Silesian Station (2008)

by David Downing

  'Did Effi provide them with the excuse?'

  Russell told him what she'd said. 'She was reported by another actress, one that she beat to a part.'

  Thomas grimaced.

  'So what do I do?'

  Thomas ran a hand through his spiky grey hair. 'Well, I suppose the first thing is to find out what they want. Whatever it is, you'll have to at least say that you'll go along with it. If it's more than you can stomach, then, first chance you get, you take yourself and Effi out of this godforsaken country.'

  'And Paul?'

  'Better an absent father than a dead one.'

  'Of course. But what if they punish him for my sins?'

  Thomas used the clanking of a passing freight train to think about that. 'Maybe I'm being naive,' he said finally, 'but I don't believe they would. What could they do to a twelve year-old aryan boy? And he has his stepfather to stand up for him. Matthias is very fond of Paul - he wouldn't let anything happen to him without a real fight. Neither would I, by the way.'

  'I know that. And you're probably right. I was thinking last night - this won't go away, I have to get out. But getting Effi out will take time - they won't just let her leave. Do we have that sort of time? The smart money's all on September, after the harvest, before the rains.'

  'There's no way of knowing, is there? We seem to go through the same dramatic scenes every six months. Hitler stamps his foot and shouts a lot, everyone rushes around making him offers, and he graciously accepts a mere 99 per cent of what he asked for. It could happen again.'

  'Not with the Poles.'

  'You're probably right. I wish I could send Joachim somewhere safe.' Thomas's seventeen-year-old son was doing his compulsory year's service in the Arbeitsdienst public works programme, and would be shifted to auxiliary military duties if war broke out.

  The two men sat in silence for a moment.

  'So you're seeing the SD tomorrow,' Thomas said eventually. 'How are you going to spend the rest of today?'

  'Worrying. And working, I suppose. I have a new job, by the way. Central and East European correspondent of the San Francisco Tribune. Salary, expenses, the works.'

  'Well, that makes a welcome change. Congratulations.'

  'Thanks. I met the Editor in New York - Ed Cummins. An amazing old man, very pro-Roosevelt.' Russell smiled. 'He wants me to wake America up. Particularly those Americans with their roots in Germany and Germany's neighbours. The Jewish-Americans of course, but the Polish-Americans, the Hungarian-Americans, all of them. He wants them to know what's really happening in the old countries, and to get really angry about it. And not to go along with all that crap - to use his own words - about it being none of America's business.' Russell laughed. 'Of course, we weren't reckoning on the SD and Gestapo breathing down my neck. I'll just have to convince the bastards that retaining my credibility as a journalist is in their interests too. Because if I suddenly start sucking up to them in print, no one who matters will trust anything I do or say.'

  'I suppose not. Are you going to be covering the day-to-day stuff?'

  'Not really - they'll carry on using the agencies for that. I'm more comment than news - the big diplomatic stories and whatever else strikes me as important. The first thing Cummins wants is a piece on how the Czechs are doing under occupation. And I thought I might visit that agricultural school in Skaby that the Jews are running for would-be emigrants to Palestine. I can't believe the Nazis are still sponsoring it.'

  Thomas grunted his agreement as another suburban train headed for Gor-litzer Station. One carriage seemed full of over-excited young boys, most of whom were hanging out of the windows. A school trip, Russell supposed.

  'Talking of Jews,' Thomas said, 'I've got a mystery of my own to solve.' He brushed a speck of dirt off his trousers. 'I had an employee by the name of Benjamin Rosenfeld. A good worker, he started here five or six years ago. A Jew, of course. About six weeks ago he came to ask if I had a job for his seventeen-year-old niece. Her family are farmers in Silesia, the only Jews in the area apparently, and she was being harassed - perhaps more, he didn't say - by the local boys. Her parents thought she'd be safer in Berlin.' Thomas's shrug encompassed both the sad absurdity of the problem and the impossibility of knowing where a Jew might be safest in such times. 'As it happened I'd just lost a young woman - her exit visa had arrived that week and she was off to Palestine - so I said yes. Rosenfeld arranged the trip, sent the ticket, and arranged to meet her at Silesian Station. That was on the last day of June. Almost three weeks ago.

