by Philip Kerr
“Hey,” I said.
“Don’t make the mistake of pulling out that chair,” he murmured. “I’m not the type who likes to jaw with strangers.”
He wore a mid-green suit and a dark green shirt with a brown woolen tie. On the bench next to him were a leather coat and hat and, for no reason I could see, a substantial-looking dog lead. The flat, yellowish cigarettes he was smoking were not Russian, however; they were French.
“I understand. Are you Herr Goerz?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Stefan Blitz. I was told you were the man to speak to about getting work on the Olympic site.”
“Oh? Who told you that?”
“Fellow named Trollmann. Johann Trollmann.”
“Never heard of him. Does he work for me?”
“No, Herr Goerz. He said he heard it from a friend of his. I can’t remember his name. Trollmann and I, we used to box together.” I paused. “I say ‘used to,’ because now we can’t. Not anymore. Not now that there are rules about non-Aryans in sporting contests. Which is how I come to be looking for a job.”
“I’ve never been a sporting man myself,” said Goerz. “I was too busy earning a living.” He looked up from his newspaper. “I can see the boxer in you, maybe. But somehow I can’t see the Jew.”
“I’m a mischling. Half and half. But that doesn’t seem to make much difference to the government.”
Goerz laughed. “No, it certainly doesn’t. Let me see your hands, Stefan Blitz.”
I held them out in front of him, showing off my dirty fingernails.
“Not the backs of your hands. The palms.”
“Are you going to tell my fortune?”
His eyes narrowed as he pulled on the last few centimeters of the foul-smelling cigarette. “Maybe.” Not touching my hands, just looking, he added, “These hands look strong enough. But they don’t look like they’ve done much real work.”
“Like I said, mostly I’ve worked with my knuckles. But I can handle a pick and a shovel. During the war I did my fair share of digging trenches. Quite a few graves, too.”
“Sad.” He put out the cigarette. “Tell me, Stefan, do you know what a tithing is?”
“It’s in the Bible. It means a tenth part, doesn’t it?”
“’Sright. Now, then. I’m just the hiring boss. I get paid by the construction company to find them men. But I also get paid by you, to find you a job, see? A tenth of what you make at the end of the day. You can think of it as being like your union dues.”
“A tenth seems a little high for any union I’ve ever been in.”
“I agree. But then beggars can’t be choosers, now, can they? Jews aren’t allowed to be in German workingmen’s unions. So, under those circumstances, a tenth is what you’re asked to pay. And you can take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it.”
“I thought you would. Besides, like I said. It’s in your holy book. Genesis, chapter fourteen, verse twenty. ‘And he gave him tithes of all.’ That’s the best way to look at it, I think. As your holy duty. And if you can’t work your head around that, then just remember this: I only pick the men who pay me the tithing. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Six o’clock sharp, at the monument outside. Maybe you’ll work, maybe you won’t. It all depends on how many are needed.”
“I’ll be here.”
“As if I care.” Goerz looked back down at his newspaper. The interview was over.
I HAD ARRANGED TO MEET NOREEN at the Romanisches Café on Tauentzienstrasse. Formerly popular with Berlin’s literati, the café resembled an airship that had made an unscheduled landing on the pavement in front of a four-story Romanesque building that might have been the sibling of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church opposite. Or perhaps it was the modern equivalent of a Hohenzollern hunting lodge—somewhere for the princes and emperors of the first German empire to get a coffee or a kummel after spending a long morning on their knees to a God who, by comparison with them, must have seemed rather vulgar and ill bred.
Under the glass ceilings of the café she was easy to see, like an exotic species of hothouse flower. But, as with any vivid tropical bloom, something dangerous was close at hand. A young man wearing a smart black uniform was seated at her table, like Miss Muffet’s spider. Less than six months after the demise of the SA as a political force independent of the Nazis, the impeccably dressed SS had already established itself as the most feared uniformed organization in Hitler’s Germany.
I was none too pleased to see him myself. He was tall and blond and handsome with an easy smile and manners as polished as his boots—lighting Noreen’s cigarette as urgently as if her life had depended on it, and standing up with a click of heels that was as loud as a champagne cork when I presented myself at their table. The SS officer’s matching black Labrador shifted uncertainly on his haunches and uttered a low growl. Master and dog looked like a warlock and his familiar, and before Noreen had even begun the introductions, I was hoping he might disappear in a puff of black smoke.
“This is Lieutenant Seetzen,” she said, smiling politely. “He’s been keeping me company and practicing his English.”
I fixed a rictus smile to my jaw, affecting pleasure in our new friend’s company, but I was glad when he finally made his excuses and left.
“That’s a relief,” she said. “I thought he’d never go.”
“Oh? You looked like you were getting on very well.”
“Don’t be an ass, Gunther. What could I do? I was reading through my notes, and he just sat down and started speaking to me. All the same, it was kind of fascinating in a sort of creepy way. He was telling me that he’s applied to join the Prussian Gestapo.”
“Now, there’s a job with prospects. If only I didn’t have any scruples, I might just do the same.”
“Right now he’s on a training course in the Grunewald.”
