by Heinz Rein
‘You can rely on that,’ the lieutenant confirms, and turns back to Dr Böttcher. ‘Make your minds up, gentlemen, we haven’t much time, and every minute is precious.’
‘I agree with the lieutenant’s suggestion,’ Dr Böttcher says.
‘And the rest of you?’
Gregor and Lassehn agree with him, Schröter is still undecided.
Wiegand looks at the floor for a few seconds as if lost in thought. ‘The Hauptsturmführer you were talking about before,’ he says slowly, ‘do you happen to know his name?’
‘Yes,’ Tolksdorff replies, ‘his name is Wiegand, people call him Robert the Devil.’
‘Then I can’t come with you,’ Wiegand says firmly. ‘No, I can’t do it.’
‘Why not?’ the lieutenant asks, astonished.
‘This Hauptsturmführer … yes, he’s my son,’ Wiegand answers blankly.
‘Your son?’ Tolksdorff is flabbergasted.
‘Yes, my son,’ Wiegand confirms.
‘That’s no reason …’
‘It’s an excellent reason!’
‘I don’t understand,’ Tolksdorff says, puzzled. ‘Just because he’s your son …’
‘Yes, precisely because he’s my son, lieutenant,’ Wiegand replies. ‘No one knows my political past, my unbending resistance and my deep hatred of National Socialism as well as he does.’
‘But you’re his father,’ the officer persists.
‘What difference does that make? Hasn’t it occurred to you that it was one of the first tasks of National Socialism to break down all human relationships and put rigid principle in its place?’
‘You mean that your son would take action against his own father? No, I can’t believe that.’
‘I know what I’m talking about, Lieutenant,’ Wiegand replies firmly. ‘A few years ago he once observed that they would be best off putting such an obstinate enemy of the state as myself behind bars for ever.’
‘That is impossible to believe,’ the Lieutenant says.
‘You must come to understand, Lieutenant,’ Dr Böttcher says, ‘that National Socialism is merely the badge of an unscrupulous gang of criminals. What you previously saw only as military errors, a lack of discipline, occasional attacks or individual excesses, is in fact a monstrous system of murder and looting, a violation of the intellect and contempt for human beings, but we will talk about that in calmer times. So I agree with the lieutenant’s suggestion.’
‘Then let’s go,’ Schröter says, and takes his Volkssturm armband out of his pocket. ‘But let me tell you this straight away, Lieutenant, I’m not shooting at Russians. If it comes down to it, I’d rather turn the gun on myself.’
‘Do you think we’ll be doing that?’ Gregor asks. ‘If we have to do any shooting then we’re firing in the air, that’s obvious.’
‘And you need to hide, Mr Wiegand,’ Tolksdorff says. ‘I happened to hear that this restaurant is thought to be particularly suspicious, there’s some kind of political functionary, Hoffmeister or something, who’s constantly under the influence, he’s forever going on about an office steward who’s supposed to have disappeared suddenly under suspicious circumstances. Do you know anything about that?’
‘No idea,’ Dr Böttcher says quickly. ‘So let’s get going. Goodbye, Wiegand.’
‘Shame we couldn’t stay together,’ Wiegand says, and shakes his outstretched hands.
A few handshakes, a brief bow, then the men run across the courtyard and through the hallway into the street. While still running, Lassehn glanced at Klose’s grave, and for a fragment of a second he saw before him the affable face of the fat landlord – it seems an impossibly long time ago, and yet only ten days have passed since then – standing in front of him, broad and phlegmatic, and looking down at his revolver with a superior grin on his face.
But now isn’t the time to get lost in thought. The little band crosses the street and, speeding up, reaches the station building. In the ticket room, in the corridors and waiting rooms there is complete confusion, flying columns of orderlies, field kitchens, impromptu offices, command posts, ammunition depots have been stored here, but everything is in the process of being moved, hasty, hurried, nervous, old bandages, broken medicine bottles, empty tins, bundles of files, steel helmets, gasmasks, bits of bread, broken chairs and tables, tangles of telephone wire, cigarette butts and tarpaulins lie around, all covered by the pale-grey clouds of the dust that trickles ceaselessly down from ceilings and walls, the smoke of the field kitchens, the sooty haze from the burning houses.
SS military police scour all the rooms, their eyes dart around like those of quick and hungry rats. ‘All men to Küstriner Platz!’ they shout over and over again. ‘Apart from the seriously wounded and medical orderlies!’ Their voices sound like hoarse barking.
