, there was no raid; an alert went off in the early evening, provoking an outburst of panic, but they were just reconnaissance planes, come to photograph the damage. After the alert, which I spent in the Staatspolizei bunker, Thomas took me to a little restaurant that had already reopened its doors. He was in a cheerful mood: Schellenberg had arranged to have a small house in Dahlem lent to him, in a fashionable neighborhood near the Grunewald, and he was going to buy a small Mercedes convertible from a widow who needed money; her husband, a Hauptsturmführer, had been killed during the first raid. “Fortunately, my bank is intact. That’s what counts.” I made a face: “Still, there are other things that count.”—“Like what, for example?”—“Our sacrifices. The suffering of the people, here, around us, on the front.” In Russia things were going very badly: after losing Kiev, we had managed to retake Zhitomir, only to lose Cherkassy the day I was hunting grouse with Speer; in Rovno, the Ukrainian insurgents of the UPA, as anti-German as they were anti-Bolshevik, were picking off isolated German soldiers like rabbits. “I’ve always said, Max,” Thomas said, “you take things too seriously.”—“It’s a question of Weltanschauung,” I said, raising my glass. Thomas gave a brief, mocking laugh. “Weltanschauung here, Weltanschauung there, as Schnitzler said. Everyone has a Weltanschauung these days, the lowliest baker or plumber has his Weltanschauung, my mechanic overcharges me thirty percent for repairs, but he too has his Weltanschauung. I have one too…” He fell silent and drank; I drank too. It was a Bulgarian wine, a little rough, but given the circumstances there was nothing to complain about. “I’m going to tell you what counts,” Thomas said urgently. “Serve your country, die if you have to, but take advantage of life as much as possible in the meantime. Your posthumous Ritterkreuz might console your old mother, but it’ll be cold comfort for you.”—“My mother is dead,” I said softly.—“I know. I’m sorry.” One night, after many drinks, I had told him about my mother’s death, without going into too much detail; since then we hadn’t talked about it again. Thomas drank some more, then burst out: “Do you know why we hate the Jews? I’ll tell you. We hate the Jews because they’re a thrifty, prudent people, greedy not just for money and security but also for their traditions, their knowledge, and their books, incapable of giving and spending, a people that doesn’t know war. A people that just knows how to accumulate, never to waste. In Kiev you said the murder of the Jews was a waste. Well, precisely, by wasting their lives the way you throw rice at a wedding, we’ve taught them expense, we’ve taught them war. And the proof that it’s working, that the Jews are beginning to learn the lesson, is Warsaw, Treblinka, Sobibor, Bialystok, it’s the Jews who are becoming warriors again, who are becoming cruel, who also are becoming killers. I find that very beautiful. We’ve made them into an enemy worthy of us. The Pour la Semite”—he struck his chest at the heart, where the Jews sew the star—“is picking up value again. And if the Germans don’t pull themselves together like the Jews, instead of moaning, they’ll just get what they deserve. Vae victis.” He emptied his glass in one swallow, his gaze distant. I realized he was drunk. “I’m going home,” he said. I offered to drive him back, but he refused: he had taken a car from the garage. In the still-half-cleared street, he absentmindedly shook my hand, slammed the door, and shot off. I went back to sleep at the Staatspolizei; it was heated, and the showers, at least, had been fixed.
