Winter, page 56
‘Don’t be awful, Pauli,’ said Lottie, laughing. ‘He’s exaggerating, of course. It’s not like the Kaiserhof or the Kempi, but Lisl has worked wonders. Oh, I just remembered, your mother sent some brownies for me. Would you like one?’
‘No thanks. I’m getting too fat.’
‘Even when I was in prison she sent them. Not real chocolate, of course, but it’s wonderful of her. A taste of the U.S.A., she calls them. I love your mother.’
‘She wanted to come and see you more often,’ said Pauli, ‘but I told her to make it no more than twice a month. For the time being I want you to be extra cautious.’
‘Whatever you say, Pauli.’ In prison she’d heard what happened to certain categories of prisoners when they’d finished serving their sentences. But instead of an SS man with a custody order, it was Pauli whom she found waiting in a car outside the prison in Barnimstrasse. He’d brought her straight here to the Hennigs’ house. She’d never asked him how he’d arranged things so that she wasn’t taken to a camp. She just did as he suggested and thanked God for the miracle.
‘Things are tightening up. The war is not going as well as was expected. The whole of the Sixth Army perished at Stalingrad: twenty-four German generals surrendered to the Reds. Some of the boys I knew at Lichterfelde were there. It must be the worst disaster in German history. Fritz Esser says that in the final days Hitler got the message that his nephew, Leo Raubal, was amongst the injured, but he refused to evacuate him by air. God knows what will happen to the man if the Russians discover who he is. Then, in May, a quarter of a million more German soldiers surrendered to the British and Americans in Tunisia. More friends gone, Lottie. Will I ever see them again, I wonder?’
‘But no invasion?’ said Lottie.
‘Of France? I don’t think that will ever happen. Think how many ships they’d need, and the whole coastline is heavily fortified. I saw the defences on the newsreel last week. But Dr Goebbels has decreed “Total War”, whatever that means, and everyone from sixteen to sixty-five has to register for service. Even poor old Hauser has to register. More registrations means more spot checks.’ Pauli finished his ersatz coffee and got up. He hoped the mention of the spot checks would be enough to keep Lottie inside. He knew from Lisl that she’d taken little Theo out shopping, and for walks in the Tiergarten. This reckless behaviour appalled Pauli, but he didn’t know how to persuade Lottie to stay indoors.
‘You’re not going already, Pauli?’
‘I’d better. I walk to work nowadays. I’m trying to cut my weight down, but it means I have to leave home earlier.’
‘Poor Inge. So she has to get up earlier, too.’
‘I’m on my own at present.’
‘Inge works too hard, Pauli.’
He looked at her for a moment. ‘Inge spends most of her free time with Fritz these days.’
‘What do you mean, Pauli?’
‘She sleeps at Fritz Esser’s apartment.’
She looked at him. Did he really mean what she thought he meant? ‘Pauli! You can’t be serious.’
‘Yes, I’m serious. I suppose I should have guessed what was going on when she was out of town so much. But it never occurred to me that she was always away at the same time that Fritz was on a trip. Why should it?’
‘Oh, Pauli!’
‘I accused her, and she laughed and said that they’d both wondered how much longer it would be before I guessed.’
‘Oh, Pauli,’ she said again. She couldn’t think of what else to say. He looked so pathetic. How could anyone do that to Pauli? His face was tight – the face of a little boy whose world has come to an end. She put her arms round him, and he embraced her tightly.
‘She laughed,’ said Pauli, still holding her tightly. ‘I asked how long had it been going on, and she said for years. She laughed. I told her that I’d never been unfaithful to her, and she just said, “Then you must be a fool.”’
‘But Inge…’ Lottie’s mind went spinning. She’d not seen Inge for many years. ‘I thought she adored you. I’m sure she did.’
‘Perhaps if we’d had a child…’
‘How could she be so cruel?’ said Lottie, still holding him. She could feel his heart beating.
‘She loved me once, she said, but Fritz Esser is more of a real man. I don’t know what she’s talking about, Lottie.’
