Berlin Finale (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Heinz Rein

  ‘Doesn’t anything strike you, Aunt Else?’ Irmgard Lassehn asks.

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ Mrs Niedermeyer replies.

  ‘This gentleman says he’s my husband,’ Irmgard Lassehn now says.

  Mrs Niedermeyer gives Lassehn another scrutinizing glance.

  ‘He looks not unlike your husband, Irmy,’ she says, ‘but that’s all.’

  ‘Thanks, Aunty,’ Irmgard Lassehn says and smiles with a superior air. ‘Leave us alone again.’

  ‘Two to one, one-nil at half-time,’ Irmgard Lassehn says triumphantly after Mrs Niedermeyer has left the room. ‘What do you say now, sir?’

  Lassehn shrugs. ‘If you don’t recognize me,’ he says, ‘then your aunt isn’t going to, that much is clear. You could have spared her that test.’

  Irmgard Lassehn waves away his objection. ‘Let’s talk in concrete terms and without beating around the bush.’

  ‘My opinion exactly,’ Lassehn concurs.

  ‘I see that we agree for the first time,’ Irmgard Lassehn says. ‘Now tell me clearly and briefly what you want from me.’

  ‘Certainty about my marriage, nothing more or less,’ Lassehn replies.

  ‘Don’t start all that again,’ Irmgard Lassehn says irritably. ‘If you really are my husband, why didn’t you say so straight away? Why did you go through that whole rigmarole?’

  ‘I can’t exactly say what it was that made me do that,’ Lassehn replies, ‘but when I’d taken the first few steps there was no going back, but I didn’t want to continue because you didn’t recognize me, you treated me like a stranger and talked about me in the third person. You gave me the certainty I needed.’

  ‘Not that I was aware of,’ Irmgard Lassehn says.

  ‘You proved to me that our marriage, if we want to give that name to the eight days that we spent together, was only a small episode in your life, no more significant than any of your earlier friendships. You don’t need to get impatient, our discussion will soon be over. I would just like to repeat the question I asked before: so there was no love?’

  Irmgard Lassehn’s mouth twists into a broad smile. ‘What sort of question is that? With or without love, you got your money’s worth, didn’t you?’

  She speaks to him informally for the first time, and it hits Lassehn like a slap in the face. ‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘that was quite clear.’

  Irmgard Lassehn walks up to him. ‘If you really are Joachim Lassehn,’ she says, ‘then there’s an unmistakeable distinguishing feature, too stupid of me not to have thought of it before. You have a small scar behind your left ear, it’s in the shape of a spiral, and quite honestly that is the only mark that I remember.’

  Lassehn recoils. ‘I don’t need to be identified by my wife,’ he says bitterly. ‘Stop it!’

  But Irmgard Lassehn refuses to be deterred, she brushes his hair back behind his left ear and feels the spot, then she takes a few steps back and looks Lassehn up and down again. ‘You really are Joachim,’ she says quietly. ‘It was mean of you to creep in here like that!’ she suddenly shrieks. ‘What were you thinking of?’

  Lassehn stares at her. ‘What were you thinking when you married me?,’ he replies. ‘When you took me into your bed, which was still warm from someone else?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer you,’ Irmgard Lassehn says dismissively and throws back her head. ‘Certainly not about my past.’

  ‘And where is the child?’ Lassehn asks all of a sudden.

  ‘What child?’

  ‘The one you were pregnant with when we got married!’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ Irmgard flares up.

  ‘I know, that should be enough for you,’ Lassehn says casually. ‘Well?’

  Irmgard Lassehn paces back and forth for a moment, then leans against the sideboard and fiddles with the belt of her dressing gown. ‘In the eighth month I had a miscarriage when the house next door was hit by a bomb. Is there anything else you want to know?’

  Lassehn shakes his head. The experience of those eight days, which previously burned within him every time it came to mind, has now shrunk down for him into the insignificant encounter that it was for Irmgard, it has lost the mysterious, marvellous power that forces the sexes together, it has shed all its aura of tenderness, and all that remains is a collision of two bodies. Lassehn listens within himself, but there is no voice of regret, he is not in despair, he is barely disappointed, he didn’t even come here unprepared.

