CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘Did you see the sunset this evening?’ asked Gerda Pippert of the man sitting on her left. She had gained confidence by now. No one had guessed that she was not the Frau Pippert on the invitation list, and nowadays everyone was far too concerned with his own life to inquire into hers.
‘Ah,’ said her companion, ‘we should have been out in Koller Meadow, you and me, holding hands and catching pneumonia on the damp grass.’
Gerda Pippert blushed. He was frightful, this bald-headed little man with whom she had sat through dinner, and yet everyone else took his jibes in good spirits, so she was reluctant to object. Although, goodness knows, Koller Meadow behind the hospital and Nurses’ Training Centre had become truly notorious on these summer nights. There was a joke going around town: whenever someone had a bruise or cut they said they had fallen over a nurse while crossing Koller Meadow in the blackout.
The architect’s wife, who even on this warm evening had insisted upon sitting through dinner in her fur cape, leaned across and said, ‘I heard they were going to have caviar.’
‘I’ve never had caviar,’ said Gerda Pippert.
‘It’s horrible,’ said Gerd Böll. ‘I’ll take smoked eel every time.’
‘How lucky you are, to have a taste for the common things,’ said Frau Hinkelburg. She was watching her architect husband at the far end of the table as he talked with a redheaded young cousin of the Burgomaster. Once before she’d had trouble with her husband over a redhead.
‘There are certainly enough common things about,’ agreed Gerd Böll cheerfully. As he reached for a second helping of tart he winked at Gerda and she smiled at him. He didn’t care what he said to anyone and she admired that in a man, she always had.
She looked around the table at all the guests, especially the ladies. There was the Burgomaster’s mother, what a dignified lady: eighty-six years old with a lace blouse boned high under her chin and freckled white hands glittering with rings. There was the Burgomaster’s wife, her white hair drawn back in the severe earphone style that was now considered patriotic. A handsome woman of great charm and kindness, neither of which virtues could truly be attributed to her husband.
‘And the lady with the diamond tiara?’ asked Gerda Pippert.
‘Graäfin von Linck.’
‘The astrologer?’
‘None other,’ said Gerd.
‘People say Reichsführer Himmler consults her. She says victory will come next year.’
‘Yes, she does, she says that every year.’
Gerda Pippert scrutinized Gerd’s face in alarm and Frau Hinkelburg tutted her disapproval.
All the waiters were busy attending to the curtains, so Gerd reached to the ice bucket and served both ladies with a little more French champagne. He noticed that the 1937 label saying ‘For export to England’ had been overprinted with ‘Réservé pour le Wehrmacht’. He wondered if that labelling department had already prepared similar ones for the Americans or even the Russians. To drown the thought he served himself an extra measure.
The windows of the Frenzel Stube’s private room gave all the Burgomaster’s guests an extensive view of the town, which is why the waiters had waited so long before closing the curtains and putting on the lights, but once that was done a different atmosphere came to the party. More intimate and seemingly more private too, the guests—merry with the Burgomaster’s carefully chosen and generously supplied wine—settled into their chairs and made ready for the speeches and toasts that would occupy the rest of the evening. Some speech-makers already had their notes before them on the table.
Gerd Böll timed his exit nicely. A second helping of Frenzel’s apple tart marked the end of the evening as far as he was concerned. He knew the drill from now on: coffee cups were standing by on the trolley and even before the spoons were in the saucers the first of the speech-makers would be on his hind legs mouthing a diligently assembled collection of sycophantic and patriotic clichés. Each would bring lengthy if unenthusiastic applause. It was a damn shame about the cigars—bluntended Stumpen from Holland—that had long since disappeared from any sources that Gerd Böll knew, but even they didn’t tempt him to stay. He had explained to the Burgomaster that this evening he would have to leave early in case of air-raid duties.
‘Duty comes first,’ the Burgomaster had said. Many years ago he’d been complimented on his fine speaking voice and he always pronounced his careful Hochdeutsch as though speaking to an imbecilic foreign child.
Actually Gerd Böll was going down to the railway-station buffet for a game of skat with his TENO friends. He’d promised to be there before eleven-thirty and he whispered his excuses to the garrulous wife of the architect and to the simple old schoolteacher woman seated next to him.
‘Goodbye, Frau Pippert,’ said Gerd. ‘So nice to see you again, and I’m glad to see your foot is so much better.’
Frau Pippert smiled uneasily. So the real Frau Pippert had a bad foot. ‘Yes,’ she said tentatively, ‘it’s much better now.’ She decided to embellish it a bit. ‘The toes give a stab of pain from time to time.’
