Berlin: A Novel

by Pierre Frei

  Before they arrived, Fredie had explained to her, 'Blumenau is where they put people who don't belong in our society. Jews, homosexuals, Communists, gypsies and so on. Those who really want to prove their worth can do it by working. As camp commandant I'm responsible for discipline and order.'

  An eerie silence lay over this bleak wilderness. 'But of course, the people are all working.' She was relieved to have found an explanation for the deathly silence. She nodded to the guard. The dog growled as they passed him.

  'You strong, you work, you eat.' Jana pointed to a row of neat dark green wooden buildings in the background, obviously the workers' quarters. She pushed open the door to one of the grey huts in front of them. A stench of excrement and urine met them. When her eyes were used to the dim light, she made out long rows of wooden bunks stacked four high. On them cowered skeletons with skin stretched over them, wearing striped rags. Heads shaved bald were raised, with difficulty. Eyes lying deep in their sockets stared expressionlessly at her. 'No work, no eat. Only get thin soup.' Jana spoke like a tourist guide, her voice devoid of emotion.

  Marlene felt only a dull emptiness. In the last five minutes she had seen more horrors than in her entire life. The squalor of Riibenstrasse was a sunny memory by comparison, the repulsive desires of men who paid for sex a harmless bit of fun. 'I'll speak to my husband. I'm sure he doesn't know anything about this.'

  Jana pointed ahead. 'Farm there.' The striped backs and headscarves of a hundred women weeding rose in hunched outline above the endlessly long vegetable beds. Women overseers supervised the work.

  Hauptsturmfiihrerin Werner stood tall and slender between the beds, her cap pulled down over her forehead. She was wearing boots with her uniform coat, and carried a riding crop. In a terrible way she was beautiful, and well aware of it. Marlene went towards her. 'Good morning, Frau Werner.'

  Jana muttered something that sounded like 'Good morning.' She was evidently frightened.

  Marlene offered her hand. Frau Werner ignored it. 'I came to ask you for some vegetables. A few carrots and sugar peas, and two lettuces, if you wouldn't mind.'

  Frau Werner turned to the gypsy girl. 'Have you forgotten how to address me in your new position?' she hissed.

  Marlene leaped to Jana's defence. 'She did say good morning.'

  'Come here. How do you address me?'

  Jana took a step forward, assumed a wooden military stance, took a deep breath and shouted, her voice breaking, 'Prisoner 304476. Heil Hitler, Frau Hauptsturmfiihrerin.'

  There was the ugly sound of a blow. A bloody weal crossed Jana's cheek from her left ear to her chin. Frau Werner lowered her riding crop. 'To help you remember how to speak to your superiors.'

  Marlene was beside herself. 'You monster! My husband will see that you pay for this!'

  Gertrud Werner looked her coldly up and down, and kicked the prisoner crouching closest to her in the ribs with the toe of her boot. A basket of carrots, sugar peas and two lettuces for the Frau Commandant. Free delivery to the big house,' she added mockingly.

  'Come along, Jana. Dr Engel will see to you.' The red cross on the white background showed Marlene the way. The infirmary building was all sterile white tiles. Surgical instruments glittered in little glass-fronted cupboards. A swing door led to the next room, obviously the operating theatre, from which a smell of disinfectant wafted.

  Jana screamed as the doctor dabbed alcohol on her would. When that dreadful woman hit her she didn't utter a sound, Marlene thought in surprise.

  'Fancy hitting out like that - terrible!' she said to the doctor, venting her outrage.

  'Very unpleasant, admittedly. Camp life gets on all our nerves. To be honest. I'd rather be at the Front. Were marching west now after our blitzkrieg on Poland.'

  Dr Engel pulled down the girl's lower lids down. 'Fascinating, these black gypsy eyes.' He stuck a large plaster over her cheek. 'The wound will heal in a couple of days.'

  'The people shut up in those grey huts are starving. They get nothing but thin soup.'

  Engel took a test tube from its holder and held it up to the light. 'The commandant is responsible for the camp. My place is here with my scientific work.'

  'We won't trouble you any longer, doctor.'

  'Oh, you're not troubling me. Do visit me whenever you like.' Engel patted Jana's unharmed cheek.

