Red Love

by Leo Maxim

  By now Gerhard is certain that he loves the doctor and wants to marry her when he’s big enough. He wonders if he’s allowed to say that to her, whether it isn’t strange for a ten-year-old to court a grown-up woman. The night before his release he can hardly sleep, in the small hours he plans to see his declaration of love as a kind of test of courage. The doctor appears at the usual hour and he starts hesitantly, then faster and faster, telling her about his feelings. She listens to him seriously, doesn’t even smile. When he’s finished his declaration of love she thinks for a moment and says she likes him very much too. She’s thirty-five years old and still unmarried, and if he’s still willing to marry her in ten years’ time and she hasn’t yet found anyone else, she would live with him. Then she leans down to him, kisses him on both cheeks and leaves the ward. They see each other regularly for several months. She invites him to dinner in her flat, they go walking in the Bois de Boulogne or go to the cinema. But after a while they meet less often. Gerhard has joined a clique of boys at school, he has other things to do than meet a grown-up woman. One summer day in 1935 she says goodbye to him because she has to move to a different town. They never see each other again. Later Gerhard told me about that first love, that woman who turned him into a Frenchman. He said there weren’t many things he’d done in his life that he regretted. But that he could forget that woman so easily had always been a painful mystery to him.

  Gerhard in Paris, 1935

  In the summer holidays Gerhard goes to a camp for émigré children near Paris. Sleeping next to him is the son of Hans Beimler, the Communist who was already famous. He tells Gerhard how his father escaped from Dachau concentration camp and started his struggle against the Nazis. Gerhard asks the boy to tell him every last detail. He finds these stories so exciting that he decides to be like Hans Beimler one day.

  After he gets back from the camp he tells his parents about his experiences and says, “I’m actually a Communist now.” His father smiles when he hears that. He is sceptical about Communism, as he is about all extreme views. Wilhelm doesn’t think much of the idea of destroying the whole bourgeois legal and state apparatus in order to put some peasants or proletarians in power. But he also sees that lots of Communists are fighting valiantly against the Nazis, and he thinks one should work with these people if one wants to bring down Hitler. Wilhelm lost his horror of the Communists early on. When, before the First World War, he was studying at the College of International Law in Geneva, he and one of his fellow students met a certain Monsieur Ulyanov in a café—a Russian revolutionary who would come to fame only a few years later under the name of Lenin. Lenin had patiently explained the politics of the Bolsheviks to the bourgeois young German, telling him that they considered terror against the Tsarist regime legitimate because the rulers also used terrorist methods. Wilhelm was very impressed by Lenin and was quite sympathetic towards the state he later founded. The coffee-house conversation with Lenin was also a reason why Wilhelm later considered joining the French Resistance, which also used violence to combat a violent regime.

  Incidentally, the fellow student who took part in the conversation with Lenin in Geneva was Pierre Mendès-France, who became French prime minister after the Second World War. When Wilhelm arrives in Paris, Mendès-France is already an influential member of parliament with the ruling Radical Socialists. After the failure of the left-wing People’s Front government in 1938, Wilhelm’s family is ordered by the Paris police to leave the country immediately, along with many other dispossessed German émigrés. Wilhelm turns to his former fellow student for help. Pierre Mendès-France appears the very next day, buys up much of the stock of the bookshop and phones the French Minister of the Interior to persuade him to let the family stay.

  Wilhelm is still the most important person that Gerhard can talk to about political matters. So for the time being Gerhard doesn’t become a Communist, but a member of the “Faucons Rouges”, the youth organization of the French Socialist Party. He wears a blue shirt and a red scarf and is present when the Red Falcons sing songs to thousands of workers on the shop floor of the Renault factory on the island of Seguin in the Seine during the strikes that paralyse the whole of France in 1936. Gerhard is also there in 1937 when the Falcons storm the Paris Mutualité and interrupt a speech by the Socialist Prime Minister Léon Blum with the cry “Planes for Spain”. They are trying to persuade the head of government to support the Spanish Popular Guard in their struggle against the fascist Franco. But Léon Blum sticks to his policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War and Gerhard wonders what sort of Socialists these people are if they don’t dare to fight.

