Berlin Finale (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Heinz Rein

  ‘That’s true!’ Wellenhöfer agrees. ‘If your suspicion is correct, and the man is living outside the law, then of course he will be doing so under a false name.’

  ‘I am confident that I will be able to draw his real name out of him,’ Siering says. ‘We could …’

  Wellenhöfer raises his hand. ‘Just one moment, Siering,’ he says quickly. ‘Before we go on discussing the matter, I would like to dismiss Mr Deiters.’ He turns to the Senior Inspector. ‘Listen very carefully to what I am about to say to you, Mr Deiters, you must give me your personal assurance that my instructions are carried out to the letter. Adamek must be transferred immediately, you will have him informed of his transfer by a random third party, because you already know too much to be able to tell him without giving the game away. I do not believe you have the requisite acting talent.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Deiters says meekly. ‘I will transfer him to the boiler room, as he is constantly …’

  ‘You have no decisions to make in this matter,’ Wellenhöfer cuts him off abruptly. ‘Adamek will no longer be doing shift work, you will put him in a column that always works outside, under a very strict and dependable foreman who won’t take his eyes off him. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Deiters replies. ‘I will see to it.’

  ‘Please do!’ says Wellenhöfer, the harsh tone of his voice contrasting with his words, which are an order rather than a request. ‘And now you will leave us on our own.’

  Deiters considers himself dismissed, he rises to his feet, bows to Wellenhöfer and Siering and raises his hand in the Hitler salute, then leaves the room.

  Wellenhöfer looks after him darkly. ‘Inadequate excuse for a human being,’ he says irritably. ‘You have to chew their food for them if you want anything to happen.’ His face brightens when he looks at Siering. ‘You will continue to keep Adamek under supervision, I’ll give you two good people to do that. I want to learn who Adamek keeps company with. You have full freedom to do as you please, Siering. Your hands will not be tied. You know what that means?’

  ‘Of course, Sturmbannführer,’ Siering says with a nod, and rummages in his jacket pocket. ‘Here is a picture of Adamek, I took it from the personnel files of the Karlhorst depot.’

  ‘Let me see,’ says Wellenhöfer, and takes the photograph. He frowns and holds the picture away from him. ‘I know that face,’ he says slowly, ‘I’m sure I know it. But where from?’

  ‘It’s not the sort of face you’d forget,’ Siering says.

  ‘That’s why,’ Wellenhöfer observes thoughtfully. ‘Damn it, where do I know this rogue from?’

  He sits there motionless for several seconds, blinking uneasily.

  Siering sits quite still, reluctant to disturb the concentration of a superior officer.

  Then Wellenhöfer brings his fist down on the table with a thump. ‘Now I know,’ he says loudly. ‘When I was in charge of a unit in Sachsenhausen I ran across this piece of filth. I can’t remember his name right now, but we’ll have it very soon.’ He lifts the receiver and dials a number. ‘Archive?’ he says into the phone. ‘Wellenhöfer here. I need the list of prisoners in Sachsenhausen between 1934 and 1936.’

  He hangs up again. ‘I remember him very clearly, he was some kind of trade unionist, one of the radicals,’ he says to Siering with a certain excitement in his voice, the thrill of the passionate huntsman who has good lighting conditions, and who might at any moment see a rare deer walking into his sights. ‘This man Adamek, or whatever his name is, was one of those characters who can’t be defeated however hard you thrash them, who have such a damned superior expression on their mugs that my blood boiled at the sight of them and I thrashed them at every opportunity. And in spite of everything I could never knock that sense of superiority out of the bastards.’

