Especially not to someone with Marco’s ancestry, I thought.
“So maybe we’re in the clear,” Walter said, sounding like someone from one of his Tom Shark novels. Maybe they are, but even if this one blows over, we seem set for many more such crises. As targets for Nazi bullying, Walter and Marco are made-to-measure.
Rather like Czechoslovakia, which is still being pummeled in the press. Ordinary people all over Europe have no idea what’s going on above their heads, and there’s a general feeling of helplessness in the air. We don’t know who’s talking to whom, let alone about what. Are the English and French telling the Poles to talk to Moscow? Because there’s no way Soviet troops can come to the aid of Czechoslovakia without crossing Polish soil. Are London and Paris trying to convince each other to support the Czechs? Or pleading with the Czechs to be “reasonable,” stressing the blessings of “homogeneity”? I can’t see Beneš buying that one.
Tuesday, September 20
Walter’s faith in Kurt Pietzch’s pride has proved misplaced. He did tell his father how the tooth got broken, and the father has made his displeasure known to the school. The principal spoke to each boy involved today—according to Walter and Marco, he just listened to their stories and said very little. But he did send them home with a letter asking Verena to see him first thing tomorrow. I said I’d go with her.
Wednesday, September 21
Walter’s school principal confounded most of my expectations. An athletic-looking man of around thirty-five with wavy blond hair and keen blue eyes, Herr Huelse invited Verena and me into his office with an almost apologetic smile and thanked us for coming. After sitting us down in two of the three seats facing his desk, he looked at his watch and said that Kurt’s father should arrive soon. While we waited I let my eyes wander and was encouraged by the placing of the Führer’s portrait on the wall beside the only window, where it was hard to make out.
Herr Pietzch arrived around five minutes later and looked almost too like the man I expected—running to fat, red nosed, and piggy eyed. He had a swastika badge pinned to the lapel of his too-tight dark grey suit, and a block warden’s armband wound around one sleeve. After shaking hands with the principal and treating Verena and me to looks of disdain, he moved his chair another half meter away from us and heavily sat down.
The principal introduced us, and I had to spend the next few minutes defending my right to be there as Walter’s representative. Once that had been sorted out, Verena and I both said how sorry we were that Kurt had been injured.
“How are you going to punish these boys?” Pietzch asked the principal, ignoring us completely.
The principal smiled at him, and there was something in the way he did it that made me feel a lot less anxious. It was beginning to look as if Huelse was as combative as he was decent. Which certainly made sense—a decent man doing his job in Nazi Germany would always have a fight on his hands. “After talking to Kurt, Marco, and Walter, I have two very different accounts of what happened,” Huelse said, “and since I cannot be sure who is telling the truth . . .” He shrugged.
Pietzch looked dumbfounded. “You’re not going to—”
“I can only punish a boy I know to be guilty,” Huelse told him. “And there’s no conclusive evidence either way.”
“What about my son’s lost tooth?”
That, Huelse agreed, was certainly evidence, but all it proved was that Kurt had lost. It threw no light on who had started the fight.
By this time Pietzch was not so much incredulous as furious. “Let me get this straight,” he said, pointing a chubby index finger across the desk. “You are refusing to take my son’s word over that of a Rhineland bastard and a boy whose mother and brother are both in prison?”
“Neither Marco nor Walter are responsible for their parentage,” Herr Huelse said coldly.
“I think you’ve just said goodbye to your job,” Pietzch responded in kind. “I shall be reporting you to the governors. And the local party.”
“You must do what you think is right. But be warned: they will look at your son’s record and note the many occasions on which he has been caught bullying others. By several different teachers. If I were you, Herr Pietzch, I would talk to your son. He is clearly a bright boy, but he is damaging his prospects with such behavior.”
Pietzch looked at him and then at us. “So you won’t be taking any further action.”
“I think things are best left as they are. Don’t you?”
Pietzch didn’t, but he suspected he’d met his match. The block warden got to his feet, opened his mouth to speak, and then thought better of whatever he was going to say. Rather to my surprise, he left without slamming the door.
Huelse shook his head. “Politics, I’m afraid,” he said. “I believe your boys’ account of what happened, but it would be pushing my luck to say that to Herr Pietzch.” He smiled wryly. “And of course Karl has been punished already. I’d like to prevent its happening again, but that’s easier said than done. All I can say to you is that Walter and Marco must make every effort not to give boys like Karl an excuse.”
“I think they already do,” Verena said.
“That may be true, and I know it’s not fair to put the onus on them. But short of transforming the national mood there’s not much else I can do. These are challenging times.”
They are indeed, but Verena and I walked back to the house with a spring in our step. In Hitler’s Germany, meeting one decent man in authority feels like winning the jackpot.
Thursday, September 22
Czechoslovakia is beginning to look like a bull awaiting the matador’s coup de grâce. The Poles stuck a stick in yesterday, demanding a plebiscite in the Teschen area; today it was Hungary’s turn to weaken the bull, with strident demands for more pieces of territorial flesh. The Slovaks—or at least the Slovak Fascists—say they want independence, and the Sudeten Freikorps claim to have “liberated” several predominantly German towns in the Czech Sudetenland. The German matador is yet to enter the ring, but I imagine his hooves are pawing the ground. Hardly surprisingly, the mood at home and work grows darker by the day.
