Cave Dwellers

by Richard Grant

  Stefan shook his head. “With the Jews, though—well, of course you expect this. Everyone knows you can’t have Freud, you can’t have Adler, that’s a given. But how about Jung, can you have him? One bureau says yes, because he’s a proper Aryan. Another says no, because he’s still a psychoanalyst, and psychoanalysis is a Jewish invention. You don’t know which bureau to—”

  “And there were seventeen different bureaus, can you believe that? Seventeen different authorities telling you what to do, all competing to be the most zealous, the most pure. But it was even worse than that. There was an ‘asphalt’ list—these were simply banned, discarded—but also there was a ‘poison’ list. Anyone requesting these titles must be reported.”

  “It reached a point,” said Stefan, “at which only one policy was safe: get rid of everything. Clear the shelves until nothing’s left but approved authors. Any doubtful case becomes a no. Proust? He’s French and queer, so he’s gone. Alain-Fournier? He’s not queer but he’s French, so maybe he knows Proust—I’m not joking, this is how people thought. What serious professional can work like this?”

  “What decent human being?” said Lena, looking from Oskar to Leo imploringly.

  “Anyway,” said Stefan, slapping his knee, “that’s just how it was. And so we left.”

  “You came over together?” Leo asked.

  Lena smiled. “I pretended to be his wife. We had papers drawn up. Under German law, we’re actually married.”

  Stefan said nothing. This, apparently, wasn’t something he cared to talk about. He turned away to pour himself another glass of wine; the Riesling was good, high-toned and crisp. Oskar knew a little about wine from his training at Lichterfelde, those evenings you were required to spend at staged and stuffy gatherings, learning how a German officer comported himself in society.

  “But you know,” Lena said, “the funny thing is, we weren’t even really friends. Stefan and I, we were just…we knew each other from work. We got along fine as colleagues, but we never spoke about anything. Not the poison list, not the Nazis, not the little men from the agencies who came in to verify compliance. Nothing, really. Yet somehow—”

  “You just know,” said Stefan, angry now. “You know who is what. You can tell by looking at them. The way their eyes move, the things they laugh at, how they watch people.”

  Oskar remembered. “That’s true.”

  Lena went on: “One day Stefan just asked me. This was only a few months ago. He’s going to America, do I want to come along? He explained how it would work. The make-believe marriage, everything. I was so surprised and…grateful.” She gave Stefan a tender look, which he ignored. “And so now here we are. The state of Maryland. Librarians in exile. Who could possibly imagine such a thing?”

  In a sane world, she meant. In this room, everyone could imagine it very easily.

  “Excuse me,” said Leo loudly. “This is all really interesting but…am I to understand that you people can get our Oskar back to Germany?”

  Boom—out with it. Leo’s forte. There was a moment of silence, an invisible regrouping; then their host, Gregor, said, “We’re willing to help. All of us. But under strict conditions. First, you must be completely truthful with us. There are risks involved—I don’t need to tell you that. We need to be certain whom we’re dealing with.”

  “I’ll be truthful,” Oskar assured him. “I give you my word.”

  “As an officer and a gentleman?” Stefan asked rather mincingly.

  “As a German. The same as you.”

  Leo asked Gregor, “Who’s this we?”

  He started to answer, but Stefan cut in: “I’m sorry, perhaps I gave you the wrong impression. I told you that in Weimar, as a librarian, I wasn’t political. Over here, it’s different.”

  “We’re all political now,” said Lena. “To the extent we can be, so far away. Perhaps you’ve heard, Herr Leutnant, of the SOPADE?”

  Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands im Exil. The principal left-wing opposition party, operating now from abroad. Oskar knew a little, as everyone did. Now these people told him more, though probably not everything.

  They told him about the headquarters in Prague, the offices in other cities, and cells everywhere, even in Germany. The newspaper Neuer Vorwärts, distributed to the exile community and smuggled bravely into the Reich. And—to Oskar the most interesting part—the “Blue Papers,” a series of reports on conditions inside Germany, compiled from data provided by thousands of informants, some of them well-placed, most just ordinary people taking notes on what they saw and heard around them.

