Winter, page 29
‘You silly child. Of course he won’t. He’ll be the happiest man in the world.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Of course he will. And he’ll be a marvellous father. You must tell him your news as soon as he arrives – I’ll leave you together for a few moments – and we must get a cable off to your father and to my father, too. Everyone is going to be so excited at the news.’
1927
‘That’s all they ask in return’
It was late May, a time when all Berlin is filled with the smell of linden flowers. The sun came spasmodically from behind ragged grey clouds, but it was not warm. Pauli sat outside to drink his tea and spend a few minutes watching the world pass by.
Pauli’s face was known in all the most fashionable cafés in Berlin: the Monopol, the Josty, the Schiller, the Café des Westens. But the one he liked best was opposite the Memorial Church: the Romanische Café. Some said this was the most famous café in the whole of Germany; others said it was the most famous in the whole world. Yet there was always room to sit down, for it could hold over a thousand people. It was open day and night and always busy: a place where intellectuals came to discuss philosophy, couples came to talk about love, others came to argue about politics, write letters or memoirs, review new plays or write poems. There were famous faces to be seen here. Up in the balcony, where the chessplayers liked to sit, one could often see Emanuel Lasker, who’d been world champion for thirty-three years.
Some of the clients were outrageous; at least they would have been had there been anyone left in Berlin who could feel outrage at the sight of shaved skulls, dyed hair, or flamboyant costumes. Outside in the street it was easier to be outraged by the sight of crippled ex-servicemen begging in their ragged uniforms, the painted faces of the homosexuals, or the pinched white faces of the child prostitutes.
Inside the café there were always pedlars going from table to table: shoelaces, matches, Literarische Welt, Die Rote Fahne, a copy of the Times from London four days old. An angry-looking young man offered crayon drawings. The drawings, too, were angry: jagged and spiky deformed servicemen, lewd matrons in suspender belts and black stockings, and bemedalled officers with porcine faces and no trousers. He stopped to show the drawings to two well-dressed Swedish tourists. They went through his wares solemnly and thoroughly but they did not buy. Tourists rarely did. Perhaps they didn’t want to take such things through the customs inspections. The young man offered the drawings at a cheaper price. The Swedish man shook his head, the woman laughed; the drawings were gathered up. Some said the young man merely sold the drawings; others said he was the artist. But no one knew the truth about it, just as no one knew the truth about anything in Berlin. It was better not to know.
There were newspapers hanging on sticks near the door. Pauli didn’t take the Nationalist Socialist paper – from its pristine condition he guessed that no one else had read it, either. He selected the Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, an undemanding tabloid, and sat down. His usual waitress brought a glass of lemon tea and schnapps. He always came here for tea after the lunch of sandwiches that he ate at his desk. He usually sat here for thirty minutes before returning to his office. It was the only way he got a break from work. All day long at his office people put their heads round the door: ‘I don’t want to interrupt you, Pauli, but…’
And the office had not got any better since the Nazis’ new Gauleiter, Josef Goebbels, had taken over Berlin. He was too damned enthusiastic, and the rank and file didn’t like the levy of three marks a month that he demanded from them. There were fewer than a thousand Nazi Party members in Berlin; it wasn’t the way to get recruits, and Goebbels’s Rhineland accent – which sounds funny to the ears of Berliners – hadn’t helped him. Strasser, the Regional Chief, opposed almost everything Goebbels suggested, and SA Leader Kurt Daluege – with his army of brownshirts – wouldn’t cooperate with either of them. With three bosses trying to run the Berlin office, very little got completed, but there was no way that any of them would listen to Pauli Winter’s suggestions. Especially when – as Goebbels reminded him – he’d not even bothered to join the party.