  'As far as I can make out, on the day she was supposed to arrive Rosenfeld left here with the intention of walking straight to the station - it's only about three kilometres away. Somewhere along the way, some thugs decided he needed beating up. Storm troopers probably, from their barracks on Kopenicke Strasse, but they weren't in uniform according to Rosenfeld. Someone took him to one of those makeshift Jewish hospitals in Friedrichshain, and he was in and out of consciousness for several days. I didn't know he'd been attacked until one of the workers told me on the following day. I wondered what had happened to the girl, but assumed she had managed to make contact with Rosenfeld's friends, and that she'd turn up for work on the Monday. But she didn't. I had no proof she'd ever left Silesia, and the fact that she hadn't turned up seemed like a good reason for doubting it. I told myself I would contact the parents when Rosenfeld had recovered sufficiently to tell me their address, but he never did. He died about a week after the attack.'

  'I don't suppose the police were interested?'

  'I don't think anyone even bothered telling them,' Thomas said wryly. 'I went to the funeral, and talked to as many of the mourners as I could. Most of Rosenfeld's friends knew she was coming, but none of them had seen her. Then, after the ceremony, a man I hadn't talked to came up to me with a suit-case. He told me he was Rosenfeld's landlord, and said he didn't know what to do with the man's belongings. "I was wondering if you could send them back to his family with his final wages."' Thomas grimaced. 'To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about the wages. I told him I had no address for the family, and he said he hadn't either. He was obviously eager to get rid of the stuff, so I took it, thinking I could always share out whatever was in there with his work-friends. Two days later the landlord showed up at the works with a letter which had just arrived for Rosenfeld. It was from his brother, the girl's father. He was worried that he hadn't heard from his daughter.

  'There was no address of origin, only a Wartha postmark. It's a small town - a big village really - about sixty kilometres south of Breslau. About a week ago I sent a letter to the Wartha post office, asking them to forward another letter that I'd enclosed for Rosenfeld's brother, but there was no reply. So yesterday I telephoned the post office. A man who claimed to be the postmaster said he'd never got the letter and that he'd never heard of the Rosenfelds. "Jews, I suppose" - I think those were his exact words. "They've probably gone somewhere where they're wanted."

  'So I went to the Kripo office in Neukolln - not, I have to admit, in a conciliatory frame of mind. It probably wouldn't have made any difference, but I certainly rubbed the duty officer up the wrong way. After I'd explained all the circumstances, he told me that the girl had probably run off with a boyfriend, and that the German police had better things to do than scour the city for sex-mad Jewesses. I almost hit him.' Thomas clenched his fist reminiscently. 'And I've thought about reporting him to his superiors - there are still some decent men in the Kripo, after all - but it doesn't really seem like such a good idea. If I get on the wrong side of the authorities it won't be me that suffers, or at least not only me. It'll be the three hundred Jews who work here.' He paused for a moment. 'But I can't just forget about her. And I remembered that you did a piece - quite a few years ago now - on private investigators in Berlin.'

  Russell grunted his agreement. 'It was after that movie The Thin Man came out. Berlin went from having one private detective to having fifty in a matter of months. Most of them only lasted a few
weeks.'

  'Can you recommend one that's still in business?'

  'I don't know. If he's still in business, I mean. A man named Uwe Kuzorra. He was a Kripo detective who couldn't stomach working for the Nazis. So he quit, opened an agency in Wedding. I liked him. Knew this city inside out. But he was in his late fifties then, so he may have retired. I could find out for you.'

  'If you could.' Thomas rubbed his cheeks and then clasped his hands together in front of his face. 'There were always things I hated about my country,' he said, 'but there used to be things I loved as well. Now all I feel is this endless shame. I don't know why - it's not as if I ever voted for them. But I do.'

  'I'm getting to the point where all I feel is anger,' Russell said. 'And useless anger at that.'

  'A fine pair we are.'

  'Yes. I'll let you get back to work. I'll drive over to Wedding this afternoon, see if Kuzorra is still in business. If not, I'll try to find someone else.'

