by Nir Baram
Weller nodded with satisfaction, and a wave of excitement surged through Thomas. Finally—months after Milton had collapsed in Germany and put him in a tailspin, without work or decent severance pay or the right to royalties from the branch offices that he had created—he had come to the right place.
Stroking the metal frame of his glasses, Weller told him that his superior, Dr Schnurre, was meeting this evening with the acting Soviet ambassador. He added, as though sharing a secret, that Dr Schnurre was working on a new trade agreement that would be worth hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks. Germany would buy raw materials from the Soviet Union, supplies that German industry needed like air to breathe. His boyish assistant excitedly ticked them off: wheat, mineral oil, cotton, cattle fodder, phosphates, timber.
Thomas chuckled to himself at their enthusiasm, and politely endorsed their admiration for the architect of the agreement: it was a stroke of genius that would change the face of Europe forever.
The young man even added that everyone in the Foreign Office knew that Georg Weller was Dr Schnurre’s spokesman, and that von Ribbentrop himself championed Schnurre’s policies. But Bauer now reprimanded him severely: No one dictated anything to the Foreign Minister except the Führer.
Why, Thomas asked himself, was Bauer so stiff? In his imagination he spoke to the officer in the same tone that Carlson Mailer had used at the New Year’s party. But all that this stupid daydream showed was how much control Thomas had lost over the past few months.
Weller was cajoling—Thomas imagined his voice as an upholstered rocking chair, inviting you to curl up in it—and he tensed. This man could be a dangerous rival. It was no coincidence that he was telling him that the world would shortly be astonished by a new trade agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union. This would remove the final obstacle to resolving the Polish question, which the Führer was determined to do soon. It was impossible any longer to tolerate such behaviour towards the German nation. A war with Poland was weeks away, and the Foreign Office believed that insufficient resources had been devoted to studying the Polish man. Reliable information was needed that could be useful after Germany invaded and took control. ‘We in the Foreign Office are concerned: each agency has its own experts on Eastern affairs, who may present strange ideas that will damage the Fatherland’s good name. We would like to see a well-defined plan outlining the correct means for dealing with the population. Even if everyone reviles the Pole, he’s still a person who believes all kinds of things.’
A tremor of enthusiasm struck Thomas. He declared to Weller that he hadn’t the shadow of a doubt that his model could help the Foreign Office. But it would need to be expanded for the purposes of governing Poland. A comprehensive model would need supplementary research, a new synthesis of the data. In fact, this would be a new model…The tongue, like any other muscle, regains its flexibility with a little practice.
A waiter approached and began to remove the plates. Apart from most of Thomas’s strudel, nothing remained but crumbs, smears of fruit and whipped cream.
‘In this restaurant they serve the most marvellous pastries in Berlin.’ Weller sighed, and Thomas signalled to the waiter to leave his strudel, which seemed even bigger now than before he had tackled it. While he was playing with his fork, Bauer asked truculently, ‘As an expert on Eastern matters, sir, do you speak Polish?’
He answered gladly that he understood Polish, of course, though he didn’t speak it fluently, and he listed the languages that he had mastered: English, French, Italian and Russian. Weller seemed satisfied, the young man looked at him with respect, but Bauer’s face quivered, and it was clear he was sorry he had raised the question.
Weller boasted about his own knowledge of Russian—his position demanded it—and asked in Russian, in a somewhat gravelly accent, ‘When did Herr Heiselberg manage to learn all that?’
‘I always loved languages,’ said Thomas, taking pleasure in his Muscovite accent. ‘In my youth I studied Russian from books, and then my mother hired a tutor from Moscow for me. I absorb the music of a new language, and then, even if I lack words, everything comes more easily.’
‘Indeed, you could have chosen your words with more precision, and you could also improve the declensions. If you want, I would be glad to help with small improvements,’ Weller offered, his gravity enveloped with good will. ‘But your accent is truly enviable.’