‘Well, we can’t complain about that,’ said Gerd cheerfully. ‘After all there are not many people these days who can grow a complete new leg after an amputation.’
Gerd smiled and kissed her hand. ‘Have a wonderful evening, Frau Pippert,’ he said. ‘A grocer has to be most careful about confusing the bills for two ladies of the same name, but luckily there are no other grocers here this evening.’
Oberwachtmeister Müller was on his feet as soon as the coffee appeared, but by fast footwork Gerd just made it to the door. Müller pulled at the skirt of his blue uniform jacket and cleared his throat nervously. It was an honour to speak first and yet it was difficult too. The waiters were still serving the coffee and he noticed more than one guest looking enviously at that fellow Böll as he practically ran to the door. Someone rapped upon the table with a spoon and then, as he began to speak, they gave him their undivided attention.
The police chief related the Burgomaster’s achievements and Altgarten’s role as a war-winning and law-abiding part of the Third Reich. If it was a story that also reflected the police chief’s successes, then that was exactly as it should be. Other officials added their praise; the Gasmeister and the Kreisleiter gave brief speeches.
Some speakers saw this as an occasion upon which they could once again relate Germany’s progress from the demoralized nation that emerged defeated from the First World War to the mighty fear-inspiring master of Europe in 1943. Schott—the electricity chief—had known the Burgomaster for the greater part of this time. In 1933 they had worked side by side at a bench in one of the factories that were secretly rearming the newly planned Wehrmacht. Schott spoke of those times. It was not a period of his life about which the Burgomaster cared to be reminded.
‘An old man in the paint shed stole one piece of perambulator each day. When he had all the parts he tried to reassemble one in his living-room. Funny thing, he told me, every time I try it I end up with a machine gun.’
There was laughter and applause and even the Burgomaster smiled primly.
Most of the men were in uniform. A stuttering Party official from Berlin had come in an SA uniform complete with ceremonial dagger, commemorative armband ‘Horst Wessel’ and a display of medals and ribbons. He presented an engraved plaque to mark the Burgomaster’s service on the committee of a local Adolf Hitler school.
Obersturmführer Berger, senior full-time SS official of Altgarten, then stood up. He straightened the knot of his black tie and flicked at his sleeve as if to remove a piece of lint from his grey tunic. Satisfied with his appearance, Berger smiled upon his neighbours. He announced the Burgomaster’s promotion to honorary SS Obersturmführer and made a witty speech describing the lengths to which the Allgemeine office had gone to arrange that the promotion be announced on this the Burgomaster’s birthday. He also made a little joke that the Burgomaster had caught up with his own rank and he thought he should now turn the tables upon him by becoming honorary Burgomaster. It wasn’t much of a joke, but there were so few jokes made that evening that the guests took that opportunity of having a side-splitting laugh and a cough.
The evening sped past, thanks in some measure to the way in which Frenzel’s waiters enthusiastically complied with the Burgomaster’s order to ‘keep the champagne coming until everyone has had enough or I tell you otherwise’. The old room smelled of roast duckling, schnapps, candles and good cigars. Smells that went deep into the oak panelling and joined memories of other dinners in other times.
The rehearsed speeches came to an end at five past midnight when the tiniest Jungvolk boy in Altgarten presented the Burgomaster with a huge bunch of flowers on behalf of all of the Nazi Youth organizations in the district. There were still some impromptu addresses and the old songs.
‘A memorable evening,’ said Berger, who had taken off his SS jacket and was leading a chorus in a voice as powerful as it was discordant.
SS Standartenführer Wörth—CO of the SS unit at the Wald Hotel—smiled indulgently at Berger as he sang the old Party songs. He joined him in a chorus of one that he remembered from his days as an ensign, although the old man’s voice was scarcely audible. At twenty to one he declared that it was his bedtime and got to his feet. He was like an overbred Borzoi dog, his limbs thin and spindly and his face the same, with sad grey eyes that looked round anxiously as though fearing unprovoked attack. The old SS officer moved slowly, prodding the floor with his stick before committing his weight to it. He gave a nod to the other guests and edged through the door. Behind him Dieter Witting, a burly NCO, was ready to support an elbow or pull a chair for him or signal a person from his path in a courteous and unobtrusive way that would not mark Wörth as the desperately sick man that he was.
The car was close to the entrance and the driver wrapped blankets across his commander’s knees before closing the door with a considerate click. Wörth sank back into the leather seat and closed his eyes to meet the pain. His missing left hand still tormented him more than did his injured knees or feet.
