Читать книгу Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse - Len Deighton - Страница 24

Walter Ryessman often recalled the day when his name had been put forward for the job of Burgomaster. It was a job for life, but he anticipated that two hours a day would be more than sufficient to supervise the civic activities of such a small town. That was before the war, of course, when the world went at a slower pace. Decisions about slum clearance and extensions to the gasworks were referred to subcommittees and the answers were seldom in dispute. Walter Ryessman had been made Burgomaster because of his long and faithful membership of the Party. Now that the nation was at war his primary job was to ensure that Altgarten played its part in winning it, and that took him eight hours a day of paperwork and meetings, with frequent visits to anywhere and everywhere to be sure that the air-raid precautions were provided as the law demanded. At first the hospital authorities and the TENO engineers’ commander had resented his sudden unannounced arrivals. Soon they realized that Ryessman had influence in the Party far greater than his post as Burgomaster of Altgarten would suggest. He also had an honorary rank in the SS. So they learned how to put on a show of welcome when the tall white-haired man appeared like a ghost in the middle of the night. It was part of the briefing of any new sentry, night-watchman or caretaker to be on the alert for the Burgomaster.

The Rathaus was a red-brick building that faced Altgarten railway station across the grassy, tree-lined Bismarckplatz. From his office the Burgomaster looked down upon the war memorial. The fountain splashed brightly in the afternoon sunlight. On the face of it were the names of forty Altgarten men who had died in the First World War. Already the side panels were almost full with Second World War casualties and the Burgomaster wondered whether the base of the fountain would be suitable for carving more names. He decided it would have to be.

The Burgomaster had seen many changes in the Rathaus since he had taken office. The basement which had once housed the birth, marriage and death records had been turned into an air-raid control room. There was a gas curtain at the door, emergency lighting with its own generator, a large-scale map of the town and a smaller-scale one to show its position in the district. Phones connected the room to the police, fire, gas, electricity and water officials in various parts of the town and there were special lines to the rescue and repair service and to the senior air-raid precautions officials in Dortmund. Official visitors to Altgarten were always taken to see the Control Room and Herr Ryessman was very proud of it, although some of the ruder clerks called it ‘the eagle’s burrow’.

His office had been moved up to the top floor along with the marriages, births and deaths registry and the housing department. Artfully they had put benches in the corridor outside the marriage registry so they had been able to convert the waiting room into the office of the Burgomaster’s clerk – Andi Niels, a solemn young man with a gastric ulcer which, together with a certain amount of string-pulling by the Burgomaster, had released him from Army service. Downstairs there were the tax, street-cleaning and ration-card offices, and the east wing of the building was given over to the police, although the Oberwachtmeister had his office on the same floor as the Burgomaster so that he was available for conference.

The Burgomaster went next door to his assistant’s office, noting with satisfaction that in the corridor sandbags and a rope, axe and stirrup pump had been placed according to his most recent order.

His clerk’s office was smaller than the Burgomaster’s and was crammed full with filing cabinets, but he envied his clerk the view he commanded. From this window he could see the tall spire of the Liebefrau rising from the medieval roofs of the town centre. Beyond, where the open country began, there was the Wald Hotel tucked into a patch of dark woodland, and to the north, catching the sun, were four long glasshouses that were a part of Ryessman’s own property.

He was still enjoying the view when his assistant came into the room. He was startled and to Ryessman’s surprise he flushed.

‘Herr Ryessman,’ said the clerk politely. ‘Is there something you require?’

‘No,’ said the Burgomaster, watching with amusement as the clerk hurriedly pushed the files he was holding into the nearest filing cabinet. By the time he turned back to the desk he was more collected.

‘Today is my birthday, as you well know since you have been sending the invitations. I wanted to ask you to join our party this evening at Frenzel’s.’

‘The Herr Bürgermeister is very kind,’ said Andi Niels. ‘I shall be honoured.’

‘It’s a small affair,’ said the Burgomaster. ‘This is no time for ostentatious display, but there will be smoked eel to start and Frenzel’s special roast duckling to follow.’

The Burgomaster was puzzled by the young man’s behaviour. Usually a relaxed and self-composed fellow, today he seemed anxious and neurotic. He straightened a picture on the wall, wiped dust from a shelf and moved around the room. Perhaps his ulcer was playing up, thought Ryessman.

‘If you will excuse me, Herr Bürgermeister,’ he said. ‘You have an appointment with your tailor and I have a meeting too.’

‘I was forgetting the time,’ said the Burgomaster. He nodded to Niels and left the room. Outside in the corridor there were five people. At first the dark clothes of the older people suggested that they had come to register a death. Probably, thought Ryessman, they have these same clothes for weddings, births and deaths. It was the young couple who showed that this was a wedding. There was no doubt about them. They were so clearly in love that they were oblivious of everyone and everything around them. The young man was dressed in a dark well-cut suit with a small spotted bow tie. He was a handsome boy with big eyes and a strong jaw. There were not so many young men like that still in civilian clothes, thought Ryessman. The girl was pretty. She did not have the wide pelvis, heavy bones and strong arms that were common to the local girls. She was petite with jet-black hair cut short and a heart-shaped face that was pale and doll-like. The parents shuffled uneasily as Ryessman walked down the corridor. Here in the country older people had never lost their fear of authority, thought Ryessman, and that perhaps was a good thing. Young people were less respectful and as he passed he heard someone whisper and the young man looked up and stared him straight in the face.

Perhaps if the Burgomaster had been busy that afternoon he would have never pursued the matter or come across it in the first place. But the afternoon was quiet and sunny as he sat at his desk idly turning over the carbons of letters passing between departments in the Rathaus.

Dear Sir,

The Burgomaster thanks you for your letter of the twelfth of May and confirms that MEYER, Hans-Willy, of Rheinprovinz Altgarten Florastrasse 36 is now officially down-classified to Jew of two-thirds Jewish blood.

