*
My eyes and mouth full of powdered stone. I scratched at it, spat out the cake of it. I had not passed out, just dazed and dizzy as I stood and staggered to the door.
‘Paul!’ I yelled, balanced myself, pulled myself across the trolleys and their burdens. ‘Paul!’
The corridor a different place now. Only the street wall and part of the ceiling remained. I could see the stone stairs through the collapsed lift shaft, the concertina door flung aside, spiking up through the jigsaw pieces of brick. No shaft left, tendrils of cables swinging from above.
I put the tube in my jacket pocket, pushed through the mess, calling his name. I lifted what I could and thanked god when I saw his tweed jacket, the new London jacket, then remembered he had taken it off in anger of me.
Metal sheets everywhere, as if dumped down the shaft. I slipped on them, scrabbled over stone. A shoe!
I reached for it, threw the bricks that smothered, grabbed it and cried for him to hold on.
It came away in my hands and I fell back. Only a shoe. Not clean and brilliant. Dusty and ancient like the abandoned ones in ghetto streets. I clawed again at the bricks. Only succeeded in making more piles of unending piles. No other shoe and after minutes of this I made the hope go away. You can do that. You can push it aside to make way for the guilt and the shame. It is easier than you think. Not better. Just easier. The people in the maps.
I sat on bricks and listened to the fire bells ringing over the shouts and the howls from the street above. My ears rang, my jaw hurt, my eyes itched with dust and wept without my cause. The blue-grey of them. A cold wind could make them smart. An annoyance all my life.
I tossed the shoe aside. Got up because the sounds outside called me. I moved only because I could. Hand over hand, foot-hold against foot-hold. Because I could.
Chapter 37
The lift door was among the rubble on the floor above, still closed shut in its frame. Perhaps Paul had not thought on that. He would not have been able to get out. The realisation assuaged something. Not my fault. He would not have been able to get out with the door shuttered. Not been able to send the lift down to me. I would have had to roll him back down again. And we would both be dead.
The shaft had gone. Not a bomb. The structure stressed. Part of the street exposed through the wall as if punched in, the jigsaw pieces I had seen below. The roof also hammered through with holes. The sky blue before, hurtling grey waves now. I did not recognise this place.
Did you ever dream about finding a secret door in a place you lived? A room hidden within your walls. It was like that now. I had been here many times. None of it familiar except for objects I had seen in Paul’s rooms scattered at my feet. A whole wall gone. The timber of its innards still standing.
I staggered to the half-light, to the ringing bells. A fireman in black canvas filled the hole in the wall.
‘Anyone else in here?’
‘No,’ I coughed. ‘There are bodies downstairs. A mortuary. Already dead.’
He fronted me. Axe in hand.
‘You robbing them? Who are you?’
‘I was visiting my friend. Paul Reul. He owns this place. My name is Ernst Beck. From Erfurt. Please? Is the rail station still open? I must get to my wife. Is Erfurt all right?’ I was on him now, could see the hell over his shoulder.
‘Where is your friend?’ His axe across my body. Holding me back. I pushed it aside.
‘In the mortuary. He did not … there is no-one alive in here. We were the only two. ‘Please? Is the station—’
I froze as the street outside came into me.
Burning cities should only be in paintings. Seen from a distant perspective. An historical view in a gallery. Burning alive in front of you is too large to comprehend. The paintings cannot convey the urgency of fire, the glee of it, the running feet in every direction, the screams of those finding each other, the screams of those not. The realms between them.
I saw a pram burning. A motorcycle wheel spinning merrily. One whole motorcycle on its side screaming in gear round and round like a mad dog, whisking the dust of the snow up and up. The dust and ash a cyclone whirling around the church that still stood, drawn to it. The statues that still stood, heads perpetually bowed, waiting for this moment. I forgot about home. Forgot about Etta. Pushed her aside. Everything small now. Minuscule against this.
I showed my tie to the fireman. The pin. No thief would wear such.
‘Let me help,’ I said. ‘I’m not hurt. I can help.’
He took my shoulder and limped me out. The cobbled street beneath my shoes warm. I have never forgotten it. A street as warm in winter as summer sand.
*
It was late when I got home. Etta in tears. We held each other on the doorstep. No neighbours to see. She kissed the ash from my cheeks and I wiped it off with my own tears.
I had seen rib-cages and screaming skulls on fire. The limbs were charcoal but the ribs burned like braziers. More fat I supposed. The square had filled with hand-drawn wagons full of milk-churns of water as soon as the people returned from their fields of shelter. I had lost my fireman. The bells of the churches rang alongside the fire-wagons, calling people to come for aid. No-one knowing if the planes would reach some destination in the east and turn around like hounds at a hunt. Would come back.
More women than men. They had lost their sons in the years, lost their husbands to the war-maps. Now someone wanted to ease their losses by burning them.
They gripped my lapels, pulled me to them, screaming as if I could be their man or their son come home. I ladled them water from the churns into their cracked cups, called them ‘mother’ and passed each a diamond from Klein’s cardboard tube. No definite reason to do so. Wanted to be rid, to punish, to gift, as if a diamond was better than water, better than their homes back. Most did not notice and I watched them drop from their hands as they walked away only to be snatched up by an urchin in shorts every time. I watched firemen stamp on the rib-cages to put out the flames.
