“I know nothing of the details. I only know he was arranging financial support for these agents, and that he was trying to do it in a way that complied with government regulations. If there was misconduct I assume some other party was responsible.”
Bauer stares at Dietrich a moment, then says to the guard, “Take the girl back to the car.”
Maria casts a last frightened glance at Dietrich and is gone.
Bauer gathers his papers, shuts his briefcase, talks as he works. “I will continue to allow her to write to you, and you may now write to her every four days. I shall also allow her to visit you once a month for one hour.”
Dietrich begins to stammer his thanks, but Bauer interrupts.
“It’s on her account, not yours. She told me on the way here about losing her father and brother on the Russian front. A patriotic family, the von Wedemeyers. And a wise choice, Pastor Bonhoeffer. Your connection to them makes you look very good indeed. As you so carefully reminded me last time we spoke.”
He pats Dietrich on the shoulder.
“Good day, Pastor Bonhoeffer. And Heil Hitler.”
Doppelgänger
SS JUDGE ADVOCATE Alois Bauer is chain-smoking in his office in the War Court. The desktop is covered with file folders and loose papers. Bauer sifts through one stack of papers, shifts another, moves folders like a sleight-of-hand artist running a shell game. It is the way he thinks when he is stumped.
At the end of the day he is joined by Franz Sonderegger of the Gestapo. Sonderegger pulls up a chair without asking, turns it around back to the desk, and straddles it. Bauer barely notices. Sonderegger smokes and watches him.
Finally Bauer leans back and sighs. “You see, I have been over it and over it. Nothing beyond the currency violation, that I can find. And their stories match. I haven’t been able to catch them out except for a couple of conflicting dates which Bonhoeffer later corrected.”
“Well then.”
“But there is a smell, Franz, a distinct odor. Unfortunately I can’t track it down. And to be honest, I don’t know if it’s worth pursuing. The way the war is going lately, we have larger fish to fry. Frankly I’m more concerned about the Communists.”
“So what will you do?”
“They’ve never been formally arrested.”
“No,” Sonderegger agrees.
“If we hold them any longer, we at least have to come up with an arrest warrant. What do you think? Is it worth it?”
Sonderegger shrugs. “Why not? It doesn’t hurt to keep them close a while longer. Set a trial date for this winter.”
“I don’t have time for a trial, not over something petty.”
“Well, then, if you don’t have anything by the time the trial comes up, let them go.”
Bauer chews the end of a pencil. In his mind he sees the broad, open face of Pastor Bonhoeffer washed by successive waves of fear, anger, dread. “Yes,” Bauer says. “Let’s hold them awhile longer. I rather enjoyed talking to the pastor anyway. I’m interested to see how he’ll hold up.”
“What charge for Bonhoeffer? After all, he wasn’t directly involved in the currency irregularities.”
Bauer thinks some more, then says, “How about ‘Undermining the Morale of the Armed Forces’?”
And the warrants are duly issued for the arrests of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, to be served at the prisons where they already reside.
DAY 130. One night Linke comes to Dietrich’s cell, opens the slot in the door, and whispers, “Pastor Bonhoeffer? Are you awake?”
Dietrich sits up and rubs his eyes. “What is it, Linke?”
“There’s a new lad in the holding cell. Lots of them are frightened half to death when they first get here. But this one’s hysterical, trying to bang his head against the wall. We thought being a pastor, you might be able to calm him down, talk to him.”
Dietrich pulls on his trousers and follows the beam of Linke’s electric torch along the black corridor and down the stairs, emerges blinking his eyes into the light of the ground-floor holding area. The boy’s screams—loud even in the stairwell—carom off the stone walls. Dietrich enters the cell to find the prisoner on his knees in one corner, arms flailing as two guards seek to restrain him. Blood runs down the boy’s face from a cut in his scalp; he flings his head from side to side as though still seeking to butt the wall with it. Dietrich goes down on his knees in front of the boy, who ignores him.
“What is his name?” Dietrich yells above the din.
