Etta had married a poor Erfurt boy. No reason to. She could have had anyone. Any of those rich boys her father knew. Sometimes the bafflement of this needed reassurance and she would touch me, would smile as at a child.
‘There’s no such thing as a good rich man, Ernst. No-one ever got rich being a good man. I would rather trust a poor honest one. One without a mistress.’
‘And how do you know I don’t have a mistress?’
‘Because you can’t afford one.’
We moved into that one-room apartment next to the hotel that summer. Her father no longer able to pay for hers from Switzerland as the banks consolidated under government control. Only internal transactions permitted. I signed on for the married man’s subsistence. She took a waitress job. But we were never happier. Until a month became three years. Until the war became three years. People wore it on their faces. The people in their maps that they pushed their tiny markers of planes and battalions over like croupiers dragging away your losses. Thin as paper maps. The bed got made. Ate at table.
Marriage is for the young. Yet the old men you invite to your wedding scoff, the women cry, the divorced drain their glasses, talk behind hands. But there is red hair under a white veil, a boy in a loaned suit and everything is possible. But you have to go home. The larder has to be filled. You take a job drafting ovens for prison camps. The bed got made. Ate at table. Turned off lights only to save the meter. Early. Before the blackout.
When Etta and I returned from our marriage in Switzerland we had a celebration for all our friends which at least my father had got off the bridge to attend. A real Erfurt celebration with Bach and beer. The women in white and the men in green felt and caps. A gloriously ludicrous display. Probably the last time I have been truly drunk. It was Etta’s friends mostly, Paul Reul the only one of mine, the only one we shared, the only one other than my father I let dance with her.
Paul left school at fourteen to work as a stonemason with his father, and from there, from the headstone commissions, he managed to get himself in with the undertakers of Weimar and Erfurt and studied the almost religious sanctity of the crematoria.
Paul had carved his own headstone, as his father had his own. An eerie tradition. The last date missing. He was proud of it, mentioned it to people he had only just met as an ice-breaker after he had introduced himself and his employment and the laughter would come awkwardly as he explained.
‘I won’t get to see it else. And who knows what they will write about me!’
Before ’34 and the Nuremberg laws cremation was not popular, and for Jews it was against their beliefs entirely, but once the deportations began and German families moved into Jewish homes, and the camps began to bring them their trade, business increased from miles around.
The Nuremberg regulations made cremations as religious as burial. For Paul and his colleagues this legitimacy made them as respected as priests. They built chapels of rest, held services, and Topf’s petrol and gas ovens made the process contained, not vulgar, as distinguished as funerals, like the white-smocked clergy by the grave and dust to dust, and no widow would have to brush ash from her black sleeve when she took a walk outside, for a breath of air, for the private dab of tear.
Paul was a close friend at school, he was in classes below me but a good stalwart at play and with an older sister a constant source of female mysteries. He had not attended the university but his profession could aid me in mine I was sure.
Etta had wanted to come but I explained that this was work, not a day-trip. Besides, I could enquire on another matter in Weimar which would be easier without her.
*
It is only fifteen minutes and ten pfennigs to take the train to Weimar. There are five crematoria for the city. Paul owns two of them. He is on the steps of his chapel in Jacob Street in his black suit waiting for me like he must wait for his hearses or the wagons from the camps. He sees me, and his dignified stance changes to an animated rush as he runs to greet me like the boy in school again.
‘Ernst!’ He waves, clasps my hand. ‘So good to see you!’
‘Thank you for seeing me.’
‘Of course, of course! Come. I make you coffee. How is Etta? How can I help you?’
I needed my friend’s advice, his opinion. Colleagues and family, even wives, sometimes reflect only your own.
Old friends the mirror that you cannot see yourself in.
*
‘What is this, Ernst?’ Paul studied the paper, the plans across his coffee-table in his private rooms. A comfortable place. Nicer than my home. Not an office. No paperwork here. If working men had rooms where they could retire to during the day I am sure they were doing well. He had left school at fourteen. I went to university and rent a gas cooker with one working hob.
‘These are replacement ovens for a few of the crematoria at the Auschwitz camps. The place is enormous. Its own city almost.’
Paul sat back to furnish his pipe. I would not show him that I still smoked rolled cigarettes. His speech lisped as the pipe hung from his mouth. He sounded like my father judging my school-work.
‘You know, Ernst, the camp at Buchenwald used to bring wagons of corpses to us for disposal. Not so much the last year. And we used to get deliveries of ashes from the eastern camps to return to families. Not now. The camps have dispensed with formalities. Ignored the laws of their own government. By law the remains are supposed to come to people like myself. We formalised the paperwork and contacted the relatives. We store them here for them if they cannot pay for their release. The SS charge them for the cremation. We have cupboards full of them.’
‘The typhus means they are having to burn more deceased. I suppose in times of emergency laws must be bypassed.’
‘But we get no ashes now. None. They cannot all die of disease. The Party are the ones who regulated. Would you not wonder what hand decided that the rules no longer mattered? That the dead do not matter?’