  Irmgard Lassehn folds her arms over her chest. ‘So what happens now, husband of mine?’ she asks. Where does that leave us?’

  ‘It leaves everything just as it was,’ Lassehn replies, ‘consider my visit today as something that didn’t happen, live your life just as before, let’s see what happens later.’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘Yes, after the final victory.’

  There is a brief pause. Lassehn and Irmgard stand facing one another, their posture is by no means hostile, more one of hesitant politeness, of amicable negotiation, they are only three steps apart, but they can’t walk those three steps because the distance is impassable, a high wall has been erected between them.

  ‘When you got into the train for front soldiers on leave at Zoo Station,’ Irmgard Lassehn begins at last, ‘our marriage was basically over already as far as I was concerned, I went home, and everything was as it had been before I met you, nothing was left, and when I went to bed in the evening, something was missing, but it wasn’t you, in fact, it was simply … You must think I’m shameless now, Joachim, but I’m telling you the way it is, it’s just how I am, and many of my friends are no different. Have you got a moment?’

  Lassehn just nods.

  ‘Then I’ll quickly tell you how I ended up like this, and you may see it as an excuse or an explanation, just as you wish. For a woman the first experience is usually crucial for her later life, and even if she manages to detach herself from it, she never rids herself of it entirely. And that was how it was with me. When I left school, I went to do labour service with our whole class, at a camp near Lauenburg in Pomerania, that is to say we only slept at the camp, by day we worked with the farmers. Very close by was a pilots’ flying school for Hitler Youth glider pilots who were being trained to fly propeller planes. You can imagine the rest, the pilots made a regular sport of invading us, as they called it. At first we defended ourselves, but in the end we let them do what they wanted. I don’t mean to say that it was like that in all the camps, but it was in ours. Two of the girls hanged themselves when they realized they were pregnant, a few became incurably frigid, but the others, and I was one of them, were robust enough to survive it, it was how it had to be in the end, it was a part of everything, like eating and drinking, sleeping and the digestive process. There you have the reason why I see so-called love as a purely biological function. You’re unlucky, my dear boy, you don’t fit with our times, you’re too soft, too romantic, there are no sufferings of young Werther these days, the sufferings of today’s Werthers aren’t treated with the soul, but with Protargol and sulphonamides.’

  Lassehn has been listening without losing his composure. He has so far resisted the idea, but now he must admit to himself that for Irmgard he was just a man picked at random, that for her their marriage on leave was just an episode.

  ‘You can’t be thinking of continuing or resuming our marriage?’ she asks.

  ‘I didn’t come here to continue or resume anything,’ Lassehn replies. ‘I was here a few days ago, but I didn’t see you. It was probably just as well, because I might have been able to pick up where I left off, but that’s over now, it doesn’t work any more. And you’ve been a great help to me.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘Yes, you have, by thoroughly destroying at last the legend that still lived in me,’ Lassehn replies. ‘And that’s good, I couldn’t live with you now, even if I wanted to, but I don’t want to.’ He produces a few dull chuckles from his throat. ‘There are so many women and girls in Berlin who
are walking around without a husband, and who would happily take me to bed. Isn’t that what you said a little while ago? So why should it be you, just because you happen to be my wife?’

  Irmgard Lassehn shrugs. ‘Do what you like.’

  ‘If we’re just performing biological functions, it doesn’t really matter in the end who with,’ he goes on, ‘always providing, of course, that racial principles are respected.’

  ‘Stop that!’ Irmgard Lassehn says sharply.

  ‘Obviously I wouldn’t do it with a Jewess or a Negress,’ Lassehn says sarcastically, ‘my Aryan body would certainly suffer as a result. But what is the situation, in fact? I can sleep with a Japanese woman, and she is of a foreign race, but she’s allied with us politically and militarily. So we turn a blind eye to that?’

  ‘What possesses you to talk about race!’ Irmgard Lassehn rages. ‘Race is the basis of all National Socialist doctrine, you can’t mess with that.’