It was a few minutes after one when a messenger arrived from the Rathaus and whispered in the Burgomaster’s ear. Until that young fellow arrived with his steel helmet, heavy-duty gloves and official overalls it had been perfectly possible to forget that there was a war on.
‘Can I have your attention,’ said the Burgomaster, and the whole room was alert. The waiters stood at attention, the way they did each morning when Herr Frenzel inspected their hands and nails.
‘I have official notification that there is a heavy force of RAF planes in the air tonight. Our FLUKO in Duisberg has given us the preliminary warning. They predict that the Ruhr will be attacked. My guests will no doubt wish to answer the call of duty at the earliest possible moment. I will therefore bid everyone goodnight. Heil Hitler!’
‘Heil Hitler,’ repeated the guests soberly. The Burgomaster kissed his wife and mother and bowed to his guests. The first ones to leave saw searchlights to the north-west. Soon after that the early warning sounded.
Altgarten railway station was noted more for the liveliness of its buffet than for the liveliness of its train schedules. The Bahnhofecke had become a favourite hang-out for policemen from the Rathaus across Bismarckplatz and for TENO engineers, as well as the brewery manager and his foreman and of course the railway people who were there all the time.
It was smoky and noisy all day every day and it smelled of thin beer, cheap tobacco and synthetic sausage. Sometimes it didn’t close until three am even though the one o’clock train was the last one. Many times when the main line was bombed troop trains had been shunted into Altgarten and the two old ladies who ran the Bahnhofecke had served beer, coffee and sandwiches until the supplies were exhausted.
The buffet was furnished like a Victorian parlour. There were dozens of plants, glass-fronted cases full of polished glasses, a bust of Beethoven and a drawing of Wagner, a coloured reproduction of the Führer and an old piano. On the top shelf of the bar there were school caps donated by high-school students when they went off to the war. It had become a ritual, and now there were twenty-eight dusty caps untouched since the day they were flung there. On that same top shelf there were four ancient empty Scotch whisky bottles. Never a week passed without some joker ordering a White Horse or a Black and White but still old Frau Klein was able to smile as if the joke was new.
The three tables near the piano were the best ones. From the counter one of the two old ladies could lean over with bread, beer, sausage and potatoes, but on a crowded evening customers near the door could shout all evening and still not be served. The three best tables were marked with Stammtisch flags, so that only regulars would dare to sit there. This evening the centre one was taken by a group of men playing skat for small money stakes and a little crowd had collected to watch the card players: Gerd Böll and his two TENO friends.
Fuchs Ueberall was talking. His TENO jacket was hung upon his chair. The two stars on its collar-patch showed him to be a Zugwachtmeister, which is a grand title for an NCO. His Army braces supported ill-fitting grey trousers that almost covered his chest. He had a strong Saxon accent. It seemed especially comical here where the local people spoke a high-speed dialect like Dutch, but no one smiled. It would be fool-hardy to annoy this amiable giant.
‘You’ll never get them bowling here in Altgarten,’ said Fuchs. ‘It’s too near the Dutch border for the Tommis to risk it.’
‘If you mean bombing say bombing. I hate these slang words,’ said Peter Reuter, a TENO officer. He asked for another card. That rumour was resurrected every now and again. ‘It’s a comforting thought.’
‘They are forbidden under pain of execution to bomb targets within twenty kilometres of any frontier of their ex-Allies,’ said Fuchs Ueberall. He put emphasis on the word ‘bomb’.
‘How do you know that?’ asked Peter Reuter. ‘I hear the Americans and British never execute their soldiers.’
‘We are eleven kilometres from the Dutch border here. Do you know of any bombs dropping as close as that to the border?’
‘Yes,’ said Gerd. He won the trick and piled the cards in front of him.
‘Oh, I know about the plane that jettisoned its bombs on Frau Kersten’s place. That doesn’t count.’
‘You’d better explain that to Frau Kersten,’ said Gerd. Some of the men laughed.
‘Play on,’ said Bodo. Fuchs was a rumour-monger.
‘She’s too busy learning French to let me prove anything to her,’ said Fuchs, and there was a louder laugh.
The one o’clock train was almost due when Jürgen Löwe, one of the Hitler Youth bicycle messengers, came into the Ecke. He wouldn’t sit down because he had an urgent message for Andi Niels and had been unable to find him.
The HJ messenger said, ‘The Ruhr is going to get pasted tonight; over seven hundred Terrorflieger, the FLUKO message said.’
