A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter IV

16th February 1941, 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse, RHSA Headquarters The van doors opened to an inarticulate shriek from an armed soldier. Felsen took a sideswipe from a rifle butt on the shoulder. He lowered himself into the ankle-deep black slush and staggered up the steps out of the courtyard into the grim stone Gestapo building. He was one of four prisoners. They were led straight down into the cellars, into a long narrow corridor with cells on either side. Most of the light came from an open door from which came the moaning of a man post-coitus. The two men ahead of Felsen looked into the light and switched their heads away fast. A man in shirt sleeves wearing a stiff, grossly stained, brown apron was attending to a man strapped into a chair.

'Shut the door, Kruger,' he said, in a tired, long-suffering voice. A man with a full day's work ahead of him and none of it easy.

The corridor darkened with a bang to a sodium-lit gloom. Felsen was put in a stinking unlit cell with a pallet and full bucket for company. He put his hands up against the damp wall and tried to breathe away the cold clamminess he felt on the inside of his rib cage. He had gone too far. He knew that now.

They came for him after several hours, took him past the shut door of the horror room up to the first floor and into an office with tall windows in which a man in a dark suit sat at a desk cleaning his glasses for an absurdly long time. Felsen waited. The man told him to sit.

'Do you know why you're here?'

'No.'

The man fitted his face into the glasses and opened a file which he tilted away from Felsen, who stared at the precision of the man's parting.

'Communism.'

'You're joking.'

The man looked up but didn't comment.

'You are pro-Jewish.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'You also knew a woman called Michelle Duchamp.'

'That is true.'

'My colleagues have been talking to her for a week in Lyons. She's been remembering things about the time she spent in Berlin back in the thirties.'

'Before the war… when I knew her, you mean.'

'But not before politics. As you know, she's been working for the French Resistance movement for over a year.'

'I'm not political and no, I didn't know that.'

'We are all political. Party member number 479,381, Forderndes Mitglied to SS unit…'

'You know as well as I do that there is no life outside the Party.'

'Is that why you joined, Herr Felsen? To grow your business? Improve your prospects? Just hitching a ride on us are you, while the going's good?'

Felsen sat back from the desk and looked out of the window at the bleak Berlin sky, realizing that this could happen to anybody and did… every day.

'That's a nice jacket,' said the man. 'Made by your tailor…'

'Isaac Weinstock,' said Felsen. 'That's a Jewish name in case…'

'You know it's forbidden for Jews to buy yarn.'

'I bought the cloth for him.'

It was snowing again. He could just make out the grey flakes against the grey sky through the grey glass over the grey filing cabinet.

'Olga Kasarov,' said the man.

'What about her?'

'You know her.'

'I went to bed with an Olga… once.'

'She's a Bolshevik.'

'She's a Russian, I do know that,' said Felsen, 'and anyway, I didn't know you could catch communism from fucking.'

That seemed to snap something inside the man who stood up and tucked the file under his arm.

'I don't think you understand your situation very well, Herr Felsen.'

'You're right, I don't. Perhaps you would be good enough…'

'Some rehabilitation is, perhaps, in order.'

Felsen suddenly felt the runaway vehicle he was on lurch down a steeper slope.

'Your investigation…' he started, but the man was moving towards the door. 'Herr… Herr… wait.'

The man opened the door. Two soldiers came in and heaved Felsen to his feet and took him out.

'We're sending you back to school, Herr Felsen,' said the dark-suited man.

They took him back down to his cell where they kept him for three days. Nobody spoke to him. They gave him a bowl of soup once a day. His bucket wasn't emptied. He sat on his pallet surrounded by his piss and faeces. Screams would occasionally penetrate his darkness, sometimes faint, other times horrifically close and loud. Terrible beatings took place in the corridor outside his cell. More than one man called for his mother under the crack of his door.

He spent the hours and days preparing himself. He tutored his brain into a state of excessive politeness and his demeanour into one of submissive timidity. On the fourth day they came for him again. He was stinking and feeble with fear. They didn't take him to the horror room and they didn't take him upstairs for another meeting with the man in the dark suit. They handcuffed him and took him straight out into the courtyard, the snow falling in soft large flakes but packed hard underfoot by boots and tyres. They loaded him into an empty van with a large and still tacky stain on the floor. The doors shut.

'Where's this going?' he asked the darkness.

