Warsaw

by Richard Foreman

  A horseshoe of three long, curved tables stood at the back end of room next to the large oval windows - through which could be seen a melancholic's dream night, spotted with sleet. Upon the tables rested various cooked meats (moist hams, beef, salamis), different golden crusted breads, pastries, jellied pates, a honey-glazed suckling pig, shiny fresh vegetables with steam still pluming upwards off them and glass plate upon glass plate of sweets and sugar-topped cakes. To the right of Thomas, running along half the length of the wall, a bar was set up: fat kegs of beer - next to frothing steins of cider next to German wines next to zesty champagnes next to tawny port next to French brandy next to perfume-like coloured bottles of liquors and spirits - bedecked the tables.

  An attractive Polish girl with pinned-up auburn hair in a French maid's dress came up to him carrying a silver tray filled with slender glasses of champagne. Although Thomas craved a beer he kindly thanked the waitress and took a glass. After a brief scan of the room - and realising that he knew not a single soul - Thomas made his way to the buffet tables. A telling silence, followed by a whisper and then booming laugh, ensued as the Wehrmacht Corporal walked past one particular group of SS officers - which had recently added Hans Barkmann to its ranks. Thomas didn't find it difficult however to ignore the Nazis, such was his comfortable contempt for them.

  When he reached the far table of food Thomas couldn't help but grinned to upon remembering Oscar and his comically serious plans about stealing various dishes from the party, "Take the beef first, then chicken, then any lamb if you have any choice. Lamb's always too fatty, or quite literally mutton dressed up as lamb". Such was the polished night outside that as Thomas gazed out of the window he also saw a figure reflected in the glass approaching him - and about to speak.

  "Do you mind awfully if I shake your hand rather than salute? I fear any sudden movements might cause my pickled onions to fall from my plate." The voice, tone, was as dry as it was aristocratic. Such was the charm and humour of the man - and almost child-like smile upon his rubicund-cheeked face - that Thomas couldn't help but smile in reply. As they shook hands the gentleman, a little older than Thomas, introduced himself.

  "Hello, my name is Walter Fest. Pleased to meet you."

  The handshake (were they diamond studded cufflinks?) was firm. Thomas noticed how conscious the gentleman was of smiling and looking him in the eye. From his expensive double-breasted suit and well groomed hair and nails he looked a little out of place. The man was well fed and enjoyed his food, if the plate he was holding was anything to go by, Walter Fest was by no means as corpulent as the gluttonous Major. His light-brown wavy hair was combed back - emphasizing his burgeoning devil's peaks - and was slightly oiled to keep it in place and give his scalp an attractive sheen and scent.

  "Thomas Abendroth."

  "You don't mind if I join you do you?"

  "No. I could use the company. As a Wehrmacht Corporal I reckon I'm already conspicuous enough here, without being a wallflower as well."

  "Yes, quite," the wry gentleman said in reply, quietly smirking. "And thank you for being the perfect excuse to be out of their company for awhile. I either find myself having to toady up to them and unofficially offer bribes and favours - or just as unwelcome they sometimes attempt to court my favour."

  "Fortunately most SS officers have such a superiority complex in terms of Wehrmacht Corporals that they don't even deign to talk to us, let alone court any favours."

  "I'm not that fortunate. I should say now that I work for Farben. My fantastically dull job consists of visiting our work plants to check upon productivity. I also deal with various other all too routine business matters. My work both keeps me up at night and makes me yawn," he cheerfully exclaimed.

  Another raucous cannonade of laughter shattered the air. The playful twinkle in Walter Fest's aspect similarly shattered. His perfectly apple-round face suddenly became long. He rolled his eyes in unassuming exasperation. Walter Fest's expression soon gleamed with friendliness and amusement again though upon the arrival of one of the appetising Polish waitresses that the host had made sure to arrange. The young girl's peroxide blonde hair emphasised her roots all the more but Walter Fest did not take his eyes off the maid's other two virtues as he relinquished another empty glass of champagne and took another.

