Voices in Time

by Hugh Maclennan

“I asked you how long you’ve been wearing that uniform,” she said.

  “Longer than the Admiral told me would be necessary. It was his plan. He told me this was the only way to save you.”

  “Hanna hadn’t heard from you for months,” the doctor said gently. “She was very worried about you and this – well, it’s a surprise.”

  Hanna’s disgust was leaving her, but I was still hurt and angry.

  “You mean Admiral Canaris did –” and she pointed at my uniform.

  “He told me my only chance of saving you and your father was to join the Gestapo. He arranged it with Himmler. Do you think I enjoyed it?”

  “It’s done something to your face.”

  “I’m afraid it has, Hanna.”

  “We won’t go with you. No matter what you have in mind, we won’t go with you.”

  My temper broke and I shouted at her. “Has the hell I’ve been through these past two months been useless? Do you think I intend to go back to Gestapo headquarters? I have two civilian suits in the car and when the time comes I’m going to burn or bury this horrible uniform.”

  At last she believed me. Her pallor turned into a flush, but she remained stubborn.

  “The day I first saw you – when I came back to Germany – I told you I’d never endanger you, Conrad.” Quietly she added, “I still mean it. No, Conrad, we won’t go with you.”

  My nerves were screaming at me and I think I screamed at her, “For God’s sake why do you have to be so stubborn? Endanger me? I’ve endangered myself and there’s no turning back. There’s no possible alternative for any of us. More than two months have passed since Admiral Canaris warned me that you and your father could be picked up at any moment. Do what I say, for God’s sake, and stop arguing.”

  Dr. Erlich put his hand on his daughter’s arm. “Hanna dear, we both understand how you feel, but please be reasonable.” He turned to me and said, “I learn nothing here and Hanna can only guess what’s been happening. She’s thought and worried about you every day, Conrad.”

  The doctor had a way with him and my voice became normal again. “What’s happening is what both you and the Admiral predicted. The liquidation of the Jews has become almost as important to Hitler as the war. He knows he’s lost the war, but he thinks he still has time to destroy the Jews. We have no time to waste, Doctor. We can talk all we like on the way to Freiburg.”

  I looked out the window and saw some villagers standing outside watching. Dr. Erlich also looked out the window.

  “These village people rather like us,” he said. “They think you’ve come to arrest us.”

  “That’s just what I want them to think.” I gave the doctor an appraising glance. He seemed frail, but probably in adequate health for the journey. To Hanna I said, “How soon will you be ready to leave?”

  She was herself again, her very efficient self. She was already packing a carton with all the food they had. While doing so she told me they had two suitcases already packed and ready.

  I threw open the door with a theatrical crash and stalked out, not a man but a uniform, and barked at the villagers to clear out and ask no questions. They knew what my uniform meant and they vanished. I drove the Volkswagen to the back of the house where we could pack it without being seen. I asked if any arrests had been made in the village and Dr. Erlich said there had been none.

  “That’s good,” I said, “because this isn’t the normal way we arrest Jews in the Gestapo.”

  It was a cruel thing to say and Hanna winced.

  “So you were taught to do that, too?” she said.

  This day was the only one on which I felt totally bitter against her. “I was taught, but I haven’t done it. Will that satisfy you, or do you wish to continue humiliating me?”

  Dr. Erlich, of course, understood us better than we understood ourselves. “How long will it take us to reach Freiburg?” he asked gently.

  Looking at my watch I saw it was now eleven o’clock. “It’s about two hundred kilometers to Freiburg. If the roads are clear, we should be there by early evening.”

  “There have been many planes overhead recently,” he said.

  “German or allied?”

  “Both, but mostly allied.”

  “Are the Allies shooting up traffic on the roads?”

  “Possibly, but here there’s nothing to shoot at.”

  We drove off, and as we passed through the village main street I noticed a few movements of curtains and knew we were being watched. I took the road for Munich and I’m not proud of what I said then, but Hanna had wounded me and I said it.

  “If this was a real arrest, we’re going in the right direction. Just beyond Munich is Dachau.”

  Dr. Erlich said quietly, “Of course, Conrad. But Hanna has also been under great tension.”

  After Munich I turned west and there was little traffic on the road. We rolled on. It was quite incredible, but gradually I relaxed. The doctor was in the front seat of the little car, Hanna in the rear with the carton of food, the suitcases in the trunk ahead. I was thinking, “If it hadn’t been for Hanna I would not have horrified myself and now she despises me for what I did for her sake.” I was thinking, “But those men would have been tortured anyway, so why should I feel degraded?” I thought again, “But I was degraded. Hanna knows it and she’s biting me for it.” And again, “But how can she possibly know it?” And still again, I recalled that in her work with the Red Cross she must have discovered pretty accurately the training methods of the Gestapo, and it was with bitterness that I thought that I had never loved anyone as I had loved her and now she seemed to have contempt for me.

  After a time I felt her fingers touch the back of my neck and gently stroke it and at last I began to feel better. Some day I would tell her about witnessing the tortures, but I could not tell her now. Perhaps I never would tell her. Perhaps I would never tell anyone.

