by Joseph Kanon
“The U.S. Army,” Ron said to Jake, “that’s who. Pull fucking guard duty yourself, if it makes you so nervous.”
“What’s wrong?” Benson said.
“Nothing,” Ron said. “Geismar’s been seeing things, that’s all. Maybe you ought to check into the infirmary yourself, have them give you a once-over. You’re not making a lot of sense these days.”
“There’s someone there all the time?”
“Uh-huh,” Ron said, still looking at him. “No Russians allowed. Ever.”
“So I can see him?”
“That’s up to you. He isn’t going anyplace. Why don’t you take him some flowers and see what it does for you? Christ, Geismar.” He glanced toward the crowd shuffling back into the courtroom. “There’s the bell. You coming, or do you want to run right over and play nurse?” he said, then looked at Jake seriously. “I don’t know what this is all about, but you don’t have to worry about him. He’s as safe as you are.” He nodded at the Russians by the door. “Maybe safer.”
“I didn’t know you and Shaeffer were friends,” Benson said, still curious.
“Geismar’s got friends stashed all over Berlin, haven’t you?” Ron said, beginning to move. “How do you know this one, by the way?” he said, jerking his thumb toward the court.
“She was a reporter,” Jake said. “Just like the rest of us. I trained her.”
Ron stopped and turned. “That must give you something to think about,” he said, then followed Benson through the door.
Bernie was standing at the end of the table with Gunther but came over as Jake took his seat. The judges were just returning, walking in single file.
“So,” he said to Jake. “How do you think it’s going so far?”
“Jesus, Bernie. Crutches.”
Bernie’s face grew tight. “The crutches are real. So was the gas.”
“Why not just take her out and shoot her?”
“Because we want it on the record—how they did it. People should know.”
Jake nodded. “So she’s what? A stand-in?”
“No, she’s the real thing. No different from Otto Klopfer. No different.” He took in Jake’s blank expression. “The guy who wanted the exhaust pipe fixed. Or maybe you forgot already. People do.” He looked back to the press section, a restless scraping of chairs. “Maybe they’ll listen this time.”
“They made her do it. You know that.”
“That’s what Otto says too. All of them. You believe it?”
Jake looked up. “Sometimes.”
“Which gets you where? Everybody’s got a sad story, and the end’s always the same. One thing I learned as a DA—you start feeling sorry for people, you never get a conviction. Don’t waste your sympathy. She’s guilty as hell.”
The prosecutor began by calling Gunther to the stand, but before he could take the chair the defense attorney jumped up, stirred finally to some activity.
“May I address the court? What is the purpose of these witnesses? This emotionalism. The nature of the prisoner’s work is not in question here. She herself has described it for the court.” He held up a transcript. “Work, I would add, that she performed under the threat of her own death. She has also, let us remember, helped us identify her employers, given her full cooperation so that the Soviet people can bring the real fascists to justice. And what is her reward? This? We have here a matter for the Soviet people to decide, not the western press. I ask that we dispense with these theatrics and proceed with the serious business of this court.”
This was so clearly unexpected that for an instant the judges just sat expressionless. Then they turned to each other. What they asked, however, was that he repeat his statement in Russian, and Jake wondered again how much of the trial they really understood. Renate stood impassively as the pleas rolled out again in Russian. Her full cooperation. Beaten out of her? Or had she sat down willingly and filled sheets with names? A new assignment, catching the catchers. When the lawyer finished, the judge dismissed him with a scowl. “Sit down,” he said, then looked at Gunther. “Proceed.”
The lawyer lowered his head, a schoolboy reprimanded for speaking out of turn, and Jake saw that he had missed the point. The business of the court was the theater. What happens when it’s over, the summer after the war. Not clearing the rubble, not the shuffling DPs—peripheral stories. What happened was this season of denunciations, personal reprisals, all the impossible moral reparations. Tribunals, shaved heads, pointed fingers—auto da fés to purge the soul. Everyone, like Gunther, would have his reckoning.
