by Heinz Rein
‘Say what you like, it’s mean of them, harassing us night after night,’ says a railway worker.
‘It’s total war, Transport Minister,’ Klose says and shrugs. ‘Nothing you can do about it. What do you think our lot would do if they could do whatever they wanted … But let’s get out of here now, people, and close the door quickly behind you so that the light doesn’t fall on the street.’
When the guests have left the restaurant, Klose shuts the place up, lowers the shutters and goes into the back room. Lassehn is lying on the sofa there, fast asleep, his breathing the only sound in the little room with the old-fashioned furniture, he is lying on his side with his face to the wall, he has taken off only his coat and spread it over him, he has put a sheet of newspaper under his boots and even kept his ski-cap on.
Klose stops by the sofa and looks at the sleeping young man.
‘Hey,’ he says, and shakes him gently by the shoulder. ‘Air-raid warning.’
Lassehn turns away from the wall and blinks dazedly into the light. ‘What’s up?’ he asks, his tongue thick.
‘In a minute … there goes the siren. Air-raid warning, my lad,’ Klose says. ‘What shall I do with you?’
‘There’s a big bunker not far from here,’ Lassehn says and sits up, ‘over by Wriezen Station.’
‘No, son,’ Klose says quickly, ‘you can’t go there, they’re checking everybody very closely, they’d nab you straight away the way you look, but I can’t take you to my shelter, the warden has the eyes of a hawk, he’s already got my number, no, no, that would be that for you, and me too and everyone else, perhaps … So, right, let’s forget that one.’
‘Couldn’t I stay upstairs, in your flat, I mean?’ Lassehn asks hesitantly. ‘I could promise you that nothing …’
‘I know,’ Klose interrupts him, ‘you don’t look to me like the kind of bloke who steals from other people.’ He pauses, then nods. ‘Right, then, stay upstairs. I wouldn’t go to the basement either, but the air-raid warden insists that all residents are down below when the alarm goes off, particularly the loose cannons like myself. You see, he’s scared that somebody might give signals to the pilots. As if they needed them! I’ve also left a few newspapers on the table for you, you can take a look if you feel like a read. It’s worth it.’ He pauses for a moment and whistles the first few notes of the ‘March of the Toreadors’ from Carmen. ‘OK, catch you later.’ He claps Lassehn on the shoulder and leaves the room.
Lassehn is left on his own, and immediately becomes aware of the extent to which he has put himself under Klose’s wing, so much so that he already feels something like a sense of security. The simple, undramatic way of looking after him, apparently quite casually, even though he just turned up by chance at his pub a few hours ago as a complete stranger and an outcast, did Lassehn good. The perfectly natural way he took care of him, gave him food and cigarettes and cleared a place for him to sleep, without even wasting a word on the subject, or praising himself as a benefactor and wearing his goodness as a flower in his buttonhole, all that did Lassehn good as well, and for that reason he now feels doubly forsaken. It is not fear that afflicts him, only a feeling of infinite abandonment in a silence that clings, as if he is now completely alone, as if all the inhabitants of the city have sought some kind of refuge from which they promise themselves protection, and he alone is helplessly exposed to the British bombers.
He turns to the wall and tries to get back to sleep, but he can’t, his thoughts have been stirred up now, they thump in his temples, hammer in his pulses, chase the blood through his veins. Sleep won’t come again, the weariness, the great weariness that is more a longing for silence and peace and safety than physical exhaustion, is pounded to pieces by his thoughts. Lassehn listens to the silence, but everything is quiet, incredibly quiet, the night is woven of gloom and stillness.