  Along with his father he regularly goes to the Café Mephisto on the Boulevard St Germain, where the Association for the Protection of German Authors meets. They hear talks by Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Anna Seghers and Rudolf Leonhard. The authors invoke the approaching end of the Nazi regime because, as they see it, a civilized people like the Germans will never follow these criminals. Their arguments sound so enlightening that Gerhard thinks the Nazis have actually been defeated already. One man who exerts a strong influence on the fourteen-year-old Gerhard is the great reporter Egon Erwin Kisch. He often comes into Wilhelm’s book-shops and gives the émigré children lessons in German and history. At first Gerhard is most impressed by Kisch because he can do such virtuoso magic tricks. Kisch makes coins and matchboxes disappear in a flash, and sometimes they reappear in Gerhard’s trouser pocket. Kisch can also talk as grippingly about historical events as if he had been there himself. Once he takes Gerhard and three other pupils to Versailles and shows them the settings of the French Revolution. They walk along the route that the furious Parisian market women walked in their protests against hunger. They see the throne of Louis XVI, and Kisch tells them about the cobbler who put that symbol of power in his workshop in the Faubourg St Antoine after the looting of the palace. For years the cobbler’s customers were able to sit on the throne to have their measurements taken. Kisch tells stories very differently from school. He isn’t interested in the lives of the kings, but in the revolts of the people. He looks at history from below and tells his pupils that all unjust regimes are condemned to be toppled by the proletarian masses. Now Gerhard is definitely determined to become a revolutionary, and when Kisch tells him the Communist Resistance fighters are definitely revolutionaries, his mind is made up.

  One morning in April 1940 French gendarmes appear outside the front door at Rue Meslay and tell the family to pack up their belongings. The French government has issued an order for German refugees to be interned in camps, because France has, after all, been at war with Germany for eight months. This measure doesn’t apply to Gerhard, because he isn’t yet seventeen, and his mother is also exempt from internment so that she can look after him. Wilhelm and Gerhard’s two sisters are put in a camp in Gurs on the edge of the Pyrenees. Gerhard suddenly has the feeling that he’s losing his grip. He can’t sleep at night, and even by day he lives in constant fear for his father and sisters. Everything that still seemed secure until then has become insecure. France, his new home, the land of democracy and human rights, has betrayed them. Bold thoughts race through his head. He imagines secretly freeing the family from the camp at night, shooting a guard who gets in his way. Then he feels sad and weak again. He knows now that there is no longer a safe place for him, that no one can protect him. He has to take control of his own fate.

  9

  Warnings

  WHEN THE GERMAN WEHRMACHT nears Paris in June 1940, Gerhard packs a rucksack, says goodbye to his mother and leaves the city. He travels on foot, along with hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who are all fleeing to the south of the country to escape the German soldiers. Railway transport has been interrupted, and the roads leading to Orléans and Lyon are all crammed. Heavily laden cars, trucks and horse-drawn carriages are trying to force their way through. Most people are on foot, like Gerhard. They are carrying suitcases and parcels, pushing prams. They walk hundreds of kilo
metres, passing through dead-looking towns and villages. By the roadside, vendors are selling old bread and bottles of tap water at inflated prices. When Gerhard nears Vichy, he learns of the capitulation of the French government under Marshal Pétain. He also learns that there is supposed to be an unoccupied zone in the south of France. Gerhard decides to keep on walking to the coast. He has only ever seen the Mediterranean in tourist posters and books, and it strikes him as a very pleasant place to escape to.

  How quickly it all went, how few years lie between the end of his pampered childhood in Rheinsberg, life as an exile and now as a refugee. In his memoirs Gerhard describes this descent in a composed and sensible way: “It is true that the times are getting worse and worse, but things will keep going anyway.” He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t wrangle with his fate. It may have something to do with his young age, or with the fact that he isn’t the only one whose life is coming apart. Perhaps the many others with whom he fled from Paris made it easier to accept his own fate. But there’s one thing he can’t shake off: the feeling that he isn’t really at home anywhere. I think Gerhard carried that feeling around with him for ages. It may even have been the most important reason for him to go to the GDR later on. To that country where so many homeless people sought a new beginning.

