by Elly Welt
I reached for her hand. She jerked it away.
“Tanya, listen to me. Professor Kreutzer said I will be best off to follow the orders. He has checked it out—made phone calls. I’ll be all right.”
“My God, that’s what they all say. No! You must run! We will go to my parents.”
“What do you think would happen to me if I got caught? What do you think they’d do to the Chief and the others here if I should disappear? No! I trust Professor Kreutzer’s judgment. As far as I am concerned, he has never been wrong.”
“And me? Don’t you trust me? What of me? What have I done? What have I done?” She threw herself face down on the bed, sobbing.
I sat beside her and put my hand on her back.
“I am nothing to you,” she sobbed, shaking my head away. “You are self-centered, selfish, and not honorable.”
“Listen, Tanya. It’s early, two o’clock or so. Maybe we can find someone to marry us this afternoon. We can get married if you want.”
Mottled red face, snuffling nose, she sat up. “There isn’t time, and you know it. Besides, it would draw attention to us. We can’t do that.”
The offer mollified her enough that she let me put my arm around her, but there was no molding into the curve. We sat rigidly. Her ear was near my mouth. I dared not even kiss it. My hand was near the green ribbon, tied in a simple bow. I pulled it; the hair released itself, slowly, to its fullness.
Ah, there it was. She sprang from the bed, shaking her mane, and it flew free and cascaded wildly. Her eyes narrowed as though against the sun, her nostrils were dilated, teeth bared, hands on hips, skirt swirling. Fire! But just for an instant.
“Is that all you think of?” she screamed, throwing her head forward to collect her hair in one hand, then braiding, furiously, tying it with a plain white string and winding it tight around her head, not even allowing it to fall across her breast like a crossbow. I stood to leave.
“Good-bye, Tanya. Maybe while I’m gone the Chief would again permit you to use Mitzka’s balalaika to keep you company.”
The little atom looks around him and knows one day he’ll emit a quant or two and be altered, but he doesn’t know when, and does it make any difference why? Until that time, he can wander here or there, no matter how many statistical studies are run on the number of atoms apt to take the 6:30 a.m. train from Hagen to Friedrichstrasse on a Tuesday morning in early January. It cannot be known if our little atom will or will not be on the aforementioned train; however, if he has in his pocket a form letter such as I had in mine, it is easier to assume he will.
Labor Office Berlin.
Berlin, 7,I,45.
Dept. II, 4. Operation: Mixed-Blood.
NOTICE OF OBLIGATION
according to the order of the deputy of the four years plan in order to secure forces for tasks of special political significance to the State, from February 13, 1939, Reich Publications Law I, p. 206, and the Obligation Execution Order of March 2, 1939, same issue, p. 403.
Occupation according to labor book: lab technician
Citizenship: German Reich
Herrn: Josef Leopold Bernhardt
Born: 15, VIII, 26 in Berlin.
Address: Gartenfeld, Kastanien Strasse 95
You must report at 8:00 a.m. on the 9th day of January 1945, to I. G. Farben Co., in Lichtenberg, as a Manual Auxiliary Laborer.
LABOR DEPARTMENT. BERLIN
[signature]
DISTRIBUTION:
1. To the obliged one.
2. To the receiving company.
3. To the contribution company, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Berlin-Hagen.
WHAT IS SAID ON THE BACK OF THIS FORM IS TO BE NOTICED!
FOR NOTICE! You have to report as specified. You are obliged to follow this order in every case even if you protest it. The service begins with the stated time. The time of employment is as specified. The employing company has already made the contract and cannot refuse you employment. Employment can only be changed with the consent of the Office of Labor. You are on leave of holiday from your previous employment. You cannot be discharged or fired from your previous employment without consent of the Office of Labor. You may be entitled, if separated from dependent family, to separation payment to aid said family. Put in application. You are entitled to compensation given you. If you previously were insured, then insurance should continue. Take with you your papers and this notice of obligation so as not to delay employment. The original of this notice is only for the obliged one and no one is entitled to use it but the obliged one. NON-FOLLOWING OF THIS NOTICE OF OBLIGATION OR INFRACTION AGAINST THE OBLIGATION TO WORK IS PUNISHABLE BY JAIL AND FINES! THE LATTER WITH LIMIT, OR WITH ONE OF THESE PUNISHMENTS (Second Order for Four Years Plan, N4,I, p. 936).