“I wonder what they teach them. How to use a rubber hose on a man without killing him? Where do they get these bastards?”
“He’s from Eutin.”
“Ah, so that’s where they get them.”
Noreen tried to stifle a yawn with the back of her elegantly gloved hand. It was easy to see why the lieutenant had spoken to her. She was easily the best-looking woman in the café. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s been a hell of an afternoon. First von Tschammer und Osten, and then that young lieutenant. For a clever people, you Germans can be awfully dumb.” She glanced down at her reporter’s notebook. “Your leader of German sports is so full of bullshit.”
“That’s how he got the job, angel.” I lit a cigarette.
She turned some of the pages of shorthand, shaking her head.
“Listen to this. I mean, he said a lot of things that sounded sort of unhinged to me, but this took the biscuit. When I asked him about Hitler’s promise that, in the selection of its Olympic team, Germany would observe Olympic statutes and recognize neither race nor color, he said—and I quote, ‘But it is being observed. At least, in principle. Technically, nobody is being excluded on any of those grounds.’ And listen to this, Bernie. This is the best bit. ‘By the time the games are held, Jews will probably no longer be German citizens, or at least first-class German citizens. They may be admissible as guests. And in view of all the international agitation on behalf of the Jews, it may even happen that, at the last moment, the government will accede to there being a small quota of Jews on the team, albeit in those sporting events in which Germany stands only a slight chance of winning, such as chess or croquet. Because the fact remains that there are certain sports in which it cannot be denied, a German-Jewish victory would present us with a political, not to say philosophical, question.’ ”
“Is that so?” I put out my cigarette. It was still only half smoked, but I felt something sticking in my throat, as if I had swallowed the little silver death’s-head badge from the lieutenant’s black cap.
“Depressing, isn’t it?”
“If I�
�ve given you the impression that I’m a tough guy, then I should tell you now, I’m not. I appreciate a little bit of warning before anyone punches me in the stomach.”
“There’s more. Von Tschammer und Osten said that all Roman Catholic and Protestant youth organizations are, like all Jewish organizations, to be expressly forbidden to pursue any sport. As far as the Nazis are concerned, people are going to have to make a choice between religion and sports. The point being that all sports training is to be done under Nazi auspices. He actually said that the Nazis are conducting a cultural war against the church.”
“He said that?”
“Any Catholic or Protestant athletes who don’t join Nazi sports clubs will lose their chance of representing Germany.”
I shrugged. “So let them. Who cares about a few idiots running around a track anyway?”
“You’re missing the point, Gunther. They’ve purged the police. Now they’re purging sports. If they succeed, there will be no aspect of German life in which they won’t be able to exert their authority. In all aspects of German society, Nazis will be preferred. If you want to get on in life, you will have to become a Nazi.”
She was smiling, and it annoyed me that she was smiling. I knew why she was smiling. She was pleased because she thought she had a scoop for her newspaper article. But it still annoyed me that she was smiling. To me this was more than just a story, this was my country.
“It’s you who’s missing the point,” I said. “You think it was an accident that SS lieutenant decided to speak to you? You think he was just passing the time of day?” I laughed. “The Gestapo marked your card, angel. Why else would he have told you he was joining the Gestapo? After your interview with the sports leader they probably followed you here.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense, Bernie.”
“Is it? Most likely Lieutenant Seetzen was told to charm you, to find out what kind of person you are. Who your associates are. And now they know about me.” I glanced around the café. “They’re probably watching us right now. Perhaps the waiter is one of theirs. Or that man reading the newspaper. It could be anyone. That’s what they do.”
Noreen swallowed nervously and lit another cigarette. Her lovely blue eyes flicked one way and then the other, examining the waiter and then the man with the newspaper for some sign that they were spying on us. “You really think so?”
Noreen was beginning to look convinced, and I might have smiled and told her I was joking but for the fact that I’d also succeeded in convincing myself. Why wouldn’t the Gestapo have followed an American journalist who had just finished interviewing the sports leader? It made perfect sense. It’s what I’d have done if I’d been in the Gestapo. I told myself I ought to have seen this coming.
“So now they know about you,” I said. “And they know about me.”
“I’ve put you in danger, haven’t I?”
“Like you said this morning. A certain amount of danger is written into the job description.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Forget it. Then again, maybe you shouldn’t forget it, after all. I like your feeling guilty on my part. It means I can blackmail you with a clear conscience, angel. Besides. As soon as I saw you I knew you were trouble. And it just so happens that’s just the way I like my women. With big fenders, polished coachwork, lots of chrome, and a supercharged engine, like that car Hedda drives. The kind of car where you find yourself in Poland the moment you touch the gas. I’d be on the bus if I was interested in sleeping with librarians.”
“All the same, I’ve been thinking about this story and not thinking at all about the impact it might have on you. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid as to bring you to the attention of the Gestapo.”
“Maybe I didn’t mention it before, but I’ve been in their sights for quite a while. Ever since I quit the force, as a matter of fact. There are several good reasons I can think of why the Gestapo or for that matter KRIPO could arrest me if they wanted to. It’s the reasons I can’t think of that are the ones I worry about most.”
