Robert Lautner - The Draughtsman

‘So, you can start paying me back at last!’

‘Willi!’ My mother dropped my face. ‘Let the boy sit. Give them some wine. Let him talk.’

The wine in the thin glasses was already in our hands, Etta’s knees against mine on the small sofa, the same seat where I once put my little cars to bed before myself.

‘Topf and Sons were hiring. A junior position but—’

‘Of course. Why not?’ My father lifted his hands as if bargaining for a rug in a bazaar. ‘That is how men start. A year or two and you will have your own department.’ He slapped my knee.

My mother sat and tightened her shawl. ‘Topf, you say? My, my. Such a fine company.’

Father saluted his glass.

‘The oldest firm. The proudest. The world will open to you now. What are you working at, Ernst? Or is it secret?’ Eyed me in a way I had not seen before.

‘Why would it be secret?’

He shrugged.

‘Maybe they have some war works or such.’

I drank my syrupy wine.

‘They have contracts with the prisons. And for military parts.’

Etta touched my hand. Patted it.

‘Ernst is, unfortunately, only working on new oven designs for the camps.’ Not looking at me. At my mother. I took my hand away. ‘Unfortunately,’ she had said.

My mother’s shawl tighter.

‘The camps?’ Her voice as a whisper. ‘Buchenwald?’

‘All of them,’ I said, let Etta’s disparaging of me pass. She had suggested this visit. I thought because of pride in her husband. Maybe she had hoped a different reaction from my parents about the camp. ‘I am to work on new patents.’

‘New?’ My father nodded sagely over his glass. ‘You see, Mama? They give him new projects to work on.’ And then straight to it. ‘How much does it pay? Salary? Not week?’

‘Forty marks a week. No trial. I have already started. May I smoke, Mama?’

She stood. ‘I must get to my roast.’ I took that as yes and brought out my tobacco, and father’s pipe came from the drawer by his chair.

Etta stood.

‘Let me help you, Mila.’ And the men were alone.

An age for my father to suck his pipe into life. The sound of my childhood.

‘Ernst.’ He shook out his match into the glazed ashtray I made him at school. ‘Tell me about the ovens?’

I exhaled with him.

‘Topf created crem—’ Etta’s ear turned. ‘Created ovens for use in chapel, in ceremony. They invented the petrol oven and the gas fuelled. They export all over the world. But the prisons use coke for cost. As such I understand they need repairs. Often.’

‘Why so?’

I watched the cloud of him reach to the yellow-stained ceiling.

‘Overuse. Brick ovens. Typhus is in the prisons. Coke ovens and brick are not able to cope with the demand.’

‘So why use coke?’

‘Cost. Petrol is too expensive. Too crucial to waste on ovens. The SS are all about cost I gather.’

He leant forward.

‘The SS?’

‘You know they run the camps?’

‘I did not think they bought the ovens?’

I drew long on my cigarette. ‘Nor did I. I have learnt that much already.’

‘That is what you must do. Learn every day. Ask everything. Show that it is more than just a job. And then when they are looking for the next top man they will look for the one who shows the most interest in the company. He drummed his words out on the arm of his chair. ‘That is the way.’

‘I am doing something on that tomorrow. I am going to Buchenwald with my department head to inspect for a new oven.’ I looked to Etta not smiling at me from the kitchen.

He put his pipe on his knee.

‘You are going inside the camp?’

My mother’s voice. ‘Who is? Who is going to the camp?’

‘Ernst is, Mama,’ my father called over his shoulder. ‘Ernst is going to Buchenwald. Tomorrow.’

She came into the room, drying her hands. Always drying her hands.

‘Why? Do you have to work in the camps? That is not so good, Ernst.’

Erfurt not far from Buchenwald. The prison almost ten years old but known for disease now, for more than criminals. To my mother even the air of the place would be corrupt.

‘No, Mama. It is just to view on-site the work that we do. It will be good experience.’

Etta gone from the kitchen doorway. I heard the tap running. Running louder as my father spoke. His pipe neck pointing at me.

‘And it will show how keen you are to learn. When I worked for Littman, at the pharmacy, that man would teach me nothing . Nothing I tell you. Everything was a secret to him. I was too old to apprentice so to him I was worthless. When Quermann took it over, when a German took it over, he showed me true respect. A gentile cannot work for a Jew. You just become their chattel. I have always said it. Now it is Germany for the Germans we all look after each other. Nothing to gain but a better country for us all. Working together for the good. Not for the purse.’

Mother slapped him with her cloth that was always attached about her.

‘It was Littman who gave you that job, you old fool! Me running around scrubbing floors with Ernst in my belly and you with holes in your pockets. Quermann did not hire you. You were stolen.’ She groaned back to the kitchen. ‘That man, that man.’

I finished my wine and the bottle came back, which was a first for him.

‘All the same,’ he went on. ‘You learn from these men, Ernst. They are doing well. Government contracts. Always there is work there. When we conquer Stalin think how much work will be needed.’

‘The ovens is a small department, Papa. But they design silos and malting equipment. And gas jets and aeroplane parts. That is what I want to do.’

‘And why not? Mercedes you could work for. Build me a car for my old age. This country is for the young now. My war gave us a broken country. The Bolsheviks and the Jews conspiring to destroy us. Nothing but unemployment unless you were in their families. And now it is Germany for the Germans, the best men for the jobs, not just for the good connections. And my son has a career with one of the largest companies in the land.’ He thumped his chair. ‘This is how good life begins. I am proud of you, Ernst.’

He had not said these words since I had graduated.

Women were laughing in the kitchen, and the waft of steaming food came from rattling pots, and I would not have to ask awkwardly to borrow ten marks. I realised it could be good to visit parents.

*

We walked home arm in arm through afternoon light burnishing the wet cobblestones. I waited until the river’s rushing was behind us to ask Etta why she had called my work ‘unfortunate’.

‘I only meant that you should be doing higher things. Not drafting ovens. For the SS.’ Her head down now, moved close into me. ‘Not what I want for you.’

‘I’m sure it will not be for long.’

She stopped, looked about and took my hand.

‘But what if it is? What if it is for long? Do you not think of the ovens, Ernst? Why they need so many?’

‘The typhus. The disease. The sick. Prisons need ovens, Etta. I’ve told you this. It is unpleasant but it is fact. Would you question Paul buying a new oven?’

‘Coal ovens. Yet you tell me they order gas jets from Topf. What are they for if not for the ovens, Ernst? Do they not heat with coal?’

‘I don’t know. It is not just Topf, Etta. What company does not work with the SS now? Would you be concerned if a hospital wanted gas jets?’

She dropped my hand, put hers to my back as Klein did when he wanted me to understand something, guided me along.

‘But hospitals aren’t run by the SS, Ernst. Why are the camps run by them? Shouldn’t that be a government thing?’