Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  A chance to relax, or at least to get away and take his mind off his troubles, was what he was counting on from the Mecklenburg army maneuvers in late September 1937, to which he’d been invited thanks to Irmgard’s friends in Schwerin Military District HQ, and yet even the first day was ruined for him. He stood and watched a senior head of the Labor Service pick a fight with some army officers, one of them higher ranked than he was. It was about a wooden walkway that the infantry wanted built, contrary to their own instructions and drawings from the day before, and they wanted it by tomorrow, 22:30 sharp. Wegerecht saw the brawny, thuggish fellow get the apology he wanted, and get it by nothing but stubborn, persistent, bellowing insistence that he was in the right, and Wegerecht hoped he’d never end up on his bad side, and then he found out the man’s name, Griem, and that the name Griem enjoyed admiration and respect. (The following night, at eight o’clock and zero minutes, there was a wooden walkway across the moor, with a kind of handrail even, which the army had no right to hope for.) (On top of everything else, because Wegerecht had let this scene detain him, he missed his chance to see Mussolini, who’d passed through a couple miles farther west. He had been more interested in seeing Mussolini than his escort, the Führer and Reich chancellor. At least Mussolini’d made something of himself in his own country.) Then there was another dinner, at an estate on Krakow Lake, which Wegerecht didn’t attend once he saw Head Sergeant Griem standing on the outside staircase—a boorish roughneck who had learned by that point to offer his arm to the ladies and tell stories so that active officers listened with obedient laughter.

  Shortness of breath, heart palpitations, dizzy fits, decreased performance, irritability.

  Was there some connection between Robert Papenbrock, who had filed the charge, and Walter Griem? The NSDAP foreign organization versus the Reich Labor Service?

  If he knew Papenbrock, the old man would get his daughter to refuse to testify. Tone it down. Minimize. And then Wegerecht would be left holding the bag.

  What about if he charged this Lisbeth Cresspahl with failing to notify the authorities? With spreading a rumor inimical to the state? Aiding and abetting? Under the Treachery Act of 1934? Article 1, Par. 1, premeditated? Par. 2, gross negligence? Minimum three months in jail. Up to three months, or a fine.

  What about that?

  January 17, 1968 Wednesday

  Stalin’s daughter, his little Svetlana, just can’t keep her mouth shut. She’s sitting pretty in Princeton, New Jersey, and still feels the need to respond to the protests against the conviction of four young Moscow dissidents for writing without permission. Does she imagine that a Soviet judge gives greater weight to a defector’s voice than to anyone else’s? Or maybe she wants to defend her father’s intellectual property rights over the Socialist justice system he invented? Under it, countless men and women lost their lives; here the longest sentence was seven years. “We must not remain silent in the face of suppression of fundamental human rights wherever it takes place”: Svetlana Hallelujah told Columbia Broadcasting System News; why doesn’t she tell Dial-A-Flower to send their products to the graveyards where her father’s comrades are buried? If they were buried. “We must give all possible support to those who remain honest and brave under unbearable conditions”: struck her as worth saying too. Next thing you know she’ll be surprised that Isaac Babel’s daughter or Osip Mandelstam’s widow isn’t thanking her for her help. She sees “a wild mockery of justice” as having taken place. She’s got that right.

  Wegerecht was saved.

  He couldn’t believe it, to the very end. His Schwerin friends (especially Theo Swantenius, the lawyer among the four brothers) turned out to have a direct line to a Reich ministry, and everything came through loud and clear but was anything but, so everything looked just as treacherous as before, without even a promise of promotion in it. By this point it was too late to drag née von Oertzen into the situation—he had Gisela bring his breakfast as early as he now woke up, so that he’d still see his children but not his wife. One time his mind wandered and he thought the maid was his wife, and sighed; but Gisela was from Thuringia, so she couldn’t circulate news of the district court head judge’s condition to any interested parties in the Jerichow area, or even in Gneez.