‘Sit down again, Pauli. You can’t leave like this. You look awful. There’s some schnapps…’
‘I never drink alcohol.’
‘You need a drink, Pauli.’
‘Perhaps just one small measure.’ He sat down.
‘Does Lisl know?’
‘Good God, no. She’d tell absolutely everyone.’
‘Who else knows?’
‘No one,’ said Pauli. ‘Alex is not in Berlin, and apart from him you’re the only real friend I’ve got, Lottie. I mean, you’re family, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Pauli, I am.’
He smiled. ‘I feel better, now I’ve told someone. I was bottling it up…’
‘Come and see me more often, Pauli. I love to talk with you.’
‘Yes, I will, Lottie.’
‘I’ve never been able to please you, have I?’
Pauli Winter’s deep and solemn love for his father had always been tinged with a trace of fear. If he ever had children he would do everything possible to liberate them from this feeling of anxiety that he always had when face to face with his father. Even now, with Harald Winter an invalid in a wheelchair, and Pauli, forty-three years old, a senior officer in the Interior Ministry of which the universally feared Heinrich Himmler had recently become head, he still found himself nervous in his father’s presence. It was ridiculous.
His father had said very little during this Sunday outing in the Tiergarten. He sat, a wizened figure hunched inside a large blanket, his hat slightly askew, as hats are when put on by a wife. He stared at the world disapprovingly. Pauli was pushing him; his heavy wooden wheelchair was too heavy for Veronica, who walked alongside Pauli, enjoying the sunshine and the greenery. The Tiergarten was at its best. The trees were intensely lit with sun that came under the clouds and made each leaf and blade of grass unnaturally sharp, like a world underwater. Whatever else had changed, this wonderful green park, in the very heart of the city, remained as glorious as ever. Pauli had been brought here in the pram by Nanny, even before he’d learned to walk. He knew each tree and bush, and the water that looped in its surprising shapes, and the ducks and birds that lingered there waiting to be fed on bits of bread hoarded from nursery teas. Sometimes, on the way home, they’d heard the lions growling in the zoo.
That summer of 1943 was perfect. This day had been wonderful, with warm sun and blue skies. But now the spell of perfect weather was coming to an end. Today the air was turbulent with the gusty breeze that comes before a storm. There was thunder in the air and the sky was darkening. For this reason Pauli had suggested they shorten their excursion. They could turn at the Siegessäule and head straight towards Budapester Strasse. But his parents dismissed the threat of rain: his mother because she knew how much Harald liked these outings, and Harald because he readily accepted such concessions from her. He always had done. He was selfish. Sometimes Pauli wondered why his mother didn’t rebel against his father’s self-centredness.
‘I wish we’d spoken English more often at home,’ Veronica was saying. ‘It would have been good for you, Pauli, and good for your father, too. And I confess my English is getting rusty these days. It’s a sin.’
His mother was wearing a smart new coat and a brown felt hat with the wide brim that was fashionable these days. When the wind gusted, she had to hold the brim or it would have been whisked off her head. She was sixty-eight years old, but she’d kept the same slim, upright figure that she’d had as a young girl. Pauli was proud of her. ‘There is a joke going the rounds,’ Pauli offered, ‘that the optimists are learning English and the pessimists learning Russian.’
‘That’s a perfectly awful thing to say, Pauli. And I’m sure it’s not true.’
‘I’m sorry, Mama. I said it was a joke. I’m sure we’ll soon be pushing the Russians back again.’ The sky was getting blacker every moment, and the thunder came again; this time a flash of lightning preceded it. They would get wet if it rained: there was nowhere nearby to shelter.
‘I don’t even look at the newspapers any more,’ she said. ‘All those maps … Did I tell you that Hugo – the young footman who worked so hard to convert the wine cellar into an air shelter for us – was killed? He went into the navy and was killed in that terrible air raid on Hamburg. He must have put us down as his next of kin. Poor little Hugo – I didn’t know he had no family. That’s why he wrote to us so often, I suppose.’