  “And what do these Blue Papers tell you?” Leo asked. “How exactly are the conditions inside Germany?”

  “They still love him,” said Stefan. “After everything that’s happened, the people still support the regime, and Hitler himself remains overwhelmingly popular. You have to wonder just how stupid people are.”

  “You can’t blame the people,” said Lena. “Not the ordinary workers. They only know what they read in the papers, or what they—”

  Leo cut in: “What about the Jews? Do your reports talk about the Jews?”

  “They do,” said Gregor, his expression turning grim. “Things are getting worse all the time, and yet so many remain. It’s not easy to get out, of course—but many don’t even try. They’re waiting for all this to pass, I suppose. Bad things have happened before. Terrible times come and go. They don’t believe the Nazi time is really so different.”

  “You see?” said Stefan, straight at Leo. “People are stupid. Even Jews are stupid.”

  Leo started to reply but in the end only gave him a sad smile. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “You can’t believe that,” said Lena. “Not really. Not as a true Socialist.”

  “So I guess I’m not a true Socialist anymore.”

  “What, then?” said Stefan. “A Communist?”

  Leo gave them his comedian’s shrug. “I’m an American.”

  Only Oskar laughed, struck by the absurdity of Leo Gandelmann, sitting in a stranger’s house with a bad-fitting jacket bunched up around his scarecrow shoulders, proclaiming a new nationality. Though maybe he was simply speaking the truth. He could no longer be German but needed to be something, wanting so badly to belong somewhere. An American, then—what else?

  “You said there were conditions,” Oskar said, speaking to Gregor now. “What are the others?”

  “The others. Well—”

  “I’m going with you,” Lena blurted. “Back over there. As soon as arrangements can be made. This may take a little while; it’s complicated. But we can start tonight with the passport. You’ll need a new photo.”

  “The passport.” He hadn’t thought of this. But of course it was necessary to have one. “You’ll be giving me a new identity, then?”

  “An old one, actually,” Stefan said. “Mine, to be exact. You’ll be going as Stefan Sinclair. It’s an odd name, I’m told, but you’ll get used to it.”

  Oskar tried to absorb this, and the effort must have shown on his face.

  “It’s quite safe,” Stefan told him, sounding annoyed, “in case you’re worried about that. I never got in any trouble. I kept my thoughts to myself, I never spoke against the government, I did my job. Quite well, in point of fact. I never even officially emigrated—it wasn’t necessary. As I’m an American citizen, it was just a matter of booking a ticket and getting my visa stamped. I gave them a story about an illness in the family, a paternal uncle…but the point is, I can return at any time. You know how it goes—‘the call of the homeland.’ You’ll be welcomed, Herr Leutnant, as a patriot.”

  Oskar nodded in acceptance—a new mission, a new cover identity. He looked at Lena. “And you’ll be going too? As my…escort? My contact with the underground?”

  She smiled at him oddly. He glanced around to find the others also smiling, as though he alone had missed something.

  “What?” he said, frowning, resisting embarrassment.

&nbs
p; “As your wife,” Lena said.

  PATRIOTS OF THE WRONG ERA

  BERLIN, PRINZ-ALBRECHT-STRASSE: MAY 1938

  Nostalgic music on the phonograph: “Irgendwo auf der Welt,” a tune made vastly popular by the Comedian Harmonists back in the twenties, dripping with the schmaltz of that era as well as the despair.

  Somewhere in the world

  My road to heaven begins;

  Somewhere, somehow, sometime.

  The singing group had disbanded, its two Jewish members fleeing abroad—but the Schlager, the hits, played on, in a misty German twilight of dance halls and wedding receptions and, most curiously, this tall-windowed third-floor office at the RSHA, the Reich Security Headquarters, demesne of Reinhard Heydrich, a hive of black-coated scholars and lawyers and analysts and filing clerks. “Desk murderers,” Berliners called them.

