‘Thank you.’
Wolf stepped through into the hallway and Kramer shut the door behind him. It was a thick oak door on oiled hinges. It allowed no sound to escape.
‘Please, follow me.’
Wolf listened for sounds. Muted conversation. Faint music. The hallway was thickly carpeted.
‘I joined the Party in ’31,’ Kramer said. ‘The SS in ’32, sir.’
‘Good for you.’
If he was offended Kramer didn’t show it. ‘Through here,’ he said, leading Wolf into a large sitting room. Wolf stopped in the doorway. A man in a tuxedo sat at a grand piano, playing Beethoven. All around him were comfortable sofas and chaise longues, and men with ties loosened sat with drinks in their hands. Along one wall ran a walnut-coloured bar and behind it a barman was polishing glasses. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Kramer said.
‘I don’t drink,’ Wolf said.
The air was thick with the smell of expensive cigars. Wolf recognised several of the faces in the room. He had thought some of them dead. Around the men, shimmering through the room in their too-short sequinned dresses, were the girls.
They were an upscale version of the streetwalkers of Soho, Wolf thought. They were dressed like brazen flappers, in costumes that revealed more than they hid. He noted their diversity. He saw Slavic features and Aryan faces and a black girl who reminded him of Dominique. He eyed the girls and they eyed him back, but there was a vacancy in their eyes. He had seen such an expression before, in the eyes of a doped-up horse before a race. He saw the men look up at his entrance. He kept his face blank and watched them turn away.
‘Please, Herr … Wolf,’ Kramer said. His hand swept around the room. ‘You may have your choice of the girls. It is on the house, sir,’ he added.
‘I am looking for this girl,’ Wolf said. He drew the little sister’s picture from his breast pocket. Isabella had given it to him before she had departed his office. Now he and the man Kramer studied it together. The girl was thin-faced and mousy, her features almost mannish. ‘A Jew?’ Kramer said.
‘Do you stock any Jews?’
A slow, unpleasant smile broke across Kramer’s crater-moon face. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘This is just the antechamber.’ He nodded his head as if some things had become clear to him. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
Wolf followed him, leaving the men behind to the attentions of their whores. He half-expected Kramer to lead him upstairs, to the rooms that no doubt waited there, beds and mirrors and perfumes and lace, a wardrobe for a gentleman to hang his coat in, a washbasin for when his sordid business was done. Instead Kramer led him through a second door and locked it behind him. They were in a corridor in marked contrast to the pleasant sitting room they had vacated. Here bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling and the walls were plain cold stone and so was the floor. There were scuff marks on the stone. He could hear faint sounds, cries and a scream cut short. Kramer led Wolf down a stone staircase, down below ground. Wolf’s fingers itched, and for one irrational moment he wished he still had a gun. But he no longer carried one.
It was cold in the basement, and the air was scented with a familiar tang: a mixture of blood and semen and shit. It was the smell of the camp they had kept him in, before he escaped, the smell of captivity and hopelessness and fear.
They stood in a wide corridor and to either side of the corridor were the metal doors to locked cells. Pinned to the wall like billiard cues were black leather whips. ‘Come,’ Kramer said. He reached for a whip, lashed it through the air. The sound was like a gunshot. Each door had a sliding metal shutter. Kramer slid the first one open and Wolf looked through. In the cell beyond a white girl no older than fifteen lay naked on a mattress, a worn one-eyed teddy bear held in her arms. Her ankle was chained to the wall. The room was bare but for a hook on the wall for a gentleman’s hat and, in the corner, an old-fashioned chamberpot to piss in. The girl was asleep.
‘No?’ If Kramer seemed disappointed he didn’t show it. He slid the shutter back. Wolf took a deep breath.
In the next room two lithe women lay back to back on the same mattress. ‘Identical twins,’ Kramer said, with some pride. ‘Prime specimens. The Marshall always makes sure to keep the cellars well stocked.’
‘The Marshall?’ Wolf said.
‘Göring, sir?’
Wolf nodded as some things became clear. ‘The fat oaf always did like to give himself a grand title,’ he said.
Kramer shrugged. In the next cell Wolf saw an elderly man hunched over a dwarf woman, his pale quivering buttocks rising and falling steadily. Wolf shook his head. Kramer shut the window. ‘This one’s occupied,’ he said, unnecessarily.
‘All Jews?’
‘What?’
‘Are they all Jews?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘You said Göring sends them over from Germany?’
‘The Marshall? Yes. There’s good money in people smuggling, these days,’ Kramer said.
‘And these ones?’
Kramer shrugged. ‘Jews,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘Who will miss a Jew?’
‘This girl,’ Wolf said. He brandished the photograph again. ‘Where is she?’
‘I’ve not seen her,’ Kramer said. He seemed hurt. ‘I thought—’
‘You thought,’ Wolf said.
‘I thought your tastes ran into more … I mean, when you said Herr Hess sent you … Herr Wolf, I did not—’
Wolf grabbed the whip out of the man’s unresisting hand. He felt the familiar rage rise inside of him. ‘You dare?’ he said. He lashed the whip. It caught Kramer on the cheek and left an angry red welt. Kramer screamed. ‘You cavort with filthy animals, you, an Aryan, you deal in the flesh of Jews? What perversion is this?’ He was screaming, spittle was coming out of his mouth in long strings that hung from his lips. He was lashing Kramer with the whip, behind the cell doors the drugged specimens were whimpering and the copulating man could be heard banging on the metal door demanding to know what all the God damned ruckus was about, he was trying to finish his business.
‘Herr Wolf, enough!’ Kramer had half-risen and grabbed Wolf’s wrist in a painful grip. His coarse peasant face rose over Wolf. ‘I beg you.’
They stared at each other, motionless. Wolf saw Kramer’s eyes open wide at something behind Wolf’s back. His mouth opened, his lips beginning to form words. ‘Please, don’t—’
Wolf didn’t have time to turn. He felt something cold and sharp sting his neck. It penetrated his skin. His fingers opened. The whip dropped to the floor. His neck felt numb. The numbness spread, fast. His vision blurred and the last thing he saw was Kramer’s face blooming in a silent explosion of blood and bone.
* * *
In another time and place Shomer lies dreaming. In his blessed half-sleep he can pretend if only to himself that he does not hear the other men sleeping below him and the ones pressed against him so that when one wants to turn they must all turn. In sleep Shomer is not aware of Yenkl beside him shitting himself and the liquid shit dribbling down from their bunk onto the sleepers down below, and he can also pretend that it is not at all freezing cold, that it is in fact a lovely warm day and that this isn’t Auschwitz but some tropical beach, perhaps some South Seas paradise and that his belly is full and when he smiles his grin is a dazzling white and full still of all his teeth.
In his half-dream which he had begun some time ago on the train on the way here and continued through the selection process and the cleaving of his family, in that murky half-world which was once his novelist’s mind, there is a detective and a damsel in distress; there always are. He shifts and murmurs, instinctively trying to pull away from Yenkl. He feels lice crawling inside his striped prisoner’s pyjamas but he pretends that he does not. It becomes easier by the day.
Instead Shomer, this once upon a time purveyor of Yiddish shund, that is of cheap literature or, not to put too fine a point on it, of trash, dreams of a dark city and of dark deeds, and of a wat
cher in the dark: for in the camp there is always someone watching.
* * *
On Berwick Street Edith could feel the watcher, the way his gaze lingered on her body, and paid particular attention to her breasts, and then down to her inguen, where it lingered further. She had grown used to the attentions of men, wanted and unwanted both, since the moment she and her family had fled from Bregenz into Switzerland and the border official who had helped them claimed her for himself as part of the overall price. He had been her first and she remembered how he had buckled his belt afterwards, not his face but only for some reason his buckle; it was shaped like an iron eagle. They had made it to England at last, smuggling themselves across the Channel in a fishing boat, on a moonless night, with no lanterns or lamps. It was a miracle they hadn’t drowned. By then she had grown accustomed to her body being her currency. The fishermen each took their turn to fuck her, as her mother and baby sister sat huddled at the bow. Her mother never mentioned it. Perhaps she had no words with which to speak. Maybe there was nothing to say. It was just one of those things you did to survive.
But she could feel him out there, though no doubt he thought he was invisible, the watcher. He was back a second night in a row. None of the other girls saw him but Edith did. She knew he was there and she knew he was watching her.
At first she thought he was just shy, that he was watching in an effort to gather his courage and approach her. Many men were like that, requiring drink or darkness for their base natures to emerge, their desire to be made manifest. But after a while she did not think this was the case. The watcher disturbed her, though she could not say why. He wore the darkness too comfortably, as though he never intended to emerge from the shadows. A watcher – a voyeur, as the French girls said. Sometimes they got men like that, sad pathetic things with one hand twiddling away in their pocket, masturbating as they watched the whores. But the watcher was not like that, either. He got his thrills another way, she was sure.
She was busy that night, going first with a sailor off a Royal Navy ship docked in Greenwich, then with a proper gentleman whose English was as sharp as cut glass, like the King’s or the BBC man on the wireless. Lastly with a young Jew, a yeshiva boy with curly peyos, dressed all in heavy black, who thrust against her quickly but enthusiastically, against the wall of the alleyway they used as combined brothel and latrine. Now she was smoking a cigarette with quick inexpert jerks, stamping her feet against the cold, when the watcher came to her.
She saw him emerge across the road. It was late, and the other girls were all either working or had gone home and she was alone. She smiled at him. Her mother had always told her to smile.
There was nothing much very remarkable about him. His suit hung on him a little uncomfortably. It looked like a hand-me-down. He had good teeth, and the smile he gave her back was surprisingly charming. ‘You want to fuck?’ she said.
His hand was in his coat pocket. He didn’t take it out. He looked nervous and excited. ‘Where can we go?’ he said.
‘It’s ten shillings,’ she said. He agreed with a nervous jerk of his head. ‘In there,’ she said. The alleyway was empty, a fresh pile of shit against the wall where that fat pig Bertha had taken her evening constitutional. They wouldn’t be disturbed.
‘The money first,’ she said.
He took his hand out of his pocket, and she felt strangely relieved. He was holding a note. He passed it to her and she took it and tucked it in her brassiere. She took him by the hand. It was warm and dry. ‘Come on,’ she said.
He followed her meekly into the dark alleyway.
3
Wolf’s Diary, 3rd November 1939
I woke up in pain. I was not lying down and yet I couldn’t move. I tried to shift my hand but it was held fast. It was dark but I was still in the club, I could tell; the smell of fear and shit was the same and there was blood and fragments of bone and brain on the front of my suit, which would cost me a fortune to clean. My vision swam in and out of focus. It was a warm room and a flame came alive as a dark figure lit a match and applied it to a large wax candle, and then another candle and another. In the light I could see the chains that were holding me upright. I was secured to the wall, arms and legs spread. The figure turned to face me. It was a woman. She was not an attractive woman. She had a peasant’s wide face and a petulant expression as if life had never failed to disappoint her. She wore black leather with the SS insignia on her armband, for all that there was no more SS. She wore thigh-high boots and black leather gloves and in one hand she held a horse whip.
‘I am so sorry, Herr Wolf,’ she said. ‘For the unpleasantness.’
‘I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Fräulein …?’
‘Koch, sir. I am Ilse Koch.’ She gave a simpering little curtsey. She had a Dresdener’s accent.
‘What happened to Kramer?’ I said.
‘Josef?’ she shrugged. ‘He was remiss in his duties. He shall be replaced.’
‘And I?’
A small, cruel smile briefly illuminated her ugly face. I felt a sudden rising panic. Ilse Koch tested the whip. The crack it made filled the small hot room. I looked around, seeking escape. Instead, what I saw in that room were implements of torture.
Her gaze followed mine. ‘Yes …’ she said. Her smile again, like a deformed butterfly. She lashed the whip with a flick of her wrist, missing my face by inches. She came and stood close to me. I could feel the warmth of her body, the press of her soft heavy breasts against me. She reached out a gloved hand and ripped my shirt open, buttons popping. Her hand grabbed my jaw, her fingers digging into flesh. Her face was close and hot on mine, her breath sour with drink. ‘I know what it is you want, Herr Wolf,’ she said. Her other hand reached down and grabbed me painfully. Her smirk etched itself into my face. ‘You are a hard man, Herr Wolf.’
‘Let me go, you filthy whore!’
She slapped me. The sound rang through the room. My cheek burned. My eyes narrowed and my mouth opened and I licked my lips, tasting blood. Her hand was down below grasping me and moving with a certain rhythm.
‘I can stop whenever you want,’ she said. ‘Just say the word.’ Her smirk told me she understood. She reached beyond my vision and returned with a vulcanised rubber ball on a studded leather strap. She fitted the strap on my head but left my mouth free. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘Don’t stop,’ I whispered.
Ilse shoved the ball in my mouth then yanked a lever and suddenly my body was jerked from the wall and I hung suspended in the air before her. She pulled roughly at my trousers until they dangled around my ankles. I dangled there like a mounted butterfly, bare to her. She swung me round. I faced the wall. I felt her behind me, looming. My breath came short and sharp and I was stiff as a boy. I felt her gloved hands on my bare behind. She stroked my cheeks, first one and then the other, before she slapped me, hard, and I cried out. Her hand on my back, rubbing softly … ‘I will please you, mein herr,’ she whispered. I felt the weight of her against my back. Her lips against my ear. She pushed her finger deep inside me. Her other hand came round and took hold of me and stroked as she kept up a rhythm. A second finger joined the first, violating me. I shuddered with pleasure, hating her and all women, and thinking of Geli and the things I had taught her to do.
When Wolf re-emerged onto Leather Lane it was early morning and the market was already being set up with vegetables and fruit and bright materials and cloths. He made a sorry sight, and he wrapped his coat tightly around him and hunched his shoulders and drew the hat low over his face. In the old days he had Emil to chauffeur him around, men to do his bidding, a comfortable apartment to return to and his library and, after Geli, there was Eva, sweet good-natured Eva of the blonde hair and pleasant disposition and soft white flesh.
Now he had to trudge through early morning mist, on foot, in order to return to a cold unfriendly room rented out to him by a Jew.
‘It’s on the house,’ Ilse Koch had told him, before he left, refusing his
offer of payment.
‘Is it Hess?’ he asked her, the same question he had asked Kramer before her. She shook her head. ‘Who is it?’ he had said and she shook her head with finality and said, ‘It is better if you do not come back here again, Herr Wolf.’
But Kramer had been indiscreet, that much was clear. The Marshall, he had said. Wolf remembered Göring, a fat ruthless man with a great many appetites, who had built the storm troopers from a ragtag collection of misfits into an efficient paramilitary organisation in the ’20s. A decorated air-force pilot, a flying ace in the Great War. Wolf did not trust pilots; they changed course with the wind. Last he heard, Göring had survived the Fall and even thrived, changing allegiances once again. Now he was Comrade Göring, working for the communists he once despised, and trading in human flesh on the side. The hero of the skies had become a simple pimp.
The Jew girl, this Judith Rubinstein, could have been smuggled out of Germany by this same network. Her father, the banker, would have paid dearly to take his only daughter out of the communists’ grasp and bring her to the relative safety of London. But then, why would she disappear? The women in the cells were disposable; no one would be looking for them. But the Rubinstein girl would be valuable cargo. Unless there was someone willing to bid even more for her …
He was deep in thought, calculating possibilities and avenues of inquiry, and wincing slightly as he walked. So when, at last, he approached Berwick Street he did not at first notice the presence of policemen all about until they stopped him. They crowded Walker’s Court holding sausage rolls and steaming mugs of tea, as if they were at a picnic.
‘You can’t go through here, sir.’
‘What happened?’ Wolf said.
A Man Lies Dreaming Page 4