The next night there was another raid, the fifth and last in that series. The damage was terrible: the center of the city lay in ruins along with a large part of Wedding; they counted more than four thousand dead and four hundred thousand homeless, many factories and several ministries had been destroyed, communications and public transport would take weeks to be restored. People were living in apartments without any windows or heat: a large portion of the coal reserves, stored in gardens for the winter, had burned. Finding bread had become impossible, the stores remained empty, and the NSV had set up field kitchens in the ravaged streets to serve cabbage soup. In the Reichsführung and RSHA complex, we fared a little better: it was possible to eat and sleep, clothes and uniforms were provided to those who had lost everything. When Brandt received me, I suggested I transfer part of my team to Oranienburg, to the IKL premises, and keep a little office in Berlin for liaison purposes. The idea seemed good to him but he wanted to consult the Reichsführer. The latter, Brandt informed me, had agreed to let Speer visit Mittelbau: I was to take charge of organizing everything. “Arrange things so that the Reichsminister is…satisfied,” he said. He had another surprise for me: I was promoted to the rank of Obersturmbannführer. I was happy, but surprised: “Why?”—“It was the Reichsführer’s decision. Your functions have already taken on a certain importance and will continue to do so. Speaking of that, what do you think of the reorganization of Auschwitz?” In the beginning of the month, Obersturmbannführer Liebehenschel, Glücks’s deputy at the IKL, had traded places with Höss; since then, Auschwitz had been divided into three distinct camps: the Stammlager, the Birkenau complex, and Monowitz with all the Nebenlager. Liebehenschel remained as Kommandant of Auschwitz I and also Standortälteste for all three camps, which gave him a right of oversight over the work of the other two new Kommandanten, Hartjenstein and Hauptsturmführer Schwarz, who till then had been Arbeitskommandoführer and then Lagerführer under Höss. “Standartenführer, I think the administrative restructuring is an excellent initiative: the camp was much too large and was becoming unmanageable. As for Obersturmbannführer Liebehenschel, judging from what I could see of him, it’s a good choice, he understands the new priorities very well. But I must confess that when I think about Obersturmbannführer Höss’s appointment to the IKL, I have a hard time grasping this organization’s personnel policy. I have the greatest respect for Obersturmbannführer Höss; I regard him as an excellent soldier; but if you ask my opinion, he should be out there leading a Waffen-SS regiment at the front. He is not an administrator. Liebehenschel dealt with most of the daily work at the IKL. Höss is certainly not the man to take an interest in administrative details.” Brandt scrutinized me through his owl glasses. “Thank you for the frankness of your opinion. But I don’t think the Reichsführer is in agreement with you. In any case, even if Obersturmbannführer Höss has other talents than Liebehenschel, there’s still Standartenführer Maurer.” I nodded; Bra
ndt shared the common opinion of Glücks. When I saw Isenbeck the following week, he told me what was being said in Oranienburg: everyone understood that Höss had done his time in Auschwitz, except Höss himself; apparently the Reichsführer in person had informed him of his transfer, during a camp visit, using as a pretext—this is what Höss was saying at Oranienburg—the BBC broadcasts on the exterminations; his promotion to the head of DI made that plausible. But why were they treating him so carefully? For Thomas, to whom I posed the question, there was only one explanation: Höss had done time in prison with Bormann, in the 1920s, for a Vehmgericht murder; they must have remained in touch, and Bormann was protecting Höss.
As soon as the Reichsführer had approved of my suggestion, I proceeded to reorganize my office. The entire unit in charge of research, with Asbach as chief, was transferred to Oranienburg. Asbach seemed relieved to be leaving Berlin. With Fräulein Praxa and two other assistants I set myself up again in my old premises at the SS-Haus. Walser had never come back: Piontek, whom I finally sent to find out about him, reported that the shelter in his building had been struck, on the Tuesday night. The number of dead was estimated at twenty-three, the entire population of the building; there were no survivors, but most of the corpses unearthed were unrecognizable. To set my mind at rest, I reported him missing: that way, the police would look for him in the hospitals; but I had little hope of finding him alive. Piontek seemed very upset about it. Thomas, already over his bout of spleen, was overflowing with energy; now that we were office neighbors again, I saw him more often. Instead of telling him about my promotion, I waited, to surprise him, until I had received my official notification and had had my new stripes and collar tabs sewn on. When I presented myself at his office, he burst out laughing, searched through his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, waved it in the air, and cried out: “Ah! You scoundrel. You thought you could catch up with me!” He made the document into a paper plane and launched it at me; its nose hit my Iron Cross and I unfolded it to read that Müller was proposing Thomas as Standartenführer. “And you can be sure it won’t be refused. But,” he added with good grace, “until it’s official, dinners are on me.”
My promotion had just as little effect on the imperturbable Fräulein Praxa, but she couldn’t hide her surprise when she received a direct phone call from Speer: “The Reichsminister wants to speak to you,” she informed me in a breathless voice, handing me the receiver. After the last raid, I had sent him a message giving him my new coordinates. “Sturmbannführer?” his firm, pleasant voice said. “How are you? Not too much damage?”—“My archivist has probably been killed, Herr Reichsminister. Otherwise, everything’s fine. And you?”—“I moved into temporary offices and sent my family to the country. So?”—“Your visit to Mittelbau has just been approved, Herr Reichsminister. I’ve been appointed to organize it. As soon as possible, I’ll contact your secretary to set up a date.” For important questions, Speer had asked me to call his personal secretary, rather than an assistant. “Very good,” he said. “See you soon.” I had already written to Mittelbau to warn them to prepare for the visit. I called Obersturmbannführer Förschner, the Kommandant of Dora, to confirm the arrangements. “Listen,” his tired voice grumbled at the other end, “we’ll do our best.”—“I’m not asking you to do your best, Obersturmbannführer. I’m asking that the installations be presentable for the Reichsminister’s visit. The Reichsführer personally insisted on that. Do you understand?”—“Fine, fine. I’ll give some more orders.”
My apartment had been more or less fixed up. I had finally managed to find some glass for two windows; the others remained covered with a waxed canvas tarp. My neighbor had not only had my door repaired but had also unearthed some oil lamps to use until electricity was restored. I had some coal delivered, and once the big ceramic stove was started, it wasn’t cold at all. I told myself that taking an apartment on the top floor hadn’t been very smart: I had had incredible luck escaping the raids of that week, but if they returned, and they certainly would, it wouldn’t last. Yet, I refused to worry: the apartment didn’t belong to me, and I didn’t have many personal possessions; you had to keep Thomas’s serene attitude about these things. I simply bought myself a new gramophone, with records of Bach’s Partitas for piano, as well as some opera arias by Monteverdi. In the evening, in the soft, archaic light of an oil lamp, a glass of Cognac and some cigarettes within arm’s reach, I would lie back on my sofa to listen to them and forget everything else.
A new thought, though, came more and more often to occupy my mind. The Sunday after the air raids, around noon, I had taken the car from the garage and had gone to visit Helene Anders. The day was cold and wet, the sky overcast, but it wasn’t raining. On the way, I had managed to find a bouquet of flowers, sold in the street by an old woman near an S-Bahn station. Having reached Helene’s building, I realized I didn’t know what apartment she lived in. Her name wasn’t on the letter boxes. A rather hefty woman who was leaving at that moment stopped and eyed me from head to foot before barking at me, in strong Berlin slang: “Who are you looking for?”—“Fräulein Anders.”—“Anders? There’s no Anders here.” I described her. “You mean the Winnefeld daughter. But she’s not a Fräulein.” She directed me to the apartment and I went up to ring. A lady with white hair opened the door and frowned. “Frau Winnefeld?”—“Yes.” I clicked my heels and bowed my head. “My respects, meine Dame. I came to see your daughter.” I held out the flowers and introduced myself. Helene appeared in the hallway, a sweater over her shoulders, and her face colored slightly: “Oh!” she smiled. “It’s you.”—“I came to ask you if you were planning to swim today.”—“Is the pool still working?” she said.—“Unfortunately not.” I had passed it on my way: a firebomb had gone through the dome, and the concierge who was watching over the ruins had assured me that, given the priorities, it certainly wouldn’t reopen before the end of the war. “But I know of another one.”—“Then I’d be happy to. I’ll go get my things.” Downstairs, I helped her into the car and set off. “I didn’t know you were a Frau,” I said after a few minutes. She looked at me pensively: “I’m a widow. My husband was killed in Yugoslavia last year, by the partisans. We’d been married for less than a year.”—“I’m sorry.” She looked out the window. “Me too,” she said. She turned to me: “But life goes on, doesn’t it?” I didn’t say anything. “Hans, my husband,” she went on, “liked the Dalmatian coast a lot. In his letters, he talked about settling there after the war. Do you know Dalmatia?”—“No. I served in the Ukraine and in Russia. But I wouldn’t want to settle there.”—“Where would you like to live?”—“I don’t know, actually. Not Berlin, I think. I don’t know.” I told her briefly about my childhood in France. She herself was of old Berlin stock: already her grandparents lived in Moabit. We arrived at the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse and I parked in front of number eight. “But that’s the Gestapo!” she cried out, terrified. I laughed: “That’s right. They have a small heated pool in the basement.” She stared at me: “Are you a policeman?”—“Not at all.” Through the window, I pointed to the former Prinz-Albrecht Hotel next door: “I work there, in the Reichsführer’s offices. I’m a legal advisor, I’m in charge of economic questions.” That seemed to reassure her. “Don’t worry. The pool is used more by typists and secretaries than by policemen, who have other things to do.” In fact, the pool was so small you had to sign up in advance. We found Thomas there, already in a bathing suit. “Oh, I know you!” he exclaimed, gallantly kissing Helene’s white hand. “You’re the friend of Liselotte and Mina Wehde.” I showed her where the women’s changing rooms were and went to change also, while Thomas smiled at me mockingly. When I emerged, Thomas, in the water, was talking with a girl, but Helene hadn’t reappeared yet. I dove in and did a few laps. Helene came out of the changing room. Her fashionable swimsuit molded to her contours, rounded but slim; beneath the curves the muscles were clearly apparent. Her face, whose beauty wasn’t altered by the swimming cap, was joyful: “Ho
t showers! What luxury!” She dove in, crossed half the pool underwater, and began doing laps. I was already tired; I got out, put on a bathrobe, and sat down on one of the chairs placed around the pool, to smoke and watch her swim. Thomas, dripping, came to sit next to me: “It was high time you pulled yourself together.”—“Do you like her?” The lapping of the water resounded on the room’s vaulted ceiling. Helene did forty laps without stopping, a thousand meters. Then she came over to lean on the edge, like the first time I’d seen her, and smiled at me: “You don’t swim much.”—“It’s the cigarettes. I get out of breath.”—“That’s too bad.” Again, she raised her arms and let herself sink down; but this time she came back up in the same place and hoisted herself out of the pool in one supple movement. She took a towel, dried her face and came to sit down next to us, taking off her cap and shaking her damp hair. “And you,” she said to Thomas, “do you also deal with economic questions?”—“No,” he replied. “I leave that to Max. He’s much more intelligent than me.”—“He’s a policeman,” I added. Thomas made a face: “Let’s say I’m in security.”—“Brrr…” Helene said. “That must be sinister.”—“Oh, not really.” I finished my cigarette and went back in to swim a little. Helene did twenty more laps; Thomas was flirting with one of the typists. Afterward, I washed under the shower and changed; leaving Thomas there, I suggested to Helene that we go out for some tea. “Where?”—“Good question. On Unter den Linden there’s nothing left. But we’ll find something.” Finally I took her to the Esplanade Hotel, on Bellevuestrasse: it was a little damaged, but had survived the worst; inside the tea room, aside from the boards on the windows, masked by brocade curtains, you might have thought it was before the war. “What a beautiful place,” Helene murmured. “I’ve never been here.”—“The cakes are excellent, I hear. And they don’t serve ersatz.” I ordered a coffee for me and a tea for her; we also ordered a little assortment of cakes. They were in fact delicious. When I lit a cigarette, she asked for one. “You smoke?”—“Sometimes.” Later on, she said pensively: “It’s too bad there’s this war. Things could have been so nice.”—“Maybe. I have to admit I don’t think about it.” She looked at me: “Tell me frankly: we’re going to lose, aren’t we?”—“No!” I said, shocked. “Of course not.” Again, she looked into emptiness and drew a last puff from her cigarette. “We’re going to lose,” she said. I took her home. In front of the entrance, she shook my hand, looking serious. “Thank you,” she said. “I enjoyed that very much.”—“I hope it won’t be the last time.”—“Me too. See you soon.” I watched her cross the sidewalk and disappear into the building. Then I went back to my place to listen to Monteverdi.
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