A starched young woman at her station, lit by the type of green-shaded lamp that I dreamed would accompany my work at home. Franz’s cap to her desk. Quiet words exchanged, close to her blushing face, her smile, his cocked head to me, signalling me to come on. I gave a look down the corridor behind. Empty. No-one coming for me. Followed Franz to a radio room not much bigger than the barber’s tent from yesterday.
A wall of lights and switches. Nine in the morning and the fellow at the bank of machines already exhausted in vest and braces, his small round glasses smeared and steamed, fruit flies swirling about his head, or dead, fried to the single twitching bulb above him.
‘Eisel,’ Franz said. ‘Can my friend here make a call to his father? To Zurich?’
The chair swung and rocked.
‘He can.’ He sized me up. ‘Who is he?’
‘Works for Topf and Sons, in Erfurt. He needs his father to wire him money.’
‘Who doesn’t.’ He rolled his chair to his machines, filled with the same spools as Voss’s device. ‘What’s the number?’
I reeled it off from the paper in my wallet, brushed the fruit flies from the front of my face.
Eisel picked up an enormous green receiver, a rotary inside its handle. I watched his finger dial at every third number I gave. He seemed to guess the last.
‘It’s ringing,’ he said, passed it to me.
‘An operator?’ I took the strange heavy handle. ‘What shall I say?’
Eisel rolled his eyes.
‘That’s your father on the end of the line. You have one minute. I’ll log it as a test. I have work to do.’
I needed both hands to hold the thing to my ear, a large bowl like an oversized pipe to speak into. A closing in my throat as it rang. Rang and rang.
Please let this be worth it. Let me hear her.
A click as someone picked up.
‘Kirch residence?’
Her.
‘Etta!’ I said this too loud. ‘Sister! Hello, sister! It’s Ernst. I am on someone else’s telephone. He’s with me now. I can’t be long. How are you?’
‘Oh, Ernst! Ernst! I am very well. How … how are you?’
‘Good, good, sister. I am in Kassel. How is father?’
‘Fine, fine.’ I could hear the tears. ‘Everything is fine. Father’s not here. Can … can I pass a message?’
In the cupboard of a room both men’s eyes were on me. I had not expected this would be the way I would be with her. Watched. Listened to. I should be used to that. At least she understood. Knew others were listening. In the cramped room she could probably hear their breaths. My smart Etta. My good wife.
Eisel began to wind his hand to me, signalling me to finish up.
‘I need money. The rent is crazy here. It will be all right when I get back to work but I need six hundred marks to see me. Father can telegram it to the Gau here. They can frank a cheque. You’ll tell him, Etta? The Kassel Gau.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘And how is your husband, Etta?’
The line quiet.
‘I miss him so much, Ernst. I wish … but I’m sure he knows. As long as you are well, Ernst.’
‘I’m fine.’ I looked up at Franz. ‘I’m in good company. Once I get back to work—’
‘That’s it,’ Eisel said.
‘I have to go now, Etta. I love you.’
‘Oh, Ernst—’ The line dead. I hesitated to give back the telephone. Felt it still warm with her voice. My hand upon it. Her hand on hers. Holding hands.
‘Thank you, Eisel,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Franz. This means a lot to me.’
‘Maybe I won’t pay you for the cigarettes now, eh?’ He gave two of them to Eisel and pushed me from the room, back to the antechamber with the woman.
‘Your father’s name is Kirch?’ Franz asked. Had heard the voice on the other end.
I was getting used to thinking on my feet. A fine liar.
‘My stepfather.’
Franz satisfied. ‘We’ll go wait for your ID. Come. See how long you can keep me from my desk. At least you get to leave.’
We went back along the corridor. My heart too light. My step quickening. I had forgotten about my worker’s pass, about the call to Topf. No longer cared. Forgot even about the plan rubbing against my back. I had heard her voice. Was dead and buried before that. I had sensed spring again. She was safe. No matter for me.