Linke looks at a clipboard hanging outside the door.
“Schmidt,” he says. “Carl Schmidt.”
“Carl!” Dietrich says. He tries to look the boy in the face, but Carl is fixed on something no one else can see. “Carl!”
“Karin!” the boy screams. “Karin Karin Karin!”
Dietrich takes the boy’s head in his own hands and forces him to stop his wild rocking back and forth. Schmidt goes rigid, his eyes locked and upturned as though they might roll back in his head.
“Carl!” Dietrich says again. “Who is Karin?”
“Karin,” the boy repeats, more quietly this time. His voice has a broken edge to it, a mournful edge.
“Who is Karin?”
For the first time Schmidt meets Dietrich eyes.
“My girlfriend,” he says, his voice sinking to a whisper.
“Your girlfriend,” Dietrich repeats. “And where is Karin?”
Schmidt’s body goes rigid once more and he strains against the guards. In the doorway Linke reads from the chart. “Schmidt was arrested for going AWOL. His girlfriend was wounded in a bombing attack and he decided to leave his post in Italy and come see her.”
Dietrich strokes Schmidt’s temples with his thumbs. “Carl,” he says softly, “have you seen Karin?”
Schmidt stares at Dietrich. His eyes fill with tears. He nods his head.
“What has happened to Karin?” Dietrich coaxes.
“She’s dead,” Schmidt says. Then he goes limp and begins to sob. Dietrich wraps his arms around Schmidt’s chest, lets the boy’s head rest on his shoulder. He nods at the guards to leave. Linke follows them out, closing the door shut behind him.
In the early hours of the morning, after he has spent several hours holding Carl Schmidt, speaking to him, praying to him, even singing to him as one would to a small child, Dietrich tries to snatch a few more hours of sleep on his cot. He dreams, and in his dream he wrestles once more with the frantic Carl, but when he holds the boy’s face between his hands, it is his own face that stares back at him, a face tormented with longing for a girl who doesn’t exist.
After the episode with Schmidt, Pastor Bonhoeffer becomes well known throughout Tegel, a sort of trustee. When an inmate begins screaming in his cell, Linke and the other guards bring Dietrich, large and calm and quiet, to reason with him. On the eve before a condemned man is put to death, Dietrich sits all night with him if requested. He also becomes a familiar sight in the prison sick ward. This new responsibility is an improbable result of his bouts with rheumatism and lumbago. For weeks he suffered without complaint a growing stiffness and ache in his joints. Then one day in July, Linke came to his cell with the midday meal and found Dietrich hunched over on the edge of his bench where he had bent to tie his shoes, unable to straighten up. He was taken at once to the sick bay and hooked up to a brown diathermy machine that shot electrical current in relaxing warm waves through his muscles. The bed was softer as well, the ground-floor infirmary large and airy, almost luxurious with a high roof, a gently swirling ceiling fan, and whitewashed walls. He ate bowls of warm semolina and white bread, soaked his feet in pans of hot water, and swallowed a regular supply of aspirin. His worried parents sent a precious liver sausage (part of which he shared, the rest hoarded in his own cell) and ripe tomatoes from the garden.
He made himself useful in the sick bay, helping the orderlies, listening to the men’s stories of home and family, joining in games of skat, sharing cigarettes, playing the out
-of-tune piano which stood in one corner or finding the best music on the radio that occupied a table beside the door. When it was clear the treatments were helping his rheumatism and he expected to be sent back to his room day and night, Maetz called him to his office and informed him he should continue to visit the sick ward on a daily basis to prevent a recurrence of his symptoms, that the orderlies and doctors spoke highly of him and he was good for morale. Dietrich nodded and sipped the glass of champagne the commandant had given him.
“Your Uncle Rudi has been here,” Maetz had added.
“I hope I am not receiving special favors simply because of my uncle.”