They started his testimony carefully, a slow recitation of the years of police service, his voice a calm monotone, a return to order after Frau Gersh’s crying. Bernie knew his audience. You could soften them with crutches, but in the end they would respond to this, the sober reassurance of authority. The judges were listening politely, as if, ironically, they had finally recognized one of their own.
“And would it be fair to say that these years of training had made you a good observer?”
“I have a policeman’s eye, yes.”
“Describe for us, then, what you saw that day at the—” He broke off to check his notes. “Café Heil, Olivaerplatz.” Down the street from Lena’s flat, where the world had gone on around them. “The café was familiar to you?”
“No. That’s why I paid particular attention. To see if it was safe.”
“For your wife, you mean.”
“Yes, for Marthe.”
“She was in hiding.”
“At that time she had to walk during the day, so the landlady would think she was at work. Public places, where people wouldn’t take notice. Zoo Station, for instance. Tiergarten.”
“And you met her during these walks?”
“Twice a week. Tuesdays and Fridays,” Gunther said, precise. “To make sure she was all right, give her a meal. I had coupons.” Every week, for years, waiting for a tap on the shoulder.
“And this was where?”
“Usually Aschinger’s. By Friedrichstrasse Station. It was always crowded there.” The big cafeteria where Jake had often gone himself, grabbing a bite on his way to the broadcast. Jake saw them pretending to meet, jostled by the lunch crowd at the stand-up tables, eating blue-plate specials. “But it was important to change places. Her face would become familiar. So, that day, Olivaerplatz.”
“This was in 1944?”
“March seventh, 1944. One-thirty.”
“What is the importance of this?” the defense attorney said, standing.
“Sit down,” the judge said, waving his hand.
The big roundups had started in ’42. Two years of fading into crowds.
“Your memory is excellent, Herr Behn,” the prosecutor said. “Please tell us the rest.”
Gunther glanced toward Bernie, who nodded.
“I arrived first, as always, to make sure.”
“The prisoner was there?”
“In the back. With coffee, a newspaper—ordinary. Then Marthe came. She asked me if the chair was free. A pretense, you see, so we would not seem to be together. I noticed the prisoner looking at us, and I thought perhaps we should go, but she went back to her paper, nothing wrong, so we ordered the coffee. Another look. I thought, you know, she was looking at me, perhaps she was someone I had arrested—this happened sometimes—but no, just a busybody. Then she went to the toilet. There is a phone there—I checked later—so that was when she called her friends.”
“And did she come back?”
“Yes, she finished her coffee. Then she paid the bill and walked right past us to the door. That’s when they came for Marthe. Two of them, in those leather coats. Who else had leather coats in ’forty-four? So I knew.”
“Excuse me, Herr Behn. You know for a fact the prisoner called them? How is that?”
Gunther looked down. “Because Marthe talked to her. A foolish slip, after being so careful. But what difference did it make in the end?”
“She talked to her?
”
“She knew her. From school. Schoolgirls. ‘Renate, is it really you?’ she said. Just like that, so surprised to see her. Marthe must have thought she was in hiding too. Another U-boat. ‘So many years,’ Marthe said, ‘and just the same.’ Foolish.”
“And did Fräulein Naumann recognize her?”
“Oh yes, she knew. ‘You’re mistaken,’ she said, and of course that was right. Marthe shouldn’t have said anything. It was dangerous to be recognized. They tortured the U-boats sometimes, to find the others, to get names. But she knew.” He stopped, his eyes moving away, then began to talk more quickly, wanting it over. “She tried to leave then, of course, but they came, the coats, so she couldn’t get out. And that’s when I saw. They looked at her, one of them. First around the room, searching, then at her. To tell them. She could have said, she’s gone, she just left. She could have saved her. Her old school friend. But no. ‘That’s the one,’ she says. ‘She’s a Jew.’ So they grabbed Marthe. ‘Renate,’ she said, that’s all, the name, but the greifer wouldn’t look at her.”