At one time Pauli had allocated half a day to his private clients and the morning to work for the party, but it was now over a month since he’d done any private work at all. Many clients didn’t like the proximity to the party office or the way that uniformed SA men came banging in and out of his office without so much as a by-your-leave. And those who didn’t care about his political affiliations grew tired of being so obviously a low priority on Pauli’s work roster. It wasn’t that Pauli was lazy: twice last month he’d actually fallen asleep in court, but he took on too much. Nor did his long hours of work bring much financial reward. The Nazi Party retainer didn’t go far, and on individual payments they always argued about his bills.
‘You’re Herr Paul Winter, aren’t you?’ He looked up to see a woman of about sixty, perhaps older. She was wearing a good but ancient coat with an astrakhan collar. Her huge black hat, with a mauve veil wrapped round it, was secured by means of large ornamental hairpins. It was all out of style by many years: the sort of outfit his grandmother had worn at Travemünde before the war.
‘Yes,’ he said. Awkwardly he put his newspaper down and got to his feet.
‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’
He knew exactly who she was, and at one time he would have said so, but that was not the way lawyers did it. ‘I don’t think I do.’
‘I am Frau Guggenheimer.’
‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘I mustn’t keep you,’ she said, but she put down her parcel, a large brown paper one tied neatly with lots of string, and sat down on the chair he pulled out for her. She was the wife of Guggenheimer the owner of a bar that students frequented. Hetti Guggenheimer, a girlfriend of long ago, was Mrs Guggenheimer’s daughter.
He waited for her to tell him what she wanted, but now that she’d summoned up the courage to approach him she seemed tongue-tied. He said, ‘How is your husband?’
She welcomed the chance to speak on the subject. ‘The student trade is not enough; it never was. And that side of town is not so lively now that the Royal Palace is empty. Even Friedrichstrasse is not what it used to be. The centre of town has shifted. All the life is over here in Ku-damm nowadays.’
‘That’s true. I’m sorry.’
‘And the Nazis don’t want to give us any trade, of course, with us being Jewish.’
‘Perhaps he should sell up. Retire.’
‘He’s got no money, Herr Winter. We lost all our savings in the big inflation. We don’t even own the bar. We live well enough, I suppose, but we live from hand to mouth.’
‘Is there something you want, Frau Guggenheimer?’
‘Nazis used to come into the bar and fight. Terrible fighting. They’d come in on those evenings when we were crowded and shout horrible things about Karl Marx or Lenin. There was always someone there who’d fight them. Some of these young fellows like to fight no matter how badly hurt they get. They’d smash the furniture and hit out with a chair leg or with a broken bottle….’
‘You say they used to do that? They stopped?’
‘Now my husband pays them money every week, a contribution to Nazi Party funds. But we can’t afford it, Herr Winter. They ask too much, and business is not good at this time of year.’
‘I know such things happen.’
‘You’re with the Nazis, Herr Winter. Couldn’t you say something to one of the top men there? We really can’t afford it, and my husband worries. He’s awake at nights thinking about what to do. We’re getting into debt, and we’ve never been in debt before, ever.’
‘It’s not really anything to do with me, Frau Guggenheimer. I’m just a lawyer they pay to advise them.’
‘Frau Weiss, who has the flower stall, said you helped her when those young communist boys were grabbing money from her cashbox.’
‘I wish she hadn’t told you,’ said Pauli earnestly.
‘She said you sent some of your Nazis to beat them up.’
‘That wasn’t anything that I did, I assure you.’
‘And she’s never had any more trouble from that day to this.’
‘Does your husband know you came to see me?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then please don’t say anything to him. In fact, don’t say anything to anyone. Will you promise me that?’
‘I’ll do anything, Herr Winter.’
‘I can’t promise. I’ll try.’
She got up. ‘I remember you when you first came back from the war, and that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?’
‘A very long time ago.’
‘My Hetti went to your birthday party a few years back. She said it was wonderful.’
‘How is Hetti?’ he asked politely.
‘She’s well.’
‘Good.’
‘It can’t go on like this, can it, Herr Winter – all this fighting and hurting people and the prices of everything?’
‘No, it can’t go on, Frau Guggenheimer; something will happen.’
