“‘But we only have ten dozen number 18 hexagonal bolts.’
“Fritz was annoyed. He opened and closed his mouth mimicking stupidity. ‘Yeah? That’s their problem. They know what they want. That the end of it?’
“‘Yes.’ I had reached automatically for the broom but put it back against the wall. The floor was immaculate.
“Fritz needed to flex his authority. ‘We’re three days ahead on everything. Sit down!’
“I sat down and took some shiny machine parts out of my pocket and began to play with them. They were steel and vanadium alloy and beautifully machined. But of course you know that, you have them now. But Fritz didn’t know, ‘What the hell are you doing now?’ and there was a mother’s desperation in his voice.
“I smiled at him. ‘Seeing how they fit together. It’s like a puzzle.’
“‘How do you even know they’re parts of the same machine?’ Fritz said it to keep the conversation going.
“‘They all go to the special department. They only make one thing.’ … Timing devices for artillery shells.
“Then a girl came into the office. She was pretty, almost, but the lower half of her face was too big and her brow sloped back. She was all mouth and Fritz jumped up smiling, ‘May I help you? Just tell me what you want.’
“The girl leaned her eyes heavily on me and smiled, her mouth seemed three inches too wide. ‘Georg knows what I want.’ I retreated among the shelves then came back and handed her a cellophane package as she handed me the requisition slip.
“I called it out because that was expected. ‘Two typewriter ribbons, number three.’ Morosely Fritz wrote it down, impaled the slip on the bill file, then pulled it back off. The girl retreated, smiling over her shoulder, but I was ignoring her.
“Ulrich had been watching all of us and he smiled at Fritz. ‘She’s a little young for you.’
“‘I’m not old,’ said Fritz, ‘just ugly, and not wealthy enough to compensate.’ But that was not only funny, it was self-deprecating, undermining his authority in two ways at once, so he scowled at the machine parts and shouted, ‘Those parts are stolen from the company.’
“My tone was matter-of-fact, ‘How can they be stolen, they haven’t been removed from the office.’
“Fritz looked baffled. He took a deep breath and started again. ‘You know your problem, Georg?’
“‘No, sir.’ I scooped up the machine parts and put them back in my pocket.
“‘I don’t know either,’ Fritz sighed. ‘The Nazi party was supposedly designed to serve the interests of craftsmen like you.’
“‘But I’m no longer a craftsman.’ I turned over my empty hands. The calluses were gone and the palms soft for the first time in a decade. Both hands looked smaller, but that wasn’t possible.
“He insisted. ‘But you are. The Führer said at the Nuremberg Rally: We can make no distinction between skilled and unskilled labor.’ Fritz was not about to be dissuaded from his belief system.
“‘Then what’s the difference from not working at all?’ asked Ulrich, muttering as he filed. ‘I mean if it doesn’t matter how well you do it.’
“Fritz scolded, ‘Ulrich, think with your hands.’ So Ulrich went back to filing the onion skin carbons that had a tendency to stick to his fingers and come apart in his hands.
“Fritz continued to talk. ‘Georg, you walked out on the Führer’s speech. Yes, I do know about that. And, yes, you are becoming an embarrassment to the company. Is that what you want?’
“I lowered my eyes appropriately. ‘No, sir. …’
“‘History,’ said Fritz, looking over his bifocals in an almost grandfatherly manner, ‘is no longer a game from which you can walk away.’
“I repeated the words to myself internally. ‘Yes.’
“Fritz cocked an eyebrow. ‘Yes what?’
“I pulled myself erect. ‘Yes, sir!’
“Fritz was almost amused. ‘I mean, what did you say yes to?’
“That could have gone on for some time, but a sawed-off stump of a man walked in. He looked like Rumpelstiltskin without the cap and bells. His name was Eisner and he carried a medium-sized box covered with warning signs and swastikas in red and black. It bore the stamps and seals of all the departments it had passed through. Eisner was trying to make a delivery. Fritz told him to come back in the morning, and then they were shouting at each other. I ignored them, watching Ulrich trying to file the onion skin flimsies. It was like trying to file wisps of smoke. He started wadding them up and throwing them into the drawer behind the metal divider.