‘I have been inside Buchenwald,’ I said. ‘There are sixty thousand men there. They have one crematorium. Six ovens. They are overwhelmed. The morgue is below the ovens. The stench was incredible. They cannot cope. Topf is trying to help them. Auschwitz must have the same problems.’
‘And what is so different about this crematoria. What am I looking at?’ He went back to looking at the plan and I pointed the rooms out to him.
‘Instead of the ovens being on the ground floor they will be on the same level as the morgue, the mortuary and pathology. All underground. They use hand-drawn lifts currently.’
‘So do I. And what is this large room between?’
‘The delousing room. This annexe next to it is for the clothes.’
‘They delouse the prisoners next to the mortuary and the ovens?’
‘They delouse,’ I indicated the showers in the ceiling, ‘and then they shower them. This is for the new prisoners. Straight off the train. The track is close by so they do not mingle with the rest of the camp.’
He sucked on his pipe and it rattled on his teeth.
‘And what are these lines here, to the morgue?’
‘Gas pipes.’
‘Gas for what?’
‘I do not know. Exactly. Heating?’
He sat back. ‘You do not heat a morgue, Ernst. You do the opposite.’
‘For the hot water then?’
‘I doubt they give them hot water. What is the building above?’
‘I do not have that plan.’
He studied for three puffs of his pipe.
‘This building makes no sense to me.’
I watched his hands navigate the drawing.
‘You have five triple-muffle ovens behind a delousing room the size of a school hall. The dead would have to be trundled through this hall making it inoperative at those times and – if it is to be as busy as you say it is – that is useless. The morgue and pathology also in this room? There is also only one entrance. These are steps leading to it, yes?’
I agreed, but unsure of it.
‘Well, I do not see any chutes leading to the morgue. So they carry the dead down one by one? By these stairs?’
I looked hard at the plan.
‘There was a chute at Buchenwald. To the morgue.’
‘There does not seem to be one on this plan. Are the dead expected to walk down?’
I had not noticed, felt foolish in front of my friend. Fool. Idiot.
‘Perhaps it is missing?’ My first thought glinted. I had found an error, an oversight I could highlight. To my superiors. Ernst Beck. A designer. ‘They have missed the chutes.’
‘Do you think Topf would make such a mistake, Ernst?’
‘Maybe it is a cost issue? From the SS.’
‘Cement stairs rather than a couple of chutes or a lift to the morgue? I could not operate a morgue underground without a platform lift or a chute. With this design I would be carrying the bodies through the chapel. That is illegal, Ernst. This design is illegal.’
I could no longer refrain from pulling out my sweepings of tobacco. His observations needed a deliberating smoke. Paul watched me roll a cigarette before he went on. I do not think he judged my cheap simulation of smoking, as Klein would have done.
‘I would like to copy this plan, Ernst. I could maybe help with its improvement. Make suggestions. One friend to another.’
‘You have helped, Paul. I did not notice there were no chutes. And you are right. It makes no sense to wheel the dead through a shower room.’ I struck a match and lit up, to think on my next words as I folded the plan away from him. ‘I’m sure that it is an SS request rather than an error of our engineers. No need to trouble yourself further.’
The plan would stay with me. Paul had once been a stonemason. In my innocence, my naivety, I could only think of Freemasons. Of unions and communists. And I had been warned often enough. And I had copied this plan without permission.
‘It is no trouble, Ernst,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you and Etta could come to supper one evening? Catch up properly.’
‘I would like that. We would like that.’ I stood. ‘Thank you, Paul.’ We shook hands.
‘Is there anything else I can help you with, Ernst? A long way to come for so short a visit.’
‘Actually there is. While I’m here.’
‘Of course. Anything.’
‘Could you direct me to the Party office? We have none in Erfurt.’
Paul’s hand dropped from mine, went to hold his pipe in his mouth.
‘An office? Headquarters, Ernst. Weimar has an NS headquarters. The Gauforum. A whole square of them.’
I think he wanted me to react, to check something in me. As if our handshake had been a secret sign.
‘Just an office would do. Thank you.’
Chapter 12
The office in Rittergasse, behind the Herderplatz, had both the Party flag and the yellow and black-eagle standard of the Republic, the Weimar Republic, for Weimar was the city, the heart, of constitution. All but gone now, a memory. The red, white and black flag was twice the size, ridiculous on the small medieval building, the bottom of it almost stroking people’s heads as they passed underneath. Reminding them as they passed. This was the small face of the Party. Where ordinary citizens could pay to join. Weimar’s Party headquarters and buildings not for the public.
‘Ernst!’
That familiar call again. The one from across a square, from a crowded fair while courting, from a balcony as you go to work. That courting call. The red hair loose about her shoulders, not curled. Etta only ever walked in public with her hair curled. Curled and warmed as if she had paid for it and had not spent the morning making it so. She had hurried. A green woollen hat hiding the care she had not taken.
‘Ernst!’ she cried again, waving, and stopping with her hand to her face as a bicycle bell cut her path and the rider cursed as he swerved from her. And then she was at my shoulder, her gloved hand upon me, green, like her hat, no matter her hurry Etta could match her clothes from the pile that fattened in the bottom of our wardrobe before washday with ease. I could not match socks.