  ‘I’m familiar with that, Sturmbannführer,’ Siering agrees. ‘There’s something about those swine that we can’t get at, and the devil knows what it is and what it’s about. In Dachau I once had a vicar who had criticized the Führer from the pulpit, I stood in front of him and said to him, “Listen, vicar! Say quite loudly and clearly, ‘Heil Hitler!’” The vicar looked straight at me with big eyes, then said loudly and clearly: “Praise be to Jesus Christ!” Wait, you piece of filth, I thought, you’re going to learn this lesson, and I lashed him across the face with my riding crop, leaving stripes of red. “You are to say ‘Heil Hitler’”, I roared at him. This vicar stood there motionless, only his fat cheeks wobbled up and down, and he didn’t even wipe the blood from his eyes. “Praise be to Jesus Christ!” he repeated loudly and clearly. Then I hit him again, and issued the order again, and he answered the same way again, and that happened at least twenty times, Heil Hitler and Praise be to Jesus Christ, in between blows to the face, until the bastard finally toppled over and kicked the bucket, but while he was giving up his vicarish ghost he babbled, “Praise be to Jesus Christ!” again. I must say quite honestly that I admired the chap’s attitude, but that was exactly what goaded me and made my fury all the greater.’

  Wellenhöfer nods. ‘Adamek was exactly that kind of guy,’ he says, ‘I made him clean out the latrines with his hands, he had to scour the SS men’s quarters with a handkerchief-sized cleaning cloth until it shone, but I couldn’t get that look of superiority out of his face. That chap’s face irritated me so much that in the end I tied him to the vaulting horse with my own bare hands and gave him twenty-five great, loud blows, but the swine didn’t even shout. Then he fainted, and when a cold shower had put him back on his feet he looked at me as if to say: you can destroy my body, but not my mind. I would have beaten him to death next time, I’m sure of it, but I was transferred to Buchenwald, which was just being set up at the time. Damn it all, I remember the fellow, it’s just his name … But we’ll have that very shortly, the list is on its way.’

  There is a knock at the door, an SS man comes in, salutes, hands over a list and disappears.

  Wellenhöfer opens the list and begins to read. It’s very quiet in the room, the only sounds Wellenhöfer’s quick breathing and the rustle of paper. Siering sits there excitedly and watches Wellenhöfer’s finger wandering from line to line. Then the silence is suddenly broken. Wellenhöfer throws the list on the table, jumps to his feet and claps his Untersturmführer heartily on the shoulder.

  ‘You’ve landed a big one, Siering,’ he says. ‘What do we care about the little saboteur at Karlshorst, this Franz Adamek has been a wanted man since 1941, he was also supposed to have been involved in the twentieth of July.’

  ‘So who is he really?’ Siering asks excitedly.

  ‘The bastard’s name is Friedrich Wiegand!’, Wellenhöfer replies triumphantly.

  V

  15 April, 10.00 a.m.

  The Berlin Stadtbahn is an eleven-kilometre viaduct supported by countless arches; it runs through the heart of the city from east to west in a four-lane thoroughfare. The houses and factories huddle up to it, their rough, soot-blackened firewalls are a huge balustrade with gaps built in at Jannowitz Bridge, Alexanderplatz, the Stock Exchange, Friedrichstrasse Station, the Zoological Garden and Savignyplatz, through which the business of the city crashes in a great wave against the viaduct. Only between the stations of Tiergarten and Bellevue, crossing the Charlottenburger Chaussee known as the east-west axis, the fleeting glance takes in more significant details, the Tiergarten, the Brandenburg Gate, the Victory Column, Charlottenburg Bridge, before the dark chasm of the firewalls closes over it again.

  Lassehn has boarded the S-Bahn at Silesian Station for Charlottenburg.

  He is paralysed with shock as he looks at the disfigured face of the city and sees smoke-blackened walls, blind window sockets, twisted iron joists, charred wood, mountains of rubble, dangling power lines, gaping streets.

  The Stadtbahn is a ghost train, Berlin has become an inhabited Pompeii, a city which has already rotted away in many places, and in others is suppurating from freshly opened wounds.

&nb
sp; The two angular, bulky high-rise blocks close to the entrance of Alexanderplatz Station have remained strangely unchanged, their white towers, once showy and gleaming with glass and concrete and snow-white plaster, now have a merely shabby elegance made of cardboard, wood and dirty grey concrete. Just past the exit of the station a stretch of almost complete destruction begins, in fact extending all the way to Charlottenburg. Lassehn looks into grey, dark chasms, closed off by fallen walls, and the car parks of long rows of wrecked cars, formerly brightly lit streets with balconies on which geraniums blossomed, with neon signs and cars gliding over smooth, mirrored asphalt. But behind Lehrter Station there begins the hideous wasteland of the former Hansa district. It was destroyed completely in one night, going up in a single, huge conflagration beneath an overcast, rainy sky.