Another of today’s news items had a special resonance for me. The Spanish Republican government has announced that the International Brigades are being taken out of the front line prior to their disbandment. The Brigades haven’t proved a great success in military terms—most of the men recruited were amateurs, after all—but the fact that they exist at all has been a mighty symbol of resistance. Their demise feels like the end of an era.
Friday, September 23
The worst possible news. This afternoon a letter arrived for Andreas. It was an Orpo officer who delivered it, but the letter was on Gestapo notepaper.
Anna has been moved to the Lichtenburg concentration camp, which we think is south of Berlin. Her trial for sedition “will no longer be necessary” because now she is detained as an enemy of the state, “in accordance with the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (1933).” There was no mention of a sentence and therefore no clue as to when she might be released.
The letter was typed, but Kriminalsekretär Appel had added a note in pencil. Should we need further clarification, he would be in his office on Monday morning.
I thought we probably had all the clarity we could take but knew it would be unwise to cut off contact.
The immediate issue—which Andreas, Verena, and I then discussed—was whether or not to tell Walter. Verena was doubtful, but Andreas and I both thought Walter would want to know. As he’s going to be out all tomorrow with the Jungvolk, we decided to postpone the telling till Sunday—letting him carry such news around on his own all day didn’t seem like a good idea.
After that the three of us just sat around the table for a while, not knowing what else to say. Andreas and Verena both looked stricken, and I’m sure that I did too. Three ho
urs have passed since then, but if I had a mirror in front of me now, I imagine I’d see the same.
Saturday, September 24
When I woke up this morning, Anna was there in my mind. It was all too easy to imagine her despair now that she’s been torn away from the father and child who need her. I pushed back the thought that the place they’ve sent her is one from which she might not return.
If I hadn’t had the monthly treff to attend, I might have just stayed in bed. As it was, Walter had left by the time I got downstairs. Verena had seen him studying his uniformed self in the parlor mirror. “He just stood there shaking his head,” she told me.
I ate breakfast with Gerritzen and Buchloh—Jakob was doing an early shift at work—and listened to them chatting on about where they were taking their girlfriends tonight. Some people still lead ordinary lives, I thought. The realization was almost shocking.
It was a bright autumn day outside, cool but decidedly sunny, ideal weather for Walter’s day in the country fighting imaginary foes. My treff was in Essen at the lakeside café in the Stadtgarten.
I walked to Hamm station and took a train that would get me to Essen with almost an hour to spare. The journey was uneventful, the train only two minutes late, and I sat in the station buffet watching other ordinary lives go by until it was time to walk to the park.
Dieter was there ahead of me, absorbed in reading the latest news of the current crisis. “Do you think the threat of war will wake up the German proletariat?” was the first thing he asked once I’d sat down. The previous month he’d been hoping a war would bring forth the revolution; now he was hoping that maybe the threat would suffice.
I said that probably depended on what sort of war and how it went but that I wasn’t expecting too much.
He seemed disappointed by my estimation, which suggested that Comrade Stalin has seen something different in his crystal ball. I waited for further enlightenment, but was kept in suspense while the waiter brought us the cups of hot chocolate that Dieter had already ordered.
“The committee have decided that further delay would be ill-advised,” he told me, after taking an appreciative sip. “Which means that risks must be taken,” he added superfluously. “You must activate the three-man cell at once and subordinate the Working Group to one of the three. What progress have you made with neutralizing Dariusz Müller?”
I said I was proceeding carefully, rather than admitting that I wasn’t proceeding at all.
“Caution often leads to paralysis,” Dieter warned, which sounded vaguely Buddhist but was probably a catchphrase coined at the last party conference. I forbore from listing the times I’d seen a lack of caution cost the party and its members dear. If the committee wanted caution thrown to the winds—and me to the dogs—then who was I to complain? I’d thrown enough comrades to the dogs myself.
“Müller must be removed,” Dieter was insisting. “And the man you believe to be an informer.”
“Understood,” I said.
“Once that is done and the cell is operational, you will return to Moscow for reassignment.”
“How?” I asked, my voice commendably steady. My time in Germany was clearly coming to a close, and I wasn’t sure which I dreaded most, whatever was waiting in Moscow or the thought of leaving Hamm.
When Dieter gave me a Duisburg number to call, I deduced that the Rhine was my likely escape route. He repeated the number and password until sure I’d memorized both and, after passing on the time and place of next month’s treff, dropped his second bombshell—not I, but a member of my putative cell would be joining him in Bochum on October 29, because by then I would be gone. I had less than five weeks left with Walter and his family.
“Soon you’ll be home in Moscow,” Dieter said cheerfully, rubbing it in.
On the train back to Hamm, I felt strangely calm. The moment I’d dreaded had come—I had to decide whether or not I was still a Comintern rep. Activate the cell, and if I’ve misread any one of the three, I’ll be under arrest within twenty-four hours. Link the cell and group, and the risk of exposure will more than triple for everyone concerned. I was already fairly certain that I wouldn’t be taking the latter course, but I did feel confident about my chosen three. I had the strange thought that I owed it to Anna, that if she’d been condemned for doing nothing, I should at least be doing something in her name. Which sounds, and probably is, absurd.
I was still weighing risks when I got back home and received the latest ill tidings. Andreas has had a cold for several days, but this morning it took a marked turn for the worse, and Verena decided he needed professional help. We’ve been as lucky with our doctor as we have with our block warden—Dr. Offner, the sprightly young man I first met back in May, actually cares for his patients. He’s also fond of Andreas, who he says reminds him of his late uncle.
After examining Andreas, Offner had said that the cold had gone to the old man’s chest and might turn into something much more serious. He had given Verena a list of symptoms to watch out for and promised to return tomorrow morning.
“He didn’t sound very hopeful,” Verena lamented. She looked as if she’d suffered a blow too many, and I felt much the same. We were both worried for Andreas but probably even more anxious for Walter, whose entire family seems in danger of disappearing.
He arrived home early this evening looking exhausted but also slightly elated. I guessed he’d enjoyed himself despite the unfortunate context.
Everything changed when he heard how ill his grandfather is—Walter looked utterly desolate and refused to talk about his day. And tomorrow we have to give him the news of his mother.
Once the boys had gone to bed, Jakob suggested a drink at the Social, but I told him I had a headache and he should go on his own. Once he had left, I sat downstairs with the wireless, trying and failing to lose my sense of impending disaster in Berlioz and Brahms. The news, when it came, felt like a release. For the last few days, it’s been all about Czechoslovakia, and this evening offered more of the same. Chamberlain has visited the Führer again, this time at Bad Godesberg, where Chamberlain apparently stayed two nights. If an agreement has been reached, no one is saying what it amounts to. Chamberlain traveled back home this morning, but whether to muster troops or stand them down remains a mystery.
How would we know? The German press can’t be relied on to tell the truth or indeed anything like it, and these days it’s next to impossible to find a foreign newspaper—I tried in Berlin the day I met Walter. German wireless is the same, and it’s strictly forbidden to tune in to foreign stations. People still do it, though, and many try to spread the news they’ve gleaned without admitting where they’ve gleaned it. One of Jakob’s friends—a man who lives alone some way out of town—is an ardent trawler of foreign airwaves, and when their paths crossed by chance this afternoon, he filled Jakob in on the latest news. According to this friend, the British and French have persuaded the Czechs to give up the Sudetenland without a fight, and Chamberlain arrived at Bad Godesberg on Thursday expecting smiles of gratitude. What he got was Hitler fuming that it wasn’t enough, that his troops were about to march in, and that Chamberlain had only a couple of days to persuade the Czechs that their utter humiliation has to be part of the deal.
If this is all true—and it sounds convincing—has Hitler gone too far? Will this prove too much for the British and the French? The next few days will tell.
Sunday, September 25
Last night I dreamt I was playing with my brother in our house in Offenbach—hide-and-seek, I think, though it wasn’t clear. I must have been happy, because my first thoughts on waking were of what we had to tell Walter, and the emotional jolt was severe.
I lay there wondering what we could say, what crumb of comfort we might be able to offer. That one day she would be home? We didn’t know that she would. That the camp might not be so bad? We knew it would be.
Rememberin
g our conversation last week, I wondered if Walter would seek revenge on the man who’d informed on his mother. I told myself I was being fanciful—that the boy’s only twelve, and what could he actually do? And then I remembered his brand-new Jungvolk knife.
Ruchay may have already withdrawn or altered his testimony, or been planning to do so at the now-canceled hearing. We have no way of knowing, and the Gestapo are extremely unlikely to tell us. But whether he sticks to his story or not is irrelevant now, and I’m inclined to leave him stewing in his obvious guilt. Walter may not see it like that. He’s grown up in a country where taking an eye for an eye is the standard response, and turning the other cheek is for failures. And what other outlets does he have for his anger?
Verena and I talked to Walter just before noon, after the doctor had visited Andreas and pronounced him no better, no worse. Walter knew from the summons and the looks on our faces that something was wrong. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?” he said before we had a chance to open our mouths.
“Yes, it is,” Verena said. “Your mother—”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“No,” I told him. “It’s not that. She’s been moved to a camp.”
“What sort of camp?” he asked, noticing I hadn’t said.
“A KZ,” I admitted. “The one at Lichtenburg.”
“But that must be four hundred kilometers away,” Walter protested.
“Yes,” I agreed, surprised that he knew where Lichtenburg was.
“But what about the trial?”
“There won’t be one.” I explained the situation, the law they’d used to put her in the camp, the absence of a finite sentence. It felt as if I were hammering nails into his twelve-year-old heart.
I waited for shock, for anger, but all he did was nod, tears welling in his eyes. Verena pulled his head onto her shoulder, and I thought he would sob his heart out, but after a few seconds he gently drew himself away. “I want to say, I can’t bear it,” he said quietly, “but I have to, don’t I?”
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