Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

19

The Postcards Make Their Way

The actor Max Harteisen had, as his friend and attorney Toll liked to remind him, plenty of butter on his head from pre-Nazi times.^∗ He had acted in films made by Jewish directors, he had acted in pacifist films, and one of his principal theatre roles was that of the despicable weakling, the Prince of Homburg, whom every red-blooded National Socialist could only spit at. Max Harteisen therefore had every reason to be extremely cautious; for a while it was far from certain whether he would even be allowed to work under the Nazis.

But in the end it had all panned out. Of course he had had to exercise a little restraint, and first of all cede the limelight to actors of a browner hue, even if they were far less gifted than himself. But he had fallen down on this matter of restraint; he had acted so well, he had even drawn the attention of Minister Goebbels. Yes, the minister had fallen for Harteisen. And as far as these ministerial infatuations went, as every child knew, there was no more fickle and unpredictable man than Dr Joseph Goebbels.

At first it had all been sweetness and light, because when the minister wanted to honour someone, he made no distinctions of gender. Dr Goebbels treated Harteisen like a mistress: he telephoned him every morning to ask how he had slept, sent him chocolates and flowers as he would to a diva, and not a day passed without the minister spending at least a few minutes with his Harteisen. He even took him along him to the Party Congress at Nuremberg and explained National Socialism to him, and Harteisen duly understood everything he was supposed to understand.

The only thing he didn’t understand was that under National Socialism a citizen does not go about contradicting a minister. Because a minister, by simple fact of being a minister, is bound to be ten times cleverer than anyone else. On some perfectly trivial film question, Harteisen contradicted his minister, and even declared that what Dr Goebbels had said was rubbish. It is unclear whether it was the trivial and utterly theoretical film question that had so engaged the actor’s passion, or whether it was more that he was fed up with so much adoration and desired to bring it to an end. At any rate, he stood by his words in spite of various suggestions that he take them back – minister or no minister, the view was and remained rubbish.

Oh, how the world then suddenly changed for Max Harteisen! No more morning inquiries after the quality of his sleep, no chocolates, no flowers, no more visits to Dr Goebbels, and no more instructions in the true National Socialism either! All that might have been borne – perhaps it was even in some ways an improvement – but suddenly Harteisen found he had no more bookings either. Even signed film contracts were ripped up, provincial tours evaporated, and there was no more work for the actor Harteisen.

Since Harteisen was a man who not only looked to his profession for an income, but who was an actor to his fingertips, one whose life found its purpose on the stage or in front of the camera, he was completely destroyed by this enforced idleness. He couldn’t and wouldn’t believe that the minister who for a year and a half had been his dearest friend had now turned into a deplorable and unscrupulous enemy, or that he was using the power of his position to rob Harteisen of all joie de vivre merely because Harteisen had contradicted him. (In the year 1940, he had not yet understood, our good Harteisen, that any Nazi at any time was prepared to take away not only the pleasure but also the life of any differently minded German.)

But as time passed and no possibilities of work appeared, the penny finally dropped for Max Harteisen. Friends reported to him that the minister had declared at a conference on films that the Führer never wanted to see that particular actor wearing the tunic of an officer on screen again. Not much later, he heard that the Führer did not want to see him again in any capacity. The actor Harteisen had become ‘undesirable’. Over, chum, finished, blacklisted at thirty-six – for the whole of a Thousand-Year Reich!

Now, the actor Harteisen really did have butter on his head. But he didn’t give up, he asked and inquired, he tried everything to find out whether this destructive judgement really was the Führer’s or the little minister had merely made it up to finish off his enemy. And that Monday, Harteisen had run to his attorney Toll, completely confident of victory, and had declared, ‘I’ve got it! Erwin, I’ve got it! The bastard was lying! The Führer never even saw the film where I played the Prussian officer, and he’s never said a word against me, either!’

And he reported excitedly that the news was perfectly reliable, because it came from Göring himself. A friend of his wife’s had an aunt, whose cousin had been invited to the Görings’ at Karinhall. There she had raised the matter, and Göring had expressed himself as stated.

The attorney looked at his excited client a little mockingly. ‘Well, Max, and how does that change things?’

The actor muttered in some bafflement, ‘Well, Erwin, it means Goebbels was lying.’

‘And so? Did you ever believe everything that club-foot said was true?’