  While the phonograph spun, the naval officer known to his friends as Jaap wondered again, as he had all week, just what he was doing here, why they’d summoned him—though perhaps that was overstating it. The invitation had been lightly proffered, as though on a whim, over drinks at the Yugoslav embassy, one senior intelligence officer to another. The other man—name Kohlwasser, rank colonel, though Jaap had never seen him in uniform—had said, “You must drop by my office someday soon,” adding slyly, “I’d love to compare notes with you. I think we may have a case or two in common; what a shame if we were to duplicate our efforts.”

  Jaap dutifully reported the encounter. His superiors spent a couple of days deciding that, yes, it did rise to the level of an “approach,” and therefore he must respond to it; because coming from the SD, this was quite peculiar.

  What wasn’t, though? The whole outfit was odd, a stark contrast with its sister service, the Geheime Staatspolizei. With the Gestapo you knew where you stood and took it for granted that your name was in a file somewhere. With the SD you knew nothing, not even what they were about, fundamentally. “Security Service”—that could mean anything at all. One branch conspired to undermine hostile governments while another compiled data on the number of people shirking traffic fines. There was a Büro called the Race Ancestry Office that funded archaeological digs of proto-German settlements and vetted long-dead poets for weak, effeminate tendencies. Another, devoted to “German Christianity,” redacted the Bible to eliminate traces of Hebrew poison. And somewhere in this building—Jaap had it on good authority—a full Brigadegeneral called Weisstor concerned himself single-mindedly with restoring the lost Wotanic priesthood. That was national security for you, in this sixth year of the eternal Reich.

  The big, loping, phlegmatic sort, Jaap sat quite still on the leather sofa that took up a whole wall of Kohlwasser’s office while his host kept up a thin pretense of being occupied on the telephone. “Yes, I know, Schmundt, the fool has been badgering me all week about this idiotic paper. You can tell him we’ll send it as soon as it’s ready—gift-wrapped, by special delivery! What’s that, Schmundt? Please speak up, I’ve got a gentleman waiting here.” It was all for show, but it gave Jaap time to glance over the periodicals arranged with seeming artlessness over a wide coffee table, the international touch heavily on display: Paris-Soir, a couple of Swiss dailies, Life magazine, The Times Literary Supplement and, tucked not quite out of sight, the real catch: Neuer Vorwärts, the journal of the exiled Social Democrats.

  This was so heavy-handed that Jaap had to restrain himself from smiling. Look what a liberal fellow I am! See all these Western magazines! And this lovely music—they don’t write songs like that anymore!

  He looked up to find that Kohlwasser had rung off at last and was watching him with an expression that was perhaps too open-eyed, too amenable. This wasn’t a social occasion. I think we may have a case or two in common.

  “Do you smoke?” Kohlwasser asked, pushing a silver cigarette case across a desk that was otherwise bare except for a few papers in a single neat stack. The top sheet, apparently a routing slip, was printed on blue stock and bore a series of scrawled initials in small square boxes. All in order.

  Smoke or don’t smoke: the important thing was not to hesitate or betray any uncertainty. “Thank you,” Jaap said, a gentleman’s way of declining. Kohlwasser nodded but left the cigarettes lying there, as one might do at the start of an interrogation. You’ll want to later, the gesture signified.

  A delicate protocol governed meetings like this. There was no official rivalry between the SD and the Abwehr, the intelligence arm of the General Staff. At the same time, there was scant direct liaison and even less collegiality. In theory, their respective missions didn’t overlap—each served the Reich in its own special realm, civilian on this side, military on the other. No one believed it, but all agreed on the utility of maintaining the pretense. That was point one. Point two was reciprocity. You had to assume, in these circumstances, that the other party was trawling for information—of a very particular sort—so your goal was to yield it as sparingly as possible while extracting the maximum payment in kind.

  On the phonograph, the needle reached the end of its spiral, and by some clever mechanism the playing arm lifted itself from the platter and a switch turned the drive motor off. Ingenious! Kohlwasser gave it an appreciative glance and, waxing expansive, spread his palms wide and leaned back in his chair. “It is a sadness, isn’t it,” he said, “that so many of our most gifted citizens should choose to place themselves on the wrong side of history? In these great days, the German Volk should move forward as one.”

