Comrades of War (25 page)

In these underground luxury restaurants there was no menu or wine list. All one had to do was to make a wish. And the price was determined accordingly.

A scantily dressed lady took Pretty Paul’s coat and hat. Nonchalantly he threw himself into a chair in the middle of the room. He didn’t even bother to glance at the bowing waiter as he ordered partridge with mushrooms and
pommes frites
. For wine he ordered a bottle of Oppenheimer. The waiter took down his order without moving a muscle in his face.

Paul Bielert leaned back in his chair to study the many guests. Elegant army officers in gray and green uniforms. Navy officers in dark blue with sparkling gold trimmings. Airmen in gray-blue dress uniforms and gleaming white shirt fronts. Black-clad SS officers with dazzling silver on collars and shoulders. Party officials in showy golden uniforms plastered with so much gold and silver that a field marshal under Emperor Franz Josef would have envied them. Ladies in costly silks and furs, looking completely unconcerned and laughing merrily with their partners.

An admiral sat with two very gay ladies. The Knights Cross, with swords and oak leaves, dangled from his neck, and beside it the
Pour le Mérite
from World War I.

Paul Bielert snorted scornfully as the admiral gave him a condescending look. The admiral would have shivered to the very marrow of his bones if he could have read the thoughts of SS
Standartenführer
Paul Bielert.
Just wait, you fop! When victory is won at last, the tin about your neck will blow up in smoke the moment your stupid head tumbles into the basket
.

Pretty Paul hated the upper classes, the officers and the Junkers. This he showed clearly after the attempted assassination of July 20, when as SS
Gruppenführer
he came directly under the command of Gestapo boss Kaltenbrunner in Prinz Albrechts-Strasse.

He ate his partridge in silence. He gnawed ferociously at the carcass without bothering about the fact that the other guests were looking at him with condescending smiles. Bird bones crunched between his strong teeth. Now and then he would spit out a splinter, open his mouth and pick his teeth with his fork. A slight belch escaped him, too.

A civilian gentleman followed by a lady greeted him politely, almost humbly, as he passed by. Paul Bielert nodded carelessly without taking the partridge leg he was holding with both hands out of his mouth. When they were some distance away, the gentleman whispered discreetly to his lady: ‘High-ranking Gestapo officer! Heaven only knows what brings him to this place!’

A Party official in a uniform of excremental yellow entered, followed by three ladies and their escorts. Swaggeringly he ordered a cognac and smacked one of the ladies on her wiggling posterior. Her partner angrily raised his eyebrow, but when he realized where the smack had come from he smiled and nodded.

The Party man undertook the same maneuver with a lady who was dancing with an Air Force major. The major protested and made lame threats. The Party man grinned and glanced at the major’s service cross, shining lone on his gray-blue breast. ‘You seem to be looking for a hero’s death,’ he said. The round face of the Air Force officer flushed deeply. His lady smiled and looked at the Party man.

‘Is there anything else?’ he asked provocatively.

The Air Force officer turned purple and his mouth opened and closed like that of a stranded fish. He drew himself up and said faintly to the Party man: ‘You shall hear from me, Sir.’

‘And you from me,’ the Party man said. He led some ladies to the bar, where he sat like a king on a high stool looking out across the room.

Pretty Paul wiped his mouth with a white napkin and ordered a mocha.

The falling and rising blasts of the air-raid sirens sounded from far away. The heavy steel doors with their gas air locks were shut. The world on fire was locked out. The crashing of the bombs was felt only as a faint tremor.

The waiters went about serving as before, without haste and without fear. Quietly and deliberately. There was no pity for the people up there in the streets. People dancing through blazing asphalt with shrieks of terror. People rolling in their own intestines. Children melting in the glaring light of phosphorus.

A select orchestra was playing sentimental dance music. Here you could dance with the blessing of the Party. The guests were the cream of Hamburg’s upper class. Jewels sparkled around women’s bare necks. Rings worth sums written with a string of Os flashed on well-kept fingers.

In the surrounding streets far above lurked the specters haunting the city during air attacks at night, in the hope that the elegant restaurant would get a direct hit. In the ensuing panic, the corpse robbers would have an easy time of it. There were those among them who wore the swastika on their lapels.