‘No, of course not. But if we take the case to the Führer… He’s misused the name of the Führer!’

‘Yes, and then the Führer will throw out his old Party veteran and propaganda minister, for stymieing Harteisen’s career!’

The actor looked imploringly at his mocking, condescending attorney. ‘But something’s got to happen in my case, Erwin!’ he said. ‘I want to work! And Goebbels is wrongly and wilfully obstructing me!’

‘Yes,’ said the attorney. ‘True!’ And no more. But seeing Harteisen gazing at him so expectantly, he went on, ‘You’re a child, Max, such a child!’

The actor, who was used to hearing himself described as a man of the world, tossed his head back angrily.

‘Listen, Max, we’re among ourselves,’ the attorney went on. ‘The door is padded, we can speak openly together. You know, if only dimly, how much injustice there is in Germany today, how much screaming, bloody injustice – and no one lifts a finger. On the contrary, they’re proud of their disgrace. But because the actor Harteisen has suffered a teensy-weensy hurt, he suddenly makes the discovery that there is injustice abroad in the world, and he screams for justice. Come on, Max!’

Depressed, Harteisen said: ‘But what shall I do, Erwin? I’ve got to do something!’

‘What should you do? Well, that’s completely obvious! You and your wife move to some pretty spot in the country, and you stay nice and quiet. Above all you stop this dangerous talk about “your” minister, and you don’t talk about what Göring said. Otherwise it’s possible that the minister will go after you in a completely different way.’

‘But how long am I supposed to sit idly in the country?’

‘A minister’s moods come and go, Max. And go they will, you can be sure of that. One day, your name will be back in lights.’

The actor shivered. ‘Not that!’ he said. ‘Please, not that!’ He stood up. ‘Are you really saying that’s the best you can do for me?’

‘Absolutely!’ said the attorney, and smiled. ‘Unless you fancy a spell in a concentration camp as a martyr for your art.’

Three minutes later, the actor Max Harteisen was standing in some bewilderment in the staircase of the office building, holding a postcard in his hand: ‘Mother! The Führer has murdered my son…’

My God! he thought. Who would write something like that? They must be crazy! It’s their death-warrant, for sure. Unthinkingly, he turned the card over. But there was no address, either of sender or recipient, just these words: ‘PASS THIS CARD ON, SO THAT MANY PEOPLE READ IT! –DON’T GIVE TO THE WINTER RELIEF FUND! – WORK AS SLOWLY AS YOU CAN!– PUT SAND IN THE MACHINES! – EVERY STROKE OF WORK NOT DONE WILL SHORTEN THE WAR!’

The actor looked up. The elevator passed in a spill of illumination. He had the feeling of many eyes on him.

Hurriedly he slipped the postcard in his pocket, only to pull it out again a moment later. He was about to return it to the windowsill when doubt assailed him. Perhaps the people in the elevator had seen him there, with the postcard in his hand – and lots of people knew his face. The card would be found, and surely someone would come forward, prepared to swear they had seen him putting it down there. In a sense it would be true: he had put it down there, though he hadn’t been the first to do it. But who would believe him, in light of his falling-out with the minister? He was in the doghouse badly enough as it was, and now this!

Sweat beaded on his brow, suddenly he understood that it wasn’t just the writer of the postcard, but also himself, who was in danger of his life, and perhaps he even more than the other! His hand itched: he wanted to put the card down, he wanted to take it away with him, he wanted to tear it to pieces, just where he was… But perhaps there was someone at the top of the stairs, watching him? In the last couple of days, he had had the sensation now and then of being watched; he thought it was nerves on his part, Goebbels’s petty vindictiveness getting to him…

Maybe the whole thing was a trap for him? To show the world how correct the minister had been in his assessment of the actor Harteisen? Oh, Christ, he was going mad, he was seeing ghosts! A minister wouldn’t carry on in that way! Or was that exactly the way he would carry on?

But he couldn’t stand there all day. He had to make a decision – this wasn’t the time to think about Goebbels, he had to think of himself!

He races back up half a flight of stairs; there is no one standing watching him. But already he is ringing the bell for attorney Toll. He charges past the secretary and slams the card down on the attorney’s desk: ‘Here, I found this on the staircase a moment ago!’

