Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

2

What Baldur Persicke Had to Say

As Otto Quangel was going past the Persicke apartment, rapturous shouting mixed with chants of ‘Sieg Heil!’ greeted his ears. Quangel hurried on, anxious not to encounter any of that company. They had been living in the same building for ten years, but Quangel had always been at pains to avoid the Persickes, even at the time old Persicke was just a little loudmouthed publican. But now the Persickes had turned into important people, the man held all sorts of Party posts, and the two older boys were with the SS; money didn’t seem to be an issue for them.

The more reason to be wary of them now, because people like that had to keep on good terms with the Party, and the only way they could do it was if they did things to help the Party. ‘Doing things’ meant reporting on others, for instance: So-and-so was listening to a foreign radio station. Ideally, Quangel would have packed up all the radios in Otto’s room and stashed them in the basement. You couldn’t be careful enough in times like these, when everyone was spying on everybody else, the Gestapo had their eyes on all of them, and the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen was expanding all the time. He, Quangel, didn’t need a radio, but Anna had been opposed to getting rid of them. She still believed in the old proverb, ‘A good conscience is a soft pillow.’ Even though it was all bunk now, if it hadn’t always been.

With these thoughts going through his mind, Quangel hurried down the stairs, across the courtyard, and into the street.

The reason for the cheering at the Persickes was that the darling of the family, young Bruno – who now goes by Baldur because of Schirach^∗ and, if his father’s string-pulling can get him in, is even going to one of the party’s elite Napola schools – well, Baldur came upon a photo in the Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter. The photo shows the Führer with Reichsmarschall Göring, and the caption reads: ‘After receiving news of the French capitulation.’ And the two of them look like they’ve heard some good news too: Göring is beaming all over his fat face, and the Führer is smacking his thighs with delight.

The Persickes were all similarly rejoicing when Baldur asked, ‘Doesn’t anything strike you about that picture?’

They stop and stare at him in consternation, so convinced are they of the intellectual superiority of this sixteen-year-old that none of the rest of them even hazards a guess.

‘Come on!’ says Baldur. ‘Think about it! The picture was taken by a press photographer. He just happened to be there when news of the capitulation arrived, hmm? Probably it was delivered by phone or courier, or perhaps a French general brought it in person, though there’s no sign of any of that. It’s just the two of them standing in the garden, having a whale of a time…’

Baldur’s mother and father and sister and brothers are still sitting there in silence, gawping. The tension makes them look almost stupid. Old Persicke wishes he could pour himself another schnapps, but he can’t do that, not while Baldur’s speaking. He knows from experience that Baldur can cut up rough if you fail to pay sufficient attention to his political lectures.

So the son continues, ‘Well, then, the picture is posed, it wasn’t taken when the news of the capitulation arrived, it was taken some time before. And now look at the Führer’s rejoicing! His mind’s on England, has been for ages now, all he’s thinking about is how to put one over on the Tommies. This whole business here is a piece of playacting, from the photo to the happy clapping. All they’re doing is making mugs of people!’

Now the family are staring at Baldur as if they were the ones who were being made mugs of. If he hadn’t been their Baldur, they would have reported him to the Gestapo right away.

But Baldur goes on, ‘You see, that’s the Führer’s greatness for you: he won’t let anyone see his cards. They all think he’s so pleased about defeating the French, when in fact he might be assembling a fleet to invade Britain right now. We need to learn that from our Führer, not to tell all and sundry who we are and what we’re about!’ The others nod enthusiastically: at last, they think, they’ve grasped Baldur’s point. ‘Yes, you’re nodding now,’ says Baldur crossly, ‘but that’s not the way you act yourselves. Not half an hour ago I heard Father say in the presence of the postwoman that we were going to turn up at the old Rosenthal woman’s flat for coffee and cakes.’

‘Oh, the old Jewish cow!’ says Father Persicke, in a bantering tone of voice.

‘All right,’ the son concedes, ‘I daresay there wouldn’t be many inquiries if something should happen to her. But why tell people about it in the first place? Better safe than sorry. Take someone like the man in the flat above us, old Quangel. You never hear a squeak out of him, and I’m quite sure he sees and hears everything, and probably has someone he reports to. And then if he reports that you can’t trust the Persickes, they’re unreliable, they don’t know how to keep their mouths shut, then we’ve had it. You anyway, Father, and I’m damned if I lift a finger to get you out of the concentration camp, or Moabit Penitentiary, or Plötzensee Prison, or wherever they stick you.’

No one says anything, and even someone as conceited as Baldur can sense that their silence doesn’t indicate agreement. To at least bring his brothers and sister round, he quickly throws in, ‘We all want to get ahead in life, and how are we going to do that except through the Party? That’s why we should follow the Führer’s lead and make mugs of people, put on friendly expressions and then, when no one senses any threat, take care of business. What we want the Party to say is: ‘We can trust the Persickes with anything, absolutely anything!’

Once again he looks at the picture of the laughing Hitler and Göring, nods curtly, and pours himself a brandy to indicate that the lecture is over. He says, ‘There, there, Father, don’t make a face, I was just expressing an opinion!’

‘You’re only sixteen, and you’re my son,’ the old man begins, still hurt.

‘Yes, and you’re my old man, but I’ve seen you drunk far too many times to be in awe of you,’ Baldur Persicke throws back, and that brings the laughers round to his side, even his chronically nervous mother. ‘No, Father, let be, and one day we’ll get to drive around in our own car, and you can drink all the Champagne you want, every day of your life.’

Old Persicke wants to say something, but it’s just about the champagne, which he doesn’t rate as highly as corn brandy. Instead Baldur, quickly and now more quietly, continues, ‘It’s not that your ideas are bad, Father, just you should be careful not to air them outside the family. That Rosenthal woman might be good for a bit more than coffee and cake. Let me think about it – it needs care. Perhaps there are other people sniffing around there, too, perhaps people better placed than we are.’

He has dropped his voice, till by the end he is barely audible. Once again, Baldur Persicke has managed to bring everyone round to his side, even his father, who to begin with was offended. And then he says, ‘Well, here’s to the capitulation of France!’ and because of the way he’s laughing and slapping his thighs, they understand that what he really has in mind is the old Rosenthal woman.

They shout and propose toasts and down a fair few glasses, one after another. But then they have good heads on them, the former publican and his children.