‘Ernst. Don’t do this,’ she said. A hoarseness as if she had screamed this a dozen times on her way here.
‘Etta? How are you here?’ All I could say.
‘Frau Klein came for her rent. I knew you had ten marks in your old cigar box. Your papers were missing from it. Your birth certificate and mine.’ Her hand to her mouth again. ‘Please don’t do this, Ernst.’
‘You followed me here? I was only seeing Paul.’
She looked over my shoulder to the flags. ‘And coming here. I knew you were coming here.’
‘You said I could. If I wanted. For my career.’
‘I thought you wouldn’t. If I said I didn’t mind, I thought you wouldn’t.’
The minds of our women. The hand left my shoulder.
‘Buy me a tea,’ she said, took my hand. ‘We have to talk.’
*
A teapot for two in the restaurant of the Elephant Hotel. Weimar had a hundred places we could have gone and I would have preferred the Black Bear Inn next door, but I guessed that Etta thought the hotel would be quieter during the day. This was a grand place on the cobbled market square, the Party’s favourite adopted hotel. They had it redesigned several years ago and built balconies front and rear where our leader and other dignitaries could give speeches to the multitudes that gathered in the square or privately behind the hotel; for speeches that were not for the public.
There was an amusing rumour that the leader himself had called for the remodelling as his regular rooms did not have their own WC. This meant that every time he left to visit the one at the end of his corridor he would re-emerge to rapturous applause from the throng that had heard that their leader was up and about. He would have to salute as the toilet flushed gratefully in the background while he walked back to his rooms in his pyjamas. Not so many parades this year. Everything now centred on Berlin.
I thanked the waitress for the biscuits she placed beside the tea. The biscuits welcome for we could not afford to eat here. Etta thanked her warmer and the girl smiled back as she bowed away. Etta also a waitress. People who worked in service always warm to each other. They know the rest of us are the worst.
‘Do hotels have rationing?’ I asked no-one, looking around, feeling awkward in the company of my own wife. As if we were both someone else’s partners.
‘I don’t know, Ernst,’ she said, patting the back of her hair. ‘Does it matter?’
‘No.’ I smiled, hoped she would meet me with it. ‘Why did you not want me to go in, Etta? To the Party office?’
She tried to dab at her eyes without disturbing her make-up. I waited for her to finish and for the teapot to cool. The handkerchief and compact away to her handbag, its clasp’s click punctuating her talk.
‘I have to tell you something, Ernst. But promise me that you will not think that I have lied to you. Please don’t feel that. It is not personal.’
All the dread thoughts that husbands have when this conversation comes ran through my heart before my head. A flutter in my chest. She saw my consternations and her face became gentle again.
‘Ernst. My birth certificate is not my own. My parents paid for it years ago. When I was a girl. To change my name and theirs.’
‘What?’ I exclaimed this more with relief than surprise. ‘Why?’ Relief that it was not another lover. That I had not been betrayed. ‘Is your name not Etta?’
‘Of course it is. But not Etta Eischner. It is Etta Kirch. And now Etta Beck so probably none of this matters anyway.’ She poured the tea, the chime of china as she trembled.
‘I have three Jewish grandparents. My mother and father are Jewish. But they do not practise. But I do not think that matters any more. Jewish by birth is still Jewish. But – under the law – you are married to a Jewess, Ernst. Our marriage is invalid.’
My thoughts and words stumbling. ‘But we were married in Switzerland? Does that not count for something?’ Gibberish.
‘You’re not Jewish. You were born here.’ Nonsense from the boy.
‘Do you think that concerns any of them now? They still take you away in the night. Camp first. Questions later. That is why I had to be married at my parents’ villa. Safer for us all. And I’m sure there were plenty of Armenians in the last war that were married Protestant in Paris. Do you think that mattered to the Turks?’
We sipped our tea as other guests went past our little table, our little tableau.
Strange how the most shocking things are revealed in congenial places and moments. I imagine it is God’s amusement. Everything we touched cool white. Everything above us gold plaster. We apart from it all.
‘What does this mean?’ I said. The room empty again.
‘Our marriage would be annulled. That would be the least. But …’
‘But you are married to a German?’
She looked hard at me.
‘I am German, Ernst.’
‘You know what I mean. You were concerned that if I showed an official your birth certificate they might notice it was counterfeit. Or they would check up on it.’
‘I’m sure they would.’
‘So we are safe. Nothing has changed. No-one needs to know. No harm to us. I do not care. Your parents only did what they saw right. To protect you.’
‘But they left for Switzerland. I stayed here and met you. We cannot afford to leave.’
I no longer noticed if the mention of money was a slight at me. Just fact.
‘Why should we leave? I have a career now. These are our roots here. Germany is the capital of the world.’
‘Perhaps my father could pay for us to get out? Would you consider that?’
I leaned forward.
‘I have a job, Etta. For us. For our children to come. Travel is too restricted now. You have a forged passport as well.’
She sipped, shrugged, and it curdled me.
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