The attorney takes a cursory look at the postcard. Then he gets up and carefully shuts the double-door to his office, which Harteisen in his agitation has left open. He returns to his chair. He picks up the card and reads it through slowly and carefully, while Harteisen stalks back and forth, casting impatient glances at him.

Now Toll lets the card drop and asks, ‘Where did you say you found this?’

‘Outside in the stairwell, half a flight down.’

‘On the stairwell! Do you mean on the steps?’

‘Don’t be so pedantic, Erwin! No, it wasn’t on the steps, it was on the windowsill.’

‘And may I ask what prompted you to bring this charming billet-doux to me in my office?’

The attorney’s voice has an edge to it, and the actor says pleadingly: ‘But what am I supposed to do? It was lying there, I absentmindedly picked it up.’

‘And why didn’t you put it straight back? That would have been the natural thing to do.’

‘The elevator passed me while I was reading it. I had the feeling someone might have seen me. My face is so widely recognized.’

‘That’s good – I like that!’ said the attorney bitterly. ‘And so you turned back and came running to me waving the card in your hand?’ The actor nodded, grim-faced. ‘No, my friend,’ said Toll decisively, and held out the postcard. ‘Here, take it. I don’t want anything to do with it. Nota bene, you may not refer to me in any way. I’ve never seen this card. Here, take it back!’

White-faced, Harteisen stared at his friend. ‘I thought of you,’ he said, ‘not just as my friend but my attorney, the man who represents me at law.’

‘Not on this, or, perhaps better, not any more. You’re an accident waiting to happen, you have an incredible talent for blundering into the worst situations. You will plunge others into destruction with you. So here, take it back!’

He held it out to him again.

Harteisen stood there, white-faced, hands dug into his pockets.

After a long silence, he said, ‘I daren’t. In the last few days I’ve quite often had the sense I was being watched. Do me a favour and just tear it up, will you! Put it with the other rubbish in your wastepaper basket!’

‘Much too dangerous, my dear fellow! It would just take the office boy or some nosy cleaning woman turning it up, and I’d be in it up to my neck!’

‘Burn it, then!’

‘You forget we have central heating here!’

‘Take a match, and burn it over your ashtray. No one would ever know.’

‘You would know.’

Pale-faced, they stared at each other. They were old friends, going back to school days, but now fear had come between them, and fear had brought mistrust with it. They eyed one another silently.

He’s an actor, thought the attorney. Maybe he’s putting on a show for me, to draw me into something. Comes here with instructions to test my reliability. I barely got away with it that other time, with that wretched defence before the People’s Court. But ever since, they’ve wondered about me…

How much is Erwin actually doing in my interests? thought the actor grimly. He won’t help me with the minister, and now he’s even prepared to declare he’s never set eyes on that postcard. How is that acting for me? He’s acting against me. Who knows whether this postcard – you hear so much about traps being set for people. Come off it, that’s all nonsense, he’s always been a perfectly trustworthy friend…

And both looked at each other and thought better of it. They smiled.

‘We’re crazy to doubt each other!’

‘We’ve been friends for twenty years!’

‘School together!’

‘Look at how far we’ve come!’

‘What were we thinking? The son betrays his mother, the sister her brother, the boyfriend his girlfriend…’

‘But not you and me!’

‘Let’s think about what to do with this postcard. It would really be dangerous for you to leave here with it in your pocket if you feel you’re being watched.’

‘Maybe it was just nerves. Give it to me, I’ll get rid of it somewhere!’

‘You and that dangerous thoughtlessness of yours – I don’t think so. Leave the card here with me!’

‘You’ve got a wife and two kids, Erwin. Maybe your office staff isn’t completely reliable. Who is, anyway, nowadays? Give me the postcard. I’ll phone you in fifteen minutes and tell you it’s disappeared.’

‘My God! That’s you all over, Max! A phone call over something like that! Why don’t you just ring Himmler, and get it over with?! At least that’s quicker!’

And once again they look at each other, each a little comforted not to be quite alone, but to have a dependable friend.

Suddenly, the attorney pounds his fist down on the card. ‘I wonder what was on the mind of the idiot who wrote this thing, and left it on the staircase! Dragging strangers to the gallows!’

‘And for what? What is he actually saying? Nothing that each one of us doesn’t know for himself. He must be a madman!’

‘This whole nation has become a nation of madmen; I think it’s a contagion!’

‘If only they could nab the person who put others at such risk! Honestly, I think I would be pleased…’

‘Ach, don’t. I don’t think you would be pleased if yet another person had to die. But how do we get out of this situation?’

The attorney looked thoughtfully down at the card. Then he reached for the telephone. ‘We’ve got a political commissioner here in the building,’ he said to his friend by way of explanation. ‘I’m going to present the card to him, tell him what actually happened, and not put too much importance on any of it. Are you sure of your statement?’

‘Completely.’

‘And your nerves?’

‘Of course, my dear fellow. I’ve never yet had stage fright. I was always nervous beforehand, mind you! What kind of person is this political commissioner?’

‘No idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him. Probably some little pen-pusher. Anyway, I’m going to call him.’

But the manikin who turned up didn’t look much like some pen-pusher, more like a fox – and he felt very flattered to meet the renowned actor whom he had seen so many times in films. He reeled off six titles right away; the actor hadn’t been in any of them. Max Harteisen praised the manikin for his memory, and then they passed on to the substantive part of the meeting.

The little fox read the card, and it wasn’t possible to tell from his expression what he thought of it. He remained inscrutable. Then he listened to the account of the finding of the card, and of its delivery here to the office.

‘Very good! Absolutely right!’ the commissioner praised them. ‘And what time was that, would you say?’

For a moment, the attorney faltered, and glanced at his friend. Best not to lie, he thought to himself. After all, people had seen him come in here with the card, in a highly excited state.

‘About half an hour ago,’ said the attorney.

The manikin raised his eyebrows. ‘So long as that?’ he asked with quiet surprise.

‘We had other things to talk about,’ explained the attorney. ‘We didn’t attach that much importance to it. Or do you think it could be important?’

‘Everything is important. It would have been important to catch the fellow who left the card. But, of course, after half an hour it’s too late for that.’

Each one of his words sounded like a faint reproach against that ‘too late’.

‘I’m sorry about the delay,’ said the actor Harteisen smoothly. ‘It was my fault. I thought my own affairs were more important than this – this trash here!’

‘I should have known better myself,’ the attorney chimed in.

The little fox smiled soothingly. ‘Well, gentlemen, what’s done is done. At any rate, I’m glad to have had the pleasure to meet Herr Harteisen in person. Heil Hitler!’

Loudly, jumping to their feet: ‘Heil Hitler!’

And when the door had closed behind him, the two friends looked at each other.

‘Thank God, we’re rid of that bloody card!’

‘And he didn’t suspect us!’

‘No, he didn’t think it was our handiwork, but he did see that we hesitated between handing it over and not handing it over.’

‘Do you think we’ll hear any more of the matter?’

‘No, I have to say I don’t. At the worst, a harmless interrogation, where and when and how you found the card. And there you just have to tell them what happened.’

‘You know, Erwin, I think I’ll be quite relieved to be leaving the city for a while.’

‘You see.’

‘There’s something corrosive about it!’

‘Corrosive! I’d say we were pretty corroded already!’

In the meantime, the little fox had driven to his local group. Now a brownshirt was holding the card in his hands.

‘This is a matter for the Gestapo,’ said the brownshirt. ‘Why don’t you take it there yourself, Heinz. Wait, I’ll write you a note to take with it. What about the two gentlemen themselves as culprits?’

‘Out of the question! Of course, neither of them is exactly politically reliable. But I tell you, they were sweating blood and water when they started talking about the card.’

‘You know, Harteisen’s supposed to be in bad odour with Minister Goebbels,’ the brownshirt mused.

‘Even so!’ said the little fox. ‘He would never have dared anything like this. Much too frightened. I listed six films to his face that he never appeared in, and admired his performances in them. He was bowing and scraping like there was no tomorrow. He was beaming with gratitude. And all the time I could smell the sweat of fear on him!’

‘Show me one that isn’t afraid!’ said the brownshirt contemptuously. ‘And it’s so unnecessary. They just need to do what we tell them.’

‘It’s because people have got in the habit of thinking. They have the idea that thinking will help them.’

‘They need to do as they’re told. The Führer can do their thinking for them.’

The brownshirt tapped the card. ‘And this man here. What do you make of him, Heinz?’

‘What can I say? I guess he probably really did lose a son…’

‘Pah! The people that do these things are always rabble-rousers. Trying to follow their own ends. Sons – Germany – they don’t care. I reckon it’s some old Communist or Socialist…’

‘I don’t agree. I think you’re wrong. They can never do without their phrases, you know, their “fascist reactionaries” and “solidarity” and “proletariat” – but there’s none of that on this postcard. I don’t think he’s a Communist or Socialist; I’d smell that ten miles off, against the wind!’

‘Ah well, I do. They’ve all learned to camouflage themselves…’

But the Gestapo gentlemen didn’t agree with the brownshirt either. Incidentally, the report of the little fox was received there with great calm. They had plenty of other things to occupy them.

‘Ah well,’ they said. ‘Okay. We’ll see. If you’d like to take this up to Inspector Escherich, we can notify him by telephone, and he’ll get on the case. Give him a detailed report on the behaviour of the two gentlemen. Of course no steps will be taken against them for the time being, but it’s useful material to have on file, you understand?’

Inspector Escherich, a tall, gangling man with a drooping, sandy moustache, in a light grey suit – a man so dry, you could easily take him for a creation of office dust; well, then, Inspector Escherich – turned the card in his hands.

‘A new record,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got this one in my collection. A heavy hand, hasn’t had occasion to do much writing in his life, a manual labourer, I should say.’

‘Communist?’ asked the little fox.

Inspector Escherich sniggered. ‘Communist? You must be joking! If we had a police force worthy of the name and we prioritized the case, we’d have the guy locked up inside twenty-four hours.’

‘How would you do that?’

‘Very simple! I would get data for the whole of Berlin, and see who’s lost a son in the previous two or three weeks – an only son, by the way, the writer only had one son!’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It says so in the first sentence, where he’s talking about himself. It’s in the second, when he’s addressing others, that he says sons, plural. Well, and people in that position in Berlin – there won’t be all that many of them – they would be my pool of suspects, and I’d have the writer put away in no time!’

‘Then why don’t you?’

‘I told you already. We don’t have the manpower for it and, second, the case isn’t important enough. You see, there are two possibilities. He’ll write another two or three postcards, and then he’ll have had enough. You know, it’s too much trouble, or the risk is too great. Then he won’t have done much damage, and we won’t have committed much in the way of resources.’

‘Do you think all the postcards will be handed in to you?’

‘Not all, but I would have thought most. On the whole the German people are pretty reliable…’

‘Because they’re afraid!’

‘No, I didn’t say that. For instance, I don’t think this man, here,’ he taps his knuckle against the card, ‘is afraid. My hunch is for our second possibility: he will go on writing. Let him; the more he writes, the more he gives himself away. So far, he’s only given away a tiny bit about himself, that he’s lost a son. But with each card, he’ll give away a little bit more of himself to me. I don’t even need to do anything. I just need to sit here, stay alert, and one day – bingo – he’s mine! In our department we just need to be patient. Sometimes it takes a year, sometimes even a bit more, but in the end we get our man. Almost always.’

‘And what then?’

The dust-coloured man had pulled out a streetmap of Berlin and pinned it on the wall. Now he stuck in a red flag, exactly over the office block in the Neue Königstrasse. ‘You see, this is all I can do for the moment. But over the next few weeks, more and more flags will go up, and where the density is greatest, that’s where our hobgoblin will be found. Because over time he will wear out, and he won’t want to go all that way to drop one of his postcards. You see, our hobgoblin isn’t even thinking about this map. But it’s so simple! And then bingo again, and I’ll have caught him!’

‘And what then?’ the little fox asked again, impelled by a greedy curiosity.

Inspector Escherich looked at him a little sardonically. ‘Do you really want to hear the details? All right, I’ll tell you: People’s Court, and then off with his head! What do I care? Why did the guy have to write an idiotic postcard that no one reads and no one wants to read! That’s none of my concern. I draw my salary, and whether I sell postage stamps for it, or pin little flags on a map, I don’t really care. But I’ll think of you, I won’t forget that it was you who brought me the first news of this guy, and when I’ve caught him and the time has come, I’ll send you an invitation to his execution.’

‘Oh, no thanks. I didn’t really mean it like that!’

‘Of course you meant it like that. Why be coy with me? No man needs to be coy with me, I know what people are like! If we, here, didn’t know, then who on earth would? Not even God Almighty, I suspect. So that’s a deal then: I’ll send you an invitation to the execution. Heil Hitler!’

‘Heil Hitler! And don’t forget!’