‘The job includes room and board.’ The Gendarme’s purple nose twitched to emphasize my good fortune. ‘Better for a city man like you than being stuck out in the fields. We make a good team, you and I.’
I watched from the porch as he turned the living room lights on, including a decorative vine of tiny swastika emblazoned-bulbs along the windowsill and a garish glowing Bible tableaux on the kitchen archway. Only when I followed inside did I recognize the scene as the Nativity, Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus surrounded by a menagerie of farmyard animals with eyes that burnt red as coals.
Mein Host banged about from cupboard to drawer in the kitchen, maintaining a line of babbling small talk that thankfully required little input from myself. I stood rooted to a thick Oriental rug before the coffee table. Compared to the Christmas decorations, the rest of the living room was sober and would have verged on tasteful were it not for the sheer amount of paintings and ornaments crammed onto the shelves and sideboard, enough to stock an antique shop.
‘Sit, sit.’ The gendarme brushed past with a tray on which he had arranged two opened bottles of beer and a bowl of pickled gherkins. Relaxing into a winged armchair, he placed the tray on the coffee table and span it like a roulette wheel until a beer bottle rattled at my knee.
‘It’s late,’ I said, although technically it was early.
‘Just one, a toast.’
‘I can hardly keep my eyes open. If tomorrow is my first day on the job, I need to make a good impression. I hope you will not think me ungrateful.’
‘Pah.’ He waved a dismissive hand, quick to disguise his bachelor’s loneliness. ‘Please, go. I prefer drinking alone if you want to know the truth. Away and get your beauty sleep. I’ll show you up.’
The spare room was bare, but spotlessly clean. Bed, chair, wardrobe, portrait of Adolf Hitler on the wall.
Thankfully, my host did not linger. I waited by the door until I heard the stairs creak under his stockinged feet, then backed onto the mattress and slumped against the wall, my head coming to rest against the clammy paint. I removed the grandmother’s prayer shawl I’d been given and cradled it in my lap. Reaching to the head of the bed, I shook the plump pillow out its case, bunched the cotton sleeve into a gag, clamped it between my teeth and began to cough hot, tearless jags that tore my gut to shreds.
Two hours later, I rose and silently crept down stairs. The Genadarme was already up, eating porridge in the kitchen in his underpants and sock-garters.
I glanced around the kitchen. A police uniform hung in a clear plastic bag from the back door handle. Eight beer bottles from last night drained next to the sink.
‘I only eat oatmeal, Monday to Friday,’ the Gendarme said. ‘Need anything else for breakfast, put in an order with the butcher. We’ll divvy up the bills at the end of the week.’
‘Oatmeal’s fine.’
‘Grab a bowl. I’ll give you the low-down.’
There was a whole shelf of bowls next to the fridge, from what looked like a dozen different fine porcelain collections. Not one of them matched. It was like the extravagant mix of paintings and figurines in the living room. I realised with a terrible shudder that almost everything the Gendarme owned had once belonged to the Jews he’d liquidated.
‘Not that hungry, to be honest,’ I said. ‘Do you have coffee?’
‘Don’t drink the stuff. There might be some knocking around.’
I found it in a cupboard caked with flour from a split bag, tiny little termites ticking over the white dunes. Camp Coffee, in a bottle, gummed to the shelf on a sticky black ring.
The Gendarme didn’t possess a kettle, so I set a heavy pan to boil on the stove. I spurred the offer of a chair and leant against the worktop, professing a bad back. My new employer began explaining the various organisational hierarchies of the new Poland, and my place amongst them.
My duties as an interpreter would be split between the Belorussian and German police stations. I had already met Amon Goethe. Under his administration, the gendarmerie had two areas of duty. The first was the standard fare of day-to-day policing: preserving peace amongst the locals; resolving social and familial quarrels; investigating fraud and theft and assault.
‘Our and bread and butter,’ the Gendarme said. ‘Or it used to be, before the war.’
As a representative of the Belorussian police, I would naturally wear the uniform. The Gendarme had picked up two white shirts from the dry-cleaners yesterday; I might as well have one now, since we were about the same proportions around the neck and chest.
