by Chris Petit
The man to her left sat back, almost lost in the shadows. The forelock and smudge of moustache made him instantly recognisable. What Schlegel could make out of the face was expressionless, as if letting someone else take the spotlight for a change. One surprise was the informality of the pose, given the man’s control of his published image. It caught him in the middle of blinking, eyes half-shut.
Schlegel wondered not so much why the Führer was in the photograph but how the photograph had ended up there.
The torn side of the frame was taken up with the back and shoulder of a man’s dark jacket. Whether the picture had been deliberately torn, as though to cut someone out, Schlegel couldn’t say.
Hitler and a young woman sharing a table in a restaurant. In Munich, Schlegel supposed, a long time ago.
He was bound to ask whether the partly missing figure was his father. Or had his father taken the photograph? And, again, if the guide was his father’s copy how had it ended up in the garage? He stared at it, thinking how as a boy who had spent hours rooting around the garage he would have noticed the guide before.
Also in the same cupboard was a parcel wrapped in brown paper. Schlegel supposed a book. He was right about that – a two-volume edition, in fact, handsomely produced, bound in red leather, each in its own slipcase. As he unwrapped them, he was once again sure he would have looked inside out of curiosity had the parcel been there before. He read the title of the volumes with some surprise. The most widely published and unread book of the century was not what he was expecting. He supposed it must be his mother’s copy, until he opened the cover and saw the bookplate and read the dedication: ‘To Anton Schlegel, in eternal gratitude, Adolf Hitler. Munich, 24 December 1925’.
The book was not only inscribed, it was numbered 16 of a limited edition of 25 copies.
The Führer’s Mein Kampf. Signed by the man.
‘In eternal gratitude.’
*
Schlegel stepped out through the garage side door, feeling ambushed by the past. The sky’s glow was even more vivid. Somewhere must be on fire, he realised, and quite a blaze, yet no alarm bells. Schlegel was undecided whether to stay the night or go home. He continued staring at the sky, thinking about the troubling contents in his briefcase and the eternal mysteries of family. He set off towards the blaze. There was no reason to see it as a portent but he did.
The fire was further away than it looked, up towards Spandauer Chaussee, which had marked the edge of safe childhood boundaries. Schlegel heard the first crack and snap of burning as the glow turned to sparks, followed by the spectacular sight of a substantial Wilhelmine villa being gutted by flames. Two plain, modern extensions were in the process of being engulfed. A wave of intense heat hit Schlegel as the upper windows of the main building blew out, showering glass, and the whole floor erupted.
The crowd of gawkers was small for the size of the blaze. Not a single authority in sight. It was as if the fire were being laid on as entertainment. Three teenage boys circled on bicycles, doing loopy figures of eight and looking cool about the whole thing.
The building appeared exclusive, standing in its own grounds. The extensions suggested more than a domestic residence. A drive ran underneath one, which stood on pillars. Schlegel supposed the building had a commercial purpose.
No reporters or photographers either; just the spellbound faces uplifted to the blaze.
He asked if a local Party representative was present. None was. The three boys lounged on their bicycles in youthful disdain, slouching as they made a point of looking unimpressed by Schlegel’s badge.
Two fine blond boys, with crew cuts, and the third darker with acne and longer hair: future cannon fodder for circa 1949.
Schlegel asked, ‘What’s going on?’
The dark one, who looked like the leader, took his time. ‘Empty building burning down.’
‘What sort of building?’
The dark boy said, ‘A clinic.’
‘Then where are the staff and patients?’
There was no sign of evacuation, no gathering of whitecoated staff or patients in dressing gowns.
The boy took so long answering that Schlegel couldn’t decide whether he was stupid or insolent, or both. Eventually he volunteered that the place was closed for a fortnight’s holiday. What they’d heard, he said.
Schlegel made them write down their names and addresses, saying they might be required to make a statement, thinking sourly to himself: Authority throws its weight around.
Obsessively neat handwriting had been dinned into all of them.
He wondered what kind of clinic closed for a vacation. Given its emptiness, it could be arson and an insurance job, which was a matter for the criminal police. He supposed he should file a report, if only to cover himself.
A dark pillar of smoke hung over the building. Black tendrils were starting to escape from under the roof tiles. The air was full of ash, debris and smoke haze, which made Schlegel’s eyes water, causing the building to stutter and jump like film trapped in a projector.
He walked round the back and found the streets behind cordoned off with emergency tape and warning signs to stay away because of a gas leak. Schlegel passed under the tape. The house opposite the back of the clinic was empty. He supposed the area had been cleared and the clinic must have suffered a gas explosion. Such leaks were common. He considered chucking his briefcase into the flames and having done with it. What did he want to know anyway about his father? The man had been as good as dead; now the news of the Führer being dead, then not dead – two uncanny resurrections.
Flames cast dancing shadows over crisped leaves. The heat grew more intense. Schlegel sweated like he was in a sauna. His mouth was dry.
