The Death's Head Chess Club

by John Donoghue

  You probably won’t have heard that Knocken and Ernst Bock are both dead. Knocken was killed in a bombing run by some half-blind Stuka pilot who couldn’t tell the difference between the Ivans and his own men. Of course that lunatic Hempel ordered us not to shoot at the stupid fucker, but what the hell, we did anyway. And Ernst got caught in the open when we came under mortar fire. I yelled at him to get down but he kept on running. Stupid bastard.

  But that’s enough bad news for one letter. The good news is that I have been promoted to Sturmbannführer. Can you believe that? If war is crazy this is surely all the proof you need. So here I am. The Das Reich is to be refitted as a full Panzer division and I am on holiday enjoying the French sun and wine and women. Whoever said war is hell got it completely wrong – if this is hell, all I can say is I’m glad I spent my life as a sinner. You’ll also be glad to hear that Schratt has managed to keep most of your old unit together. On the odd occasions I bump into him – incidentally, he’s a Sturmscharführer now – he always asks whether I have any news of you.

  You’re still missed here, Paul. I ought to say it’s despite the way you used to go on at us about duty and honour, but I think it’s probably because of it. If you ever manage to get some leave, try to get down here and visit your old comrades.

  Sincerely,

  Your brother in arms

  Peter Sommer

  1962

  Amsterdam

  Emil had taken a table at the rear of the restaurant, telling the waiter that he was meeting a colleague – possibly two – for lunch. He could not stop himself from looking at his watch. Twenty minutes, Meissner had said, and it had been nearer thirty. He still wondered why he had allowed the priest to convince him to come but, he had to admit, Meissner could be very persuasive.

  While he was waiting, he tried to recall the first time he had met Meissner. To his surprise he found his recollection imperfect. He had thought it etched deeply into his memory, and it was a shock to find how elusive it had become.

  The door to the restaurant opened and two men entered. With the light behind them it was difficult to tell whether it was Meissner or not, but then Emil saw the walking stick. With a start, he realized who was with him.

  Angrily, he stood up. ‘You have misled me,’ he said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. What you thought you could achieve by bringing him . . .’ He raised a finger to point at Schweninger.

  ‘Do not worry,’ Schweninger replied in frosty recognition. ‘I have no more wish to be here than you.’ He directed a curt nod at Meissner. ‘I think it best if I forgo your offer of lunch, Father. I will bid you good day.’

  ‘Please,’ Meissner said. ‘Enough of this ridiculous posturing, both of you. If you won’t even talk to one another, how can you expect anything to change?’

  ‘I never said I expected anything to change,’ Emil said.

  ‘And as far as I am concerned,’ Schweninger said, ‘Herr Clément and I have nothing to say to each other.’

  ‘Nothing to say? Are you so determined to be enemies? It is my belief that you both have much more in common than either of you realize or would care to admit. Is the idea of talking to each other really so terrible?’

  Behind Schweninger, a waiter was hovering hesitantly. ‘I have a suggestion,’ Meissner said. ‘Let us at least have lunch and I will tell the beginning of a story that I pray will bring us to at least a little common understanding.’

  Emil and Schweninger exchanged a mutually suspicious look. Schweninger shrugged. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘I’ve come this far and, anyway, I’m starving.’ He looked directly at Emil. ‘How about you, Herr Clément? Is the promise of a free lunch enough for you as well?’

  Emil frowned. There was something that did not feel right about sitting down calmly to lunch with two former Nazis, and the memory of his angry exchange with Schweninger was still fresh. How could Meissner think there could be any rapprochement between them? It would be easy to walk away. And yet, last night, when he had cast the tiles, they had told him to have faith; in what, he still did not know. For a moment he hesitated but then, quietly, he sat down again.

  Relieved, the waiter stepped forward. ‘Would any of you gentlemen like something to drink?’

  They ordered beer. Meissner and Schweninger seated themselves.