‘Most of your language skills will be used on what the Germans call Political Matters.’
‘I’m no politician,’ I said.
‘Don’t worry. We get to root out all the undesirables, most of them foreign but a few homegrown. The agitators, partisans, Communists, Soviet co-workers, sympathisers, anyone who’s even suspected of anti-Nazi moves.’
‘Root out?’
He twinkled before saying, ‘Conveying executive measures.’
‘Right.’
‘And then of course, the Aktions.’
‘Like last night.’
‘The Jews are dug in all over the place, but we’re flushing them out, one nest at a time.’
‘Are there many?’
‘Goethe has drawn up a new list. You alright with that kind of fieldwork? The last interpreter was a sensitive lad. We worked out a little deal, to spare him. There’s ways I could protect you - ’
‘I just want to make sure I’m well rested next time,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if I gave a bad impression.’
He shrugged magnanimously. ‘Partly my fault. I’ll try and give you fair warning next time.’
A plan was already forming in my head. If I had access to the list of villages, I could get a message out and warn the inhabitants what was coming. That might be a tall order: it didn’t sound like the Gendarme himself knew the location of the Aktions much in advance. The Belorussian police were second tier, not particularly trusted by the Germans.
‘That’s all you need to know for now,’ the Gendarme said, placing his empty bowl in the sink. ‘The rest you’ll pick up on the job.’
He unhooked his shirt from the door handle, went upstairs, returned five minutes later in full dress, turned off the stove I was still waiting at and set the saucepan aside. The water had yet to boil, my measure of Camp Coffee congealing at the bottom of the mug.
Outside, a thaw was underway. Early morning traffic had rendered the immaculate snowfall drear and grey slush. We tramped along the road, passed a tobacconists and a dry-cleaners on the corner of a dark alley. The Belorussian police headquarters was less than a mile away, but we only got as far as the shops before coming to a stop.
The level-crossing barrier was down, angry, hooting traffic snarled up behind a throng of commuters in hats and long coats at the barrier. An immense, apparently endless Deutsche Reichsbahn train press-ganged into military evacuation was stranded at the platform, soldiers leaning out the carriage windows, smoking, singing songs. Banners unfurled along the roof swore a variety of inventive deaths to the Russians. The lower ranking passenger locomotive had been shunted onto the side tracks while the transporter was being repaired.
‘It’s been stuck there for forty-five minutes,’ a businessman blustered as we shouldered up to the barrier. ‘Broken rear axle, apparently. How long do these things take to get fixed?’
‘Does this look like a train driver’s uniform?’ the Gendarme bristled, thumbing his chest. ‘Make way, make way, police coming through.’
I followed him across to the station on the other side of the road, where a larger crowd had gathered. A cordon of German soldiers were guarding the station doors, preventing access. Behind them, the ticket hall was deserted. While the train was being repaired, the station facilities were reserved exclusively for the SS, en route to the Eastern Front. Regular commuters had been escorted outside to make way. Fairly smarting from the eviction, factory and office workers united i
n complaint. Children snaked through the dense forest of limbs, making mischief from their elder’s woes. I felt a questing tug at my hip pocket and span round, ready to pounce, but the youngster had disappeared. Somewhere behind us, a woman shrieked. Bedlam was on the verge of breaking loose. I watched as the Gendarme raised an arm and waved for me.
‘Damien. Herr Plotz. Here!’
I had indeed become separated from my new employer in the melee. But I was standing behind him, not in front. Granted, the face the Gendarme was currently beseeching did bear a certain resemblance to my own, but the body shielded from view belonged to a sturdy SS officer. As soon as the Gendarme thrust a hand on that studded epaulette, he realised his mistake.
‘Please. I sorry -’
But without a translator, he was unable to explain himself, resorting to childish mime. I hung back, watching him squirm before that mighty officer, who did not appreciate being manhandled.
‘My God, you’re a police man, too,’ the German raged, taking in the Belarussian’s uniform. ‘Captain’s stripes, you can’t even speak the language. No wonder this country’s so absolutely fucked.’