The back of the clinic had been converted into a space for vehicles. Another modern extension, part canopied, ran the width of the house. The flames consuming the upper floors hadn’t reached down that far but it was only a matter of time. Through a tall window Schlegel saw a set of stairs being consumed by giant tongues that looked like they were being chucked from a flamethrower.
A single private ambulance was parked under the canopy, next to a motorcycle and sidecar, and beyond that an empty bicycle rack. A small, separate side building with a chimney suggested the clinic had its own incinerator. Distant bells at last announced the arrival of the fire brigade; a waste of time as there was nothing to save.
A huge explosion reverberated through the guts of the building and the whole lower area went up. The mansard roof was still intact, with a dirty black fog of smoke pouring out from under it. Schlegel’s eyes stung until he could barely see. Up on the roof he thought he detected a movement in one of its windows, but his blurred vision made it impossible to tell. The start of the roof’s collapse, he supposed. Then what looked like a shape appeared to struggle to climb out of the window, vanished in the smoke, then half emerged again, hunched and lurching like a drunk along the edge of the roof. Schlegel saw it only once more, plummeting through a gap in the smoke, any scream buried by another explosion which engulfed the parked ambulance in a fireball as the falling creature smashed through the awning, to be instantly consumed.
Schlegel blinked, not quite believing what he had seen. A derelict, maybe, or fugitive, or someone passed-out drunk, waking to everything in flames.
He went back to the front and found firemen setting up in a flurry of belated activity. The boys and the crowd were gone.
A single car slowly approached down the street and stopped. Schlegel saw the hatted shapes of two men inside.
Authority at last, and taking its time.
The men got out of the car and sauntered towards him, silhouetted by flames. They wore civilian dress. One was fat and short, a beefy farm boy who looked like a best man at a country wedding. His companion was cadaver thin, a human lollipop. Mid-fifties perhaps for the cadaver, the other about thirty-five, though his baby face made him appear younger. Their walk was unthreatening but against such an apocalyptic backdrop they a
ppeared less like mortals than archetypes of a particular kind of violence.
Ministry of Works, Schlegel was told, when he asked.
They obviously weren’t, and not Gestapo or they would have said when he showed his badge. They made no effort to take control though Schlegel guessed they were in charge.
Fatso looked at him and asked, ‘What do you call a Pole with no arms?’
Schlegel, baffled, asked, ‘What?’
‘Trustworthy.’
The man cracked up while his companion looked for all the world as though rigor mortis had set in. The fat one carried on laughing while Schlegel thought they may as well be wearing clown suits.
He said, ‘You may wish to question why the fire department took so long to answer the call.’
They looked like they couldn’t care less.
Schlegel’s impression remained of men best avoided. He made no mention of any falling body because he didn’t want them coming back with questions. He still wasn’t sure what he had seen. With the spectacle like a shadow play, he could easily have projected his own subconscious anxieties, with the falling man becoming a symbol for his father.
*
The S-Bahn, like everything else that evening, took its time arriving. Standing in the darkened, rattling carriage, Schlegel was aware of the reek of smoke on him. He was bound now to make a formal note of the fire, since he had shown the men his badge. Technically, it was none of his business. Oh, just write the bloody thing, he thought, rather than get caught out. He tried to make the image of the falling man disappear: whirling arms and thrashing legs, like someone trying to swim through space. But there had been no whirling arms. Just the opposite. It could have been the fat one’s armless Pole falling to earth. The legs kicked as the top half plummeted head first. As to why a man should fall that way, Schlegel could come up with only one answer. Straitjacket.
9
Schlegel took several drafts until he had a report innocuous enough for no one to bother with. The fire had not been mentioned in the newspapers, either being censored or too late for morning editions. Any awkward aspects he ignored – such as the gas board having no record of leaks in the area of evacuation. A cursory search had revealed nothing on the clinic. Its telephone number was ex-directory – if anyone wanted to check, he could do so through the companies register or the health inspectorate.
Nor did he mention any falling body.
He cursed his luck. Were it not for a coincidence of geography and had he not gone to check on his stepfather, he would know nothing of the fire.
His final report offered a terse summary of location, circumstances, evacuated building, tardiness of the fire department, possible arson for insurance purposes (surmise; no proof), names and addresses of the three bicycle brats and the late arrival of uncooperative authorities who did not say what they were.
File and forget.
*
He remained preoccupied by the puzzle of his father’s Mein Kampf. The night before, he had laid everything out on the table in his apartment: the book, the guide to Munich, the bus ticket, the photograph of the bright young girl, the smart photograph of his stepfather, and the list. On the bus ticket someone had written ‘Room 202’. A hotel room? A room to report to? In the map part of the guide one of the streets, Nussbaumstrasse, had been underscored in ink. He couldn’t get it out of his head that all these components were trying to tell him something. He looked at the two photographs: his stepfather, more central than usual, with the man in Party uniform; and the torn one, offering a glimpse perhaps of his missing father, appropriately removed. Complicated histories to both, Schlegel suspected, thinking he was bound to try and find out.
*
He sloped off early from work, telling himself he was just going back to his stepfather’s, which he did, briefly, to find it the same. All the while he was wondering about the clinic. Don’t pick the scab, he had been warned as a child, and he always had.