  The first clue came in the form of a reprimand: Could the presiding judge please bethink himself of the names of the accused. Since when are witnesses taken into custody while the accused are left running around, etc.

  Wegerecht couldn’t work up the nerve to send Semig home. He decided this meant he should lock up Warning and Hagemeister. That was in the last third of October.

  Things with Kraczinski went as expected. The prosecutor had only wanted to give Wegerecht time to get on board with the charges, and he quickly, almost contemptuously, dismissed the judge’s new ideas regarding how to conduct the investigation. Kraczinski was confident. Wegerecht didn’t like that, nor his fat pursed lips, his crafty looks, his contented humming. There was something calculating about Kraczinski. He had worked something out in that sixth-form head of his under his schoolboy’s part.

  Wegerecht wanted to get it over with. He opened the proceedings on October 29.

  He pushed the bonnet back on his sweating head, gathered up his robes, took his seat. His face was bright red, he looked healthy, like a spoiled child, but resentful. He was paying very close attention. Couldn’t see well that morning.

  His eldest son had told him something over breakfast: first period was canceled at school. To honor the birthday of the Reich minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the Berlin gauleiter Dr. Joseph Goebbels. One day earlier and the verdict could have been handed down in honor of Erasmus of Rotterdam.

  While the criminal charges for transgression of the Treachery Act were being read out against Paul Warning, agricultural laborer, and Siegfried Hagemeister, forestry employee, Wegerecht searched the courtroom for unfamiliar faces. He found no visitors from the state capital, neither in uniform nor out. That was good. Unless it meant he was already written off to such an extent that a local observer was enough. It was hardly a consolation to have seen the Jerichowers sitting in the witness room like sheep in the rain.

  The denunciation, submitted by a patriotic citizen filled with a sense of duty to the party and the state and presented by the prosecution, had been properly drawn up, sworn to, signed. Someone had helped, advised, filled in the cracks. But who?

  Warning and Hagemeister were completely carried away by their eagerness to admit that they had expressed themselves in the terms described by the indictment. Both were shaken at having been taken down to the basement with the Jew Semig, as though not only he were in trouble but their own skins were on the line too. Hagemeister was calm, dependable, so like himself that what he said didn’t sound like a recitation but like the start of a new conversation: – Just look at Griem and his lot.

  – Yeah: Warning said. – He and Semig used to be thick as thieves, you couldn’t even stir the pot. Now Griem is head sergeant or whatever with the Reich Labor Service.

  The prosecutor had no further questions. Dammit.

  Dr. Wegerecht was surprised that his palms weren’t even wet, though his whole body felt hot. A headache like something inside his temples wanted out. He pressed his belly against the desk as though he could hang on that way. The District Court Head Judge Wegerecht of earlier days used to wave his arms with gusto as he talked; this one kept his hands flat on his papers. Seen from below, he was a stern and wrathful representative of the law, when he asked: What were they thinking of.

  Warning hadn’t been thinking of anything.

  Hagemeister had thought there wasn’t anything worth listening to. And it was so quiet behind the other walls of the train compartment that it seemed like the whole car was empty.

  Now the prosecutor had a question, but it was so unexpected and proper that Kraczinski might as well have just woken up, or maybe it was that, with the best will in the world, he’d forgotten a firm intention. H
ow had Griem come up in the defendants’ conversation? What statements were made before the remark that was witnessed?

  First: Hagemeister said. Kraczinski waved him to stop, as if he’d just thought of something. Hagemeister had gotten to the point where Warning was working for Griem in his townsman-farmer days, and Warning was eagerly trying to confirm it, but before they got to the point both men’s gazes had strayed in confusion over to Wegerecht, since Kraczinski didn’t seem to be listening.

  Wegerecht called the witness Mrs. Cresspahl. Kraczinski seemed surprised.

