Berlin Finale (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Heinz Rein

  ‘What do you want here?’ the SS man launches into Lassehn.

  ‘I want to pay a visit,’ Lassehn replies. ‘Is that forbidden?’

  The SS man looks him contemptuously up and down. ‘Who did you want to visit?’

  ‘Mrs Wiegand, naturally enough,’ Lassehn replies.

  For the first time since Lassehn entered the room Lucie Wiegand moves, she lifts her head and looks at him confusedly, but since she is lying in the shadow of the desk and the room is already growing dark, Lassehn can’t make out her face.

  ‘Great,’ the Untersturmführer says sarcastically, ‘I don’t think there’s anything natural about visiting Mrs Wiegand. We are here to visit Mrs Wiegand as well, except that isn’t as natural for us as it may seem to you.’

  Lassehn gives the SS man a challenging look. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘We ask the questions,’ the SS man reprimands him curtly. ‘Why are you visiting Mrs Wiegand?’

  ‘Because Mrs Wiegand is the mother of one of my schoolmates,’ Lassehn replies, having been prepared for the question. It’s lucky that Klose gave me a bit of background information, Lassehn thinks gratefully. Good old Klose, you’ve really thought of everything.

  Again Lucie Wiegand lifts her head for a few minutes and looks at Lassehn, then she lets her head sink heavily back down on her arms.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asks the SS man.

  ‘Horst Winter.’

  ‘Do you live in Eichwalde?’

  ‘I used to live here.’

  ‘God, how touchingly affectionate,’ the SS man mocks, ‘in spite of the terrible transport conditions the good friend comes from … from where?’

  ‘From Reinickendorf.’

  ‘From Reinickendorf to Eichwalde,’ the Untersturmführer goes on. ‘Touching, when you think about it.’ He turns to the policeman. ‘Do you know this young man, Comrade?’

  The police lieutenant shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t know him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean very much, because I’ve only been in Eichwalde since 1940, and then …’

  ‘That’s fine,’ the SS man says. ‘Of course you know this young man,’ Mrs Wiegand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucie Wiegand says quietly, ‘I know him.’

  ‘Well, we might have expected as much. What was his name again?’ the Untersturmführer says with a mischievous wink.

  ‘Horst Winter,’ Lassehn says quickly.

  The SS officer draws his arm back and slaps Lassehn full in the face with the back of his hand. ‘If you so much as open your trap if no one has asked you to,’ he shouts furiously, ‘you’ll get another of those, but it’ll be a fist next time.’

  Lassehn has staggered backwards. For a fraction of a second he considers hitting back, but only claws his fingernails into the ball of his hand. He might have had a small chance of knocking down the SS thug if he had attacked straight away, but the cop is still there and above all the woman. An attempt to escape wouldn’t just be pointless, it would also be mean to leave that defenceless woman behind in the hands of the bandits.

  ‘Who sent you?’ the SS man asks. Before Lassehn can even open his mouth he adds threateningly, ‘And don’t try to lie to me, or things will get very nasty for you.’

  Lassehn doesn’t reply, and looks cautiously around.

  The SS man has noticed his gaze. ‘You won’t leave this room alive,’ he says, drawing his pistol from his brown-leather holster, ‘if you even think of trying to get away.’

  Lassehn bites his lips, he sees that he has made a mistake, he should have answered, given some names and addresses, shown that he was willing, to weaken the SS man’s determination. He will try to make up for that now, not all at once, and not too conspicuously to avoid arousing suspicion, for the time being he will have to contradict …

  ‘Right then, spill the beans,’ the SS man says in a tone that alternates between threat and advice, ‘we know more than you can imagine.’

  ‘Then you don’t need me,’ Lassehn says stubbornly.

  The SS man inhales audibly, as if he is struggling to keep control of himself. ‘This thing goes off incredibly easily,’ he says and plays with the safety catch of his pistol. ‘Will you speak now?’

  At this Lucie Wiegand raises her head. ‘No,’ she says, ‘no, no, no, he won’t speak.’

  ‘Shut up, you bitch,’ the SS man roars and kicks at her with his foot. ‘Just wait, my turtle dove, they’ll teach you some lovely tunes to sing in Ravensbrück.’