I was on the 6:30 train the next morning, Tuesday, from Hagen to Friedrichstrasse, where I transferred to another train for the suburb of Lichtenberg, which is on the eastern periphery of the city. I had with me a small satchel with changes of clothing and, in my pocket, a tube of Veronal tablets.
When I left Tatiana in her rage the day before, I’d gone directly to the Rare Earths Laboratory, where certain poisonous substances were kept along with the rare earth elements, alkaloids, and radioactive material. Theoretically, it was all under lock and key, but actually the cupboard I wanted was not locked; there was the symbol of a skull and crossbones pasted to the door. On the jar of Veronal was a warning: Use of Veronal should be discouraged in favor of a barbiturate less potent, shorter-acting, with noncumulative effects.
The Roumanian Biologist George Treponesco—who was in charge of Rare Earths now—said nothing as I shook twenty tablets into my hand and put them in a small tube, which I stoppered at both ends with cotton. He was still infatuated with Tatiana. In any case, he shook my hand and wished me good luck. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad person after all, or maybe he was hoping I would take the Veronal.
I should have taken a later train than the 6:30, for I arrived at 7:29 and stood outside the gate of I. G. Farben for half an hour looking through the barbed-wire fence at the huge complex: two large factories, several smaller buildings, and an acre of temporary structures—Nissen Hütten—of one floor each.
At exactly 7:59, one hand in my pocket clutching the tube of Veronal, the other holding the satchel and my papers, I approached the entrance. There were guards at this gate, but they waved me on without even looking at my papers. I, however, stopped and asked one of them where I was to go. He read the summons and directed me to Building 7, a temporary hut not far from the gate. Outside the door of Building 7 stood a man in a white lab coat.
“Bernhardt?” he said.
I nodded.
He walked away as I entered the building.
The official at the desk was polite. I presented him with my summons, and he gave me forms to fill out for employment, taxes, and insurance. While I was writing, the man in the white lab coat came into the room and began to complain to the official.
“My laboratory assistant was taken away two months ago—two months! And you promised you would find me some help. How do you expect me, alone, to keep up with all the lab work for the entire factory?” He left without so much as glancing at me.
When I returned the completed forms, the official said, “You are to sleep in Building Twenty-seven; you are to eat in Building Ten; you will be working for Dr Schmidt in the laboratory in the Administration Building. You will have off every other Wednesday”—he consulted a calendar, looked up at me, and smiled—“starting tomorrow.” He handed me back my papers!
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.” He smiled at me again.
“Do I have to take the day off tomorrow?”
“Yes, but you can stay in the barracks, or there are day rooms with libraries, radios, and you are most welcome to use them.”
I stood and bowed to him. “Thank you very much.”
My good Lord, how on earth could I go back to the Institute the next day after the tears and fare
wells the day before? After I’d picked up the Veronal, I’d gone to the greenhouse to see if there were any flowers. There were not, but Gunther the gardener gave me some leafy sunflower plants, not blooming yet, which were grown to feed Bolotnikov’s ladybugs, and I borrowed from Gunther a pair of white gardening gloves. Then I returned to Tatiana. The Chief had sent over a bottle of real wine, Sonja had baked a cake with real sugar and eggs, and they’d given us a rabbit and all.
During the meal, we listened to the news and music on the new Allied Station—Soldiers Transmitter West. Tatiana would not touch even a drop of the wine, but she did eat some. And after our dinner, when a mellow Glenn Miller began on the Allied Station, I put on the white gloves, stood, bowed as I had been taught in Dancing and Social Behavior Class, and presented her with the green bouquet.
She took the sunflower plants but would not dance with me. Her hair still was braided tight around her head, and she still was weeping. So I finished off the rest of the wine, plus vodka, drank myself senseless, fell into bed, and awakened in a sweat from the dream.