*
The reception crowded. An urgency to every boot and cap. Something had happened, was happening. Only one group of officers not in a hurry. A circle of them. Laughing and slapping each other’s backs. I looked away as Franz pulled me to a seat.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to leave you, Ernst. Find out what this shit is. Probably Dresden again. It was Ash Wednesday yesterday. They’ll call it Ash Dresden at this rate. Go to the desk, Ernst. See if they’ve got your identification back. I’ll see you tonight.’
He left me sitting on a bench against the wall. The only civilian in the place. Sitting like a naked boy in church, believing every eye on me. I watched the group of caps and grey still laughing, talking loud as high ranks do. Something about them drawing me. Something odd I could not place. An optical illusion about them my brain would not let me see. I blinked them away and went to the desk, asked about my card.
The woman went through her pigeon-holes and papers.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It is not here. Do you know what it is about? We’re very busy.’
This my way out. Escape in chaos. Why should I ask her?
‘Please, madam, have I been caught yet? Where do I surrender myself?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s fine. I’ll come back tomorrow.’ War a wonderful place to get lost. Fate had already given me one glorious moment so why not another? I thanked her.
I went to leave, watched the laughing group of caps and boots separate and saw in their dispersement the optical illusion that my eye could not close on.
Seven men. Seven caps. But not enough legs for them all.
I saw the crutch, not the face, put my head down as the body swung forwards and I tried not to bolt across the floor to the doors.
Too many bodies, too many uniforms pressing me back and sideways, taking me to him like a magnet as I tried to press my way through. Like before. The camp. Going under the arch. The same horror.
He was only three bodies from me. I was treading on toes and apologising as I pushed. Then only an ear between us as he changed direction to escape the same crowd and I reacted as only a child might.
I crouched, pretended to tie a shoe as the crutch brushed past me. I saw a gap and the bright light through the glass doors and almost rolled my way towards it. And I was up, pushed the doors free, met the air and stumbled down the steps to the street.
No voice called. No call to stop. I wouldn’t know what a bullet would sound like if I heard it. You couldn’t rely on the movies for these sounds. They make everything up. Even noise. The speed of the shot faster than its sound. You would be dead before you heard it.
I tried not to run the road. Not hurry. Counted my steps in time with my heart. Only Hercules on his hill watching my receding back.
Chapter 54
I vomited at the first corner I came to. Still civilised enough to do it in a drain. Urchins laughing at me, miming my heave in a chorus line one at a time. I staggered the half-mile back to the house, always looking over my shoulder, contemplating all the horrors that the crutch entailed. Imagination is mostly terror. But so is instinct. Fate had given me Etta’s voice. It had given me the chance to get away without my identification, without a call to Topf and, as fee for its goodness, it had shown me Voss. And so follow your instinct Ernst Beck.
At the house, motorcycles and side-cars. Helmeted adjutants astride the bikes eyeing me enter. I had not seen any officers here other than Franz. Did not worry about it to show. The witch and Franz had told me all the rooms were let out to them. Fitting to see them now. I forced my anxiet
y to be more from the cold than of the square jaws watching. Hugged myself and rushed inside.
I stamped off the cold, waited at the desk to pay my rent, heard the talking, could not help but look along the hall, to the open door. The parlour full of them, full of their loud voices, always belonging to a bar. Talking over each other like drunks. Attention only on each other. The peasant in the wool cap and summer coat not worth an eye.
I needed to wash up, had vomit on my coat, stank of it. The witch not there. A pot of coffee and a plate of fried bread on the front desk. Her ten marks of breakfast and bed. No stomach for it. Nausea still. The thought of coffee, her coffee on an empty stomach too much. Rest a while, settle down. Eat later. I walked past the parlour and to the stairs, pretended to search for something in my wallet to not meet anyone’s eye. Slow. Walk slow Ernst. Twenty steps to the room. The longest I have walked.
Bolted the door behind me, back to it, holding the world from it. Thoughts of Etta and the doors she would always close to keep her mystery. Her bathroom sanctum. Would give my life to hear her running a tap now.