One of the men playing cards said, ‘That will be the second heavy raid in a week.’
Two brewery workers were playing chess in the corner. They had their French Army helmets and gloves ready and were wearing their civil-defence overalls. ‘Lie-in tomorrow morning,’ said one of them, for if the alarm went at night they were paid a two-Reichsmark bonus and allowed two hours off in the morning.
‘Loser of this game goes back to phone the Rathaus.’
‘Suits me,’ said the second one and he brought his bishop to threaten the king’s knight.
Herr Holländer, the marriage registrar, was one of the local Blockwarte. He swallowed the last of his beer and hurriedly got to his feet when he heard that a raid was imminent. It was his job to open the shelter and collect front-door keys from local residents in case of fire bombs. He also must make sure that old deaf Frau Klietmann was properly awakened when the alarm sounded. Not all the people from his block would go down into the shelter, in spite of the regulations. Most of them worked in the brewery and no one who had to clock-on at a quarter to seven wanted to interrupt his sleep and go into the cold cellar. Blockwart Holländer slipped out quietly.
The one o’clock train came in exactly on time with a whistle, a groan and a hissing of steam. Six TENO engineers who were going on leave left the Ecke to derisory cheers. The doors had hardly stopped swinging when one of the TENO men put his head back round it. ‘Come and look at the Tommi flares going down—somewhere near Neukirchen I’d guess.’
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the Public Warning began. The warbling notes echoed eerily across the town. Even then not everyone left the Ecke. The Public Warning was only a preliminary caution for people in the street or a long way from shelter. And even if the more serious General Warning sounded it was purely academic out here in Altgarten; the bombs were destined for one of the big cities of the Ruhr.
Gerd Böll still had his playing-cards in his hand when he went out to look at the flares. They were a long way away, sputtering little pinpoints of intense light like that of the old-fashioned acetylene cycle lamps. Gerd decided it was time for him to report with his van to the Rathaus Control Room. Once the FLUKO let them know where the attack was being centred he would head into the bombed town to help. That was the advantage of being single, thought Gerd. He’d never be able to do such a thing if he had a wife and children to look after. That’s what led him to think of Hansl and the girl. If the attack was going to be a heavy one—over seven hundred, the messenger had said—then perhaps he had better call in at August’s place and make sure the child and the girl took shelter tonight. They’d object, of course, but he would insist upon it. He sat down again and took a last look at his cards. Then he raised his eyebrows to ask what Reuter thought would happen.
Bodo Reuter played a famous game of skat. He’d played it when as a fifteen-year-old he’d falsified his age to go to the first war. He’d played it in the Merchant Navy and now after many evenings in the Bahnhofecke playing Gerd Böll and old Fuchs for Pfennig bets he’d almost regained his former skill. After a few glasses of Gerd’s home-made schnapps he’d tell stories: around the Cape in a floating dock, the Grand Banks in a Spanish trawler, the trenches in the winter of 1917, Paris in the summer of 1940, brawls in Boston, brothels in Shanghai. Oberzugführer Reuter had done it all, and, as he said, some of it twice.
He was from Hamburg, a quick-spoken man, thin, tall, with light-blue eyes deeply set into their sockets, drawn face, high cheekbones and a big forehead with receding soft fair hair. He looked more like an art critic than a pioneer officer; most of Altgarten’s TENO battalion were, like Fuchs, brawny fellows with a noisy sense of humour.
Some of the regulars at the Ecke found it hard to believe that this quiet-spoken man had done the things of which he told, but he had a chestful of medals to prove it and, as he had once told a crowd of angry Bolsheviks, his hands told the story of his life. Knobbly red angry hands they now were, shiny with scar tissue and criss-crossed with corns from a windjammer’s lines.
Bodo threw his hand of cards upon the table to indicate that the game could not continue. Gerd lined up the edges of his cards with a neurotic care and Fuchs Ueberall sadly assembled the whole pack together and put it into its box. For an hour Fuchs had become a civilian again, but now that Altgarten had come under attack he was jerked back into the world of harsh military reality.
‘Take my grocery van,’ Gerd told Bodo. ‘I will borrow a bicycle and be with you before you are ordered out.’
There was no time for the courtesy of argument. Bodo caught the keys that were thrown to him and, nodding to the other men in the bar, hurried out. Fuchs sat in the front seat alongside his officer and a few minutes later it was Fuchs who shouted in time for them to avoid driving into a big crater near the railway crossing.
