Field Gray

11

It was a Saturday, May 23. I know that because it was my birthday. You tend to remember your birthday when you have to spend it in Tegel Prison, interviewing one of the men convicted in the Eden Dance Palace trial. An SA storm trooper by the name of Konrad Stief. He was just a kid, really, not much more than twenty-two, with a couple of convictions for petty theft, and he’d joined the SA the previous spring. For the last years of the Weimar Republic, his was a fairly typical Berlin story: On November 22, 1930, Stief and three other chums from SA Storm 33 had gone to a dance hall. Nothing wrong with that except that they weren’t going there to do the Lindy Hop; and instead of ties and neatly combed hair, they took some pistols because the Eden Dance Palace was frequented by a communist hiking club. Surprisingly, communist hiking clubs used to do what everyone else did in dance halls: they danced, but not that night. Anyway, when the Nazis arrived they went straight upstairs and opened fire. Several of the happy wanderers were hit and two of them seriously wounded. Like I say, it was a typical Berlin story, and probably I wouldn’t have remembered many of these details except for the fact that the Eden Dance Palace case at Berlin’s Central Criminal Court in Old Moabit was hardly a typical trial. You see, the defense attorney, a fellow named Hans Litten, called Hitler to the stand and cross-examined him about his true relationship with the SA and its violent methods; and Hitler, who was trying to sell himself as Herr Law and Order, didn’t much care for that, or for Herr Litten, who happened to be a Jew. Anyway, the four of them were convicted, Stief was sentenced to two and a half years in Tegel, and, the very next day, I drove over there to see if he could shed any light on a different case. It was something to do with the murder of an SA man. The gun Stief had used in the Eden Dance Palace was used to murder another SA man. And my question was this: Had the SA man been murdered by communists because he was in the SA? Or, as was beginning to seem more likely, had he been murdered by the Nazis because he was really a communist sent to spy on Storm 33?

“Finally, I got a name out of Stief, and a Storm tavern in the old town that was frequented by Storm 33. Reisig’s tavern, in Hebbel Street, in the western district of Charlottenburg. Which wasn’t so very far from the Eden Dance Palace. So when I left Tegel I decided to drop in there and take a look. But as soon as I arrived outside I saw a group of SA men piling into a truck. They were armed and clearly bent on some murderous mission. There was no time to phone headquarters, and thinking that I might for once prevent a homicide instead of merely investigating one, I followed.

“If this sounds brave or foolhardy, it wasn’t. In those days, a lot of cops used to carry a Bergmann MP18 in the trunk of the car instead of a pistol. The Bergmann was a nine-mil submachine gun and perfect for sweeping crap off the streets. So I followed the gang all the way to Felseneck Colony in Reinickendorf-East, a Communist Party stronghold. Felseneck Colony was just a series of allotments for Reds who wanted to grow their own food; and what with money being so tight, a lot of them needed those vegetables just to live. Some of the Reds actually lived there. They had their own guards, who were supposed to keep a lookout for Nazis, only they hadn’t been doing their job. They’d run away or been tipped off, or maybe they were in on the attack, who knows?

“But when I got there, the Nazis were just about to lay down a beating on a young man of about twenty. I didn’t get a good look at him immediately—there were too many storm troopers on him, like dogs. They probably figured to beat the crap out of the boy and then take him somewhere else and put a bullet in his head before dumping his body. I swept the air over their heads with the Bergmann, marched them back to their truck, and told them to beat it because there were too many of them to arrest. Then, in case they decided to come back, I told the boy to get in my car and said I’d drop him somewhere—somewhere safer than where we were, anyway. He thanked me and asked me if I could take him to Bülowplatz, and that was the first time I got a good look at Erich Mielke. In my car, on the way to Berlin.

“He was about twenty-four years old, five feet, six inches tall, muscular, with lots of wavy hair, and a Berliner—from Wedding, I think. He was also a lifelong communist, like his father, who was a carpenter or wheelwright. And he had two younger sisters and a brother who were also in the Communist Party. Or so he told me.

“So it’s true what they say,” I said to him. “That madness runs in families.”

He grinned. Mielke still had a sense of humor in those days. That was before the Russians got hold of him. About Marx and Engels and Lenin they never did have a sense of humor.

“There’s nothing mad about it,” he said. “The KPD’s the largest Communist Party in the world outside the Soviet Union. You’re not a Nazi, that much is obvious. I suppose you’re SPD.”

“That’s true.”

“I thought so. A social fascist. You hate us more than you hate the Nazis.”

