6

Potatoes, cabbage, and hot black pudding

In the thick snow I missed the turn-off to Mannheim at the Walldorf intersection. Then the snowplough drove into a parking lot, and I was lost. I made it as far as the Hardtwald service area.

At the stand-up snack bar I waited with my coffee for the driving snow to stop. I stared into the swirling flakes. All at once pictures from the past came vividly alive.

It was on an evening in August or September, 1943. Klara and I had to leave our apartment in Werderstrasse, and had just completed the move to Bahnhofstrasse. Korten was over for dinner. There were potatoes, cabbage, and hot black pudding. He enthused about our new apartment, praised Klara for the meal, and this annoyed me, because he knew what a pitiful cook Klärchen was and it couldn’t have escaped him that the potatoes were over-salted and the cabbage burnt. Then Klara left us men with our cigars for a bit of male conversation.

At that time the Tyberg and Dohmke file had just reached my desk. I wasn’t convinced by the results of the police investigation. Tyberg was from a good family, had volunteered for the front, and it was only against his will, as his research work was essential to the war effort, that he’d been left behind at the RCW. I couldn’t picture him as a saboteur.

‘You know Tyberg, don’t you? What do you think of him?’

‘A man beyond reproach. We were all horrified that he and Dohmke were arrested at work, without anyone knowing why. Member of the national German hockey team in nineteen thirty-six, winner of the Professor Demel Medal, a gifted chemist, esteemed colleague and respected superior – no, I really don’t understand what you people at the police and prosecutors are thinking.’

I explained to him that an arrest wasn’t a conviction and that in a German court no one was sentenced unless the necessary evidence was at hand. This was an old theme of ours from our student days. Korten had come across a book at a bookstall about famous miscarriages of justice and argued for nights on end with me whether human justice can avoid miscarriages. That was my contention, Korten’s position being the opposite, that one has to accept they occur.

A winter evening during our student days in Berlin came to my mind. Klara and I were tobogganing on the Kreuzberg, and were expected back at the Korten household for supper. Klara was seventeen, I’d encountered her and overlooked her, thousands of times, as Ferdinand’s little sister. I’d only taken the brat tobogganing with me because she’d begged so. Actually, I was hoping to meet Pauline on the toboggan run, help her up after a fall or protect her from the ghastly Kreuzberg street urchins. Was Pauline there? At any rate, all of a sudden I only had eyes for Klara. She was wearing a fur jacket and a bright scarf, and her blonde curls were flying, and snowflakes melting upon her glowing cheeks. On the way home we kissed for the first time. Klara had to persuade me into going up to supper. I didn’t know how to behave towards her in front of her parents and brother. When I left later she found some pretext to bring me to the front door and gave me a secret kiss.

I caught myself smiling out of the window. In the parking lot a military convoy stopped, also unable to make headway in the snow. My car was swathed in another thick layer. At the counter I fetched a coffee refill and a sandwich. I took up my place at the window again.

Korten and I had also come round to talking about Weinstein that time. An irreproachable man as the accused and a Jew as the prosecution witness – I wondered whether I shouldn’t drop the investigation. I couldn’t tell Korten about Weinstein’s significance, nor could I let the opportunity of learning something about Weinstein slip by.

‘What do you actually think about using Jews at the Works?’

‘You know, Gerd, that we’ve always thought differently about the Jewish question. I’ve never had any truck with anti-Semitism. I find it difficult having forced labourers in the plant, but whether they’re Jews or Frenchmen or Germans is all the same. In our laboratory we have Professor Weinstein working with us and it’s a crying shame that the man can’t be behind a lectern or in his own laboratory. His service to us is invaluable, and if you go by his appearance and cast of mind, you couldn’t find anyone more German. A professor of the old school, up until nineteen thirty-three he had a chair in organic chemistry at Breslau. Everything that Tyberg is as a chemist he owes, as his pupil and assistant, to Weinstein. The loveable, scatter-brained academic type.’

‘And if I were to tell you that he’s the one accusing Tyberg?’

‘My God, Gerd. And with Weinstein so fond of his student Tyberg . . . I really don’t know what to say.’

A snowplough made its way to the parking lot. The driver got down and came into the snack bar. I asked him how I could get to Mannheim.

‘A colleague has just set off for the Heidelberg intersection. Get going quickly before the lane is blocked again.’

It was seven. At a quarter to eight I was at the Heidelberg intersection and at nine in Mannheim. I had to stretch my legs and revelled in the deep snow. I’d have liked to have driven a troika through Mannheim.