by Chris Petit
Bormann considered and said, ‘You are wrong. She is not.’
The look he gave Morgen said he knew she was. The deadly game had gone up a level. Bormann had blocked his move.
Morgen countered by saying, ‘Perhaps I could have that in writing. To avoid any further confusion.’
Bormann laughed. ‘What would I write?’
‘That the woman is not Jewish.’
Bormann went along with the game, producing an expensive fountain pen. He scratched a couple of lines on Chancellery paper, stamped it and handed it to Morgen saying, ‘Have your pawn.’
Morgen carefully folded the paper and placed it in his wallet, feeling less guilty about using Sybil now he had acquired her exemption, providing Bormann let him out of the building after all.
He knew he should leave.
Bormann regarded him expectantly.
‘I have a personal question, if that is not impertinent.’
‘We are in my office, not a bar,’ Bormann said coldly.
Morgen could see the man was curious nevertheless. He took another deep breath and said, ‘I received a message from you through Fegelein to say the commandant was not to be investigated. As I am here I thought I would ask why.’
‘I could say it is no business of yours but the answer is old loyalties.’
‘I merely wish to understand how the commandant came to deserve your allegiance.’
Morgen waited, realising Bormann was pleased to have an excuse to relate his story.
‘In the early days before the Party there were among the idealists who wished to do something for the Fatherland many confidence men, adventurers and scoundrels. These included a fraud named Kadow, who passed himself off as a war veteran, wore medals he hadn’t won and swindled the organisation of which I was treasurer. He was warned not to show his face again, and when he did, being a fool, a group of men got him drunk and found in his pockets a membership card of the Communist youth group and roubles. I had ordered only for him to be taught a lesson, but Kadow died. Hoess was one of those convicted and he was sentenced to ten years. He knew of my instruction yet never squealed to get himself a better deal, so I only served a year. They were tough times. Since no court would have sentenced Kadow, we passed our own judgement. Feme.’
Morgen was familiar. Feme was an improvised justice based on a medieval system of secret tribunal.
‘When was this?’
‘Twenty years ago.’ Bormann gave Morgen a mirthless smile. ‘Headstrong young boys.’
He stood and said, ‘There is something I should like you to consider.’
Morgen realised he had probably already walked into the trap. Not worth the paper it was written on, he thought of the signed declaration in his pocket. It was probably his death warrant.
Bormann stood behind Morgen and placed a hand on his shoulder.
‘There is an embarrassment concerning your young associate. He has managed to get himself arrested for arson.’
‘Arson?’
Bormann said Schlegel had been caught stealing and set fire to the evidence. Morgen knew such a preposterous story was all too likely in Pohl’s world.
He immediately asked himself where Bormann fitted in this intrigue.
‘There will be a trial. You need to attend as his ranking officer.’
‘I have already been warned I will be shot on sight if I return.’
‘I will issue a personal warrant in my authority.’
Morgen suspected that, like Sybil’s exemption, it would be worthless.
The obvious answer was that Bormann had done a deal with Pohl to have Morgen returned so he could be taken care of too.
‘There’s a train tonight. You will be back tomorrow. I will give you an escort, so no one gets up to any monkey business. I lost a good ally once who mysteriously fell from the window of his sleeping compartment. Suicide was the given verdict but he was in good spirits when I last saw him. We wouldn’t want the same to happen to you.’
Bormann’s hand rested on Morgen’s neck. He said, ‘I am glad we had this little talk.’
He shook hands this time rather than saluted. The handshake was moist and lacklustre.
Morgen had just enough time to go to the newspaper library and look up the Kadow case. One of the anomalies of life was that while the press was muzzled back issues of old publications were still available for inspection in all their messy glory.
The case was as Bormann had told.