He finished his tea and his schnapps and went back to the office. It was crowded, as usual. Unemployed party members sat in the anteroom reading, smoking and telling the same stories over and over again. He went up to the Regional Chief’s office. Strasser was out, but Fritz Esser was there. ‘Ah! Good. Fritz. Just the man I was looking for. Where are those two gorillas who were arrested at the Pharus Hall battle?’
Fritz Esser looked up from the plate of sliced sausage and rye bread that he had every day. ‘They’re waiting downstairs,’ he said through a mouthful of food.
‘Send them up now, Fritz.’
The Pharus Hall was a large squalid room in Müllerstrasse in Berlin-Wedding. It was rented for meetings. There was no district of Berlin more solidly communist than Wedding, and no meeting place more regularly used by the communists than the Pharus Hall. That’s why the new Gauleiter had chosen it for a well-publicized speech. The communists were of course waiting there for the Nazis to arrive, and the ensuing fighting was prolonged and bloody. Josef Goebbels had announced his intention of getting more publicity for his tiny Berlin Nazi Party, and he’d succeeded. Only the presence of a large contingent of Berlin police had restored order and prevented a massacre. Now it had become fashionable to call it the ‘battle of Pharus Hall’, and these two roughnecks – arrested for kicking a policeman until he was unconscious – were still waiting to have their cases heard in court.
Although very different, they were both typical of the men who’d joined the SA. One was in his late thirties, an ex-serviceman with a grey lined face, dark, deep-set eyes, and a grey moustache. His brown uniform shirt was clean and pressed with a neat darn on the collar. His army record was exemplary. Wounded twice and severely gassed during three years of front-line infantry service on the Western Front. Nearly a year in military hospitals. It was all in his file. Pauli would need such details for the courts if he was to keep the fellow out of prison. Usually the courts were more sympathetic to the right-wing political factions than to the communists, but when a policeman was the victim such fine distinctions counted for nothing.
The other one was scarcely a man: a pale, spotty-faced nineteen-year-old, nearly twenty, a huge hulk of a body but without the foundation of strength that proper nutrition provides. He’d left school when fourteen years old and had never had a proper job. His hair was dirty and his face not properly washed. His uniform was stained and rumpled. He was probably sleeping on the floor somewhere, or even in the street. His face too easily relaxed into the insolent smile that is the mask worn by the insecure and uneducated. Pauli noted it: one leering smile like that and the case would be lost immediately.
‘Now, I don’t know who’s been going to Guggenheimer’s bar and squeezing money from them. And if I ask around I don’t suppose I’ll get anyone to tell me.’ The two men exchanged brief grins. ‘But you’re going to go to the Guggenheimers and tell them it’s all been a mistake. You are going to tell them they are not to pay any brownshirt, or party member, any more. And you’re going to make sure that whoever has been engaging in this bit of private capitalism crosses the Guggenheimers off his list. Got it?’
‘It’s official policy now that all Jewish…’
‘Shut up and listen to me. I don’t want to know any of the details. The only thing that interests us in this room is what happens to you two when you go to court. Right?’
‘Yes, Herr Doktor. Right,’ said the elder man.
‘And if the Guggenheimers are pestered any more, you two are going to suddenly find yourself without adequate legal defence.’
‘That sounds like a threat,’ said the younger one.
‘Oh, does it?’ said Pauli. ‘Good, because that’s exactly what it was.’
The man with the grey moustache was subtler. He said, ‘It might be a bit difficult explaining why these bloody Jews are not to make a contribution to our funds.’
Pauli stood up, leaned across his desk, and poked the man in the chest. ‘Well, my friend, you tell anyone who asks you that “difficult” question that it was because I said so. You pass the word around!’
‘Yes, Herr Doktor.’ He was an ex-army man: he liked taking orders. These SA men were all like that; that’s why they liked dressing up in their brown shirts and peaked caps and big boots. They wanted someone to take over their lives and give them orders.
‘Now get out. I’ll get an adjournment for a few weeks. Come back on the first day of next month.’