“And you?” the lawyer said in the quiet room. “What did you do?”
“Of course people were looking then. ‘What is this?’ I said. ‘There’s some mistake.’ And they said to her, the greifer, ‘Him too?’ And she had no idea who I was, you see. So they were ready to take me too, but then Marthe saved me. ‘He’s nobody,’ she said. ‘We were just sharing the table.’ Nobody. And she moved away with them so they wouldn’t even think about it. Quietly, you know. No commotion. Not even another look to give me away.”
Jake sat up, his mind darting. Of course. If you didn’t know your victim, someone had to point him out. Mistakes could be made. A crowded café. A crowded market square. But nobody had been there to save Liz.
“Herr Behn, I’m sorry to ask again. So there’s no confusion—you state positively that you saw and heard the accused identify your wife for deportation. A woman known to her. There is no doubt?”
“No doubt. I saw it.” He looked at Renate. “She sent her to her death.”
“No,” Renate said quietly. “They said a labor camp.”
“To her death,” Gunther said, then looked back to the prosecutor. “And she went with them in the car, the same car. All the greifers together.”
“I didn’t want to,” Renate said, a stray detail.
“Thank you, Herr Behn,” the lawyer said, dismissing him.
“And then—do you know what?” Gunther said.
Bernie raised his head, surprised, something outside the script.
“What?” the lawyer said uncertainly.
“You want to know what it was like? Those days? The waitress came over. ‘Are you paying for both?’ she said. ‘You ordered two coffees.’” He stopped. “So I paid.” The end of the column, his final point.
“Thank you, Herr Behn,” the lawyer said again.
The defense attorney rose. “A question. Herr Behn, were you a member of the National Socialist Party?”
“Yes.”
“Let it be entered that the witness is an admitted fascist.”
“All policemen were required to join the party,” the prosecutor said. “This is irrelevant.”
“I suggest that this testimony is biased,” the defense attorney said. “A Nazi official. Who enforced the criminal laws of the fascist regime. Who testifies for personal reasons.”
“This is absurd,” the prosecutor said. “The testimony is the truth. Ask her.” He pointed to Renate. Now both lawyers were standing, what formal procedures there had been slipping away in a crossfire that darted from lawyer to witness to accused. “Were you at the Café Heil? Did you report Marthe Behn? Did you identify her? Answer.”
“Yes,” Renate said.
“Not a stranger. A woman you knew,” the prosecutor said, his voice rising.
“I had to.” She looked down. “You don’t understand. I needed one more that week. The quota. There were not so many left then. I needed one more.”
Jake felt his stomach move. A number to fill the truck.
“To save yourself.”
“Not for myself,” she said, shaking her head. “Not for myself.”
“Fräulein Naumann,” the defense said, formal again. “Please tell the court who was also being held in custody in Grosse Hamburger Strasse.”
“My mother.”
“Under what conditions?”
“She was kept there so that I would come back in the evening, when my work was finished,” she said, resigned now, aware that it wouldn’t matter. But she had lifted her head and was looking at Jake, the way a public speaker pinpoints a face in an audience, talking only to him, a private explanation, the interview they probably would never have. “They knew I wouldn’t leave her. We were taken together. First to work at Siemenstadt. Slaves. Then, when the deportations started, they told me they would keep her name off the list if I worked for them. So many every week. I couldn’t send her east.”
“So you sent other Jews,” the prosecutor said.
“But then there were not so many left,” she said, still to Jake.
“To—what did you call them?—labor camps.”
“Yes, labor camps. But she was an old woman. I knew the conditions were hard. To survive that—”
“But that’s not all you did, is it?” the prosecutor said, pressing now. “Your superior”—he glanced at a paper—“Hans Becker. We have testimony that you were intimate with him. Were you intimate with him?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes on Jake. “That too.”