Without its political context, the shortest reports read as nothing more than a fight between drinking companions, in which a death had occurred. It took one of the more sensational newspapers to report the gory details. Kadow, drunk to start with, was plied with more alcohol and at closing time taken off in a cart on the promise of a coffeehouse with women. When the blows came it was six against one. Fists. Sticks. Rubber truncheons. Kadow was dragged down from the cart and beaten in a meadow. The 22-year-old Hoess was named as breaking off a sapling maple and bringing it down full force on Kadow’s head until his skull fractured. The man’s teeth were kicked out. His throat was cut, two bullets fired into his head and the corpse buried in the forest, to be dug up later by the police.
The ferocity of the violence was like a presage of things to come, as if everything had been foretold in that squalid drunken murder.
All the accounts spoke of six assailants, except one, which mentioned a seventh.
Bormann had claimed not to have been involved. Morgen was sure he was, in with the rest, battering and kicking and gouging, then absenting himself, already a master of disappearance, the unaccountable man who was never there.
When Morgen left Berlin rain was hammering on the station roof. The platform was crowded, the train late, like the last time. The only difference, apart from Schlegel’s absence, was the unmistakeable sight of two thugs, loitering in the crowd, men in raincoats with hats worn low, laughable in their obviousness. Morgen, careless and a little drunk, had taken no precautions. The men boarded the train after him.
The trial took place after how long Schlegel had no idea. Time had ceased to exist outside an infernal present. At some twilight point, Broad had strolled into the slaughterhouse, so relaxed he didn’t look twice, and said, ‘That’s enough, boys. He has a trial to face.’
A suit was found for him, double-breasted, jacket too big, trousers too short. No tie and laceless shoes.
The process took place in the usual room in the punishment block.
Everything became speeded up. Scrape of chairs as all stood. The travelling assizes judge positioned centre. A couple of bored makeweights. Stenographer. A legal clerk. On the wall behind the judge, a portrait of the leader, stern and messianic. Schlegel was spared the salute because handcuffed. To the right of the judge, the man whose presence Schlegel blanked. The nerve of him, showing up like that!
Charges. A sublime cameo from Frau Hoess, dressy and sombre in hat and veil. What an outfit! Speaking of what he had stolen. Evidence produced. Yes, she said. Next, no witness but a report on the man he had drowned: homicide. Next, no witness: charge of aiding a prisoner to escape.
Words made individual sense; joined up, none.
Schlegel offered nothing in his defence. The witnesses were radiant in their certainty of his depravity. He had spoken up once to say Frau Hoess had taken sexual advantage. An audible gasp. Frau Hoess’s froideur allowed for no interpretation other than that such a liaison beggared belief, adding, ‘You can see he is quite mad.’ They nodded.
He hoped in vain Sybil would be introduced so he could see her again. At least she had survived without violation, with Baumgarten saying: Just a bit of innocent fun, come back another time and we will really show you how to shove it.
Schlegel thought he might as well be watching a projection in his head. His mind now seemed to occupy its own lonely, floating auditorium, above everything. He had looked back when Frau Hoess had warned him not to. He should have listened to her.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes? N
o clock in the room. The whole thing unceremonious for its speed. Everyone beyond care; get it over with. Schlegel’s wrists were bandaged. He was doped up on something that wrapped him in a cocoon – the word shaped itself and died in his mouth – making him docile and stupid, a spectator of someone else’s fate.
He continued with all his might to resist Morgen’s presence, sitting there as part of the presiding body. He could only suppose the man had done his deals, made his peace and part of the price was he attend this charade. That was the most charitable explanation Schlegel could come up with, given that Morgen should have been shot on sight.
Outside the weather had broken for good. Fog and drizzle. Berlin weather.
Did Schlegel have any last words? He wished he could rally enough to denounce the lot of them, especially Morgen. He made a point of staring and Morgen steadfastly refused to look back.
No, he said. The charges were technically correct and entirely false. The best he managed was to mumble that he did not recognise the authority of the court, and to address the judge to say, ‘Let their blood be on your head.’
The judge banged his hammer and shouted order.