  ‘Just look,’ Lassehn says, ‘I didn’t even know you were in the Party. Next time, if there should ever be a next time, put your Party badge on your dressing gown so that we know straight away what we’re dealing with.’

  ‘I am in the Party,’ Irmgard Lassehn replies, rattled, and for the first time her face blushes a deep red, ‘but racial ideas are by no means restricted to Party membership, they’re a universal property of our people.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve made an extensive study of the emotions of the mass of the people,’ Lassehn smiles, ‘so that you can deliver such a comprehensive judgement.’

  ‘Let’s finish this conversation here, anyone who doesn’t grasp things through language of the blood won’t understand with reason either. And besides … I see that you’re in civilian clothes.’

  ‘I was dismissed from the Wehrmacht,’ Lassehn says quickly.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Irmgard Lassehn replies, and looks at him quizzically. ‘Since the twelfth of January no one has been dismissed, I happen to be well informed on that one, I’m a staff assistant at High Command. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes.’

  Time to get away, Lassehn thinks, it’s starting to get dangerous. He thinks about the warning against getting involved in private matters, in 99 per cent of cases it leads to complications. And this is a bit much all at once: staff assistant, Party member, personal enmity.

  ‘What do you think of me, Irma!’ he cries with mock fury.

  ‘You’ve abandoned your unit,’ she says excitedly. ‘Good Christ! In the hour of their greatest danger … I’m ashamed of you!’

  ‘No need,’ Lassehn replies, unmoved, ‘everyone is ashamed on his own behalf, I’m ashamed of my cowardice in not putting an end to it before, you for being an accomplice with a wretched gang of criminals.’

  Irmgard Lassehn furiously stamps her feet. ‘You’re crazy!’, she cries. ‘Only someone who has lost his senses could speak like that – or someone who is a traitor.’

  ‘What you call treason is in reality the fulfilment of human obligation,’ Lassehn exclaims, ‘but you don’t understand that, you can’t understand it. Your conscience has been systematically dulled, numbed, confused, your ears have been tuned only to a single note, your eyes fixed on a single point, you think you are living when in fact you are being lived, you think you are thinking, but you are merely thinking machines …’

  ‘Stop it!’ says Irmgard Lassehn angrily.

  A harsh smile forms on Lassehn’s lips. ‘That’s your life,’ he continues unperturbed, ‘submitting to orders, disconnecting your own will completely, becoming a cog in the murderous machinery, that’s your life, the absolute refusal to shape it meaningfully yourself and determine the course of your existence. You have become an apathetic and basically an amorphous mass …’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this!’ Irmgard Lassehn shrieks. ‘I – don’t – want – to – hear – any – more – of – this!’

  ‘Does it ring in your ears like the trumpets of the Day of Judgement?,’ Lassehn asks insistently. ‘Does it break through the armour of emotionlessness that you think is invulnerable? Is there a spark of humanity in you that is fanned and burning you inside?’

  ‘Whether you are right or not is quite irrelevant,’ Irmgard Lassehn says, and looks at him menacingly. ‘We are where we are and it doesn’t matter how we got there. There’s only one thing to do, which is to fight and fight again to avert the fate that threatens us.’

  Lassehn smiles malevolently. ‘Because you have committed a murder, in order to remain undiscovered you must commit a second to escape retaliation, you must line them up, murder after murder, there is no turning back until … yes, until it’s your turn.’

  ‘There is no agreement between us,’ says Irmgard Lassehn.

  ‘Yes,’ Lassehn agrees, ‘there is none. Where is my suitcase? I would like to take it with me.’

  She looks at him, a hard, piercing gaze suddenly in her eyes. ‘Personal concerns must now be silenced,’ she says slowly as if to give her words a particular significance. ‘I will give you up to the next patrol, I will not let you out of my sight. If we have reached a situation whereby the enemy is deep within our country, then it’s the fault of people like you.’

  Lassehn laughs darkly a couple of times. Then he says threateningly, ‘My dear child, I have a revolver with six bullets in it.’ He takes the gun out of his pocket and holds it in the flat of his hand. ‘It would be a shame to damage that body of yours, which is so gifted in the art of love.’

