Berlin Finale (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Heinz Rein

  ‘Elisabeth Mattner,’ the lady says and smiles approvingly at him.

  The two gentlemen also say their names, but Lassehn doesn’t hear them, and he isn’t interested in them anyway, but he greedily absorbs the fact that the lady’s first name is Elisabeth. It’s always been like that when he’s met a girl, he isn’t able to rest until he knows her first name. You can’t do anything with a surname, it sounds wooden and always formal, absolutely impersonal, but a first name is music, it can be varied, you can let tenderness, longing and hope flow into a first name, you can dream of a first name, you can whisper it, and this lady’s first name is Elisabeth.

  The red-faced man still won’t leave him in peace. ‘It’s very strange for a young man like you to be running around in civilian clothes,’ he says doggedly.

  Now that Lassehn knows the lady is on his side, he grows bold. ‘Do I owe you an account of myself?’ he asks.

  ‘Bravo!’ cries the lady. ‘You tell him!’

  The other man’s face turns even redder, a vein in his temple swells fat and blue. ‘I wouldn’t mind having you arrested,’ he hisses through his teeth, and a menacingly flickering light appears in his eyes, wide with hate.

  Lassehn wants to put his revolver on the table the way he did yesterday afternoon at Klose’s, but of course that is out of the question here. Stay calm, he whispers to himself, stay quite calm, you can only get yourself out of this situation with calm and impudence, not by being soft and yielding. ‘And what good would that do you?’ he asks.

  The man with the horn-rimmed spectacles, who has taken a newspaper down from the hook and been reading it, tries to intervene. ‘Let’s not argue, or our food won’t taste nice,’ he says. ‘I’m sure you have papers, Mr Lassehn, show them to us and everything will be fine.’

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ the lady hisses at the red-faced man before Lassehn can say anything. ‘Don’t do anything of the sort, Mr Lassehn, you don’t need to.’

  ‘Jealous? Ridiculous!’ the red-faced man says, his mouth twisted. ‘And by the way, don’t poke your nose into matters that don’t …’

  At that critical moment the waiter brings their food, he serves them slightly awkwardly and asks if things have gone quickly enough.

  Lassehn sighs with relief, at least he has gained some time. As he eats he realizes what the lady, this woman Elisabeth, has just said: the red-faced man is jealous! Jealous? Of him? Until now he had interpreted the lady’s attitude as one of general, impersonal friendliness. Might it be more than that? Didn’t they only get to know each other an hour ago? Get to know each other? That’s putting it strongly, they walked a little way together, that’s all. So it can’t be friendship. And love? Of course it can’t be love, love doesn’t look like that, love grows out of a gentle seed, love is quiet and peace, loneliness and pain, but this woman Elisabeth is jolly and disputatious, no soul has appeared in her eyes. Lassehn racks his brain as he eats his soup, but he can find no explanation, because he doesn’t know that there is also an animal lust that requires only the body and nothing else.

  Suddenly he feels something touching his foot, he looks carefully under the table and sees that the lady’s right foot is resting close beside his left one. It could be chance that her foot is touching his, he tries to take his foot back, but he is so confused that he presses his foot against hers, and then he feels the counter-pressure. Even though it is foolish to assume that the warmth of her foot is communicating itself to his, because she is wearing coarse skiing-boots and he is wearing solid knee-length boots, a hot shock runs through him, as if she had touched his body with her hand. Lassehn studies her face over the edge of his plate, but her face hasn’t changed, it bears the same nonchalant expression as before, perhaps with a little extra hint of excitement.

  But right now his attention is claimed by the food, he consumes it with the concentration and gratitude of one who hasn’t had a proper meal for weeks, he has to control himself not to wolf down his soup at speed, and not gulp the vegetable dish with the aromatic potatoes in one great bite, but even though he is holding back, he has finished long before the others. The meal has created a certain distance between him and his adversary, the red-faced man, but the end of it diminishes him again, he feels the red-faced man constantly staring at him, and hides behind the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, which he spreads out in front of him. His eye falls on an article about the new air-raid warning technology.