20
NOREEN WANTED TO SPEND THE NIGHT with me at my apartment, but I couldn’t bring myself to bring her to what was little more than a room with a tiny kitchen and an even tinier bathroom. Calling it an apartment at all was a bit like describing a mustard seed as a vegetable. There were smaller apartments in Berlin, but mostly it was the families of mice that got them first.
It was embarrassment that prevented me from showing her how I lived. But it was shame that prevented me from telling her that I was one-eighth Jewish. It’s true I had been discomfited at the discovery my so-called mixed blood had been denounced to the Gestapo, but I felt no shame in being who and what I was. How could I? It seemed so insignificant. No, the shame I felt related to my having asked Emil Linthe to airbrush from the official record the very blood that connected me with Noreen, albeit in a small way. How could I tell her that? And, still nursing my secret, I spent another blissful night with Noreen in her suite at the Adlo.n.
Lying between her thighs, I slept only a little. We had better things to do. And early in the morning, when I made my nefarious exit from her room, I told her only that I was going home and that I would see her later that day, and nothing at all about catching the S-Bahn to Grunewald and Schildhorn.
I kept some working clothes in my office. As soon as I had changed, I went out into the predawn darkness and walked to Potsdamer Station. About forty-five minutes after that, I was walking up the steps to the Schildhorn monument with several other men, most of them Jewish-looking types with brown hair, dark melancholy eyes, bat ears, and beaks that made you wonder if God had chosen his people on the basis of their having noses they might not have chosen for themselves. This generalization was made easier by the certain knowledge that all these men shared a bloodline that was probably purer than my own. In the moonlight, one or two of them shot me a questioning look, as if wondering what the Nazis could possibly have against a tall, burly man with blond hair, blue eyes, and a nose like a baker’s thumb. I didn’t blame them. In that particular company I stuck out like Rameses II.
There were about 150 men gathered in the darkness under the invisible pine trees, which whispered their presence in an early-morning breeze. The monument itself was supposed to be a stylized tree crowned by a cross from which a shield was hanging. It probably meant something to someone who had a taste for unsightly religious monuments. To me it looked like a lamppost without a much-needed lamp. Or, perhaps, a stone stake for burning city architects. That would have been a worthwhile monument. Especially in Berlin.
I walked around this economy-sized obelisk, eavesdropping on a few conversations. Mostly they were to do with how many days each man had worked in the recent past. Or not worked, as seemed rather more common.
“I got one day last week,” said a man. “And two the week before. I need to work today, or my family won’t eat.”
Another started to excoriate Goerz but was quickly silenced by someone else.
“Blame the Nazis, not Goerz. But for him none of us would work. He’s risking as much as us. Maybe more.”
“If you ask me, he gets well paid for the risk.”
“It’s my first time,” I told the man standing next to me. “How do you get yourself picked?”
I offered him a cigarette, and he looked at me and my cigarettes strangely, as if suspecting that no one who really needed to work had money for such sensuous and expensive luxuries. He took it anyway and put it behind his ear.
“There’s no method in it,” he said. “I’ve been coming here for six months, and still it seems arbitrary. There are some days when he likes your face, and others when he doesn’t even meet your eye.”
“Maybe he’s just trying to spread the work around,” I said. “For the sake of fairness.”
“Fairness?” The man snorted his derision. “Fairness has absolutely nothing to do with it. One day he’ll take a hundred men. Another day he’ll take seventy-five. It’s a kind of fascism, I
think. Goerz reminding us all of the power he wields.”
Shorter than me by a head, the man was red-haired and sharply featured, with a face like a heavily rusted hatchet. He wore a thick pea jacket and a worker’s cap, and around his neck was tied a bright green handkerchief that matched the color of the eyes behind his wire-framed glasses. Jutting out of his coat pocket was a book by Dostoevsky, and it was almost as if this young and studious-looking Jew had emerged, fully formed, from a space between the pages: neurotic, poor, undernourished, desperate. His name was Solomon Feigenbaum, which, to my mostly Aryan ears, was about as Jewish as a ghetto full of tailors.
“Anyway, if it’s your first time, you almost always get picked,” said Feigenbaum. “Goerz likes to give the new man a day, so that they get the taste.”
“That’s a relief.”
“If you say so. Only you don’t look like you’re in desperate need of work. Matter of fact, you don’t even look Jewish.”
“That’s what my mother said to my father. I always figured that’s why she married him. It takes more than a hooked nose and a yarmulke to make a Jew, friend. What about Helene Mayer?”
“Who’s she?”
“A Jewish fencer on the German Olympic team in 1932. Looks like Hitler’s wet dream. She’s got more blond hair than the floor in a Swedish barbershop. And what about Leni Riefenstahl? Surely you’ve heard the rumors.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. Her mother was a Polish Jew.”
Feigenbaum seemed vaguely amused by that.
“Listen,” I said. “I haven’t worked in weeks. A friend of mine told me about this Plage. As a matter of fact, I thought I’d see him here.” As if hoping to see Isaac Deutsch, I looked around the crowd of men standing near the monument, and shook my head with disappointment.
“Did your friend tell you about the work?”