Prayers can be answered, and old stories were not always wrong. On a warm spring day, very early, a dark-green car without insignia drove up, a German civilian, nondescript but armed, presented Greg with a package, then myself with an order, the signature illegible on paper stamped with the swastika, that I should accompany him.
It could only be a call-up for the last army of the Reich, Goebbels having announced Hitler’s fury against army commanders incompetent, cowardly, disloyal. My captor’s silence was that of manacles, while he drove through packs of refugees, carts laden with chairs, bedding, lambs; small groups begging help; broken-down lorries; tanks, probably abandoned from lack of fuel. Periodic explosions sounded behind us, horribly close. Herdish, muddied troops sullenly parted for us, many maimed, bandaged in grotesque camouflage. Corpses lay under hedge and tree and those too fatigued to move. No officers were discernible: some might have torn off badges, others had been shot from behind. Roads were holed or blocked by fallen trees, charred lorries, empty staff cars. We passed wrecked inns and garages, smouldering villages swarming with military stragglers. The plains would bear no harvest.
Well provisioned, we stopped nowhere. Once the driver had to pistol off angry, dishevelled troopers. What sort of army could I expect? The night was lit with fires. We drove on, and by dawn I found myself at Meinnenberg.
MEINNENBERG
1
Twelve million displaced persons were on the move, south and west, as the Red Armies lunged through Prussian Junkerdom, massed tanks and planes racing the Western Allies to Berlin. But the Führer still resisted, and the Wehrmacht had counter-attacked in the west. Throughout eastern Germany the Russians were said to be shooting all captives, with more women and children fearing rape than since the Thirty Years War. Ragnarok had demolished Ergriffenheit, enchantment with god-leaders.
Charnal lights covered that spring. Scraps of newsprint transmitted Heinrich Himmler’s elegy to the SS: ‘And what will history say of us? Petty minds bent on revenge will bequeath a false perverted version of things great and good, the deeds I have done for Germany.’
Once a tourist village encircled by thick woods, Meinnenberg possessed a summer camp of chalets, cafés, jazzy pavilions, a pool now dense with slime. A few picnic tables still supported faded, rainbow-tinted umbrellas, incongruously cheerful amid an amalgam of hostel, lazar-house, hide-out, camp, established and supervised, perforce irregularly, by the Swedish Red Cross, occasionally by the SS.
The woods had been crushed to fill makeshift stoves, shelters, latrines, anything to assist and protect the constant intake of German peasants and deserters, enigmatic Balts, Mongoloid Russian renegades turned bandit, tramps with faces locked into fear and suspicion, gypsies, townsfolk once neatly respectable, now twitching idiotically from air-raids, several Lutherans and Lithuanian Catholics. Another New Order, New Europe. Many of us would have been disposed of as Untermenschen by a Reich that had overtaken the Germania of scholars, songsters, princes. I had very quickly learnt of the SS Night and Fog directive, obeying the Führer’s command to eliminate life unworthy of Life.
One man, scarred, interminably coughing, had crept from von Paulus’s army, joined Russian commandos, deserted them. ‘At Stalingrad, early on, we saw a wide, grey mist on the earth, streaming towards us. Rats!’
The sky had narrowed, lost all luminosity. Day and night merged in common crisis. Outside the stockade I had already trodden on stiffened, rancid, sodden flesh and been surprised at my indifference: tallowy face, eyes sunk in blood and dust. No more. Life was less valued than a packing case, delivery of lard, theft of bacon or string. Amongst the sick and hopeless, some women, haggard, heads gleaming, shaven for hygiene, viciously sought red fungus and old book covers to tint their parched faces. In its way, Resistance.
On my second day, unremarked, neither welcome nor unwelcome, I saw another head, thick with a dim glitter which suddenly stirred, quivering with lice.
I could relate only to myself. The Manor was irretrievable, my parents only vapour and bones. I was attuned not to tennis and books but to deaths, the threats from others’ ill temper, moroseness, hunger. At this time, in this abyss, I could have signed damning papers unread, found excuses for the inexcusable, like some devious Public Prosecutor, a Fouquier-Tinville. Only one certainty prevented absolute surrender to filth and savagery: that I was fatefully protected, like the youngest son to whom birds speak, wise old men nod and for whom the princess waits.
