Voices in Time

by Hugh Maclennan

“I have nobody to talk to here.”

  I opened my wallet and began counting out paper marks. Seeing them, the old man laughed like an amused child, but what he said was not childish.

  “What’s the use of that money?”

  “Money is always useful.”

  “Soon all that money of yours won’t buy a box of matches. We’ve lost the war.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The old man’s face deployed in a crafty smile. “I have a little radio. I have two batteries for it. At night I put up my antennae. I hear our radio.” He smiled again. “But also I hear the English radio.”

  I asked the forester if I could bring my people up that evening.

  “I told you that,” he said.

  I left him and went back to the city. When I reached Mother’s apartment only Dr. Erlich was there. He told me that Hanna and Mother had gone out to buy some necessities. Owing to my father’s naval rank, Mother had a telephone, so I called the office of her doctor. I introduced myself to his secretary, who told me the doctor was too busy to see another patient for at least three weeks. I explained that I was an officer on leave, that my mother was already his patient, and asked if the doctor could speak to me for a few moments on the phone. When he came onto the line his voice was brusque and he seemed annoyed, but when I asked him if cancer had been found in Mother, his tone altered.

  “Is she in hearing now?” he said.

  “No, Herr Doktor.”

  “Why did you ask such a question?”

  I tightened, for I had asked the question only as a cover-up in case the police should check with the doctor to make sure I had told them the truth.

  “My mother is no longer young,” I said. “Naturally one thinks of these possibilities.”

  He hesitated. “Are you returning to the front?”

  “To my duties, certainly.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Well, yes, there is cancer. I refrained from telling your respected mother. She should be able to live with it for a few more years. Cancer with older people is slower than with the young. And in the meantime, Herr Leutnant” – I could almost see his shoulders shrug – “who knows what may happen?”

  “Who knows,” I said, and it was a statement, not a question. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

  I hung up and sat silently looking out the window. Dr. Erlich had left the room when I went to the telephone to make the call. Probably he had lain down for a rest. I changed into my uniform and went out to buy some supplies. Bedrolls we all needed and I had told Hanna to leave that to me. I went to four different stores before I found one that had them. Then I went to a grocery and bought a quantity of powdered milk, a few kilograms of rice, and a sack of flour. There was no serious lack of food in Germany because the Nazis had looted the continent of most of the food they needed.

  When I returned to the apartment Mother and Hanna were there and it was evening. I packed the car and was giving my instructions when Hanna interrupted me.

  “You should have been an actor instead of a scholar. Two months in the Gestapo and you’re to the manner born.”

  I was angry until I saw she was smiling.

  “It’s good, Conrad. I never thought you had it in you.”

  “God damn you!” I said, but I also smiled and for an instant I was proud.

  “All right,” I said, still smiling, “these are the orders and they’re necessary. Dr. Erlich, will you and Hanna leave here and walk slowly to the corner of the Kaiserstrasse and the Salzstrasse. I’ll pick you up there in the car. Meanwhile, I want to be seen leaving here.”

  They left and I had a few more words with Mother. Then we both went outside and talked a little longer. We kissed one another and I got into the car. My last words were spoken loudly through the open window of the car. “I wish I didn’t have to go to Munich but I must.”

  My departure had been witnessed. Mother went back to her home and I drove off.

  It was twilight when we entered the forest. On the verge of it we passed a few pedestrians and one of them looked at us curiously until he recognized my uniform and turned his eyes away. The Volkswagen bumped over the corduroy and reached the forester’s cottage just before dark. We settled in by the light of two lanterns, spread our bedrolls on the floor, and one after the other we fell asleep.

  FIVE

  Early the next morning I removed the licence plates from the car and buried them. Then I tried to conceal the car in thick underbrush near the cottage. It was a very small car but its top was just high enough to be visible above the bushes. I took off the wheels and the car jerked down out of sight. It wasn’t much of a precaution but it was better than nothing.

  Several days passed with nothing happening and no news. Dr. Erlich and Hanna had brought along a few books in their suitcases and were reading in the sun with their backs propped against a log. The forester smoked and seemed happy to have us with him. Once he pointed the stem of his pipe towards Hanna and Dr. Erlich and remarked, “Vornehme Leute. Es freut mich sehr solche Leute zu beschützen.”

  Yes, I thought, he was just the kind of man who would be happy to protect them, but if the police came it would be the end of him. I told him I hoped we would not cause him trouble and he spat carefully.

  “My wife is dead. My sons were put into the army and killed. What is trouble? Don’t worry, Herr Leutnant. I know what I know and I do what I do.”

  But I could not stop worrying about nearly everything and particularly about my mother. I had toyed with the idea of asking her to join us in the forest but I knew she would never have done so. She had to be home in her apartment if my father called her. Also, if Krafft had his men question her, she would be able to say that I had left for Munich on schedule and the neighbors would corroborate her. When I failed to turn up in Munich, they might believe I had been shot up on the roads or killed in the bombing of a city, but if Mother disappeared they would be sure I had deserted and the hunt would be up. As for Hanna and her father, I still relied on Canaris’s assurance that the police knew nothing of my connection with them.