At the mention of the series of air raids that had devastated Hamburg – and caused widespread alarm throughout the German population – Harald Winter showed interest in the conversation. ‘What do you know about Hamburg, Pauli? What’s the truth of it? Eh? Eh?’
Pauli didn’t soften the hard truth. ‘Kauffmann, the Hamburg Gauleiter, reported having eight hundred thousand homeless wandering around the streets and needing food, clothes and shelter. What could we tell him? We sent blankets and medical supplies and so on. But our people in the ministry don’t know how to cope with that sort of catastrophe. The fellow we sent didn’t help them much, I’m afraid: he came back quite shaken and said the damage was unimaginable. He brought photos. The whole city has been razed. But they’re gradually getting it back to work. No one will ever know how many died. People leapt into the canals to escape from the flames, but they didn’t escape, and the canals were filled with corpses next morning.’
His father growled. Every such disaster was to be blamed on that ‘fat fool’ Göring, Commander in Chief of the sorely pressed German air force. His mother didn’t respond. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told either of them. Some people preferred to be ignorant of the facts about everything. A plane flew over. He looked up. It was a Junkers transport. He’d seen hundreds of them, but each time he saw one his mind went back to that dreadful morning in 1934 when the Führer had flown into Munich to wreak a terrible vengeance upon his brownshirts. Again he saw poor old Graf fold up and spurt blood. And the others … ‘Heil Hitler!’ they’d screamed as the firing squad squeezed the triggers. Poor deluded devils. And what for? Had Röhm’s cronies really been planning a coup, or was it just another example of the Führer’s notorious paranoia?
‘Will the Führer ask for terms?’ his mother asked.
‘Peace terms?’ Pauli was surprised at such a question. The possibility had never seriously entered his mind. ‘No, I don’t think so. He’s always said he’ll fight to the last drop of blood, and he’ll demand the same from us.’
‘But they will keep on bombing, won’t they? Suppose all our cities are attacked by thousands of bombers, the way that Hamburg was attacked?’
‘We’re safe in Berlin, Mama.’
‘But the Luftwaffe started bombing London years ago. I can’t think that the English will want to spare us.’
‘Hamburg is on the sea, Mama. It’s easier for them to attack Hamburg – they don’t have to penetrate our main air-defence zones.’
‘You’re always so confident, Pauli, but I fear the worst.’
‘What is the worst, Mama?’
‘That the Russians will get here,’ said Veronica without hesitation.
Pauli laughed. ‘Come along, Mama. You can’t really believe that the Russians could get all the way to Berlin. The Cossacks are coming: that’s the sort of story Berlin mothers used to frighten their naughty children with.’ There was another flash of lightning, and this time the soft drumroll of thunder went on for a long time.
Another plane came over. Veronica said, ‘Perhaps they are hurrying to land before the rain starts.’
He didn’t laugh at her. ‘Perhaps they are, Mama,’ he said. The plane was very low; it was a huge four-engined Focke-Wulf transport coming in to land at Tempelhof. Its camouflage painting was streaked with dirt and oil, and it bore the marks of recent damage. These long-range aircraft that carried senior officers and urgent supplies between Berlin’s Zentral-Flughafen and the battlefront, reminded every Berliner who cared to look up how near the fighting was.
His mother said, ‘Germany is fighting a two-front war, Pauli. I can remember when everyone said that a two-front war is always fatal for Germany.’
‘We haven’t got a two-front war, Mama. The British and the American armies are still in England.’
‘They are not there on vacation, Pauli,’ said his mother sharply.
‘You’re not secretly hoping that the Amis will win, are you, Mama?’
‘No, of course not, Pauli, but I wish the Führer would start thinking about peace.’
‘I wouldn’t say anything like that in public, Mama.’
She looked at him. It was terrible when a mother couldn’t reveal her true thoughts to her own son, but she could see that, on this subject, Pauli’s mind was closed. ‘No, I won’t, Pauli,’ she promised.
He looked at her and touched her arm. He loved his mother. But, like too many other people he knew, she simply didn’t know the difference between what was expedient and what was downright foolish. Suppose everyone in Germany went round saying exactly what he or she thought? The cellars of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse wouldn’t have room enough to lock them up.
‘It’s going to rain hard,’ said Pauli. ‘Did you bring the umbrella?’
‘No, but it doesn’t matter.’
‘We’ll get wet,’ said Pauli.
Four young soldiers and their girls, anxious to avoid the rainstorm, came hurrying past them as they crossed the little bridge. They were noisy and excited as only young couples can be. Pauli turned his head to watch them as they pushed one another and chased along the path. Pauli had never known that sort of carefree, youthful exuberance. His whole life had been spent in thrall to authority.
When they reached the rose gardens everyone had gone, the seats were all empty. Pauli sat down alongside his father’s wheelchair while his mother strolled around the flower beds. Harald’s outings to the Tiergarten had become a set routine. Mama liked to examine the flowers: she remembered all the bushes like children, and remarked upon their progress. While Pauli talked to his father, they watched his mother on her tour of inspection. She showed no sign of hurry, despite the black sky and the thunder that was getting nearer all the time. It was characteristic of her: she was a very determined woman. One day Pauli would confide in her about Inge’s infidelity, and she would provide renewed strength for him – but not yet.
‘Have you visited Lottie recently?’ his father asked him. It was a surprising question. Although Harald Winter had been informed that his daughter-in-law was living in Berlin, he’d shown no interest in seeing her, and her name was seldom mentioned in his presence. When Veronica went to visit Lottie, she went alone.
‘I take food for her,’ said Pauli nervously.
His father’s eyes shone with an intensity that did nothing to allay Pauli’s fears of him. Other old men had vague, watery old eyes, but Harald Winter had the same piercing gaze that had sent Pauli running to Nanny. ‘You got her out of prison, didn’t you?’ Harald Winter said, showing no sign of pleasure.
‘She was released. Her sentence was fully commuted for good behaviour.’ Pauli’s speech was hasty and nervous. He knew his father had an ear tuned to nervousness in anyone, and that made Pauli more diffident.
Harald Winter looked round to see where his wife was. She was well out of earshot, but even so he whispered. ‘What happened to Martha?’
‘Martha?’
‘Don’t pretend to me, you swine!’
‘Oh, Martha. Your Martha.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘I don’t know. Why?’
‘You went there, you went to Vienna. I heard all about it.’
‘That was years ago…. That was the Anschluss.’
‘You gave her a card and offered her protection.’
‘Yes.’ Pauli smiled nervously. Surely now he would be praised.
‘She was arrested. She phoned you in Berlin.’
‘No!’
‘Don’t deny it: I have a witness,’ said his father.
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘I know you weren’t there. I say she phoned you.’
‘I wasn’t in the office, I mean.’
‘Don’t tell me lies. She spoke with you. The man who arrested her let her use the phone to call you in Berlin. You told her that nothing could be done.’
Why was his father blaming him for everything? Pauli corrected him. ‘I told her that I would try to help her.’
‘You did nothing.’
‘I did what I could.’
‘You did nothing.’
Now it was Pauli’s turn to become resentful. ‘You think it’s so easy, don’t you? Why didn’t you do something to help her? She’s your mistress.’ Harald Winter reeled back as if struck in the face. Pauli had never spoken to him like this, at least not since that terrible night when Hauser was stabbed by one of Pauli’s Nazi comrades.
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ said Harald Winter.
So great was Pauli’s sense of injustice that the sort of hurt and anger that he’d harboured so long came pouring out. ‘I’ll talk to you any way I like. I’m not a child any longer. She was taken into custody because she was a foreign national of Jewish race. If you’d married her she would have had a German passport and the protection of a mixed marriage.’
‘Are you trying to blame me for what happened to her?’
‘I don’t know what happened to her,’ insisted Pauli.
Harald Winter stiffened; his hands clenched tight and his voice went quiet. ‘You never could face the truth, Pauli.’
‘I tell you I don’t know.’
‘She was taken to a camp and sent east for resettlement.’
‘There was nothing I could do.’
Softly Harald Winter said, ‘Your signature was on the protective-custody order. Can you explain that?’