Little could be guessed from clothes and manners. Uniforms had been discarded in panic, almost all were ragged, some absurdly distinguished by a gaudy sash, feathered hat, belt, stolen in some raid or by clumsily hacked clogs, heavy but soundless in the clotted mud.
Germans mostly avoided each other, some suspected of SS credentials. Two Czechs boasted that with the collapse of a Polish gaol they had gladly massacred SS guards and Jewish kaputs. One child, almost naked, with scared, unblinking eyes, could only repeat, ‘I’m far away.’
Help from any outside administration being spasmodic, all at first appeared anarchic but eventually, as I scoured for food, committed small thefts of straw and biscuit, I recognized a skeleton authority of a few men and women, the Ten Per Cent Factor, always seeking to find former nurses, carpenters, bakers, cooks from those who arrived daily, replacing the dead.
Under putty sky, within derelict but crowded shacks, stench, hubbub, the half-throb of sterile vagabondage and want, greyness dominated. Pure colours surfaced only in recall of brilliant water, radiant trees, scented flowers. Green was lost in summers that had neglected this desolate outpost: lawn, billiard table, a green evening gown, were as if forbidden. Yellow was maggoty, blue deathly, crimson neither glowed nor swaggered but spilt from the dead and wounded.When, years ahead, Nadja said that Van Gogh identified thirty-seven shades of black in Hals’ art, I thought of Meinnenberg and the elimination of colours once serene.
For several days I wandered haphazardly through the camp and the broken village, scrounging, sleeping on straw, trusting none, my farmyard attire not concealing health and youth, both perilous here, like cleanliness, restraint, an educated voice. Securing place at a communal table, I could hear only braggarts, possible spies, scroungers like myself, together with the pleading, the impotent good-natured, the inert, while children, skinny from malnutrition, begged, played tag, pimped, fingered their loins invitingly. Too many were orphans, were shrewd, grasping, wary, eyes over-bright or almost extinct.
Older folk, first to vanish, prayed, in a whining sort of way, but expecting little.
The most obviously powerful figure was Vello, ogreish, Latvian, from whom I first thought I must seek protection, though was then deterred by his entourage, brutalized men and girls, better fed than most, wild-haired, ready to pounce.
To steady myself, I whispered, ‘Great Wrath. French Terror. Stalingrad.’
Meals somehow appeared, mostly from determined women. Barging for the tables, we gulped down messes of hare, squirrel, parsnip, hay-like bread, unidentifiable birds. Vello was the most acclaimed provider, a professional poacher, mottled by drink, face strung with broken veins and bald as a wrestler. With his pack, nicknamed the Acrobats, he raided farms and orchards, ambushed lorries for military stores, liquor, medical supplies, pillaged fields and barns for straw, tools, frost-bitten potatoes. Beholden to none, he was reputed to have stamped on a dying girl for a tin of tobacco. An accusation possibly unjust.
After my three requisite days in the Underworld, a voice addressed me. ‘Perhaps you will care to help in our labours.’
Gently, even tentatively, uttered in a formal German distinct from the rough dialects and polyglot rumbles, not demanding but enquiring, the speaker was in long, clean overalls and carrying a hoe. Almost alone, he had contrived to shave. A pale, ovalled face beneath hair light and thinning, ‘Hanoverian blue’ eyes, an indeterminate smile. Slender but not famished, neither young nor old but a singular mixture of each, and a veneer of improbable humour.
&nb
sp; At my confusion, his smile was more candid. ‘People are good enough to call me Wilfrid.’
Yes, his German was excellent, his nationality more questionable. Possibly Hungarian, Slav, Jewish. Whether I had ever met a Jew was doubtful. I imagined Jews as wily, exotic, with powers not readily assessable.Whatever the truth, this individual could not be easily envisaged as shouting ‘Fatherland’ with strident fervour.
His consideration drew me out of the human debris of so much Meinnenberg. By professional expertise of fluke of personality he unofficially manipulated the group attempting rudimentary organization. He led in encouraging, soothing, mediating and, foremost of hazards, treating with Vello and establishing a precarious Mutual Assistance truce.
