Europe Central (73 page)

No, Herr Captain, I have that much in stock.

It’s best to deliver it directly to this office. My orderlies will load it onto the baggage car.

By your order, Herr Captain.

That’s all. Here’s your ticket.

By your order, Herr Captain.

One more thing, Gerstein. Listen carefully. This is one of the most secret matters, even the most secret. Do you understand? Anyone who talks about it will be shot immediately.

I understand, Herr Captain.

Heil Hitler!

Heil Hitler, said Gerstein, and he clicked his heels.

In their compartment of the Warsaw Express, a beautiful, placid darkhaired Polish girl sat ever so slowly turning over the leaves of her illustrated German magazine; the skin of her naked throat was as perfect as a political idea. She might have been a woman of pleasure. Presently a middle-aged Wehrmacht officer came and sat beside her. At his breast he wore a Knight’s Cross which he kept fingering nervously. Gerstein leaped to his feet and saluted; the lieutenant waved him down, his small eyes swimming ceaselessly in his exhausted, desperate face. Then he whispered something to the girl. Strangely enough, although she now awarded him the first of several cursory smiles, it was Kurt Gerstein whom she seemed to look upon. The young man lowered his eyes.

Dr. Pfannenstiel drummed his fingers on the windowsill. Finally he indulged himself to the point of remarking: As the Führer says, after so many generations we Goths are riding again!

No doubt, said Captain Günther.

The lieutenant grinned mockingly at this (for, in truth, poor Dr. Pfannenstiel was as heavy as an Opel-Blitz truck). The girl also smiled, stroking her lover’s sleeve, but the smile sank away at once. Turning to Kurt Gerstein, as people so often did, the lieutenant inquired: Where might you Goths be riding to?

Warsaw, the young man lied pleasantly. And yourself, Herr Oberstleutnant?

I’m taking Basia to her parents. Then it’s straight back to the Ostfront!

With a self-important air, he adjusted his Knight’s Cross. Gerstein thought him rather pitiable.

And when will you come back for me? asked the girl in a weak and listless voice.

Don’t worry, darling; there will be plenty of passes given out as soon as we take Stalingrad.

The summer-green forests were growing crazily, nourished by atrocity. It seemed to Gerstein, such was the profusion of foliage, that the train was now passing into the earth itself, and through some illusion the shimmering of the leaves resembled veins of crystalline chalcedony. After all, it was now evening, the sky turning Prussian blue in the train windows. Ahead lay the still richer summer leaf-darkness of the Polish countryside. (But Poland, of course, had ceased to exist.) Although Basia suffered the lieutenant to hold her hand, she never stopped looking at Gerstein. Unable to control himself any longer, he allowed his eyes to find her eyes. At once, doubtless through some peculiarity of lighting, her face seemed to take on the features of his murdered sister-in-law, and she said in a voice which only he could hear: Be brave, Kurt Gerstein. I am your conscience. When you walk the dark way, remember me, and always do your best.

He had, perhaps, been in love with Berthe. Her smile was always grave approaching sadness, and the more sweet for that. She had deep brown eyes with rich lashes, and brown hair which waved so graciously across her forehead before, caressing her rich eyebrows, it curled back against her temples and then flared down all the way to her shoulders. Her lips were both full and delicate. There had been something Jewish-looking about her.

Gerstein did not even feel frightened. Perhaps he was dreaming, for the others in the compartment continued to notice nothing. Ever since his childhood, strange enthusiasms and hallucinations had attacked him. His late mother had always worried about his susceptibilities, and used to keep him away from military uniforms and memorabilia inasmuch as she was able—not merely because any reminder of her other son’s death grieved her, but also since she feared, not without foundation, that any passing whimsy might induce him to sign up for dangerous adventures. In adolescence he used to dream of a pale face, neither male or female, which hung over his and kissed him all night. Sometimes it had seemed more than a dream, as did this apparition.

He tried to cobble together some reply, but now already Berthe’s face was melting back into Basia’s (for a moment, when it was neither one or the other, it almost seemed to take on the appearance of a skull); then Dr. Pfannenstiel took out his pocket watch as the train entered a zone demarcated by searchlights and barbed wire: the former frontier. The lands ahead had all been annexed into our Reich. And out the window they saw a helmet on a cross, a flower-bush on a mound of earth. Gerstein and the other two
-men rose and rigidly saluted the corpse. The lieutenant stared at them with twitching lips. As for Basia, she had returned to her German magazine.