‘There’s no point to any of it any more,’ an old soldier says, ‘It’s all …’
A jab in the back shuts him up. ‘Shut up, you old peasant,’ an SS man says menacingly. ‘Get moving, and be quick about it.’
The soldier takes his rifle away from the wall, he fiddles around slowly, buttons and unbuttons his greatcoat and looks furtively at the patrol, which has already walked a few steps further on. ‘Bunch of bastards, damn them all,’ he murmurs, and attends to his boots.
The Unterscharführer spins around and is right by the soldier in a trice. ‘You’re still here!’ he roars. ‘You thought once we’d moved on a few steps that would be it, is that right?’
The soldier puts his rifle over his shoulder and gets moving.
‘I’m going,’ he says. ‘Can’t we still …’
‘You can do nothing at all, you dung beetle,’ the SS man roars. ‘Don’t try to run away or …’ He raises his machine gun and plays with the trigger, a repellent grin running over his brutal face. ‘Bang, said the virgin and then she wasn’t. Clear off you, rag-draped clothes-stand!’
Lassehn clenches his fists and bites his lips.
‘Calm down, son,’ Dr Böttcher whispers, having watched him carefully, ‘just stay calm. I know it’s hard to have a gun in your hand and not to be allowed to shoot.’
They walk down the corridors, past the waiting rooms and the Wehrmacht quarters into Fruchtstrasse. A young lance corporal shoves his way past them, he has a pronounced limp and is holding his perfunctorily bandaged hand up in the air. ‘Come here, lad,’ the Unterscharführer shouts. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘To get a decent bandage put on, sir,’ the lance corporal replies.
‘Balls with bells on,’ says the Unterscharführer. ‘That bandage is fine. You just want to skive. Are you shitting yourself because the Russkies are on the way?’
‘No, Unterscharführer,’ the corporal says. ‘And besides, I’ve sprained my right ankle.’
‘And besides you’ve got a fart stuck up your arse the wrong way, and you’ve got heartburn on top of that,’ the SS man’s companion, a Scharführer, mocks. ‘Get going right this minute, or else … We’re not going to be hanging about, bang, said the virgin, and then she wasn’t. Do you get that?’
‘But the lieutenant expressly ordered me to …’ the lance corporal tries to object.
‘Fuck your lieutenant!’ the Unterscharführer says, and puts his finger to the trigger of his sub-machine gun. ‘He has no say here. Come on, clear off!’
The lance corporal still hasn’t given up. ‘But the wound might … The lieutenant expressly ordered …’
‘Shut your trap, you miserable little coward,’ the Unterscharführer says. ‘One more word and I’ll fire a series of bullets into your arse and you can give up the idea of shitting for the rest of your life. So come on, jump to it!’
The lance corporal flushes deep red, he presses his feet firmly against the stone floor and doesn’t budge from the spot. ‘And if my hand has to be cut off because the wound wasn’t treated in time …’
‘Like I give a tinker’s curse,’ the Hauptscharführer hisses. ‘If you don’t get out o
f here right this minute … Christ, these people are driving me insane.’
Tolksdorff can no longer contain himself and walks up to the group. ‘Chief Platoon Leader, let the corporal go to the bandage station,’ he says vigorously.
The two SS men carelessly click their heels and raise their hands in the Hitler salute. ‘Sorry, Lieutenant, but I can’t accept your order,’ the Hauptscharführer says, smiling in Tolksdorff’s face with restrained hostility.
‘What on earth are you thinking of?’ Tolksdorff rages at him.
The chief platoon leader shrugs. ‘I had express orders, Lieutenant,’ he says, and turns back to the lance corporal. ‘Get a move on,’ he shouts at him, raising his sub-machine gun. ‘There was some shooting a second ago.’
The lance corporal doesn’t dare to contradict him again, but he still turns uncertainly on his heels and looks pleadingly at the lieutenant.
The Hauptscharführer registers his expression and smiles sarcastically. ‘You needn’t bother thinking about whatever you had in mind. Right, be off with you or you won’t know what’s hit you.’ He gives the lance corporal a shove on the shoulder and then turns back to the lieutenant. ‘I would also advise the lieutenant here to get to the front line as quickly as possible.’