Vello and the Acrobats occupied an old barn, respectfully or jeeringly called Wolf’s Lair, after Hitler’s overrun Eastern HQ. From there they bargained with the main group, offering the hares, crows, the rare morphine tablet. Wilfrid’s reserved cordiality, residue of a vanished, probably cosmopolitan élite, must have bemused the primitive, superstitious Latvian, darkly cautious of anything outside his own simplicities. He was often unseen for many days, ‘on patrol’. He scowled at hygiene precautions, rations, restraint, yet reluctantly forced his thugs to, in some measure, concede to them. Before Wilfrid’s arrival he had ruled undisputed, denying food to babies and the sick. Behind his inarticulate brutishness might lurk deep grievance or hatred, which, should outside relief be delayed too long, might have violent ending. For the younger he induced not only fear but a Dantonesque audace, the chance of a break-out from privation and uncertainty, which the patience, industry, professional skills of Wilfrid’s cabal did not.
At public meetings called to remedy some crisis or dilemma, Wilfrid, with unemphatic sincerity genuine or assumed, would praise Vello’s delivery of provisions, his enterprise, his independence, though privately commenting that the man would play football with his own head.
Telephones and newspapers were lacking, the SS had long gone, the Swedes failed to appear, but from almost exhausted radios we heard that the Russians had taken Budapest, a follow-up army had crossed the Oder and Himmler, at last, and perhaps maliciously, allowed a military command, had been defeated on the Vistula. Savage SS resistance at Breslau, after the hanging of the Burgomeister, was crumbling. Zhukov and Vasilevsky were poised to capture Berlin, rumour insisting that Stalin, Comrade Marshal, was himself hurrying for the kill. The Reichsmarschall was said to be rallying whatever remained of the Reich. ‘Our Hermann’, several were overheard enthusing. Americans were rampaging through France, British and Canadians regaining Holland. The Herr General’s friend, Bernadotte, now prominent in the Swedish Red Cross, was apparently involved in peace preliminaries. Of the Führer, only speculation, often ribald or obscene.
More immediate were symptoms of typhus and diphtheria, and mouths were rotting from scurvy, dropping from swollen gums. Dark patches discoloured hands and necks. Survival required the abnormal: selfishness, altruism, apathy, animal need to keep one move ahead. A harassed Polish doctor spoke of more violence, over a jug of milk, a single pfennig, an empty aspirin bottle; a boy had died, fighting for a girl raddled by sickness.
The White Rose had no presence here, and sexual desires poisoned thought. In a climax of nerves, shortages or Russian arrival, Vello would probably resume power. Evidently, belief was vital for survival, for, the same doctor assured me, Christians, communists and other zealots lasted longer than the disillusioned and faithless. Without politics or religion, unpleasantly naked, I could put trust only in Wilfrid.
He managed by persuasive improvisations rather than direct orders or appeals to good sense and public spirit and had lately recruited, without dissent, a Waffen SS colonel on the run, almost tenderly capable with adolescent thieves. Old hatreds, political antagonisms had to be suspended to avert total disarray, people allowed to cherish or forget pasts best kept hidden.
Wilfrid advised me to step carefully, observe, take stock. Stalwart-looking men could slump into drooling infantilism. ‘Would you like to spin my top?’ a hunched figure croaked, holding a mouldy turnip, from a swing he was too weak to move. Another, with beard long as a rhubarb stick, extended a claw-like hand. ‘Young man, in my thesis on the Romantic Inheritance …’ then relapsing to babble.
Wilfrid began lending me books, of which he had a surprising store. This, once again, made me conscious of a protection scarcely supernatural yet as random and undeserved as Calvinist predestination. Chance, luck, coincidence, though evident, appeared to obey no human rules or, if they did, rules not yet evident. The books were passports to escape from unremitting shouts, grumbles, wails, slithery whispers. I could enter solid mercantile towns, gabled mansions leaning confidentially together over cobbled lanes; family prayers and music, a child racing from a demon and finding it grinning on the bed; handsome lovers and sad wives.