  Meissner spoke first. ‘This is a long and complicated story,’ he said, ‘and Herr Schweninger has a train to catch later this afternoon, so we must try to keep to the point. I don’t think any of us knows the full extent of it, so we will all have something to tell. Let me start by saying that Herr Clément and I knew each other during the war. We were both in Auschwitz – I was an SS officer and he was a prisoner. In normal circumstances, it would have been extremely unlikely that our paths would ever have crossed, but in Auschwitz nothing was normal.’

  The drinks arrived.

  ‘So what was it that brought you together?’ Schweninger asked.

  Meissner made no attempt to respond. He looked to Emil.

  Emil sighed. ‘Chess,’ he replied. He lifted his glass to his lips and drank deeply.

  Schweninger seemed unconvinced. ‘Chess? In Auschwitz?’

  ‘Yes. It was played among the prisoners. Apparently I was one of the better players.’

  A smile played fleetingly on Meissner’s lips. ‘One of the better players? Come now, I never took you to be one for false modesty.’ He turned to Schweninger. ‘The perception of the other prisoners was that he was so good it seemed he had almost magical powers. He was their talisman, their unbeatable champion. I can’t begin to tell you about the problems he caused me.’

  ‘This is fascinating,’ Schweninger said, dropping his pretence of disbelief. He took a sip of his beer. ‘Did you know that late in 1944 I was approached by the SS and asked if I would play a chess match in Auschwitz?’

  Meissner smiled. ‘Yes, I did know. The request came from me. But then I was transferred back to my old unit. I never found out whether the game took place.’

  Schweninger’s eyebrows lifted. ‘From you? Then you would know who my opponent was to have been.’

  Meissner looked from Schweninger to Clément. Understanding dawned on both men.

  ‘Are you gentlemen ready to order?’ the waiter asked.

  17.

  RUY LÓPEZ

  May 1944

  SS Officers’ quarters, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-I

  On Sunday evening, Meissner was in his quarters in the Stammlager half listening to a programme of light music on the wireless. The music was doing nothing to improve his mood. I ought to be celebrating, he thought. Before leaving, Gruppenführer Glücks had commended him both for his efforts to improve morale and for the results of his work with the satellite camps. Added to this, Liebehenschel had been as good as his word and had recommended him for promotion to Hauptsturmführer, which Glücks had been happy to confirm. He had also been given a week’s leave.

  If it had been longer, he might have attempted to get to Toulouse to see his old comrade, Peter Sommer. The truth was, he was ambivalent about going home. He felt changed by the war, tempered and reshaped in its furnace, and the old certainties that he had once happily shared with his parents and his fiancée now seemed distant and unimportant. All the same, he felt he should spend a few days with them. It worried him that he hadn’t heard from them for a couple of weeks, though with the bombing, disruption of the postal service was becoming more frequent.

  On top of that, he was sure somebody had been looking through his journal. It could only be Oberhauser. His servant denied it, of course, but Meissner could not shake off his suspicion, despite the reputation for honesty that the Bible-worms enjoyed. In future, he would make sure to keep it locked away.

  Now, Oberhauser was folding his clothes prior to packing them. Knowing that it was practically impossible for his servant to write home, Meissner had offered to take a letter back to his family for him. His servant was such an odd character; Meissner could not underst
and his stubborn devotion to his incomprehensible religion. ‘Why,’ he had asked, ‘do you not simply say that you no longer hold your beliefs? That is all that is required for you to be able to go home. Nobody will care if you continue with your beliefs, as long as you do it in private.’

  But Oberhauser had been adamant. ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses are commanded to live in the truth,’ he had replied. ‘If I did as you suggest, it would be a lie. Better that I should lose my life in the service of Jehovah than to even pretend to turn my back on Him.’

  Oberhauser was sewing the insignia of Meissner’s new rank onto his uniforms when Eidenmüller arrived to inform his superior that Oberscharführer Hustek had departed for Berlin earlier that day. Meissner took it as a subtle reminder that it was time for him to make good on the wager he had made on Brossman to win.

  ‘It all went so well,’ Meissner observed, ‘until the end.’

  ‘You mean the wrong man won, sir?’