  "Thank you. That's twice now you've saved me from thirst. You're as veritably sweet as this second-rate champagne my dear," the womanising gentleman exclaimed with a suave glint in his chestnut eyes. The girl herself couldn't help but smile in reply, to the point where Thomas thought that she was almost going to break into a fit of the giggles.

  "Nice girl. If she understood half of what I said just now then that's twice as much as the rest of the soubrettes here this evening," Walter Fest issued after finally taking his eyes off the girl's shapely calves as she provocatively walked away.

  Dietmar gently tapped his fingernail against the rim of his half empty glass of Riesling. He had watched his former Corporal arrive and was pleased upon witnessing how uncomfortable he was at attending the SS gathering. But now it was Dietmar who was feeling uncomfortable as he watched from across the room the confident Corporal conversing with an important - and wealthy - guest at the party. The secretary's blood burned all the more for being tempted to introduce himself to the Corporal and talk to him, for the youth himself currently appeared out of place in the room. He had earlier tried to ingratiate himself with a senior officer and his staff but they had snubbed the insignificant adjutant. He had attempted too to catch the eye earlier of a couple of officers who he thought might like to catch his eye in return. In particular Dietmar noticed a strikingly attractive Second Lieutenant with short cropped blond hair and a taut, athletic build. He looked as intimidating as he was handsome though; cold sapphire eyes - which seemed at once to take everything in but also dismiss it all at the same time. An aristocratic scowl dominated his features. For fear of being snubbed again Dietmar refrained from approaching the SS officer who he had never seen before. And so Dietmar remained, alone, glued to an empty corner of the room. He could not even take solace in the wine, as he was under strict instructions from Christian not to drink too much during the evening.

  "Before you become too suspicious of me Corporal, or back away in lieu of my frankness, I should just declare that I know something of you already. One of your Privates, Oscar Hummel, used to tend to the garden of one of my properties. I caught up with him this afternoon. He not only mentioned that you would be attending this party but he also spoke highly of you - and I dare say we both know how rare that is for Oscar. But he's a good man. An army of men like him and this war might've been over by now.”

  "I dare say that, if we had an army made up of men like Oscar, we would not have gone to war in the first place."

  "I can toast to that. And also have a cigarette. Smoke?" Walter Fest asked, holding a French cigarette in between his chubby fingers.

  "No thank you. I don't."

  "Really? I don't know what I'd be like if I didn't smoke - several pounds heavier I suspect," the man then spontaneously confided, infectiously beaming at his own joke.

  There was something of the dandy or dilettante about Walter Fest, Thomas later concluded. In some ways the ironist was wise beyond his years, in other ways it was as if Walter Fest didn't want to grow up - with humour and playfulness acting as an elixir to the welts and gravity of the age. After the party that night Thomas even thought to himself that Fest had been almost unreal, like a character from a novel. The well-read soldier then somehow thought of Fest, perhaps because of his girth or epicurean appetites, as being a German sequel to Polozov, a character from Turgenev in his novel "Spring Torrents". But then Thomas rightly dismissed the comparison as being unfair.

  Christian saw Walter Fest and the Wehrmacht Corporal laughing together out of the corner of his eye. Etiquette dictated that Christian invited the well connected contact from Farben. He was also a long-term acquaintance of his father's set. In truth the Lieutenant
had little time for the former theatre critic. Fest was sarcastic and even frivolous in the officer's eyes, to the point where he could say something and one would not know if the one-time theatre critic was being sincere or not; he seemed to be perpetually amused, as if sharing a private joke with himself - but at someone else's expense. He was glib. A sour expression over clouded Kleist's features as the paranoid egoist imagined that Abendroth and Fest were laughing at him. The host then snapped out of his brooding and smiled appreciatively at a remark from his Major which the group appeared to enjoy - albeit Christian's inattention meant that he had no idea what the remark pertained to.

