Winter, p.43
Winter, page 43
‘Does Inge know what’s happened?’
‘No. I must be getting along.’
‘Thanks, Pauli.’
‘Did you ever think about living abroad?’
‘Is that your advice, Pauli?’
‘I’m thinking of Helena . . . schools and so on.’
‘I will have to see what happens to Lottie.’
‘If you went now it would probably be easy. But if and when Lottie is convicted, you might find it impossible to get permission to leave, even as a tourist.’
‘I can’t think about such things at this time.’
‘This will make a difference in other ways, too, Peter. Be prepared for that.’
‘What exactly do you mean?’
‘There will be publicity, and it won’t be helpful. The company might have complaints from shareholders. I’ve seen it all happen before. A thing like this makes a lot of ripples in the pool.’
‘I’ll be ready.’
‘If I can help . . .’
‘Thanks, Pauli. You already have.’
‘And, Peter, you see Isaac Volkmann now and again, don’t you?’
‘I’m one of his patients,’ said Peter defensively.
‘I hear that he’s looking for somewhere to live.’
‘Yes, poor Isaac. Their landlord has thrown them out with only a month’s notice.’
‘I wonder if he’s ever thought of living in a lock-up shop?’
‘Why?’
‘Shopowners don’t have to register tenants with the police the way people have to with apartments and houses.’
‘Live in a shop? Like a fugitive. Is that really necessary?’
‘No, it’s precautionary. There will be more and more pressure brought on Jews. Life might become intolerable for them.’
‘Is this an instruction?’ said Peter, carefully choosing his words, ‘or just information?’
‘It’s advice,’ said Pauli unhesitatingly.
‘I’ll pass your message on.’
‘Better not say it’s from me, Peter.’
‘I can’t believe the Volkmanns will go to live in a shop.’
‘You never know,’ said Pauli.
‘Lottie is so headstrong,’ said Peter. ‘She wouldn’t listen to me.’
When Pauli finally got home he was exhausted. He let himself into the apartment and entered the drawing room. The room was dark except for a pool of light on the sofa, where Inge was lounging. Next to her sat Fritz Esser, his jacket off and necktie loosened. They were laughing: laughing in a way he’d never heard either of them laugh before. When they looked up to see him the laughter stopped, and their faces were frozen in a circle of yellow light from the parchment-shaded table lamps. He felt like a stranger, an intruder almost.
‘Pauli darling,’ said Inge. She got up hurriedly and smoothed her skirt. ‘We heard about Lottie.’
‘I’ve been with Peter,’ explained Pauli.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘I don’t want anything.’ All he needed was a stiff drink. There was an assortment of drinks on a side table, but Pauli hesitated. He’d been drinking far too much lately. It would be better to have coffee.
‘How is Peter taking it?’ Inge asked.
‘It’s a shock for him.’
‘It’s a shock for all of us,’ said Fritz Esser. He got up unsteadily. He’d been drinking.
‘Did you want me, Fritz?’ Pauli asked.
‘Fritz came to ask if he could help in any way,’ said Inge.
‘That was very kind of you, Fritz,’ said Pauli. He looked at the brandy decanter and decided to have a proper drink. After a day like this one, a man was entitled to get a little drunk.
1938
‘Being innocent is no defence’
Riding across the snow-covered German countryside on a good horse was one of life’s finest pleasures. It was white everywhere, with not a human habitation in sight. Sometimes it was hard to believe such open country existed so near to the heart of Berlin.
Despite the loose zipper jacket he wore and his red silk scarf, a careful observer would have recognized the horseman’s riding breeches and high boots as belonging to an officer’s uniform. He always came here in uniform straight from church. It was a part of his long-established routine.
Colonel Alex Horner had spent too long in the War Office. The introduction of compulsory military service had expanded the German army to almost unmanageable size, and the paperwork was overwhelming. The Bendlerblock had become a madhouse. Some of his fellow desk-bound officers – especially the older ones – liked being at the centre of things, delighted in the petty departmental squabbling, and enjoyed the sophisticated pleasures of life in the capital. But such desk work was too tiresome for any fit young officer, and too constricting for the energetic and ambitious Horner.
To make it worse, the civil war in Spain had been going on for over a year, and the German army had been using this foreign battlefield to test its men, its commanders, its tactics and its equipment. Now, when he seemed to have arranged a posting there, Horner’s wife, Chrisi, had announced that she was pregnant. It would make no difference to his determination to go – that his career came first had been agreed at the time of their marriage – but she had no relatives in Berlin, and it seemed unkind to leave her.
He was thinking of these things while riding Pola, a wonderful chestnut roan, back to the Bernau stables near Berlin. He relished these Sunday-morning outings. He loved his wife, but he also cherished the opportunity to be alone now and again. And these Sunday-morning rides were the only chance he got to withdraw from his demanding daily life.
The stables were run by ex-Sergeant Major Winkel, a comrade from the war. It was funny to think that Winkel had come back to Berlin suffering so badly from British chlorine gas that the doctors had almost given him up for dead. Six months, they’d said, or maybe a year, providing he got out of the filthy Braunkohle fumes that Berlin’s factories and power stations spread over the city like a brown blanket.
So Winkel took his hundred-per-cent-disability pension, such as it was, and a pretty young farmer’s daughter, and the two good-tempered horses that came as her dowry, and set up his riding stables out here in what had then been open countryside. And now, twenty years after the war ended, Winkel was looking as well as ever he looked, and raking in the cash from officers like Horner who wanted a decent horse, rather than the mounts the army provided for such exercise.
It was January and the air was cold. He’d given the horse a good chase, and now, for the final kilometre, he let her walk to cool off. She knew the way home even better than he did. It was a chance for Alex to think his own thoughts about Spain, changing tactics, Germany’s Condor Legion and his contemporaries who were building reputations there. Soon – too soon – the white-painted gates of the stables came into sight, and another Sunday-morning excursion was ended.
He let the horse find her own pace as her feet encountered the uncertain surface of the cobbles. The experts said horses liked cobbles, but Pola seemed to be an exception. As he rode into the yard, he saw Winkel and his teenage son trying to find the leak in a bicycle tyre by holding it in a tin bath of water.
‘Leave her to me, Winkel,’ said Horner, waving away assistance. Winkel always made sure that Horner had his favourite, Pola, and Horner liked to look after her. He liked the stables, the smells of sweat and dung and old harness. He liked to see ex-Sergeant Major Winkel, too. Winkel’s comfortable existence confirmed for Alex Horner that the army looked after its own. Bernau was outside the city limits of Gross-Berlin, half an hour on the train from Stettiner station, and yet enough officers came here to make sure that Winkel flourished.
Now that his father was dead, and his elder brother – who’d inherited the estate in East Prussia – wrote to him only once a year, it was this feeling about the close comradeship of the army that made life worth living for Alex Horner. Once, many years ago, during the terrible time when the army was being torn apart by Bolsheviks and revolutionaries, a fierce artillery colonel had asked him whether he would be prepared to die for his country. It was the sort of question only an old man who’d spent the war years at a divisional HQ twenty miles behind the fighting would put to a very young infantry subaltern who’d seen as much front-line service as Horner. Horner – a mere Leutnant at the time – had immediately given an answer in the affirmative, but a more truthful answer might have expressed his willingness to die for the army. He loved the army, and perhaps it was a significant reflection upon his relationship with his father that his proudest memory was of his father’s words of praise after Alex graduated from Lichterfelde and went home wearing his regimental uniform.
As he rode Pola into the dark stables, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, he didn’t for a moment see the figure standing near the ladder that led up to the hayloft.
‘Hello, Alex.’
It was a man of about his own age. A man wearing a grey felt hat and black leather overcoat with a grey knitted scarf wrapped around his neck in that careless style sometimes affected by students.
‘Pauli?’
Pauli took the horse without answering, but now Alex Horner recognized his old friend.
‘How did you find me here, Pauli?’ He swung down off the horse and they shook hands and exchanged greetings. Then Alex Horner turned back to his horse again. He released the girth and hauled the saddle off.
Pauli took the saddle from him and hung it on the half-door. ‘So Winkel’s still got this place,’ said Pauli. They’d both known Sergeant Major Winkel in the war. Long ago Pauli had ridden with Alex for a few Sunday-morning rides. But Inge felt neglected, so he stopped.
Pauli took off his overcoat and hat, and started to help. He grabbed some straw and began rubbing the horse down. On the other side of the horse, Alex did the same. For a few minutes the men worked on in silence; then Alex, finding the silence discomfiting, said, ‘Let me guess what you’ve come to tell me. Have you come to give me the inside story on the downfall of our beloved War Minister?’
‘That’s another matter,’ said Pauli. ‘Field Marshal von Blomberg is finished; no one can do anything to help him. He’ll have to resign.’
‘Blomberg must have guessed she was a whore before marrying her, don’t you think?’
‘I’m not an expert on women, or on the working of army officers’ minds,’ said Pauli.
Alex gave a brief smile. ‘But still . . . he surely must have . . .’ He waited.
‘Men don’t usually check with the Identification Office of the Kripo before proposing marriage,’ said Pauli.
‘Was it just bad luck that someone saw her antics on old porno photos and then recognized her in the marriage-group photo?’
‘There was no marriage photo, as far as I know. It was a very private ceremony.’
‘Very private,’ said Alex sarcastically, ‘with the Führer and General Göring as witnesses.’ He paused and waited until Pauli smiled at the notion of Göring as a general. ‘So how did the police find out?’
‘That change-of-address card,’ said Pauli.
‘Well, Blomberg is big enough and old enough to look after himself,’ said Alex. ‘Let him resign. There are plenty of other men to fill his job. I don’t want people pointing a finger at the War Minister and saying. “There’s Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg, the old fool who married the whore.” It makes the army look ridiculous.’
‘The Frau Generalfeldmarschall was never a whore, as far as police records go,’ said Pauli patiently. ‘She posed for pornographic photos.’
‘Then she must be a damned odd one,’ said Alex.
‘After working for the Gestapo, you start realizing how many odd people there are about,’ said Pauli.
‘I don’t approve of this so-called tolerant society.’ Alex threw down his handful of straw and moved away.
‘You’re a stuffed shirt, Alex; you always were,’ said Pauli.
‘You say that about everyone. You used to say that about your brother.’ His voice was raised as he went out through the door and into the locker room beyond.
‘I still do,’ called Pauli.
‘Have a drink.’ Alex Horner came back with his army tunic over his arm and a hip flask in his hand.
‘I’ve stopped drinking; I really have.’
‘One schnapps won’t hurt you. It would be better than all those cigarettes you smoke.’ Alex carefully removed the silver cup from the flask and poured a measure into it. After offering it again to Pauli, he downed it in one gulp. This also was a part of Alex Horner’s Sunday-morning routine.
‘Cigarettes don’t spoil my judgement, Alex.’
‘Would the occasional spoiled judgement be so bad? You’re not on the battlefield.’
‘Oh, but I am, Alex.’ Pauli watched Colonel Alex Horner put on his beautifully tailored tunic. Pauli felt a twinge of envy. But for one isolated piece of bad judgement, plus the spiteful officiousness of that swine Brand, Pauli might have been wearing the same colonel’s uniform and been working alongside his friend. But Pauli didn’t dwell upon it: he’d never wasted much time feeling sorry for himself. He’d grown up under the shadow of his academically brilliant brother. Considering his meagre assets, Pauli was satisfied with his good fortune. Still, Colonel Horner looked damned good, even if he did have to wear those ridiculous little swastika badges. Despite his own party affiliation, Pauli felt that von Blomberg should never have agreed to making the German army wear political-party insignia: it was undignified.
‘Won’t you come home and have lunch with us? Chrisi is only cooking home-made soup and some bratwurst. There will be plenty.’
‘I have to get back to the office, Alex. Thank you.’
‘Chrisi is keen that you and Inge come to dinner.’
‘Next month things will be easier.’
‘It’s Sunday! My goodness, you people work hard. The Gestapo now, is it?’
‘I’m trying to keep my SD desk running, too. It’s the devil of a lot of work.’
‘Then you’d better tell me your news.’
‘How close are you to von Fritsch?’
‘No one is close to von Fritsch,’ said Alex without hesitation. Colonel General Werner Freiherr von Fritsch, the Commander in Chief of the German army was a forbidding figure.
‘Is he a homosexual?’
‘No. Fritsch, a homosexual? It’s out of the question.’
‘He’s not married,’ said Pauli.
‘Is this official?’
‘I’m trying to help.’
‘Well, Fritsch is not a homosexual; I’d bet anything on that. Now, what else can I tell you?’ It was one of those rare moments when Alex Horner revealed a hint of displeasure.
‘It’s not official, Alex. We’re old friends. I wanted to talk with you.’
‘About the C in C?’
‘The railway police at Wannsee picked up some little piece of rubbish named Otto Schmidt. He was hanging around the station there. He makes a living by blackmailing homosexuals. In the course of his interrogation he started name-dropping. One of the names was Fritsch.’
Alex Horner showed both relief and exasperation. ‘Good God, Pauli, you’re surely not going to take that seriously. He just wanted them to think he had influence. What other names did he drop?’
‘Lots of other names: the Potsdam Police President and the Minister of Economics.’
‘There you are.’ Alex poured some more schnapps from the flask, then held it up, but Pauli shook his head to decline again. Alex drank. Usually on Sunday he limited himself to only one drink, but today was different.
‘Not quite,’ said Pauli. ‘The police pushed him along to the Gestapo desk that deals with the suppression of homosexuality. . . .’
‘Is there such a department?’ He wiped his lips on the back of his hand.
‘We think of everything,’ said Pauli sardonically. He watched Alex carefully; Pauli had become an expert observer. In the next stall a restless horse put its weight against the wooden partition so that it creaked. ‘And they showed him photos. He picked out the photo of the C in C.’
‘Hardly reliable evidence.’
Still studying his friend’s face, Pauli said, ‘He is prepared to say he saw Fritsch committing a homosexual act with a youth he picked up at the Wannsee station.’
‘Oh,’ said Alex, keeping his emotions under control. ‘What will happen now?’
‘Quite a lot has happened already. A file on the case went to the Führer. Reichsführer Himmler took it to him personally, so we kept the tightest security.’
‘And?’
‘The Führer said, “Burn this muck.”’
‘Good for the Führer. Was it burned?’
‘We don’t burn anything.’
Alex sighed. ‘Oh, come along, Pauli, old friend. Some things get burned in the Third Reich. Didn’t I see big piles of books by Jewish authors being burned in Unter den Linden not so long ago? At Opernpiatz; I stopped to watch. A big bonfire. I noticed quite a few books there I rather fancied. Freud, Gide, Proust, Zola, Wells, Zweig, Mann . . .’
‘I wish you’d trust me, Alex.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
It was not easy to help people; Pauli had found that again and again. They all acted as though Pauli were talking to them in some incomprehensible foreign tongue. ‘Warn Colonel General Fritsch.’
‘You expect me to walk into his office and tell him that Hitler suspects him of committing homosexual acts at the Wannsee station?’
Alex still couldn’t get it into his head. All these years in the army seemed to have made him incapable of understanding the simple facts of German political life. Pauli explained it as simply as he could. ‘Now that it seems as if von Blomberg must go, Göring will persuade Himmler to bring up the Fritsch business again.’
‘But why?’
‘Don’t be naïve, Alex. Göring wants Blomberg’s ministry, and Fritsch is next in line right now. “War Minister Göring”: he’d love that.’