The lance corporal has stumbled forward a couple of steps, but goes no further, he turns round again, stands to attention in front of Tolksdorff and puts his right hand to the steel helmet by way of salute. ‘Please, Lieutenant …’
He gets no further. The Unterscharführer has raised his sub-machine gun and fired four times, the shots ring out like thunderclaps in the passageway and even drown out the fire of the artillery and the mortars, the lance corporal collapses and falls sideways, his helmet strikes the wall, his feet slip away with a scraping sound.
The chief platoon leader shrugs. ‘I’d been patient enough with him,’ he says calmly. ‘What a coward …’
The lieutenant and his group are rooted to the spot for a few seconds.
‘Why are you standing there gawping like a herd of cattle?’ the chief platoon leader roars. ‘Do you object to seeing cowards shot? You miserable shower! Come on, get him out of the way, and be quick about it, or this thing’s going off again.’
Tolksdorff nods a command, Lassehn and Schröter lay the lance corporal on a bench. Dr Böttcher examines him quickly and breaks off the bottom half of his dog tag.
‘And you and your men go to the front line, Lieutenant,’ the chief platoon leader commands. ‘Or what are you waiting for? Snow?’
Tolksdorff bites his lips and turns round abruptly. ‘Come on!’ he struggles to speak loudly, making it sound like an order, but he doesn’t quite manage it, fury, shame and nausea block his throat, but there is also something else that takes his speech away, an impotent helplessness at being exposed to these beasts, who cold-bloodedly destroy human lives as others wouldn’t even crush a beetle.
They leave the station, pass beneath the railway viaduct and go down Fruchtstrasse, past the big high-rise bunker and the warehouses, stagger among goods wagons and locomotives, over tracks and points. One-man trenches have been hastily dug here, machine guns set up in signal boxes and on goods trains, a few field-artillery cannon put in position, Volkssturm men, Luftwaffe ground personnel and a few railway police are sitting there too, and SS men are roaming all over the place with red faces and narrow eyes, mouths like slits, their steel helmets or caps pushed to the backs of their necks, sub-machine guns in their hands. They are running around like snappy dogs, their eyes are hard, they knock down any resistance, they crush any willingness, rip apart any refusal, they sling around hatred, meanness and murder, the words spray from their mouths like drool, rough, hoarse, gurgling, they don’t speak, they grin, they don’t walk, they creep.
The Tolksdorff group runs over torn tracks that protrude contorted into the air as if a giant’s fist had begun to roll them up, they stumble over shattered sleepers, fallen lamps and signal posts, they wind their way through the confusion of burnt-out and ruined wagons whose iron structures cut strange figures in the bright-blue sky, the air above them bellows and whistles, shells rattle down, fountains of gravel spray up in all directions, goods wagons burn, smoulder, smoke, billow and blaze, the stench of burnt rubber sweeps across the area like a cloud of gas.
In the midst of the tracks stands an abandoned goods wagon, it has previously served as accommodation for railway workers and is curiously almost entirely undamaged, shell splinters have torn a few small holes in the roof, and a board has been broken from an end wall and the paint, once dark red, has made way for a faded bright red, but the particulars of the wagon are still clearly recognizable: Kassel 16,741 Gh, it says in discoloured white, 15.0 t/17.5 5, 21.3 m3, 10,620 kg, and even the wire mesh that once held the accompanying document is still there, but all of those identifying marks have long since become irrelevant, because years ago the wagon took its leave from its colleagues from Königsberg and Leipzig, Munich and Essen, Breslau and Frankfurt and was pensioned off to Eastern Station. Its premature retirement has kept it from forming a train with its co-opted brethren SF France and FS Italia, PKP and CCCP, Nederland and BMB/ČSD; to some extent it has become stationary, and just as an old seal settles near a great body of water for the evening of its life, the veteran goods wagon has been put at anchor here in the wide expanse of Berlin’s Eastern Station among the iron bands of the tracks and amidst the soot and smoke of the locomotives, and has placed itself at the service of the 63rd Road Master’s Office. But now even the sign ‘Equipment Room of the 63rd Road Master’s Office’ has lost its validity, because it now bears various military identifying marks, hastily jotted in chalk and only comprehensible to the initiated.
‘In there,’ Tolksdorff says, and points to the wagon.