A lady pointed at the people who were laughing, drinking and dancing and whispered to her partner: ‘Don’t they have any heart at all? Don’t they know that a whole world is going to ruin, burnt to cinders by incendiary bombs?’

Her partner, an elderly SS officer, put a piece of juicy red meat into his mouth and took a sip of red wine. ‘Today the brain is more important than the heart, my dear. People without a heart have a bigger chance to survive.’

A beautiful lady in a light blue dress and high-heeled, low cut shoes strolled slowly down the central passage. She stopped at Paul Bielert’s table and gave him a smile of recognition.

‘Hello, Paul. You here?’

With eyes asquint and the long silver cigarette holder teetering between his lips, he nodded to her and pointed at the chair across from him. ‘Have a seat, Elsebeth. Sit down and let us have a little chat.’

Elsebeth sat down. She crossed her legs and pulled up her dress, revealing a pair of fine, shapely legs in sheer stockings.

‘Is it to be private or official?’

Pretty Paul took a sip from his glass and pursed his lips. The living eye flashed ominously.

‘I’m always official. There’s a war going on, Elsebeth.’

She laughed sarcastically. ‘I realize that, Paul. Even if I only have lost a husband and three brothers.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘And a son,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Just one son. Do you understand what that means, Paul?’

‘It means nothing, Elsebeth, absolutely nothing. The only thing that matters is that the victory will be Germany’s at the end. To die for the Führer should be the ultimate wish of every German man and woman. It’s a beautiful death, Elsebeth, and you are to be envied. Not everyone can boast five fallen heroes!’

She stared for a long while at his dead eye. ‘Did you say heroes?’

‘Yes, heroes fallen in battle for the Führer!’ He drew himself up as he said ‘Führer.’

She uttered a forced laugh. ‘My little boy, Fritz, was seven. A falling beam broke his back. My son, my little Fritz. You should’ve heard him cry!’

‘No victory without tears, Elsebeth. That’s a law of life. In order to live we have to suffer. The Führer too has harsh moments.’

She played with a napkin ring. The waiter brought a glass of wine. She sipped at it.

When the waiter brought the mocha he bent familiarly over Paul Bielert. ‘There has been a good deal of noise over Barmbeck and Rothenburg for the last twenty minutes. It’s said that a heavy blanket of bombs has fallen this time.’

Paul Bielert raised the brow of his dead eye. ‘Why do you tell me, waiter? Did you see it yourself?’

The waiter started. ‘No, Sir. I heard it. Everybody’s talking about it.’

Paul Bielert took a sip of his mocha. ‘Rumors, that is,’ he noted menacingly. ‘Rumor-mongering is a crime prosecuted before the People’s Court. Do you realize that? Why, incidentally, aren’t you in uniform? You certainly look as if you could run an obstacle race with an MG 42 on your shoulder!’

The waiter changed color. He ran a well-kept finger between his neck and collar. It looked as if he was about to choke. Finally he managed to stammer out: ‘I was rejected because of heart disease, Sir.’

‘Heart disease!’ Paul Bielert jeered and laughed loudly. ‘What’s heart disease? Today that means absolutely nothing. You shoot with your hand and take aim with your eye. Isn’t that so, my friend? It has nothing to do with the heart, and you won’t have to look for the target at all. It will come of its own accord, and right at you. We are going to transport you and your sick heart straight to the trenches, and when we stack you up there, you’ll only have one thing to do: blaze away! We’re a great power and do a great deal for our infantry. In most other places the infantry has to trot on their flat feet, but with us they’re carried straight to their position. And yet a malingering Fritz like you dares to talk about a weak heart!’ Paul stuck the long cigarette holder in his mouth and hissed viciously: ‘As long as you aren’t dragging your heart on a plate, cut in four pieces, I won’t recognize such a thing as a weak heart. Do you know what you are? You’re a saboteur of your country’s defense, my dear man. A disgusting defeatist, an anti-social element!’

The waiter sent a pleading look across to a Party man standing at the bar. Their eyes met.

The Party man stood up, adjusted his uniform jacket and rolled high and mighty toward Paul Bielert’s table. The waiter was standing there in a cold sweat.

‘What’s going on here?’ the Party man asked, giving the waiter a friendly slap on the shoulder and grinning condescendingly at Paul Bielert. Pretty Paul, who was leaning back in the commodious club chair, crossed his legs, taking care not to disarrange his trouser creases.