At this affinity between Weller and Thomas, Bauer’s face darkened. He leaned over and picked up a few pebbles and juggled them. Then he demanded that the table limit itself to German.
‘Herr Heiselberg, would it be possible to prepare a new model in such a short time?’ Weller asked.
‘How much time do we have?’ Thomas asked, and at once regretted that he might seem too eager.
‘A few weeks at most,’ Weller answered. ‘Germany’s negotiations with the Soviet Union are going to begin very soon.’
This time, Thomas was in no hurry to answer, and he let Bauer boast about the inconclusive connections between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, as if this were his own personal accomplishment. But if the government dillydallied, the French and English would offer Stalin concessions in the east to tempt him into an alliance against Germany.
‘Stalin won’t come to any agreement with them,’ said the young man contemptuously. ‘He kicked the Jew Litvinov out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to improve ties with Germany. There could be no other interpretation.’
The young man had courage. He was absorbing blow after blow, but he didn’t give up.
‘True,’ said Weller, the expert on the Soviet Union, ‘but the model we’re discussing isn’t supposed to draw on shallow information from the press.’
‘No, of course not.’ Thomas took advantage of the opportunity. ‘The model observes strict research principles. It explains the present and suggests the actions necessary to shape the future. Therefore we avoid direct contact with day-to-day politics.’ He gave ‘day-to-day’ the disdain of a professor responding to a student’s questions about current events.
‘Excellent. That’s just what we need.’ Weller’s cheeks bulged into two fleshy balls.
Bauer juggled his pebbles in irritation, then gripped them in his fist. ‘Your brave words about the Jews who distorted German ideas are ringing in my ears,’ he said to Thomas. ‘Now you’re rescuing Germany from the Jews…’
‘I described our methods precisely.’
‘…instead of saving Jews from Germany,’ he concluded, as though he hadn’t heard Thomas at all.
‘Why waste time on gossip,’ Thomas responded, wondering whether Bauer was referring to Frau Stein, Erika Gelber or both. ‘You’re not the one to judge my contribution to the Reich. During the party’s days of struggle, when you were still reciting Latin in school, my father gave it his all.’
‘Gentlemen!’ Weller waved away a hovering fly, and looked at Bauer impatiently. ‘Let’s maintain respect.’
‘To get back to our business, we will continue to refine the model until it’s perfect!’ Thomas felt encouraged because Weller had also had his fill of Bauer. ‘Look, the kite has come down, but the NSV only rises and rises. There’s no organisation in the world more favourable to the welfare of the people!’ In a hoarse voice he told them that yesterday he had donated some items from his dear mother’s wardrobe to the organisation. She had passed away, but he was pleased to know that those garments would raise the spirits of so many women. He plunged his fork into what was left of the strudel, and finished off the apples and the pastry.
‘You, too, Hauptsturmführer,’ he spoke to Bauer—a bit of generosity on the victor’s part wouldn’t hurt here—‘certainly make a fine contribution to the poor children of the homeland.’
Thomas returned home buzzing with ideas and plans. He immediately noticed that Clarissa’s red-collared coat was gone, as well as her scent: her hair cream and perfumes, the fresh smell of the grass that clung to her when she returned from the university.
She had gone to Westphalia that morning with a group of girls from the NSV to distribute goods in towns and villages. In preparation for the trip she had removed superfluous objects from the house—a coat, shoes, notebooks, textbooks—and she had also packed up his mother’s wardrobe, Thomas’s reluctant contribution to her organisation.
‘All well and good, but those clothes have sentimental value,’ he complained when she piled everything into a large carton.
‘The greater the suspicion, the greater the contribution,’ she chided, reminding him of the events of November. A glow of victory smoothed her face. ‘Besides, you were the one who taught me that an obsessive focus on “the good old days” is a disease of the German soul. A house isn’t a memorial to the dead but a place where people live.’ (Not ‘a person’, he noted, but ‘people’.)