“You’re right, of course. The only reason I helped you back there was because I want you to die of shame when you have to tell your lefty pals that it was a cop that supports the SPD who took your pot off the stove. Better still, I want you to go and hang yourself like Judas Iscariot for the betrayal of the movement brought about by a Red being indebted to a Republican.”

“Who says I’m even going to tell them?”

“I guess you’re right. What’s another lie on top of all the other lies told by the KPD?” I shook my head. “It’s a low, dishonest decade that’s ahead of us, make no mistake.”

“Don’t think I’m not grateful, polyp,” said Mielke. “Because I am. Those bastards would have cut my throat for sure. They wanted to kill me because I’m a reporter for The Red Flag. I was doing a story about the workers’ community at Felseneck Colony.”

“Yeah, yeah. Brotherly love and all that crap.”

“Don’t you believe in brotherly love, polyp?”

“People don’t give a damn about brotherly love. They just want someone to love who loves them back. Everything else is bullshit. Most folk would give the keys to the door of workers’ paradise for a chance at being loved for themselves, not because they’re German, or working-class, or Aryan, or the proletariat. Nobody really believes in the euphoric dream that’s built on this book or that historic vision; they believe in a kind word, a kiss from a pretty girl, a ring on a finger, a happy smile. That’s what people—the individuals who make up a people—that’s what they want to believe.”

“Sentimental rubbish,” jeered Mielke.

“Probably,” I said.

“That’s the problem with all you democrats. You talk such unutterable nonsense. Well, there’s no time for that kind of clap-trap. You’ll be giving that speech in the cemetery if you and your class don’t wake up soon. Hitler and the Nazis don’t care for your individuals. All they care about is power.”

“And things will be different when we’re all taking orders from Stalin in some degenerate workers’ state.”

“You sound just like Trotsky,” said Mielke.

“Is he a Social Democrat, too?”

“He’s a fascist,” said Mielke.

“Meaning he’s not a true communist.”

“Exactly.”

Our route back into the center of Berlin took us along Bismarck Strasse. At a tram stop just short of the Tiergarten, Mielke spun around in his seat and said, “That was Elisabeth.”

I slowed the car to a halt and Mielke waved over a handsome-looking brunette. As she leaned in the window of the car I caught a distinct whiff of sweat, but I didn’t hold that against her on a hot day. I was feeling kind of warm myself.

“What are you doing here?” asked Mielke.

“I was fitting a dress for a client who’s an actress at the Schiller Theater.”

“That’s a job I’d like,” I said.

The brunette shot me a smile. “I’m a seamstress.”

“Elisabeth, this is Kommissar Gunther, from the Alex.”

“Are you in any trouble, Erich?”

“I might have been, but for the Kommissar’s enormous bravery. He chased off some Nazis who were planning to give me a kicking.”

“Can I give you a lift somewhere?” I asked the brunette, changing the subject.

“Well, you could drop me anywhere near Alexanderplatz,” she said.

She climbed into the backseat of the car and we set off east again, along Berliner Strasse, across the canal and through the park. At first I jealously supposed that the brunette was involved with Mielke, and she was, although not in the way I had supposed; it seemed that she had been a close friend of Mielke’s late mother, Lydia, who also had been a seamstress, and after her death, the brunette had tried to help Mielke’s widowed father to bring up his four children. Consequently Erich Mielke seemed to regard Elisabeth more like a big sister, which suited me just fine. That year I was keen on handsome brunettes, and there and then I resolved to try to see her again, if possible.

Ten minutes later we were approaching Bülowplatz, which was Erich Mielke’s preferred destination, being the location of the KPD headquarters in Berlin. Occupying a whole corner of one of the most heavily policed squares in Europe, Karl Liebknecht House was a noisy indication of what all buildings might look like if the lefties ever got into power, each of its five stories decorated with more red flags than a dangerous beach and several bromide slogans in large white capital letters. If architecture is frozen music, then this was a partly thawed Lotte Lenya telling us we must die and not to ask why.

Mielke slid down in the passenger seat as we entered the square. He said, “Drop me around the corner, on Linien Strasse. In case anyone sees me getting out of your car and thinks I’m a spy.”

“Relax,” I said. “I’m in plain clothes.”

He laughed. “You think that will save you when the Revolution comes?”

“No, but it might save you this afternoon.”

“Fair enough, Kommissar. If I sound ungrateful, it’s because I’m not used to getting a square deal from a Berlin bull. Pork Cheeks is the kind of polyp I’m used to.”

“Pork Cheeks?”

“That swine Anlauf.”

I nodded. Captain Paul Anlauf was—among the communists at least—the most hated cop in Berlin.

I pulled up on Weyding Strasse and waited for Mielke to get out.

“Thanks. Again. I won’t forget it, polyp.”

“Keep out of trouble, yeah?”

“You, too.”

Then he kissed the brunette on the cheek and was gone. I lit a cigarette and watched him walk back onto Bülowplatz and vanish into a crowd of men.

“Don’t mind him,” said the brunette. “He’s really not so bad.”

“I don’t mind him as much as he seems to mind me,” I said.

“Well,” she said. “I’m grateful for the lift. This is fine for me here.”

She was wearing a bright print percale dress with a heart-shaped button waistline, a lacy collar, and cute puff sleeves. The print was a riot of red and white fruit and flowers on a solid black background. She looked like a market garden at midnight. On her head was a little white trilby with a red silk ribbon, as if the hat were a cake and it was someone’s birthday. Mine perhaps. Which, of course, it was. The smell of sweat on her body was honest and more provocative to me than some expensive, cloying scent. Underneath the midnight garden was a real woman with skin on every part of her body, and organs and glands and all the other things about women I knew I liked but had almost forgotten. Because it was the kind of day when girls like Elisabeth were wearing summer dresses again, and I remembered just what a long winter it had been in Berlin, sleeping in that cave with just my dreams for company.

“Come for a drink,” I said.

She looked tempted, but only for a moment. “I’d like to, but—I should really be getting back to work.”

“Come on. It’s a warm day and I need a beer. There’s nothing like spending a couple of hours in the cement to give a man a thirst. Especially when it’s his birthday. You wouldn’t want me to drink alone on my birthday, would you?”

“No. If it really is your birthday.”

“If I show my identity card, will you come?”

“All right.”

So I did. And she came. Immediately next to the police station on Bülowplatz there was a bar called the Braustübl, and, leaving my car where it was, we went in there.

The place was full of communists, of course, but I wasn’t thinking about them, or about Erich Mielke, although for a while Elisabeth kept on talking about him as if I were interested, which I wasn’t. But I liked watching her red lips open and close to show off her white teeth. I was especially taken with the sound of her laughter, as she seemed to like my jokes, and that was really all that mattered because when we parted she agreed to see me again.

When she’d gone I bought some cigarettes, and heading back to my car I caught the eye of one of the uniformed cops on the square and stopped to chat with him in the sunshine. Bauer, that was his name, Sergeant Adolf Bauer. Our chat was the usual splash on the wall: the trial of Charlie Urban for a murder at the Mercedes Theater, Brüning’s emergency decrees, Hitler’s evidence at the court in Moabit. Bauer was a good bull, and all the time we were speaking I noticed how he had his eye on a car that was parked in front of Karl Liebknecht House, as if he recognized it or the man waiting patiently in the driver’s seat. Then we were both watching three other men come out of the Braustübl and get into the car with this other fellow. And one of the men was Erich Mielke.

“Hullo,” said Bauer. “There goes trouble.”

“I know the kid,” I said. “The one with the quiff. But I don’t know the others.”

“The one driving is Max Thunert,” said Bauer. “He’s a low-ranking KPD thug. One of the others was Heinz Neumann. He’s in the Reichstag, although he doesn’t limit causing trouble to when he’s there. I didn’t recognize the other fellow.”

“I was just in that bar,” I said. “And I didn’t see any of them.”

“There’s a private room upstairs that they use,” said Bauer. “It’s my opinion that they keep some weapons there. Just in case we decide to search Karl Liebknecht House. Also, if the SA mounts a demo here they won’t be expecting anything from the top floor of that bar.”

“Have you told the Hussar?”

The Hussar was a uniformed sergeant called Max Willig, who was frequently about Bülowplatz and almost as unpopular as Captain Anlauf.

“I’ve told him.”

“Didn’t he believe you?”

“He did. But Judge Bode didn’t when we went to get a warrant. Said we need more evidence than an itch on the end of my nose.”

“Think they’re planning something?”

“They’re always planning something. They’re communists, aren’t they? Criminals, most of them.”

“I don’t like criminals who break the law,” I said.

“What other kind are there?”

“The kind that make the law. It’s the Hindenburgs and Schleichers of this world who are doing more to screw the Republic than the commies and the Nazis put together.”

“You got that right, my friend.”

I might never have heard the name of Erich Mielke again but for two things. One was that I saw a lot more of Elisabeth and, now and again, she’d say that she’d seen him or one of his sisters. And then there were the events of August 9, 1931. There’s not a policeman from Weimar Berlin who doesn’t remember August 9, 1931. The way Americans remember the Maine.