Garden of Beasts (30 page)

“Yes, Inspector Kohl, we will,” Squad Leader Gruber announced, not bothering to poll his troops.

“Good. The Leader will be proud of you. I will now distribute these sheets.” He paused and caught the eye of one particular student in the back, one of the few not dressed in a uniform. “One other matter. It is necessary that you all be discreet regarding something.”

“Discreet?” the boy asked, frowning.

“Yes. It means you must refrain from mentioning a fact I am about to share with you. I have come to you for this assistance because of my son Günter, in the back there.” Several dozen eyes swiveled toward the boy, whom Kohl had called at home not long before and instructed to come to his headmaster’s house. Günter blushed fiercely and looked down. His father continued. “I suspect you do not know that my son will in the future be assisting me in important matters of state security. This, by the way, is why I cannot let him join your fine organization; I prefer that he remain behind the scenes, as it were. In this way he will be able to continue to help me work for the glory of the fatherland. Please keep this fact among yourselves. You will do that?”

Helmut’s eyes grew still as he glanced back at Günter, thinking perhaps of recent Aryan and Jew games that possibly should not have been played. “Of course, Mr. Inspector Kohl,” he said.

Kohl looked at his son’s face and its repressed smile of joy and then said, “Now line up in a single queue and I will distribute the papers. My son and Squad Leader Gruber will decide how you divide the labor.”

“Yes, sir. Hail Hitler.”

“Hail Hitler.” Kohl forced himself to offer a firm, outstretched-arm salute. He gave the handouts to the two boys. He added, “Oh, and gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir?” Helmut responded, standing to attention.

“Mind the traffic. Look carefully when crossing streets.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

He knocked on the door and she let him into her room.

Käthe seemed embarrassed by her living space in the boardinghouse. Bare walls, no plants, rickety furniture; she or the landlord had moved all the better items into the rooms to be let. Nor did anything here seem personal. Maybe she’d been pawning off her possessions. Sunlight hit the faded carpet but it was a small, solitary trapezoid and pale; the light was reflected from a window across the alley.

Then she gave a girlish laugh and flung her arms around him. She kissed him hard. “You smell of something different. I like it.” She sniffed his face.

“Shaving soap?”

“Perhaps that’s it, yes.”

He’d used some he’d found in the lavatory, a German brand, rather than his Burma Shave, because he was afraid a guard at the stadium might smell the unfamiliar scent of the American soap and grow suspicious.

“It’s nice.”

He noticed a single suitcase on the bed. The Goethe book was on the bare table, a cup of weak coffee next to it. There were white lumps floating on the surface and he asked her if there was such a thing as Hitler milk from Hitler cows.

She laughed and said that the National Socialists had plenty of asses among them, but to her knowledge they’d created no ersatz cows. “Even real milk curdles when it’s old.”

Then he said, “We’re leaving tonight.”

She nodded, frowning. “Tonight? When you say ‘immediately,’ you mean it.”

“I will meet you here at five.”

“Where are you going now?” Käthe asked him.

“Just doing one final interview.”

“Well, good luck, Paul. I will look forward to reading your article, even if it
is
about, oh, perhaps the black market, and not sports.” She gave him a knowing look. Käthe was a clever woman, of course; she suspected he had business here other than writing stories—probably, like half the town, putting together some semi-legal ventures. Which made him think she’d already accepted a darker side to him—and that she wouldn’t be very upset if he eventually told her the truth about what he was doing here. After all, his enemy was her enemy.

He kissed her once more, tasting her, smelling lilac, feeling the pressure of her skin against him. But he found that, unlike last night, he wasn’t the least stirred. This didn’t trouble him, though; it was the way things had to be. The ice had taken him completely.

“How could she have betrayed us?”

Kurt Fischer answered his brother’s question with a despairing shake of his head.

He too was heartsick at the thought of what their neighbor had done. Why, Mrs. Lutz! To whom they took a loaf of their mother’s warm stollen, lopsided and overfilled with candied fruit, every Christmas Eve, whom their parents had comforted as she cried on the anniversary of Germany’s surrender—that date a surrogate for the day her husband was killed during the War, since no one knew exactly when he died.

“How could she do it?” Hans whispered again.

But Kurt Fischer was unable to explain.

If she had denounced them because they had been planning to post dissident billboards or to attack some Hitler Youth, he might have understood. But all they wanted to do was leave a country whose leader had said, “Pacifism is the enemy of National Socialism.” Like so many others, he supposed, Mrs. Lutz had become intoxicated by Hitler.

