Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

10

What Happened on Wednesday Morning

All the events related thus far took place on a Tuesday. On the morning of the following Wednesday, very early, between five and six, Frau Rosenthal, accompanied by Trudel Baumann, left the Quangel apartment. Otto Quangel was still fast asleep. Trudel left the petrified Frau Rosenthal, the yellow star on her coat, outside Fromm’s apartment door. Then she went back up half a flight of stairs, resolved to defend her with her life and honour in case of a descending Persicke.

Trudel watched as Frau Rosenthal pushed the doorbell. Almost immediately the door was opened, as though someone had been standing behind it, waiting. A few words were quietly exchanged, and then Frau Rosenthal stepped inside, and the door shut. Trudel Baumann passed it on her way down to the street. The front door of the building was already unlocked.

The two women were lucky. In spite of the earliness of the hour and the fact that early rising was not among the habits of the Persicke household, the two SS men had passed down the stairs not five minutes before. Five minutes prevented an encounter that, given the routine brutality of the two fellows, could only have ended badly, certainly for Frau Rosenthal.

Also, the SS men were not alone. They had been instructed by their brother Baldur to take Borkhausen and Enno Kluge (whose papers Baldur had examined in the meantime) out of the house and back to their wives. The two amateur burglars were still almost completely out of it, what with the amount they had had to drink and the ensuing blows. But Baldur Persicke had managed to persuade them that they had behaved like pigs, that it was merely due to the great philanthropy of the Persickes that they hadn’t been handed over to the police, and that any subsequent blabbing would land them there double quick. Also, they had to promise never to show up at the Persickes’ again and never to admit knowing any of the family. And if they ever set foot in the Rosenthals’ apartment again, they would be handed over to the Gestapo forthwith.

All this Baldur had dinned into them, with much abuse, till it sank into their befogged brains. They had sat opposite each other across the table in dim light in the Persicke flat, with the incessantly swaggering, threatening, flashing Baldur between them. The two SS men had sprawled on the sofa, a threatening, dark presence, for all that they seemed to be smoking cigarettes nonstop. Enno and Borkhausen had an awful impression that they were in a kangaroo court facing imminent death. They swayed back and forth on their chairs, trying to grasp what they were supposed to understand. From time to time they nodded off, only to be wakened by painful blows from Baldur’s fist. All they had planned, done, and suffered seemed to them like an unreal dream, and they longed only for sleep and oblivion.

In the end, Baldur sent them away with his brothers. In their pockets, without their knowing it, Borkhausen and Kluge each had fifty marks in small-denomination notes. Baldur had decreed this further, painful sacrifice, which for now turned the whole Rosenthal scheme into a loss-making operation for the Persickes. But he reminded himself that if the men went back to their wives penniless, shattered, and incapable of work, that would give rise to much more fuss and questions than if they showed up with a little money. And he imagined it would be the women who found the money, given the condition of their men.

The older Persicke, who was charged with getting Borkhausen home, accomplished his mission in ten minutes flat, during which time Frau Rosenthal had disappeared into Judge Fromm’s apartment and Trudel Baumann had emerged into the street. He simply grabbed Borkhausen by the scruff of his neck – he was barely capable of walking – and dragged him across the courtyard, dropped him on the ground outside his flat, and woke his wife by banging on the door with his fists. As she recoiled from the dark figure looming in her doorway, he yelled: ‘Here’s your man back! Put him to bed! He’s been lying around on our staircase, puking over everything…’

And all the rest he left to Otti. She had quite a bit of trouble getting Emil out of his clothes and putting him to bed, and the elderly gentleman who was still enjoying her hospitality was roped in to help. Then he too was sent away, despite the early hour. Also he was told he mustn’t on any account come again – perhaps they might arrange to meet in a café or something, but not here.

Otti was seized by panic on seeing the SS man Persicke at the door. She knew of some colleagues who, instead of being paid for their services by these gentlemen in the black uniforms, had been pitched into a concentration camp for being immoral and work-shy. She had imagined she had a completely invisible existence in her gloomy subterranean apartment in the back building, and now she made the discovery that – like everyone else at this time – she was the object of unceasing surveillance. For the umpteenth time in her life she swore to reform herself. This prospect was made easier by her discovery of forty-eight marks in Emil’s pockets. She put the money in a stocking and decided to wait to hear what Emil told her of his adventures. She, at any rate, would begin by denying all knowledge of any money.

The other Persicke’s task was much harder, especially as the distance to travel was a lot further, for the Kluges lived on the other side of Friedrichshain. Enno was no more capable of walking than Borkhausen, but Persicke couldn’t take him by the arm or the collar in the public street. It was embarrassing enough anyway to be seen with this battered-looking drunkard, because although Persicke had little regard for his own honour or that of his fellow men, his uniform demanded respect to a unique degree.