‘Very sorry - ’
‘Ten engineers dicking around and not one of them knows what to do! We’ve been on the rails for a day with no problems at all. Then we get to Poland and boom, the whole world grinds to a fucking halt! The payphone’s out of order. The tobacconist doesn’t even sell Nordlands! Then I come out here and get an earful from this rabble, a bloody disgrace after all we’ve done for them. If you don’t get your people under control, Captain, I will.’
I could stand by no longer. I stepped forward and offered my services. After I’d translated the officer’s rant, the Gendarme put a whistle to his lips to quell the crowd, then stopped and pulled me close.
‘Tell him they might have some Nordlands next to the dry-cleaners.’
I pointed out the Tabak sign across the road. The SS officer made off without uttering another word, hurling himself forward like a ball-player in a scrum.
When the crowd closed again behind us, the Gendarme was standing next to a group of workers in gas company caps and overalls. The shortest, meanest-looking one crossed his arms high up on his chest and said, ‘If they pay you enough to take that crap, I’m in the wrong job.’
His friends concurred, lowing like cattle.
‘You saw his rank,’ the Gendarme said. ‘What was I supposed to do?’
One of the men made a crude suggestion and the others laughed, then formed a circle and began muttering. A loose bag underneath the Gendarme’s left eye twitched as if a fly was trapped beneath the skin. He was spared further embarrassment when another spat erupted further down the line. An ejected commuter was frantically pointing across the No Man’s Land of concrete into the station restaurant.
Few of us saw the outrage with our own eyes. But word spread like fire over harvest stubble. Two of the elite SS, after finishing their complimentary breakfast of bread and sausage, had enticed a couple of younger waitresses out from behind the grill. Proprietorial arms around thin shoulders, the officers paraded the women past the tables at the window, in full view of the evicted Poles, right through the length of the restaurant into the men’s bathroom, from where they had not returned.
As I strained to see into the restaurant for myself, an object whistled over my head. A plate-glass window detonated behind the cordon of soldiers at the entrance. Thinking the explosion had come from within, the soldiers span round, and a second rock landed between a set of German shoulder blades. Ten inches south of denting the back of his skull. All around me, Poles were on their knees, tearing up the ground for rubble.
‘There’s a phone in the dry-cleaners.’ The Gendarme scanned for reinforcements but found only myself. ‘Call the station before we’re mopping up a bloodbath.’
Rifles volleyed as I barged through the mob to the level-crossing. I froze mid-stride, cringing. A flurry of shots and then no more. Silence. The Germans had fired over the protesters’ heads to restore order. No more missiles rained down on their cordon. An uneasy truce seemed to hold.
I hopped the barrier and sprinted up the street towards the shops by the Gendarme’s house. Hurtling from the other direction, two young Poles swerved around me, one of them dropping an object that bounced into the gutter. I called out but they didn’t hear me and didn’t stop. In the road I kicked through slush, unearthing the leather wallet they had dropped. Turned inside out, and picked clean of cash. All that remained in the wallet was a Waffen-SS identification card. It belonged to the officer the Gendarme had just upset, Oberführer Harry Mohnke. I recognised the raging face from his photograph.
I span round to face the narrow alley next to the dry-cleaners. A pair of black leather boots splayed out from behind a dumpster bin. I announced myself as the Gendarme’s translator. No answer. Nobody else was watching us. All eyes were on the siege on the other side of the road. I crept into the gloomy alleyway and peered around the dry-cleaner’s bin.
Oberführer Mohnke lay propped against the wall, ambushed before he could buy his Nordlands. One of the two fleeing youths had probably been hiding where I stood now, at the alley’s entrance; his accomplice had pushed the German in. They’d fought. Mohnke’s had fallen backward, or been pushed. His tunic was torn open, one missing button, his cap dislodged. The flattened back of his head was glued to the wall with a paste of blood and brain.
Gagging, I stumbled away, turning towards the light. Over the stalled traffic, I could hear the futile piping of the Gendarme’s whistle in front of the train station. I looked back at the gleaming insignia of a senior SS colonel’s grey-green tunic, the pair of oak leaves on his silver braided collar, and that German jaw that had been only ten minutes ago been mistaken as my own.
Hiding behind the dumpster, I kicked off my shoes off and yanked my trousers down around my ankles. In my underpants, I tugged Mohnke’s boots from his legs, unbuckled his belt, grabbed hold of the flared fabric at his hips and pulled, exposing two pale white thighs, a scarred knee and a pair of sturdy shins. The pulped remains of his head came unstuck from the wall, chin flopped down and rested against his breastbone. I pulled on the man’s trousers and boots, but spent the next five minutes trying to stuff his feet into my shoes, which were a size smaller.
Centauroid, half-man, half-beast, I rose to finish my transformation. I wrenched my white shirt open without popping any buttons and unfastened the man’s tunic. Extricating first his left arm then his right, I slipped the jacket from his back and peeled off his white vest, slick with sweat. Of all the man’s noxious garments, it was that damp vest I could not stand to feel against my chest. I twisted it into a rag and buried it in the dumpster. His tunic fitted me well enough, a little long in the arms and a touch short at the back.
Not bad. Not perfect, but it would do.
Almost.
The only distinguishing features were Mohnke’s nose and mouth: fleshier and closer together than my own. What a shame it was the back of the German’s head his attackers had caved in and not the front. For this deception to work, I had no choice but to alter his appearance, with only the bluntest of surgical instruments at my disposal.
Gripping his lapels, I pulled the body forward until it was facing the corner of the dumpster. Then I reared back on my right foot, placed my left one squarely behind his head and stomped. The first kick met some resistance. I stomped again, bone and cartilage crunching underfoot. The third time, the centre of Harry Mohnke’s face split around the perpendicular steel edge like a watermelon under a machete. I left him embedded there, pausing only to retrieve the old woman’s prayer shawl I had dropped.
Back out on the street, I tugged my zip as if emerging from a sly urination, for the benefit of any curious on-lookers. A factory whistle blew, high and lonesome. The pavement in front of the shops was busy with the hustle of early morning workers. Nobody paid me much notice. If you saw the SS, you put your head down and kept moving. Vehicles were still stopped
at the level-crossing but drivers had turned their engines back on, and not in wishful thinking. The whistle was not from any factory. Straddling the tracks, the SS transporter train was puffing steam into the cold air. The engineers had finally fixed the problem; the train was ready to leave.
The quickest way out of the Gendarme’s purview was on that train. All I had to do was get to Lublin Main. I would determine the rest from there.
Resisting the temptation to goose-step in my new boots, I cut between bumpers and hurried across the road. The cordon of soldiers was gone from the front of the station. A weary porter was brushing up a mound of broken glass at the windows. I hurried past him into the building. No inspector asked to see my ticket. The restaurant was starting to fill back up, a queue already forming at the counter. I followed the signs out past the Waiting Room.
The first platform was empty.
While I crossed the footbridge to the other side, the Lublin locomotive let out another long mournful whistle beneath my feet. At the far end of the track, the chimney pumped a dark plume that spiraled to a taper. Men skidded along the platform and dived into open carriages, officers at the front in first-class, soldiers at the rear.
About to descend the final flight of stairs, I paused as heavy bootsteps clanged across the walkway behind me. Somebody shouted, ‘Hey, wait!’
I could do nothing but flatten myself against the wall as the soldiers raced past, shoving each other and giggling. One of them called out, ‘Stop that train!’
I followed them down through a fog of hissing steam on the platform to the rear of the train, as far from the officers’ quarters as I could get. In Second Class I stood less chance of being recognized. Or not being recognized - whichever was worse. With the engine goading the wheel pistons into motion, I gripped the handles of the last open carriage and hurled myself in.
The lion’s den resembled a debauched Kiel dormitory after finals, except my enemy wore Wehrmacht uniforms not waistcoats and blazers. Almost all were drunk. A few soldiers had passed out, stripped naked, dead to the world. The rest had been enjoying the stations’ facilities while the train was fixed and had scrambled back the whistle blew. I found myself squashed on a corner bench with a group sharing a bottle of vodka. Red-nosed and emboldened, the lad at my elbow turned with a wink and ventured, ‘Checking up on us, sir?’
I Am Juden Page 24