A policeman approached. “Mein Herr, it’s not safe here. There’s usually a second blast. Please come away quickly.”
Distraught, Richard looked up at him. “I can’t find a pulse! I think he’s dead.”
Gently the policeman tugged on Richard’s arm to pull him away. “Come, mein Herr. Your bravery won’t do your friend any good now. Please, come away.”
As they crossed behind the police cordon, Richard was greeted by others from the Ministry. A flurry of negotiations took place around him as the various branches of the police tried to determine who would take responsibility for the investigation. It was finally determined that Richard and Stefan would give their statements the following day to RSHA investigators. The local police were left to clean up the mess and clear the area of any unexploded bombs.
As they walked Richard back to the offices, Herr Schindler placed an arm around his shoulders. “Close call there, Traugutt; we’re lucky that thing didn’t get both of you.”
Still obviously shaken, Richard only nodded.
“Maybe you should go to the hospital and get checked out,” someone else opined.
That opinion was seconded by a number of voices.
Richard stopped and rubbed his face. “No, I’m okay.”
“Hell of a Berlin welcome, eh?” a third voice asked.
Richard nodded. “It’s okay. We have blasts in Göringstadt as well.”
“I’ve heard they’re a lot less frequent since you took over that division. Maybe you should come to Berlin,” Helga’s boss suggested.
“Yes, maybe.” Richard gestured back in the direction of the blast. “Do you have any idea who was responsible?”
“Oh, lots of ideas!” Schindler assured him. “Too many!” He laughed and some of those around him ventured to laugh as well.
“You don’t think it was random terrorism?” Richard asked, somewhat concerned.
“Could be, I suppose,” Schindler explained. “Still, Schacht had so many enemies!” At Richard’s surprised look, Schindler laughed again. “Don’t worry, there won’t be a shortage of suspects. You want to get in on the investigation? There’ll be a lot of people who’ll have to be questioned. It could be fun.”
Richard shook his head.“No, sorry. I can’t stay more than a few days. I’m due back. After I make my statement, I’ll have to catch a train to Göringstadt.”
13
RICHARD SAT GLOOMILY staring out the window of his first-class compartment, his feet resting casually on the seat opposite, as Stefan handed over their papers to the conductor. The train was crowded and the conductor scowled meaningfully at Richard’s feet but after perusing his identity papers decided not to comment.
Click-click, click-click. Thump-thump, thump-thump. The rhythm of the train’s wheels kept reminding Richard of Schacht’s pulse. It had been so unexpected! He had almost not bothered to check! He felt unusually rattled by the whole affair. It had taken so much to lure Schacht out that, if he had survived the blast long enough to speak, he would definitely have pointed a finger at Richard. Not only that, but the gruesome interrogations that had followed: some of the suspects had been genuine lowlifes—apparently Schacht had been deeply involved in some criminal conspiracies—but still there were the others, the various Danish nationalists who had been brought in. Richard closed his eyes and sighed. It shouldn’t have to be like this, he thought.
He opened his eyes and stared out the window as the countryside sped by. The old Reich lands had long ago given way to the new Reich, and now as they crossed yet another internal border, the colonial lands emerged. Vast estates with their worker townships dotted the terrain. Gated German villages stood out in isolation on the plains or were surrounded by miserable dilapidated housing. Military installations with mile upon mile of barracks and airfields, warehouses and firing ranges, loomed large on the landscape. Huge tracts of forest lay inruins—clear-cut, the logs left to uselessly rot—either in retaliation for resistance or out of fear of what, or who, might lurk within. Huge industrial complexes rose up out of the horizon, defiling the land for mile upon mile with their concrete and their pollution, then vanished back into the earth as the train moved on. Miles of electrified, barbed wire lined the track at various points as the train passed by concentration camps.