It was equally unavailing to order Kluge to march a step ahead or a step behind, for he always had the same insuperable inclination to sit down on the ground, to stumble, to grab hold of walls and trees, to walk into pedestrians. Hitting him was useless, so was barking at him: the body just wouldn’t obey, and the streets were too busy already for the good seeing-to that might just sober him up enough. The sweat stood out on Persicke’s brow, his jaws were working with rage, and he vowed to tell his odious little squirt of a brother to his face what he thought of such assignments.

He had to keep off the main roads and make detours down quieter side streets. Then he would grab Kluge under his arm and lug him for two or three blocks until he couldn’t do it any more. He got some grief from a policeman who had noticed this compulsory form of transport, and who trailed after him through the whole ward, forcing Persicke to adopt a gentler and more concerned manner than he would have liked.

But once they arrived in Friedrichshain, he was able to get his revenge. He put Kluge on a bench behind some shrubbery and beat him so hard that he lay there unconscious for ten minutes at the end of it. This little chump, who cared about nothing in the world except his horses – and all his knowledge of them was through the tabloids – this creature that was capable of feeling neither love nor hate, this idle creep who had devoted every winding of his pathetic brain to the avoidance of real exertion, this pale, modest, colourless Enno Kluge developed such a fear of uniforms from that time forth that meeting any Party member was enough to paralyse his brain.

A couple of kicks in the ribs roused him from his stupor, a couple of thumps on the back set him on his feet, and then he trotted along like a beaten dog in front of his tormentor till he reached his wife’s apartment. But the door was locked. The postwoman Eva Kluge, who had spent the night in despair of her son Karlemann and her whole life, had set off on her usual daily grind, the letter to her other son in her pocket, but very little hope in her heart. She delivered mail as she had done for years, because it was still better than sitting idle at home tortured by gloomy thoughts.

Once he’d persuaded himself that the woman really wasn’t home, Persicke rang next door, as luck would have it at the door of that same Frau Gesch who with her lie had helped Enno gain entry to his wife’s flat. Persicke simply shoved his hapless victim into the woman’s arms as she opened the door, said, ‘Here! Look after him, you know where he belongs!’ and then left.

Frau Gesch had firmly resolved never again to take a hand in the affairs of the Kluges. But such was the authority of an SS man, and such was the universal fear of them, that she took Kluge into her flat without protest, sat him down at the table, and plied him with coffee and bread. Her own husband had already gone to work. Frau Gesch could see how exhausted little Kluge was, and she could also see from his face, his ripped shirt, and the filth on his coat evidence of protracted mishandling. But since Kluge had been handed over to her by an SS man, she didn’t dare ask a single question. Yes, she would have rather put him outside the door than listened to an account of what had happened to him. She didn’t want to know anything. If she didn’t know anything, she couldn’t testify to anything, blab, get herself in trouble.

Slowly Kluge chewed his bread and drank his coffee. Thick tears of pain and exhaustion dribbled down his cheeks. From time to time, Frau Gesch cast a sidelong look at him. Then, when he had finished, she said: ‘Now where do you want to go? Your wife’s not taking you back, you know that!’

He didn’t answer, just stared straight ahead of him.

‘And you can’t stay here with me either. For one thing, my Gustav wouldn’t have it, and then I don’t want to have to keep everything under lock and key on account of you. So where do you want to go?’

Again, he didn’t reply.

Frau Gesch said crossly, ‘Well, in that case, I’ll leave you on the staircase! I’ll do it right away. Or?’

He said with difficulty, ‘Tutti – old girlfriend of mine…’ And then he was crying again.

‘For goodness sake, what a baby!’ she said contemptuously. ‘If I always folded like that the moment something went wrong! All right, this Tutti: What’s her real name, and where does she live?’

After many further questions and some threats she learned that Enno didn’t know Tutti’s real name, but thought he could find his way to where she lived.

‘Well then,’ said Frau Gesch. ‘But you can’t go on your own in that state – any traffic policeman would arrest you. I’ll take you. But if you’re wrong about the apartment, I’ll leave you there on the street. I’ve got no time for looking around, I’ve got to go to work!’

‘Could I have just a little nap?’ he begged.

She hesitated briefly, then decreed, ‘All right, but no longer than an hour! In an hour we’re off. There, lie down on the sofa, I’ll find something to cover you with.’

He was asleep before she came back with the blanket.