‘Did you tell Karlchen that you were going away? If you didn’t, he’ll turn up here every morning,’ he said in mock annoyance.
‘Don’t worry, I told him,’ Clarissa chuckled. ‘I warned him not to come near you. You scare him a little.’
In the last few weeks she had taken to sleeping in his mother’s room, and did the housework for him in lieu of rent. Sometimes she returned late, a little drunk, in a thin summer dress, with a hairdo that changed every week, while he sat in the parlour, read a book or planned all sorts of ‘business ventures’—but actually he was waiting for the moment of her return when she would stand in front of him in all her glory, blushing and giggling, leaning against the wall, a high-heeled shoe in each hand. Then the room would swarm with invisible motion, and, though nothing had apparently changed in him, he would be filled with life, and his whole body would awaken. He would pretend to be interested in where she had been, and how she had enjoyed herself, wanting her to stay near him: in those moments he was permeated with pleasure and hope, and once again everything seemed possible. Sometimes she didn’t come home, but would sleep at a girlfriend’s house, in her parents’ apartment or somewhere else. He never dared to ask where, and would fall asleep in the parlour or crawl into his room, the windows already pale with the dawn.
Thomas wasn’t the only one who tracked Clarissa’s nights: they also preoccupied Karlchen, her seven-year-old brother, who adored her. From the moment he learned that she was sleeping in the neighbour’s apartment—Thomas never asked her whether her parents accepted the arrangement or whether it expressed a kind of minor rebellion against them—he would climb the two flights of stairs in the early morning and knock on the door. If his sister was there, she usually sent him home, but sometimes she let him lie in her bed, depending, she said, on the lesson she wanted to teach him, but Thomas suspected she decided on impulse. Sometimes the kid would turn up very early. Thomas would regard him with groggy eyes, and hear himself saying sweetly, ‘My dear little boy, I’m also looking for your sister.’ He would warm some milk for him, and together they would wait for Clarissa.
‘Where do you work?’ the boy asked. ‘Clarissa says you used to be a big man. She says that now you sit in the house and complain, and she’s going to help you be a big man again.’
Thomas laughed. ‘Do you think a man can stop being big?’
The boy gave him an annoyed look, blew on the milk and didn’t answer: just like Clarissa when something didn’t please her.
Thomas wandered through the house before sitting down to concentrate on the opportunities that were now presenting themselves. He poured himself some cognac and took it to his workroom. Recently he had stopped smoking a pipe. It reminded him of the smoke-filled rooms at Milton, and anyway he had decided it was time to exercise regularly and discard harmful habits. He had applied to join a swimming and a rowing club. Meanwhile, he exercised twice a week at home.
A grey bird stood on the windowsill and picked at breadcrumbs that Clarissa had left there. A breeze ruffled the heavy curtain, which swung out and swallowed the bird up in its folds. Thomas sprang over to it. He imagined the bird plummeting to the street, but it had disappeared.
He turned around and inspected the dark workroom, striped with small enclaves of light. The candle flame trembled in the evening breeze. Clarissa’s decision to turn the little room where his mother had kept souvenirs and old things into a workroom had been a good one. But Clarissa’s absence now struck him with awareness that he would spend his last days here in total solitude. He was overwhelmed with the certainty of death; it trampled over every other thought, destroying the trace elements of memory, as if all of his consciousness were silent. Death was terrifying, but even more terrifying were ‘the colonnade years’, as his mother called them, which were already part of its domain. In truth, from childhood he had felt that in some aspect of his soul there was no pulse of life, that something inside him, which was steadily eroding, was already given over to death, and there was nothing left for him to do but look upon it, seized with dread and resignation.
With an effort of will he brought his thoughts back to the meeting with Weller. He had two choices: he could write a report and ask an exorbitant price for it, but he would be paid once only, and the document would do the rounds of the departments; if he didn’t include the conventional opinions about the Poles, he might be accused of deviation from party principles, of fondness for Slavs or Asiatics. Or he could write a report that did no more than repeat the familiar invective; the people in the Foreign Office would decide he was an idiot and reject him. Could he blend the two approaches? The result would be muddy and useless.
He had to admit that the model prepared in the Warsaw branch of Milton was comprehensive. All he had to do now was rearrange it. It included a chapter about the commercial practices of the Polish Jews, which he could now refresh, calling it, let’s say, ‘An Outline of the Character of the Polish Jew’. The challenge was to use the existing material to squeeze his way into the Foreign Office—preferably to a position of influence.
This was a golden opportunity, the first job offer in months that suited his abilities (if you forgot about the offer to serve as personal adviser to that tiresome woman, Scholtz-Klink, of the Nazi Women’s League), and he needed to avoid any false steps. But to prepare a document for people without understanding their aspirations or power struggles was like cursing people in the street while wearing a blindfold: maybe someone would fall in love with your blunt style, but it was more likely you would get slugged.
At last he decided to prepare a short paper that would outline the general principles of the Polish model and to attach a proposal to hire him as a consultant. Only then would he deliver the whole document. ‘The matter will be settled to our satisfaction,’ he said, letting the brandy linger in his throat, luxuriating in its warmth. ‘It’s a classic case of everyone winning.’
…
The document that he presented, ‘A Multi-Disciplinary Model: The Ideal Type of the Polish People’, contained twelve chapters, and was approved by senior officials in the Foreign Office. It was read at once and hastily circulated among the various agencies of the Reich. In just a week, on the eve of the invasion of Poland, urgent calls were received from the SS and from the Treasury, the Interior, Justice and Propaganda ministries; from Hermann Göring’s office; from a man Thomas admired, Dr Todt, who was now supervising most of the technical projects of the Reich; and from officers of the Wehrmacht and from research institutes that dealt with Eastern European affairs. All of them wanted to meet Thomas, praised the report, raised objections, but mainly offered ideas regarding their future roles in Poland. Dozens of questions were showered on him, on myriad matters, like the extent of the Pole’s opposition to accepting the local rule of the Volksdeutsche, the best way of neutralising the intelligentsia, the treatment of Polish businesses and the views of the Catholic priests.
The chapter that compared the attitude of the Poles to the Reich with their attitude to the Soviet Union, which Thomas regarded as the most brilliant, did indeed arouse great interest. An idea was going round that harmful Polish elements, especially within the intelligentsia, sh
ould be encouraged to move into the zone that the Soviets would conquer. Thomas thought this was crazy and he gave it short shrift: the hatred of the Pole for the Russian would sabotage any initiative to encourage emigration. The only practical possibilities were ‘the hastening of emigration by severe measures’, or expulsion.
The Foreign Office decided to hold a conference focusing on the model, and to invite representatives of the various agencies that would operate in Poland. Ernst von Weizsäcker, the State Secretary at the Foreign Office, announced that he would chair the conference, an event that of course would be kept secret, and all the participants would be forbidden to speak about it to anyone except their superiors. Weller was full of cheer when he told Thomas that von Weizsäcker would be leading the discussion. ‘Do you understand? That means that the Foreign Office endorses the document. An outstanding achievement!’ Weller, who had enlisted Thomas, a step that had cost him ‘a stubborn struggle with dangerous elements, who don’t like the idea and like you even less’, regarded the great interest that the model had generated as a personal achievement, and he felt like the author of a great event.
On the morning of the conference Thomas woke up at exactly four o’clock. He lay in bed for a while and polished the first ten sentences of his lecture. When a phrase especially pleased him, he repeated it. Of course, he didn’t write anything down: you had to know the crucial speeches of your career by heart. At five he took a cold shower, and rehearsed the final instructions that he would give to Weller before the participants gathered in the Foreign Office. When he came out, Clarissa was already making breakfast.