Your department will ensure that his employer is informed and that any privileges that he had due to his former status as a Jew of one-third Jewish blood should now be withdrawn.

A. NIELS

for the Burgomaster

Niels had initialled the carbon as was his usual practice. Acting on impulse the Burgomaster phoned through to police records and asked them for their file on this man Hans-Willy Meyer.

‘You have it already,’ said the police constable.

‘You are sure?’

‘I am certain, Herr Bürgermeister. Herr Niels came down for it personally. He said you had asked for it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Is everything in order?’

‘Yes,’ said the Burgomaster. He knew the man with whom he had spoken, an elderly constable who had been put in charge of records after being badly injured in a fight with two drunks at the beginning of the war. He was a man of experience and would have made no mistake. The Burgomaster picked up the phone but replaced it and walked along to Niels’ office instead. The wedding party were still waiting in the corridor.

Niels was not in his office and although at first Ryessman was about to dismiss the matter from his mind he had second thoughts and went through the cabinet to find Meyer’s police file. It was not there. There were in fact none of the grey-covered police files anywhere in the cabinet. It was then that he remembered that Niels had been carrying a grey file when he had come into the office and found Ryessman behind his desk. Yes, there it was, stuffed into a cabinet of purchase agreements so carelessly that its cover was bent double.

The Burgomaster read through the file of documents. Meyer was a twenty-one-year-old Jewish farmworker. He was not permitted to serve in the Wehrmacht. His file was a very ordinary one that could have been that of any of Altgarten’s two dozen Jews. Ryessman had hoped that his data card with its identity photo and fingerprints would have been there, but it was not. Perhaps police records filed them separately.

Meyer had been down-graded because his grandfather, a butcher from Lübeck hitherto listed as an Aryan, had now been classified as purely Jewish. This made Meyer’s father two-thirds Jewish like his mother, and, as everyone knew, the offspring of two such Jews was a two-thirds-Jewish son, not a one-third-Jewish son. What puzzled Ryessman was where the information had come from. Usually in cases of this sort one found in the file a short unpleasant note from a neighbour or fellow worker. Typed sometimes, or written in block capitals to conceal the writer’s identity. Often they contained obscenities, sometimes they ended with Nazi slogans instead of a signature. This file had no such note. The grandfather had been dead since before the Party came into power and these documents had originated with the Lübeck police records office. It seemed unlikely that they would have made a mistake but then perhaps in 1933, the first year of Hitler’s power, they had been overworked, for that was when all these Jewish files began. Before that the police had dealt only with criminals.

It was time to go for his fitting. He replaced the file as he had found it, even bending it as before. As he left his office he saw the wedding party again. They were no longer tense and the bridegroom held his wife’s hand protectively. Herr Holländer, the registrar, brandished a huge bunch of keys and used them to unlock the cupboard on the landing. He reached for one of the hundreds of black-bound volumes that lined its shelves. The ceremony was not yet complete and Holländer looked the groom in the eye warningly. They were hushed and solemn as Holländer handed the official edition of Mein Kampf to the bride as was mandatory in all Reich weddings. The Burgomaster nodded approvingly at them as he passed.

The sun now shone from a clear blue sky and Ryessman enjoyed the walk up Dorfstrasse past the ruined windmill on the corner. As he crossed Vogelstrasse he could smell the sweet, freshly cut timber in the carpentry shops where as a young child he had lingered on his way to school. He tried to forget the business of Meyer but he could not. Even as the tailor – old Herr Voss himself – supervised the fitting of his fine Party uniform he remembered it again. What sort of spiteful motive was behind the reclassification? Not that Ryessman had much sympathy for Jews; it was simply a matter of procedure. If there was a reclassification, then the file should show the evidence for it. If the reclassification had been upwards instead of downwards then Ryessman would have suspected corruption. It did happen, it was useless to deny it. There were such large sums of money involved. Some of them would offer a fortune rather than go into a concentration camp. It wasn’t fair that these Jews put that sort of temptation to loyal policemen and Party workers, but what could you expect from such people?

‘Raise your arm,’ said Herr Voss. ‘Too tight?’

‘Exactly right.’

‘Bend forward and straighten up.’

The Burgomaster did so and Herr Voss fussed around the back of his collar, slashing at the soft brown cloth with his chalk. It was a smart uniform; he wished it had been ready this morning when the family had had its group photo taken. How fine his mother had looked even at eighty-six, and the children in their best suits had been transfixed and silent in case the photo should show them as having moved. For their parents had promised them dire punishments if this photograph for grandfather’s birthday was less than perfect.

‘Sit down. Clothes must look as well on a man seated as upon him standing.’ Again he applied the sharp edge of the chalk. It was an honour to be fitted by Voss himself. Voss was among the wealthiest men in the town. In 1930 in an upstairs room in this very building he had first tried his hand at making a uniform. It was for an old and valued customer who had just joined the SA. One of his fellow officers had admired it and by 1933 Voss uniforms had become famous for miles around. One wealthy SS officer came from Berlin and had previously been a customer of the famous Stechbarth, Göring’s tailor. It made Voss very proud. Some people said things against them, but the Nazis had done wonders for the uniform business, whatever other faults they might have. There were so many part-time organizations that many Germans had two or three uniforms. Voss’ greatest complaint against the Nazis was the way they had deprived him of his skilled Jewish staff. It was all very well, these arrogant young men complaining about stitching and the cut of the breeches. They didn’t seem to understand that there were secrets to tailoring a pair of breeches that were known to very few cutters, and they were all Jewish.

‘Stand up.’

It was almost as though the Burgomaster had read Voss’ mind. He said, ‘Are there many Jews still in the tailoring business?’