The prison cell at Columbia House was about three by three meters, made of rough-hewn stone, windowless, with metal bars for a door, opening onto the corridor. Water dripped and the young men heard the scuttle of rats nearby. There was a single bare, glaring bulb overhead in the cell, yet none in the corridor so they could see few details of the dark forms that occasionally passed. Sometimes the guards were alone, other times they escorted prisoners, who were barefoot and made no sound except their occasional gasps or pleas or sobs. Sometimes the silence of their fear was more chilling than the noises they uttered.

The heat was unbearable; it made their skin itch. Kurt couldn’t understand why—they were underground and it should have been cool here. Then he noticed a pipe in the corner. Hot air streamed out fiercely. The jailors were pumping it in from a furnace to make sure the prisoners didn’t get even a small respite from their discomfort.

“We shouldn’t’ve left,” Hans muttered. “I told you.”

“Yes, we should have stayed in our apartment—
that
would have saved us.” He was speaking with sharp irony. “Until when? Next week? Tomorrow? Don’t you understand she’s been watching us? She’s seen the parties, she heard what we’ve said.”

“How long will we be here?”

And how does one answer that question? Kurt thought; they were in a place where every moment was forever. He sat on the floor—there was nowhere else to perch—as he stared absently into the dark, empty cell across the corridor from theirs.

A door opened and boots sounded on the concrete.

Kurt began counting the steps—one, two, three…

At twenty-eight the guard would be even with their cell. Counting footsteps was something he’d already learned about being a prisoner; captives are desperate for
any
information, for
any
certainty.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…

The brothers regarded each other. Hans balled up his fists. “They’ll hurt. They’ll taste blood,” he muttered.

“No,” Kurt said. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

Twenty-five, twenty-six…

The steps slowed.

Blinking against the glare from the light overhead, Kurt saw two large men in brown uniforms appear. They looked at the brothers.

Then turned away.

One of them opened the cell opposite and harshly called, “Grossman, you will come out.”

The darkness in the cell moved. Kurt was startled to realize that he’d been staring at another human being. The man staggered to his feet and stepped forward, using the bars as support. He was filthy. If he’d gone inside clean-shaven, the stubble on his face told Kurt that he had been in the cell for at least a week.

The prisoner blinked, looked around him at the two large men, then at Kurt across the hallway.

One of the guards glanced at a piece of paper, “Ali Grossman, you have been sentenced to five years in Oranienburg camp for crimes against the State. Step outside.”

“But I—”

“Remain quiet. You are to be prepared for the trip to the camp.”

“They deloused me already. What do you mean?”

“I said quiet!”

One guard whispered something to the other, who replied, “Didn’t you bring yours?”

“No.”

“Well, here, use mine.”

He handed some light-colored leather gloves to the other guard, who pulled them on. With the grunt of a tennis player delivering a powerful serve, the guard swung his fist directly into the thin man’s belly. Grossman cried out and began to retch.

The guard’s knuckles silently struck the man’s chin.

“No, no, no.”

More blows, finding their targets on his groin, his face, his abdomen. Blood flowed from his nose and mouth, tears from his eyes. Choking, gasping. “Please, sir!”

In horror, the brothers watched as the human being was turned into a broken doll. The guard who’d been doing the hitting looked at his comrade and said, “I’m sorry about the gloves. My wife will clean and mend these.”

“If it’s convenient.”

They picked the man up and dragged him up the hall. The door echoed loudly.

Kurt and Hans stared at the empty cell. Kurt was speechless. He believed he’d never been so frightened in his life. Hans finally asked, “He probably did something quite terrible, don’t you think? To be treated like that.”

“A saboteur, I’d guess,” Kurt said in a shaky voice.

“I heard there was a fire in a government building. The transportation ministry. Did you hear that? I’ll bet he was behind it.”

“Yes. A fire. He was surely the arsonist.”

They sat paralyzed with terror, as the blistering stream of air from the pipe behind them continued to heat the tiny cell.

It was no more than a minute later that they heard the door open and slam closed again. They glanced at each other.

The footsteps began, echoing as leather met concrete. …six, seven, eight…

“I will kill the one who was on the right,” Hans whispered. “The bigger. I can do it. We can get the keys and—”

Kurt leaned close, shocking the boy by gripping his face in both of his hands. “No!” he whispered so fiercely that his brother gasped. “You will do nothing. You will not fight them, you will not speak back. You will do exactly what they say and if they hit you, you will take the pain silently.” All his earlier thoughts of fighting the National Socialists, of trying to make some difference, had vanished.