The towns the train stopped in were sometimes reconstructed, or even newly constructed, with a heavy emphasis on fortifications, walls, gates, and barriers. Other towns, older cities, where the train did not stop, were bombed out and consisted of nothing but ruins and weeds. They sped through wrecked stations— ghostly shells of metal and broken glass. Bridges arched over the railway line and then fell away to nothing. Burned-out farmsteads, their chimneys rising above the charred roof struts, hinted at a life gone by. Animal corpses, bones whitewashed by the sun, littered fields here and there as if no one dared collect them. A landscape of wanton destruction, of resistance and waste, of oppression and fear.
Richard decided to stretch his legs and left the compartment. He took up a position against the compartment window so that he could look out across the landscape. He was the only one who did so. The other passengers in the aisle— mostly Germans—seemed determined not to look out the windows. It was supposed to be their triumph, it should have been their proof of superiority! Yet, judging from their faces, their animated conversations carried on with everybody casually leaning with their backs to the outside windows, it was an embarrassment to them. An undeniable sign that they had put their fates, their country, and their hearts into the hands of madmen.
He wondered at what had brought each of his fellow passengers to the region—the incentives were high: money, land, prestige, and slave labor being just a few. But still, for every three immigrants to the colonizable lands, one returned within five years. And that despite the social stigma and low-level government harassment that they had to face upon returning. It was not a wellknown fact, yet it spoke volumes. How many people were shocked when they learned the reality about the “New Lands”? How many came expecting green fields and friendly, compliant peasants offering baskets of fruit and bouquets of flowers to their new masters? The image of the ubiquitous poster appeared before him, contrasting sharply with the desolate landscape, the result of decades of pillage and hatred and destruction, that rolled past.
As the train headed north to cross the river, the landscape began to change. He returned to his seat to watch as entire suburbs of ugly, squat, but serviceable concrete-block houses began to appear. The houses grew more substantial, and occasionally a wealthy suburb of proper pitched-roof houses passed by. The beginnings of Göringstadt and their final destination.
“Write out the chit when he drops you off,” Richard ordered Stefan, as he climbed out of the taxi. Richard stretched, rubbing the small of his back to relieve a pain there, and surveyed the Party-assigned house that he called home.For as far as the eye could see, cheaply built, ugly, squat houses surrounded his manor, like concrete mushrooms springing up in its confiscated fields. Only a generous yard and the house itself remained of the old estate.
Stefan collected the luggage, told the driver to wait, and followed his boss as they proceeded to the front door. Kasia herself answered the door, and as Stefan deposited the luggage in the hall and took his leave, Richard embraced her.
“How was your trip?” she asked. “Successful?”
“Yes, I’m going to be transferred to Berlin soon,” he answered, accepting the cigarette that she offered him. Then, glancing around, he asked, “Have the guests arrived?”
“Not yet, the servants are upstairs making the last-minute preparations. I’ve doubled up the children so we have two bedrooms free. We’ll put your sister and her mother-in-law in one room. We’ll put her nephew in the other, and her daughter can . . .”
Richard nodded disinterestedly as Kasia continued to explain how she would arrange everyone. “What about the servants?” he interrupted suddenly.
“I’ve given them weekends and the evenings
off. I can’t do better than that. They’ll need you to write them special transport passes—it’ll be too early in the evening to use their usual ones. And you should give them a little extra to cover the higher fares.”
“All right, all right,” Richard groaned. He wandered into his study and began picking through the small pile of accumulated post.
Kasia watched for a moment from the doorway, then she ventured, “Your father called this morning. He said he had important business and would meet up with us here, this evening.”
“Then who’s . . . ?”
Kasia raised her eyebrows. “All right. Which train?”
The train arrived on time and she was one of the first to descend to the platform. Richard greeted his sister with a peremptory hug. “Welcome to Göringstadt, dear . . .” He stopped dead and stared at the SS major who had stepped off the train and stood expectantly behind her. Richard took a step back to better survey his guests, then drawing in his breath slowly, he stated, “I didn’t realize your husband would honor us with his presence.”
“Yes, I thought I’d surprise you,” his sister answered breezily.
Richard continued to stare at the stranger, who at first met his gaze with a fleeting smile, then after a moment, nervously averted his eyes to watch an incoming train. “I guess we should go,” Richard announced without even bothering to greet the others.
As they drove back, Richard searched feverishly through his memories trying to answer the jumble of questions in his head. An Englishman. That’s what he had heard. But where else? An Englishman who looked a bit like Adam. But notjust Adam, somebody else. Who? Where? Those mannerisms. So familiar! Someone from the RSHA? An agent? Richard glanced nervously at his unexpected guest and then at his sister. Damn her anyway! He lit a cigarette to calm himself and decided to wait until he could speak to her in private.
Kasia was no less surprised by the unexpected guest, but with the servants present, she put on a brave face and kissed her supposed brother-in-law warmly, then carefully explained to the servants where to place the luggage. The family all retreated to the sitting room and conversed stiffly as drinks and hors d’oeuvres were served. Richard’s parents arrived and the conversation continued in its oddly stilted manner until finally Richard announced to Kasia, “I think we don’t need the servants anymore.”
Kasia readily agreed and leapt to her feet to help hustle them out the door.
“Polish?” Zosia asked as Kasia shut the door on them.
Richard stood and paced to the window, watching silently as the servants left the property.
“Ryszard?” Zosia pressed.
“Yes, they’re Polish,” Kasia answered testily. “We prefer the risk of a knife in the back to being spied on by German employees.”
“No luck with getting some of our own?” Marysia asked.
“Not yet. We’ve been making do ever since the last pair were reassigned.” Ryszard turned away from the window to face his sister, ready to lambaste her, but was distracted by the way the stranger shifted nervously in his seat, rose suddenly, and walked aimlessly around his chair. When he realized that everyone was staring at him, he smiled nervously and sat back down.
Ryszard noticed how the man met his eyes only briefly, then turned his gaze away, off to the side again. Why was that expression so familiar? Unbidden, grimy images crowded his mind: a bare bulb, concrete walls, an officer’s incomprehensible curses, the sound of a truncheon striking flesh. He winced at the familiar, unwelcome imagery and glanced again at the man’s face. It was the eyes. That look of an impenetrable distance, of an isolation defined by pain. The look of a prisoner. Ryszard felt relieved: it wasn’t the man he recognized, it was that look. If their paths had ever crossed, it had probably been during one of his numerous prison tours, and that made the man unimportant and forgettable. And fragile. Ryszard let out his breath slowly, deciding to hold his tongue for the moment.
“So, how about introducing us to your husband?” Alex suggested jovially to his daughter.
Zosia gladly obliged, the ice was broken, and everybody relaxed and exploded into conversation. Joanna disappeared upstairs with her younger cousins to play. Olek shyly excused himself to go talk with Ryszard’s eldest—their daughter Stefi. Marysia and Anna retreated to the kitchen to sip vodka and exchange Council gossip. Kasia busied herself as hostess, not taking part in any conversation except in passing. Alex sat himself on the edge of the couch near Peter’s chair andinsisted, in English, that they get to know each other, and Ryszard rubbed his face tiredly and sat down to talk with Zosia.
She, however, was not interested in answering questions. Instead she started talking about Adam and how nothing was the same without him. Ryszard nodded his head wearily and let his mind wander.
“Make Zosia speak it to you—and make her listen to you in it!” Alex was advising Peter. “And don’t worry if she laughs. Hell, they all still laugh at my accent!”
Ryszard listened to his father’s nasal whine, and though he could tell Peter’s accent was quite different, he did not know what significance that held, if any. He furrowed his brow as he listened in, trying to follow the rapid, fluent English. He could not catch everything, but they seemed to be discussing the corruption of English by German neologisms and comparing it with American English. “I would suppose that the Americans have always considered their language ‘proper’ English,” Peter was saying.