‘Yes, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said Voss. ‘I still have one cutter downstairs and there are certain lining materials which can be obtained only from Jewish concerns in the Netherlands. Now take this lining in your tunic …’

‘I don’t wish to know about it,’ said the Burgomaster hurriedly. ‘I was asking in case you have heard of a person named Meyer: Hans-Willy Meyer.’

‘I don’t recall the name, Herr Bürgermeister, but my cutter Jakob might know. Shall I fetch him?’

‘Yes,’ said the Burgomaster.

Poor Jakob; he came into the room in answer to old Mr Voss’ call and found the Burgomaster in his full Party uniform. For a moment he completely forgot that this was the very garment he had been handling only an hour before and went white with horror.

‘There’s nothing to fear, Jakob,’ said Voss. ‘There’s nothing to fear, Herr Bürgermeister, is there?’ he added.

‘Nothing,’ said the Burgomaster. ‘I merely wondered whether you knew a young man named Hans-Willy Meyer. He lives in Florastrasse.’

‘No, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said Jakob.

‘It will not mean trouble for him,’ promised the Burgomaster. ‘I promise it upon my word as a German officer.’

‘You are sure, sir?’

Voss said, ‘Of course, Jakob.’ All these Jews were suspicious; why couldn’t they behave like patriots.

‘The fellow has been denounced,’ declared the Burgomaster dramatically. ‘Tell me what you know of him; it can only help.’

There were so few Jewish families left in Altgarten that it was foolish to deny that he knew young Meyer.

‘He is a fine young man,’ said Jakob. ‘His family comes from Lübeck. He works on a farm. It means catching a bus at five-thirty AM.’

‘When did you first know him?’ The Burgomaster offered Jakob a cigarette. The Jews didn’t get a tobacco ration – or a meat ration either – and Jakob dearly loved to smoke.

‘I lived near his parents in Lübeck,’ said the old tailor. He took a cigarette but stored it carefully away.

‘His father’s parents were Jewish?’

‘No, both his father’s parents were Aryan. It was just his mother’s mother who was Jewish.’

‘Are you quite sure?’

‘I am quite sure, Herr Bürgermeister. There was so much talk about it.’ Jakob gave a short laugh. ‘His father was one of the most prosperous pork butchers in Lübeck.’

Ryessman smiled. ‘So this fellow Meyer is only one-third Jewish.’

‘For you perhaps, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said the old tailor. ‘For me, he is not Jewish at all.’

The thing that still puzzled the Burgomaster was the way in which this Jewish fool Meyer had signed the reclassification form. It was almost as if he wanted to be down-classified.

‘See the shoulder, Jakob: high when the Herr Bürgermeister is seated, but straight when he stands.’

Ryessman was irritated that they should talk of him as though he was deformed. Like surgeons rather than tailors, and that’s the way they looked at him too.

‘Are you finished?’

‘Yes, thank you, Herr Bürgermeister. The day after tomorrow for another fitting. We must have it exactly right.’

‘My secretary will phone,’ said Ryessman.

‘Is he well?’ asked Voss.

‘Niels?’ said Ryessman. He smiled. ‘He was when I left him an hour ago.’

‘I thought I saw him going into the front entrance of the hospital,’ said Voss. ‘I wondered whether he was sick or just visiting.’

‘You were mistaken,’ said the Burgomaster, but his voice lacked conviction. Young Niels had not been his usual self today, and there was the strange business of the hidden dossier. Perhaps he was sick, perhaps he was in hospital. From the window of Voss’ office he could see the grey-brick St Antonius Hospital and beyond it the flat roof of the Annex building. For a moment he was tempted to use the phone and ask the reception if they had admitted Niels, but he decided that if Niels was in hospital the Rathaus would have phoned him here at the tailors to report it.

The Burgomaster was wrong on both items. At that moment Andi Niels, personal secretary to the Burgomaster of Altgarten, was occupying a bed in Room 28 on the top floor of the silent Annex building.

Originally the Annex had been intended as an overflow for St Antonius solely to cater for Altgarten’s increased population, but under the new hospital zoning arrangements it was used to receive air-raid casualties from badly bombed cities in the Ruhr. From here they were dispersed as soon as possible and the beds made ready for the next contingent of casualties. It was a stroke of genius to build the Training Centre for Samariter nursing assistants between the hospital and the amputee camp. The poor little girls worked until they dropped. Especially on those awful days when convoys of the new bus-like ambulances were jammed along Joachimstrasse so that air-raid victims from the Ruhr were lying in corridors for want of bed-space. Samariter with only a couple of weeks’ training found themselves working in the operating rooms or casualty wards. On the days when there were no RAF raids the Samariter worked almost as hard in the Amputee Centre across the road. At any time of day or night the nurses’ accommodation wing of the Training Centre was dark with a silence marred only by the snores and nightmares of the exhausted girls.

There were many young girls in Altgarten: Red Cross nurses, Frei sisters, Brown sisters and Samariter. The tearooms and hairdressers vibrated with their chatter and the inhabitants of Altgarten were never at loss for a story about their shameless activities. Once a month there were dances at the Training Centre. TENO officers, SS men from the Wald Hotel training camp and certain local residents received neatly penned invitations and displayed them like honours. All three of the town’s hairdressers could be certain of one ticket; so could the haberdasher and an old man named Drews who regularly obtained bolts of silk and linen from some secret source over the border. For obvious reasons the senior staff at Kessel’s brewery were asked and the Burgomaster’s office received a ticket as a matter of courtesy. Andi Niels used that ticket.

Tonight there was to be a dance at the Training Centre. The girls had decorated the assembly hall with coloured papers and cardboard representations of Mount Fuji. On the tickets it had hopefully said ‘fancy dress with a theme of old Japan’ but only the most enthusiastic girls had sewn together a costume.

‘The old fool invited me to his birthday dinner,’ said Andi Niels. ‘What the devil can I do?’

‘Couldn’t you get away early?’ said the nurse. She was a short plump sexy girl who giggled readily at any situation. She giggled now.