‘This gentleman is threatening me with the People’s Court and the front,’ the waiter whispered, with terror still in his voice.

‘Now, now,’ the Party man growled, thrusting a round face with a lustful mouth toward Paul Bielert, who was indifferently puffing at the long cigarette holder. ‘Don’t you realize this man is my friend?’ Like a schoolmaster he raised his finger in an admonishing gesture. ‘If anyone is going East, I’m afraid it’s you. Show your papers!’

Paul Bielert gave a venomous smile. The watery-blue healthy eye flashed ominously. He resembled a reptile hypnotizing its victim before it devours it. Slowly, extremely slowly, he put his hand into his pocket, pulled out an identification card, and with two fingers held it up under the nose of the Party man, who reacted with astonishment. He clicked his heels when he saw the red Gestapo card and read the service rank: SS
Standartenführer
and
Kriminalrat
Central Security.

For a moment Paul Bielert’s glance shifted from the Party man to the waiter. ‘Gentlemen, we’ll discuss your eastern itineraries in greater detail tomorrow morning at 10:15 in room 338 at Headquarters on Karl Muck Platz.’ His dismissed them condescendingly and continued his conversation with Elsebeth.

The waiter and the Party man heard him say to Elsebeth: ‘I pounce ruthlessly on these wretched skulks wherever I find them.’

‘Have you been to the front yourself?’ she asked softly.

‘No, not the front you’re thinking of, but another one,’ came in harsh staccato from Bielert. ‘Adolf Hitler . . .’ – he perceptibly drew himself up saying the name – ‘can use some people right here, people who take care the whole thing runs like well-oiled machinery. People who mercilessly seek out traitors and anti-social elements and watch out that the plague bacillus of defeatism won’t destroy the heroic German people. Don’t imagine our work is a bed of roses, my dear. We must harden our hearts. We must be hard as Krupp steel! Know nothing of foolish pity or childish softness. Believe me, I don’t even know what a heart is!’

She looked at him.

‘I can well believe that.’

The Party man was scolding.

‘Theo, you’ve gotten me into a stinking mess. A fellow like that should be shunned – and what do you do, you stupid pig? Get into a discussion! Even an ass like you should be able to see what he is. You can smell Stapo miles away.’

‘But, Peter, you started arguing with him yourself,’ Theo protested mildly.

‘Shut up,’ the Party man flared up. He threatened the unhappy waiter with his clenched fist. ‘Don’t you get any ideas. That’s what one gets for picking fellows like you from the gutter. But now you are . . .’ He turned down his thumb in an eloquent gesture. ‘Before a week has passed you’re going to be in Putlos or Sennelager for infantry training, and there you can shove you weak heart up your ass. Don’t dare greet me any more. I don’t know you. Never have known you and will never want to get to know you!’ He called the manager. They whispered together. Both looked across at Theo Huber standing by the buffet.

The manager nodded eagerly and answered, ‘Gladly,
Herr Ortsgruppenleiter
. Of course,
Herr Ortsgruppenleiter
. In this place we want only nice and respectable employees. Be assured of that,
Herr Ortsgruppenleiter
.’

Theo Huber’s former friend rubbed his hands with pleasure. He pointed openly at the waiter, who was feverishly polishing a plate.

The manager nodded and bore down on Huber. He had put on his ‘strong’ face, as he always did when something special was up. He would thrust out his lower jaw, push out his cheekbones and knit his eyebrows to a fierce-looking wad of hair. He was overjoyed the first time he saw himself like this in the mirror and discovered how much a brute and a superman he looked when he put on this mask. He rubbed his milky white, soft hands and jumped upon Theo Huber with a shower of abusive language.

Ten minutes later the waiter was putting his things together and leaving the paradise of luxury by the narrow iron staircase reserved for the staff. The rumbling steel door slammed tauntingly behind him.

He was struck by a glaring light.

Hamburg was burning.

He lay down behind some rubble. He cried. He sobbed with self-pity. His heart ached. Tears ran down his cheeks at the thought of the wonderful world that would be closed to him from now on.

Six weeks later panzer-jäger Theo Huber was sitting in a Russian peasant hut smoking a self-rolled makhorka cigarette while wearily chatting with three Russian peasants and a couple of buddies.