“Not at all,” Maetz had said. “Though he did bring me four bottles of that very fine champagne you are drinking. Quite a gift. I told him you’re a help to me, and just between us, you will probably be more useful in the months to come. I don’t wish to alarm anyone—” lowering his voice with a nod to the guard whose elbow was visible just beyond the open door—“but your uncle says we should expect some very rough treatment from the Allied bombers soon. Something on the order of Hamburg and Munich. I don’t need to tell you that men in a prison are sitting ducks. There are no underground shelters here.”
“No air-raid shelters? Not even for your staff?”
“Not even for me.” Maetz shook his head glumly. “Even though we aren’t in the city center, we’re very close to the locomotive works. If this district is hit as hard as we expect, there’ll be men killed and wounded in their cells, and the sick bay will be very busy. I’m going to instruct Linke to leave your cell open at night. I know you won’t try to escape—there’s no need for you to try, since your case isn’t a serious one. As soon as the bombing begins you can go to the sick bay—the orderlies tell me you’re a great help there.”
“Assuming I survive the bombing.”
“Yes, well, who of us can tell that? Anyway, listen for the sirens and keep an eye out your window. High up as you are, you may even see the bombers coming. When they’re close, go on downstairs.”
That evening, back in Dietrich’s cell, a knife and fork appeared with his dinner for the first time since his arrival in Tegel. He stared at them as though he had forgotten what they were. Then he began to laugh.
On this night in late August he hears the distant wail of sirens and goes to look out his window. Berlin is a black pool, as devoid of light as if it remained the unsettled and impenetrable forest of ancient times. The sirens fall silent, the silence marred only briefly by a faint echo. Then there is the faint rapping of flak, and the sky to the southeast is streaked with infusions of orange and yellow. The pounding of exploding shells and answering artillery is a low pulse.
A key rattles in Dietrich’s door and Linke enters.
“Close by?” he asks anxiously. He is thinking of his wife and daughters cowering in a basement in Wedding.
Dietrich moves to the end of his cot so Linke can stand on the stool. “It looks as though they’re only hitting Neukölln and Rudow,” he says. Most of Berlin’s factories are in those districts.
“Better them than us, poor bastards,” Linke says.
The two men stand side by side, faces pressed against the bars, until the light fades in the south.
DAY 133. Maria von Wedemeyer arrives at Tegel with a hamper of food for the prisoner Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The guard who lifts the yellow gingham cloth for inspection gives a sniff of appreciation at the aniseed biscuits, strawberry jam, and cheese. Maria takes out a box of a half-dozen fresh country eggs and hands it to the guard. A gesture recommended by Dietrich not only because it wins goodwill but because he knows from talking to the guards that many of their families are short.
In the room where prisoners receive their visitors Dietrich and Maria sit across from each other, a table between them, the guard at the door. It is difficult for them to talk. In truth even if there were no guard and no table and no prison, they would struggle to speak, for they have grown more uncomfortable with each other. Dietrich does not possess a natural gift for intimate conversation, and Maria, while gay and chatty with her school friends, is afraid of saying anything that will depress Dietrich or seem trivial to him. So they sit and search for words.
Maria, of course, asks after Dietrich’s health. He has said just enough in his letters to cause her concern about his rheumatism. He assures her that he is much better, that the packages he receives do him great good and her letters cheer him.
“And how is Mother von Wedemeyer?”
“Her health is good. And this time of year she’s very busy about the estate. They’ll soon be bringing in the rye. She sends her love.”
In fact Frau von Wedemeyer has sent only her regards, but Maria thinks this a permissible exaggeration.
“Are you still reading?” Dietrich asks. “You know it is important to me that you not allow your mind to stagnate until you are able to take up your studies again.”
“I’ve tried Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov.”
He waits.
“It’s very slow going,” she says reluctantly. “I’m afraid I’ve never taken to the Russian novelists.”
She slides her hand across the table and places it shyly in his own. He presses it distractedly, pats it, and lets it go.
“Keep trying,” he says. “The more you read, the more comfortable you’ll become. I do long for you to read some of these books I’m recommending to you. It would be a great joy to discuss them in our letters to each other.”