‘There’ll be toasts to his father, the regiment, officers who fell in the first war. Then we’ll listen to speeches and sing old war songs. You’ve no idea what it’s like.’

‘There’ll be food at the dance. The girls have been saving their rations for three weeks.’

‘No matter,’ said Niels sadly. ‘We’ll go to Düsseldorf this weekend and stay in a fine hotel.’

‘And share a room?’ said the nurse. She giggled. ‘They will ask for our papers.’

‘I can fix that.’

‘Have you inherited some money?’

‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ said Niels. He turned over in bed and reached down to her. ‘You’ve left your stockings on,’ he accused.

‘Just in case.’

‘The door’s locked, and no one will come up to the top floor during the day.’

‘I’ll take them off,’ said the girl. ‘But I must be back on duty by five.’ She climbed out of bed again.

‘By five I must be in my office,’ said Niels. ‘I’ve left lots of work there.’ He watched her take off her stockings and suspender belt. She knew he was watching her and she moved in a deliberately provocative way, knowing that his impatience would put an edge on his appetite.

Niels breathed heavily. ‘My God,’ he thought, ‘I’m going to miss all this next week.’

After August Bach had driven away, Anna-Luisa busied herself in the house and garden. She scrubbed the kitchen floor, boiled down oddments of soap and cleaned out the chicken house. At four o’clock she met Hansl at the Volkschule and walked him past the fire station. Both of the Magirus fire engines were outside and he watched intently as the equipment and paintwork was shined to a high gloss. The firemen were accustomed to the Volkschule boys and Johannes Ilfa, the Gruppenführer on the number one engine, recognized Hansl and lifted him up to see the driver’s seat. For months he had seen Anna-Luisa meeting the child from school. One of his friends had teased him about concealing a secret passion for the girl. He would be teased even more if seen speaking to her.

‘My name is Johannes Ilfa,’ said the fireman, offering Anna-Luisa a cigarette.

‘My name is Johannes too,’ said Hansl.

Anna-Luisa waved the cigarette aside. ‘We call him Hansl,’ she explained.

‘We? …’ said the fireman. ‘He is your son? I thought you were the nurse.’

Anna-Luisa enjoyed his obvious discomfort. ‘You mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

‘Do you never smoke?’ he asked, the packet still open in his hand.

‘Not in the street. Have one yourself.’

‘It’s forbidden.’ He brushed his fine moustache with the back of his hand.

‘Lift me up again,’ called Hansl, and Johannes Ilfa did so. The little boy fingered the shiny steering-wheel and then looked at his hero in wonder.

‘We mustn’t be a nuisance.’ said Anna-Luisa.

‘You couldn’t be a nuisance.’ He looked at her for a long time trying to find something to say. Something that would make her delay and make her smile at him again.

‘We must go.’ She smiled at the fireman.

‘Make Mutti bring you again, Hansl,’ called the fireman.

‘Yes,’ said Hansl, and he gripped Anna-Luisa’s fingers in his warm hand as though he was part of a conspiracy.

‘Say goodbye to Herr Ilfa and thank you,’ she told the child.

They both waved when they reached the corner. At Mauerstrasse they turned right. This was the main road that joined Kleve to Krefeld and followed the ancient walls that marked the edge of Altgarten. On the other side of Mauerstrasse a wide stream moved sluggishly southwards. Hansl liked to throw pieces of paper into the green water and run to each of the wooden bridges to see them move underneath.

Much of the wall still remained and Frau Birr’s tea-room was built into the massive stones. From the second floor there was a view as far as the high ground upon which stood the Burgomaster’s glasshouses near the waterworks. In the other direction there was a view of the Wald Hotel, now taken over by the SS and garlanded with tall barbed-wire fences and endlessly patrolled by guard dogs.

Smart Hausfrauen of Altgarten gathered in Frau Birr’s tea-room each afternoon accompanied by their daughters in neat dark dresses and well-kept shoes. That’s why TENO officers, Army doctors and administration officials from the Amputee Centre liked to have tea here. Sometimes cavalry officers and veterinary surgeons, complete with spurs and riding-crops, came all the way from their depot near Kempen and set the ladies’ hearts aflutter.

Hansl and Anna-Luisa shared a slice of Apfelstrudel. The coffee wasn’t too bad and Frau Birr could usually find a small glass of milk for the boy. The people in the big cities didn’t live as well as this, thought Anna-Luisa. Life seemed unbelievably sweet. Soon she would be Frau Bach, and the ladies in the tea-shop with their fruit-filled hats would have to nod in a way different from the condescending smiles they gave to the RAD girl.

Frau Hinkelburg, the architect’s wife, was just as condescending as any of them but at least she was affable. This day she sat with Anna-Luisa and Hansl and told them all her news.

There were always stories about the Russian prisoners of war in the disused factory beyond the brewery. The citizens of Altgarten were fascinated and a little afraid of these strange Bolshevik men from the far side of the world where so many young Germans were being sent.

‘They put two fierce guard dogs to keep the Russians inside the fence at night. Even the dog-handlers were wearing thick protective gloves. By the next morning the dogs had been cooked and eaten. Only the bones remained, they say. And those they carved into crucifixes.’

Frau Hinkelburg paused long enough to cut a piece of cake and hurry it into her mouth. Anna-Luisa felt that she was expected to add something, but she kept her own wonderful news to herself to be gloated over and devoured slowly. Even before she’d swallowed her cake Frau Hinkelburg smiled at Anna-Luisa and began again.

‘Frau Kersten is going to put apple trees in the field behind the cemetery and she’s bought the land she leased from Richter. The money she must make from the potatoes.’ Frau Hinkelburg opened her fine new patent-leather handbag so that Anna-Luisa could clearly see its Paris label. From it she took a small lace handkerchief and brushed a cake-crumb from the corner of her mouth. ‘I heard that Frau Kersten has a leather box full of money hidden in her bedroom. She can’t bank it, they say, for fear of the tax department.’