Old Judge Fromm had let Frau Rosenthal in personally. He had led her into his study, whose walls were completely lined with books, and let her sit down in a chair there. A reading lamp was on, a book lay open on the table. The old gentleman himself brought in a tray with a pot of tea and a cup, sugar, and two thin slices of bread, and said to the terrified woman, ‘First have some breakfast, Frau Rosenthal, and then we can talk!’ And when she wanted to bring out a word of thanks, he said kindly, ‘No, please, I insist. Just make yourself at home here, take an example by me!’

With that, he picked up the book under the reading lamp and calmly carried on reading, all the while mechanically stroking his beard. He seemed entirely oblivious of his visitor.

By and by, a little confidence returned to the frightened old Jewess. For months she had lived in fear and confusion, with her bags packed, always ready for a vicious attack. For months she had known neither home nor ease nor peace nor calm. And now here she was sitting with the old gentleman whom before she had never seen except on the stairs, and very occasionally at that; the light and dark brown leather bindings of many books looked down at her, there was a large mahogany desk by the window (furniture the likes of which she had once owned herself, in the early years of her marriage), a slightly worn Zwickau carpet was under her feet. And then, add in the old gentleman himself, reading his book, stroking away at his not un-Jewish-looking goatee, and wearing a long dressing gown that reminded her of her father’s kaftan.

It was as though a spell had caused a whole world of dirt, blood, and tears to fade away, and she was back in a time when Jews were still respected people, not fugitive vermin facing extermination.

Unconsciously, she stroked her hair, and her face softened. So there was still peace in the world, even in Berlin.

‘I am very grateful to you, Judge,’ she said. Her voice sounded different, more certain.

He quickly looked up from his book. ‘Please drink your tea while it’s hot, and eat your bread. We have a lot of time, there’s no hurry at all.’

And he was reading again. Obediently, she drank her tea and ate her bread, even though she would much rather have conversed with the old gentleman. But she preferred in the end to obey him in all things and not disturb the peace of his apartment. She looked around again. No, everything had to remain as it was. She wasn’t going to endanger it. (Three years later, a high-explosive bomb would blow this home to smithereens, and the sedate old gentleman himself would die a slow and agonizing death in the cellar…)

Replacing her empty cup on the tray, she said, ‘You’ve been very kind to me, Judge, and very brave. But I don’t want to endanger you and your home to no purpose. It’s no use. I’m going to go back to my flat.’

The old gentleman looked at her attentively while she spoke, and when she got to her feet, he led her gently back to her chair. ‘Won’t you remain seated a little longer, Frau Rosenthal!’

She did so, reluctantly. ‘Really, Judge, I mean what I say.’

‘Won’t you kindly listen to me, first. I, too, mean what I am about to say to you. Let’s start with the question of danger. I was in danger, as you put it, all my professional life. I had a mistress whom I had to obey: one that rules over me, you, the world, even the world outside as presently constituted, and her name is Justice. I always believed in her, I made Justice the guiding light for everything I did.’

While he spoke, he paced back and forth, his hands behind his back, always in Frau Rosenthal’s sight. The words passed his lips calmly and unexcitedly. He spoke of himself as in the past, a man who really no longer existed. Frau Rosenthal listened to him, gripped.

‘But,’ the judge continued, ‘I am speaking of myself, instead of speaking about you, a bad habit among people who live alone. A little more now on the matter of danger. I’ve received threatening letters for ten, twenty, thirty years… And now I’m an old man, Frau Rosenthal, sitting reading his Plutarch. Danger means nothing to me, it doesn’t frighten me, it doesn’t engage my head or my heart. Don’t let’s speak of danger, Frau Rosenthal…’

‘But people are different nowadays,’ Frau Rosenthal objected.

‘And if I tell you that those earlier threats were issued by criminals and their accomplices? Where’s the difference!’ He smiled. ‘They are not different people. There are a few more of them, and the others are a little more circumspect, a little cowardly even, but Justice has remained the same, and I hope that we both live to witness her victory.’ For an instant he stood there, rather erect. Then he began his pacing again. Quietly he said, ‘The triumph of Justice will not be the same thing as the triumph of the German nation!’

He stopped for a moment, then went on in a lighter tone of voice: ‘No, you can’t go back to your flat. The Persickes were there last night, you know, that Nazi family that lives over me. They have your keys in their possession, and they will keep your flat under constant observation. You really would be putting yourself in unnecessary danger.’

‘But I must be there when my husband comes back!’ begged Frau Rosenthal.

‘Your husband,’ Judge Fromm said in a kindly tone, ‘your husband will not be able to visit you any time soon. He is currently in Moabit Prison, accused of having secretly passed property abroad. He is safe, therefore, at least as long as he is able to keep the state prosecutors and the tax authorities interested in his case.’