  A young woman prisoner was waiting for them in the kitchen with the basket of vegetables. She whispered something in Jana's ear and then ran away full tilt. 'Sema gypsy too.' Jana began shelling the peas into a pan.

  A good-looking man, Dr Engel. I think he likes you.' Marlene picked up a handful of pods and helped to shell them.

  'It's nine o'clock,' she told her husband when he came home late from the camp that evening.

  'No end of administrative stuff. Sorry, darling, I should have let you know. Or you could have called. The field telephone in the kitchen connects directly to my office. You only have to lift the receiver. So take care cleaning - a temporary connection like that isn't very stable.'

  'I'll remember that. Come and eat.' She was determined to talk to him about conditions in the camp and Hauptsturmftihrerin Werner after supper, but he nipped her story in the bud. 'By no means is everything here just as it should be. Getting the place under control is a considerable task, but I shall do it. And I want you backing me up, right?' Marlene understood. He didn't wish to be bothered with complaints.

  'Thank you, Jana, go to bed now,' she dismissed the girl. 'We'll wash the dishes tomorrow. Goodnight.'

  'Heil Hitler, Herr Commandant. Heil Hitler, Frau Neubert.'

  'Nice girl.'

  A prisoner like the others, don't forget that.' Fredie poured himself a cognac and leaned back comfortably in his armchair. Not bad, this house, eh?'

  As long as the hedge is high enough,' she couldn't help saying.

  When she went to lock the door of the house, she heard quiet weeping outside. Jana was sitting on the steps, her head between her knees. 'Hello, child, what's the matter? Don't you want to go to bed?'

  The girl raised her tear-stained face. 'Sema say Frau Hauptsturmfiihrerin very angry. She wait for Jana with whip.'

  'I'll go with you. She won't dare do it again if I'm there.'

  Agonized black eyes looked up at her. 'When Frau Neubert gone, Frau Hauptsturmfiihrerin more angry. Then Jana have to go in with rats.'

  'Come along.' She drew the girl back into the house and took her upstairs. Fredie had already gone to bed. There were a couple of mattresses in the attic. 'This will have to do for tonight. Tomorrow we'll see.'

  As usual, Fredie was in a good temper at breakfast. He gave his permission for Jana to move into the house. Marlene was delighted. She cycled into the village and bought flowered linen curtains and bedlinen. They found some sticks of furniture in the attic, and she and Jana painted them pale blue. Together they refurbished the little attic bedroom.

  In the afternoon she picked up the field telephone to ask Fredie if he wanted to come over for a cup of coffee. Surprised, she heard both his voice and a stranger's. He was speaking to his head office in Berlin. She hung up again at once. There was probably some problem in the temporary line, which went out of the kitchen window and then wound its way from tree to tree and over the yew hedge to the office building. She'd mention it to him.

  Jana brought her an old nickel-plated alarm clock that she had found in a chest. The thing rattled fit to wake the dead. 'Well, you won't oversleep and be late for work,' Marlene teased her.

  'Jana not sleep. Jana like work for Frau Neubert.' The girl flung her arms round Marlene's neck and kissed her cheek.

  'Oh, what nonsense,' said Marlene, moved. 'Tell you what, I'll ask my husband if you can cycle into the village to fetch the breakfast croissants from the baker's. Can you ride a bike?'

  'Not know.'

  'Never mind, child, I'll teach you.'

  Jana squealed when Marlene put her on the bicycle. They both had a lot of fun, and Marlene forgot all a
bout the telephone.

  You couldn't forget about the camp. It was omnipresent. When the wind blew from there towards the house, Marlene could smell it. It smelled of hunger, latrines and mortal fear, of the sweat of its inmates and the black shoe polish the slaves used to clean their masters' belts and boots.

  She avoided the camp, but the camp came to her every day, when a female prisoner brought the vegetables. Then she saw not the basket of lettuce and carrots but the army of women's bent backs among the endless vegetable beds.

  Fredie banned Jana's expeditions to the village, so Marlene herself cycled to Blumenau once a week to do the shopping. Conversation in the grocer's shop died away when she came in. There was suspicion, fear and hostility in the air. She felt like crying out, 'I can't help it! None of this is anything to do with me!' She didn't, offering a friendly greeting instead. Today, Friday 14 June 1940, the radio drowned out her voice. The German Army had occupied Paris.