Lassehn pushes the door open. A gloomy semi-darkness fills the wagon, the overcast daylight only comes in through the skylights and the holes in the roof. A few soldiers are sitting on a narrow bench, their feet stretched out, their backs resting against the long wall. One squats sleeping on a stool, his head resting against a lathe, all kinds of equipment are lying around, pickaxes, forks, wrenches, extension tubes, tar buckets, mallets, dowels, spirit levels, winches, crowbars, rail tongs, carbide lamps. ‘Watch out!’ one of the soldiers shouts when Tolksdorff comes in.
Tolksdorff waves a quick hand. ‘Reinforcements are on the way,’ he says, and turns to Dr Böttcher. ‘It isn’t exactly comfortable here, but I’m sure you weren’t expecting anything else.’
‘What happens now?’ Schröter asks and shuts the door again.
The lieutenant shrugs. ‘We’ll see,’ he replies.
‘What kind of unit are you?’ Gregor asks.
‘Our task is to keep an eye on the incoming trains and the discharge of their cargoes,’ Tolksdorff replies, ‘that is, it was, because no trains are coming in now. And where would they come from? The last goods train we guarded has been burning since last night, and the unit is basically surplus to requirements.’ He darts a quick glance at the soldiers. ‘The people are more or less exhausted, and they don’t want to go on.’
‘Who does want to these days?’ Schröter asks.
‘Nobody,’ Tolksdorff replies ‘but they keep going along with it all, and that’s exactly what …’
‘Being a soldier’s like being a dog,’ Dr Böttcher says, resting on a heavy sledgehammer, ‘he wants off the leash, but the more he pulls and tugs, the more the collar throttles him. He can only get out of the noose if he decides to jump at the person holding the other end of the leash, but he doesn’t do that.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Tolksdorff says quietly.
‘There are some bread rolls back there in the corner if you’re hungry,’ one of the soldiers says without changing his position, he sits there with his eyes closed, his elbows resting on his knees and his chin in his open hands.
‘Thanks,’ Lassehn says. ‘We’re not hungry.’
‘Don’t be too proud,’ the soldi
er says. ‘Aren’t you used to plain bread?’
‘If you’re enterprising,’ another soldier says, ‘there’s a nice little food depot over at the Plaza, but the SS are standing outside.’
Lassehn makes a dismissive gesture.
‘You’re not so keen on the blackshirts either?’ the first soldier says. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘From Stalingrad,’ Schröter says, ‘if you really want to know.’
The soldier still doesn’t move, he just opens his eyes and blinks nervously at Schröter. ‘Shut up,’ he says, not loudly, not coarsely, he just murmurs the word with weary resignation. ‘Stalingrad, I’m fed up hearing about it.’
‘Why is that?’ Dr Böttcher asks.
‘Stalingrad,’ the soldier says in a tired voice, as if talking to himself, ‘I was there. I was lucky, I was wounded, they flew me out in a Junkers, that is, I smuggled myself into the plane in Gumrak, then they stitched me back together and chased me off to the front again.’ He mutters briefly. ‘What was left of the front, in fact, because it was moving backward. No harm done, I thought, the quicker we get back the sooner you’ll be at home.’
‘And where do you live?’ Schröter asks.
The soldier slowly pulls himself away from the wall and opens his eyes. ‘Not far from here, on Boddinstrasse in Neukölln, you know, the street that climbs gently from the City Hall on Berliner Strasse …’
‘I know the one,’ Schröter says, and nods to him, ‘it continues to Hermannstrasse, and there’s a big school on the left.’
The soldier almost becomes lively. ‘I live directly opposite that, and I have a shop there, a cigar shop, not that big, but nice and clean, and it worked very nicely, thank you, six Bergmanns, a pack of Villager, a pack of Glücksmann, and a twenty-five pack of R6, a few better cigars, Ortolan …’
‘Shut up, Ruppert,’ one of the soldiers says from the corner, ‘we all know about that, you’ve told us often enough.’
‘He’s forgotten Black and White and Neumann Hundred and One,’ another calls.
The soldier gives the speakers a withering look. ‘Yes, you see,’ he goes on, turning to Schröter and Dr Böttcher, ‘so I’ve come from Stalingrad via Rostov, Krementschug, Kamenez-Podolsk and whatever all those backwaters are called, back to Berlin, two or three thousand kilometres, I don’t know how many, I didn’t check, and now I’m sitting here at Silesian Station, and Neukölln is who knows how far away.’