by P. G. Glynn
Meanwhile exploring Vienna without her meant that when they went there together Hugo would for once know more than she did about something. He would be able to take her to the Kunsthistorisches Museum to see some of Bruegel’s paintings and Oskar Kokoschka’s amazing portraits and landscapes. They would go to hear the Philharmonic Orchestra play … and when they visited the Habsburg palaces, hand-in-hand, he would be able to tell her that she was as much his empress as ever the beautiful Elizabeth had been Franz Josef’s. Which would be Hugo’s way of telling Helga that she, too, was a beauty. She couldn’t object, could she, despite having told him to stop being ‘flowery’? Hugo didn’t see how she could … and had to find some way of expressing his love.
Would she look at the Imperial Crown Jewels and be as sad as he was that there was no head to wear the crown now that Austria had lost her Emperor? Uncertain on that score, Hugo was sure that Helga would like Fasching, when they could waltz in the Hofburg until first light, and that she would want to climb the Kahlenberg with him and visit Heiligenkreuz and Gumpoldskirchen. He was also convinced that she would delight in the cuisine of the old Danube monarchy and in the Viennese coffee houses so typifying Austria and Austrians. Papa had told Hugo of friends who had their post sent to their favourite coffee house and who took telephone calls and received visitors there. Papa himself frequented them and spent hours holding court as if in his own drawing room, while sipping an Einspaenner and tucking into his favourite Mehlspeise with the Herr Ober ever hovering in attendance. Once Hugo understood what it meant, he could tell Helga that Alfred Polgar had once said that the coffee house represented an Austrian outlook on the world, the very essence of which was not to look at the world. That might impress her, while on the other hand it might not impress her one bit. It suddenly occurred to him that although he had known Helga all his life he didn’t know her very well … and his discovery was depressing.
Fortunately there was no time to be depressed in: his train was pulling into the station and he could already see Mama and Papa waiting on the platform for him.
As Hugo scrambled to his feet and reached up to the rack above him for his suitcase the Stormtrooper stood up too and, clicking his heels together, raised his right arm stiffly saying: “Heil Hitler!”
41
As Hugo turned the handle to open the carriage door he could feel the Nazi’s breath on the back of his neck. Then, as Papa rushed forward in greeting, the Stormtrooper said: “This youth is your son, Herr Berger, yes?”
“He is,” Otto responded, “if that’s any of your business.”
“Show me your papers.”
“A ‘please’ would not come amiss.”
“Is that so?”
Within his fear at what was happening, Hugo saw Mama pinch Papa, after which the papers were handed over. If Papa was arrested and taken away forever it would all be Hugo’s fault for being on the soldier’s train. But how had the man known Papa’s name … and on whose authority was he now reading Papa’s passport? Hugo felt as if his world were ending … felt as if he were about to be horribly sick.
After a seeming eternity, with people scurrying past them on the platform and averting their eyes in the hope of escaping notice, the Nazi handed Papa’s papers back saying: “Alles in Ordnung. But your son must come with me. He is guilty of contempt.”
“I haven’t done anything!” Hugo protested.
“I can confirm that,” said Otto, shocked. “My son is guilty of nothing.”
“You were not there to see when he stared at me contemptuously between Brno and Wien.”
“I wasn’t staring!” Hugo said in panic. “Honest to God, I wasn’t!”
“I’m sure you weren’t,” Otto reassured him before addressing the Stormtrooper: “But then, you people don’t need actual guilt, do you, before acting against so-called offenders?”
“I don’t think I follow you, Herr Berger.”
“Then let me remind you of my brother’s activities at Stadelheim. You are aware that my brother, Ludwig, is an officer with the Schutzstaffel?” When the sole response was an intake of breath, Otto said: “Ernst Roehm – as well as being your Chief of Staff – was one of your Fuehrer’s oldest friends, which didn’t save him when Ludwig was sent to murder him in prison. If that’s the way Hitler treats his friends, can you sleep in your bed for wondering who’ll be next?”