  They walked back down the line of wagons and round the side of the works to the front yard. 'Give my love to Effi ,' Thomas said as Russell climbed into the front seat.

  'I will.' He leaned his head out of the window. 'What's the girl's name?'

  'Miriam. And I almost forgot.' He took out his wallet and removed a dog-eared photograph of two men, one woman and a girl of about fifteen. 'Rosenfeld's on the left,' Thomas said. 'The others are Miriam and her parents.'

  She was a pretty girl. Dark hair and eyes, olive skin, a shy smile. Her figure would have filled out, but the face wouldn't have changed. Not that much, anyway.

  Miriam Rosenfeld. A nice Jewish name, Russell thought, as he motored up Slessische Strasse towards the city centre. Miriam Sarah Rosenfeld, of course. It was almost a year since the regime had blessed all Jews with a self-defining second name - Sarah for females, Israel for males. Dumb as a dog in heat, as one of his mother's friends liked to say.

  It was another hot summer day. The traffic seemed unusually sparse for noon, but then Berlin was hardly New York. The pavements were busy with pedestrians going about their business, but the faces showed little in the way of animation. Or was he imagining that, looking for depression to mirror his own? Berliners were aggressive talkers, but they could give the English a run for their money when it came to cold reserve.

  A long stomach growl reminded him that he hadn't eaten that morning. Gerhardt's frankfurter stand, he decided, and abruptly changed direction, causing the driver behind to sound his horn. A new set of traffic lights outside the main post office held him up for what seemed an age. He found himself thumping the steering wheel in frustration, and then laughing at himself. What was the hurry?

  The queue at Gerhardt's stretched out of the concourse beneath the Alexanderplatz Station and into Dircksen-Strasse. It moved quickly though, and Russell was soon ordering his bratwurst and kartoffelsalat from Gerhardt's brother Rolf, the sprightly septuagenarian with the drooping moustache who manned the counter.

  'Haven't seen you for a while,' Rolf said, taking Russell's note and handing back some coins.

  'I've been in America.'

  'Lucky man,' Rolf said, passing over the food. Russell shifted down the counter to add mustard and mayonnaise, stabbed a chunk of potato with the small wooden fork and popped it in his mouth. A mouthful of steaming bratwurst followed. Paul had been right in New York. German hot dogs were better.

  He walked back to the Hanomag and sat behind the wheel enjoying his meal. 'A lucky man,' he murmured to himself, and remembered Brecht's line about 'the man who laughs', who had 'simply not yet heard the terrible news.' Well, he'd heard the terrible news and he still wanted to laugh, at least once in a while. Even these clouds had a few stray fragments of silver lining hanging down. He was too old to fight, his son was too young. And Effi would be released the next day.

  A drink, he decided. At the Adlon. It was time he caught up with his colleagues.

  In the event, only the Chicago Post's Jack Slaney was there, perched on his usual barstool. He greeted Russell with a big grin. 'Beer, whisky or both?'

  'Just the beer, thanks,' Russell said, sliding onto the next stool and gazing round. 'Not too busy, is it?'

  'It's like this every summer. How was the States?'

  'Good. Very good. My son had a whale of a time.'

  'Staten Island Ferry?'

  'Four times. Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Grand Central Station, Ma-cy's toy department...not to mention the World's Fair.'

  'And you're one of us now.'

  'News travels fast.'

  'We are journalists. How's next year's election looking? Any chance that Lindbergh's going to run?'

  'Doesn't look like it. The way things are going in Congress it doesn't look like he needs to. Roosevelt's chances of revising the Neutrality Bill seem to be getting worse, not better. America won't be joining a European war any time soon.'

  'Pity. The sooner we get into a war, the sooner I get to go home.'

  'What's been happening here?'

  'Not much. Lot of grumbling in the press about you British - how the guarantee to Poland has given the Poles a free hand to persecute their poor German minority. A few incidents around Danzig but nothing serious. Calm before the storm, of course.'

  'Most calms are.'