  She bought bread and butter; their rations were generous, and there was a special allocation of coffee and chocolate from looted stocks. The British had abandoned all their supplies of food in their headlong flight to the Atlantic coast.

  Outside the shop, someone asked her quietly, 'Can I speak to you?' The woman was about fifty, simply dressed, holding her small handbag close to her breast. In her other hand she carried a brown paper shopping bag. She looked careworn and sick. You could only guess at the beauty that had once been hers.

  'Speak to me? Why?'

  'You're the commandant's wife. My name is Mascha Raab. My husband is in your camp.'

  'Raab?' Marlene remembered the name. 'He had something the matter with his circulation. Dr Engel treated him.'

  'He's a diabetic. They take good care of him so that he'll last a long time. Pure philanthropy.' There was no mistaking the irony in her voice.

  'You are very incautious, Frau Raab. Don't forget, I'm Obersturm- bannfiihrer Neubert's wife.'

  Mascha Raab lowered her handbag. A yellow Star of David with the word JEW on it came into view. 'People like me are perceptive. It's a matter of survival. I sense that I have nothing to fear from you.'

  'But suppose your feelings deceive you?'

  'Then you can have me imprisoned or killed. That's all. Forgive me, I didn't mean to alarm you. They won't do anything to deprive Georg of hope.' She raised her shopping bag. The neck of a bottle stuck out of it. A 1934 Chablis. Very dry, suitable for diabetics. A luxury - Jews aren't allowed such things. But the wine merchant knows us from the old days. Georg loves French wines, and today is our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Would you give him the bottle?'

  'I'll ask my husband to let you have a visitor's permit as a special case.'

  'No, just take Georg the bottle. Lie to him for me - say I'm looking young and healthy, tell him I'm confident that he'll soon be back with me. My train leaves in ten minutes. You're a good woman, I know you are. Goodbye.'

  Fredie sat down to lunch in very good spirits. 'The Frogs are as good as done for. Now for the Tommies. What's new in the village?'

  'Just imagine, a woman called Frau Raab approached me. Out of the blue! What a nerve those Jews have! Said her husband was here in the camp, and could I take him a bottle of wine for their thirtieth wedding anniversary? Well, I brought the wine back with me. What do you think?'

  She had struck the right note. Fredie nodded.

  'Raab is a special case. What's for lunch?'

  'Veal schnitzel au naturel with cream sauce and rice. And green beans on the side.'

  'Schafer can take you to Raab when we've eaten. Incidentally, I have to go away for a couple of days, to compare notes with my colleague at Buchenwald. Not a very inviting prospect, they say his wife is a terrible cook. Hurry up, Jana. I'm ravenous.'

  Oberscharfiihrer Schafer was waiting for Marlene at the door beyond the yew hedge. He had taken off his peaked cap and was mopping his brow. A hot day, isn't it?' The bristly-headed man attempted a smile. He looked like the doorman of a second-class hotel hoping for a tip. He did not look like a murderer. That was the thing that made the executioners of Blumenau so terrible: they were ordinary men and women who smiled, perspired, made love, went to the lavatory and looked forward to pay day.

  Schafer hit the corrugated iron with his stick. It made a hollow sound like a drum in the African bush announcing some misfortune. The guard opened the door at once and stood to attention. 'That's all right, my boy,' the Oberscharfiihrer thanked him jovially. 'This way, Frau Neubert.' He trudged towards a bungalow that stood outside the camp itself, like the office and infirmary buildings. Here too, gravel paths and well-tended flower beds would give visitors the impression that the atmosphere was one of calm and beauty. Inside, the bungalow was clean and cool. Polished, pale-grey linoleum muted the sound of Schafer's hobnailed boots. There was a door at the end of a corridor. 'Visitor for you, Raab. In you go. Frau Neubert.'

  A room flooded with light, a cross between a workshop and a laboratory. A chubby little man with a white coat over the coarse, cotton uniform worn by inmates. He was wearing a Helmholtz mirror on a band around his forehead. He folded the mirror up, revealing intelligent brown eyes, and stood stiffly to attention, which looked rather comic. 'Prisoner 48659, Heil Hitler,' he said in a quiet and friendly voice.