  The bastard, Lassehn thinks. ‘Leave the woman in peace,’ he says, ‘I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘Well then,’ the SS man says. ‘You have more sense than she does. Who sent you to Eichwalde? Wiegand or – Dr Böttcher?’

  Christ, Lassehn thinks, he seems to know all kinds of things. ‘What did you say? Dr Böttcher?’

  ‘That’s right, Dr Böttcher, you heard me correctly.’

  ‘I don’t know him,’ Lassehn shrugs.

  The SS man comes right up to Lassehn and presses the muzzle of the pistol to his body. ‘If you think you can fool me, you’ve made a big mistake,’ he says darkly. ‘Who else sent you?’

  ‘Someone called Richter,’ Lassehn replies, and looks at the gun. The safety catch is on, he thinks, he’s been playing around with it for so long that in the end he’s forgotten to take the catch off. Strange, the cop is completely passive, he’s standing there as if none of this has anything to do with him. If I started shooting, would I have to kill him as well?

  ‘Where is Richter?’

  Lassehn replies and shrugs, ‘I’ve always met him somewhere else.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘Somewhere in the Prälat dance hall, or at Wollermann’s on Alexanderplatz.’

  ‘And Wiegand was there too?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  The SS man pulls the pistol back a little and looks at Lassehn with a frown. ‘And where does Wiegand live?’

  Lucie Wiegand sits up. ‘Don’t tell him,’ she exclaims. ‘You mustn’t give anything away.’

  The SS man takes a step backwards and half turns towards Lucie Wiegand. ‘Wait, you damned cunt!’ he cries furiously, lifts his pistol and is about to beat her with the buttstock.

  Then a violent kick from Lassehn catches him and knocks him down, at the same time Lassehn pulls his revolver out of his trouser pocket and shoots three times at the SS man, then he turns round and points his gun at the police lieutenant. ‘Hands up!’ he shouts. ‘If you put up the slightest resistance I’ll shoot you down, just like him.’

  The police lieutenant is taken completely by surprise and immediately raises his hands.

  Lassehn walks around the desk and glances at the SS man. ‘He’s gone,’ he says, surprised that his own voice sounds so relaxed. Strange duplicity of events, never in his life has he deliberately killed anyone, and now over two evenings he has finished off two men, but what made him agitated yesterday leaves him quite cold today.

  ‘Go and stand in the corner right now,’ he orders the police lieutenant, ‘with your face to the wall. I’ll shoot if you don’t follow each instruction to the letter.’

  The policeman walks heavily into the corner and stands against the wall with his hands up. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asks, his voice quivering.

  ‘I just want to get us to safety, that’s all,’ Lassehn says, he goes up to the lieutenant and takes the pistol from his holster, then walks back into the room and attends to Lucie Wiegand. ‘Stand up, please, madam,’ he says and puts his gun down on the desk. ‘Pack a bag or two right now, you can’t stay here.’

  Lucie Wiegand stands in front of Lassehn, small and delicate, she barely reaches his shoulder, and gives him a long and urgent look. ‘Thank you,’ she says, reaching for his hand.

  Lassehn hastily withdraws his hand.

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ he says, embarrassed, ‘let’s not waste time on gratitude and sentimental gestures, we need to hurry so that we can get away from here as quickly as possible
. Meanwhile I’m going to lock this one’ – he points at the policeman – ‘in the cellar. Will you show me where it is?’

  Lucie Wiegand nods. ‘The back door leads to the cellar,’ she says. ‘Kiepert was always very decent to me,’ she adds with a pleading note in her voice.

  ‘Come on,’ Lassehn says to the policeman, ‘I won’t tie you up and gag you if you stay calm, but I have to lock you in the cellar for our personal safety.’

  The policeman turns round, his face is pale grey, his upper lip trembles as if he were freezing. He glances at the SS man, who is lying crookedly by the door he was guarding.

  ‘Come on, we have no time,’ Lassehn says impatiently and pushes the door open. ‘And I repeat that you will get three bullets in your body just like him if you try to make a fuss. Do we understand each other?’

  ‘Yes,’ the lieutenant says quietly, and stands uncertainly by the corpse of the SS man.