  The consequence of the military development is that enemy planes cannot, as before, be registered a long time before they fly into the Berlin alert network. Because the front line is so close by, the time between the start of the air-raid warning and the arrival of enemy planes over the Reich capital has become shorter. The military agencies responsible are doing everything they can to ensure that the period between the start of the air-raid warning and the start of hostilities is no less than ten minutes. Particularly at night, all technical possibilities are exploited to ensure that the air-raid warning is started in time. Understandably, the closeness of the front line has led to more frequent warnings, since fighter aircraft are able to enter the Berlin alert zone more frequently.

  He gets no further, because the red-faced man addresses him again.

  ‘You seem to be extremely hungry, young man,’ he says casually, and there is something like a smile on his face, but it doesn’t look real, a malicious gleam in the back of his eyes reveals that he has drawn the smile over his hostile intentions like a curtain.

  Lassehn doesn’t respond, and lights the last of the five cigarettes that Klose gave him for his journey that morning.

  ‘At least you seem to be well supplied with cigarettes,’ the red-faced man continues to probe, he has finished his meal and pushes his plate far away from him, as if he needs room for the argument that is beginning.

  Lassehn goes on smoking his cigarette, the thoughts chasing around in his brain. If only he knew how to escape this unpleasant red-faced fellow without at the same time losing his connection with this woman Elisabeth. ‘What do you actually want from me?’ Lassehn asks and frowns with displeasure, he can still feel the pressure of Elisabeth’s foot against his, and that boosts his confidence.

  The red-faced man rests both forearms on the table and looks keenly at Lassehn. ‘There’s just one thing I’d like to say to you, young man,’ he says slowly, emphasizing every word. ‘There are all kinds of rogues wandering about in Berlin at the moment, deserters, saboteurs, spies, the communists are suddenly very active again, and the Jews are getting cheeky again …’

  ‘You exaggerate, sir,’ says the man with the horn-rimmed glasses, ‘it isn’t as bad as that.’

  ‘What do you know?’ the red-faced man says, spinning round. ‘The danger must not be underestimated, and that is why it is the duty of every decent German to make all suspicious and unreliable elements harmless, and any ways and means for doing that are acceptable.’

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses narrows his eyes. ‘You don’t need to lecture me about the duties of a decent German,’ he says excitedly.

  ‘Opinions differ about what constitutes decency …’ the red-faced man begins.

  ‘Certainly!’ says the man with the horn-rimmed glasses. ‘But if being an informer is considered decent …’

  Now the red-faced man turns round to face him squarely. ‘I reject that term completely,’ he says threateningly. ‘It seems that I will have to take an interest not only in this young man, but also in you.’

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses crumples visibly. Lassehn realizes that he has said too much in the heat of the moment, that he would like to take back his words or at least water them down retrospectively, because he knows as well as anyone else that behind everyone today who appeals to the sovereignty of state there is a consistently brutal power that crushes everything that might stand in its way or hamper it. It is easy for anyone who wishes to get rid of an enemy, out of hatred, jealousy, revenge, envy, an interest in profits, wounded pride or simp
ly a delight in doing evil, to see to it that they perish.

  ‘You misunderstand me, my dear sir,’ the man with the horn-rimmed glasses says, ‘you misunderstand me fundamentally.’

  Lassehn is aware of a stale taste in his mouth. The man with the horn-rimmed spectacles is doubtless a decent citizen in his private life, blameless and in all likelihood efficient at his job, but he is a weak character who ducks immediately when someone else clenches his fist, who allows cruelty and injustice to happen and salves his conscience with the commonest of all excuses, that he couldn’t change anything.

  ‘So?’ the red-faced man says slowly. ‘As a rule I understand very well. When the enemies of our Reich, which we have sacrificed so much to defend, now believe that their time has come, they are thoroughly mistaken. My opinion is not crucial, and I don’t want to use it to tip the scales, but I recommend that you read the most recent article by Dr Goebbels in the Reich and the leading article by Dr Ley in the Nachtausgabe …’

  ‘Quite right,’ the man with the horn-rimmed glasses says eagerly, ‘the article “Without Luggage” was particularly …’

  The red-faced man looks at him with contempt. ‘So do you think that men like Dr Goebbels and Dr Ley,’ he goes on, ‘could write with such expressive force and such bravura if they were not themselves convinced of the absolute rightness of their words?’