‘Heil Hitler!’ said both men in unison.
‘That’s right,’ said Pauli. ‘Heil Hitler.’
‘Your brother’s a decent sort of fellow,’ said Fritz Esser to Pauli, having obviously come to this conclusion only recently. He tapped his cigar to put ash into an ashtray, but it went onto the tablecloth. Fritz was drunk.
‘He’s a stuffy sort of man, but he never lets anyone down,’ said Pauli. He was self-conscious about his affection for his brother. He didn’t want people to think he depended on Peter in any way.
The room – lit only by the greenish light of two hissing and popping gas jets – was panelled in a dark wood, its botanical origin obscured by half a century of tobacco smoke and old varnish. On the wall were framed photos of a cycling club posing in groups with their machines after the races at Friedenauer Volkspark each year. The two men were sitting at a long dining table; the dinner was finished and all the guests had departed. The table was littered with ashtrays, plates, glasses and bottles, and wine was spilled on the cream-coloured linen cloth.
‘What made the bloody fool marry a Jew?’
‘They’re very happy together,’ said Pauli.
‘Oh sure. She’s beautiful and clever and witty and rich, but she’s a Jew. Jews should marry Jews.’
Pauli looked at him. ‘You sound like one of Góebbels’s speech-writers. You don’t believe all that stuff, do you?’
Fritz took him by the sleeve. ‘You saved me, Pauli. I don’t mean saved my life during that damned streetfighting in 1919, although I’ll be eternally grateful for that, too. But if you hadn’t come to the Imperial Palace and saved me that night, I would have ended up selling matches in the gutter where I often see some of those stupid bastards from the People’s Naval Division. But after you I owe everything to the party. They have given me everything. I had no education, no money, no influential friends or family, no nothing. But the party took me and gave me everything I’ve got. And all they ask in return is that I hate Jews. Is that something I have to question?’ He let go of Pauli’s sleeve and drank some schnapps.
‘I didn’t marry her; my brother did.’
‘So you saved his life?’ said Esser. He spilled some drink down his shirt, drank the rest, and poured more. ‘I didn’t know that on that day I fished you out of the sea. So you’d jumped in to help him?’
‘I don’t know what happened,’ said Pauli. He was embarrassed, just as he’d been embarrassed earlier in the evening when Peter had raised a glass and proposed the health of the brother who’d saved his life at the risk of his own. ‘Neither does he. We were only children, weren’t we? But he insists that it all happened his way, so I go along with it.’
Fritz half closed his eyes against the curling cigar smoke and smiled. He was a tough customer and something of a loner. Even for tonight’s celebration he brought no partner. Despite his sly little sexy jokes and stories, he was seldom seen with women. Fritz said that was because all his lovers were married to other men, but sometimes Pauli wondered if that was true. The dinner had been held to celebrate Fritz Esser’s departure to Munich. No one knew exactly what his new job was to be, but there was no doubt that it was a promotion. By now it seemed that Esser, like Captain Graf and certain other rising stars, was marked for a good job in the Nazi Party organization.
Pauli had organized the farewell party. It took place in a private dining room in Leipziger Strasse. The food and drink were all supplied by the Guggenheimers, not so far away. It amused Pauli to think that all these ardent Nazis had been eating Frau Guggenheimer’s delicious food. Some of the dishes were traditional Jewish ones, but the people present couldn’t distinguish between traditional German and Jewish dishes. Not many Germans could.
Pauli knew that having the Guggenheimers do the catering would be enough to persuade Peter and his Jewish wife, Lottie, to attend, and that was his chief motive in arranging it. Dr Josef Goebbels had remarked on the food and stayed long enough to deliver a short speech of congratulation from which all trace of his Rhineland accent had been eliminated. It was this polished performance – and the fact that he was the only one of the top Nazis with a quick-witted sense of humour – that earned him a round of applause from all present. Fritz said afterwards to Pauli that a man who could change his hometown accent could change anything or anybody.