“But—”

Kurt’s powerful fingers pulled Hans close. “You will do as I say!” …thirteen, fourteen…

The footsteps were like a hammer on the Olympic bell, each one sending a jolt of fear vibrating within Kurt Fischer’s soul.

…seventeen, eighteen…

At twenty-six they would slow.

At twenty-eight they would stop.

And the blood would begin to flow.

“You’re hurting me!” But even Hans’s strong muscles couldn’t shake off his brother’s grip.

“If they knock out your teeth you will say nothing. If they break your fingers you can cry and wail and scream. But you will say nothing to them. We are going to survive this. Do you understand me? To survive we cannot fight back.”

Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four…

A shadow fell on the floor in front of the bars.

“Understand?”

“Yes,” Hans whispered.

Kurt put his arm around his brother’s shoulder and they faced the door.

The men stopped at the cell.

But they weren’t the guards. One was a lean gray-haired man in a suit. The other was heavier, balding, wearing a brown tweed jacket and a waistcoat. They looked the brothers over.

“You are the Fischers?” the gray-haired man asked.

Hans looked at Kurt, who nodded.

He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and read. “Kurt.” He looked up. “You would be Kurt. And you, Hans.”

“Yes.”

What was this?

The man looked up the hallway. “Open the cell.”

More footsteps. The guard appeared, glanced in and unlocked the door. He stepped back, his hand on the truncheon that hung from his belt.

The two men stepped inside.

The gray-haired man said, “I am Colonel Reinhard Ernst.”

The name was familiar to Kurt. He occupied some role in Hitler’s government, though he wasn’t sure what exactly. The second man was introduced as Doctor-professor Keitel, from some military college outside of Berlin.

The colonel asked, “Your arrest document says ‘crimes against the State.’ But they all do. What exactly
were
your crimes?”

Kurt explained about their parents and about trying to leave the country illegally.

Ernst cocked his head and regarded the boys closely. “Pacifism,” he muttered and turned to Keitel, who asked, “You’ve committed anti-Party activities?”

“No, sir.”

“You are Edelweiss Pirates?”

These were informal anti–National Socialist clubs of young people, some said gangs, rising up in reaction to the mindless regimentation of the Hitler Youth. They’d meet clandestinely for discussions about politics and art—and to sample some of the pleasures of life that the Party, publicly at least, condemned: drinking, smoking and unmarried sex. The brothers knew some young people who were members but they themselves were not. Kurt told the men this.

“The offense may seem minor, but”—Ernst displayed a piece of paper— “you have been sentenced to three years at Oranienburg camp.”

Hans gasped. Kurt felt stunned, thinking of the terrible beating they’d just seen, poor Mr. Grossman pounded into submission. Kurt knew too that people sometimes went to Oranienburg or Dachau to serve a short sentence but were never seen again. He sputtered, “There was no trial! We were arrested an hour ago! And today is Sunday. How can we have been sentenced?”

The colonel shrugged. “As you can see, there
was
a trial.” Ernst handed him the document, which contained dozens of prisoners’ names, Kurt’s and Hans’s among them. Next to each was the length of sentence. The heading on the document said simply “The People’s Court.” This was the infamous tribunal that consisted of two real judges and five men from the Party, the SS or the Gestapo. There was no appeal from its judgment.

He stared at it, numb.

The professor spoke. “You are in general good health, both of you?”

The brothers glanced at each other and nodded.

“Jewish to any degree?”

“No.”

“And you have done Labor Service?”

Kurt said, “My brother has. I was too old.”

“As to the matter at hand,” Professor Keitel said, “we are here to offer you a choice.” He seemed impatient.

“Choice?”

Ernst’s voice lowered and he continued. “It is the thinking of some people in our government that particular individuals should not participate in our military. Perhaps they are of a certain race or nationality, perhaps they are intellectuals, perhaps they tend to question decisions of our government. I, however, believe that a nation is only as great as its army, and that for an army to be great it must be representative of all its citizens. Professor Keitel and I are doing a study that we think will support some shifts in how the government views the German armed forces.” He glanced back into the hall and said to the SA guard, “You can leave us.”

“But, sir—”

“You can leave us,” Ernst repeated in a calm voice and yet it seemed to Kurt as strong as Krupp steel.

The man glanced again at Kurt and Hans and then receded down the hall.

Ernst continued. “And this study may very well ultimately determine how the government values its citizens in general. We have been looking for men in your circumstances to help us.”

The professor said, “We need healthy young men who would otherwise be excluded from military service for political or other reasons.”

“And what would we do?”

Ernst gave a brief laugh. “Why, you’d become soldiers, of course. You would serve in the German army, navy or air force for one year, regular duty.”