Berlin Finale (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Heinz Rein

  Hille’s political rise leads to deep changes in his private life. The dairy on Weidenweg was sold in 1933, and he has moved to a sumptuous four-bedroom flat on Kniprodestrasse, whose dining room alone is worth several times the value of the dairy, including equipment and goods and the adjoining flat. This new apartment is the property of a Reichstag member, who is criminalized twice over by being both a Social Democrat and a Jew; on the night of the Reichstag fire he is arrested and transferred to Dachau concentration camp, and shortly thereafter he is transferred from life to death. The man’s brother, who claims a right to the inheritance, is persuaded to renounce it, with threats and allusions to the fate of the flat’s late owner, and to pass the flat on to Hille at a ridiculously low price. Small and large matters are treated in an identical fashion: the adversary is placed under pressure, first of all you apply your velvet-gloved paws to the backs of their necks, saying not ‘I will do …’ but ‘I could imagine that …’, not ‘I know …’ but ‘if I remember correctly …’ If the neck is not prepared to bow, then you become more forceful, you threaten and you blackmail until your adversary yields. But once you reach that point at last, everything is entirely legal, the formalities of civil law are respected with scrupulous precision, and it is an outrageous calumny to claim that Germany is not a state based on justice and integrity. A sales contract is drawn up between Hille and the legal heir to the man who died in the concentration camp, a notary is present to witness it, and Hille pays the purchase price in valid banknotes of the German Reich, which makes him the legal owner of an Aryanized four-bedroom flat. One further advantage of the move is that he can free himself from his old surroundings on Weidenweg, where he is too well known, and even if Kniprodestrasse is only ten minutes from Weidenweg, they are ten Berlin minutes, or almost as much as if two villages in the country were several hours’ journey apart. Still, here too there is a voice that wants to know about his previous convictions, but Hille is having none of that, he brings the slanderer before the court, and lo and behold, Hille’s police record is as pure as the driven snow. There is no magic, no sorcery at work, it is just one of the tricks of the Third Reich, which is not of course discussed in court. According to a secret decree issued by the Ministry of the Interior the previous convictions of meritorious Nazis are to be wiped from police records.

  Now Hille has become a citizen who maintains and represents the state, but he himself does not believe in his civil respectability, he is still dominated by the same impulses and makes politics with the same means, except with different nuances; he no longer drinks in pubs these days, but at Gerold’s or Kempinski’s, his erotic outings are no longer to Mulackstrasse or Steinstrasse, or to the freelance prostitutes on the edges of the Friedrichshain, but to the demi-monde of Friedrichstrasse and the Kurfürstendamm, he no longer stands by the paddock in Karlshorst or Ruhleben, but sprawls importantly in the stands by the finishing line. He is even proud of his wife, when the silver Cross of Motherhood is hung around her scrawny neck at a National Socialist People’s Welfare evening, and if he really couldn’t care less about his five children, they still prove that he has personally put the Führer’s population policy into action for many years.

  Hille is a loyal follower of Adolf Hitler, and one of the many guarantors of the Third Reich, which has elevated him socially, and which he must defend for his own sake. For the first time in his life he sees the course of his life ahead of him, all the way to his old-age pension, but before that goal is reached there are still little side streets here and there that lead to the promised land of eternally unsatisfied desires.