No, in my fantasy, I could picture a return to Tatiana the very next day. Besides, I did not want to talk to anyone. I was very tired, and I did not want to talk.
The man in the white lab coat whom I’d seen at the entrance to Building 7, and again when he came in to argue about a lab assistant, was waiting outside the building for me. “I am Dr Wilhelm Friedrich Schmidt. I am a physicist. You will be working with me. Do you know anything at all of polymerization?”
“Nothing.” I walked beside him across the compound.
“I hear you know a lot about electricity. You can tell me about it.”
My dear Lord, Professor Kreutzer’s umbrella still covered me.
The Administration Building was red brick and looked like my high school. The lab was old-fashioned: high ceilings, gothic windows, square wooden worktables. There was a very clean bathroom with a shower. The factory produced perlon fibers, and the job of this lab was to measure the viscosity of the polymers and the tear resistance of monofilaments. It took less than an hour a day to do this, and after Schmidt showed me how, he didn’t do anything at all but smoke and talk and, more or less, continue my education for the brief time I was there.
That first day he gave me books to read, and because he hadn’t anything else to do, he made up a formal written examination to quiz me on what I had read. Stupid.
EXAMINATION
I. G. Farben Corp.,
By: Dr W. F. Schmidt
Lichtenberg II, I, 45.
For: J. Bernhardt
Subject: Polymerization
1. Why do we measure the viscosity of resins? (Discuss the relationship between degree of polymerization, length of chain, and viscosity.)
2. Why do we measure tear resistance and stretchability of monofilaments?
3. Describe the influence of temperature upon the viscosity of liquids. Consult the article by Andradi in Nature, V. 125, p. 582, 1920.
4. Describe the difference (temp.) of the Du Pont Nylon and our product.
5. Discuss the electrical properties of thermoplastics in great detail.
Ha! The last question was because he really didn’t know and was too lazy to read up on it himself. Professor Kreutzer never questioned me on what I’d read. Nor did the Chief. But since I had nothing else to do, I wrote out elaborate answers for three days—he said it was all right if I studied in the lab on my day off—until I was so bored I asked Schmidt if he would like me to make the entire operation of measuring the viscosity completely automatic.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” he said.
The viscosimeter was a long tube filled with the hot, syrupy stuff. One dropped a steel ball and timed its trip through the tube; in short, one measured how long it took to sink to the bottom. I began to figure out how to measure the drop of the steel ball electrically, so we wouldn’t have to watch it and time it, which would give us both absolutely nothing to do. The tear-resistant test took no time at all—one merely tied weights to a thread of determined length and weight to ascertain how much it stretched and when it tore.
I had just begun to assemble the equipment to make an automatic viscosimeter when someone must have denounced me—perhaps a loyal Nazi in the personnel office took a good look at my forms, or maybe one of the other workers resented my privileged position. I received another summons less than a week after coming to Farben. I was to appear the very next morning, Tuesday, at eight, at another factory closer to the center of Berlin, near Ostkreuz. So I had no opportunity for a second day off to see Tatiana. I could have telephoned her, I suppose, but I didn’t want to. It occurred to me, also, that I should let Professor Kreutzer know what was happening to me, but I did not wish to burden him with my existence any longer. I was very tired. I did not want to talk.
Berlin is dark at 6:30 a.m. in mid-January. There no longer was snow removal and after the sunrise one would be able to see the dirty, gray snow. I had all my papers with me, my small suitcase, and the tube of Veronal tablets. There was nothing to keep me from taking the train anywhere—to the Institute, to the house of my father—but they would look for me there. I spoke French like a native and could have gone into a free French labor camp, or I could have sought out some of my father’s family—Gentiles. Surely, they would hide me? I understand now that I was ill and depressed, and I did as all the others—I followed the orders of the governing authorities. One cannot pass judgment unless he has been in a similar circumstance.
