Black Cross

23

As it happened, Rachel did not have to steel herself to walk into Major Schörner’s office and ask to speak to him. Fifteen minutes after the gypsy woman died, Schörner sent Weitz to the block with orders to bring Rachel to him.

Her first response was panic. Had Schörner grown tired of waiting and decided to punish her?

“The Pole will take care of your brats,” Weitz muttered as he pulled Rachel across the Appellplatz. “I think that bitch is in love with you.”

At Schörner’s office, they walked right past the clerk and into the major’s presence. Schörner sat behind his desk, his face clean-shaven today, his tunic buttoned to the throat. He dismissed Weitz and opened his mouth to speak, but Rachel started first.

“A moment please, Sturmbannführer! May I ask you a question?”

Schörner looked discomfited by her directness. “Go ahead, then.”

“It is a difficult question, Herr Sturmbannführer.”

“I’m not squeamish.”

Rachel concentrated on speaking perfect German. “Are you a man of your word, Sturmbannführer? A man of honor?”

Rather than explode with indignation as Rachel had feared, Schörner leaned back in his chair and regarded her with interest. He chose to answer her question with a question of his own.

“Do you know what honor is, Frau Jansen? I will tell you. When our armies marched into Athens, a German officer ordered a Greek soldier to strike the Greek flag from the Acropolis. The Greek took down the flag, wrapped himself in it and stepped off the parapet. He plunged to his death. That is honor.”

Schörner sniffed and looked toward his office window. “Do you think Sturm and his men know anything of honor?”

Always Sergeant Sturm, Rachel thought. Why do they hate each other so much? Why does a major trouble himself about a sergeant?

“If the Russians overran this camp tomorrow,” Schörner said, “Sturm would kiss the ass of the first private through the gate and offer to sell him a watch.”

“And you, Sturmbannführer?”

Schörner steepled his fingers and gazed into Rachel’s eyes. “Only the day of action can answer that question. But I can tell you this. My word is my life.”

“I am glad to know that, Sturmbannführer. Because I have a favor to ask of you.”

Schörner’s eyelids lowered a little. “A favor?”

“You have asked something of me. I wonder if I might ask something from you?”

“I see. What is it?”

Rachel felt her words slipping away. She had rehearsed them all the way across the Appellplatz, but to stand here like a beggar and offer to trade herself . . . it was too difficult.

“Speak!” Schörner demanded, coming to his feet. “What is the matter with you? Weitz tells me you refuse to eat any of your food. I go to great trouble to send that to you! The other prisoners endure the same hardships as you, yet they have no trouble eating. In fact they gobble their food like swine.”

Rachel felt the floodgates burst. “It is my children, Sturmbannführer! My son! I’m worried that—” Her throat closed involuntarily. If Schörner perceived Jan as an obstacle to sexual congress with her, might not he simply order the boy taken to the E-Block and—

“Out with it, woman!” Schörner shouted.

Rachel could think of nothing but the truth. “Sometimes . . . sometimes children disappear here, Sturmbannführer.”

This statement took Schörner completely aback. He stood motionless for a few seconds. Then he walked to the door and made sure it was completely closed. “You’re speaking of Herr Doktor Brandt, of course,” he said in a low voice.

Rachel nodded quickly.

Schörner sighed. “The commandant has . . . a problem, it is true,” he said softly. “A weakness. As a man and a German officer, I despise him. However, I tolerate him. Not because he is my superior, but for one very simple reason. He is competent. In fact, he is probably a genius. Can you understand? Brandt is not like Mengele and the other quacks they call doctors at Auschwitz. Brandt was educated at Heidelberg, and then at Kiel as a medical doctor. He was a senior chemist with Farben for a while, after which he moved into pure research. He worked with Gebhardt Schräder himself.” Schörner rubbed his chin, as if mulling over how much to reveal. “Research is what he is doing here. Farben provides him with equipment and materials. And what he is working on, Frau Jansen, well . . . never mind. I have forgotten myself in the presence of a beautiful woman.” He looked Rachel from head to toe. “You have some sort of accommodation in mind, I take it.”

“Yes, Sturmbannführer.”

“That would be fair, of course. But I must be honest. The simple fact is that I cannot protect your son. As commandant, Brandt has absolute authority over everyone here, including me.”

“But you are second only to him! And I have heard some people say that — well, that Brandt is afraid of you.”

Schörner laughed. “I can assure you that rumor is false.”

“Sturmbannführer, I think that a small gesture from you at the right moment might save my son, even my daughter.”

Schörner made a sound indicating great weariness. “Frau Jansen, I can only give you advice. Keep the boy out of the Appellplatz except during roll call. Make him look sick. Rub his skin with something to give him a rash. Give him lice. It won’t kill him, and it might save him. Make his skin look yellow, jaundiced.”

“But what about medical inspections? I’ve heard that they periodically remove the sick and . . .” She faltered.

“Eliminate them,” Schörner finished. “Sometimes they do, yes. SS doctors are bloodthirsty, even when working on their own brothers-in-arms. They would rather hack off a leg than try to save it for you.” Schörner’s right hand went to his eyepatch. “You would come to me tonight?”

“Sturmbannführer, please. Promise me you will try. For that . . . for that I could come.”

As Schörner’s eyes bore into hers, Rachel felt wretched and ridiculous. What was she offering? To have her body, the major had only to lock the door and bend her over his desk. She could not afford to scream, much less fight him. Yet that did not seem to be how he wanted things to happen.

“Perhaps,” Schörner said carefully, “I could help about the medical inspections. I could send word to you just beforehand. You could clean your boy up a bit, so that he wouldn’t be eliminated for sickness.”

Rachel put her hand over her mouth. “But then Dr. Brandt would see him up close and clean. He might decide he wants him for the medical experiments. Or for — you know what.”

Schörner threw up his hands. “There is only so much I can do! That is the system. I didn’t devise it. I am merely trapped inside it, as you are.”

Rachel let this remarkable statement pass unchallenged. But in a way, Schörner was right. He could only do so much to thwart the desires of his superior officer. It was a miracle he had offered even this much. Of course, he didn’t have to live up to his word. And he would probably grow tired of her after a few nights. Then what would she do?

“Frau Jansen!”

“I’m sorry, Sturmbannführer?”

“Come to your senses, please. We are agreed? You will come to my quarters tonight?”

Rachel felt the coldness of a crypt seeping out from her heart. “Tonight,” she said.

Naturally it was Weitz who escorted Rachel to Schörner’s quarters. The camp was dark, blacked-out to conceal it from Allied bombers. Once she was inside, the physical act happened quickly. The major had obviously been waiting at the door. She did not fully undress. She merely became bodiless for a few minutes, a mind that absorbed the inanimate environment around her. Cherry furniture, of which Schörner had a few nice pieces, scrounged from God knows where. A phonograph, an old gramophone that clicked steadily, insisting that the end of the record had been reached. A framed picture on the wall, the obligatory stern-faced father and mother, with Schörner in front in civilian clothes and a tall, smiling young man beside him in a Wehrmacht captain’s uniform. His older brother, of course. Also a little blond girl, smiling at the level of Schörner’s belt. There were other photos stuffed between a bureau mirror and its frame. A group of gray-uniformed men standing in deep snow, and beyond the snow a white haze of sky split by bare black trees. A pile of burning scrap metal behind the men materialized into a tank that would never move under its own power again. The men’s faces were grim, but every man was touching a comrade in some way, as if to reassure himself he was not alone on the great white plain.

Rachel had assumed that when Schörner finished she would be told to go back to the women’s block. Or at least allowed to go. But after she pulled on her underpants and rose from the couch, Schörner asked if she would stay a bit. She hesitated, wondering what he could want. Had he not satisfied himself? He looked quite at ease.