  “If you mean this singing group,” Jaap said, “I should think it’s more a question of placing themselves on the safe side of the border.”

  Kohlwasser deflected this provocation with a faint smile. A man confident enough to display Neuer Vorwärts on his coffee table could afford to be indulgent. Still, the message appeared to have gotten through: Jaap, too, was confident, and didn’t plan to speak in slogans. Kohlwasser was happy to continue in the same vein. “That’s not really what disheartens me. A few popular singers more or less, who even notices? Though my wife, you know, she was fond of them. ‘Veronika,’ ‘Schlaf, mein Liebling’—she would hum them around the house. And why not? It’s harmless stuff. You’d need a trained ear to detect the racial element there. Certainly it’s no Mahler, with corruption oozing from every note. Anyway, you can’t blame a Jew for being a Jew, wouldn’t you agree? You just acknowledge the fact and treat him accordingly. No, what disheartens me—quite saddens me, really—is when a German chooses not to be German. When one of our own racial comrades refuses to think and feel and act according to the natural dictates of the blood. I don’t care which side of the border he’s on. But of course it’s only our side of the border I’m concerned with. Professionally speaking.”

  Jaap kept quiet for a few moments, wondering if there was more. “You’re the expert, I guess,” he said finally. He meant it as a question of sorts. He was curious about exactly what Kohlwasser’s position was here. The brass tag on the office door had been uninformative, and if there was any kind of internal SD phone book, the Abwehr didn’t have a copy.

  “Oh, no,” the man said, “no expert, certainly not. A patriot. And an interested observer.” Modest words from an immodest man, served with a patronizing smile. He changed the subject though not the tone: “I believe you’re on friendly terms with the circle in the Fasanenstrasse.”

  Jaap considered this formulation: the circle. Connoting an association, a closed society, a cabal. Such a thing, if it existed, would be viewed with suspicion by the authorities. National Socialism recognized only one rightful association: the unified body politic, the Volksgemeinschaft. He said, “I’m unaware of any such circle.”

  “Unaware? That surprises me. I should have thought you’d be a highly observant fellow.” His nod completed the thought: in your line of work.

  Jaap shrugged. “Sometimes there’s nothing much to observe.”

  “Ah!” Kohlwasser seemed to find this a very original thought. “Well, of course we’re not spea
king of tanks and planes, enemy formations.”

  Jaap wondered what in hell they were speaking of.

  “Quite a crowd of luminaries,” Kohlwasser pressed on, “there in the Fasanenstrasse. Poets, aristocrats, diplomats, high-ranking officers—and real musicians, not the cheap radio hacks. Anyone would feel honored to have a place among them. Is that not so, Kapitänleutnant?”

  Jaap acknowledged the use of his formal rank with a faint bow of the head. An easy enough trick, but more than he’d been able to manage on his end. “I’m always surprised when a hostess lets me through the door. They seldom make that mistake twice.”

  Kohlwasser nodded, as though Jaap had said something quite different. His gaze moved out over an imagined view, as vast and glittering as a ballroom. “They say the Baroness is an amazing woman. A grande dame of the old school. She must be ninety if she’s a day, yet so…incisive, so opinionated. And altogether fearless, I’m told. Says exactly what’s on her mind. And if you take offense, well—” He flipped one hand as though dismissing an annoying person of no significance. “What does she care? Her mind is on greater things. On the arts. On culture, on history—all the great events she’s witnessed. And those occurring this very day. A truly Olympian Weltanschauung, one must imagine.”

  He paused as though expecting a reply. Jaap aimed to appear placid, to keep his expression neutral. He feared he’d somehow opened a door and now wondered what might slip through it.

  Kohlwasser warmed to his theme. “Naturally, around such a personage, a like-minded coterie would gather. People who also have strong opinions, perhaps not quite so bold, not quite so fearless, yet willing to be outspoken in sympathetic company. I’d love to be a little bird perched on those splendid railings, listening to the music and the conversation floating through those windows. I’d love to know—I’m being quite frank with you—what those brilliant people are talking about. It’s my job, actually. My job, and my duty as a patriot. To learn what people are saying, what people are feeling, what people really think.”