He pronounced the death sentence. Thirteen charges in all, including setting the fire that had destroyed the evidence. A witness to that too, a man he had never seen before, produced to be asked: ‘Did you see this man standing before you set fire to the building?’ He recited the sentence back like a bad actor trying not to forget his lines.
A show trial, ha-ha, thought Schlegel, starting to come down. What did Morgen make of it? He could see the old Morgen shrug and say: Justice is seen to take its course. The new Morgen, he had no idea.
A last choice, offered with insolent politeness. Death by hanging or firing squad. His decision.
The judge informed him that the cost of his execution would be deducted from his final pay packet.
Schlegel’s cell door was banged. Visitor!
His hope was Sybil, however unlikely.
Instead it was the one person he never would have guessed.
He had to look twice, thinking why had they sent him an old woman. His mother had aged – a gaunt figure, confused, her pride extinguished. Dressed neatly but shabbily. She wept on seeing him, asking what had they done to him, what had he done to himself? They clung to each other, for the first time in as long as Schlegel could remember. He felt sticklike bones. He could tell she was privately disappointed by her errant, wayward son, undone by dishonour. He would have preferred she had not seen him this way. He watched her lose her words, saw a flash of her former self when she said her memory was shot. Weakness was not something she had ever admitted to. Had she been told it was a last visit?
Schlegel thought: One leaves knowing no more of the world than when one came in.
Nothing connected, other than a few rotten memories that could just as well have been borrowed or appropriated.
In a while his mother would still be there and he wouldn’t; that was all. Did it even matter if he went out with dignity or was dragged to the wall in a screeching funk? He might almost prefer the latter because it suggested life was still worth clinging to when all evidence stated the contrary.
As for his mother being there, he knew it was unlikely to be a mercy visit.
Her explanation had the illogic of another bad dream.
News of her transfer had filled her with trepidation, she said. She had remained secure where she was and had influential people on the outside working on her behalf. She had been advised of a camp for VIPs and her name was down for that. When told she was being sent there instead she had wept in despair.
She whispered, ‘People say this a place from which you don’t return.’
How had she known he was there? he asked.
‘Oh, Frau Hoess told me. I work for her now,’ she said brightly. ‘She asked for me because of you. Thank you, darling!’
Morgen tried to remember his trigonometry. He presumed he was dealing with a triangle consisting of Bormann, Pohl and Himmler and it was a matter of calculating the correct angles. It was evident Bormann was making a play sending him back; it would be political because Bormann was not one to act on a whim. Morgen had presumed as a gesture to Pohl; now he wasn’t sure. Bormann’s dubious magic pass seemed to be doing its job, leaving him at least shunned, as though he were contagious.
Himmler’s role was hardest to decipher, having been absent throughout, or operating on a deeper level than Morgen was aware of, for which he would probably need Heini’s alchemists to decipher.
These calculations didn’t even get him as far as Kammler’s stratagems or the role of his increasingly enigmatic brother.
Bormann had scotched Morgen’s pursuit of Hoess by contradicting Sybil’s Jewishness, thereby protecting his old friend.
Krick reappeared and made no mention of their previous meeting or discussion.
Sybil remained missing in that Morgen didn’t know where she was and his enquiries yielded nothing, especially from Groenke. Morgen had no idea whether she was safe or in jeopardy.
He didn’t know what to do about Schlegel. He knew he should go and see him yet didn’t.
His failure to discern Bormann’s motive for sending him back started to drive him crazy.
News came through that the commandant was being kicked upstairs, into the camp inspectorate, a straight job swap with the garrison’s new commandant. Morgen supposed Kammler had achieved his aim by ushering in a new regime more attuned to his methods. Pohl had done his job, protecting his man, and the cold-hearted Bormann had shown a rare example of loyalty in that Morgen supposed it was he who had told Pohl how to sort out the mess.
What his own moves were, Morgen had no idea. He suspected his magic pass could become invalid at any moment.
The other big news was that Frau Hoess would be staying and not even moving house to make way for the new commandant, who was said to be a bachelor.
The commandant left the garrison a frail imitation of his former self, a man lost. He spent his last days riding the field. Winter almost.
Schulze found herself travelling on the same train, sharing a compartment reserved for staff, which they had to themselves, prior to adjourning to their separate sleeping berths. The commandant seemed not to recognise her, then only distantly and asked to be reminded.
‘The construction department?’ he said vaguely.
He offered her a sandwich, made by his wife. She declined, out of politeness.
Before leaving she had gone to Broad to say she needed a name for the father to be eligible for the pregnancy care programme. Krick had refused, believing the child not to be his, and Schlegel was disqualified. Broad’s agreeing didn’t surprise her. That he asked for nothing in exchange did, only joking to say if he was the father he should get to know the mother better, then stopping to add, ‘There’s a new word going around. Called hope.’
The commandant wiped sandwich crumbs off his trousers. He stared at Schulze but addressed himself. ‘Until the daybreak, and the shadows flee away, so the litanies of lust rise amid the filthy stench of the abattoir, but thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee. Yea, the evil one cheats all those that give themselves up.’
The odd thing was, she thought, he sounded quite normal. He turned away and she saw his tears.
The train passed the new camp. The security lights were coming on though it was not yet dark. Schulze was stunned by the endless enormity of what they had built. It went on and on. She had managed to avoid going there after its first days. Her life since had been contained entirely by the garrison. The chimneys blazed and she remembered how the early work shifts ran round the clock, night generators powering temporary arc lamps, the distinctive knock of their diesel engines broken by the scream of a prisoner as he trod on a live wire and short-circuited the system, the incident registering out of no more than the corner of her eye. She did a lot of bicycling that winter down to the surveyor’s hut which doubled as the site office. It had no telep
hone, requiring messages to be taken by hand. When the road was icy or after a snowfall she had to walk or cadge a lift. The Russians stared at a woman alone. Walking home in the dark she thought about them eating each other.
When the camp finally disappeared the commandant said, ‘It is not what I had in mind.’
Morgen sought out Broad, that astute reader of which way the wind was blowing. The main victim of the internal war was his own department. The story was no more tough punishment. Cooperation was being encouraged, with the prison hierarchy’s loyalty being bought through rewards and incentives.
‘There will still be a day of reckoning,’ Morgen said.
‘They’re talking about it already,’ said Broad.
Morgen suddenly thought: Bormann and Kammler. In tandem?
Kammler possessed what looked like close to genius when it came to seeking those with the most power. He had attached himself to Himmler and Speer, both of whose stars could be said to be waning, which was not the case with Bormann.
He thought of Krick’s Swiss moves and supposed Kammler had knowledge of them, if not actively involved. Cultivating Bormann as well meant he must have a foot in both camps.
The day of reckoning. Morgen suddenly had a glimmer of what Bormann had in mind.
He had inadvertently played into Bormann and Kammler’s hands by arguing that the whole Auschwitz death operation was a rogue enterprise.
Morgen now suspected Bormann was sending him back precisely to distance the top level from the perpetrators, to prove the opposite of the truth, which was they’d had their hands all over the thing from the start. He had been naïve to believe otherwise.
Bormann saw what no one else had: Morgen would no longer be a problem if he became part of the solution. Broad was right: someone would come one day and start taking names, for they all knew too much. Bormann clearly intended that he, Morgen, be the inquisitor, the one who erased all trace of the record, so the top could deny such things had happened with its knowledge.
It was an exquisite move.
Morgen made his own moves, flimsy as they were. Whatever else others had in mind he would continue to weed out corruption. To that end he recruited Broad, saying he could not afford not to throw in his lot. Broad, amused by any level of game playing, was amenable. He seemed grateful for being able to start distancing himself. Morgen recruited Palitsch with a view to sending him back into the garrison later as his investigator, setting a fox to catch a fox. Morgen was sure they hadn’t even started to scratch the surface. He backtracked with Dr Wirths, saying he would value his strategic alliance. He apologised and said he’d had to run Grabner on a long lead to bring about his downfall.