  Kleist also noticed an ostracised Dietmar, looking bored and lost. Rather than resolving to rescue him from his isolation though Christian thought how it might have been an error in judgement to have invited the non-commissioned adjutant. He had only invited the youth out of a sense of guilt for not taking him to Berlin. He would make it up to his companion though, but not now. Christian half hoped that in a quiet moment Dietmar would approach him and, using the excuse of feeling tired, he would prematurely head back to the apartment. Partly the Lieutenant wished this so as to save the youth from what he would have to witness and endure later on in the evening.

  "Take Laurel and Hardy behind me there, Major Barkmann and his appendage, our Second Lieutenant Wittmann. Although I can't see them I have no doubt that they are making a couple somewhere in the room."

  Thomas pursed his lips in a smirk at Walter's comment about them being a Teutonic impersonation of the comedy duo. He nodded also to confirm that yes, the pair were indeed still joined at the hip.

  "My job has afforded me the opportunity over the past six months or so to talk and correspond with the Lieutenant in private. Contrary to appearances I have found him to be exceedingly well-read, generous and far from prickly. He is an inveterate snob, but I can forgive him for that as easily I can forgive myself for that minor sin, or virtue. It is far from difficult nowadays to look down upon the mob - and bourgeoisie. Before the war Michael used to be an accountant and you could say that in his present position he still employs some of the skills of his former profession. He works in an adjoining office to the good Major over there and tallies up the figures that various officers hand him in relation to the amount of Jews the SS have dispatched for the week. He drowns out the sound of Barkmann having sex with his latest secretary in his office next door by listening to Elgar and Gilbert and Sullivan. Perhaps the stirrings of his conscience are also similarly muffled by such sweetness and light, I don't know. But I confess I have grown to enjoy, or at least tolerate, the man's company. The principle reason why I have spent so much time with Michael of late is that he is helping me with a project you might say. He has been assisting me - in terms of wording the letters and letting me know who to send the correspondence to - in regards to protesting about the needless mistreatment and deaths occurring in our factories. It would be a fanciful and fruitless task appealing to them on humanitarian grounds, so I do my best to save as many lives as possible by arguing that they can kill as many Jews in the ghetto as they like - a good Jew is a dead Jew I trot out - but I protest that a good worker cannot possibly be a dead or malnourished one. I have to appeal to them on the grounds of productivity, but it sometimes works. Although it has remained unsaid I believe that Michael has helped me for the right reasons. Saying that though, I am also doing him a favour in return. I am presently reading over for him a radio play which he first developed long before the war. He has conceded though that he will now have to alter the work if ever he is to lay the would-be pearl before the swine of the German masses. In his own words I have heard him describe the work as "nihilistic", "Wagnerian" and even "whimsical". It is an eminently mediocre piece of amateurism that contains as many merits as it does faults. My apologies, I used to be a theatre critic many moons ago. I rarely have a chance to unsheathe my tongue nowadays. Before I slip off my soap-box though I must just spout a theory I have - that German theatre died on the day that Rathenau was assassinated. Under Bruning no one could afford to either set-up or attend a worthwhile production - and under our current whip-wielding ringmaster and his troupe of bloodthirsty clowns there is nothing worth seeing. But my point is this, if indeed it is a point - we are all hypocrites. Our Lieutenant Wittmann will rightly tell you in a confidential moment that the waste and horrors of this war must come to an end. But then he will finish having his cup of milky coffee with you and return to his work, typing up suggestions on how various stages of production can improve the process of the elimination of an entire race of people. I used to colour my cowardice during our slow but inexorable descent into barbarism by deeming myself an ironist Thomas. I was detached and amused by the great game being played out before my tipsy eyes. And when I became too depressed or I too suffered stirrings of conscience, I just went shopping either for a new affair or silk tie. But yet then I argued with myself - and I gave myself credit for my honesty - that I was a hypocrite. And was that not better than being a sadist or slave? After all aren't we all hypocrites? We all can say one thing and do another. What with the various masques and trades we experience in society hypocrisy is a necessity, a prerequisite for success - or for functioning even. If one can reconcile oneself with becoming a hypocrite then can we not reconcile ourselves to anything? I once thought this perhaps, but I feel unreconciled now because I am a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is the glue which binds together the institutions of civilisation itself, but there are still finer things in life. I used to believe that partly why being a hypocrite was permissible was that we all experienced the social malady, or remedy. We're all two-faced are we not? - Or at least I considered that until I encountered specimens such as Major Barkmann behind you. There's no pretence or contradiction in the man, he truly believes in what he says and does. What you see is what you get. He embodies the progression and evolution that National Socialism hopes to confer on its loyal servants. How about this for a contorted syllogism? - Animals are not hypocrites. Barkmann is not a hypocrite. Therefore Barkmann is an animal. And I dare say he's proud of the fact. He will doubtless bombastically remark this evening, as has done so a countless number of other times, that "I am just a soldier". In terms of another quote which I found interesting - when I was in Berlin last and suffering a senior Party member's Hitlerian speechifying - listen the following. I believe it is originally an aphorism from Nietzsche under the title of "Truth as Circe" but no matter. The parvenu filled his lungs with air, paused to check that he had his audience's attention and sagely spouted "Error has transformed animals into men; is truth not perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?” The enemy of Nazism is not the Jew, or Bolshivist; it is far more ambitious and nefarious than that. The enemy of Nazism is civilisation itself: freedom, sensibility, art, tolerance, decency, compassion, irony. Anyway, speaking of irony, I feel I am now speechifying myself. Sorry, but when I have the fortune to meet someone like yourself I fear I suddenly turn into Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and I must capture your ear in order to unburden myself. Am I right in thinking that the clatter of heels upon the wooden floor means that our pretty waitress is returning to top us up?"