‘Her farmhouse is being replastered.’

‘By the French prisoners of war,’ added Frau Hinkelburg. ‘Have you noticed the tall one with the tiny moustache?’

‘The one giving orders?’

‘He’s giving more than that, my girl, if the stories about him and Frau Kersten are true.’

‘But Frau Kersten is nearly fifty.’

‘Many a fine tune is played upon an old violin.’ Frau Hinkelburg laughed loudly and clamped her hand over her mouth in a gesture she believed refined. The diamonds on her hand caught the light. ‘Before the Frenchman, they say she was casting her eyes farther afield.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Anna-Luisa.

‘Your employer, my dear.’

Anna-Luisa laughed good-naturedly.

‘You think that’s funny?’

‘But Herr Bach and that fat old Frau Kersten …’

‘Yes, Frau Kersten would be a lucky woman to have Herr Bach as a husband,’ admitted Frau Hinkelburg as she thought about it.

‘Any woman would be a lucky woman.’

Frau Hinkelburg looked up sharply. Her ears were attuned to chance remarks and she never missed an innuendo. ‘Ach so!’ was all she said, but Anna-Luisa knew that one part of her secret was a secret no longer. Frau Hinkelburg put a freckled bejewelled hand upon Anna-Luisa’s thin white arm and smiled at her.

‘You were not here when the Wald Hotel was really a hotel. What a wonderful place! The chef was French, from Monte Carlo. People came from all corners of Europe – and from America too – to dine there and stay in the suites that face on to the gardens and the forest. There were floodlit fountains and an orchestra outside in the summer. They used to dance until two or three o’clock in the morning and the sound of the music could be heard right across the town on a still summer’s night. When I was a young girl I would open my bedroom windows and listen to the music and the voices of the fine people who left their motor-cars and chauffeurs waiting down there in Mauerstrasse. It will never be the same again.’

‘When the war is ended, perhaps …’

‘No, the world has changed since then. There is no place for romance now. Why, look at what the Wald Hotel is now used for.’

‘No one knows what it’s used for.’

‘I know,’ said Frau Hinkelburg. ‘My husband is an architect and he heard it from someone in the Burgomaster’s office.’ She leaned closer to emphasize the confidential nature of her theory. ‘It’s a human stud. Young carefully chosen Aryan girls are sent there to –’ she hesitated – ‘to have children by selected SS officers.’

‘How awful,’ said Anna-Luisa. She said it mechanically for she did not believe it.

‘Awful,’ agreed Frau Hinkelburg, ‘and yet fascinating. Is it not?’

‘There are so many stories about the men in the Wald Hotel.’

‘Because they so seldom emerge from the place.’

‘Probably,’ agreed Anna-Luisa.

‘Well, it’s understandable,’ said Frau Hinkelburg. ‘They have everything they want there, don’t they?’ She laughed coarsely; Anna-Luisa smiled.

‘Are you going anywhere tonight, Anna-Luisa?’

‘I have so much ironing to do.’

‘I thought you might be going to the Burgomaster’s birthday party at Frenzel’s. They are having Russian caviar and roast duckling. I am going.’

‘Herr Bach scarcely knows the Burgomaster.’

‘But his cousin Gerd knows him.’ She watched the girl carefully. ‘And you are a friend of Andi Niels, the Burgomaster’s secretary.’

‘He’s no friend of mine,’ said Anna-Luisa; ‘he’s horrid.’

‘He has a reputation,’ agreed Frau Hinkelburg, ‘but he wields a great deal of influence in this town. The girls with extra clothing-ration coupons … you’d never believe.’ She laughed again.

‘I have heard stories about him,’ said Anna-Luisa.

‘There are stories about everyone in this town. Small towns are always full of gossip. There are stories about you, even … you would laugh if you heard them.’

‘About me?’

‘It means nothing, child. A beautiful girl is bound to have stories told about her …’

‘In connection with whom?’ interrupted Anna-Luisa angrily.

The woman smiled and Anna-Luisa knew that she wanted her to be angry.

‘Whom?’ repeated Anna-Luisa. ‘What lies are being spread?’

‘I never listen to scandal,’ said the old woman haughtily. ‘It’s all stupid nonsense. I have told you that.’

‘With whom?’

‘With everyone, child; you would have to be the most energetic courtesan since Pompadour.’ She patted her arm again and the bejewelled rings flashed in the sunlight.

Fischer was a young man – twenty-four last birthday – but his bloodshot eyes and the black rings of tiredness around them made his appearance deceptive. Now that he had had a steaming hot bath and washed the Russian dust out of his hair he shook away some of his fatigue. He found a last clean set of underclothes and a reasonably clean shirt in his baggage. An orderly had just returned his boots to him brightly shining, although there were deep scratches that went right through the leather in places. His long leather overcoat hanging on the door was also beyond salvage. Its lapels were scuffed white and the sleeve seams had been ripped and resewn so many times that it was crookbacked. He put the Knight’s Cross over his head and tucked the lady’s garter to which it was attached under his collar out of sight.

In the front line no one any longer wore their conspicuous Leibstandarte cuffband but now Fischer put it on his sleeve. The words ‘Adolf Hitler’ shone bright and new compared with the faded fabric of his jacket. Fischer stroked the armband. The number one SS division, and he was to join number twelve. Ugh! He feared it might be like this rundown SS training depot where even the sentries were improperly dressed and the slow-witted young officers only half trained. It depressed him to think about it.

He looked at himself in the mirror. A tall slim man with a yellowish complexion that never altered no matter how long he spent in the sunshine. His eyes were black, intelligent and attractive. His brows were bushy, meeting above his large hooked nose to make a straight line across his face. At school he had been chosen to play Julius Caesar when his teacher said that he looked exactly like a Roman emperor. Adolf Fischer liked that idea and even now he would sometimes have too many drinks and surprise the other officers, who knew him only as a zealous and consistently savage warrior, by long quotations from Shakespeare’s play.