  Lassehn is stunned.

  In those thirty minutes that the journey takes from Silesian Station to Charlottenburg, he becomes aware for the first time that this city is his home, and he has not previously seen it as anything remarkable, he has taken its gifts for granted, as if things could not be otherwise. Now he understands that much is irrevocably lost, and since the end of the war is not in sight, still more will fall into rubble and ashes.

  One question burns in him, and he cannot find the answer. What is it that enables people to tolerate and endure such an existence, which they euphemistically call life? Is it really a belief in a big idea, divine providence, that enables them to do so? Or is it only the iron compulsion that ruthlessly crushes those who do not comply? Or merely the small chance of saving one’s own small self from the general chaos?

  Lassehn studies the faces of his fellow passengers. They are slack, weary faces which reflect only hopelessness and resignation, but there are also hard, grim faces, with wrinkles and harsh edges that allow no easy smile. He remembers an article that he read recently in the newspaper, which he picked up by chance, he looks in the faces once more and takes the newspaper from his coat pocket, his eyes slide over the lines. Yes, there it is:

  We have become a people on the defensive. We work, we work and fight, wander and trek, suffer and endure, and we do so with mute dignity. No weakness may befall us, not for a second may we waver. We must remain firmly on our feet, even if we bleed from a thousand tears and scratches and the body of our people is riven with countless wounds. Later they will be our scars of honour. Then the nation will bear for all time the face of the warrior.

  The man who wrote that is not some hack, not some propaganda unit reporter, giving vent to his inner warrior poet, no, the article is by no less a figure than Dr Joseph Goebbels and published on 11 February 1945 in the Reich under the headline ‘A People on the Defensive’.

  Lassehn keeps looking attentively at the faces, but he sees nothing there of mute dignity, of the honour of being able to endure the wounds of war and bear its scars, the pride of belonging to a nation of warriors and not one of well-fed, peaceful civilians. He can read nothing in those faces but despair and stubborn defiance, a reluctant flinching from fate, whose shadow is already falling upon them, a wrangling with destiny that refuses to accept defeat. Admittedly they had not at first agreed with the war, they did what they saw as their duty, but their enthusiasm had not been fired. The army columns did not march singing as they did in 1914, accompanied by music and decked with flowers, through the streets to the railway stations, the women and girls did not cheer them as they had back then, and no flags fluttered in the windows. It was still a war that began with an invasion and at first found little resonance on the ground. After the victory over Poland, however, people began to come to terms with the fact of war, and what the authorities had not succeeded in doing, could not have succeeded in doing at the beginning of the war (because everything had been done secretly and in a clandestine fashion, and because even with the most elegant distortion of the facts it could not be turned into a war of self-defence), namely the creation of consensus and a certain amount of enthusiasm, did occur when Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia and Greece fell, military and political success seemed to prove the leaders of the Reich right, and also the rich bounty flowed in from the conquered nations (after the seductive bubble of the pre-war years had left no doubt about the rightness of the National Socialist management of the economy), then people came to agree entirely with the war, it was their cause, they suddenly believed in themselves, and it also seemed wise for them to stick with the winning side.

  When the German Army advanced as far as Moscow, the whole of Europe seemed to have been brought low and Great Britain was seen as a remote island destined for oblivion, then even the last doubters joined in, then the crowd of the just had hopelessly turned into the minority. The great mass of the people stuck with the victors, a gigantic propaganda machine using all the means of lying and mass psychology had left them numbed and immune to outside influences, by making common cause with a criminal gang they had become chained to it for good or ill, chained to it so tightly that its fall must become their fall, retaliation against one was retaliation against both, so that all decisions taken against them were seen not as decisions but as side-effects or the result of the fortunes of war, and finally, when the setbacks started coming thick and fast, they were seen as inescapable fate. For that reason those people also endured all the setbacks which began with the winter battle outside Moscow, continued via Stalingrad, El Alamein and the elimination of the U-Boat force, culminated in the landings in Italy and France, the loss of the Romanian oilfields and the advances on Warsaw, Aachen and Budapest, and finally led to the Elbe and the Oder and to massive daily air raids on the Reich.