Schörner led her into his front room and bade her sit down in a wing chair. He poured some brandy, which Rachel left standing on the low table before her. Then Schörner simply looked at her. To Rachel the room seemed filled by a brittle silence. She did not feel particularly uncomfortable, or particularly comfortable either. She simply noticed that the major’s quarters, unlike the Jewish women’s block, did not stink of sweat and disinfectant and worse things. It smelled of leather and gun oil and faintly of cigars. While he sat there watching her, she wondered if she was a different person for what she had allowed him to do. She didn’t feel different. At least not any different from when she had walked in the door fifteen minutes earlier. But perhaps she was not thinking clearly, like a person who has had a limb torn off by a shell.

While Rachel sat thinking these things, Major Schörner began to talk. It struck her as quite odd, the things he said. He began by talking about the city of Cologne, how he missed it. And then about his older brother. He talked about hunting trips they had taken together as boys. He required no response from Rachel, only that she listen. She was glad he had not done all this talking before. Somehow she knew it would have been more difficult to block him out. To erase him as a person. After some time talking like this, he fell silent again. He studied Rachel with a wistful intensity so great that she suddenly realized she knew what he was thinking. This strange certainty gave her the courage to ask a question.

“Who is it that I remind you of, Sturmbannführer?”

Schörner answered effusively, as if during all his silence he had been waiting for her to ask this very thing. “A young Fräulein from my hometown. Cologne, as I told you. Her name was Erika. Erika Möser. We were sweethearts from a very young age, but no one knew it. She was the daughter of a rival banking family. You’ve read Shakespeare, I’m sure. It was the Montagues and the Capulets all over again. The coming of Hitler made things even worse for us. Unlike my father, Herr Möser openly condemned the Führer and anyone who supported him. He was an arrogant man — too powerful to eliminate — but Goebbels forced him out of the country in 1939. Erika stayed behind to wait for me.” Schörner swallowed and looked at the floor. “It was a mistake. She was killed in the British thousand-bomber raid of 1942.”

Rachel listened in amazement. It was all so unbelievable. One imagined SS officers to be monsters, sterile machines that obeyed orders to rape and massacre — not human beings who quaintly compared their childhood romances to Romeo and Juliet. Yet Schörner had killed many times, she was sure of it. At Totenhausen alone he had presided over the executions of hundreds, perhaps thousands of prisoners. And tonight he had pressured her into submitting to his will.

“You went to university?” Schörner asked suddenly.

“Yes. At Vrije. For two years only, though. I married before graduating.”

“But that is excellent! Now perhaps I can converse for a while in words not prescribed in the manual of orders. I told you I was at Oxford, didn’t I?”

Rachel could hardly believe he remembered, he had been so drunk. “Yes, Sturmbannführer. You said you were a paying student. Not a Rhodes scholar.”

Schörner laughed. “That’s right. My father wanted me to be the German Asquith. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Strange that a man like that would let his son join the SS.”

“Let me?” Schörner slapped his knee. “The old hypocrite made me join! It’s true! Let me tell you a funny story. Secretly, my father despised Hitler. The Führer was a bounder, an upstart, a nobody. But after 1935 or so, my father began to see which way the wind was blowing. So did a lot of aristocrats, as well. He decided Hitler might take Germany where it needed to go after all. Given that, he decided he should cover his bases. My brother Joseph was already in the Wehrmacht, as per family tradition. He’s on Kesselring’s staff now, in Italy. And so young Wolfgang was ‘encouraged’ into the SS. The National Socialist aristocracy. The Nazi elite.”

“You swore the personal oath to Hitler?” Rachel asked quietly.

“Yes. It didn’t seem such a difficult thing to do in 1936. Now . . . well, let us say that the SS is not the ideal organization for an educated man. Not even for a half-educated man like me. Educated men tend to ask questions, and questions are verboten in the SS.”

Rachel’s curiosity struggled with her fear of provoking retaliation. “But even if the SS began as an elite unit, how can a man of your education ignore the things they have done over these years? What I have seen myself — the stories I’ve heard. . . ”

Schörner’s face seemed suddenly to grow heavy. “There are excesses, certainly. There are things I do not agree with. War brings opportunities to men who in normal times suppress darker appetites. You should see what the Russians did to some of my friends.” He curled his lip in disgust. “But frankly, if we win the war, none of that will ever be brought up in polite conversation, much less in a court of law. The butchers will be heroes.”