  Thomas couldn't help but just stop and gaze at the amiable gentleman for a second or two as Fest - as if he had just broken off a meaningless conversation about the rising price canned soup – turned and greeted his young waitress for the evening. He winked and asked for a re-fill in his glass. Still there was hesitancy in the Wehrmacht Corporal as to how much trust and friendliness he wished to invest in his satirical companion. But the soldier's reticence may have just been due to how confounded Thomas was at what he had just heard in the middle of a party for senior SS officers. Thomas smiled, partly due to the incredulousness of the scene - and partly due to his admiration for the unassuming gad-fly of the state. Walter Fest, chewing upon another piece of bread smothered in pheasant pate, grinned in reply, witnessing the expression on the Corporal's face as the waitress also filled the soldier's glass. If he ha
d not been an old friend of Oscar's Thomas would have undoubtedly suspected that Walter might have been Gestapo, commissioned by Kleist in order to entrap him. For once Thomas was at a loss as to what to say. It was Christian Kleist of all people however that saved the Corporal from compromising himself, either way, to this stranger or would-be friend.

  "My apologies gentlemen. I would've come over earlier but we were talking shop. How are you Walter? Have you upset anyone with your razor-sharp wit yet?"

  "No, as the Russians are finding out much to their cost it's very difficult to out-flank the SS, even in a battle of wits. This is a wonderful party by the way," the critic added, waving his arm out in front of him and surveying the array of distinguished guests, "this pate is absolutely delicious".

  Christian politely smiled in reply, his expression strained. He could not be sure whether the comment was genuine or meant to traduce the evening. "Sarcasm is the lowest form of sarcasm," Walter would express to Thomas in a whispered aside later on in the evening. Christian again could not evince whether the self-proclaimed wit was being serious or not. And Fest was always clever and glib enough to be free from any sincerity in his double-edged comments. Thomas grinned into his wine glass at the man's sardonic timing. He was amused in that it was the normally intimidating Lieutenant who was at a loss as to how to deal with the moneyed civilian.

  "Thank you. I hope also that you are enjoying yourself Corporal. I actually have a present for you. Having visited your recreational area I know how all the Wehrmacht enjoy their beer - and so when I happened upon a case of some particularly strong stuff in Berlin, I thought of you. I think I've got a bottle of two here somewhere. Please, excuse me for a second and I'll get you one. I'd be interested to know your expert opinion" Christian remarked, friendly - yet somewhat patronising the soldier also.