  That is the situation of these April days. Even though all predictions have been proved false, hopes repeatedly dashed in spite of all reassurances to the contrary, even though the material superiority of the enemy is in fact all too apparent to be ignored, and their strategy is putting ever-greater pressure on the Reich with deadly certainty, the great mass of the people still refuse to believe in defeat and downfall. Every optimistic word from Goebbels in the Reich, every rumour inspired from above and whispered with significant expressions is greedily received, even now when, at the terminus points of the suburban railways in Erkner, Strausberg and Königs Wusterhausen, with a half-way decent wind they can hear the thunder of cannon at the eastern front. What is this almost grotesque faith based on? Is it only rooted in fear of Bolshevism and the Western democracies?

  Again and again Lassehn studies the faces around him, but he can read nothing in them, the faces are not only hard, they are frozen.

  In Charlottenburg Lassehn leaves the S-Bahn. The station is nothing but a wreck, the roof is covered over and the twisted joists stretch into the air, the structures of the platforms are shattered, the waiting rooms burnt out and destroyed, the whole enterprise is a makeshift operation, and around the station stands a horrific backdrop of ruined houses.

  Lassehn crosses Stuttgarter Platz, from which all life seems to have fled, and walks dazedly into Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse. Scruffy children, squealing wildly, climb over the piles of rubble and into the bomb craters, as nimble as mountain goats on broken walls and barricades, familiar with the colours of the dead city, charcoal-black, rust-red, heedless of the fact that tears and blood, curses and prayers hang over these fields of ruins. War, which once we brought to foreign lands, he thinks, has returned to us like a boomerang and retaliated, it is making us pay for Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry. The terrible logic of a vengeful justice!

  Then he stops in front of a house. Was this not where his wife lived? The white sign with the number has been hit by a ricochet and is now indecipherable, and the houses nearby have been destroyed. Lassehn is still unsure. Was there a bookshop in the building? He can’t remember, he only lived here for a week, after all, at last he decides to go in. When he tries to open the door and puts his hand on the handle, it is pushed back up from inside and thrown violently open. Lassehn quickly steps back.

  A lady comes out of the door, she g
ives Lassehn a fleeting glance and mumbles an apology, then she walks past him. Lassehn stands there paralysed, as if an electric shock has run through him. Was that not Irmgard, his wife? He has to summon all his strength to turn his head and watch after the lady. The figure seems familiar to him, but there are tens of thousands of women and girls in Berlin who look like that. And the way she walks? No, Lassehn doesn’t know how she walks, he has only ever walked beside his wife, there has never been an occasion when she walked in front of him, there is not a single detail that has stayed clearly in his memory. Were Lassehn challenged to confirm that the lady he met on 14 April 1945 at 11 o’clock in the morning in the doorway of number 46 Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse was his wife, he would be unable to deliver such an oath. She does bear a certain resemblance to the image he has vaguely preserved in his head, but no more than that. Does the cause lie in his deficient memory, or has his wife changed so much that he can no longer establish the identity between memory and reality?

  Lassehn stirs himself at last and enters the dark hallway into which not a shimmer of light falls, the front window is boarded up and the light switch doesn’t work, he feels his way towards a door, through the frosted glass of which a faint beam of light penetrates the darkness of the hallway, and knocks. It happens to be the concierge’s lodge.

  A small, squat woman opens the door. ‘Yes, what it is?’ she asks, holding the handle in her hand and apparently determined to get rid of the visitor as quickly as possible.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Lassehn says, ‘does Mrs Lassehn still live in this house?’

  ‘What is her name?’ the concierge asks back.

  ‘Lassehn,’ says Lassehn.

  ‘Doesn’t live here,’ says the woman.

  Lassehn smiles thoughtfully. ‘If she no longer lives here,’ he says in a patient voice, ‘then she used to live here, at least until September 1943.’