The I. G. Farben plant was a city compared to Wolff Printing and Dyeing Company, which was on a side street, ten minutes by S-Bahn from Lichtenberg. It was one U-shaped building, behind a dirty red-brick wall with barbed wire on top. There were guards at the gate. They took all my papers, and one of them “escorted” me to the personnel office, where, once again, I was asked to fill out forms for employment, insurance, and taxes.
When I had finished, the personnel official said, “You are assigned to the dye kitchen. Do you prefer day or night shift?”
“Night.”
He made a notation, then recited: “It is forbidden to leave the premises without orders. This is an industry which is directly under the Interior Ministry for Total War. Any infraction against the rules, which include rules of safety, loitering, and tardiness, will be mercilessly punished under martial law. Your work begins promptly at six o’clock in the evening. You will report to the foreman of the dye kitchen, Herr Freulisch, at five fifty-five!” He handed me a card. “His name is on this card. His orders to you will be the law! A foreman in the dormitory will assign you quarters.” He handed me a canteen book. “You have here coupons for three meals each day.”
He did not return my papers.
My “quarters” were a cot in a room with twenty-four others. The barracks were not in separate Nissen Hütten but in an older section of the factory building along with the canteen. Although they were not as clean as those at Farben and not as warm, and the bathrooms were filthy, I felt more secure, for at this second factory, the workers mostly were free Germans, some of whom lived in the barracks, and the forced laborers were either Russians or people with a mixed background similar to mine. There were no Baits, as far as I could tell. The German free workers did not bother the others, displaying no feeling one way or the other. But at the first place, Farben, the “Folk Germans,” as they were called, who had migrated east to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, had maintained their ties to Germany with exaggerated patriotism. Professor Kreutzer was right about them—they out-nazied the Nazis. I was afraid of them, although they hadn’t time to actually bother me at Farben. Following Professor Kreutzer’s advice, I stayed to myself in both places and kept my mouth shut.
I was hungry. The food at Farben had been inadequate. I put my suitcase under my cot and went to the canteen to eat lunch: one meal ticket for a plate of stew, bread, and ersatz coffee which was undrinkable. The food was all right, except that the three meals amounted to only 800 calories. Then I retu
rned to the dormitory, where I crawled into my cot with my clothes on—a sweater, too—covering myself with the two warm blankets they provided. I could not get warm, and I was very tired. I dreamed my dream and awakened after five in the afternoon, went to the canteen for the supper of stew, bread, and ersatz coffee, and, after asking directions from the dormitory foreman, began to look for the dye kitchen.
It was in the basement of the boiler house, a section of building at the tip of the U nearest the front gate, behind two huge, closed iron doors. I was ten minutes early—it was a quarter to six—and worried that someone might assume I was loitering. At five minutes to six, I tried the great doors, but they would not budge, and I worried that the foreman would turn me in for tardiness. Remember Uncle Philip. At one minute to six, nine other night workers gathered. At six, on the dot, the great doors opened and the day workers moved out, silent and hurried; the night workers filed in, silent and slow. I entered last, following them through the heavy iron doors, which clanged shut behind me.
I was in a stinking, smoky den, warm and moist. Sooty beads of water slid down blackened concrete walls. Shaded lamps hanging by a single cord from the ceiling illuminated the work areas like the lamp over the billiard table at my father’s club. Four giant vats steamed on a gas fire, vats so tall the workers climbed a three-rung ladder to a catwalk circling them to stir or add or take away. In the center was a large platform scale; in the shadows were hills of bags—starch, sugar, and dye—and buckets and buckets of milk.
The workers all were old, as old as my father. They stood together beneath a lamp, immobile, eyes cast down. I stood out of the light.
A low voice, monotone, most likely the foreman, said, “You! Bring me the fuckin’ bucket.”
A worker left the group, plodded fifteen paces or so, holding his lower back, groaning as he bent to pick up a galvanized iron pail. He carried it to within three paces of the foreman and released the handle. The bucket fell, clattered to the floor, and rolled over, bending the rim. The foreman let it lie and gave assignments in a language I could not understand—Berlin dialect—a ten-word vocabulary covering the spectrum, totally metaphorical and esoteric, each word with a hundred meanings covering a hundred circumstances.