  Irmgard Lassehn takes a step back, her face has turned completely pale, as if the rouge and powder had been absorbed by her skin.

  ‘Where is my suitcase?’ Lassehn asks and puts the revolver in his right hand.

  ‘In the hall,’ Irmgard Lassehn says, her lips trembling. ‘We put it …’

  ‘Fine,’ Lassehn says dismissively and walks slowly to the door. ‘If you try to open the window and set your people on me, that would mean certain death for me. As a matter of fact I’ve brought a few of my own people with me, they’re waiting in the hallway of the building and on the other side of the street, they’re reckless chaps and excellent shots. It would be a good idea for you to moderate your behaviour accordingly.’

  Irmgard Lassehn leans exhaustedly against the gable. ‘Go,’ she says, her voice fading away. ‘Please go!’

  At that moment Lassehn almost feels a little sorry for her, he turns round again in the doorway. ‘How should I take my leave of you now?,’ he asks. ‘See you? No, I don’t want to see you again, and you probably don’t want to either. Good day to you?’ He laughs again briefly. ‘You won’t experience any good days in the Third Reich once the Russian guns are firing at Berlin. So: Heil Hitler!’

  III

  19 April

  ‘What follows is a speech by Reich Minister Dr Goebbels on the eve of the Führer’s birthday.’

  For a few seconds the only sound is the hum of the electrical current, then the nasal Rhineland voice begins:

  ‘At the moment of the war when – so it seems – all forces of hate and destruction have been gathered once again, perhaps for the final time, in the west, the east, the south-east, and the south, seeking to break through our front and give the death blow to the Reich, I once again speak to the German people on the eve of 20 April about the Führer, just as I have done every year since 1933.

  I can only say that the age, in all its dark and wounded greatness, has found its only worthy representative in the Führer. The fact that Germany yet lives, that Europe and the Western world, with their culture and civilization, have not yet fallen into the dark abyss that looms before us, is thanks to him alone. He will be the man of this century.

  But if it is manly and German, as Führer of a great and brave people to depend wholly on oneself in this struggle, relying on one’s own strength and certainty as well as the help of God in the face of an enemy who threatens with overwhelming numbers, to fight rather than to capitulate, then it is just as manly and German for a people to f
ollow such a Führer, unconditionally and loyally, without excuse or reservation, to shake off all feelings of weakness and uncertainty, to trust in the good star that is above him and us all. This is all the truer when that star at times is covered by a black cloud. Misfortune must not make us cowardly, but rather resistant, never giving a mocking watching world the appearance of wavering. Rather than hoisting the white flag of surrender that the enemy expects, raise the old swastika banner of a fanatic and wild resistance, thanking God again and again for giving us a true leader for these terrible times.

  The war is nearing its end. The insanity that the enemy powers have unleashed on humanity has gone beyond all bounds. Fate has taken the head of the enemy conspiracy. It is the same fate that the Führer escaped on 20 July 1944, amidst the dead, the wounded and the ruins, so that he could finish his work – through pain and trials it is true, but nonetheless as providence ordained. The German people gave birth to him, they chose him, by free election they made him Führer. They know his works of peace and now want to bear and fight the war that was forced upon him until its successful conclusion. Who else could show us the way out of the global crisis but the Führer. His work is the work of order! His enemies can only oppose him with a devil’s work of anarchy and the devastation of human beings and whole nations.

  So if the world still lives, and not only our world but the rest of it as well, whom has it to thank other than the Führer? It may defame and slander him today, persecuting him with its base hatred, but it will have to revise this standpoint or bitterly regret it! He is the core of resistance to the collapse of the world. He is Germany’s bravest heart and our people’s most passionate will. I permit myself to make a judgement that must be made today: if the nation still breathes, if it still has the chance of victory, if there is still an escape from the deadly danger it faces – it is thanks to him.

  We look to him filled with hope and with a deep, unshakeable faith. We stand behind him with fortitude and courage: soldier and civilian, man, woman and child – a people determined to do all to defend its life and honour.