“Roehm … led an unruly element.”
“I’ll bet! I’ll also bet, heavily, on the fact that you won’t live long if you make any move to cut the Nazi Party off from substantial Berger gifts. My meaning is that if you so much as touch my son I can personally guarantee that the flow of my family’s money to your masters in Berlin will instantly cease.”
“You have misunderstood me!”
“I have?”
“Yes.” The man was backing away as if from a loaded gun. “You took my little … jest too seriously. There’s no question of an arrest. We can forget this whole incident, yes?”
+++++
Hugo knew that he would never forget that arrival in Vienna. It was imprinted so indelibly on his memory that for as long as he lived he would remember the fear he had felt … and the relief when Papa’s weasel words got rid of the Nazi. But they might not have done. The man might so easily have been sent by Onkel Ludwig to take Hugo – or Papa – off to be tortured to death. Since then Hugo had suffered terrible nightmares in which Papa was dragged from his bed and hung from a scaffold at the Prater. Hugo could see him hanging there but could not help him because he and Mama were riding on the Riesenrad, which kept turning round and round without ever stopping. Hugo would awaken from the dream with tears streaming down his cheeks … and he would sometimes think that it would be a good thing were Papa to kill Onkel Ludwig before Onkel Ludwig killed him.
Not that killing could ever be a good thing … and even if Papa were to do it, there would still be the other Nazis and Hitler himself to deal with. There were so many of them that it was perhaps just as well Dr Eduard Benes had taken office. Since he became President Prague had totally changed and it was said that never before in Czech history had so many smart soldiers been seen on the streets. Because of Benes, Bohemia’s anti-militarist traditions had been set aside and for the first time the army had achieved popularity. Now that people believed their national existence again to be threatened they were ready to follow their President’s lead.
Lukas said it was reassuring to see soldiers everywhere and Hugo saw that it was, in a sense. But where there were soldiers there might also be war and it was appalling to imagine the Nazis invading Czechoslovakia and trying to take it over. Supposing Benes’s men weren’t strong enough to stand against them … and supposing jackboots were let loose to do whatever they wanted to in this beautiful land that was never meant for brutality and massacre …
Hugo preferred not to think such things, despite Lukas’s claims that he was behaving like an ostrich. There was nothing wrong with ostriches. And of course Lukas didn’t have a Nazi in his family like Hugo did. So despite all his theoretical knowledge he didn’t know first hand just how grisly they could be, or how powerful an adversary.
It was horrid having to keep secrets from his friend and Hugo often wished he could tell Lukas about Onkel Ludwig. But he knew that would be a big mistake, just as he would be mistaken in confiding in anyone about Papa’s plan to leave Bohemia if Anschluss happened. Papa and Mama had, in fact, sworn Hugo to secrecy so he had no choice in the matter.
He was glad to be considered adult enough to be told about his parents’ plans but wished he had someone at school with whom to discuss his worries. If he couldn’t discuss these with Lukas he couldn’t discuss them with anyone in Prague, since Ferdi now lived in Herrlichbach and helped Onkel Franz run the linen factory. Hugo not only missed him. He also envied him the fact that Helga worked in the factory nowadays.
It would mean nothing to Ferdi but everything to Hugo to see Helga on a daily basis. And if he had to leave Bohemia he might not
see her again for ages. He could not think of a worse fate: far better to stay and fight Hitler, if he invaded, than run away to somewhere safe.
Helga would never marry someone she saw as a rat deserting a sinking ship … unless … unless she could be persuaded to join him.
He had not yet come of age, which would weigh against him in her estimation, but it should go in his favour that he had been saving himself for her. Hugo now knew what massage parlours were. It was his second-best friend, Boris Matzke from Brno – with whom he had lunched before catching that Vienna-bound train – who had first suggested a visit to a knocking-shop and Hugo had almost gone. In fact he had gone with Boris as far as the door, only to show himself up by remarking on its lack of a window-display and commenting that it must be a strange sort of shop. It would be a long time before he forgot Boris’s expression as he said: ‘Grow up, Hugo, do! I thought you knew this wasn’t a shop in the ordinary sense’.