“Fritz and Eisner were still shouting. I tried to continue ignoring them, but the noise level was becoming painful. Eisner called Fritz a traitor and a Communist. Fritz called Eisner a Jew and an Anarchist.
“‘I will report this to the plant manager,’ said Eisner.
“‘We will go together,’ said Fritz.
“Then I walked up between them, took the box out of Eisner’s hands, and walked away with it. Fritz and Eisner stared at each other, baffled then they turned jerkily and haltingly walked away. Ulrich had a dreamy half smile and there was a question in his eyes. Even after they were gone, Ulrich kept staring as I lit a cigarette. I offered him one but he grabbed the lit one from my mouth, took a quick drag then stamped it out with an exasperated gesture at the high explosive signs. ‘You weren’t the center of attention for 30 seconds and you went berserk.’
“I laughed. ‘I stopped it, didn’t I?’
“He shot me peeved glances. ‘That’s only because they weren’t arguing with you. If they had been, you would have let it go on forever.’
“I shrugged and reached for the broom but save for the cigarette the floor was still immaculately clean.
Nebe smiled at Georg—at least he showed some teeth—and Georg smiled back. Nolte tented his eyebrows and sighed wetly. “I’ve never heard of an office like that; all so crazy.”
Nebe would have agreed with him, but he said, “That’s why it sounds true. He wouldn’t make up a story like that, but …”
Nolte wouldn’t shut up. “Someone did. It’s coming out too neat. It’s like a parable in a sermon to illustrate some moral point that no one asks you to believe actually happened.”
“He’s telling it the way he remembers it!” said Nebe. He would have kicked Nolte under the table, but he wasn’t within reach.
The cocky SOB continued, “He can’t be. Memories aren’t that organized, not unless he thought it through for a long time and, if he did, he’d have some answers. They’d be lies, but they’d be answers.”
That was almost interesting, thought Nebe. “Meaning what?”
Nolte looked a bit smug. “He’s telling a story that someone else made him memorize.”
Nebe shook his head. “I don’t really give a shit as long as he keeps talking. Sooner or later, he has to talk about the one thing on his mind.”
“Right now I’m thinking about food. …” The childlike candor in the tone of Georg’s comment made Nebe chuckle involuntarily and drove Nolte to crack his knuckles. Brandt merely licked his lips, a reflex at the mention of food, while his fingers clomped along the keys of the typewriter.
Nebe straightened his back and gazed at Georg like a British headmaster. “Well then we must push on to the point of our business mustn’t we? No victuals until you tell us the whole story.” Georg lowered his eyes and swallowed, then the gears began to turn in his mind once more. …
“I was with Franz and Ulrich, again. We’d gone out for beer and it was a different bar, again. We were using up bars fast because it was a small town and there really wasn’t anything else to do. They were all pretty much the same: dim light, worn dark wood, and gray mirrors with the liver spots of age. There was a jukebox and someone kept playing the same record, a polka band doing their version Preussen’s ‘Gloria’. Franz looked at me strangely before turning to Ulrich. ‘Isn’t Georg almost hard to see? You think he’s handsome, but he isn’t. If you look away from h
is eyes, you can see that his ears are too big and his chin too narrow and pointed. His nose is too long. It should be a rat-like face, but it isn’t so, he is a handsome man in an entirely nondescript sort of way. It makes about as much sense as anything else.’
“Ulrich was paying no attention to anything Frantz, he complained, ‘Anyone got any money?’ Franz threw some coins on the bar and pulled out a picture of his son in a Nazi Youth uniform. The color was lousy. The face looked like an orange gumdrop with buck teeth. The mother stood primly behind the boy wearing a gray face to match her gray dress. She looked like a fireplug with eyes.
“Franz flapped the picture at us. ‘Look,’ said Franz was saying, ‘I don’t like everything that’s going on either. They’re giving anti-Semitism a bad name. I feel like I live in a conquered country, a country conquered by midgets.’
“What he said made me think about my family too but I threw the images away as fast as they came to mind.
“‘More beer, now that’s a cure for conquering midgets.’ Ulrich grunted and signaled to the waiter.
“‘What the hell are you doing now?’ asked Franz. I had split a beer coaster and was sketching on the blank side with a charcoal pencil. I showed them. I was drawing a cuckoo clock. It looked good, too good.