Gerd borrowed a woman’s bicycle from Frau Klein behind the bar. The tiny slotted blue street-lights had been extinguished but the luminous paint on the trees and lampposts helped him find his way through the darkened town.
As he passed the Nazi Party HQ, he popped in to tell them there was a big raid tonight, but one glance told him that he needn’t have bothered. The NSV kitchens were bustling with voluntary workers in aprons and Party officials in their fine uniforms. Shrewdly it was a matter of policy that compensation, clothing, soup kitchens and emergency aid for the homeless were all provided by Nazi Party workers. Gerd picked his way past mountains of potatoes. The raw smell of the freshly peeled ones was strong. Gerd hated that smell. There were blue fantailed gas flames under the soup vats and more potatoes were being tipped into the peeling-machines.
‘Some coffee, Herr Böll?’ said Frau Grundel.
‘I mustn’t interrupt the good work,’ said Böll. The woman smiled. Many years ago they had held hands under the trees and on summer evenings like this had walked along the stream as far as the Kersten windmill, long since broken and demolished. Now she was nearly fifty, widowed with three grown-up daughters and a soldier son. She ran her baker’s shop and still volunteered long hours for the Frauenschaft. Frau Grundel reached for a chipped enamel mug from the shelf of mugs that stood ready by the stove. She poured the hot dark coffee and passed it to him.
‘For the Hilfzug?’ asked Gerd Böll.
‘That’s it,’ said the woman. ‘The lorries are waiting. It’s strange to think that within three hours poor bombed-out people in the Ruhr will be drinking our good hot potato soup.’ She smoothed the starched white apron of her uniform.
‘We’ve a lot to thank God for.’
‘God and the Führer, Gerd,’ said the woman.
‘There are flares dropping to the north,’ said Gerd. ‘And searchlights.’
‘You are the third one to tell us,’ said Frau Grundel. ‘But there’s no need to be alarmed about the Terrorflieger; our brave boys will be in the air after them.’
‘I must be getting along,’ said Gerd Böll. He swallowed his coffee and pursed his lips at the bitter after-taste. Frau Grundel noticed his grimace.
‘You’ve nothing to worry about; our anti-aircraft defences in the Ruhr are the most formidable in the world.’
‘Goodbye, Frau Grundel,’ said Gerd. She turned away and switched on the peeling-machine which made a noise like thunder.
Anna-Luisa was brushing her hair carefully, three hundred times as she did every night, when she heard the voice of little Hansl from the next room.
‘Fräulein, Fräulein.’
‘Yes, Hansl. But you must get back into bed.’ He had pulled back the curtains.
‘The pretty lights, Fräulein. Such pretty lights. Like Christmas trees in the sky.’
Anna-Luisa went to the window. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Exactly like Christmas trees, Hansl.’
‘Is Daddy doing it?’
‘No, Liebchen.’ The coloured lights were close; very close. She picked him up. ‘You’re a weight, Hansl. Soon you will be too heavy for me to lift.’
‘When I am a man I will lift you, Fräulein.’
‘That will be splendid,’ said Anna-Luisa and kissed the boy.
When the knock came at the door she went to it still carrying Hansl.
‘Herr Böll, is something wrong?’
‘Good, you are dressed.’
‘I want you to take shelter this night.’
‘Shelter?’
‘Next door with Herr Voss. Last month he told August that he wanted you and the child to shelter there if the air raids came. His shelter is reinforced and has fans for air. Suffocation is the great danger, you see.’
‘Tonight?’
‘The flares are dropping already. They are target markers. You must hurry.’
‘But they will not bomb Altgarten.’
‘Please hurry.’
‘I must get my shoes and a coat for Hansl.’
‘I can’t wait, Fräulein,’ said Gerd. ‘Hurry, and knock loudly on Herr Voss’ door. I know he’s in because his blackout always has chinks in it, but he plays the gramophone and he may not hear you.’
‘It was kind of you, Herr B.ll.’
‘I promised August,’ said Gerd coldly. He swung his leg over the saddle of Frau Klein’s bicycle and pedalled away towards the TENO camp.
When the first bombs fell it was a sound new to Anna-Luisa: a slippery, shuffling half-whistle, like a heavy parcel sliding down a metal chute. Each ended with a bang. Not the sort of bang that a firecracker or a pistol makes. This was as different from those bangs as a tuba is from a piccolo. These were big brassy bangs that slapped ears, shook the ground underfoot and kicked urgently at the windows.
‘We must hurry, my darling Hansl.’