  At the end of June Gerhard arrives in Cannes. The weather is wonderful, holidaymakers in pale-coloured suits sit on the terraces of the restaurants and cafés on the Croisette, white yachts bob in the marina, children play in the sand on the beach. It’s all exactly as Gerhard imagined, but he himself feels a little forlorn. Just before Cannes he spent his last few francs on a pound of bread, he’s quite dizzy with hunger, while on the promenade the smell of bouillabaisse reaches his nostrils. In the evening he discovers an abandoned tomato field in the hills above the city. There he finds another refugee from Paris who has been living on tomatoes for three days, and who suggests asking at the hotels, which are thought to be looking for part-time staff.

  The next morning Gerhard walks along the backs of the hotels. He sees greengrocers and meat delivery men carrying baskets, boxes, sides of beef and whole calves into the rear entrances. By the entrance to the Grand Hotel there is a sign: “Kitchen boy wanted”. In the staff office they tell him he can start as an unpaid apprentice. In return he can help himself to leftover food. The first time Gerhard steps inside the kitchen of the Grand Hotel he stands there as if enchanted. He sees a huge, white-tiled room, with a whole battalion of spotless pots and pans boiling away on gas rings in the middle. He reports to François, a fat, congenial man wearing a pastry chef’s cap, who congratulates him on his decision to learn the cook’s trade. But first of all they have breakfast, because no one can work in a kitchen on an empty stomach. François, the head of patisserie and cold food, puts cold meat and pâté, a tin of sardines and various cheeses and cakes down on the table in front of Gerhard. Gerhard eats as much as he can and tells François, speaking with his mouth full, that he is a refugee from Germany. François advises him to keep that to himself, because it’s not a good idea to mention foreigners here in the Grand Hotel, particularly when they come from Germany.

  Work in the kitchen is hard. For ten to twelve hours a day Gerhard cleans vegetables and scrubs copper pots until the meat chef can see his stubble in them. He carries the heavy trays to the dumb waiter, cleans the floor, guts fish and cracks lobster shells. Along with four other kitchen boys, two lift attendants and a porter, he sleeps in a little room under the roof. It’s unbearably hot at night, they only have a paraffin lamp and they have to fetch water in a bucket from the toilet. The pastry chef François reveals himself to be an anarchist, whose motto is, “If it’s good enough for the moneybags in the dining room it’s not good enough for us.” When François has to make a special cake, he always produces two. The better one is for the employees. On one occasion a cream cake is ordered for the banquet of a Bolivian tin-mine owner. Gerhard carries the cake to the dumb waiter and trips on the way. The cake is dented on one side, there’s ash stuck to the cream where it fell on the floor. Gerhard says gloomily that they’ll probably have to deliver the other cake now. François resolutely rejects this idea, because at his table they don’t eat anything that’s been on the floor. François moulds the cake back into shape with his hands, reaches into the ashes and dusts the edge of the cake on all sides. “Tell the waiter I’ve made the cake in the Indian style this time,” he says to Gerhard. Then the other cake is eaten in the kitchen.

  The head chef, a fat, bald little man whom everyone addresses as “maître”, only ever comes into the kitchen in a dinner jacket. Just before midday and half an hour before dinner he does a tour of the kitchen to check that his recipes are being followed to the letter. This tasting is a ceremony. The sous-chefs present him with sauces and pieces of meat on preheated plates. The soufflés and puddings are served up in ice-cooled bowls. Behind the master someone has to carry the tasting cutlery, and after three weeks this honour goes to Gerhard. Forks, spoons and knives are neatly aligned in a shallow morocco leather case. When the master brings something to his lips, there must be absolute silence in the kitchen. Then he pauses, quite motionless, shuts his eyes and gives his last instructions for the achievement of perfection. At the time the Grand Hotel in Cannes has one of the finest restaurants in France, and in spite of the horrendous prices the dining room is always full. So Gerhard gets to know the little dodges and the major differences in the art of cuisine. Even decades later he continued to celebrate it. When we had dinner at my grandparents’, Gerhard always paid special attention to the meat. Sometimes he asked me to cut him a slice of the roast and tasted it with his eyes closed—as the master chef in the Grand Hotel had once done.