“Ulrich looked at it. ‘Yeah, you’ve got talent. That’s a problem. Makes you think you’re better than everyone else. If you didn’t have talent, you’d know you were an asshole.’
“I was only half listening because I was watching a panhandler working his way through the bar until he was chased out by the waiters. ‘You guys ever look at derelicts?’ I asked.
“‘I try not to,’ said Ulrich.
“‘It’s surprising how many of them were once handsome men. How many men are good looking? One in ten? One in twenty? But if you look at derelicts, at least half of them were once handsome men.’
“‘What’s he talking about now?’ Franz interjected. The beer hadn’t arrived yet.
“‘He’s telling his fortune,’ Ulrich explained. ‘They were like you, Georg, visibly better than the people around them, so they expected more. When they didn’t get it, they refused to compromise. They’re your heroes.’
“I smiled at him. ‘You sound like Fritz.’
“Ulrich had been leaning over me almost perched on my shoulder. ‘Not surprising,’ he said, ‘sometimes I think he’s inside my head.’ I had finished the sketch of the cuckoo clock, but instead of a bird popping out it was a very puzzled Christmas tree angel. Franz decided to ignore us but Ulrich went on. ‘Now you see, that’s clever and you’re not like me, always trying to prove how clever I am. You only use it when it’s vitally necessary, or entirely unnecessary. You’re always so calm and in control, I can’t understand why you’re such a bum?’
“I looked him full in the face. ‘I don’t like anyone either. Maybe that’s why, lack of motivation.’
“‘What about that ‘anyone’ over there?’ Franz interceded gracefully and he nodded across the room to a tall, skinny girl with good legs and a bad face. She was wearing a tight shiny dress that ended above her knees. It looked at least ten years old. She looked about thirty or, maybe, twenty-five and bitter. Then she saw Franz and I looking at her and she looked away. ‘She’s not much, but she knows it so she tries extra hard, at least that’s what I hear.’
“‘That’s all you’ll do is hear,’ said Ulrich. ‘She’s a dental assistant. She wouldn’t go out with a factory worker.’
“That suddenly made me take interest in the sport. ‘I’m a cabinet maker.’ I said it like it had just come to me.
“‘You could have been a lot of things,’ said Ulrich, ‘but what you are right now is an asshole just like us.’ But Hannah and I were already smiling at each other across the room. I got up and walked over to her. She seemed to be alone. There was a lot of smiling and whispered conversation, but I wasn’t listening to what either of us said. I had the impression she wasn’t either and then we left together. Franz and Ulrich watched us go.
“The next morning I woke up screaming in her bed, shouting from out of a nightmare. Somehow I got dressed and was sitting at the table. She had on a night gown. It was all ruffles and lace but with an eye to function, closed only at the neck. I wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say except, ‘Coffee ready?’
“I had considered running but she had tactfully recommended I have some coffee before I do or say anything regrettable. She had an authentic Italian espresso pot so I decided to be patient when she said: ‘In a minute …’
“I got up and paced around the room while she fussed with the coffee paraphernalia. I spotted her lone shelf, mostly novellas, so I slipped Mann’s Professor Unrat in my coat pocket and left her Kafka. Funny but I don’t think she ever noticed.
“She served the coffee and sat down, pulling up her negligee and crossing her legs to draw attention away from her face. ‘Tell me about your dream.’
“I sat across from her. ‘Nothing to tell.’ I lowered my eyes and breathed in the aroma of the coffee. It was good, all things considered.
“‘It’s all new to me. I’m interested.’ She raised one knee higher to flash me a little, but I looked away so she clasped her thighs together.
“‘I can’t think of anything to say.’ I really couldn’t.
“She grabbed both sides of the table and leaned towards me. ‘You mean there’s one thing on your mind and you’re afraid to say it. Say it!’
“Then I smiled, it’s a defense mechanism really, and she sat back down. ‘You’re too damn smart.’
She drilled her eyes into me. ‘I’d better be, since I’m ugly. But my legs aren’t bad.’ She uncrossed them and held one out for appraisal.
“I had to agree matter-of-factly. ‘Your legs are beautiful.’
“Hannah hummed to herself, almost purring. She stood up to show off her legs one more time and poured more espresso into my cup. ‘You were saying?’.”
“You were saying?” asked Nebe. Georg said nothing. “So, what did you dream, Georg?” Georg pointed to the photograph of the wreckage. The detectives looked at each other. None of them believed it.
“Sounds almost true. Sort of,” Nolte said soothingly.
Brandt looked up from the typewriter, “Do you believe that shit? Coming to him in a dream? Isn’t that a little too melodramatic? I mean too cute and stupid to be real.”
“It’s embarrassing,” said Nebe, “but dreams often can be. Real motives aren’t clever. They’re dumb and bestial,” he searched for a word, “at times humiliating. No, what he said was all right. What bother me are the things he left out.” He lit a cigarette to give himself time to think. After it was lit, he didn’t know what to do with it. He put it in the ashtray and watched it burn. “How you thought of it doesn’t matter. It’s fascinating and I’m glad you told me but … Let me illustrate: one time I thought of poisoning my wife, but all I did was to think about it. She had the decency to die of pneumonia before I could work myself up to the act.” He lied smoothly. “Thinking of doing it is different than actually doing it. Something always happens in between.”
“Not when you have nothing to lose.”
“Don’t answer for him,” Nebe snapped at Nolte, but he hadn’t actually said anything. The voice was emanating from inside his head so Nebe leaned forward and smeared out the cigarette.
“Like grinding out that cigarette,” said the voice, “…between thinking of it and doing it, what had happened?” Nothing conscious … That didn’t help.
“Perhaps,” said Nebe, “if you stopped trying to prove how clever you are and just did your job. …” Nolte looked uneasy and Nebe left the sentence unfinished. He recomposed his features and smiled at Georg. “I understand. You had the skill and the opportunity and nothing to lose, but those aren’t reasons. They were circumstances that made it easier, but aren’t reasons. So, why did you do it?”
Nebe momentarily considered feeding him a cyanide pill, could say it
hadn’t shown up on the body search; that would mean disgrace, maybe demotion, but he’d still be alive. “Georg, if you hadn’t thought of it, you wouldn’t have done it. If you had anything to lose you wouldn’t have done it. But why did you do it?”
Georg woke up a bit. “I was trying to stop the war.” Nebe nodded to Brandt at the typewriter, but Brandt widened his eyes and gave a tiny shake of his head in warning. Again, he signaled to Brandt to type and again Brandt looked scared and froze.
“Doesn’t make sense, Georg,” said Nebe.
“What time is it?” asked Brandt.
“Same as it was an hour ago,” said Nebe.
Nolte was looking pleased with himself. He licked his lips and smiled like a wolf pursuing a troika; meaning: another smart ass remark was coming.
Nebe didn’t give him the chance. “Georg, your girlfriend … the ugly one, is she what happened in between? Are you in love with her?”
“That’s none of your damn business!” All three men noted the emotion behind Elser’s response.
“Might be the only true words he’s spoken tonight,” said Nolte.
Nebe chose to ignore that line for the moment. “But the way he tells it, this was a message from God.”
“I didn’t say that.” Georg’s indignation seemed genuine.
Nebe laughed. “You said it came to you in a dream like Joan of Arc. Georg, we don’t mean to be rude, but we don’t believe you. Why did you do it? We know you did it, so what difference does it make? Tell us why.”
And at that moment the answer occurred to Georg. It was an idea that would certainly get him killed. It had been an extraordinary crime and, therefore, all had assumed that it must have an extraordinary motive. But it didn’t. The only extraordinary part about the whole business was how easy it had been for him to execute. He’d spent seven years making cuckoo clocks, ideal training for making a mechanical time bomb. Then an inept management structure put him in charge of inventory at a munitions plant with access to all the explosives he could possibly use. … The obvious had happened. That was all. Even had there been no motive but the craftsman’s itch, the overwhelming drive to exhibit skill and precision, the orbs had aligned placing Georg’s frustrations and skills in the right place at the right time. Have you ever thought about doing something, then become obsessed with doing it just so you could prove that, even if it seemed impossible, it could be done by you?
The Führer Must Die Page 6
