Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

53

Otto Quangel’s Heaviest Burden

Of the nineteen days that Otto Quangel spent in the basement of the Gestapo headquarters before being handed on to the examining magistrate at the People’s Court, the interrogations of Inspector Laub were not the hardest thing he had to bear, even though Laub used all of his not inconsiderable resources to break, as he put it, Quangel’s resistance. This meant, more or less, doing everything he could to turn the prisoner into a panicked, gibbering wreck.

Nor was it his steadily growing, tormenting anxiety about Anna that affected Otto Quangel so. He hadn’t seen his wife and never heard anything directly about her. But when Laub in his interrogations dropped the name of Trudel Baumann, or rather Trudel Hergesell, he knew that his wife had been intimidated or outwitted, and that a name had escaped her lips that should never have been mentioned.

Later, as it became clearer that Trudel Baumann and her husband had been arrested, had given statements, and were caught up in the ongoing investigation, he spent many hours in his mind quarrelling with his wife. It had always been a source of pride to him in this life that he was an island unto himself, not needing others, and not a burden on them either, and now through his fault (because he took responsibility for Anna) two young people had been drawn into his affairs.

But the quarrel did not go on for very long, because soon his grief and worry for his wife came to dominate his thoughts. When left alone, he would dig his nails into his palms, shut his eyes, summon up all his strength – and think of Anna, try to imagine her in her cell, and transmit streams of energy to her to give her fresh courage, so that she would not lose her dignity, not humiliate herself in front of that miserable wretch Laub, who had so little that was human about him.

His worry for Anna was hard to bear, but still it wasn’t the heaviest thing.

Nor was it the almost nightly incursions into his cell by drunken SS men and their officers, unleashing their rage and sadism on their helpless victims. They would tear open the cell door and teem in, wild with alcohol and intent on seeing blood, the twitching of humans in pain or death, the desire to feast their eyes on the weakness of the flesh. This too was very hard to bear, but it wasn’t the hardest thing.

The hardest was the fact that he was not alone in his cell, that he had a cellmate, a fellow sufferer, someone guilty as himself. Worse, this was a person who caused Quangel to shudder: a wild, demented animal, heartless and cowardly, trembling and crude, a person whom Quangel could not so much as look at without feeling revulsion and yet was forced to be pleasant to, because the man had far greater physical strength than the old foreman.

Karl Ziemke – Karlchen to the warders – was a man of about thirty, with a Herculean build, a round, mastiff’s head with tiny eyes, and long hairy arms and hands. His low, lumpy forehead under its fringe of matted hair was always creased with horizontal furrows. He spoke little, and what he did speak was crazed and murderous. As Quangel soon learned from the warders, Karlchen Ziemke had once been a prominent member of the SS, he had been given fairly spectacular missions to accomplish, and the number of people those hairy paws had killed would never be ascertained, as Karlchen hadn’t bothered to keep count.

But for the professional killer Karl Ziemke, even these murderous times hadn’t sufficed, and when he had no official employment he had taken to killing freelance. Though he never neglected to rob his victims of money and valuables, robbery had never been his motive, but rather the sheer love of killing. In the end he had drawn attention to himself, as he had been unwise enough to kill not only Jews and undesirables but also impeccable Aryans, among them a member of the Party. He had been consigned to the basement, and it was as yet uncertain what would become of him.

Karlchen Ziemke, who had sent so many others to an unnatural death, had become fearful for his own precious life, and in his brain, which was not much larger than a five-year-old boy’s, only infinitely more depraved, the idea had surfaced that he might save himself from the consequences of his actions if he pretended insanity. His idea was to act like a dog – or this had been suggested to him by some comrades, which was likelier – and he played the part with considerable tenacity.

Usually he scrabbled around the cell on all fours, completely naked, ate out of his dish like a dog, and repeatedly tried to bite Quangel in the leg. Or else he demanded that the old foreman toss him a brush for hours on end, which he would then fetch in his jaws and be petted and praised for doing so. Or else Quangel would have to swing Karlchen’s trousers round and round like a skipping rope for Karlchen to jump over.

If the foreman didn’t show sufficient enthusiasm for these entertainments, the ‘dog’ would jump him, knock him to the ground, and go for his throat, and there was always the possibility that the game would turn serious. The warders took deep delight in Karlchen’s antics. They would stand by the cell door for hours on end, spurring him on and making him angry, and Quangel had to take the consequences. But when they came to take their drunken fury out on the prisoners, then they would throw Karlchen to the ground, and he would spread his arms, begging them to kick the guts out of his bare body.

It was with this man that Quangel was condemned to share his life, day after day, hour upon hour, minute by minute. He, who had always lived as self-sufficient, now no longer had a quarter of an hour to himself. Even at night, when he sought the consolation of sleep, he wasn’t safe from his tormentor. Suddenly the ‘dog’ would be squatting by his cot, with his paw on Quangel’s chest, demanding water or a place on Quangel’s bed. He would have to move aside, disgusted by the unwashed body, hairy as a beast’s but without an animal’s purity and innocence. Thereupon Karlchen would begin to bark quietly, and lick first Otto Quangel’s face and then, by and by, the rest of him.

Yes, it was hard to bear, and often Otto Quangel would ask himself why he did bear it, given that the end was sure to be near. But he felt a reluctance to do away with himself, and to thus desert Anna, even though he wasn’t able to see her. There was a reluctance in him to make it easier for them, to pre-empt their judgement. Let them take away his life with rope or axe, but they weren’t to think that he felt any guilt in himself. No, he wanted to spare them nothing, and so he didn’t spare himself Karlchen Ziemke.

And then a strange thing happened: as the nineteen days passed, the more devoted the ‘dog’ seemed to become to him. He didn’t bite him any more, didn’t knock him over, didn’t go for his throat. If his SS chums had given him a better morsel for once, he would insist on sharing it with Quangel, and often the ‘dog’ would rest his gigantic round skull on the lap of the elderly man for hours, close his eyes, and yap softly to himself, while Quangel’s fingers brushed his pelt.

The foreman wondered whether in the course of feigning madness this animal hadn’t actually become mad. But if he was, then so were his ‘free’ comrades, and then it didn’t matter, because along with their crazy Führer and the inanely grinning Himmler they were one brood that would have to be wiped off the face of the earth so that sensible people could live.

When it emerged that Otto Quangel was being shipped out, Karlchen was broken-hearted. He whimpered and yelped, he forced Quangel to take the whole of his bread ration, and when the foreman was made to step out into the corridor and press his face against the wall with upraised arms, the naked man slipped out of his cell, hunkered down beside him, and howled pitifully. That had the good effect that the SS men weren’t quite as rough with Quangel as they were with other inmates: a man who had won the heart of a dog like that, this man with the cold, implacable bird face, impressed even the Führer’s henchmen.

And when the order came to move out, when Karlchen the dog was driven back into his cell, then Quangel’s face was no longer cold and implacable, and in his heart he felt a slight pressure akin to regret. The man who all his life had only ever given his heart to one being, his wife, was sorry to see the multiple murderer, the beast of a man, pass out of his life.