  Meissner smiled wryly. He wondered where Eidenmüller’s unconscious knack of lightening an atmosphere came from. He went into the bedroom to retrieve his wallet, passing Oberhauser on the way. ‘Did you hear about our little tournament, Oberhauser?’ The servant nodded. ‘No doubt you disapprove that Unterscharführer Eidenmüller made so much money out of it?’

  ‘It’s not my place to approve or disapprove, sir.’

  Meissner returned to the sitting area and counted a number of notes into Eidenmüller’s hand.

  ‘Did you know, sir, that chess is also played in the camp by the prisoners?’

  Meissner regarded his servant with surprise. It was rare for Oberhauser to volunteer anything without being spoken to directly.

  ‘By the prisoners? No, I didn’t. Where on earth would they get a chess set from?’

  The servant held his sewing up to the light to check the stitching. ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

  ‘I assume it is the Blockältesten and Kapos who play?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s mainly the politicals and some of the Jews.’

  ‘The Jews? Really? I wouldn’t have thought they’d have the strength.’

  ‘No, sir, I suppose not. But they say that one of the Jews is so good his talent is unnatural. I heard one of the Blockältesten say he was unbeatable.’

  ‘Unbeatable, eh?’ Meissner found the idea highly amusing. ‘What do you think of that, Eidenmüller? It wouldn’t be too healthy for your gambling enterprise if there really was a player who was unbeatable, would it?’

  Eidenmüller smiled broadly. The chess tournament had indeed made him a lot of money. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir. Nobody’s unbeatable, especially not a Jew. After all, it’s us who’re the master race, not them.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you think we ought to issue a challenge.’

  ‘Definitely, sir. Can’t have a Jew going round thinking he’s unbeatable, can we?’

  ‘No,’ Meissner agreed, ‘I don’t suppose we can.’

  *

  1962

  Amsterdam

  The conversation over lunch was polite, if reserved. Schweninger said little as the other men talked about their time in Auschwitz, but ate heartily.

  ‘I always wondered,’ Meissner said, as the waiter cleared their plates, ‘why people called you “Watchmaker”.’

  Emil looked at him, surprised. ‘Because I made and repaired watches. Before I was sent to Auschwitz, I had a shop in Paris. Then, at the camp, because I had those skills and could speak German, I was put to work in a technical workshop. Word got about, and before long I was repairing watches for the SS guards and the civilian supervisors.’

  Schweninger’s disbelief resurfaced. ‘You spoke German?’

  ‘I grew up in Metz.’ Emil took a swallow of beer. ‘It was only later that I moved to Paris. Although my family was French, until I was six, Metz was part of Germany. In the 1930s, there were many in Metz who wished they were still under German rule and who wanted to follow the example of the National Socialists regarding how they treated the Jews. He paused. ‘One day my mother was knocked to the ground by a group of men wearing swastika armbands. They screamed at her that she was a filthy Jew and that the time when the Jews got what was coming to them was fast approaching. Even though the men were arrested, my mother was very frightened. We decided it was time for us to leave.’

  His words were followed by an awkward silence. Neither German could meet Emil’s gaze.

  Schweninger mumbled, ‘Yes, I suppose it could not have been very easy for you, but things were worse in Germany.’

  ‘Worse?’ Emil snapped. ‘Worse for whom?’

  Schweninger bowed his head, embarrassed. ‘For the Jews. Things were bad for everyone, but for the Jews . . .’

  Gently, Meissner tried to steer the conversation. ‘I can imagine things must have been awful. But still, it must have been a difficult decision to pack up your entire family and leave.’

  ‘It was not such a difficult decision. My father had died in the war, fighting for the Kaiser. He even won an Iron Cross. My sisters both died from influenza after the war. There was only myself and my mother. We sold the family pawnbroking business and I set myself up as a watchmaker in Paris, near the Gare Montparnasse. It was there that I met my wife.’

  1935

  Paris

  Emil adored Paris. After the dour, narrow streets of Metz it was open, bright and exciting. He and his mother had taken an apartment off the Boulevard Garibaldi, with its overhead Metro line, not far from the shop he was renting in Montparnasse.