Lassehn rolls onto his back and thinks about the past. The image of his parents appears in front of him. His father with his little pointed beard, cool eyes, thin, dark-blond hair, always a little unapproachable, meticulously correct, entirely the official, always ready to give to the state that which belonged to it. His mother, small, slightly stout, quick with her tongue and quick on her feet, kind, always informative and understanding, and he, a bad school student, not because he was lazy or stupid, but because he didn’t fit with the rigid discipline of school and the Hitler Youth. He was a musician, only a musician, and that almost manic tendency made everything else collapse into insubstantiality and rendered insignificant the demands and necessities of life. The daily battle with school and his struggle with his father, who refused to admit that his son was going to become a musician, his resistance against the mass organizations, against the uniformity of thought and submission, against service in the Hitler Youth and, at the same time, dependence on it (because without a good mark for leadership he could never have enrolled at music college). Until then he had never been able to savour the joyful experience of becoming one with music, something else had always got in the way, imperiously demanding attention.
The deeper he descends into his memories, the darker the shadows that fall upon him, the more painful the features revealed. He closes his eyes to dismiss the images of the past, but they force their way through his closed eyelids. He had to do his labour service and become a soldier, at the same time laying aside his old life. His old life being Beethoven and Rilke, the Havel lakes and singing academy, peaceful shades of evening among tall pine trees and a path between swaying cornfields. In that life there was a sky unsullied by the little clouds of exploding shrapnel, fountains of soil flying into the air and flaming, smoke-filled cities. And what remains of that past? His parents were burned to death, pitifully, helplessly, and dumped in a mass grave in Baumschulenweg, while he himself, always a loner who never belonged to the much-vaunted ‘people’s community’, has now freed himself from it completely, he has taken a step that cannot be reversed. But where does this path that he has embarked upon lead to? Where is his guiding star? What is his destination?
Lassehn struggles bitterly for clarity, he desperately resists the nihilistic insinuation that life is neither destiny nor providence, neither predestined by fate nor dependent on the benevolence of the power that he is still minded to call God, instead there was absolute meaninglessness. How did it happen, though, how did he escape? He had often considered the possibility, and rejected it just as often, before it matured into a clear plan and a firm intention, he was waiting for the right moment, he lay in wait for it, and there were many right moments, but they did not coincide with his availability until one day, marching through a field, he stumbled and fell and one of his puttees was untied. He stayed behind to sort it out, and when he stood up again the unit was already twenty metres ahead of him. He watched after the last man and stood where he was, and the twenty metres had turned into thirty, and still he hadn’t moved, and then it was fifty metres, and it was as if he was petrified, and then it was a hundred metres. He wanted to get moving but the last man was just disappearing behind a bend in the road. Then he had drawn his outstretched foot back and pressed it firmly against the moss, he had been suddenly filled with defiance and all at once he knew: this is the chance, he hadn’t been lying in wait for it, it had been waiting for him, and had grabbed him when he heedlessly tried to pass by. He had first walked, then run into the forest, and at last he had thrown himself into the undergrowth, when his lungs had given out. As if in a daze he had peered into the swaying tips of the pine trees until the cold stirred him once more. That was how it was, it was not a brave decision, he had allowed himself to be impelled, and it was necessity that drove him further along the path he had taken.
At first his flight was only a leap from a train dashing headlong to perdition, the saving of his raw, naked life, but he doesn’t feel like someone who has been saved, someone who has solid ground beneath his feet once more, because with every hesitant step that he takes into unknown territory his uncertainty grows. He lacks the r
obust nonchalance of an inveterate soldier, he feels cornered wherever he happens to be. Again and again the question of the meaning of his action arises, now transformed from mere thought to reality, suddenly separated from forced membership to a national community. He has become autonomous and has no idea what life has in store for him. All that is certain is that he has broken the bridges behind him, and again and again he feels utterly amazed that such a thing could have happened. Often he feels like a dead man walking through the realm of the living, he no longer has a part in anything, neither in joy nor in suffering, but that isn’t even what oppresses him so, for he has usually gone his own way in the past. But he feels empty, burnt out, music is nothing but a memory of beautiful, far-off days, the memory of his wife has faded like an old photograph. Has nothing survived but the fact of vegetating away, the satisfaction of the most primitive needs, hunger, thirst and copulation?