'Sachsenhausen,' said the guard outside.

'What about the law?' said Felsen. 'What about the process of law?' The guard hammered on the side of the van. The driver slammed it into gear and sent Felsen cannoning against the doors.

Eva Brucke sat in her office in Die Rote Katze smoking cigarette after cigarette and trickling more brandy into her coffee cup until it was all brandy, no coffee. The swelling on her face had gone down with the daily application of a little snow and she was left with a blue and yellow mark which disappeared under foundation and the white powder she used.

The door to her office was open and she had a clear view of the empty kitchens. She heard a light tapping on the back door and stood to answer it. At that moment the telephone went off louder than a stack of china hitting the floor. She jumped and steadied herself. She didn't want to pick it up, but the noise was shattering and she snatched it to her ear.

'Eva?' asked the voice.

'Yes,' she said, recognizing it. 'This is Die Rote Katze.'

'You sound tired.'

'It's a job with long hours and not much opportunity for rest.'

'You should take some time off.'

'Some "Strength through Joy" perhaps,' she said, and the caller laughed.

'Do you have anybody else with a sense of humour?'

'It does depend on who's telling the jokes.'

'No, well, I mean… someone who appreciates fun. Unusual fun.'

'I know people who can still laugh out loud.'

'Like me,' he said, laughing out loud to prove it.

'Perhaps,' she said, not laughing with him.

'Could they come and see me for an evening of amusement and wonder?'

'How many?'

'Oh, I think three is a merry number. Would three be all right?'

'Could you drop by and give me a better idea of what…?'

'It's rather inconvenient at the moment.'

'You know, I worry after…'

'Oh, no, no, no, don't be concerned. The theme is food. What could be more joyous than food in this day and age.'

'I'll see what I can do.'

'Thank you, Eva. Your service is appreciated.'

She hung up and went to the back door. The small, enclosed man she'd been expecting was there in the snow-packed alley. She let him in. He shook the snow off his hat and stamped his boots clean. They went to the office. She pulled the telephone plug out of the wall.

'Do you drink, Herr Kaufman?'

'Only tea.'

'I have some coffee.'

'Nothing, thank you.'

'What can I do for you?'

'I was wondering if you'd have room for two visitors?'

'I told you…'

'I know, but it's an emergency.'

'Not here.'

'No.'

'How long?'

'Three days.'

'I might be going away,' she said, off the top of her head, inspired by the telephone call.

They can manage on their own.'

'I told you before that this would be… it would have to be…'

'I know,' he said, folding his hands into his lap, 'but the circumstances are unusual.'

'Won't they always be unusual?'

'Perhaps you're right.'

She lit a cigarette and sighed the smoke out.

'When are they coming?'

Sachsenhausen was an old barracks turned concentration camp thirty kilometres north-west of Berlin in Oranienberg. Felsen knew of the place only because he'd taken on a political and two Jews to sweep the factory floors. They'd been released from there in 1936 just before the Olympics. They didn't have to say anything about the conditions in the KZ, the two tendons at the backs of their necks stood out sharply from under their shaved heads-they were fifteen kilos underweight minimum.

It was an unnerving drive on snow-covered roads from Berlin. The van skidded and slewed across the road. At Sachsenhausen he heard the gates opening and a thunderous pummelling on the panels of the van. The van seemed to run a gauntlet for a hundred metres until Felsen's nerve was completely shattered. Then silence and only the creak of tyres on snow. The van stopped. The wind moaned. The driver coughed in his cab. The doors opened.

Felsen got to his feet, felt the stickiness on the edges of his hands which were stained russet from the drying blood on the floor. He stumbled to the back of the van. Outside was a vast white expanse with just two lines across it from the wheels of the van. Far off, perhaps two hundred metres away, it was difficult to judge over the snow's squinting glare, were trees and buildings.

The van took off, throwing him out on to the ankle-deep snow. The doors flapped and banged shut and he put his hands up over his head, confused by the sudden noise. At the edge of the enormous flat expanse of snow-covered ground a figure stood at ease. Felsen nosed forward, eyes creased shut. The figure, grey and indiscernible, didn't move. Felsen flinched at a noise behind him, the sound of sharp metal slicing through snow. He whipped round. There were three men in black SS greatcoats and helmets. The hems of their coats rested on the surface of the snow. One carried a wooden club, the next a spade which he swung in an arc, the blade singing against the crystalline snow. The third held a metre length of steel cable, frayed at the end. Felsen looked back to the figure, as if he might help. The figure had gone. He got to his feet. The men were eyeless beneath their helmets. Felsen's legs were shaking.

'Sachsengruss,' said the guard with the club.

Felsen put his hands on his head and began doing knee-bends. The Saxon Greeting. They kept him at it for an hour. Then they told him to stand to attention for an hour, until his body was shaking with cold and his ears full of the swish from the cable, the slicing of the spade, the tamping of the wooden club. The guards trod a circle around him.

They removed his handcuffs. The spade flew through the air at him. He caught it in fingers which he expected to shatter like porcelain.

'Dig a path to the building.'

They walked behind him over the vast area as he dug hundreds of metres of paths. Tears streamed down his face, the snot ran in freezing rivulets from his nose, the steam poured off him thick as bull's breath. It began to snow. They told him to reclear the paths he'd already made.

They worked him for six hours until it was completely dark, no light coming from the blacked-out buildings. They faced him out into the darkness and gave him another hour's Sachsengruss while they told him how he was going to have to clear it all again tomorrow. In the last ten minutes he dropped to the floor twice and they kicked him back up on to his feet. He was glad to be kicked. He knew something from the kicking. He knew they weren't going to beat him to death with the club, cable and spade.

They stood him to attention after that until a thin reed of music came floating through the pitch black. They told him to march into the building. He fell over. They dragged him backwards inside. His feet trailed damp lines over the polished floors.

The warmth of the building seemed to unfreeze his mind and tears poured out of his head, water leaked out of his nose and ears. The music grew louder. He knew it. Mozart. It had to be. All those notes. Voices and laughter came over the music. A familiar smell. The guards' boots rolled over the polished floors. Felsen's feet came back to a life of pain but he was grinning. He was grinning because he knew now what he'd suspected before out in the snow-he wasn't in Sachsenhausen.

They arrived in a room with chairs and carpets, newspapers and ashtrays-unimaginable civilization after Prinz Albrechtstrasse. They stopped. The guards got him standing. One of them knocked and they took him backwards into the room. A girl giggled. The talking subsided, only the music remained.

'Does the prisoner like this music?' asked a voice.

Felsen swallowed hard. His legs trembled. His humiliation stiffened his neck.

'I don't know whether I should like it, sir.'

'You have no opinion?'

'No, sir.'

'This is Mozart. Don Giovanni. This has been banned by the Party. Do you know why?'

'No, sir.'

'The libretto was written by a Jew.'

The music was cut.

'Now what did you think of the music?'

'I didn't like it, sir.'

'Why are you here?'

'I've been sent back to school, sir.'

Felsen's feet throbbed in his ruined shoes, the blood thumping through them.

'Why are you here?' asked a different voice.

He thought for a long minute.

'Because I'm lucky at cards, sir,' he said, which screwed the tension down in the room so that the girl tittered. 'Sorry sir, because I cheat at cards, sir.'

'Prisoner, turn around and stand at ease.'

He didn't see who was sitting at the table at first. His watering eyes took in the gross quantities of food before anything. Then he saw Wolff, Hanke, Fischer and Lehrer, two other men he didn't know and a young woman who was smoking through lipstick already smudged.

Lehrer was smiling. The Brigadefuhrers were all amused. Fischer broke first and roared and drummed the floor with his boots. They all laughed, banging the table, even the girl, who didn't know why she was laughing.

'Is the prisoner permitted to laugh?' asked Hanke.

They roared again.

'Prisoner Felsen. Laugh!' shouted Fischer.

Felsen smiled and started to blink, conjuring mirth from relief. His shoulders began to shake, his stomach pumped and he laughed, he laughed himself helpless, he laughed himself to a retching standstill. He laughed the SS officers silent.

'The prisoner will stop laughing now,' said Lehrer.

Felsen's mouth clamped shut. He returned to 'at ease'.

'There are some clothes for you in there. Change.'

He went into the kitchens, stripped and got into a dark suit which hung off him. He rejoined the table.

'Eat,' said Lehrer.

He laid waste to the table in his immediate vicinity more thoroughly than a retreating army. The officers talked amongst themselves except Lehrer. 'Don't think I'm a bad loser,' he said.

'I don't think that, sir.'

'What do you think?'

'I think you are what your name implies… a teacher, sir.'

'And what have you learned?'

'Obedience, sir.'

'We're giving you this job you don't want for a number of reasons. You can organize things. You are ruthless and aggressive. But you must not be insubordinate, Felsen. In your business you might lose an hour's production because somebody didn't follow your orders. In the business of war it could be a thousand lives or more. There's no place for the maverick. Control is the key. And I am in control,' he said, swilling the brandy in his glass. 'So why don't you want this job?'

'I don't want to leave Berlin, sir. I have a factory to run.'

'At least it's not a girl.'

'I've produced quality goods and I've shown my appreciation.'

'Don't start on a different question. What's in Berlin for a Swabian like you apart from your factory? We're not talking about Paris or Rome. It's not a city you can fall in love with. Not like Nuremberg, my city. And Berliners?…My God, they think the world owes them a living.'

'Maybe I like their sense of humour.'

'Yes, well, you've always been a bit dry down in Swabia.'

'I don't follow you, sir,' said Felsen, touchy.

'Trampled to death by a pig. What was that?'

Felsen didn't respond.

'Do you think I don't know about your father?' said Lehrer.

'Yes, well, there you have two examples of Swabian humour.'

'It gave me a problem, Hanke thought you were psychologically unsuitable.'

'I should have tried harder with him.'

Lehrer leaned across the table, his face flushed with wine, his breath sour and cigar-streaked.

'This job is a big opportunity for you… a big opportunity… You will thank me for it. I know you will thank me.'

'Then why don't you tell me about it, sir?'

'Not yet. Tomorrow. You'll come to Lichterfelde. I'll have you sworn in first.'

'Into the SS?'

'Of course,' said Lehrer, until he saw Felsen's frozen face. 'Don't worry, you're going west, not east.'

They drove slowly north through the fresh snow back to Berlin. That familiar smell had been the Lichterfelde barracks. On the few occasions a car passed in the other direction Felsen could see the shadows of the officers in the car in front, passing the girl between them. Lehrer didn't speak. It stopped snowing. They cruised into Berlin and the first car peeled off to the Tiergarten and Moabit. Lehrer ordered the driver to do a small circuit of the city. Felsen stared out into the dark, the black parks, the flak towers, the lightless houses, the silent Anhalter station.

'It's the nature of war,' said Lehrer, 'that things happen. More things happen than could possibly happen in peacetime. In that respect it's the most exciting time of a man's life. One moment you're running a factory, making more money than you could ever dream of as a farmer in Swabia. You dance with girls in the Golden Horseshoe, watch the shows in the Frasquita, walk the Kufu with all the other monied bastards. And the next moment…'

'I'm in Prinz Albrechtstrasse.'

'A new and radical regime must protect itself. Strength through fear.'

'And the next moment… go on.'

'Think international. Germany is not just Germany any more. Germany is the whole of Europe. A world power. Political and economic. Don't be small-minded.'

'It's my peasant mentality. It's how I get things done for the money.'

'That's good, but see the big picture too. The Reichsfuhrer Himmler wants the SS to be an economic power in its own right within the new Germanic Reich. Think about that.'

The car finally turned into Nurnbergerstrasse and pulled up outside Felsen's apartment. He got out and went up the two flights of stairs and found his front door repaired. He let himself in and lit one of his own cigarettes. He looked from behind the blackout and found the car gone. He put on a coat and hat and went out into the night.

It was a short walk to Kurfurstenstrasse. He walked in the street where it was easier. There was nobody out. The temperature had dropped sharply.

Felsen went down the small lane at the side of Eva's apartment building and in dirough the gate. The mounds of earth and rubble taken out of the cellar were covered in thick snow. The door was locked. He hammered on it and stepped back and up on to one of the mounds to see if there were any cracks of light around the windows. He roared her name. After a few moments someone opened a window and told him to shut his drunken talk.

He went back home, soaked in a bath and got into bed. It was 2.30 a.m. He'd call her in the morning, he thought, as he drifted into his first hour's sleep. He came awake four times, each time with a rush and a crack in his head as if he'd been hit with a brick. There was the smell of shit in his nostrils, and the last frames of his dream stayed with him; the white of the widening parade ground lengthening out for ever. He had to put the light on after that.