  At first the outbreak of war awakens contradictory feelings in him, it throws the even sequence of his life into chaos, a vague premonition rises up in him and sometimes chokes him on restless nights unveiled by alcoholic fog. But the premonitions and doubts are stifled by the sudden victory over Poland, they lose consistency with the subjection of the Nordic nations, of Holland, Belgium and France, and they fall into complete oblivion when the thrust of the German armies, which had gone into the battlefield to win back Danzig for Germany and open up the Polish Corridor, brings him to Moscow and Alexandria. Hille imagines the holy German Empire of European nations coming into being, from Narvik to Gibraltar, from Archangel to Baku and with secure outposts in Aden and Dakar. He completely agrees with his colleagues and fellow Party members that nothing can resist the triumphal procession of the armies and generalship of Adolf Hitler. But then things suddenly stop advancing, they even start going backwards, in Russia and Africa, at first they are only tactical retreats, adjustments to the front, shortenings of supply lines, evasion manoeuvres, but Hille is still an old front-line fighter, and his experiences from the First World War put him on his guard. Are there not surprising parallels with the First World War? The unstoppable victory march into the heart of enemy countries, then a stand-off and finally a series of retreats, the material superiority of the enemy with their swarms of tanks and planes, the failure of the submarine war and finally the loss of allies? The front lines are still far away, but this time the arm of the war reaches far over the front and all the way home. It is not only the enemy aircraft that darken the German sky, they are now joined by the voice of truth and the conscience of humanity, which, in spite of all the jamming transmitters blocking the enemy radio stations, forces its way through the ether and penetrates the fog that has settled around people’s minds.

  Even more than the external enemy, Hille begins to hate the enemy within the country, the denier, the sceptic, the defeatist, because each of them undermines the foundation on which he has firmly based his life. Every no, every dose of scepticism breaks a pebble away from that foundation, worse than rape and murder are the offences which are described in the jargon of Freisler’sfn4 People’s Court as subversion of the war effort and enemy propaganda. The breakdown in human relationships had begun during the time of struggle, the war had speeded it up, the uninterrupted chain of military setbacks is aimed entirely at a new goal: rendering harmless those people who do not put all their energy into achieving the final victory. No means is too small for him, no path too devious, now he only wears his brown uniform on certain occasions or for official reasons, otherwise he goes hunting. He sits with a detached expression and pricked ears in barbers’ shops, in restaurants and on the underground; he mingles with the workers who swarm outside the factory gates at the end of the working day, striking up conversations wherever he goes; he creeps up stairs and listens outside doors; he hands countless people over to the Gestapo, listeners to foreign radio stations, Jews who have escaped transportation and who are living underground, people who make discouraging remarks about the leadership of the Reich, soldiers who speak about the bad atmosphere at the front, women standing in queues who curse the Nazi bosses. On Elbinger Strasse he shoots an American pilot who has escaped from his plane with a parachute, and at the same time hands over to the Gestapo two women and a man who stood around the American to protect him; he arrests an old worker who is passing on an English flyer that had been thrown from a plane. Hille is a man obsessed, he seems to have been afflicted with lycanthropy, but now he is nothing more than a ham actor playing out his closing scene while all around him the shabby backdrops are being dismantled, and who is well aware of how unbelievable his role truly is. While outwardly, when he is not actually hunting, he continues to display an unshakeable conviction in the coming victory, his optimism is crumbling away, he feels the ground trembling under his feet, he sees everything being called into question. He clings desperately to any favourable news, he falls like a parched man on the Reich to drink some hope from Goebbels’ leading articles, but doom is getting closer and closer, apparently inexorably, it is already reaching out its hand for him. Even the award of the War Merit Cross and his promotion to provisional Local Group Leader only lift his mood temporarily. Hille is filled with rage, hatred and a desire for vengeance, the will to destroy everything that lives burns within him, he knows that he is lost, that he doe
s not have the escape route of the big shots who have for some days now been driving packed and laden cars westward along the military road to safety. He cannot cope with the fact that others should live while he must descend into the underworld, so now he is shaking off all his bourgeois respectability like loose plaster, the concept of community is dissolving like smoke, and the Nazi beast is running amok through the streets of Berlin.

  XIV

  15 April, 10.00 p.m.

  Klose opens the door to the flat.

  ‘Yes, what’s … Oh, it’s you, Fritz. Come in.’

  Wiegand comes in, takes off his hat and coat and puts his suitcase down in a corner.

  ‘What’s up?’ Klose asks. ‘A suitcase? Has something happened?’

  He goes over to the door leading to the restaurant and opens it. ‘You can come to the back room, Joachim.’

  ‘Nothing has happened yet,’ Wiegand replies, and sits down heavily on a chair. ‘But I think they’re after me. Good evening, Lassehn.’

  Lassehn has come in and held his hand out to Wiegand. ‘Good evening, Mr Wiegand.’

  ‘Is the doctor coming this evening?’ Wiegand asks, and turns to Klose. ‘Did he call?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Klose says and looks at his watch. ‘It’s still early, it’s just ten. But now I’d like to ask what’s up, Fritz.’

  Wiegand talks in short, clear sentences. ‘So, now you know, Oskar. I’d like to stay here tonight. Can you arrange that?’

  ‘Should be fine,’ Klose answers quickly, ‘I’ve got an old army bed in the back, we can set it up here or in the kitchen. Are you sure no one followed you here?’

  ‘Pretty sure,’ Wiegand replies. ‘There was a man with a rucksack, with an indefinable facial expression, you know, like someone trying to seem perfectly harmless, and strangely enough he was going the same way as me. It could have been a coincidence, I didn’t see him again after the air-raid warning. I’ve been careful, Oskar, believe me, I know how much hangs on it.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone outside the front door or in the courtyard?’ Klose asks.

  ‘Meet anyone? No, there were a few young lads standing in the hallway,’ Wiegand replies.

  ‘We’ll have to be bloody careful,’ Klose says, ‘Sasse, that bastard, was making a few suggestive remarks yesterday in the air-raid shelter … That’ll be the doctor!’ Two short and two long rings sound in the corridor. ‘Will you open the door, Joachim?’

  ‘Of course!’ Lassehn jumps to his feet, he’s glad to make himself useful, even if it’s just by opening a door.

  Then they sit around the table, Klose, Wiegand, Dr Böttcher and Lassehn. Klose has dealt some cards, Wiegand and Dr Böttcher each have ten cards in front of them, Klose holds ten cards in his hands, fans them playfully and brings them back together again. In the middle of the table are two cards face down, and each of them has some money beside him, a few notes and a pile of coins.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asks Lassehn, who has watched the cards being dealt with astonishment. Mixed with that astonishment is a fearful supposition that these three men may be nothing more than politically minded card players.

  ‘We’re having a game of skat, son,’ Klose says, and grins from ear to ear, ‘a perfectly harmless game of skat, do you understand?’

  ‘To be quite honest, no,’ Lassehn replies.

  ‘We always have to reckon with the possibility,’ says Dr Böttcher, who is sitting next to Lassehn, and who rests a hand gently on his shoulder, ‘that a stranger may arrive, a check or a raid or whatever, and if that happens skat cards are to some extent our alibi. Playing skat hasn’t yet been forbidden.’

  Lassehn smiles, having understood. ‘But I have …’

  ‘No, you have no cards, Joachim,’ Klose says, ‘first of all skat is a game for three players, and secondly you have no papers to show. We have to hide you anyway. Do you see?’

  ‘Completely,’ Lassehn says. ‘Where should I disappear to if …’

  ‘Out the front,’ Klose says, nodding towards the door that leads to the restaurant, ‘and then into the cellar.’

  ‘Is something going on?’ Dr Böttcher asks.

  ‘Not exactly, Doctor,’ Klose says, ‘but prevention is better than cure, and in any case Wiegand has definitely gone underground this time.’

  Dr Böttcher turns round suddenly to Wiegand. ‘Are they on your heels, Wiegand?’

  ‘I assume so,’ Wiegand replies.

  ‘Who are they after?’ Dr Böttcher goes on. ‘Franz Adamek or Friedrich Wiegand?’

  Wiegand shrugs. ‘I assume it has something to do with my work in Karlshorst, but I can’t dismiss the other possibility. In that case … yes, I’ve got to warn my wife whatever happens.’ He says nothing for a few seconds and frowns. ‘Lassehn, you could do me a big favour.’