  Two nights later the forester’s radio was tuned in to London and the BBC informed Europe that American planes had delivered a mass raid on Munich. It was a daylight raid and it struck the city at just about the time I would have been due to arrive in it. God knows how many innocent Bavarians had been slaughtered, but all I could think about was ourselves. This might be my alibi.

  “I think we’re going to make it,” I said.

  Hanna and I walked out into the forest. It was a warm night with a gibbous moon in a clear sky and no aircraft within hearing. The moonlight filtered down through the branches and the earth was fragrant. We lay on a patch of soft, dry moss and looked up at the Gothic intricacy of the branches with the moonlight shimmering through them. She was wearing a blouse and a dirndl skirt and with swift movements she opened her blouse, took off her skirt, and embraced me.

  “Come into me, darling. Come into me!”

  If tenderness can unite with ferocity it did so then for both of us. I had never known anything like it before and neither had she. After it was over she rolled on her side still holding me and in the silence of the forest we heard the stealthy movements of small animals. An owl hooted and we lay together until I became potent again and time vanished. The moon was behind a cloud and it was so dark I could not see her but I saw all of her in my mind. We said nothing because no words were necessary. But these words I have written are necessary because this was the last time Hanna and I made love.

  The next night the news on the forester’s radio was different.

  Marvellous, we thought, when we heard the first two sentences; terrible we knew, when we heard the rest:

  “An unthinkable thing has happened. An attempt has been made on the life of the Führer. The criminals failed, as they were sure to fail. The police already have some of them. The identities of the others are known and they will be hunted down relentlessly.”

  We were then i
nformed that the hand of God had been over Hitler and that Hitler had taken command of all Germany including the armies. This meant that victory was now certain. “Deutschland über Alles” crashed out and when it ended the radio was silent.

  The forester said cheerfully, “Now let’s hear what the English say.”

  The radio crackled with static while he turned the key and soon we heard a voice speaking such meticulous German it could only have come from a foreigner. The English broadcaster made no mention of the plot to kill Hitler. Instead, he told us that the German armies in France were being annihilated in a climactic battle and that the end of Hitler was in sight.

  Time, I thought, time! From now on time is going to be the only thing that matters to us. I looked at Dr. Erlich enquiringly and his face in the lamplight was somber.

  “This is terrible,” he said. “It will make him totally ferocious. He will drive the people to the bitter end.”

  “He would have done that anyway. I’m wondering about Admiral Canaris.”

  “So am I.”

  “Do you think he was involved in it?”

  “You would know that better than I.”

  I shook my head, for I knew nothing. “I’m also thinking about my father.”

  That night I may have dozed for half an hour, but no real sleep came. I heard Hanna breathing peacefully, but when I got dressed two hours before dawn she came awake.

  “I have to go into town to speak with Mother,” I whispered. “I’m not wearing my uniform.”

  “I understand.”

  I kissed her, she clung to me and guided my hand to her breast. “It’s still dark,” I whispered. “It will probably be safe enough. But I have to find out what she knows.”

  Following the path in the darkness I came out of the forest and arrived at Mother’s apartment just as the Minster spire was emerging into the first light. The streets were void and I did not see a living thing, not even an alley cat. It was two minutes after my ring before Mother opened the door. She had been asleep and was in her dressing gown. I went in and closed the door silently.

  “Have you heard the news?” I asked her.

  “You heard it on the radio up there, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father telephoned me last night from Berlin.”

  “Was he involved?”

  “No.”

  “Did he dare tell you that over the phone?”

  “Not in actual words, but he was able to let me know it.”

  “So he’d discussed something like this with you before?”

  “All he told me was that there were officers who were planning something. He never told me what it was. I don’t think he knew.”

  “Is he absolutely safe? Were any of his friends involved?”

  “All I know is that he made it clear that he had nothing to do with it.”

  “What of Canaris?”

  “He did not mention Canaris.”

  I sat down and breathed deeply. “Thank God! Even if those officers did fail, the war can’t go on much longer. The British and Americans will break through at any time now. We heard the radio from London.”

  “You must leave now, Conrad.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “And don’t you worry about me.”

  I left unnoticed and met nobody on my way into the forest. When I reached the forest I smelled coffee brewing.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Now there’s nothing for us to do but wait.”

  SIX

  But it was not all right. They came for Mother about a week after I left, though I did not know it until much later. Had she told me the truth about my father? I still don’t know whether she had or not. Had Father told the truth to her? I don’t know that, either. Long after the war was over, when I was safe in America, I read that seven thousand people were executed after the plot against Hitler, and that the families of all the suspects disappeared into what Hitler called Nacht und Nebel – night and fog. Every trace of them was obliterated.