  Are you Herr Raab?'

  'In an earlier life I was Dr Raab. Professor Georg Raab.'

  'I'm Frau Neubert.'

  'I know, madame.'

  'My congratulations on your thirtieth wedding anniversary, and greetings from your wife.' Marlene handed him the bag with the bottle in it.

  'Mascha came here?'

  'I saw her down in the village. I'm afraid it wasn't possible for her to get a visitor's permit. She's looking fine, she's in good health. A beautiful woman.'

  'Oh yes, she is indeed beautiful.' An expression of reverie appeared on his face. He took the bottle out of the bag. 'Wonderful, a 1934 Chablis. To think such things still exist! I shall allow myself a glass at supper. It would be better in company, but I mustn't ask too much.'

  'Don't you have to go back to the huts at night?'

  'I have a comfortable little bedroom here, my own bathroom with a lavatory, and the same meals as the guards.'

  As an inmate of the camp?'

  'They need me. Please sit down, madame.' He pulled out a chair for her. 'Your husband has let you visit me, so he obviously has no objection to your knowing what I'm doing here, even though it's top secret.'

  'That sounds intriguing, Professor!' A touch of the old Berlin accent crept back into her voice.

  A genuine Berliner, and a particularly pretty one too!' Raab rubbed his hands, delighted. 'We live in Kopenick, in the Wendenschloss district, if you happen to know it.'

  'Sorry, no.'

  A pretty place. You should visit us there some time.' He bowed his head and added quietly, 'They've let Mascha stay on in a little room in our house.'

  He picked up a sheet of white paper, put it in the printer's block by the window, and turned the handle of the wooden spindle until its leather pad pressed the paper down on the plate. He took the paper out and held it up. 'Would you like to see?' Marlene could make out ornate black lettering on a white background.

  A banknote for twenty pounds sterling. The paper and the watermark will stand up to any examination, it's almost as well printed as the original There's a tiny flourish on the C of the words "Chief Cashier" still missing. I'm about to add it. Well, what do you think?' There was a touch of pride in Raab's voice.

  'Forgeries?'

  'Forgeries that even the Bank of England will take for the real thing. Once they're put into circulation in their millions, they're expected to wreck the British currency. A project devised by the SS Office of Economic Affairs, at Himmler's instigation.'

  'You're a forger?'

  'Oh, a dedicated forger. Also former professor of art history at Berlin University, now dismissed, and a former member of the Prussian Academy of Arts. In addition I'm a trained engraver,
both copperplate and woodcuts. Even eminent international art experts have fallen for my Diirers and Piranesis. Until recently I pursued my hobby for fun and never made any money out of it. Now it's paying off. They let me stay alive a little longer, and they spare my Mascha.'

  'You're very frank with me, professor.'

  'Mascha trusts you, that's enough for me. And furthermore, they need me. So long as Himmler's pince-nez look kindly on me, I have nothing to fear...'

  And when you've finished your work?'

  'Oh, there's plenty more to be forged yet. We're working on dollars and Swiss francs, for buying armaments. Passports of all countries are in preparation for the secret services, ID papers, military marching orders, certificates of appointment ... I have originals of all those documents here in my wall safe. They're already combing the prisons for capable people to work with me. Oh, there you are, Herr Siebert.'

  The young Untersturmfuhrer wore a laboratory coat over his uniform. 'Hello, Frau Neubert. What an honour for our witches' kitchen! Professor, we've raised the nickel content of the security thread by 0.03 milligrams. I hope that was right.' She was surprised to hear the SS man speaking to a prisoner with such respect.

  'Thank you, Herr Siebert. Excuse me, madame, I want to get back to that flourish. Will you visit me again?'

  And me too?' Siebert was clearly always eager for a little flirtation.

  Marlene ignored him. 'Yes, indeed, Professor. Good day, Herr Siebert.'

  'I'll find you a cushion to make you more comfortable, Professor,' she heard Siebert say as she left. A thought went through her head: in other circumstances, would the SS man kill Raab out of hand?

  A one-pot dish, the kind of thing the Fi hrer wants to see on every German lunch table once a week. With water from our well. And as dessert, fruit bottled from our own harvest. We are proud of our simple, nourishing food.'

  'Oh, don't talk such garbage!'