Wilfrid’s activities suggested virtuosity without genius, but, washed up in dissolution and torment, many could have thought that dictators’ genius had intoxicated, then ruined them. They craved either the miraculous or a plate of meat. At all times, however, he possessed a singular calm, a distinction of manner and behaviour, treating alike the hostile and disruptive, the helpful and admiring, as acquaintance of unusual attractions. Already I could not imagine him haggling or counting the change, though sometimes allowing himself a rueful smile, as at a poor joke. He achieved some mastery by seeking no votes, expecting no privilege: the mastery was informal yet certain, its consequences unforeseeable. It made the Acrobats’ conquistador strength slightly absurd, archaic as flintlock or harquebus. He might have been guest conductor of a barely trained orchestra. Unlike Vello, he lacked coercive powers but, by a glance, apologetic gesture or laugh, could trap the aggressive or lazy into joining him to repair a table, clean a latrine, erect a tent. A handshake, grumble, outright compliance he accepted as a favour graciously awarded, inadequately earned. He eased the alarm caused by a huge, unexplained heap of earth appearing overnight and blocking the main gate, by murmuring that extravagance was the prerogative of moles. Complaints, threats he studied with the seriousness due to guests always welcome but apt to prolong their visit.
Once, in a voice like a rusty saw, Vello had demanded that ‘certain ones’ should be denied the cheese he had ‘salvaged’, Wilfrid mildly remonstrated, unconcernedly proposing that the entire cheese-ration be denied to everyone save Vello himself, in gratitude and to fortify him for further public-spirited enterprise. Many laughed, some applauded, the bruiser stood puzzled, calculating, then, accepting the acclaim for himself almost, but not quite, smiled, then stamped away, leaving the cheese to be distributed in the usual manner.
I doubtless exaggerated Wilfrid’s merits, overlooking his failures, though, in Europe, 1945, anything was believable, drastic changes of fortune commonplace, even the miraculous might become typical. To encourage or reprove, he might feign incomprehension of the workings of a stolen watch, the meaning of some dialect, some obscenity, the identity of a coin dubiously acquired, the explanations, patiently endured, establishing a relationship. On his feet for hours, he seldom showed fatigue, as he stooped to examine some nauseating pile, as if it were not only interesting but refreshing, or stepped over filth without seeming to notice it, while, beneath his overalls, remaining almost debonair in blue linen tunic and well-pressed trousers. I would move alongside him, amongst fetid cabins, shelters constructed from branches, rotten coats, Red Cross blankets and the tinted umbrellas of forgotten summers. Constantly pausing, greeted by waves, frowns, small coughs or with smouldering resentment, he would praise, comfort, enquire, promise, salute an urchin squatting beneath another umbrella. On such occasions he could look younger than he probably was, an illusion strengthened by his delight at an ancient jest or picturesque curse. His laugh could be noisy, adolescent, his smile much older, subtle, not altogether trustworthy.
‘We live,’ he was anxious to subdue any hint of superiority, ‘in comedy. You might say
farce. Trapdoors, caricaturing mirrors, straightforward deceit.’ As so often, he seemed about to reveal something further, though always holding back.
2
Adopted on to Wilfrid’s staff, I first worked in the sorry hospital, an old sports pavilion, fumbling with bandages, misapplying a syringe, diffidently stroking a Latvian girl lamenting not her dead baby but a stolen bracelet, itself useful currency in a barter economy, flesh the highest asset. One discovery was of peasant mothers refusing to wash infants’ hands lest they become thieves. This, Wilfrid at last said, very apologetic, did not markedly justify my presence, and he then requested, as a favour, that I should try my hand, no, tax my patience, at teaching. ‘It might amuse you …’
Several volunteers gave lessons in a dilapidated summer-house, ill-attended yet oddly resilient. Wilfrid himself gave language instruction, in German, French, more rarely English, sometimes attending other classes like a pupil, sitting on packing-case or floor with others of all ages, curious, care-nothing, at times eager.
I began awkwardly, to a circle of adults and children, some prepared to jeer, disrupt, slink away. I read aloud or recited half-remembered poems, anecdotes, flakes of history, inviting questions, often insolent, over-simple: did angels fart; was Jesus left-handed; were Greenlanders green? Later, I encouraged them to speak, about personal habits, memories, Utopian fancies, factual accounts of work, trees, wheels. I found myself accepted, less for this than from making a football, irregularly sphered, from tarred strings and broken boot-soles.Wilfrid did not stimulate me by disclosing Tolstoy’s confession that, when seeing school children, dirty, ragged but sometimes angelic, he was filled with restlessness and terror, as though at people drowning. I saw no angels, only the scrawny, suspicious, puzzled, some as if already drowned, staring and indecipherable. Nevertheless, numbers increased. Wilfrid was appreciative. ‘But tell them more stories.’ Some I had less to teach words than help recover them. Speech could be dangerous.
Secret Protocols Page 6