The old judge smiled subtly, looked encouragingly at Frau Rosenthal, and then went back to his pacing.

‘But how can you know that?’ exclaimed Frau Rosenthal.

He made a dismissive gesture, and said, ‘Oh, even if he’s retired, an old judge gets to hear this and that. You will be interested to learn that your husband has a capable lawyer and is being reasonably well fed. Of course I can’t tell you the name of the lawyer, he wouldn’t welcome visits from you…’

‘But perhaps I can visit my husband in Moabit!’ Frau Rosenthal cried. ‘I could bring him clean clothes – who’s looking after his laundry? And some toiletries, and perhaps something to eat…’

‘My dear Frau Rosenthal,’ said the retired judge, laying his veined, liver-spotted hand firmly on her shoulder, ‘you can as little visit your husband as he can you. Such a visit would not be useful to him, you would never get in far enough to see him, and it would only harm you.’

He looked at her.

Suddenly his eyes were no longer smiling, and his voice sounded strict. She saw that this small, gentle, kindly man was following some implacable law, probably the law of that Justice he had referred to earlier.

‘Frau Rosenthal,’ he said quietly, ‘you are my guest – as long as you obey the conditions of my hospitality, which I will go on to explain to you. The first law of my hospitality: as soon as you do anything without consulting me, as soon as the door of this apartment has closed behind you a single time, one single time, you will never be readmitted here, and the names of you and your husband will be wiped from my mind. Do you understand?’

He touched his brow with his fingertips, and looked at her piercingly.

‘Yes,’ she breathed.

Only then did he take his hand off her shoulder. His expression lightened again, and he slowly resumed his pacing. ‘I would ask you,’ he continued, a little more easily, ‘during the daylight hours not to leave the room I am about to show you, and not to stand by the window. My cleaning woman is reliable, but…’ He broke off a little irritably, and looked across at his book under the reading light. He continued, ‘Try to do as I do, and make your nights into days. I will give you a sleeping pill every day. I will supply you with food at night. Now would you kindly follow me?’

She followed him into the corridor. She was feeling a little bewildered and frightened, her host seemed so changed toward her. But she told herself perfectly correctly that the old gentleman loved his quiet life and was no longer accustomed to the presence of strangers. He was tired of them, and longed to be back with his Plutarch, whoever or whatever that was.

The judge opened a door for her and switched on the light. ‘The blinds are down,’ he said, ‘and I keep it dark. Please leave it that way, otherwise someone from the back building might be able to see you. I hope you will find everything you need.’

He allowed her to take in the bright, cheerful room with its birchwood furniture, a side table well stocked with toiletries, and a four-poster bed upholstered in flowered chintz. He looked at the room as at something he hadn’t seen for a long time and was now revisiting. Then he said, with deep seriousness, ‘This was my daughter’s room. She died in 1933 – no, not here, not in this room. Don’t be alarmed!’

Quickly he took her hand. ‘I’m not going to lock the door, Frau Rosenthal,’ he said, ‘but I would ask that you bolt it immediately from the inside. Do you have a watch? Good. I will knock on your door at ten o’clock this evening. Goodnight!’

He left. In the doorway he stopped and turned to her once more. ‘Over the next few days, you will be very much alone with yourself and your thoughts, Frau Rosenthal. Try to accustom yourself to it. Solitude can be a very good thing. And don’t forget: every single survivor is important, including you, you most of all! Now – bolt the door!’

He went out so softly, shutting the door so gently, that she only realized later that she had neither thanked him nor said goodnight. She walked quickly to the door, but stopped and reconsidered. Then she turned the bolt and dropped on to the nearest chair. Her legs were trembling. In the mirror of the dressing table, she saw a pallid face, swollen with crying and sleepless nights. Slowly, sadly, she nodded at her face in the mirror.

That’s you, Sara, she said to herself. Lore, now called Sara. You were a good businesswoman, always working hard. You brought five children into the world, and one of them is in Denmark, one in England, two in the USA, and one is lying in the Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee. It doesn’t make me angry when they call you Sara; it’s not what they meant to do, but they made me a daughter of my nation. He is a good and kind old gentleman, but so distant… I could never talk to him properly, the way I talked to Siegfried. I think he is cold. For all his goodness, he is cold. His goodness itself is cold. That’s on account of the law he serves, the law of justice. I have followed only one law, which is to love my husband and children and help them in their lives. And now I’m sitting here with this old man, and everything I am has fallen from me. That’s the solitude he mentioned. It’s not quite half past six in the morning, and I won’t see him again until ten at night. Fifteen and a half hours by myself – what will I discover about myself that I never knew? I’m afraid, I’m so afraid! I think I’m going to scream, I’m going to scream in my sleep! Fifteen and a half hours. He could have spent at least the half hour sitting with me. But he wanted to get on with his old book. For all his goodness, human beings don’t mean anything to him, the only thing that has meaning for him is his justice. He does it for that, not for me. It would only matter to me if he did it for my sake!