  Oh God, Lassehn thinks, sitting here and having to listen to all this and not being able to say a word, not simply to be able to stand up and say, ‘Animals! Idiots! Cursed fools!’, oh how pitiful and craven we have become, how have we been put in fetters, how have our tongues been stilled and then our brains jammed, our character bowed and our manly confidence broken, while cowardice and hypocrisy have thrived, how shabby our character has become.

  Now the lady joins the argument for the first time. ‘There I must agree with fatso,’ she says, ‘even though the situation looks rather difficult at present, it will soon change.’ She lowers her voice to a mysterious whisper. ‘I know from a very reliable source that over the next few days we will be deploying our V-3, and then …’ She doesn’t finish the sentence, but there is in her voice a tone of confidence and hope, and her eyes gaze into the distance, as if she could already see the German armies back at the Volga and the Atlantic.

  ‘You can’t believe how much we are all waiting for that, my dear lady,’ the man with the horn-rimmed spectacles says immediately, almost rolling his eyes.

  You cowardly bastard, Lassehn thinks furiously, if you can’t say what you mean then at least keep your trap shut, but don’t just pretend, to let this fat fool give you an alibi.

  ‘A little while ago I didn’t have the impression that you were such a good National Socialist,’ the red-faced man says, still suspicious. ‘Your statements before were very … well, let’s call them incautious.’

  ‘I am infinitely sorry if you have gained a false impression of me, sir.’ The man with the horn-rimmed spectacles practically writhes with willingness to please.

  But the red-faced man is no longer listening, his attention has suddenly fled, neither is it focused now on Lassehn, but on two men who have just come in through the revolving door and are walking along the passage in the middle. An excited, evil expression appears in his eyes, Lassehn follows that expression and stares at the men, but he can’t see anything striking about them, unless it’s that they look a little foreign, like Italians or Hungarians. As they pass Lassehn’s table, the red-faced man is practically bouncing up and down with excitement, his hands are firmly pressed to his fat thighs and his head is drawn in between his shoulders as if ready to strike.

  ‘What’s up with you, fatso?’ the lady asks and watches after the two men as they sit down at the last table in the furthest corner of the restaurant.

  ‘If they aren’t Jews I’m a Bantu Negro,’ the red-faced man replies without taking his eyes off the two men. ‘I’ll teach them to walk around without their star and play the Aryan. Curse them, that gang of bandits!’

  Lassehn claws his fingernails painfully deep into the balls of his hand. He has had as much sympathy for Jews as he has had antipathy, as indeed he has for other people. He has never transferred that antipathy to the generality and sympathy to the individuals who seemed worthy of it. Since he is used to making his assessments and judgements on music and the term ‘Jew’ only assumed concrete form when he was almost thrown out of his grammar school for playing a Mendelssohn scherzo as an encore after thunderous applause in a school concert, he has always felt that universal defamation to be particularly contemptible. For a few seconds he hears within him that Mendelssohn E minor scherzo, which begins with a few staccato notes before moving into sparkling runs of sublime purity, but he can’t take the melody to its conclusion and is dragged painfully back to earth.

  The red-faced man has risen to his feet and pushed his chair noisily back. ‘I’ll teach those two,’ he says firmly. ‘Will you join me?’ he asks the man with the horn-rimmed spectacles.

  The man with the horn-rimmed spectacles nods eagerly, but gets up only hesitantly from his chair.

  ‘Are we authorized?’ he asks cautiously.

  ‘Every German is authorized,’ the red-faced man replies gruffly. ‘Or do you want to issue an arrest warrant, or ask somebody or other for permission? They’re fair game! But if you’re afraid … please do!’

  ‘No, of course not,’ the man with the horn-rimmed spectacles says hastily, ‘of course I’m at your disposal.’

  ‘So, why not do it straight away?’ the red-faced man says and smiles crookedly. ‘Let’s go!’