  After a few weeks Gerhard is promoted to assistant waiter. He wears a white tropical tuxedo with black trousers and patent-leather shoes. Most of the guests are rich Americans and French members of the collaborationist government in Vichy. There is also a German who is there almost every evening. His name is Dr Müller, and he identified himself at reception as a representative of the German Red Cross. But a fellow waiter tells Gerhard he spotted the butt of a pistol under Dr Müller’s left armpit when he was clearing up. He probably doesn’t work for the Red Cross. One evening a senior American diplomat has his leaving banquet in Cannes. He comes in a convoy of cars from Paris, where the American Embassy has just been closed down. The party goes on into the night. Eventually the head waiter goes into a side room to rest. He tells Gerhard to call him as soon as the guests show signs of leaving. A few minutes after the head waiter has disappeared, the diplomat’s wife, a slim blonde in pearls and diamond rings, gets to her feet. As she does so, her mink stole falls to the floor. Gerhard rushes over and lays the stole around her shoulders. She smiles, opens her handbag and puts a bundle of crumpled notes in Gerhard’s trouser pocket. A few moments later the head waiter appears. He is furious because Gerhard didn’t call him, and demands the tip. Gerhard thinks for a moment. He remembers that the personnel department told him to hand in his papers, he thinks of the hard, unpaid work and the money that would allow him to leave Cannes. He says no, and walks away. The waiter yells after him that he is fired, and must leave the hotel by seven o’clock in the morning. The next morning there’s one last breakfast with François. He fetches a bottle of white Burgundy and truffled foie gras from the fridge. They drink to the future, and then Gerhard leaves the Grand Hotel, through the rear entrance, just as he arrived.

  Via his mother, who is still in Paris, Gerhard manages to contact his father, who has escaped from the internment camp and is living under a false name in the village of Cazaubon near Toulouse. He is being looked after by an illegal Catholic aid organization. Gerhard heads off on foot. He only walks at night, because even in the unoccupied zone there are regular checks and raids now. Industrious French gendarmes are hunting down Jews and foreign refugees, before handing them over to the Germans. After two weeks Gerhard reaches Cazaubon, and is able to hug his father for the first ti
me in ages. Wilhelm has aged, his face has become narrow and transparent, and he has developed deep wrinkles around his mouth. Life in the camp, which he doesn’t really want to talk about very much, has taken its toll on him. Wilhelm has a heart condition and has to take things easy. He can no longer manage more than one half-hour walk a day. This inactivity bothers him, because he would ideally like to be fighting the Nazis. But he has to leave that task to Gerhard, who has made contact with the Resistance via the husband of his sister Ilse. A few weeks later Kurt Weber, a former fighter in Spain who is now working with the Resistance in Toulouse, comes to Cazaubon. Kurt Weber tells Gerhard about the illegal work of the German Communists in France, whose chief task lies in spying on the Wehrmacht and recruiting German soldiers. He says Gerhard needs to be clear that he’s risking his life if he joins the Resistance. He talks about torture by the Gestapo, about the death sentence awaiting anyone who gets caught. Someone like Gerhard, just nineteen years old, should think very hard about that. They agree to meet in Toulouse. If Gerhard comes, it means he wants to join.

  At 1.30 in the afternoon on 12 May 1943, Gerhard is standing as agreed in the little park near the Capitole in Toulouse. He has to wait a few minutes before a small, broad-shouldered man appears from the shadows of an avenue and walks straight over to him. It is Werner Schwarze, code name Eugen. He suggests taking the tram out of town so that they can talk in peace. They travel through the southern part of the city past the gunpowder factory where the first shift is just getting out. Beyond the Garonne Bridge the tram stops outside a massive red-brick building surrounded by high walls. Eugen explains that this is the Fortress of St Michel, a prison from the previous century that the Germans are now using as a jail. Gerhard thinks that he might end up here if he makes a mistake one day. But he immediately dismisses the thought.