  A few nights after I saw Mother, we heard from the London radio that the front had broken in France and that British, American, and Canadian tanks were streaming eastward toward Germany with their infantry following in thousands of army trucks. All the German troops that had not been killed or captured in France fell back to defend the frontiers. I thought the war was sure to end within a few weeks at the most, but it dragged on for eight more months during which several million more people died. Once again Dr. Erlich had been right. Hitler drove his people to the bitter end, and Europe with them.

  SEVEN

  The planes finally came to Freiburg. In the forest we heard them approaching from the west like the noise of a vast orchestra tuning up before a concert. Then we heard the reverberation of bombs, we felt tremors in the earth, and from the verge of the forest we saw the smoke and flames with the Minster now hidden, now emerging. This was one of the most merciless raids of the entire war. Apart from a few retreating soldiers and the wounded in the hospitals, the total population of Freiburg was less than a hundred thousand souls. After the war I was told that more than twenty-five thousand died in this single attack. Whether it was actually this bad I still don’t know, for there was always a tendency to exaggerate the number of casualties in these extermination attacks.

  Wave after wave of planes came in over the city, dropped their bombs, and wheeled away. There was no defence at all. Not a fighter plane, not an anti-aircraft gun.

  I looked at Hanna and realized I was sobbing.

  “I must go down there. I must go down.”

  Whatever the others may have thought of the possibilities of my finding my mother in all that carnage, they realized that I had to go. On the edge of the city I moved through clusters of men, women, and children who had escaped. Some of them were in tears, all of them seemed in shock. For most, this was the first experience of a mass air attack.

  The smoke became so dense that I did not know where I was. The heat seared my skin. Firemen were working but seemed unable to do anything. The city’s heart looked impassable. Suddenly I realized that I was in the Schillerstrasse beside the little Dreisam stream only fifty meters from our old home. Its windows were shattered, and when I touched the wall of the house it was hot. I crossed the bridge to the Schwabentor and stumbled through rubble toward the Minster and Mother’s house. A hand came down on my shoulder and it was a policeman.

  “My mother,” I shouted. “I’m trying to find my mother!”

  “If she lived where you’re going, you’ll never find her until the fires are out. I can’t let you enter. Orders.”

  He turned away but I stepped after him and caught his arm.

  “I’m a naval officer on leave. My father is Admiral Dehmel.”

  He turned around abruptly. “Did you say Admiral Dehmel? Is Frau Dehmel your mother?”

  “Yes, now will you let me go.”

  He looked at me strangely. “Frau Dehmel isn’t here. She left the city a short time ago.”

  “Are you sure? Did you know her?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m sure.” And he added, “I’m very sorry about it.”

  I was in too much of a daze to ask him why he was sorry. I felt only relief because my mother had not been there when the planes struck. But I also felt a terrible grief because this was my city, this was my home, and it had been destroyed. As usual, the bombers had spared the cathedral.

  I struggled back through the wreckage, passed through the Schwabentor, and crossed the bridge away from the fires. The clusters of refugees had now become a swarm, and police and troops were trying to make some order out of them. I worked my way through intending to return to the forest and suddenly I found myself a few meters away from a face I had almost forgotten. She was in some kind of uniform and was standing beside a big Gestapo officer of a much higher rank than Krafft’s. With him was a small clutch of NCOS.

  She saw me at the same instant that I saw
her. She pointed at me and screamed, “That’s him! Grab him!”

  It was Eva Schmidt after all these years. A pair of sergeants closed in and I was arrested. I saw Eva speaking to the officer with hatred in her face and saw his eyebrows rise. He came close and looked me over appraisingly.

  “So you are Herr Doktor Dehmel! This is very interesting.”

  He lifted the riding whip he was carrying and slashed me twice across each side of my face.

  “Take him away,” he said to the sergeants. And to me he added, “I’m occupied at present but we shall soon meet again.”

  I don’t know where they took me, but it was certainly a long distance from Freiburg. I was lying with my hands and ankles manacled in a closed truck and could see nothing. It was dark when they dragged me out and kicked me forward into a prison. I was locked up in a cell and lay there with my back in a partial spasm for many days. I was given enough soup and bread to keep me alive and I lay there and thought about my parents and about Hanna and her father, and about that terrible expression of Hitler’s, “Nacht und Nebel.” Was that where Mother was? Had my father been arrested? The Gestapo chief had told me we would meet again. Torture followed by death? I assumed it was certain and tried to prepare myself for it.

  The day came when the door of my cell was opened with a crash and two Gestapo goons came in. They kicked me down a corridor into a room with the table and the whips and the instruments. Eva’s man was standing there in his uniform and high polished boots. He looked at me without speaking and ordered the goons out of the room and closed the door. Then he sat down on the only chair and looked me over again.

  “Your training with us seems to have improved you a little,” he said. “You’re not as soft as you used to be.”

  I stood in front of him and said nothing.

  “I have decided to introduce myself. I am Obersturmbannführer Heinrich. You have possibly heard of my reputation?”

  “Naturally, sir.”

  He lit a cigarette, drew on it, held it away, and looked studiously at the burning tip of it.