I took my first breath of the morning. Laughed. No. Not a laugh. A hand over mouth simpleton’s relief. Misplaced glee at where I had come to hide. An acorn in a pile of almonds. Who would look for Ernst Beck in a hotel full of SS? The fool genius. Idiot. Fool.
Perhaps he is sharing a room with one of us? Did he really put his own name in the register? Our hotel?
I washed and smoked, took out the plan and put it to the bed. Talked to it. My only friend. The only player in my conspiracy. Let it judge me. Blew my smoke in its face. Dog-eared. Aged years in days. The ink already fading. A well made forgery. My own Turin shroud. Too good to be real.
What are you? What are we doing?
There were the sig-runes, the signatures, my pen-strokes.
Will anyone care? Why am I doing this? What’s the manner of it?
Empty stomach. Light head. Cold. February cold. The hum of planes high above. Etta’s voice from the paper.
They were going to build me.
*
Perhaps they have.
You do not know.
And what if they win?
How will they continue then? They would ask you back. To do more. If they win no-one could stop them. Meat grinders next. You will draw giant meat grinders. For them.
You drew me. You helped them. You could see what I was. It is your amends.
Who will know if you do not show me?
You might have the one plan not burned.
Could show that which burned within.
I worked for Topf and Sons. We built ovens. Designed them. That’s all. All that we did. I didn’t do anything.
You could have put that girl from the camp on your bike.
Could. If you had it then. Or if you could drive a car. If you weren’t such a boy. If time were a line you could ride. And would you?
You freed yourself from the arch. Begged an officer to save you.
Left them. Left her.
I am paper thin.
What are you, Ernst Beck, but cold and lonely? How thin?
What did you imagine? Want? Your wife on a train. What did she hope?
Why did you take me? Paper thin.
Every oven began paper thin.
Hundreds and thousands within lines on paper. The people in the maps. Who are you saving? Hoping to save?
What point?
Paul Reul without ashes.
Hans Klein.
What was his last look? Last.
Fool.
Idiot.
I saw myself fold onto the bed. Made sure the chattering paper was beneath my chest before I passed out.
*
A rapping on the door woke me. Woke like a thief again. Jumped, slapped myself awake in a sweat.
Because I am a thief.
Getting dark outside. Late afternoon. The knock came again, this time a voice. Franz. Swearing at me through the door. I folded the plan back under the mattress.
‘Why did you bolt the door?’ This maddened him more than it should, I thought. He came into the room still in coat and cap, still in uniform, his back to me, looked about the room as if disgusted, as if it were not his.
‘I was taking a nap. Longer than I wanted. Sorry.’
He faced me.
‘You don’t look well, Ernst.’
I sat on our chair.
‘I was sick this morning. I should eat more hot meals. Not these sandwiches all the time. The only damned place to eat closes at three.’
He took off his cap and coat. At last. Franz again. Not one of them.
‘You need to find a widow with a chicken and a pot.’ The holster came off, back to the wardrobe. ‘You should have gone back to Erfurt when you had the chance. Too late now.’
‘It’s not bombed is it?’
‘I don’t know. But the roads are closed. By Monday anyone in this city is staying here. Did you get your worker’s pass back?’
I pictured Voss pocketing my card, hobbling into a car, pointing a black-gloved finger down the road through the windscreen.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it tomorrow. I’ll have to pick up the telegram from my father.’
‘I’ll get them. Get the cheque cut for you. You’ll be hours if you go.’
Some relief in this. Not wanting to go back to that place. A child again, hiding among the crevices and stonework of the Merchants’ Bridge from my father’s belt.
‘Thank you, Franz.’
‘No problem. Naturally you’ll lend me sixty marks for the privilege, old boy. Listen. I’ll get some apple wine and see if the witch can make you up some soup. She has some books in the parlour. I’ll find you something racy.’
I thanked him again. All I ever did now it seemed. Thanked Franz. Thanked an SS officer. I gave him my rent money to pass to her. That would surely grace her to turn a spoon with some potatoes.
I should run. Get on the bike and go. The colonel here in Kassel. Probably not for me, surely not for me. Who would care about Ernst Beck? But get him to get to his wife. You could not trust the newspapers to tell truth. A liar like the rest of us, like the radio. The report the newspaper gave probably did not refer to Hans. He was in his home with a Martini in one hand and a Camel in the other. Topf too busy burning plans to answer the telephone. The lines already down. The Gau in chaos with more important things to concern than Ernst Beck and his wife. The heart of Germany was being bombed. One line written somewhere about Ernst Beck and his Jewish communist wife. A million lines written above it. A fish rots from its head down. Told this to Hans. A philosopher above Hans. Not true. A metaphor for a country’s failure. A dog cannot get rid of its own fleas. Better. Truer. You are a flea, Ernst Beck. Run. Go. But you need that cheque. You will brunt the fall because you need that money and your pass. And the roads closed. So sit and wait to get caught.
It started to snow again, went to the window and watched it coating the ruins, building them up again, painting them white. Everything looks better in snow. Of all I had to concern me there was the strange numbness in my pit that Franz Werra would be disappointed in Ernst Beck.
My parents, Etta, Hans and the Topfs, Prüfer and Sander, yet all I could think of was Franz judging me. Shaking his head as they carted me away. I could not reconcile except with a cigarette as I watched the snow. He was going to wangle me soup because I said I was sick. I had bought him cigarettes. We shared a room in a bombed-out city, had only known him three days. Maybe it was a male thing. That way you can make best friends in one drunken night, like people used to before this. Spend years meeting without knowing their second name. Or maybe just a liar’s thing, a war thing. Any day dead. Any day.
He came into the room with a tray. A bottle. A bowl covered with cloth, a paperback book. The waft of chicken soup. The room became a home. I ate, wished we had a radio. Franz watched me eat, pleased, as if he could see my strength returning with each spoonful. I faked revival, like you might with your
mother. I was weak with something more than lack of food. We did not talk. It was Thursday evening. I had been in Kassel three days. Or three years. Franz and I old men. But soup. And Etta’s voice. She had made it. Was safe. All that might go wrong was a journey to be, and might never be. This was good. Today. Tonight. This was good. Franz uncorked the wine. Drink the only thing left for young men. Barely a war for us now.
Machines rolled and flew. Automatons were at war. Buttons were pressed. Faces did not look on faces from across a field. No trenches. A war on paper now, end any day now, and no-one would care about Ernst Beck and his lapsed loyalties. It was all about the maps. The young men still living would live, go home to their wives, find wives. I could not imagine what would come. But they did. They knew. He knew.
A knock on the door. I put the tray to the bed, expected this. Franz answered the door. Expected it also.
A soldier in helmet. Such a helmet. Designed so well. Somehow it removed the wearer from the world. They looked like machines.
He saluted Franz in the doorway. I stood. Waited. Had always waited for the knock.
‘Your rifle, Corporal Werra.’ The helmet passed over a gun and bag. Saluted again as Franz took them. Franz waved him away, closed the door. Not a door for me. No longer my door. I was furniture in a barracks.
He dropped the bag to the floor, checked the bolt, the action of the weapon. Did not look the same man.
‘This,’ he said, put the weapon to his bed, sat with it behind him. ‘This it comes to.’
Silence for a moment. Drank wine. Spoke again. The last time for the night.
‘You know all wars come to streets. Always town to town. House to house. Why don’t they just start like that? If that’s how they end?’ He lit a cigarette, dragged long. ‘It’s shit. All shit. If they knew it would end like this … this should have been day one. Then we could all go home.’
‘It’s snowing,’ I said, did not know what else to say. There was now a rifle in our room, a bag of ammunition. I went back to my soup.
Franz to the window, struggled with the clasp.
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