  Lassehn’s hand twitches towards his revolver, but he pulls it back, it’s pointless, he wouldn’t be able to help the two Jews, he himself would go down with them, because the restaurant has filled up in the meantime, and there are lots of SS officers and a few NCOs among the guests. He feels wretched when he sees them both approaching the last table, but then he is distracted.

  ‘Come on, Mr Lassehn,’ the lady says, getting to her feet and hastily buttoning up her suit jacket. ‘Let’s go, then we won’t get involved in whatever those two are up to.’

  Lassehn gets slowly to his feet, he sees the red-faced man and the man with the horn-rimmed spectacles approaching the last table, but he can’t make out what is said, the hubbub of voices in the restaurant is too loud.

  ‘Come on, hurry up,’ the lady urges. ‘What does it have to do with us? Don’t you fancy walking alone with me?’

  Even though Lassehn inwardly feels a part of the scene in the background, because instead of the two Jews it could just as easily have been him, the deserter Joachim Lassehn, his face flushes when he sees the lady’s red mouth, which is slightly open in a promise of pleasure. He presses some money into the hand of the waiter, who has noticed that they are about to leave, and follows the lady as she walks quickly towards the revolving door, he turns round one last time but he can’t make anything out.

  Then the revolving door receives him and he is standing with the lady in Potsdamer Strasse.

  XI

  15 April, 8.00 p.m.

  By the time Lassehn gets back to Klose’s place near Silesian Station dusk has already fallen, the time when the declining day and the ascending night meet briefly. Lassehn is somehow invigorated, he has taken his first steps in Berlin, admittedly quite uncertain and hesitant steps, guided by chance, if one can see an air-raid warning, a humane old woman and a woman’s enticingly red mouth as chance. But steps they were, and a child making its first attempts to walk and keeping its balance against its swaying surroundings could not be more delighted. He is absolutely clear that fortune has favoured him, and from the solid ground beneath his feet to the all-engulfing abyss it was but a short step.

  Because it’s Sunday, Klose hasn’t opened his restaurant, and on the shop door, which is closed with a sliding grille, there hangs a sign: ‘Beer sold out’. Lassehn has to walk down the dark hallway, and collides with a man who is walking down the hallway from the co
urtyard and almost knocks him over. Lassehn has a ripe curse on the tip of his tongue, but he keeps it to himself, chat and back-chat can lead to arguments, and Lassehn must avoid everything that might make him stand out, for good or ill. So he reacts with neither words nor deeds, but continues on his way across the courtyard into the side building that contains the rear entrance to Klose’s restaurant.

  ‘Ah, the global traveller,’ Klose greets him as he opens the door.

  ‘Didn’t quite work,’ Lassehn says while they are still on the stairs, ‘I …’

  ‘Not here, my boy,’ Klose interrupts him. ‘Come in first. The walls have ears,’ Klose says when he is sitting at the table with Lassehn, ‘you’ve always got to remember that, but now tell me what’s been happening.’

  ‘I’ve experienced a lot of things, Mr Klose,’ Lassehn replies, ‘but the important one was …’

  ‘What about your young woman?’ Klose interrupts and winks with a smile. ‘Didn’t she take you into her bed?’

  Lassehn tells him, haltingly, constantly searching for words to circumscribe what he has to say, he doesn’t want to lie, but neither does he want to admit the truth, which strikes him as humiliating.

  Even though Klose is aware that Lassehn is keeping something from him, he doesn’t press him. ‘So it actually happened as you suspected it would,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘You didn’t recognize each other. So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘I absolutely have to speak to her,’ Lassehn replies. ‘After all, she is my wife, I have rights to her and she to me, and besides … there’s also something that absolutely needs clearing up.’ Lassehn is thinking about the child that was already alive in Irmgard when he met her, and which later mysteriously disappeared.

  ‘So you want to stay with me for the time being?’ Klose asks. ‘Or what were your plans?’

  Lassehn stares stiffly at the ground in front of him. ‘If it’s possible, Mr Klose,’ he says hesitantly, ‘I would like to stay with you.’