Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all these people. No one’s told me a damn thing. How long they’re going to be here. How to make them comfortable. How to answer all of these bloody women who are demanding answers. It’s not so easy, I can tell you. All I’ve got is what was in this office building when we turned up yesterday. Toilet paper ran out within an hour of us being here. And Christ only knows how I’m going to feed them. There’s nothing open on a Sunday.’

‘Why don’t you open those food parcels and give them that?’ I asked.

The sergeant looked incredulous. ‘I couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘Those are private parcels.’

‘I shouldn’t think that the people they belong to will mind,’ I said. ‘Just as long as they get something to eat.’

We found Franz Meyer seated in one of the larger offices where almost a hundred men were waiting patiently for something to happen. The sergeant called Meyer out and, still grumbling, went off to think about what I’d suggested about the parcels, while I spoke to my potential war-crimes witness in the comparative privacy of the corridor.

I told him that I worked for the War Crimes Bureau and why I was there. Meanwhile, outside the building, the women’s protest seemed to be getting louder.

‘Your wife and sisters-in-law are outside,’ I told him. ‘It’s them who put me up to this.’

‘Please tell them to go home,’ said Meyer. ‘It’s safer in here than out there, I think.’

‘I agree. But they’re not about to listen to me.’

Meyer grinned. ‘Yes, I can imagine.’

‘The sooner you tell me about what happened on the SS Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim , the sooner I can speak to my boss and see about getting you out of here, and the sooner we can get them all out of harm’s way.’ I paused. ‘That is if you’re prepared to give me a deposition.’

‘It’s my only chance of avoiding a concentration camp, I think.’

‘Or worse,’ I added, by way of extra incentive.

‘Well, that’s honest, I suppose.’ He shrugged.

‘I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?’

He nodded and we spent the next thirty minutes writing out his statement about what had happened off the coast of Norway in August 1941. When he’d signed it, I wagged my finger at him.

‘Coming here like this I’m sticking my neck out for you,’ I told him. ‘So you’d better not let me down. If I so much as get a whiff of you changing your story I’ll wash my hands of you. Got that?’

He nodded. ‘So why are you sticking your neck out?’

It was a good question and probably it deserved an answer, but I hardly wanted to go into how a friend of a friend had asked me to help, which is how these things usually got fixed in Germany; and I certainly didn’t want to mention how attractive I found his sister-in-law Klara, or that I was making up for some lost time when it came to helping Jews; and maybe a bit more than only lost time.

‘Let’s just say I don’t like the Tommies very much and leave it at that, shall we?’ I shook my head. ‘Besides, I’m not promising anything. It’s up to my boss, Judge Goldsche. If he thinks your deposition can start an inquiry into a British war crime, he’s the one who’ll have to persuade the Foreign Office that this is worth a white book, not me.’

‘What’s a white book?’

‘An official publication that’s intended to present the German side of an incident that might amount to a violation of the laws of war. It’s the Bureau that does all the leg work, but it’s the Foreign Office that publishes the report.’

‘That sounds as if it might take a while.’

I shook my head. ‘Fortunately for you, the Bureau and the judge have a great deal of power. Even in Nazi Germany. If the judge buys your story we’ll have you home tomorrow.’

Wednesday, March 3rd 1943

They took me to the state hospital in Friedrichshain. I was suffering from a concussion and smoke inhalation; the smoke inhalation was nothing new, but as a result of the concussion the doctor advised me to stay in bed for a couple of days. I’ve always disliked hospitals – they sell just a little too much reality for my taste. But I did feel tired. Being bombed by the RAF will do that to you. So the advice of this fresh-faced aspirin Jesus suited me very well. I thought I was due a bit of time with my feet up and my mouth in traction. Besides, I was a lot better off in hospital than in my apartment. They were still feeding patients in the state hospital, which was more than I could say about home, where the pot was empty.

From my window I had a nice view of the St Georg’s cemetery, but I didn’t mind that: the state hospital faces the Bohmisches Brewery on the other side of Landsberger Allee, which means there’s always a strong smell of hops in the air. I can’t think of a better way to encourage a Berliner’s recovery than the smell of German beer. Not that we saw much of it in the city’s bars: most of the beer brewed in Berlin went straight to our brave boys on the Russian front. But I can’t say that I grudged them a couple of brews. After Stalingrad I expect they needed a taste of home to keep their spirits up. There wasn’t a great deal else to keep a man’s spirits up in the winter of 1943.

Either way I was better off than Siv Meyer and her sisters, who were all dead. The only survivors of that night were me and Franz, who was in the Jewish Hospital. Where else? The bigger surprise was that there was a Jewish Hospital in the first place.

I was not without visitors. Renata Matter came to see me. It was Renata who told me my own home was undamaged and who gave me the news about the Meyer sisters. She was pretty upset about it too, and being a good Roman Catholic she had already spent the morning praying for their souls. She seemed just as upset by the news that the priest of St Hedwig’s, Bernhard Lichtenberg, had been put in prison and seemed likely to be sent to Dachau where – according to her – more than two thousand priests were already incarcerated. Two thousand priests in Dachau was a depressing thought. That’s the thing about hospital visitors: sometimes you wish they simply hadn’t bothered to come along and try to cheer you up.

This was certainly how I felt about my other visitor, a commissar from the Gestapo called Werner Sachse. I knew Sachse from the Alex, and in truth he wasn’t a bad fellow for a Gestapo officer, but I knew he wasn’t there to bring me the gift of a Stollen and an encouraging word. He wore hair as neat as the lines in a carpenter’s notebook, a black leather coat that creaked like snow under your feet when he moved, and a black hat and black tie that made me uncomfortable.

‘I’ll have the brass handles and the satin lining please,’ I said. ‘And an open casket, I think.’

Sachse’s face looked puzzled.

‘I guess your pay grade doesn’t run to black humour. Just black ties and coats.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ He shrugged. ‘We have our jokes in the Gestapo.’

‘Sure you do. Only they’re called evidence for the People’s Court in Moabit.’

‘I like you Gunther, so you won’t mind if I warn you about making jokes like that. Especially after Stalingrad. These days it’s called “undermining defensive strength” and they cut your head off for it. Last year they beheaded three people a day for making jokes like that.’

‘Haven’t you heard? I’m sick. I’ve got concussion. I can hardly breathe. I’m not myself. If they cut my head off I probably wouldn’t notice anyway. That’s my defence if this comes to court. What is your pay grade anyway, Werner?’

‘A3. Why do you ask?’

‘I was just wondering why a man who makes six hundred marks a week would come all this way to warn me about undermining our defensive strength – assuming such a thing actually exists after Stalingrad.’