Prague Fatale

CHAPTER 10

I got down to Berlin’s Anhalter Station about an hour before the train was due to depart so that I could meet Arianne and make sure that we both got a seat in a compartment. The newspaper vendors were shouting about the greatest victory in all military history at Kiev, and now and then about some smaller Italian air success against the British at Gibraltar. A squadron of pigeons up in the rafters of the station roof must have been listening because they flew south across the station concourse in formation, as if in honour of our wonderful armed forces and their brave Italian allies.

The station was busy with people. Nowadays, Anhalter was always busier than Lehrter or Potsdam: Germans were not travelling west toward RAF targets like Hamburg and Cologne if they could help it. South was better and south-east was better still. Even the pigeons knew that much.

The train filled. Among the other passengers with a seat in our compartment was an old Jew, easily identified by the yellow star recently sewn onto the left breast pocket of his suit. Nothing else about him was Jewish according to the filthy caricature of a Jew you saw in the newsreels or on the front of Der Stürmer, and prior to the nineteenth of September and Heydrich’s new police law I should have assumed the old man was just another Berliner. Except that he was without question a brave one: the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves he wore on a ribbon around his neck was eloquent proof of that, and probably a clever way to offset the stigma of the yellow star.

By now people were standing in the corridor and a man wearing the uniform of a Labour Corps leader loudly demanded that the old man give up his place to ‘a German’. From his substantial girth, his relationship with real work looked tenuous to say the least.

Normally I didn’t interfere in these matters; maybe it was the sight of the Knight’s Cross around the old man’s neck – maybe it was just that like a lot of other Berliners I didn’t like the yellow star – but I was feeling more querulous in the face of Nazi bullying.

‘Stay where you are,’ I told the Jew and stood up to face down the Labour leader.

His face reddened like a Muscovy duck as he tried and failed to lift his chest above the polished brown belt around his waist.

‘And who the hell are you to interfere?’

It was a fair question. I wasn’t in uniform. That was in my suitcase and, for once, I was almost regretting not wearing it. But I had the next best thing in my pocket: my warrant disc. I showed it to him in the palm of my hand and it had the usual effect of cowing the man and the rest of the carriage into respectful silence.

‘Do you see a sign that says this carriage is forbidden to Jews?’

The Labour leader glanced around, redundantly. There was a small printed panel that read Attention! The Enemy is Listening! but nowhere was there an anti-Semitic sign of the kind you sometimes saw on park benches or at public baths. Even I was surprised about that.

He shook his head.

I pointed at Arianne. ‘This woman worked for BVG until about a year ago.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I was secretary to the director himself.’

‘Is there anything in the BVG railway rules and regulations that says a Jew must give up his seat to a German?’

‘No. There isn’t.’

‘So there,’ I said. ‘Let that be an end of it. Go away and keep your ignorant mouth shut.’ I might also have mentioned the decoration around the old Jew’s neck, but I didn’t want anyone in that compartment thinking that this was the only reason I was interfering on his behalf.

There was a murmur of approval as the Labour leader barrelled his way out of the compartment and down the carriage. I sat down.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the old man, tipping his hat.

‘Don’t mention it,’ I said and tipped my own in return.

Someone else said, quietly, ‘No one likes that yellow star.’

By now the old man was looking thoroughly bewildered, as well he might be, and he could reasonably have asked any of us how it was, if none of us cared for the yellow star, we had allowed Heydrich’s police order to happen. If he had, I might have suggested a better question: how had we allowed Heydrich to happen? There was no easy answer to a question like that.

The old man got off the train in Dresden, which was a relief to everyone. The sight of the word ‘Jew’ emblazoned on a man of such obvious valour made all of us feel thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.

Despite what had been said about the yellow star, no one in our compartment – no one at all – talked about the war. The injunction on the wooden wall that the enemy might be listening was more effective than might have been imagined. And since there was little else but the war on anyone’s mind, this meant that none of the other passengers in our compartment said very much. Even Arianne, who liked to talk, was silent for most of the journey.

The train travelled north of the Elbe until Bad Schandau, where it passed over a bridge onto the south bank, then east and south again until Schöna, where it halted to allow several customs officers to board. Everyone – myself included, until I flashed my beer-token – was obliged to leave the train and have their luggage searched in the customs shed. None of my fellow passengers protested. After eight long years of Nazism, people knew better than to complain to authority. Besides, these officers were backed by twenty or thirty SS who stood thuggishly on the platform ready to see off any trouble.

The customs officers themselves were surprisingly courteous and polite. They did not bother to search Arianne or her bags when I informed them that she was travelling with me. If they had, I wonder what they might have found.

While the rest of the passengers were in the customs shed and we were alone in the compartment, she looked at me strangely. ‘You’re an odd one, Parsifal. I can’t figure you out.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The way you stuck up for that old Jew back there. Jesus, I thought you were supposed to be a Nazi.’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s the company you keep. We don’t see much of General Heydrich in my circle.’

‘He’s not an easy man to disappoint.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Can you? I wonder. I wasn’t always his creature. Even before the Nazis took over, I was out of the police, because of my politics. Which is to say that, like most people who supported the old Republic, I didn’t really have any politics except I wasn’t a Nazi and I wasn’t a Red. But that was no good, see? Not in the cops. So I left; but they’d have kicked me out anyway. Then, in 1938, not being a Nazi made me seem like good police again. I wasn’t about to chalk someone up for a crime just because they were Jewish. That was useful to Heydrich and so he ordered me back into Kripo. And I’ve been stuck there ever since. Worse than that, if I’m honest. Suddenly, when war was declared, if you were in Kripo you were also in the SS; and when we attacked Russia—’

I shook my head. ‘Well, from time to time I’m useful to him in the same way a toothpick might be useful to a cannibal.’

‘You’re worried he might eat you, too. Is that it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Perhaps if more people stood up to Heydrich, the way you stood up to that fat Labour leader?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know Heydrich. People don’t ever stand up to Heydrich for very long. Most often, they end up standing in front of a firing squad. If they’re lucky.’

‘You’re a bit like Faust, I suppose. And Heydrich is your Mephistopheles.’

I nodded. ‘Except that I haven’t had any of the pleasures of the world out of the deal. I didn’t even get to seduce a beautiful and innocent girl. Gretchen, isn’t it?’

‘No. Arianne.’

‘You’re hardly innocent.’

‘But I am beautiful.’

‘Yes. You are beautiful, angel. There’s no doubt about that.’