What a fool he had felt! But Boris had proved a true friend and, when told about Helga, had not pressured Hugo into doing something he didn’t want to do. Nor had he made him a laughing stock at school. And now Hugo knew that he was unusual in not wanting to consort with prostitutes. But when he made love to someone he would want to feel love. It was surely wrong to use a woman’s body without feeling anything … without caring about her feelings. Boris and Lukas disagreed … and had both warned him that most girls preferred boys who were experienced.
Hugo did not believe them. They were saying that simply to suit their own ends. And he could see that having sex was probably preferable to fantasy and to wet dreams. His fantasy, though, was focused on Helga … and on making passionate love to her after their wedding. If Anschluss happened before he was old enough to go into uniform, and if Mama and Papa insisted on taking him to Britain, would Helga ever agree to marrying him quickly and going with him?
“You’ll never pass your exams unless you stop daydreaming!”
It was Lukas who had spoken and Hugo looked up from the books he was supposed to be studying to say: “I know. I wish I could live in the present, like you seem to, instead of forever in the past or the future.”
“It’s a discipline,” Lukas said, peering from opposite Hugo through his thick spectacle lenses, “besides which it seems to me that the present is the best place to be. The past is obsolete, the future an unknown quantity.”
They were virtually alone in the Common Room, most students having finished their prep and left. “I suppose that’s true,” said Hugo, “but I wish we knew enough about our tomorrow to prepare for it.”
“As well as daydreaming, you’re always wishing,” Lukas told him with a wry grin. “Still, in this wish at least you aren’t being an ostrich. If you want my opinion … ”
Whether he wanted it or not, Lukas’s opinion was what Hugo got. He half-listened as his friend spoke of a rapid rise in Czech military efficiency and of high praise for the Air Force from foreign experts. Lukas seemed to see Benes’s preparation of the army as a sign that Hitler would be prevented from entering Czechoslovakia on his drive east, citing too the construction of a ‘Maginot’ line across the Oder valley and the fortification of other vulnerable sections of the frontier, such as the old Koeniggratz approach and the Eisenstein gap. He said that these defence measures, along with the manufacture both in Brno and in Enfield, England, of the new-fangled ‘Bren’ gun (its name having been formed from the first two letters of both towns) would soon see Hitler off and teach him not to be so cocksure. Hugo would need to wait for him to pause for breath before asking whether he was overlooking the fact that Nazi kidnapping raids across the frontier were on the increase.
The trouble with having such a well-read and learned chap as Lukas for a friend was that Hugo often seemed to be on the receiving end of a lecture. Having asked his question and received a dismissive answer, he found himself listening again.
“At least the Defence Law means that the employment situation is improving for the Czechs – and deteriorating for the Sudeten Germans! To lessen the risk of espionage the Defence Ministry is favouring Czechoslovak firms more and more when choosing tenders and most militarily important factories are being built in the Slovakian interior. Which favouritism is, of course, double-edged,” Lukas shrugged. “We could do without our age-old internal unrest now that we’re faced with this external threat.”
There were also the propagandists stirring things. After Hitler appointed Goebbels as his Minister of Propaganda a report had appeared in a German newspaper about the torture by Czechoslovak police of Bruno Weigel, a Reich German. But the facts according to Lukas were that Herr Weigel, a chemist who worked in a Czech gas-mask factory, had been accused of espionage and arrested before being released and returned to Germany. There had been no torture – but the lies had helped the Nazi cause. For the Czechs were outraged by the deception while the Sudeten Germans implicitly believed Berlin. Meantime Konrad Henlein – whose Sudeten German Party was partially financed by Reich German funds – backed Berlin’s stories and supported Hitler in his aim for annexation between Germany and the Sudetenland.
“Next you’ll be telling me,” Hugo said, still without a satisfactory answer to his original question, “the German papers have reported that President Benes himself has been kidnapped from within the Hradschin!”