3

On the silent weed-grown tracks of Rzepin, a long black windowless train basked beside them in the dusk. The lieutenant and his mistress disembarked here without any farewell. The whistle screamed. Then came small houses whose roof-tiles partook of the color of earth. Big-breasted Polish girls were lounging in a brickwork doorway, smiling at the train and smoking cigarettes. One of them laughed aloud, and her mouth glistened poisonously. After more brown-green grass and shunted trains, they passed bullet-riddled hulks of engines at the yard at Posen. Gazing through the window at the dim platform crowded with Poles, Gerstein wondered who Basia had really been. A real German woman needs no makeup, but
she
had painted her lips as carmine-red as the service colors of the Polizei fire brigade. Neither his father nor his wife would have liked her.

They paused at the next station for a long time. No one disturbed them. Dr. Pfannenstiel snored, then awoke with a gasp. Captain Günther was so still that he might as well not have existed. As for Gerstein, he stared wearily out the window. Tired S.D. men were checking documents, their jackbooted feet wide apart on the dirty concrete. The train began to move again at last, very slowly now, and after an interminable time reached the new frontier. They stopped once more for nearly an hour while the police inspected everyone’s papers. Then they crossed into the General Government.

So it’s sprayed directly on the clothes? inquired Dr. Pfannenstiel. I’m not personally familiar with this substance.

Correct, said Gerstein. It comes highly recommended by the Sanitation Office.

In Berlin?

Berlin, yes, answered Gerstein with a vacant smile, that smile which lacked three teeth.

Changing trains in Warsaw, they rode across the Vistula bridge and arrived in Lublin.

Gerstein, I’ve heard that there are some outstanding Ruthenian-Byzantine frescoes in that Dominican church over there. You’re a Catholic, I believe?

No, Herr Captain, an Evangelical.

So. I’ll do my best to overlook that. Do Evangelicals cross themselves?

No, Herr Captain.

All the same, don’t start crossing yourself in public! The Führer has said that after Jews, Slavs and Freemasons, the churches are Germany’s most dangerous enemies.

By your order, Herr Captain.

I’m afraid you won’t have time to see your little frescoes, Gerstein. But we may be able to visit Lublin Castle. Quite a number of prisoners being kept on ice in the cellars . . .

4

What’s your opinion of the castle, Gerstein?

Well, from the outside it seems—

The Führer has said that everything Polish must be erased from the world.

Heil Hitler! cried Gerstein at once.

The railroad tracks were the same color as the evening sky.

5

They went by car to Lvov, which our forces had captured a year ago from that Slavic general, Vlasov. (Vlasov would soon begin working for us.) Lvov was now called Lemberg. In the windows of all the nice restaurants, neat signs warned: GERMANS ONLY. NO POLES ADMITTED.

You’re a quiet young man, Gerstein. I commend that.

Thank you, Herr Captain.

You haven’t been in Lemberg before.

No, Herr Captain.

I’m happy to say that Lemberg was a very anti-Semitic city long before we arrived here. Even the Polish students used to . . .

Gerstein smiled on him with hatred.

Hidden beyond the greatness and greenness of Polish summer trees, past tallish rounded Polish haystacks like ancient tumuli, a railroad spur ran to the secret place called Belzec, which would sometimes appear in his nightmares as a negative image, white on black, the Nazi eagle-stamp a white blotch on the document with the swastika black; sometimes eagle and swastika went completely white together, becoming a winged bomb falling in prefiguration of our V-2 rockets:
And then that file was opened; the secret of Belzec opened unto him in typed and numbered paragraphs, the numbers centered, the section titles underlined after the fashion of legal contracts. It was all for the best; thus the lesson he’d been meant to learn. Once the zone was clean and clear, there’d be happier scenes: Volksdeutsche receiving farmhouses, identification cards and framed photographs of the Führer as they entered their new inheritance.

Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet
-Brigade Chief Otto Globocnik. Chief, I believe you’ve already met Professor Dr. Pfannenstiel, our Waffen-
hygienist. And this fresh-faced young man is our delousing expert,
Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein.