The Children's War (21 page)

22

P
ETER WALKED AN APPROPRIATELY
respectful distance behind Frau Vogel as she led the way. Ahead lay a small, nondescript building: the local police station. Today it would be made official—his life had changed hands. The officer on duty knew Frau Vogel personally and greeted her respectfully, asking after the children by name. After the pro forma pleasantries were completed, Frau Vogel explained Peter’s presence. The officer scrutinized him carefully, trying to commit his features to memory, then took his fingerprints and photo for the files, filled out a number of forms, and finally entered his number and place of work into the local registry.

After the local registration was finished, they were sent to the main building of the district security police in Berlin to complete the formalities. Only then did he realize he now lived in a suburb of the capital. Just approaching the bland building in the center of the city caused a cold sweat to appear on his brow. The sensation of raw power was overwhelming. His right hand ached, and without realizing what he was doing, he tried to slide the band on his wrist up and down to try to relieve the tension. Finally Frau Vogel was driven to snap, “Stop that! They’ll think you’re guilty of something, then we’ll be here forever.” Obviously, even she felt somewhat daunted by the aura of authority.

Inside, they joined a long queue for the reception desk. After a short wait, Frau Vogel ordered him to stay in line and walked off. Fear gripped him as he watched her disappear around a corner: she had taken all the documents with her! In police headquarters, wearing the uniform of a criminal, undocumented! Unregistered! His heart thundered as he forced himself to keep his gaze lowered, trying to remain as insignificant as possible. After an eternity Frau Vogel reappeared with Herr Vogel and motioned to him to leave the queue and follow them as they turned to go down another corridor. He rushed after them and caught up as Herr Vogel stopped to show his identification to a guard. Peter continued to follow a few steps behind as Herr and Frau Vogel were escorted to an unmarked door and shown into a large office with twenty or so desks. They walked through that and into a small private office at the back. Herr and Frau Vogel confidently approached the desk as Peter slipped in and stood unnoticed near the wall.

A heavily built man with thin brown hair sat behind the desk poring over some documents. He immediately snapped to attention and saluted when he saw Herr Vogel, then added, rather incongruously, “Herr Vogel! What an unexpected pleasure!”

Herr Vogel waved his hand upward with a casual
“Heil,”
then said, “Herr Franz, you remember my wife, don’t you?”

“Of course, always a pleasure, Frau Vogel!” Herr Franz replied, giving Frau Vogel a crisp bow. Herr Franz seemed genuinely pleased to see them, although he betrayed a certain anxiety by repeatedly eyeing his cigarette as it burned in the ashtray. Suddenly he snatched it up to take a puff. He made a motion as if to sit back down, but changed his mind and instead shuffled his weight uneasily from one leg to the other. “So, what can I do for you?” he asked, directing his attention back to Herr Vogel.

“We have to register him,” Herr Vogel replied as he indicated Peter, “and the wait seemed horrendous. Would you mind handling it for us now?” Despite the politeness of the request, something in Herr Vogel’s tone told Peter that it was an order.

The man behind the desk certainly reacted as though it were. “Of course, of course, just leave it to me. No problem at all!”

“Good. Well, I really should get back to the ministry.” Herr Vogel turned toward Frau Vogel. “Do you mind if I leave you to handle it from here?”

“No, not at all. I’ll see you back at home this evening.”

“Frau Vogel, if I may interrupt,” Herr Franz interjected obsequiously, “there’s no reason for you to stay. I can take care of everything and bring your boy to your house this evening after work.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful of you. Are you sure you don’t mind?” Frau Vogel cooed.

Peter shifted his gaze from one to the other, wondering if any of them would even acknowledge his presence.

“No, of course not. It’s on my way home. It will be my pleasure!”

“Yes, okay. You have our address in Schönwalde?”

“Yes, I’ll see you this evening.”

“Thank you.” Frau Vogel handed over Peter’s docket and she and Herr Vogel left together.

Herr Franz followed them with his eyes. As the door shut behind them, the smile dropped from his face and he muttered to himself, “Shit. As if I don’t have enough to do today.”

Peter cocked his head slightly at the faux pas and was mildly pleased to see a startled response as Herr Franz took notice of him for the first time. Herr Franz glared a warning at him, then walked to the door, opened it, and called out to one of his staff to come into his office.

A young woman appeared at the door. Her hair, bleached to the standard platinum blond, was neatly pinned up. She wore a conservatively cut, dark
brown suit and a serious expression. She snapped a curt
“Heil, Hitler!”
complete with hand gesture, then added in a normal voice, “Yes,
mein Herr?”

It was, Peter thought, one of the few small mercies of his place in society that no one expected him to indulge in the
Heil
nonsense, and when the secretary glanced curiously at him, he took advantage of this one liberty and winked at her in return. Her look of shock was rewarding, and she immediately turned her attention back to her boss.

After the situation was explained to her, the young woman led him away to her desk. She spent about an hour typing up forms and cross-checking references and numbers while he stood, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, in the narrow space between the desks. Finally, she pulled the last sheet out of her typewriter with a flourish, gathered together a stack of documents, and led him through the labyrinth of desks to a door near the back of the room.

The door led to a stairwell, and as they descended the steps to a floor well below ground level, he felt his pulse quicken. They went down a corridor, passing a number of heavy, closed doors. The light tapping of the secretary’s heels sounded incongruously ordinary in the oppressive atmosphere. As they turned a corner, he espied their destination and relaxed a bit. At the end of the hallway was a workroom door, the top half open to reveal a mechanic’s shop.

A radio was playing inside the shop, and he could see various tools and machines lining the greasy shelves. The young woman stopped at the half-open door and, disdaining to go farther, called inside for the mechanic on duty. An older man appeared; he had wispy gray hair and wore a pair of heavy glasses. A mischievous grin appeared on his face as he noticed the young woman, and he made a fuss about wiping his hands on a greasy cloth to clean them.

“So, you couldn’t resist coming to see me again!” he teased.

She smiled indulgently at him, then said, “We have a rush order. Can you replace his identity band right now?”

“For you, anything.” The mechanic took the papers and looked at the information on them. “Yeah, come back in about forty minutes, maybe an hour.” Then he looked up at her and winked. “Unless you want to stay here and watch a master at work.”

“Love to, but I’m absolutely swamped with work.”

“Okay, okay. You bureaucrats aren’t happy unless you’re pushing paper.”

“Don’t let him get lost,” she admonished as she walked off. “I’ll be back.” Her heels made tapping sounds as she retreated back down the hall.

“You all right?”

It took Peter a moment to realize he was being spoken to. He jerked his head up, stunned.

“You don’t look so well. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he finally stammered.

The fellow kept up a continuous jovial patter as he led Peter into the shop
and seated him in a chair next to a workbench. He placed Peter’s right arm on the bench and inspected the metal band. “Bad workmanship. These things require skill, but any old cobbler is allowed to put them on. Look at this.” He twisted Peter’s wrist around, showed him the seam. “That causes irritation. It’s too tight, doesn’t move around enough. I can’t get under it with proper metal cutters. Maybe that’s why they did it that way. Hmm?”

He brought over a heavy board with leather straps affixed to it. Sticking the board under Peter’s arm, he buckled the straps at his wrist and elbow, explaining, “This will help you keep your arm still. We don’t want you losing your hand, do we? It’d be more stable attached to the table, but we can’t have everything.” He shoved a thin piece of metal between the band and Peter’s skin and then slid a mounted saw across the bench and positioned it over his arm.“Here, use this,” he said, handing Peter a piece of heavy cloth. “Turn your head away and hold this over your ear to protect your hearing. I only have one set of these,” he continued, tapping the ear protectors he wore around his neck. “Bought them myself,” he added as he put them on and set about adjusting the saw.

He continued to speak even after he started the saw and began cutting the metal. Peter could not hear most of the monologue, something about precision cutting and bad equipment; nevertheless, he felt comforted by it. He concentrated on remaining perfectly still as he felt the whir of the blade just above his wrist.

At long last, the whining of the saw stopped. Peter looked to see a neat slice cut out of the metal band. The mechanic released the leather straps and then used two sets of pliers to pull the crescent shape flat enough to slide off.

With poignant memories of freedom, Peter rotated his arm and ran his fingers gently over its surface. The skin of his wrist was tender, the area under the band paler than the rest, and the balance felt wrong without the familiar weight, but for those few minutes at least he was rid of the damn thing. The old man watched him in silence, then said almost wistfully, “It’s my experience that everyone prefers to have the old one off first thing, before I make the new one. We can have a little break before I start on it. You want some tea?”

Peter nodded and the old man turned to put on a little coil on which a kettle stood. “Not supposed to have this, you know, but none of the bigwigs ever come down here, so, I get to keep my little kitchen.” He laughed, turning toward Peter to encourage him to join in.

Peter smiled wanly in return.

“Ach, you’re relatively new at this, aren’t you?” the old man asked.

“Just over a year.”

“Heh. You must have really offended someone! A nice-looking Aryan-type like you, you should be upstairs making other people’s lives miserable!”

Peter nodded. The old man turned his back to pour the tea, saying as he did so, “Ach, look, we all work for someone. I wear a badge, see!” He pointed to the badge that was pinned to his shirt. “And a uniform. We all got bosses. That’s what it’s like in an orderly society.”

“I want to be free,” Peter mouthed in case anyone was listening in.

The old man waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t we all! If it’s not bosses, it’s wives and kids. Then, just when you figure you can’t stand it anymore, they up and leave you all alone and . . .” His voice trailed off and his eyes took on a distant look. They were both silent for a moment, then, as if speaking to himself, the old man said, “None of us get to do what we want in this world. Just put on an act. Survive. It’s what we all do.”

By the time Peter was returned to Herr Vogel’s friend, he had another identity band affixed to his wrist and an identity card complete with photo. “All finished,
mein Herr,”
the young woman informed her boss as she deposited the documentation on his desk.

“All right. I’ll take it from here.” As she left the room, Herr Franz consulted his watch, then finally addressed Peter directly: “Sit down over there and don’t say a word.”

There was no chair where Herr Franz had indicated, so he sat on the floor, his back resting against the wall, his arms supported on his knees. He sat very still and stared at the wall opposite. The shadows cast by the afternoon sun suggested unfathomable secrets in their patterns, but he did not even attempt to interpret them. He waited in silence, sitting on the floor of an office of a man he didn’t even know in the headquarters of Reich Security in Berlin, waited while Herr Franz worked, waited patiently like a package to be delivered back to his prison. A pang of homesickness swept through him, made all the more poignant by the fact that he did not even know where home was anymore.