Аннетте Хесс - The German House

The girl knocked, then opened the door to a surprisingly cramped office. Inside were three men, surrounded by cigarette smoke and document files stacked on tables, shelves, and the floor.

One of them, a short, older gentleman, sat bolt upright in a chair in the center of the room, as though the entire room—the entire building—had been constructed around him alone. Perhaps even the entire city. A younger man with light blond hair and fine, gold-rimmed glasses was wedged behind a desk laden with files. He had cleared himself a small spot, where he was now writing. He was smoking a cigarette but had no ashtray. As Eva looked over at him, the ash fell on his notes. He mechanically brushed it to the floor. Neither man rose, which Eva thought quite rude.

The third man, a gnarled figure, even turned his back on her. He was standing at the window, peering out at the dark. Eva was reminded of a film on Napoleon she had seen with Jürgen. The general had assumed the same stance at the palace window. In despair over his planned campaign, he had gazed across the countryside. Only they could see that the landscape outside the window was painted on cardboard.

The blond man behind the desk gave Eva a nod. He gestured toward the seated man. “This is Herr Josef Gabor, from Warsaw. The Polish interpreter was meant to come with him today, but he encountered some difficulties in leaving the country. He was detained at the airport. Please.”

Since none of the gentlemen made any moves to help her, Eva removed her coat herself and hung it on a stand behind the door. The blond man pointed at a table against the wall. On it were dirty coffee cups and a plate with a few leftover cookies. Eva loved speculoos. But she refrained from indulging. She had put on two kilos in recent weeks. Eva positioned herself at the table so she could look Herr Gabor in the face, and removed the two dictionaries from her handbag. One general, the other a lexicon of specialized economic terms. She slid aside the cookie plate and set the books in its spot. Then she pulled out her notebook and a pencil. The girl in green had taken a seat at the other end of the table, at a stenotype machine. She fed the paper tape into the machine, the roller chattering. She never took her eyes off the light blond-haired man. She was interested in him, but it wasn’t mutual, which Eva detected straightaway. David Miller also removed his coat and sat down in a chair against the opposite wall, as though he weren’t involved, his coat across his knees.

Everyone waited, as if for a starting pistol. Eva looked at the cookies. The gnarled man standing at the window turned around. He addressed the man in the chair.

“Herr Gabor, please tell us what, exactly, occurred on the twenty-third of September 1941.”

Eva translated the question, although the year struck her as odd. That was more than twenty years ago. They must be examining some crime (although hadn’t the statute of limitations expired?) rather than a contract violation. The man in the chair looked Eva straight in the face, clearly relieved to have finally met someone in this country who understood him. He began to speak. His voice was in direct contrast to his upright bearing. It was as if he were reading from a letter faded with time, as if he were at first unable to decipher all of the words. He also spoke in a provincial dialect that gave Eva some trouble. She translated haltingly.

“That day it was warm—almost humid, in fact—and we had to decorate all the windows. All the windows in hostel number eleven. We decorated them with sandbags and filled all of the cracks with straw and dirt. We put a lot of effort into it, because mistakes were not tolerated. We finished our work toward evening. Then they led the 850 Soviet guests down into the cellar of the hostel. They waited till dark, so you could see the light better, I suspect. Then they threw the light into the cellar, down the ventilation shafts, and closed the doors. The doors weren’t opened till the next morning. We had to go in first. Most of the guests were illuminated.”

The men in the room looked at Eva. She felt slightly nauseous. Something was wrong. The woman tapped away at her machine, unfazed, but the blond man asked Eva, “Are you sure you understood that correctly?” Eva paged through her specialist dictionary. “I’m sorry, I usually translate in contract disputes, regarding economic affairs and negotiating settlements for damages….”

The men exchanged looks. The blond man shook his head impatiently, but the gnarled man by the window gave him a placating nod. From across the room, David Miller looked at Eva with disdain.

Eva reached for her general dictionary, which was heavy as a brick. She had the feeling it wasn’t guests, but prisoners. Not a hostel, but a cell block. And not light. No illumination. Eva eyed the man in the chair. He returned her gaze, his expression as if he were suddenly feeling faint.

Eva said, “I apologize, I translated that incorrectly. It was, ‘We found most of the prisoners suffocated by the gas.’”

Silence filled the room. David Miller was trying to light a cigarette, but his lighter refused to catch. Chk-chk-chk. Then the blond man coughed and turned toward the gnarled man. “We should be glad we found a replacement at all. At such short notice. Better than nothing.”

He responded, “Let’s try to continue. What other option do we have?”

The blond man turned to Eva. “But if you’re ever uncertain, look it up immediately.”

Eva nodded. She translated slowly. The woman typed on her machine at the same trickling pace. “When we opened the doors, some of the prisoners were still alive. About one third. It had been too little gas. The procedure was repeated with double the amount. We waited two days to open the doors this time. The operation was a success.”

The blond man stood up behind his desk. “Who gave the order?” He moved the coffee cups and laid out twenty-one photos on Eva’s table. Eva regarded the faces from the side. Men with numbers under their chin in front of whitewashed walls. But some in sunny yards, playing with big dogs. One man had the face of a ferret. Josef Gabor stood up and approached the table. He gazed upon the photos for a long time and then pointed at one so suddenly, it made Eva jump. The picture showed a younger man grasping a large rabbit by the scruff, holding it toward the camera with a proud smile on his face. The men in the room exchanged satisfied glances and nodded. My father used to breed rabbits , Eva thought, at their garden plot outside the city, where he grew the vegetables for the kitchen. The endlessly chewing animals were kept in little enclosures. But the day Stefan realized he wasn’t just petting and supplying his silky soft companions with dandelions, but also eating them, he had thrown a terrible fit. Her father got rid of the rabbits.

Later, Eva had to sign her translation of the testimony. Her name looked different than usual. As though written by a child, clumsy and rounded. The blond man gave her an absentminded nod. “Thank you. Invoice goes through your agency?” David Miller rose from his chair against the wall and said brusquely, “Wait outside. Two minutes.”

Eva put on her coat and stepped into the hall, while David conferred with the blond man. She could make out, “Unqualified! Utterly unqualified!” The blond man nodded, picked up the telephone, and dialed a number. The attorney general dropped heavily into a chair.

Eva stepped up to one of the tall windows in the hallway and peered out into the shadowy back courtyard. It had begun to snow. Thick, heavy flakes. Countless dark windows, deserted and mute, in the high-rise opposite returned Eva’s gaze. Not a soul lives there , Eva thought. Just offices . Three mittens had been laid to dry on the radiator under the window. Who do they belong to? she wondered. Who does the single mitten belong to?