Rachel was too stunned to consider her words. “If you win? Surely you don’t — I mean, can you win, once the Americans and the English invade?”

Schörner smiled with surprising confidence. “That is exactly the problem we are working on here at Totenhausen. I almost told you the other day.” He leaned back on the sofa, a man in a good humor, munificent in his superiority. “What is this power you have over me?” he asked. “You make me want to pour out my soul. What a fool I am, telling all to a woman.”

Yet he did not stop. He seemed to enjoy the absurdity of the situation. “Frau Jansen, what I told you about Doktor Brandt’s abilities is true. He is a pioneering chemist, a man of genius. His war gases are Germany’s only hope of throwing the Allied invasion army back into the sea. Believe me when I tell you that Soman can stop literally an infinite number of troops. It is what we call a ‘denial’ weapon. No one can occupy the same area it does. And if we deny the Allies a foothold in France this year, we can stop the Russians in the East.”

“But can you win?”

Schörner bristled. “We might. If not, we can negotiate an end to the war with respectable territorial gains. That would be satisfactory. The alternative is the destruction of Germany.” Schörner leaned forward. “That is why I tolerate Herr Doktor Brandt’s eccentricities, Frau Jansen. It is an interesting intellectual problem, yes? Brandt’s weakness is one for which I might kill him during normal times. But we are at war. Thus his value to Germany is determined by a different equation. Perhaps by a different mathematics altogether.”

Rachel wondered where she fit in Schörner’s “different” mathematics. There he sat, a scion of the “master race,” having a parlor chat with a member of the tribe he was pledged to eradicate from the face of the earth.

“Sturmbannführer,” she said quietly, “are you not in danger, sitting here with a Jew in this fashion? Doing what we have done?”

Schörner cocked his head slightly to the side. Then he chuckled softly. “I suppose so. But in this crazy camp, I would say that what I did tonight hardly qualifies as a misdemeanor.”

Rachel would not be put off. “I am a Jew,” she said again. “What does that mean to you?”

Schörner turned up his palms. “To me you are a woman,” he said. “I don’t really care about religion. I never did. Brandt doesn’t care either, to tell you the truth. To him we are all guinea pigs.”

“If I was old and ugly,” Rachel said, “would you still not care about my religion?”

Schörner laughed. “You are not old and ugly. Even nearly bald you are quite beautiful. But please, do not push me on this. There are paradoxes in all societies, Frau Jansen. You did not grow up as I did, so you cannot possibly understand what led me to the position in which I now find myself. Nor can I really understand yours.”

“No,” Rachel said under her breath.

Schörner stood, not hurriedly, but with enough emphasis to indicate that the conversation was over. “I have absolutely no doubt that these things I’ve said tonight will not leave this room. You understand, of course.”

Rachel felt as if an electrical switch had been thrown in her chest. What she had taken as a strange intimacy was merely Schörner speaking freely in the certainty that she would eventually die like all the other prisoners. She could scarcely believe she had dared speak to him, much less pressed him about personal matters.

“I understand completely, Sturmbannführer,” she said submissively. “Should I go now?”

“You may go. I look forward to your next visit.”

Rachel turned to the door.

“Just a moment. Take the brandy with you.”

Schörner was holding out the glass she had left untouched on the table. Rachel considered taking the brandy to Frau Hagan. The old Pole would have no scruples about drinking Nazi booty. But Rachel could not touch the glass. Somehow, she felt, if she accepted anything material from Schörner, she would be lost. That she might never find herself again, even if she did someday manage to escape this place.

It was only a small victory, but she clung to it.

Outside Schörner’s quarters, Rachel saw a man standing in the shadow of the administrative building, smoking a cigarette. She cringed, thinking it might be Sergeant Sturm.

As she drew closer she realized it was only one of Sturm’s dog handlers. He did not challenge her, but he smiled in a way that made her rush past as quickly as she could.