Slowly she nods at the suffering face of Sara in the mirror. She looks round at the bed. My daughter’s room. She died in 1933. Not here! Not here, she thinks. She shudders. The way he said it. Surely the daughter also died because of – them, but he’ll never talk to me about it, and I’ll never dare to ask him, either. No, I can’t sleep in this room, it’s awful, inhuman. Why doesn’t he leave me his servant’s room, a bed still warm from the body of a real person sleeping in it? I can’t sleep here, I can only scream…

She picks up the tubes and boxes on the dressing table. Dried-out creams, lumpy powder, verdigrised lipsticks – dead since 1933. Seven years. I have to do something. The way it runs through me – the fear. Now that I’ve landed on this island of peace, my fear comes out. I have to do something. I can’t remain so alone in my thoughts.

She looked through her handbag, found paper and pencil. I will write to the children, Gerda in Copenhagen, Eva in Ilford, Bernhard and Stefan in Brooklyn. But there’s no point, the foreign post no longer goes, it’s wartime. I will write to Siegfried; somehow I can smuggle the letter to him in Moabit. So long as the servant is indeed reliable. The judge doesn’t need to know, I can bribe her with money or jewels. I still have enough left…

She took these out of her handbag as well, and spread them out in front of her, the money in little bundles, the jewels. She picked up a bracelet. Siegfried gave that to me, when I had Eva. It was my first birth, it was hard. How he laughed when he saw the baby! His belly shook he was laughing so hard. Everyone had to laugh when they saw her with her tight black curls and her thick lips. A white Negro baby, they said. In my eyes Eva was beautiful. That’s when he gave me the bracelet. It was very expensive; he spent a whole week’s earnings on it. I was so proud to be a mother. The bracelet didn’t mean anything to me. Now Eva has three girls herself; Harriet is nine already. I wonder how often she thinks of me, over in Ilford. But whatever she does think, she won’t imagine her mother sitting here, in some dead girl’s room at Judge Fromm’s, who only obeys Justice. And all alone…

She laid down the bracelet and picked up a ring. She sat the whole day over her things, muttering to herself, clinging to her past. She didn’t want to think of herself as she was today.

In between came outbursts of wild panic. Once, she got as far as the door, and said to herself, If I could only be sure they wouldn’t torture me, that it would be swift and painless, then I would give myself up to them. I can’t stand this waiting any more, and in all probability it is futile. Sooner or later, they’ll catch me. Why does each individual survivor matter so much, myself most of all? The children will think about me less and less, the grandchildren not at all, Siegfried will die soon in Moabit. I don’t understand what the judge meant, so I had better ask him about it tonight. Probably he will just smile and say something I won’t understand, because I am just a woman of flesh and blood, a Sara grown old.

She propped herself on her elbow on the dressing table, and gloomily studied her face with its network of creases. Creases drawn by anxiety, fear, hatred, love. Then she went back to the table, to her jewels. Just to pass the time, she counted through her money again and again. Later on, she tried ordering the notes by serial numbers. From time to time she wrote down a sentence in the letter to her husband. But it wasn’t really a letter, just a series of questions. What was the accommodation like, what did they give him to eat, couldn’t she help with the laundry? Small, banal questions. And: She was fine. She was safe.

No, it wasn’t a letter, it was silly, useless chatter, and not even true at that. She wasn’t safe at all. Never in the last ghastly months had she felt herself in such danger as in this quiet room. She knew she would have to change here, she wouldn’t be able to escape herself. And she was afraid of who she might turn into. Perhaps she would have to endure even more terrible things to come, she, who had already changed from a Lore to a Sara.

Later on, she did lie down on the bed after all, and when her host knocked on the door at ten, she was so fast asleep that she didn’t hear him. He opened the door quietly with a key that turned back the bolt, and when he saw her asleep, he nodded and smiled. He brought in a tray with food and set it down on the table, and when he moved aside her jewellery and money, he nodded and smiled again. He tiptoed out of the room, turned the bolt once more, and let her sleep…

So it came about that Frau Rosenthal saw no human being during the first three days of her protective custody. She slept through the nights, and woke to anguished, fear-tormented days. On the fourth day, half-crazed, she did try something…