  Lisbeth was not the tradesman’s wife Dr. Wegerecht had been expecting—whether the slow-witted, eager, or stubborn variety; the woman who walked in, sure of step, with face unbowed, wearing a black fabric coat with a velvet collar, was a Papenbrock daughter, undaunted, in fine clothes with fine behavior. Which form of the oath, Mrs. Cresspahl, the secular or the religious?

  The religious. And Lisbeth had not only remembered but also reread what the Mecklenburg Christian Family Almanac recommended for consideration on October 29, 1937: Matthew 10, verses 34 to 42.

  She had heard it at the time. (Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.) By “at the time” what she meant was that she only knew the exact words from the policemen’s allegations. (He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.) She wasn’t trying to deny anything except that she literally remembered it; if her brother, Horst, said that that’s what she’d told him, then that’s what she’d heard, and that was the truth. (And he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.) On the contrary, the circumstances were extremely well suited for hearing properly, a Saturday in mid-July, noonday silence, the train from Gneez to Jerichow almost empty, and when it stopped in Wehrlich the wind was blocked by the Countess Woods. She could even hear the stationmaster’s chickens scratching. (And he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.) Sorry, she couldn’t understand the question. Why hadn’t she filed a report herself? Because it’s all twaddle. Nonsense, hogwash, malarkey. Not right in the head. Only someone who’d never set foot in Jerichow could believe for a second such crazy ideas about Dr. Semig or Griem, and Hagemeister knew it as well as she did. (And he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.) It’s nothing to do with protecting Jews, just the truth. (And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only. . . .)

  When Wegerecht thanked her, she stayed standing before him for a moment. She had to be led back to her seat. Suddenly she looked like someone who had prepared for a long journey, for something uncertain. Her gesture, when she pulled her scarf out from under her coat collar, had something puzzled about it.

  Griem—beefy, his pudgy weatherproof face making him look almost cheerful, state power personified there in his uniform: Not that he knew of. Idle chitchat. Poor slobs like that, he could only feel sorry for em. No, he would not bother filing a complaint. Let it be a lesson. A warning. Not that he was trying to anticipate the court’s decision.

  The prosecution moved to reprimand the witness Griem for offering unsolicited advice to the court. Now that was the Kraczinski of just ten days ago—sharp, rapacious, merciless as a hawk. The Kraczinski who then had no further questions didn’t match.

  Dr. Semig, Vet. Med., came into the courtroom with head lowered, looking not meek but like a grown man who’d let himself get caught in a childish mistake and who needed no accusations from others to add to the ones he was leveling at himself. He chose the religious form of the oath. After which he sat up straight, looked the jurors in the eye, turned unhurried to face Kraczinski. They’d given him back his Iron Cross. He spoke a bit slowly, because he had spent such a long time alone.

  Did he continue to maintain that he had not procured any unlawful pecuniary advantage for then townsman-farmer Griem, when, in his capacity as veterinarian, he had evaluated a sick cow and sent it to be destroyed, for which the aforementioned Griem would receive a sum of 800 then rentenmarks from the cow fund (Mutual Cattle Insurance), more than he would have been likely to realize in a normal sale? And without Dr. Semig as the abetting party even receiving a portion of the profit from the abetted party?

  Semig stroked his shock of gray hair as if embarrassed to have to repeat to an educated man what any child should have grasped the first time. Hepatitis was hepatitis. At no point had it ever been in his power to have the Bacteriological Institute in Schwerin falsify his findings. Not even in 1931 had his financial circumstances been such that. . . .

  The rest couldn’t be heard properly because Griem had started shouting as soon as Kraczinski had asked his first question, wild snarling half sentences interrupted by violent blows wherever his hand happened to land, on his knee, on the armrest, it was like he could feel no pain.

  Dr. Kraczinski had no further questions.

  Griem was given a fine for insufficient respect for the dignity of the court.

  Semig was released, in a subordinate clause.

  Warning was given 120 days in prison, for unwarranted suspicions directed at a party officeholder and hence at a party organization.

  Hagemeister was fined two hundred marks.