The gutted building, with its scorched brickwork, already looked neglected and forlorn, with the roof since collapsed. The municipal authorities, usually efficient at sealing off damaged property, had done nothing, leaving Schlegel free to walk down the drive, under what was left of the modern wing. He could still feel the heat from the ashes. The ambulance was a shell, its back doors blown off to reveal a deep bed of soft grey ash in which the remains of any dead body were not apparent. He didn’t have to be there, Schlegel kept telling himself, checking automatically over his shoulder as he passed through the clinic’s missing back door and stepped inside, conscious of his footprints in the virgin ash.
The building unnerved with its creaks and groans, as though making a last effort to transmit the trauma of its destruction. The air was still acrid. The fire had swept everything before it. The ceiling had collapsed in several rooms and was still smouldering. He looked back at his wavering footprints that told him no one else had been in the building.
*
He didn’t expect a cellar. The fire hadn’t reached down there. There was less damage towards the front where corridors and rooms remained more intact.
Schlegel presumed the door was a cupboard until he found himself looking at descending steps. Turning to go, he saw the narrow shelf with a lantern and matches for power cuts.
He held the lit lamp tentatively in front of him as he made his way down. At the bottom was a bare space, with benches. The cellar served as a bomb shelter. The low ceiling forced him to stoop.
A second space revealed the same. On the threshold of a smaller annex he saw a solitary female shoe, turned sideways in the dirt. A practical shoe, for the sort of person who spent a lot of the day on her feet.
Some minutes later he left the building in a state of composed shock, scuffing his footprints in an effort to disguise his trail. At the doorway he paused and saw it looked like someone had tried to pretend he hadn’t been there, with good reason.
Eight bodies in the cellar, two male, six female, shot in the back of the head, execution-stye. White coats. Clinic staff.
*
On the train back, Schlegel looked at the tired passengers, trying to guess which ones informed and decided he may as well go out, get drunk and look for Gerda. The rest could wait. What he had just discovered put him way out of his depth. The question was did he report what he had found? And to whom? There were no off-record conversations. No doubt a demolition crew would come and the bodies would be buried in the rubble, and that would be that, Schlegel thought, so leave it.
He found Gerda in one of the illicit clubs out near Wollankstrasse. The venue was a dive, full of smoke and sweat. She wasn’t there at first, then she was, just as he was about to give up. They shouted meaningless pleasantries in the din and hopped to the music. The syncopated, scratchy rhythms compounded the tension in his body as he kept thinking of white coats and executed corpses.
When they left they groped around in a doorway, but in a perfunctory manner. It felt easier, walking in step, their sleeves occasionally brushing, than it had fumbling with her.
They walked on in silence until he asked how she knew about the cellar clubs.
‘Wild fliers. Luftwaffe boys,’ she said; a crowd on leave, most of them dead now. One with a rebellious kid brother introduced them to the scene.
He warned her it might not be safe to carry on going to the clubs.
‘How do you know?’
‘A friend in the Gestapo.’
‘A reliable friend?’ she asked, carefully.
‘Most of the time.’
‘Are you going to report me?’ she asked, sounding worried.
‘I would have already if I was going to.’
‘Perhaps we could go out on a date instead.’
They both laughed to show it was meant as a joke.
A street or so later, she said, ‘As in two people doing something together.’
‘Haven’t we rather got beyond that?’
He found her disconcerting.
‘I am curious t
o see where you live,’ she said.
Now that he was being offered, he wasn’t sure. What would they talk about? He barely knew what she looked like. Their relationship had been confined to dark cellars and street blackouts. He was more familiar with her body in a blind way than he was with her.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to stay.’
She had read his mind, Schlegel thought.
‘Ninety-six steps,’ he said. ‘It’s right up in the roof.’
She was his first guest. He listened to her softly counting off the steps as he followed the soft moves of her legs.
She wandered around inspecting his meagre possessions. The Mein Kampf was open on the table. She read the dedication and the effect was electric. ‘The Führer!’ she gasped.
Schlegel suspected she was 120 per cent Nazi. He looked at her properly for the first time in the dawn light and couldn’t decide if he would have been attracted had they met normally. She had a big-boned girl’s forced cheerfulness. Quite sporty. Pleasingly fair hair, flawless skin and a tan. She shone with rude health. A tiny misalignment in one eye gave her an askance, seductive look.
10
On the Sunday after the bomb, Bormann returned briefly with the Führer to Berlin for a special party in the Chancellery gardens to celebrate his escape from death and to greet and walk among the Party faithful.
Bormann surveyed the gathering and thought: These are my days of greatness.
Most were so caught up in their own self-regard that they couldn’t see what was under their noses. Bormann delighted in their contempt and dwindling influence.
The Führer was on his best behaviour, telling everyone it would take more than a bomb to get rid of him.
A kowtowing Goebbels declared the Führer a picture to melt the sternest heart. Silly ass, thought Bormann, watching Goebbels say how important it was the Führer did not become distracted from their deliverance.