  Until now, all these years later, I never have.

  A half-hour after leaving Munich we overtook a column of tanks moving slowly ahead of us. I guessed they had come from Russia and were going west to reinforce the new front in France. I exchanged salutes with an officer standing in the turret of the leading tank and we passed on ahead of the column. When we reached Augsburg the center of the city was in ruins from a recent raid and it took some time to get through. Beyond Augsburg we saw a formation of heavy American planes flying west, which meant that they had discharged their bombs. Where, I could not even guess. I muttered to the doctor what madmen the Nazis were to continue this war when the skies over Germany were in the complete command of their enemies. Then, remembering the ss men I had been living with, I said, “Are they really insane, Doctor? Are they really insane or am I just using words that mean nothing?”

  “Are they insane?”

  The doctor said this and was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, “That’s a question I’ve asked myself thousands of times. Insanity is not a word to be used carelessly. The human mind is infinitely suggestible.”

  Driving the car, irritable and feeling put upon by Hanna, I said, “Doctor, I have asked you a direct question.”

  “Yes, Conrad, you have, and it’s a legitimate question. You may not like my answer. In my opinion very few of Hitler’s henchmen are true psychotics. But even before he came to power I realized that he was creating what we call in my profession a folie à deux. Are you familiar with the term?”

  “No.”

  “Among individuals this happens frequently. A man – or a woman – gets another person under control and makes his partner believe that he is not only right but a benefactor. Quite often this person is sincere, though in such a case sincerity is another meaningless word. I’m not talking about confidence men. They know what they’re doing. You asked me a question, Conrad, and I’ll try to answer it.

  “Hitler in my belief has created a folie à deux – a duet of folly – with a nation of ninety million people. Others have done it in the past and the great men of your profession h
ave called them men of destiny. The great men of the earth! This is understandable, that they call them great, considering what they have accomplished. Napoleon psychotic? He was a gambler, but he was seldom out of touch with reality. But Hitler is an out-and-out psychotic and the generals and politicians are helpless before him because they can’t understand what a psychotic can do. Your colleagues, your historians, they used to talk of ‘the dignity of history.’ To me the evolution of mankind is utterly marvellous. But there is no dignity in the history Hitler has made, just as there is none to be found in the psyche of a sadistic maniac. Unfortunately, there is some of that in us all and Hitler has found his path to it.”

  “Professor Rosenthal used almost the same words to me.”

  I was frightened again. Why was I here? Why was I driving along this road with a woman I loved who distrusted me and shut me out? Why, for God’s sake? Had Hanna created a folie à deux with me because of her family? Was her father indirectly trying to tell me that? But of course she hadn’t and he wasn’t.

  We passed another column of troops, this time infantry huddled close together in army trucks with motorcycle men on their flanks. Another transfer from Russia? If the British and the Americans killed them their troubles would be over. But when I took a quick glance at their faces I knew they would fight in anguish to the last word of command from above.

  Soon afterwards we reached the Danube at Ulm, that beautiful city where Einstein was born. Its ancient heart had been blasted to rubble but the famous spire of the cathedral was still a finger pointing to eternity. It was uncanny how the bombers, even the British who bombed by night, were able to blast the hearts out of city after city and yet leave their cathedrals standing. Did they spare the cathedrals because they needed their spires as markers?

  Uncanny also was the peacefulness of the German countryside where farmers were working as usual in their fields, though night after night they had heard the thunder of the bomber streams and seen the flames of burning cities flaring around their horizons. We passed still another troop column moving very slowly because of the ersatz fuel it was using. Some thirty kilometers later I saw the burntout wreckage of a large bombing plane in a field near the road. On an impulse I stopped the car, got out, and walked over to it and there was a single corpse inside the wreckage. It was the pilot, who must have stayed at his controls while his crew parachuted. There was little left of him but on his only remaining shoulder I made out the scorched word “Canada” and it gave me a feeling of awe. What was the mystical power of England that had enabled her to draw these distant people across the ocean to fight for her? Now, of course, I have become one of them.

  As we neared Freiburg an American long-distance fighter plane dipped its nose and made for us. I stopped the car, Hanna and I leaped out and helped Dr. Erlich, and we hurried him across a ditch into a clump of trees and lay down with our faces pressed against the grass. It smelled sweetly of clover and I heard a thrush singing in the branches. We waited and nothing happened. The noise of the plane’s engine diminished and I got up and saw it climbing into the sky in the west. Was it on reconnaissance, and if so, for what? Anyway, the pilot had not wasted his ammunition on a Volkswagen.

  We reached Freiburg in the evening and the Minster spire was outlined by a sinking sun.

  THREE

  The house where mother lived had once belonged to a wealthy Jewish manufacturer who had left Germany shortly after Hitler had taken charge of the country. Afterwards it had been broken up into five separate apartments. There was no Blockwart and Mother lived on the ground floor. When she saw me standing in the doorway in my Gestapo uniform she blanched. When I entered and told her why I was wearing it, she trembled so much I thought she might faint. There was no need for me to tell her what danger I was in because of this uniform. But she had always had the strength of the gentle ones who seem able to accept anything. When I beckoned to Hanna and her father to come in, her eyes met Hanna’s and she smiled.