These rooms on the first floor with balconies overlooking the lake had once been the finest rooms in the hotel. The bridal suite, perhaps. Now they were used for officers in transit and they had been left unaltered even to the china jug and basin on the marble washstand with an enamel jug of boiling water delivered each morning to the rooms without baths. The pictures too remained: stag hunt, dawn in the mountains and Napoleon after Waterloo. There was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ bawled Fischer. He was surprised to find that his visitor was an old man who outranked him considerably. Embarrassed by the manner in which he had shouted, Fischer came to a stiff position of attention and waited with unseeing eyes until his visitor bid him relax.

‘Standartenführer Wörth,’ the old man introduced himself. His voice was quiet and his manner hesitant. Fischer had to watch his lips to understand his words. ‘I’m the commanding officer. Please continue with whatever you were doing. I only wished to offer you my greetings as I shall not be dining in the Mess this evening. The Burgomaster here in Altgarten is an old Allgemeine SS officer and he’s having a rather formal dinner party.’

It was frightening, thought Fischer. The German Cross medal on the old man’s pocket showed that he had been a fighting soldier in this war and yet now he’d become a mere vegetable, wrinkled and bent like an old turnip and so pale that Fischer felt positively tanned beside him.

‘I have acquaintances nearby, sir. It was my intention to call upon them this evening.’

‘Splendid,’ said the old man. ‘You’re going to this new “Hitler Jugend” Division.’

‘The Division commander was with me in the Leibstandarte. He’s asked for me.’

‘Reich Germans?’

‘Yes. All of them born in 1926, volunteers from the Hitler Jugend.’

‘It will be an élite division.’

‘Yes, my tame Untermensch will look out of place.’

‘So I hear.’

Fischer felt obliged to answer the unspoken question. ‘He’s a first-class gunner and mechanic. I had him assigned as a personal servant only in order to keep him.’

‘You’re a tank man?’

‘Tigers; I volunteered for the first tank company the LAH got.’

‘Cavalry man myself.’ He flinched from some secret pain. ‘Left a hand behind in Rzhev, can’t hold a rein and fight with one hand.’ Fischer noticed the stiff glove. Cavalry; that explained everything. These old fogeys are from another world.

‘Cavalry Brigade Fegelein?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s largely Volksdeutsche now.’

‘In my time it was just Reich Germans. It was an élite unit then.’

‘I know that, sir.’

Wörth looked at Fischer’s cuffband and then again at the young man’s face. He saw his own youth there. Wörth was with the Leibstandarte in 1937. What fine fellows we were! Our average age was eighteen years one month. Liebchen aller Herzen they called LAH in those days. Heart-breakers we were too. Handsome fellows. The volunteer ahead of Wörth at the medical was failed for having one filled tooth. He could scarcely believe it now, when he looked at some of the odds and ends they had sent him. Dutchmen some of them and Flemings too. Keen of course, but he couldn’t understand a word they said. Somewhere nearby a guard dog barked and then another one. There were shouts and a yelp of pain before the dogs became quiet. ‘Those damned dogs will drive me mad,’ muttered Wörth.

‘I can well believe it, sir,’ said Fischer. ‘Why don’t you get rid of them?’

‘Why indeed,’ said Wörth and smiled as though Fischer had made a rather good joke.

Leibstandarte, this old man, was it possible? ‘Rzhev?’

‘January ’forty-two, the Rzhev pocket.’ It was months since he’d last spoken of it. ‘My company of cavalry were trying to find Ivan. Our artillery found us.’ In the snow, horses and riders moved like ghosts, silent and invisible in their newly issued white smocks. Wörth was riding Rosenknospe, a lightfooted horse as fast as any other in the company and with a gentle disposition.

They were in the Valdai hills where the Volga rises, north of Rzhev. They had come over the rise cautiously; Hentschel first on the black mare that he’d had all the way from the training school in Warsaw. At the bottom of the rise there was a T34, its turret askew and a black circle round it. Hentschel waved them on and then went close to the sooty burned-out tank, but there was no sign of life there. It was snowing slightly and the horses were fidgety, tossing their heads and missing their footing as they encountered debris, bodies and goodness knows what under the snow. ‘It was our artillery.’ They must have had the old T34 zeroed in; by getting close to that we were asking for it really. ‘A T34 might be very different from a Tiger tank but Russian cavalry looks just like us, eh?’ Then there was the noise: deafening thuds and the screams of horses and men. Instead of a black and white silent film it became a noisy colour film. The black mare racing across the snow, dragging young Hentschel – his second-in-command – by his foot, with horse and rider spilling blood as they went. Hentschel, Hentschel. ‘No horses survived, four men did.’ Rosenknospe, his favourite, threw him and then kicked wildly. It was frightened, its eyes dilated and mouth open. Then he saw that its belly was split open and its kicking feet entangled in its own entrails. Damn you, Rös’chen. Get up! ‘Crawled back three miles on hands and knees.’ The pain. ‘Took twenty-eight hours.’ Why the devil should he remember it all today? He pushed it back again deep into a recess in his mind.

‘You were all right?’

‘Only survivor. The other three died of wounds in hospital. I was there for three months, discharged myself. But only on anti-partisan work after that.’

‘That’s important duty.’ Must the fellow relate his adventures. That little scuffle wouldn’t merit a mention nowadays.

‘Strong stuff; a whole village sometimes. Old men, old women, and then there’s the problem of one’s own soldiers with the girls. You take a hundred villagers …’ His voice faded before he described their fate. ‘Strong stuff. I was glad to leave it.’

‘Necessary stuff, sir. We must never let up on any of them,’ said Fischer.