“The propagandists could even come up with that,” Lukas agreed, taking his friend seriously, “but they’d be as wrong as they could be. To my mind, nothing’s less likely.”
“So you honestly believe we have the strength to stop Hitler on his drive east?”
“Speaking for Czechoslovakia – yes, I think we’re now strong enough to stop him. But,” Lukas frowned, “I admit to doubts about poor little Austria.”
“Are you saying that Anschluss will happen sooner rather than later?”
“I suppose I’m saying that not even I can predict the future … but that in my view living in Prague is considerably safer than living in Vienna.”
+++++
Not only had Hitler now imposed the Berchtesgaden Agreement on the Austrian Federal Chancellor, insisting that Schuschnigg included Dr Seyss-Inquart, the Nationalist, in his Cabinet – he had also activated ‘Operation Otto’. He had done so since Schuschnigg’s announcement of a plebiscite, knowing that a national vote for a free and German, independent and social, Christian and united Austria, could ruin his plans for Anschluss, along with his whole expansionist programme. While Otto felt that the code-name could have been construed as another element of Ludwig’s vendetta against him, it had in fact been given to a scheme devised originally against the eventuality of Otto von Habsburg attempting to regain Austria’s throne. Now the German border at Salzburg had been closed and railway traffic stopped, while all German divisions in the Munich area had been mobilised and were heading toward Austria. It was even being reported in German newspapers that Communist flags were flying in Vienna and that mobs there were shouting: ‘Heil Moskau! Heil Schuschnigg!’
Otto did not believe a word written in German newspapers but he did believe that things were very serious. Now that Berlin had demanded Schuschnigg’s resignation and postponement of the plebiscite, with Goering threatening ‘appropriate action’ unless these demands were met, there were no prizes for guessing what would happen next. And it was preferable to be out of the country before Anschluss.
So the decision had been made for him. He must abandon his homeland in the interests of safety – his own and his family’s – doing as he probably should have done months ago. Marie had been telling him for ages that he was leaving things too late, but she had spoken in Vienna of running away and in a sense it felt wrong to run, saving his own skin at others’ expense. He had already lost several friends, who had just disappeared and not been heard of again.
Significantly, Jan Stein had been the first to be snatched from his bed. Ludwig said that he had begun with Jan as a gesture of intent. It was horrific, knowing that his own brother was behind the mayhem and
grief being unleashed on Jan’s and other friends’ families, and Otto still could not get to grips with the depth of hatred Ludwig felt both toward him and toward all things Jewish. The man was a monster who killed and tortured for pleasure, but he was also a Berger and Otto therefore had some responsibility for his behaviour. He was responsible in the sense that Ludwig’s loathing was chiefly directed at him and that family friends were suffering abominably as a consequence. The question Otto had long asked himself was whether their suffering would decrease or increase if he removed himself from the scene.
And he had concluded that it would inevitably increase, given the unbridled fury Ludwig would feel, along with his frustration at having let Otto slip through his net. There was the added fact that, as in 1914, Otto would be seen as cowardly. He didn’t care, of course, how Ludwig saw him but had begun to care how he saw himself. Leaving Bohemia in its hour of need would be the act of a coward and yet, all things considered, he now seemed to have no alternative.
Ilse Stein had left. She had been lucky not to be fried alive after Jan was carted off into the night. They were in Regensburg at the time, asleep in their apartment above one of their shops, and she had told him since that her escape was little short of a miracle. Now safely with her daughter in Virginia, she had clung to Otto before leaving and told him that she would sooner leave everything behind and start from scratch in America than risk staying where Nazis did unspeakable things to innocent victims. She was still upstairs when they began looting and burning the business she and Jan had built up over twenty years and, dazed from the raid and her husband’s abduction, she had left it almost too late to jump from a rear window onto a bush below. The bush had cushioned her fall and as she landed, singed from the intensity of the heat and with flames hungrily devouring the building, she had heard the bloodcurdling cry: “Kill the Jewish pigs!”