When I ran out of water I walked away. No-one called me back. I did not think on the trains. Not worth trying. Not possible they were running now. Erfurt came back to me. Etta came back to me. Was she safe? Erfurt like this? The market square in Weimar almost gone. The apothecary with the bay window we all used to direct people around the centre gone, disintegrated. The Russian church still standing over all, the statues still there, still pitying. The old stone still standing. As it ever did. The rest like half-finished doll’s houses, their front or side walls gone, the timber remaining. You could look into people’s homes like a ghost. Their sofas, their bathrooms. All exposed. Privacy not an aspect of war. Wardrobes scattered on the streets. Women gathered up their private clothes and bundled them in their coats. Ashamed that the world could see. They yelled at their children picking up slips and brassieres and waving them like flags. So many children, and that at least a relief. They were laughing. Laughing at their mothers’ sobs. No father to admonish.
I thought about Paul’s grand car. If I found it could I drive it? Could I get home that way? Then I heard the sound like a wasp trapped in a bottle on the opposite side of the square. The motorcycle still spinning in a circle on its side, trapped in its gears. How difficult could it be? To ride such?
I approached it like it was a wild animal, edged at it and, like the same, kicked my foot at its saddle to calm it and it stopped bucking long enough for me to pull up the starter and switch it off. I stepped back as it died.
You have to push up a fallen motorcycle, not lift. It took me a moment to discover this. It was an old Zundapp, twenty years old but the kids loved them because under the Party they were tax and licence free. Not much more than a bicycle in looks. I could not see the rider. I hoped he had run, got away. I sat and balanced it, pushed the starter and pulled the choke. It was still in gear and went off like a wayward horse. I wobbled for a few yards and then realised why it was named ‘the motorcycle for everyone.’ Like riding a bicycle downhill. Two
gears from a lever on the frame. Point and ride. I mastered it before I left the square. I still had the blue tube in my pocket. One diamond left.
I took the road to Erfurt, kept close to the hedgerows as planes went over, over all the compass. It did not matter whose planes. Just crosses in the sky. Everything in the air the wrong side now.
I was in Etta’s arms. Erfurt still the same. Not bombed. I was the only one on the afternoon streets coated in ash. I have never been as grateful to be home. Nor ever so shamed to be so.
She closed the door behind me, holding onto me.
‘I heard the planes,’ she said. Enough to say.
We stayed in the hall. Talked low, as if there was a party in the parlour we did not want to be part of.
‘Paul is dead.’ I said it as it was.
She reacted like women did now. Grief for later.
‘Are you all right?’
I said nothing. She ran her hands carefully over me as she spoke. ‘Perhaps this could be a good thing. Klein sent you to Weimar. Perhaps we could pretend that you … we could get away now.’
‘He will telephone to ask. Could you lie? To him?’
‘I think I could. We could get away. Tonight.’
I stood back. Of course she could lie.
‘I do not want to be dead yet, Etta. And I doubt there is a train after today. And then none until Monday. I have to get our money from the bank. Besides, we need a travel permit from the Gau.’
‘Would that be difficult?’
‘I would need signed permission from my employer.’
‘They won’t do that.’
‘They might. If I could bargain with them. And I think I know what to do. What I must do.’
She wrapped her arms about herself, sat on the foot of the stairs.
‘We are in danger aren’t we?’
‘No. No more than anyone else.’ I took off my dusty jacket. ‘Do you think your friends could find out where the Americans are?’
‘What for?’
‘Paul wanted the plan. Said he could take it to the right people. He can’t do that now.’ I smiled at my wife. It had been a long time since I had done that proudly. ‘I can.’
‘But you would have to get it from the factory? Could you not just make a copy?’
‘Not proof. The original is designated for the SS. Marked. It will be proof of their plans. I made a copy. Klein asked me to. A stamped copy. I could give them a Topf copy of the same plan they will find in Berlin. Could you find out where the Americans are?’
‘There is a meeting tonight. After the café closes. Always on Friday. But I don’t know if they will accept me any more. I have not seen them for weeks.’
‘I am sure they will listen once they know what I intend to do.’
She got off the step, held me again, as if such an act valuable now.
‘How will you get them to give you a travel permit? They said you could not leave?’
I unfurled her from me, took the blue tube from my jacket on the stair. I twisted off the lid and held her hand. Poured the single diamond to her palm. She stared at it. As all do.
‘What is this?’
‘Leverage.’
And the telephone rang before I could explain. I took the stone back. Etta went white, the colour of the diamond that had been in her hand, stared at the telephone through the wall. I touched her arm.
‘Wait here,’ I said.
Chapter 38
‘Ernst?’
It was Klein. I looked at the mantle clock. After six. Klein still at his office. Late for him on a Friday. Only after six. Felt like I had been gone for days.
‘It has been on the radio,’ he said. ‘The sky is black over there. Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Thank you, sir. I am just glad that Erfurt is unharmed. That Etta is fine.’
‘And your friend?’
‘No. The building was bombed. I was lucky.’
‘I see.’ He paused enough for grief. ‘And the ashes? Are they safe?’
Only two things I could say. Both would be a lie. But if I said I had them he might come to retrieve. I would. He would.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We had already put them away. I’m sorry, sir. The place was destroyed.’
Silence, just the hum of the receiver.
‘Will you be at work on Monday, Ernst?’
‘Yes, sir. I just need rest. My ears are ringing.’
‘I am sorry for Herr Reul. At least Topf has banked his cheque. Goodnight, Ernst.’
I put the receiver down, noticed it did not sit right. One end did not fully connect with the mount. I corrected it, pleased, despite Klein’s call, realised that was why Etta had not picked up when I telephoned her all those months ago. Nothing sinister, nothing secret. She said she did not hear it ring. She hadn’t. No deception. It had simply not sat home correctly. One thing no longer to concern. I would take a look at it over the weekend. Something to do to distract from today, to distract from the Monday to come.
*
The café owner I supposed also a communist to allow such goings-on in his premises no matter how clandestine they appeared.
We came in the back, through the kitchen, smaller than I had imagined able to serve so many tables. I thought of Etta when she worked here. She would brush past the cooks and the waiters as she worked. I never thought of it before. They probably smiled and blushed at each other all night. I was not jealous as such. No. Only sorry I had removed those blushes.
In the café the chairs were upturned on the tables. Nobody sat. Maybe the owner conceded to their conclave as long as they did not disturb the completeness of the restaurant put to bed. The new height of the chairs made all of them like children. As many women as men. I do not know why that surprised me.
They were as young as us although I felt older in my suit and wing-tips than the other men in caps, shirts and braces, their woollen coats piled up on the bar. I wondered how these youths were not in the war Did they work for essential companies, departments? Is that how the communists infiltrated? Or did they just not turn up with their papers and hid in the cracks which got wider every day?
One of them broke their group to come and smile at Etta, to sniff at me. He had those Bohemian moustaches old men dislike in the youth. I have never liked beards.
‘And who is this, Etta?’ He spoke to me.
‘My husband. Ernst, this is Bernie.’
I put out my hand but he left it there.
‘Ah. The one who makes the ovens for the baby-killers.’
My hand back to my pocket.
‘I do not make them. I annotate them.’
‘Is there a difference?’
He was so assured, convinced he could say anything to anyone. One of those who would smile, cross his arms at the firing squad for the photograph, not realising that the Party had just as many the same, who would do the same. They probably had similar lives behind them. A chip on one shoulder, a braid of entitlement on the other.
‘Bernie!’ Etta scolded him the same as she would me. I feared for our children. ‘Ernst is here to help. How dare you!’
He apologised like scraping shit off his shoes.
‘And how is he going to help? Look at him. He has Gestapo written all over.’
I took a step.
‘I could help your father’s shame by putting you on your arse.’
I said it like Klein would have. Through a promise of smile and eyes that had already settled on the act completed and I was only recalling it fondly. ‘We won’t be here long. Go stand with your comrades. And listen.’
He looked at Etta’s glare, swung away as if bored of me. Slouched on the bar as the others looked between us.
Etta walked with me to the centre of the room of folded arms.
‘I am Ernst Beck,’ I announced, still with Klein’s countenance. I wished for one of his Camels, for the silver lighter. Would not roll a cigarette in front of them.
‘I work for Topf and Sons. And if you did not alre
ady know, Topf is the prime supplier of ovens for the SS. For the camps. Has been so since before the war.’
A voice chirped.
‘Have you come to sell us one? You sound proud.’
‘I have come to tell you that Paul Reul died in Weimar this afternoon. I was with him.’ I let that whisper around, wished I had kept the smut and dust on me, had not washed it off. ‘And that I am done with Topf.’
I walked the room, hands in pockets, as I had at the barracks.
‘I do not need to know any of you. I am not here for allegiances. And my wife’s politics are her own.’
Bernie came off the bar. Folded his arms with the rest of them.
‘So what do you want, Company Man?’ The same words a soldier in Auschwitz had said to me. The similar, the dislike of men in suits. If they stood together, the soldier and the communist, I would be the one against the wall as they aimed.
I stopped walking.
‘I took a job. Working for one of Erfurt’s finest. I wanted to design. I was hired to detail new ovens for the SS. I have come to realise that these ovens were for more than their original intent.’
‘Their only intent.’ Another voice. Did not rise to it. My speech was not practised but it had the sound of it. It was the speech of the sorry drunkard. Interruptions not tolerated, honesty absolute, absolution asked.
‘My last work was for what they called a continuous oven for mass use. It was designed on four levels. A single muffle in. The bodies would be put in one by one. They would move down a series of rollers to the furnace at the bottom. The onwards consumption of the bodies below would fuel those burning above. It would save fuel and the necessity to remove waste from the oven. They would burn as fast as you could shovel them in. As many as you could. As many as you wanted.’
Women put their hands to mouths. I did not want to look at the men.
I took a lighted cigarette from a mouth. A protest until he saw the shaking of my hand. I did not even taste it as I dragged. Needed it to drag the last words from my pit.
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