  “So you are Hanna at last!”

  Hanna looked at her and also smiled, “And you are Maman!”

  They embraced each other. I introduced Dr. Erlich and when he kissed her on both cheeks I had to turn away because tears of thankfulness were in my eyes. It might still be worth while. Hanna had not turned on me after all.

  With Hanna helping, I unpacked the car, and after the suitcases were inside the apartment I left to make my report to the local Gestapo headquarters. It was a small establishment compared to the one in Munich and the commanding officer had once served under Krafft. I presented the paper signed by Krafft and explained why I was in Freiburg and how long I expected to stay. The officer offered me any assistance I might require but I told him I needed none. It was simply a family matter, I said. He nodded and did not even ask Mother’s address.

  When I returned to the apartment Mother was cooking supper with Hanna helping her. I was too restless to sit down and stood by the window looking out at the Minster and remembering my grandfather when I was a child.

  Behind me I heard the doctor say, “This is truly a lovely city.”

  “I have never felt at home anywhere else,” I said and sat down. I had not realized how tired I was. My eyelids felt as though they had weights on them like a doll’s.

  There was a calmness in the doctor’s prematurely aged face. I was aware of him observing me, probably wondering what kind of man I really was or would become; wondering also how well or how little I understood what manner of woman his daughter was. I felt a sudden happiness and realized that ever since leaving England I had almost forgotten what happiness feels like.

  While we were eating supper I asked Mother if the city had been attacked.

  “There have been a few warnings. Single planes have flown over us, but they dropped no bombs.”

  But they certainly took photographs, I thought. There was no need to mention this to Mother. She knew why the planes had come.

  “We still hope to escape the bombing,” she said. “There are now almost thirty hospitals in the city, each of them with a Red Cross painted on the roof.”

  “They must be military hospitals. Are many wounded in them now?”

  “So far very few.”

  “More may arrive unless the war ends soon.”

  I asked her if there was any news from the front in Normandy.

  “The radio tells us the British and Americans are being held there.”

  For how much longer, I thought, and at what cost? The Red Crosses on the hospitals? I did not have to tell Mother they would be more of an invitation than a protection. Hitler had taught his enemies to be as merciless as himself, and some of them must certainly be relishing it. They were human, after all, and Hitler had given them a perfect excuse to do what they could do.

  I asked Mother about her health and she admitted to the occasional heart palpitation, but said that the arthritis was the only thing that troubled her. We were sipping coffee (I had brought a small tin I had taken from the kitchen of the barracks) when I asked her if she had news from my father. She told me it was more than a month since she had heard from him.

  “Are you worried on account of the bombing in Berlin?”

  “The Admiralty has deep shelters.”

  “I suppose you know what it’s been like in Berlin?”

  “Naturally.”

  Neither of us said anything more about my father for several minutes. Hanna and her father ate quietly and both understood what we were talking about.

  Finally I said, “Admiral Canaris told me he has had several conversations with Father. He likes and respects him, but my impression is that he considers Father too rash. I don’t think they will permit him to be one of them.”

  She nodded imperceptibly and changed the subject.

  We spent the night in Mother’s little apartment with Dr. Erlich sleeping in the spare bed, Hanna on a couch in the living room, and me in an armchair. I heard Hanna’s voice coming out of the darkness.

  “I’m sorry about this
morning. Some time perhaps you will tell me what it was like for you in the Gestapo barracks.”

  “It was Gestapo routine.”

  “Try to forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  “For what you had to do there.”

  I felt a wave of peace come over me because she had understood, but I was still bruised and my pride would not let me thank her.

  I was almost asleep when I heard her once more: “When all this is over, perhaps I can be good for you again.”

  FOUR

  At dawn the next morning I put on a sweater and an old pair of pants and drove into the Black Forest. I found the old forester sitting in the sun sucking an empty pipe. At first he did not seem to recognize me, but when I gave him a tin of tobacco and spoke to him in the Schwarzwald dialect he suddenly smiled.

  “You’re the young naval officer. And you thought I’d forgotten you! I have a very good memory. I have not forgotten you.”

  We smoked our pipes for five minutes in silence and he told me it was good tobacco, the best he had ever had. It was; I had made sure that it would be the best. Finally I asked him if he would accept three people in his cottage until the war ended. Myself, a young lady, and an elderly man who was her father. For what may have been three minutes he did not speak and I wondered if he was deaf or had not understood.

  “I will pay you, of course,” I said. “I will pay you very well. And I will bring rations.”

  He smiled with a sublime insouciance. “But I also have rations. Hares and pheasants. Eggs from a few chickens. Soon I will have potatoes and turnips. My beans are ripe already.” He looked at me with an ancient smile. “The last time you were here you wore a naval uniform.”

  “I’m on leave now.”

  He smiled again. “Why do you and these people want to come to my house?”

  “Air attacks,” I said. “My fiancée and her father. He is old and he has not been well.”

  “You don’t have to tell me a story.”

  “Will you accept us?”