  Lassehn leans solicitously forward. ‘I would love to, Mr Wiegand. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I would like to ask you to go to Eichwalde tomorrow and bring my wife a message. But you have to be very careful, because my house may be under strict surveillance. Do you think you can do that?’

  Lassehn nods. ‘Admittedly I’ve never been to … What’s the name of the place?’

  ‘Eichwalde, a stop beyond Grünau. From Grünau you can take the Görlitz suburban railway or tram 86 to Schmöckwitz, I’ll tell you exactly tomorrow.’

  ‘Your underground status throws up very new prospects,’ Dr Böttcher says thoughtfully. ‘First of all we need to find you a place to stay.’

  ‘That question has already been answered, my dear Doctor,’ Klose says. ‘Wiegand is staying at mine.’

  ‘And the young man?’ Dr Böttcher asks, looking at Lassehn.

  ‘… is the third man,’ Klose replies, ‘it’ll be fine.’

  ‘I think it may be dangerous to have two people staying at your place,’ Dr Böttcher suggests. ‘I’m also of the opinion that we should have our meetings somewhere else, but most of all it is fundamentally wrong, my dear Klose, for you to keep your restaurant shut on a Sunday. If someone comes through your door, there’s nothing unusual about that, but if people often use the back door, that might attract attention. We’re making a serious mistake if we think we are already in safety, it’s wrong to assume that with one foot in the grave the gang will give up and let things take their course. Precisely the opposite is the case, they’re like mad dogs now, they won’t think twice about taking down a few innocent bystanders. So we’ve got to be particularly careful, and, most importantly, if one of us should be arrested, there should be no discernible connection with the group.’

  ‘Today I nearly had an opportunity to make contact with another group,’ Wiegand tells them. ‘In an air-raid shelter on Petersburger Strasse I met an old comrade who I didn’t know, but who – by his own account – knew me from the old days.’

  ‘And why didn’t you establish contact?’ Dr Böttcher asks.

  ‘This man is probably reliable,’ Wiegand replies, ‘but I don’t know if he’s clever and cautious enough, and I didn’t want to do anything without first discussing it with you.’

  ‘I think it’s the right thing to do,’ Dr Böttcher says, ‘but on the other hand we must leave our isolation a bit more, it is urgent that we extend our radius of action and consolidate our work. In my opinion we need to concentrate our forces, because we are heading towards the end on giant steps. You want to say something, Mr Lassehn?’

  Lassehn had attracted their attention with a timid hand gesture. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘if I might interject something, Doctor …’

  ‘Please do,’ says Dr Böttcher and nods encouragingly.

  ‘Fire away,’ Klose bids him, and looks at him with an expectant smile.

  ‘I’d like to take part in your underground work,’ Lassehn says seriously.

  ‘My dear boy, this isn’t some romantic game of hide-and-seek, Indians and trappers and so on,’ Klose says, no longer smiling. ‘It’s a damned serious and dangerous business, where you risk …’

>   ‘One moment, Oskar,’ Wiegand interrupts him, ‘that alone isn’t the crucial thing, and Lassehn is certainly aware that our work is a matter of life and death. Before we even consider your offer to take part in our work,’ he says, turning to Lassehn and staring hard into his eyes, ‘I have to ask you why you want to do it, if you are driven by a desire for adventure or if your way of thinking calls for it?’

  Lassehn holds his gaze. ‘It isn’t a desire for adventure, Mr Wiegand,’ he replies. ‘My need for adventure is amply satisfied, believe me, but a way of thinking …’ He resolutely lowers his head and tries to catch Wiegand’s eye. ‘But I know what drives me: my hatred for this accursed Hitler regime.’

  Dr Böttcher nods to him.

  ‘Hatred is a good motive, Lassehn, but it must be fed with conviction,’ he says with a hint of indulgence in his voice. ‘Have you also considered who you want to sit at a table here and work with?’

  Lassehn looks at him questioningly. ‘I think it would be with you, Mr Wiegand.’