  Dr. Wegerecht went home, so stunned at Dr. Kraczinski’s sudden change of heart that he invited him along for lunch. He sent Gisela to get wine, in broad daylight, and the joy swelling his heart from the resolution of the affair, and the first glass, was only slightly spoiled by Irmi von Oertzen’s flirtatious behavior toward the new guest, and her asking why such trifles had even come before the court.

  Hagemeister came by to give his thanks. He insisted on shaking Lisbeth’s hand. – That was one ’spensive conversation: he said.

  Cresspahl mumbled a response that might have turned into an offer.

  – What!?: Hagemeister said. He was more than willing to pay a hundred to learn his lesson. He’d get the other hundred from Robert Papenbrock, that guy’d come crawling to him! – Nothin personal, Fru Cresspahl!

  – I don’t like it: Marie says. It’s clear from her voice that she’s lying on her back; since the Killainen family came she’s been sleeping in the Swiss woman’s room, with Annie and me. Her voice is slow, thoughtful, dissatisfied.

  – Because everyone got off so easy? It’s not over yet.

  – Because you set it up to turn out badly and then it didn’t.

  – Bait and switch?

  – Right. And that there’s no ending. And no explanation for what happened.

  – Marie, how could people in Jerichow find out who’d put in a call for Griem, and who against him?

  – You mentioned ministries.

  – They were far away, and even from up close Cresspahl couldn’t see behind the curtain, and Papenbrock couldn’t anymore. The Jerichow witnesses—Dr. Berling, Avenarius, a lawyer himself mind you—had heard so little that someone had to go get them from the witness room because the bailiff forget all about them. There they were still practicing their lines, evasions, excuses.

  – Okay, Gesine.

  – Now what if I tell you something about Peter Niebuhr?

  – Whatever. Peter Niebuhr? An in-law on both Lisbeth’s and Cresspahl’s side. Young man. He has nothing to do with this story.

  – Ah, but what if he does, Marie? What if he’d long since left the NCO academy in Eiche near Potsdam and was working in an office under Eugen Darré, head of the Reich Agricultural Corporation, and what if, while he was there, he’d come across a Nazi who’d been taking bribes and accepting other signs of gratitude, one from Jerichow no less, and had imperceptibly dragged his superior to the telephone, maybe his superior’s superior, with the honor of German agriculture, so that at least in the vicinity of his relatives by marriage up on the Baltic one Nazi would get what he deserved, until it dawned on Peter that the denunciation had been filed by a Papenbrock, and that he wouldn’t be giving his brother
-in-law Cresspahl or sister-in-law Cresspahl the pleasure he’d wanted to give them, and now the instructions for Schwerin had to be reversed, between various different interministerial departments, and then he was given warnings he had to swallow, not only from himself but from friends who would have praised him and trusted him even more if the scheme had worked. . . .

  – Yes: Marie says. – Yes: she repeats, her voice deep in her throat, appreciative, convinced. – I’d believe that in a second.

  January 18, 1968 Thursday

  The New York Times doesn’t let anything show in her face. Adroit and incorruptible, she holds forth on attempts to shore up the British pound, the gold cover of the dollar, and also the church’s goodwill with regard to the Negroes, in which regard Henry Ford II himself refuses to be outdone. Our reliable old auntie brings us President Johnson’s account of the State of the Union (“seeking, building, tested many times this past year, and always equal in the test”), in her own transcription, energy undimmed by her all-nighter; nor does she neglect to mention that Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia condemns the United States for a breach of promise she moreover quotes him as calling “cynical.” She has the latest on the Mafia scandal in the city waterworks, arrested tax agents, stolen credit cards, the narcotics raid at SUNY Stony Brook; she informs us, almost consolingly, that Pavel Litvinov, if he’s not happy with Socialist justice in Moscow, will not be allowed to work there as a physicist. All this on the front page, with no sign of anything missing. Such honest furrows on her brow.