Lassehn lies there like a sick man, closed in on himself, but there is no pain in him, only a dark sense of loss. Pain would have made his blood twitch and burn and erase his thoughts, but this feeling of being lost in the bottomless depths of horror is not pain, it sends his thoughts dashing into the void again and again. He feels as if there could be nothing more in his path, as if nothing more could plunge into his heart. Apart from music there has never been anything there, none of the fiery, dramatic speeches has ever made an impression on him, militaristic ideas always disgusted him, and he always escaped from spiritual and physical violence into music. But all of a sudden he knows that it’s too little, that the music was only a way out, an escape from reality, that in fact he always felt within himself the compulsion to flee.
Lassehn opens his tightly closed eyelids, slings aside his coat and jumps to his feet, runs to the mirror and stares in horror at the dull glass. So this is what’s left of him? Take a good look at yourself, Joachim Lassehn, a good, long look, this is you: hollow-cheeked, with a chiselled, vertical wrinkle above your nose, deep-grey shadows under your eyes, short, bristly hair, thick, dark-blond fluff on lips, chin and cheeks, skin stretched taut over the bones of your temple … Lassehn stares penetratingly into the face in the mirror, pulls down his skin with the jagged knife of self-laceration, frees the flesh from the skull and sees the death’s head with empty eye sockets and bared cheekbones.
Lassehn raises his fist to shatter the vision, but his hand falls weakly down. What is he? A dead man who can’t bear the sight of his own skull, stripped of all living accretions? A dead man (albeit this side of Lethe), who doesn’t dare to give up the last pitiful scrap of life? A dead man who knows he is already beaten, but still tries to avoid the scythe-stroke of death that will finish him off once and for all?
Lassehn slumps onto a chair and hides his face in his hands, his lungs wheeze as if after a violent run.
‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘No, no!’ he cries out to himself and jumps to his feet. ‘No!’ he roars at his reflection, and turns his back to him.
Then his eye falls on the newspapers. What use are newspapers to him? He shrugs. What does it matter what they write in their papers? But he flicks through them briefly, Angriff, Völkischer Beobachter, 12-Uhr Blatt, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Morgenpost, Das Reich, odd that pub landlord Klose seems to think it important for him to stir about in this mishmash of opinions. But was there not a strange smile playing around his lips when he nodded at the newspapers? Lassehn doesn’t even pick the papers up, and only now does he notice that certain articles are marked in red.
I want to see what’s so interesting and important that it attracted your red pen.
There’s the Berliner Morgenpost from 2 March.
Defiant Stronghold of Weapons and Hearts.
An example for the entire German people: the spirit of Königsberg – fights to the last blow of the rifle stock!
Eastern Prussia, 2 March.
The spirit that unifies the soldiers and population of Königsberg may be heard in a proclamation by Kreisleiter Wagner, which says among other things: ‘Just as the defence of the stronghold of Königsberg has been reinforced, the losses of the Soviets and the difficulties they are experiencing with their supplies have increased. With each day we come closer to the hour when our armies will step up and sweep the Bolshevik hordes out of Germany. Until then we will do everything we can to become better trained, tougher and more resilient.
So use every free minute of training in guns and their care! Your gun is your life! Mastering your weapon is your victory! Anyone who abandons his gun or his anti-tank grenade and leaves it in the way of the enemy is a traitor and must die! Use every minute to disassemble and improve positions! Every time the spade cuts deeper into the earth your life is closer to being saved! Dig yourselves in straight away and claw your way into every clump of homeland earth. Sweat spares blood! Fight like Indians, battle like lions!
Every means you use to hold the position and destroy the Bolsheviks is sacred and correct. There is no turning back! Anyone who is unwilling to fight and runs away will perish! Beat all cowards, smart-alecs and pessimists! If a Führer or Unterführer weakens, then let the bravest assume leadership! The crucial things now are not age or official position but courage and resolution. The Bolshevik infantry is a ragbag of trash. When they feel fire on their faces, the battle is almost won. Do not waver at the sight of the tanks! Destroy them with the anti-tank grenades or let them run over you! Infantry reinforcements strike together!
The Führer says: the last battalion on the battlefield will be a German one. We must have the strength and pride to be a part of that battalion. So I appeal to your passion. Men! Soldiers! The fate of our mothers, wives and children is placed in our hands, the fate of our city and the freedom of our Eastern European home! Volkssturm men! The sun will not go down on us! Hail to our Führer!
Lassehn picks up The Reich, the issue dated 11 March.
‘The Turning-point’ by Reich Minister Dr Goebbels.
The article is too long for him, he only reads the passages marked in red:
History offers no example of the courage of a people, unbroken to the last, being overwhelmed at the last minute by raw force. At the crucial moment an inexplicable power of destiny always kicks in at the right moment, which means that the eternal laws of history can be ruled out of court.
The spiritual power of a people can be very precisely calculated in advance, but of course only by those who are capable of such a feat.
We have an advantage over the enemy that he is not able to offset. Depending on the state of things, it can fully take effect only after a certain amount of time has passed. We must wait for that time to come, however many sacrifices it takes. It will bring the definitive turning-point of the war.
So Goebbels wrote that four weeks ago. And what did the Reich Boozer-in-Chief Ley have to say on the matter? The night edition of Angriff of 17 March published his article:
‘Journey to the front line at the Rhine’ by Dr Robert Ley.
Now the Rhine has actually become the front line once again, and German men must defend it to the death. By that I do not mean that the Rhine represents Germany’s destiny. The thing that I said about Berlin still applies: we will fight before the Rhine, around the Rhine and behind the Rhine. We fight as long as we have a breath within us, wherever it might be. Spaces, rivers, cities and provinces have nothing to do with it.
Beneath the thundering guns of Meiderich, amidst bombs and shells, our work continues. The chimneys smoke, the hoisting cable makes its familiar hum, the tracks roll and people become accustomed to artillery fire. They are used to so much suffering, they have experienced so much pattern-bombing and now they have had enough of the shells as well. At any rate: they are still working. Under the heaviest artillery fire, so that the soldiers have guns to fight with. Anyone who is not otherwise required and has a free minute digs trenches, builds anti-tank barriers or exercises with the Volkssturm. A glorious people, these Germans on Rhine and Ruhr – all of them, workers, engineers and works ma
nagers, form a single community of fate and defence. I am proud to be one of them.
I arrived in Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine as Gauleiter Grohé was the last to cross over in the rubber dinghy.
Anyone who thought they would find a broken man was mistaken. On the contrary! Full of fanaticism and wild hatred as before, when we both began the battle for Cologne, he said to me: ‘Now that we have encountered those cowardly dogs over there I am more convinced than ever of our victory.’ Now I knew that the old fanatic and National Socialist Josef Grohé, whose fists flew dozens of times in brawls of various degrees of severity, and acquitted himself excellently, would give the Americans hell to pay today.
We will reconquer it all for a second time. Not a single square metre of German soil, no person of German blood will be left to them. They will have to make reparations for all the crimes they have committed against Germany. They will be given nothing, and nothing will be forgotten, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!
Lassehn, repelled, lays the newspapers aside. He feels and senses it, yes, he knows he didn’t do what he did just to preserve his life, to save himself from the general chaos of downfall, but that there is also something else that impels him with irresistible force, an incomprehensible energy that feeds on a source that lies deep within him, which he does not know. Isn’t there something from which one might draw inspiration, for which heart and soul might blaze? He cannot think of an idea that carries his life and forces its way towards a goal, he knows only rejection of the idea that they had tried to force on him with pathos and brute force, he knows only revulsion because he sees blood dripping on the well-tended hands and shiny boots of that idea’s supporters, he knows only resignation because he has entered the machinery that crushes like an insect anyone who even tries to break out of the formation.