“I suppose,” she says. “It’s just that sometimes it’s difficult to concentrate just now, what with—” She breaks off, unwilling to let him see how difficult things are for her.
She nods and her eyes catch and hold his for a moment, then drop. When she returns to Pätzig and writes to him, she is more forthright, tells him she loathes Russian novels because they are overwritten and practically wallow in the most distasteful subjects. She defends her beloved Rilke, whom Dietrich despises as soft and sentimental. It is easier to write this way because she is not faced with Dietrich across the table, with his clothes that smell less than fresh, his tired and ill-shaven and—to her eighteen-year-old eyes, yes, she must admit it—his old face.
At home at Pätzig, at night, she writes in her diary. Dear Dietrich, I placed my hand in yours and you did not hold it. Oh my darling, don’t you like to be romantic?
DAY 140. Influenza has run through the prison and the sick bay has been full for days, but is finally clearing. Most of the patients have returned to their cells, allowing the orderly on duty to wander off into the prison yard for a smoke and a bask in the early-autumn sunshine. Dietrich and four others—among them Oberleutnant Pfifer and the boy Carl Schmidt—are left to lounge on the beds and listen to the radio. The RRG is playing a recording of a concert held in honor of the Führer’s birthday. A concert drenched, of course, in Wagner, with a large dollop of Nazi marching songs played by an SS band. The grand conclusion is a chorus of Berlin schoolchildren singing the “Horst Wessel Song” with pure lilting voices. It is the third time the concert has been broadcast in as many days. Dietrich listens to the children, pictures them standing upon the stage in their Hitler Youth uniforms, little ones of nine and ten, happy and proud to be singing in front of their parents and the nation and the Führer, who will be to them a god.
It is more than Dietrich can bear. He jumps up from his bed, goes to the radio, and twists the knob. The others look up from their games of solitaire, open their eyes from their naps, and watch him with surprise. The radio whines and pops and sounds clatter about the room like beads from a broken necklace. Then a voice clear as a bell says in English The invasion has been underway since fourteen hundred hours. Anglo-American troops under the command of General Mark Clark have established a beachhead at Salerno and along a front extending from Amalfi to Agropoli. This follows the successful incursion four days ago into Calabria by British forces under Field Marshal Montgomery. Casualties around Salerno are reported to be heavy as expected but
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br /> Dietrich takes his hand from the dial.
“My God!” Pfifer says. “It’s the BBC!” He throws off his covers and sits up. “What are you trying to do, get us all shot?”
He gets out of bed and totters toward the radio as though he means to shut if off, but Dietrich is in the way.
“Don’t touch it,” Dietrich says. “I’ll take responsibility. If necessary.” He looks around the room as he speaks. He has gotten to know all the men present. Knows there is not a rabid Nazi among them, though there are no rebels either.
Schmidt says, “They’re talking about Italy, aren’t they? I was in Italy.”
Dietrich begins to translate. Even Pfifer stands transfixed when he understands what the announcer is saying. “It is the beginning of the end,” he says wonderingly. He is scheduled to go to trial in December and expects to receive a twenty-year sentence, a possibility that has precipitated his present illness. “The beginning of the end,” he says again. He hides his smile by holding his sleeve to his face and pretending to cough, because he has caught the distraught look on the face of young Schmidt, a good patriot like most of his fellows.
“We’ll hold them yet,” Schmidt is saying to a friend in the other bed. “I was in Italy. The boys there are tough.”
When the orderly, Kranz, returns he finds Dietrich seated beside the radio with his hand on the knob. He looks up, but doesn’t move. The newscast is over and the BBC is featuring swing music, Benny Goodman and his orchestra playing “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.”
Kranz freezes. “Verboten,” he whispers. He glances nervously over his shoulder.
“Linke and Knobloch are on duty,” Dietrich says. “They won’t report it even if they hear it.”
“I don’t know,” Kranz says.
“Do you know how to dance to this?” Dietrich asks.
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