“Yes, but we know better, don’t we?” Alex laughed.
“So what do you think?” Zosia was insisting. Ryszard drew his attention back to her. “Hmm? I don’t know yet. Tell me more.”
Zosia launched into the details. “Ananas? That’s pineapple!” Alex was saying, sounding surprised. “Didn’t you know that?”
“But we’ll need to get him out and about, to prove he can be trusted . . .” Zosia was saying.
“. . . the English word for those, dear boy, is venetian blinds,” Alex was explaining. “Just what sort of language are they speaking back home nowadays?”
Anna and Marysia wandered back into the room. Their voices rose and fell in the happy exchanges of old comrades-in-arms. Kasia kept refilling everyone’s glass with cherry-flavored vodka, and Olek and Stefi ventured downstairs, giggling and blushing as they exchanged their last-minute private observations before joining the adults.
“Sunny-day showers, eh? Never heard that one,” Alex was admitting. “There is some silly American joke about April showers, but I doubt there’s any connection. God only knows what obscure rhymes kids will be singing in five hundred years about the invasion and good ol’ Uncle Adolf.”
“Hopefully, irrelevant ones,” Zosia chimed in, apparently giving up on her onesided conversation with Ryszard. She had switched to English as well, and Ryszard noticed that she now spoke it with a confidence that was greater than his own.
“By then, the question will be, are they them or us?” Ryszard suggested, switching the conversation back to Polish so that the others could join in.
They did, and the discussion ebbed and flowed around the room, eventually settling on the question of whether the Warsaw uprising should ever have been allowed to take place. Some said that if they had only thrown open the city from thefirst to the German invaders, perhaps it would have been spared the way Paris was. Others said nonsense, Hitler had always been intent on destruction—and besides Paris was a backwater sleaze joint for Party officials now. It was pointed out that whatever the French had saved by giving away Paris, they had lost in pride. Someone responded that pride was a bit pointless when you were dead. Olek opined that an uprising would have occurred sooner or later whether or not it was sanctioned, and at least a sanctioned uprising was organized. That was answered with a derisive “Organized suicide! Big deal!” Nearly the entire leadership had been wiped out and it took decades to rebuild, Marysia reminded everyone. Zosia noted that it had at least brought the world’s attention to what was going on, but then countered her own opinion with the observation that it had
not changed anything as far as she could tell. And why should it have? her father asked. They then veered off into international politics and why any country should risk its own security to protect another. General human rights, national integrity, the trickiness of presenting an aggressive foreign policy to a voting public—all went into the soup.
Only Peter remained silent, with that intense look of one trying desperately to understand what was being said. He rose suddenly and went over to Zosia and said something into her ear.
“No problem. Just don’t get lost,” Zosia answered cheerfully.
“I won’t,” he laughed and headed toward the hall. There was a sudden silence, which caused him to turn around at the door and look questioningly back at them all.
Ryszard was wondering what exactly to say when Kasia interrupted the awkward moment by putting down the cheese tray she had brought into the room, saying, “Wait for me, I’ll go with you. I can use a break.”
Ryszard stood and accompanied them into the hall. As Kasia changed her shoes, Peter opened the box of cigarettes that sat on a little table in the hallway. “Do you count them?”
“Heavens! Why would I do that?” Kasia looked up to reply.
“Just wondered.”
“Help yourself,” Ryszard suggested.
“Thanks.” Peter gingerly selected one. He lit it, then held it out and spent a long time contemplating it.
“Is there something wrong with it?” Ryszard was finally driven to ask.
“Funny how life changes. If I had done this just over a year ago . . . Well, never mind.”
As Ryszard closed the door behind them and returned to the sitting room, Olek and Stefi, sensing that they were better off elsewhere, made a quick excuse and hurried upstairs. Alex took a deep breath, fixed Zosia with a stony look, and said in a low, angry voice, “What the hell was that all about?”
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