“And did he keep your mother off the list? For your good efforts?”
“At first. Then he sent her to Theresienstadt. He said it was easier there.” She paused. “He ran out of names.”
“Tell the court what happened to her there,” the defense said.
“She died.”
“But you continued your work after that,” the prosecutor said. “You still came back every night, didn’t you?”
“By then, where could I go? The Jews knew about me—I couldn’t hide with them. There was no one.”
“Except Hans Becker. You continued your relations with him.”
“Yes.”
“Even after he deported your mother.”
“Yes.”
“And you still say you were protecting her?”
“Does it matter to you what I say?” she said wearily.
“When it’s the truth, yes.”
“The truth? The truth is that he forced me. Over and over. He liked that. I kept my mother alive. I kept myself alive. I did what I had to do. I thought, there’s nothing worse than this, but it will end, the Russians will come. Not much longer. Then you came and hunted me down like a dog. Becker’s girlfriend, they called me. Girlfriend, when he did that to me. What is my crime? That I’m still alive?”
“Fräulein, that’s not the crime here.”
“No, the punishment,” she said to Jake. “Still alive.”
“Yes,” Gunther said unexpectedly from the witness chair, but not looking anywhere, so that no one was sure what he meant.
The Russian prosecutor cleared his throat. “I’m sure we’re all enlightened to hear that the Nazis are to blame for everything, fräulein. A pity, perhaps, that you did their work so well.”
“I did what I had to do,” she said, still staring, until finally Jake had to look away. What did she expect him to say? I forgive you?
“Are you finished with the witness?” the judge said, restless.
“One more question,” the defense said. “Herr Behn, you’re a large man. Strong. You did not struggle with the men in the café?”
“With Gestapo? No.”
“No, you saved yourself.” A pointed look at Renate. “Or, to be exact, your wife saved you. I believe that’s what you said.”
“Yes, she saved me. It was too late for her, once they knew.”
“And after this you remained on the police force?”
“Yes.”
“Enforcing the laws of the government that had arrested your wife.”
“The racial laws were not our responsibility.”
“I see. Some of the laws, then. Not all. But you made arrests?”
“Of criminals, yes.”
“And they were sent where?”
“To prison.”
“So late in the war? Most were sent to ‘labor camps,’ weren’t they?”
Gunther said nothing.
“Tell us, how did you decide which laws to enforce for the National Socialists?”
“Decide? It wasn’t for me to decide. I was a policeman. I had no choice.”
“I see. So only Fräulein Naumann had this choice.”
“I object,” the prosecutor said. “This is nonsense. The situations were not at all similar. What is the defense trying to suggest?”
“That this testimony is compromised from start to finish. This is a personal grievance, not Soviet justice. You hold this woman accountable for the crimes of the Nazis? She had no choice. Listen to your own witness. No one had a choice.”
The only possible defense left. Everyone was guilty; no one was guilty.
“She had a choice,” Gunther said, his voice thick.
The defense nodded, pleased with himself, finally where he wanted to be.
“Did you?”
“Don’t answer,” the prosecutor said quickly.
But Gunther raised his head, unflinching—a moment he’d expected, even if Bernie hadn’t, the other reckoning. Not to be put off, even by a bottle to blot himself out. He gazed straight ahead, eyes stone.
“Yes, I had a choice. And I worked for them too,” he said, his voice as firm and steady as the hand on the razor. “Her murderers. Even after that.”
The room, suddenly embarrassed, was silent. Not the answer any of them had wanted, a little death, pulled out of him like Liz’s gasp. One cut.
He turned to Renate. “We all did,” he said, his voice lower now. “But you—you could have looked away. Your friend. Just the once.”
At this she did look away, facing the stenographers, so that her words were almost lost.
“I needed one more,” she said, as if it answered everything. “One more.”
Another awkward silence in the room, broken finally by the judge.