Wörth looked at him and nodded, confirming not Fischer’s opinion but his own opinion of Fischer. Wörth grimaced involuntarily. ‘Gangrene, pain recurs more frequently lately. My foot and hip too. Without the sunlamp I can’t walk.’

‘It was bad luck, sir.’

‘Mustn’t bore you with my stories.’

‘No question of that, Herr Standartenführer.’ Not much!

The old man suddenly became tired. ‘Witting,’ he called in a voice no louder than the rest of his conversation, and from behind the door came an NCO. ‘Leave you now, Fischer. Don’t see you again, luck.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Fischer came rigidly to attention and averted his eyes as the bent old man was helped out through the door. Moving ever more slowly he inched his crippled feet forward. Witting closed the door gently.

‘This is a slight unmeritable man,

Meet to be sent on errands …’

quoted Fischer softly to himself. On the table there were the remains of his meal. He’d eaten two frankfurters and a dish of boiled potatoes but had left the dehydrated cabbage and powdered soup. German Army frankfurters, by some miracle of logistics, tasted the same in Danzig as they did in Paris. He wondered how his driver was managing the repairs on the Kübelwagen. It would be ready by ten PM he was sure of that. He’d ordered it for ten and his driver would have it in good order even if he hadn’t eaten, bathed or slept and was still wearing the same stinking underwear. Still, you can’t have everything.

From his pocket he took a small notebook. Written there was the name of Herr Voss the tailor followed by his private address. There were four other names and addresses in Münster and Dortmund but they had been ticked. Fischer went out on the balcony to have a cigarette and stare at the placid lake and the ducks. Soon he would phone.

Andi Niels, the Burgomaster’s secretary, got back to his office at five-fifteen. There was a note waiting: the Burgomaster wanted to see him urgently. He sighed irritably; already the doorman and the typist next door had given him the same message. He went to check that Meyer’s file was still where he had hurriedly pushed it. Only when he was sure it was there did he go next door.

‘Niels,’ said the Burgomaster, ‘you have been signing documents and borrowing police dockets in my name without proper authority.’

Herr Holländer from the marriage registry was standing in the corner with a look of satisfaction on his rat-like face. He had always been jealous of Niels, who he knew could win any argument by invoking the Burgomaster’s name. Now he was delighted to be in at the young upstart’s undoing.

Niels had not responded to the Burgomaster’s statement, so he spoke again. ‘This file on Meyer, Hans-Willy.’

Meyer, Hans-Willy, thought Niels, the old buffoon spoke like an official document.

‘Explain the down-grading,’ said the Burgomaster.

‘It’s all in order, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said Niels, smiling in one final hope that Ryessman would let the matter drop.

‘I didn’t ask you that, Niels.’

‘He wanted to be.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He wanted to be.’

‘Don’t raise your voice to me, my boy. You know very well that what he wanted is nothing to do with it. You made entries on the documents, why?’

‘So that he could be married.’

Ryessman remembered the dark-eyed boy and girl. ‘Was he married this afternoon?’

‘That was him,’ said Niels. ‘You frightened the life out of him.’

‘I did?’

‘He thought you were about to stop the ceremony. It can’t be altered now, you know.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ said the Burgomaster.

Herr Holländer said, ‘I understand, Herr Bürgermeister. Marriage between two persons with one-third Jewish blood is forbidden, but marriage between a person with one-third Jewish blood and a person with two-thirds Jewish blood is permitted under certain circumstances. The man Meyer wanted to be down-graded so that he could marry the girl.’

‘But she must be mad,’ said the Burgomaster, trying sincerely to comprehend it. ‘A girl with only one-third Jewish blood could have married an Aryan.’

‘They are like that,’ said Herr Holländer. ‘I get them coming into the registry for advice. It’s hard to believe, but some of them would sooner marry one of their own kind than one of us.’

The Burgomaster shook his head in wonder. He looked up at Niels. ‘What did they pay you?’

‘Nothing, I did it to help. They were in love.’

‘Must I hand this matter over to the Gestapo?’

‘Three thousand marks.’

‘When I think of what I did for you, Niels … It was my influence that secured your discharge from your regiment when your mother told me of your stomach ulcer.’

‘Well, your influence didn’t last long, Herr Bürgermeister. I didn’t get a discharge. I was placed temporarily on the reserve. My papers came this morning. I rejoin the 15th Panzer-grenadier Division in Sicily next week. They are awaiting the invasion. I shall never come back.’ That little bastard Holländer was smirking gleefully.

‘You would do well not to come back, Niels. Give your mother a hero for a son, you at least owe her that.’

‘More than I owe her money to pay the rent and keep her from starving?’

‘I would rather starve than have a son like you. You are an enemy of the State, a thief and a liar.’

Niels stood waiting for the Burgomaster’s wrath to diminish.

‘Get out,’ he said after a long silence. Niels was pleased to get away so lightly.

‘And …’ said the Burgomaster. Niels turned. ‘You will pay the three thousand marks to the Winter Help Fund and show me the receipt. I shall not withdraw my invitation for dinner tonight, but I shall not be unhappy if you fail to turn up.’

‘Yes, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said Niels, trying to look sad. That was wonderful. He had far better things to do tonight: the dance, and providing the terror flyers stayed away perhaps a visit to the fourth floor of the Annex. There was a tall Viennese nurse whom he rather fancied. She would be tastier than the Burgomaster’s roast duckling.

Niels had been responsible for the eighteen invitations to the Burgomaster’s dinner at Frenzel’s. He had done the job carefully, remembering all sorts of obscure cousins and business colleagues. In fact, only one invitation had gone astray; the one to Frau H. Pippert, widow of a building contractor, had been typed with the wrong street-name and the postman had guessed, wrongly, that it was intended for Fräulein G. Pippert, a teacher at the Volkschule.