  'Maybe. The German universities all closed for the summer last week. Two weeks earlier than usual, so the students can help with the harvest. They're busting a gut to get it in on time this year, and why do you think that might be? If I was a betting man - and I am - I'd put money on a new batch of Polish atrocity stories in the first two weeks of August. And then Hitler will start ranting again. A complete idiot could recognize the pattern by this time. I know they're an evil bunch of bastards, but what really gets me down is that they're such an insult to the intelligence.'

  'Talking to you is always such a joy.'

  'You love it. I'm the only man in Berlin who's more cynical than you are.'

  'Maybe. I seem to be moving beyond cynicism, but God knows in what direction.'

  'Despair comes highly recommended.'

  Russell laughed. 'Like I said, a real pleasure, but I've got be off. I owe you one.'

  'At least three actually. Where are you off to?'

  'To see a man about a missing girl.'

  Wedding had been a communist stronghold before the Nazi takeover, and it still seemed depressed by the outcome of the subsequent reckoning. A few faded hammers and sickles were visible on hard-to-reach surfaces, and billowing swastikas were less ubiquitous than usual. Uwe Kuzorra's office was on the east side of the Muller-Strasse, a hundred metres or so south of the S-bahn. Or it had been - his name was still among those listed by the door, but the detective himself had retired. 'End of last year,' a brisk young woman from the ground floor laundry told Russell. 'If you want his home address, I think they have it upstairs.'

  Russell climbed the four flights to Kuzorra's former office, and found it empty. An elderly man with a monocle eventually answered his knock on the opposite door. A wooden table behind him was covered with clocks in various stages of dismantlement, chalk circles surrounding each separate inventory of pieces.

  'Yes?'

  'Sorry to interrupt, but I was told that you had Uwe Kuzorra's home address.'

  'Yes. I do. Come in. Sit down. It may take me a while to find it.'

  The room gave off a rich melange of odours - wood polish and metallic oil from the workbench, soapy steam from the laundry below, the unmistakable scent of male cat. The beast in question, a huge black tom, stared blearily back at him from his patch in the sun.

  The horologist was shuffling through a pile of papers - mostly unpaid bills, if the frequent mutters of alarm and dismay were anything to go by. 'Ah, here it is,' he said at last, waving a scrap of paper at Russell. '14 Demminer Strasse, Apartment 6. Do you have a pencil?'

  Russell recognized the street. He had interviewed a dog breeder there several years earlier - some dreadful piece for an American magazine on the Germans a
nd their pets. The breeder had claimed that Mein Kampf inspired him in his search for pedigree perfection.

  It was only a five minute drive. The apartment building was old, but seemed well cared for. A grey-haired woman opened the door - in her early 60s, Russell guessed, but still attractive. He asked if Uwe Kuzorra lived there.

  'Who are you?' she asked simply.

  'I interviewed him once several years ago. I'm a journalist, but that's not why I'm here...'

  'You'd better come in. My husband is in the other room.'

  Kuzorra was reclining in an armchair close to the open window, legs stretched out, eyes closed. A People's Radio was playing softly on the chest of drawers - Schubert, Russell guessed, but he was usually wrong. 'Uwe,' the woman said behind him, 'a visitor.'

  Kuzorra opened his eyes. 'John Russell,' he said after a moment's thought. 'Still here, eh?'

  'I'm surprised you remembered.'

  'I was always good at names and faces. Are you chasing another story? Please sit down. Katrin will make us some coffee.'

  'You've had your two coffees,' she said sternly.

  'I can't let Herr Russell drink alone.'

  She laughed. 'Oh, all right.'

  'So what brings you to me? How did you find me? Surely that lunatic clock-maker has long since lost my address.'

  'You underestimate him.'

  'Perhaps. He has been mending the same dozen clocks ever since I met him. Still...'

  'I need a private detective,' Russell said, 'and I thought you might be able to recommend one. It's a missing persons case - a Jewish girl. Not the sort of case that'll make anyone famous...'

  'The sort of case that'll lose an investigator any police friends he still has,' Kuzorra said. 'And they're the ones you need in this job.'

  'Exactly. I imagine a lot of your ex-colleagues would turn it down.'

  'You're right about that. Can you give me some details?'