  After two years, the business was starting to take off, and an expanding coterie of discerning clients was sending family and friends to buy watches made by the young master craftsman from Metz. Emil was also gaining recognition in Parisian chess circles. That had not been so easy – there were some who did not welcome Jews, but his uncanny brilliance won many people over.

  But, for once, chess was not the centre of his life. The twenty-three-year-old Emil had become a regular at Le Chat Noir, a jazz club off the Place d’Anvers. Jazz was not the only attraction. There was a girl, Rosa. She was like no woman he had ever met before. She was intelligent, witty and overflowing with a simple, infectious joy. Emil was in love.

  Le Chat Noir was not like its bigger rival, Moulin Rouge, with its extravagant burlesques and tableaux. Patrons of Le Chat went there for two things – the heady beat of jazz, and to dance as if their very lives depended on it.

  One night in September, dripping with the joyous perspiration of dancing, Emil ordered champagne for his circle of friends.

  ‘Champagne?’ Rosa said, her eyes sparkling. ‘That’s extravagant.’

  ‘Tonight I feel like being extravagant,’ Emil said, smiling first at Rosa, then at everybody else. ‘Tonight is the most important night of my life.’

  ‘I agree that the news that Duke Ellington is coming back to Paris is a reason for champagne,’ somebody said, ‘but surely that doesn’t make it the most important night of your life.’

  ‘It’s my birthday, too,’ Emil said.

  ‘Your birthday?’

  A waiter arrived with two bottles of champagne, another with a tray of glasses. With a flourish of gushing froth the waiter poured until all had a glass. Somebody began to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. In an instant the entire audience had taken it up, then a clarinet and a muted trumpet, and within moments the whole band was playing it. Everybody was laughing and cheering and toasting in pure, hedonistic rapture.

  Rosa pulled Emil to her and kissed him. ‘You never told me it was your birthday,’ she said quietly, her lips against his ear. ‘I didn’t get you a present.’

  Eyes bright with happiness, Emil said, ‘The best present you could give me would be to make me the happiest man alive.’

  Rosa’s eyes widened as Emil went down on one knee. The band was still following its own unfettered variations of ‘Happy Birthday’ and he had to shout over them: ‘Rosa, will you marry me?’

  She took his face in her hands. Tears started,
tears of joy. She couldn’t hold them back. ‘Marry you?’ She pretended to hesitate, until she saw uncertainty playing on his face. Her beautiful, full lips parted in the widest of smiles. ‘You idiot. Yes, of course I’ll marry you.’ She laughed.

  Emil got to his feet. He waved at a waiter. ‘More champagne,’ he shouted. ‘Listen, everyone! We’re getting married! Rosa has no idea what she’s letting herself in for, but we’re getting married.’

  The next day he had told his mother. He had expected her to share his enthusiasm.

  ‘Married?’ she said, as if she couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re getting married?’

  Emil was so excited he couldn’t keep still. He smiled and nodded and played with his place setting, unfolding and folding his napkin. ‘Yes, Maman. Married.’

  But his mother did not share his excitement; she did not leave her place to kiss and congratulate her son. Instead, she said, ‘And who is this girl you’re getting married to? What do you know about her?’

  ‘Only that she’s the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I love her, and she loves me. That’s all that matters.’

  His mother tut-tutted and shook her head. ‘But what do you know about her family? Is she Jewish?’

  With that question the joy inside Emil seemed to shrivel away. ‘No, Maman, she’s not Jewish. She’s a Catholic.’

  ‘A Catholic, you say? And what do her parents say about her marrying a Jew? What if they disapprove? How will you marry her then?’

  Emil tried to smile but he had not expected his mother to take this attitude. ‘She doesn’t need her parents’ permission to marry – she’s over twenty-one. Besides, she doesn’t live with them. She’s from the south.’

  ‘So you are going to marry this girl, a Catholic from the south who’s gone past the right age for marrying and who doesn’t live with her parents. Please don’t tell me you’ve picked up some dancer in a cabaret and made her pregnant.’