Gerda Pippert knew from the moment she opened the envelope that the invitation was not intended for her. On the other hand she also knew, unlike the Burgomaster, that Hanna Pippert – Johanna really, of course, but no one called her that – had died over six months ago. Hadn’t she received more than a dozen wrongly addressed letters of condolence from brick merchants, timber firms and manufacturers of stoves and boilers. And hadn’t she forwarded them to the brother-in-law of the dead woman at some address in Krakow. Gerda Pippert deserved the invitation. In the circumstances surely no one would begrudge her honorary membership of the Burgomaster’s family for one festive evening. It was over three years since she had eaten a meal at a fine restaurant and as for being recognized, if they didn’t even know that old Hanna was dead, what chance was there that they would remember her face. Anyway, old ladies looked alike. She could put some new lace on her black dress. One of her ex-students – now an artillery officer – had sent her an antique lace tablecloth from Brussels. She had never risked a teapot on it, but as a collar for the black dress it would be most chic. She decided to gatecrash the dinner, or, as she rationalized it to herself, attend as a friend of the family.

She had written a brief acceptance, carefully smudging the initial. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe. It made the dress look quite new. Her white hair was drawn tightly back and fastened with a black ribbon. She would wear just a touch of face powder – it was a special event, after all – and leave her spectacles off. Then she remembered the old lorgnette. It was in the bottom of her sewing box, a splendid device with an ivory handle and gold rims to the glasses. She could no longer see very well through the lenses but held up to her face it looked most distinguished. What’s more, it would give her something to do with her hands. In the sewing box there was an old ivory cigarette holder too. She put it in her handbag. Tonight after the coffee and speeches and cognac she would try a cigarette again. If only her handbag were a little more elegant and the handle weren’t so worn, but if she held it low against her skirt it didn’t notice so much. She paraded up and down the bed-sitting-room practising wellborn gestures. The dress looked fine. Tonight Gerda Pippert, fifty-six-year-old spinster and schoolteacher, was to dine with the Burgomaster! It was the most exciting prospect she could remember since her holiday in Heidelberg in 1938.

Gerd Böll may have been the town wag but he was no fool. Sometimes he regretted that he had left the university, for the young people there had a sense of humour more nearly tuned to his than had the people of Altgarten. In spite of disapproving eyes Gerd continued to act the fool for he knew that it was his particular strength that he could endure the supercilious remarks of his neighbours without wishing them ill.

Of all the people of Altgarten, Gerd’s best friends were among the TENO engineers who manned the camp on the Krefeld road. Many times Gerd had taken his van and gone with them into the Ruhr after a big RAF attack. He had seen the TENOs digging for hours into burning wreckage and finding only shrivelled corpses. He’d seen them lifting steel beams in their bare hands and he’d noticed that some of the most pugnacious and disreputable roughnecks among them could be the most gentle with the injured. None of them were young, for the young had all been screened off to provide TENO battalions for bridge-building and demolition with front-line fighting units. Each man had a technical skill and their easy discipline reflected this, for theirs was a job where a few minutes could mean a cellarful of people saved from flames or drowning. They were a strange breed of men, new to Gerd Böll. They took a drink when others would need a night’s sleep, they settled for a cigarette instead of a meal and swore when lesser men would have wept.

In addition, Gerd liked their equipment: the tractors, lorries and mobile cranes, the pumps and generators, and the winches that could topple an office block.

It was five-forty, almost time for Gerd to report his movements to the Burgomaster’s Control Room. This evening of all evenings it was scarcely necessary, for he would be at Frenzel’s with the Burgomaster. For a birthday gift he had bought a small humidor, inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl. One of the Russian POWs had made it for him. He wondered if the Burgomaster would disapprove if he knew its origin. Perhaps he would recognize the style of work, for the madonnas they sold from door to door had the same design on the skirts as the humidor had round its lid.

Dark suit? Well, Gerd didn’t have a dark suit. Apart from this green suit he didn’t have one at all. And this one had long since ceased to fit him. He unfastened the jacket buttons and breathed out with a long sigh of relief. Well, he’d leave it open. It would never notice when he was sitting down. He sat down now at his antique desk and cleared aside the accounts and unanswered correspondence. From this window he had the ugliest view of Altgarten. The cramped slum tenements crowded together between brewery siding and gasworks as did the people inside them.

In the cobbled street a group of children, some of them in Hitler Youth uniform, were kicking a ball around. Gerd watched them with interest but eventually the moment he had been putting off arrived. He pulled a piece of paper towards him and sadly began a letter to his cousin August.

Rheinprovinz, Altgarten
June 31st, 1943	Bahnhofstrasse 33

My dear kind August,

Perhaps you will despise me when you have finished reading this letter and yet, try as I have, I can find no alternative to writing it. This afternoon when I met you with Anna-Luisa and you both looked so radiantly happy it seemed clearly my duty (and my joy) to keep silent. Now I once again think otherwise. Think of me and my predicament as I write this letter. As unhappy as you may be, spare a moment to remember that I too am as sad.

The test of friendship is the extent to which a man will expose the friendship to total destruction by doing something he believes is in the best interest of his comrade. The girl is beautiful and to be sure has been a loyal employee and a fine guardian of little Hansl. But a young girl like Anna-Luisa has a life different from us, different too from any style of life we can remember. Like any beautiful girl living alone in a town filled with young men, the temptations put to her are unreasonable, but it would be dishonest of me, and foolish of you, to pretend that she has not succumbed to those temptations in a way that has made her notorious.

As your housekeeper, her private life is of only limited importance to you, and of no importance to me. But when marriage is mentioned, my dear good cousin, how can I not speak? At first you will dismiss my letter as gossip. Perhaps you will be tempted to ask for details. Do not do that, August. It can only cause you deep and lasting pain. Again I repeat, August, it can only cause you more pain than you already know.

Your cousin,

GERD