  ‘Go,’ Lassehn says. ‘Or haven’t you seen a corpse before?’

  The policeman says nothing and steps over the body, his shoulders slumped, his arms dangling loosely and his head bowed.

  As they go down the cellar steps, Lassehn says again, ‘I warn you not to attract attention until we have left the house.’

  The policeman stops in the cellar door. ‘I’d rather you shot me,’ he says weakly. ‘Or do you think I can go on working after something like this?’

  ‘I don’t care about your work,’ Lassehn says curtly. ‘As far as I’m concerned you can say that an armed gang attacked the house, or come up with some other kind of cops-and-robbers story. Now, in you go.’

  The policeman still hesitates. ‘How can you imagine that …’ he begins.

  Lassehn isn’t listening any more, he gives the policeman a shove and shuts the cellar door, bolts it and turns the key in the lock. ‘That’s him taken care of,’ he says, and smiles at Lucie Wiegand.

  She returns his smile. ‘A good job well done.’

  Lassehn waves her praise away. ‘I hope it wasn’t a mistake not to shoot the cop as well,’ he says reflectively as they come back up the cellar steps. ‘At any rate, let us hurry, madam.’

  ‘Enough of the “madam”,’ Lucie Wiegand says simply, ‘I’ve never expected that form of address, and in the present circumstances it sounds like sarcasm.’ She shakes her head. ‘Where are you going to take me? I don’t even know where you’re coming from and who sent you.’

  Lassehn laughs faintly.

  ‘That’s right, we haven’t talked about it, or had a chance to talk about it, the unusual situation dragged me into a kind of whirlpool, so that I didn’t even introduce myself.’

  They climb the steps side by side.

  ‘My name is Joachim Lassehn.’

  ‘And I’m Lucie Wiegand.’

  They swap names like greetings, without bowing, without nodding, without phrases like ‘allow me’ and ‘pleasure to meet you’, everything is done quite naturally and in a comradely fashion.

  ‘But now you must tell me, Mr Lassehn …’ Lucie Wiegand begins.

  ‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ Lassehn says hastily, ‘but time is marching on, we have to get out of here as quickly as possible, I’ll happily tell you everything you need to know afterwards.’

  Lucie Wiegand nods. ‘You’re right,’ she says, ‘but I’m ready to travel right now, my air-raid suitcases are always packed.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Lassehn says, ‘the quicker we get away from here the better, because I don’t know if that man down there will try to make a noise, and I would like to …’ Lassehn pauses and looks uncertainly at the little woman, who now walks to the door and opens it.

  I don’t want to have to shoot another one, he wanted to say, but he keeps the words to himself, they might sound as if they meant, or be interpreted as meaning, that it was a habit of his to kill people and talk about it in the cold-blooded, thoughtless manner of a National Socialist thug. Lassehn knows how much of an effort it was for him yesterday to shoot the Nazi block warden when he killed a human being for the first time without being ordered to do so, and even today, when the pure instinct of self-defence and the protection of a vulnerable woman had forced the gun into his hand, the death of this unknown Untersturmführer didn’t leave him entirely indifferent. This SS officer – thug though he might be – was also a human being, who had emerged from his mother’s womb, who had a short while ago still breathed and moved and spoken, and now … Damned sentimentality, Lassehn thinks in self-rebuke. What did he say when he spoke, and how did he move? Do you really need to justify yourself?

  Lucie Wiegand touches him on the shoulder. ‘Hello, Mr Lassehn,’ she says and looks into his face with concern. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  Lassehn awakens as if from a dream. ‘I’m sorry, my thoughts were …’ elsewhere, he wanted to say, but it isn’t true, he was here with them, in the room whose door is wide open, where the man in the grey uniform lies motionless.

  ‘I’ll just pack a few things in a little suitcase,’ Lucie Wiegand says. ‘But tell me one thing quickly. What’s happening to my husband?’

  ‘Your husband is healthy and cheerful,’ Lassehn replies, ‘but he had to get away from Lebuser Strasse. He sent me to Eichwalde to bring you news.’ Lucie Wiegand’s face brightens suddenly. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘And now …’ Her footsteps, which had dragged slightly a moment before, suddenly quicken.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Lassehn asks.

  ‘No,’ Lucie Wiegand says and blushes slightly, ‘I just want to pack a few personal things quickly.’ She pauses and frowns. ‘Or rather,’ she adds, ‘you could bring up the two suitcases under the cellar steps. Will you do that?’

  ‘Of course,’ Lassehn says eagerly.

  While Lucie Wiegand enters the room, Lassehn stands motionless in the hallway for a few seconds. There was something else he wanted to bring … right, that was it. He climbs over the corpse into the room and picks up the Untersturmführer’s pistol. This might come in useful, he thinks

  ‘Mrs Wiegand,’ he says and knocks on the door, ‘have you got room for the two pistols in your suitcase? We might need them urgently.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lucie Wiegand replies, and takes the two pistols. She flinches slightly at the touch of the cold steel and turns quickly away. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she says and shuts the door behind her.

  Lassehn immediately reproaches himself for having stirred unnecessary emotions with the sight and touch of the guns.

  The house is very still, the only sound a rustle from the room where Lucie Wiegand is packing her suitcase. Nothing can be heard from the cellar.

  Lassehn climbs down the cellar steps deliberately slowly and listens at the cellar door. The policeman is being very quiet, there isn’t a footstep to be heard. Lassehn finds the two suitcases under the cellar steps and carries them up to the hallway.

  At that moment Lucie Wiegand appears in the doorway, she has put on a coat, tied a brightly coloured headscarf around her head, and is carrying a dark-brown leather suitcase. ‘We can go, Mr Lassehn,’ she says. Her voice is quite calm, without a trace of excitement, she says it as casually as if she were telling him to go from one room into another.

  Lassehn picks up the two suitcases again, he pauses for a moment and looks furtively at Lucie Wiegand’s face. Terrible, he thinks, now this woman has to leave her house to go into the unknown. Everything her heart is fond of stays behind, small and unremarkable things, perhaps, but things that mean a lot in a woman’s life. Things she has grown with over many years, which are part of herself, and which she herself is now excising with the sharp blade of compulsory renunciation.

  ‘What are you still waiting for?’ Lucie Wiegand asks, and turns to look him in the eye.

  An admirable woman, Lassehn thinks, and feels a great wave of respect and tenderness rising up in him, that upright posture, that resolute quality in her face, that clear gaze, even though she may be hurt and agitated below the surface. ‘Yes, let’s go,’
he says.

  By the time they leave the house the darkness is almost complete, they cross the garden and leave the property by the rear entrance. When they reach the adjacent forest, Lucie Wiegand stops for a heartbeat and looks back. Her house stands out like a silhouette in the darkening sky, loomed over by the tall, swaying shadows of the trees. Then she pulls herself resolutely away, and they disappear into the darkness of the forest.

  XXI

  16 April, 7.30 p.m.

  Before Wiegand enters a house he first tends to observe its surroundings very closely. So he carefully lets his eyes wander around the northern side of the Frankfurter Allee as he approaches Dr Böttcher’s house in the late afternoon.

  The street isn’t very busy, the Frankfurter Allee came to an end under a few violent and well-aimed blows from the British-American Air Forces, shops don’t exist here any more.

  There are only a few individual flats, and the street has forfeited its status as one of the city’s principal thoroughfares, since its once-bright and shiny asphalt skin is filled with bumps and holes; it is a part of that Berlin whose face, in Dr Goebbels’ words, bears heroic features because it bleeds from many wounds.

  On the promenade, diagonally opposite house number 14, workers are busy temporarily closing the damaged roof of the tunnel of the underground and removing the loose wires dangling from the overhead tramlines. On the edge of the crater a man stands watching the workers. Something about the man’s appearance seems familiar to Wiegand, that slightly loutish way of standing around, with the hands deep in the trouser pockets and the felt hat tilted slightly back towards the back of the neck, that almost imperceptible and yet unmistakeable attitude of tense expectation in the posture …

  The man looks as if he is watching the workers with interest, but his eye keeps jumping to the pavement where there is nothing to be seen but the familiar view of the ruins, apart from house number 14, with a sign with a few words written in black letters on what had once been white enamel: