‘My parents? You want to put that upon us on a Sunday?’ I sat at the table. Wished I had wine.
‘It’s been months since we saw them. At least now we have something to see them for instead of just borrowing money.’ A snipe at me? No, she was smiling. I do not think she meant to offend. Just married talk. ‘Don’t you want them to be proud?’
‘Hardly proud.’
‘And why not? You are in a company in wartime. Would they rather you were at the front?’
‘Which one?’
I was at university, had missed conscription. And Erfurt had no military attachment or demand for young men to serve. Too deep in the country for administration then. The first war different. Men had come from the forests to fight, my father amongst. Someone considered that if the enemy were faced with these giant axe-wielders they would drop their guns and run. Not now. These were the places that needed to be protected. We were the Germans of Germany. The heart that the rest fought for. The war distant from us, protected by mountains of pine bastions like a great wall. During the summer those who were students in Berlin or Munich would be deployed as medics to the front. Imagine being shot and having a geography student patch you up? I guess stabs of morphine would be their limit. Pat his chest in sympathy and then move on to the next. It was what those students saw at the front that began the protests when they returned to their universities. Their last protests.
Our city almost distinct from the war. The war heading east. A Russian war. The West done now. Africa and the Mediterranean ours. Victory assured. Normality coming back. My job a sign of that. Normality. New cars on the streets and the trains running on time. Klein had shown me his new Opel before I left. I do not know why. To me a car is just a car but I suppose these things are important to certain men. He lifted the engine’s cover.
‘Look at the plate.’ He had placed his hand on the engine to introduce it. ‘A General Motors engine! Ford and General Motors supplying German cars. We cannot all afford Mercedes! And we have their American engines in our army trucks. I wonder how the Yankee soldiers feel when they discover this. They bomb a supply convoy and find American engines in the trucks. That must be a kick! And we even sell them our ovens for their own prison camps. Topf are the largest exporter of crematoria. Not that we ever had any Jewish business. The Jew does not approve of crematoria.’ That grin again. ‘The body is only borrowed to them. It must be returned as given. Enjoy your walk home. Tomorrow you will meet Sander so shine your shoes better.’ He slapped my back. ‘Soon you will have your own car, no?’
*
‘Etta, I must tell you something.’ My cutlery still on the table. Her face became too concerned or maybe it was the look on mine.
‘What is it, Ernst?’
‘It seems that for the time … for the moment … as I am the new man … I must begin work on the second floor. Under Herr Klein.’
‘The second floor? What is that? You are not working on the silos?’
‘No. The second floor is for the Special Ovens Department. Special designs.’
‘Special? How are they special?’
I took my fork, ate into the mash, the meat too steaming to eat for a while. We often eat one after the other, Etta first. I have to let my food cool, like a child, otherwise my night will be just heartburn and milk.
‘Furnaces and incinerators for the prison camps. I’ll know more tomorrow when I meet Herr Sander.’
‘Aren’t the prisons run by the SS? You don’t have to work with them, do you?’
‘Herr Klein says I might meet them in the building. They are only officers, Etta.’
She ate slow.
‘I know. But it is just when you say SS you think of Gestapo. It is so quiet here. To think that just across the tracks there are SS. Here.’
In the single bulb light over our table her face had lowered as she ate, as if reading the tablecloth like a book in a library. I had never heard her mention the SS or Gestapo at our table before. This not dinner talk. A husband’s duty to ease his wife’s concerns.
‘I am to make the designs simpler for them to understand. Label everything. They won’t understand the Alphabet of Lines so I must make it clear.’
‘You do not think of the prisons needing ovens.’ Her voice almost too quiet for me to catch.
‘It is just like hospitals and schools. You need ovens for refuse, for heat, for the dead. No-one likes to think that hospitals have crematoria. Anywhere you have large numbers of sick people you need crematoria.’
Her fork rang against her plate.
‘Ernst! I am eating! Why are you always using that word?’
‘Etta, I am working for a company that makes crematoria. For all the world. I am going to be using that word often if you want me to talk on my day. If you consider it correctly it is probably one of the most important subjects. Paul almost holds it as a religion. It has laws.’
The mention of Paul, our crematorist friend in Weimar seemed to lighten the air. I had an ally. Not a conspirator. Paul’s business could not exist without furnaces. This she would have to concede. Just a business. That’s all.
‘Well … use a different word. Say “oven”. That sounds better. And stop talking about the dead. There is no place for that in this house. And certainly not at my table.’
I apologised. Moved the talk to visiting my parents. Agreed to it. They lived on the Krämerbrücke, the Merchants’ Bridge, in the medieval part of the city. The house I was born in. The houses on the bridge itself. On stormy nights I was always terrified in my bed that we would collapse into the river. Etta’s parents had moved to Switzerland with her sister when the Americans joined the war. They feared invasion. We travelled there to get married. Etta insisted that her mother should see her wed and her father should take her arm. My own parents not attending. They do not travel. My father does not leave the bridge. All the stores he needs are there, he says. All his friends are there, he says.
‘Why do I have to meet strangers?’ he would shrug. ‘I have met and outlived everyone I ever need to.’ And he laughed at the passing of his friends.
We finish our supper, turn down the radio and the light. Tomorrow I meet Herr Sander. Too anxious to make love and we go to sleep just holding each other, the beds pushed together. My brain will not sleep and I try to imagine what Sander will look like.
‘Ernst?’ Etta whispers above my head under hers. ‘I am glad I did not have to work tonight. It was good to eat together.’
I sighed into her chest and pulled her tighter. Her hair on my cheek. Red hair smells different. It blooms of youth somehow, like newborns in their close perfume.
‘Ernst? The SS wouldn’t look into us would they? If you are working with them?’ A tension in her hold of me, as if I was about to be pulled out of bed and away. I touched her hand, felt it calm.
‘I’m not working with them. I work for Topf.’ I lifted my head. ‘Why? Do I have a criminal I should worry about?’
She pulled me back to her breast. ‘No! Do I have a criminal to worry about?’
‘I have a receipt from your father for you. I could ask for an exchange.’ She held me closer.
‘You wish you could afford me.’
And the night came, the blackout, the sleep of couples.
Chapter 4
Raining the second day. Not the best walk. Raincoat and umbrella at least and Topf had a cloakroom where they might dry by the end of the day, as long as the day were longer than yesterday; not much more than a tour of the floors, the factory and barrack buildings where the workers from the camps ate a meal before the transport back to Buchenwald.
I had thought of Herr Sander all night. He the chief signatory of the design departments. Outside of the ownership of the company – the Topf brothers – the man in charge. I wondered what he might be like. A good boss or a hard one. I was sure all men only rise if they were the latter. My father would come home from Moor’s pharmacy every night and be quiet for the first half-hour. Some wine and a sandwic
h before dinner and he would begin to talk and smile again. Sundays he would spend sighing and devouring the newspaper. I do not think he enjoyed his work. The pharmacy had to sell up in ’35 to German buyers, the Jewish owners no longer permitted to be part of the community. I remember before then going as a boy with my mother to take my father his lunch one Saturday. We came out and a young man handed us both a leaflet. My mother paled as she read and the young man tipped his hat at us, went along with a whistle. The leaflet Gothic in script and tone.
‘You have just been photographed while you have been buying Jewish. You are going to be shamed in public.’
We had not bought anything. We were bringing my father his meal but the man did not know. My mother whisked me away in the opposite direction. Spat her words.
‘These bastards.’ She was pulling me along now. ‘Never trust a man in a suit, Ernst. He only wishes to lend you money or take it from you.’
I recall that my father was just as unhappy with his new employers as the old ones.
Prüfer I perceived to be a good man. He smiled, made jokes, he asked after my university. He was an engineer, had started at the bottom with Topf and determined his way to become a head man. He was pleased I had no children.
‘They interfere with a man’s career,’ he said. ‘Wait until you are a director! Children are a vice to a man’s promise when he is young.’
Fritz Sander did not offer a handshake. He nodded when Herr Klein introduced me in his office and I returned the nod as proficiently as his own. I had my white-coat now, my blond hair smoothed back with Etta’s pomade. It felt like I was at work. That I almost belonged.
‘Has Herr Klein detailed your work here?’ His answer already known.
‘Yes, sir. The Special Ovens Department.’ They were both standing, hands behind their back and I put mine the same.
‘It is important work, Topf has secured the contracts for all ovens for the prisons.’ I saw his skin was raw around his moustache and neck. A shaving rash like all of us except for Klein’s talcum smoothness. Even the wealthy had trouble getting good blades I supposed. But Sander’s grey hair was closely cut, precision sharp around his ears. He did not get his cut by his wife in a kitchenette with sewing scissors. A waft of Bay Rum as he moved.
‘The regular muffle ovens have become inadequate. They break. Operated by inexperienced men. And they are overworked. We are able to supply mobile counterparts and engineers to repair but new ones must be built. I have hired you to help me prepare the drafts.’
I opened my mouth to speak but he anticipated.
‘You need not know anything about crematoria. I just need you to replicate the drafts from the designs. For SS approval. Any aspect you do not understand can be put to Herr Klein or Herr Keller on the third floor for annotation. The designs are to be as clear as possible for a layman.’
I had prepared questions as I slept, in my dreams. Questions that an ambitious man might ask.
‘These new designs will improve the process, sir?’
His eyes now smaller through his glasses.
‘How do you mean?’
‘That Topf is superior throughout the world for crematoria. I’m sure we are improving all the while. I am honoured to be a part of such endeavour.’
Sander half-turned, hands opening and closing at his back.
‘These contracts were won on price not quality.’ He turned back to me sharply. ‘You know our closest competitor?’
‘Kori of Berlin, sir.’
‘Quite so. We beat a Berlin company because of our price and location.’
Klein lifted his hand for my attention. Spoke proudly.
‘And that when the call came we installed mobile systems into Mauthausen within a day. That is service,’ he said.
‘Mobile systems, sir?’ I had heard this word previously, jumped on it now.
‘Stock items,’ Klein said. ‘For farmers, small abattoirs and such, who do not need their own scale furnace. Petrol fired. The incinerators had broken and they needed an emergency replacement. We fulfilled where Berlin could not.’
Sander raised a finger to me and then to Klein. ‘That reminds. Herr Klein is going to Buchenwald. A site visit. Monday. It would be useful for you to attend.’
I inhaled, stalled.
‘To the prison?’
‘We are measuring for new muffles,’ Sander said as reply. ‘It would be useful for you to see our work first hand. It is important for an architect to see the fulfilment of his task. You will learn much.’
I would like to say that I feigned enthusiasm. But I was curious in that pedestrian way people stare at accidents or listen to a neighbour’s fight or as a child you try to peek a look into the butcher’s back room as he emerges when his bell rings, wiping his hands and beaming at your mother.
And this my work after all.
‘That would be most interesting, sir.’
‘Good,’ Sander nodded again. ‘Be sure to bring your identification.’
Chapter 5
Before supper Etta and I went for a walk. The early evening dry and warm, my coat only a little still damp from the morning’s rain. We went arm in arm by the river, towards the bridges and the old quarter. Etta had asked what Sander was like, how my day had been. I volunteered the walk. Easier to tell her outside.
‘The camp!’ Etta stopped walking, pulled her arm away. Stragglers coming home scowled from beneath their caps.
‘The prison, Etta. Buchenwald is well established. Topf has hundreds of workers from the place in the factory.’
‘Slaves you mean.’
‘Labour for their crimes.’
‘But Ernst, it is a camp. People die there. There is disease. Dangerous men.’
I took her arm again and strolled slower.
‘Klein and the engineers go there often. I am sure it is safe.’
‘I don’t like it. Why did you say you would go?’
‘I could hardly refuse on my second day.’ We walked into the cobbled streets, a walk around the block to take us back to Station Street. Quiet here. The Jewish businesses closed and sold to develop into apartments, but that had stopped. The developers no doubt waiting for the war to end any month now and the prices to rise. But even with the boarded-up windows a nice peaceful stroll in April.
‘Do you like this Herr Klein?’
‘I do not know him. Does it matter? He’s the head of the floor. When the war ends a few of those who used to work there may come back. Part of their service is to retain their old jobs. I must do well before then. Everything I can.’
‘Will you have to join the Party?’
‘No-one has mentioned. Prüfer wears a pin. A standard one. Herr Sander did not. Nor Klein.’
‘Would you? Would you join?’
I do not know why I did not think before answering. It seemed natural to say it.
‘If it helped my career. For you. For us. All other business ties are gone. No Freemasons or Rotaries. How else do you get on?’
We said no more on this.
If you live near to your parents you walk slower to meet them for Sunday lunch than if you had to get on a train where at least you can pretend that something enjoyable is happening. The slow walk, lingering around shop windows, all to avoid the dreaded hour. The walk enlivened by the Sunday street all looking to the sky as a squadron of Heinkels flew west overhead. Our skies normally silent.
Etta shielded her eyes to watch.
‘Where do you think they are going?’
‘I don’t know. England? Early for a raid. Where from is more interesting. I did not know we had bases in the east.’
‘Perhaps the Russians have surrendered. And we have taken their bases.’
‘Do they even have bases to take? I thought them all farmers?’
She slapped my arm. ‘Ernst. They are an army. I’m sure they have planes.’
‘We conquered France didn’t we? And they have toilets inside their homes. The Russians?’ I cocked my thumb over my s
houlder. ‘Toilet behind the house with chickens in it. That is all you need to know.’
The streets animated again and we came to the old bridge. You may know the Merchants’ Bridge from songs or pictures from a Christmas butter-biscuit box. A fairytale place. One of the last medieval bridges in Europe that still had the colourful houses and shops built right on its stone. Paris and London had lost theirs hundreds of years ago. Erfurt maintained. We know our history. It is still here. England does not know us to bomb. Their bridge fell down, as the song would have it. Because they did not care enough for history.
I was born on this bridge. The vaults and steps above the Breitstrom waters were my hiding places as a boy or where I crouched concealed from the wrath of my father’s open hand.
I thought we were poor to live here, our house so small and ancient, but no, despite the small leaning buildings looking into each other’s lives we were privileged. I would be happy to inherit it, as my father had from his father, if only to sell it and buy a proper home for Etta and our children. My son would not live in a box of a room with straw-packed walls and no window. Our front door would not open onto stairs to take him to a floor above a camera shop.
My father opened the door, his once blond hair now yellow and grey but still thick with vitality, like the whole of him.
‘Ernst! Etta!’ He hugged Etta and scolded me. ‘Why did you not let us know you were coming? What boy does this?’ Neither of us had a telephone. I suppose he wanted me to shout from our window. ‘We have nothing in.’ This my fault, and not true. When my parents died there would be two small plots for them and a mausoleum for their food. They were of the great war. When there were real shortages not just rationed ones. The habit of hoarding jars and cans, pickling everything, not given up. Just in case. I was born the year my father came back from the war. I stacked tins like other children stacked blocks.
The creaking stairs, my mother’s voice howling from the kitchen.
‘Etta! Ernst! Why you not let us know! My hair, Willi! My hair!’ She clutched at her head. It was in exactly the same clipped bun it had been since my youth.
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