A Stranger in My Own Country (26 page)

Back in those days I had another visit from the SA, which was just amusing to begin with, but ended up being thoroughly annoying. Anyone who has read my novel
Wolf among Wolves
will perhaps remember the figure of the little bailiff Negermeier, or Black Meier. Well, the portrait of this Black Meier is drawn pretty much from life,
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apart from all those extra bits of pure invention that we book writers feel we must put in for the sake of effect. He had been a colleague of
mine back in those dim distant days when I was still an agronomist myself, and I have to say that for all his eccentricities he was a good and loyal friend. He showed me just how good and loyal he was by remaining my good friend even after reading
Wolf
, not taking the least offence at this highly distorted portrayal. I had not heard from him in ages, when an ancient, open-topped car drove into my yard and five or six SA men got out, one of whom I recognized, to my astonishment, as little Black Meier. In the course of his chequered career he had now became an SA man as well, and therefore, obviously, a dyed-in-the-wool acolyte of the Führer. I invited the party into the house, regaled them with food, drink and cigarettes, and the two of us began by taking a trip down memory lane. ‘Do you remember, the old forest ranger – ?'

‘And what about the time old Aprilpeter
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threw you out of the hayloft, and you had to pack your bags on the spot?' ‘And that same evening he was downing a bottle of wine with me!' We laughed heartily. Eventually we got round to talking about this trip he was on with his friends, which I couldn't quite fathom. Basically it seemed to be just a joyride in a borrowed car, which had taken them up as far as the island of Rügen. Now they were on their way back to their SA barracks in Brandenburg. On the whole it seemed as if the trip had been a source of endless amusement. They joshed and nudged each other, and some of their shared memories reduced them to helpless mirth. Most of the allusions were obscure to me, not helped, perhaps, by the drinks that I had dispensed so lavishly. What I was seeing now was the other side of the coin. These men were blissfully happy and drunk with a sense of their own power. For the last few years they had been fighting for the cause while their Führer stood on the threshold of power, only to be turned away repeatedly. But now they had become the masters. They felt like little kings. Nothing seemed beyond their reach now. The humble life of an SA man was just a transient state for them; soon the Führer would be handing out jobs to his loyal followers – and they would not go away empty-handed. They would not be slow in coming forward – oh dear me no! They had served their time in punch-ups at political meetings! ‘Do you remember the cop who was hitting us
right in the face with his rubber truncheon? If we ever see him again, he'll wish he'd never been born! Just you wait!' They laughed again. ‘And that time a Communist knocked you off your bike with a soda water bottle filled with sand? I came along just in time, otherwise you'd have been toast!' More laughter. And they blithely told us what an easy time they had of it in their barracks, with no duties at all, a real cushy number! ‘When we're lying in our beds in the dormitory at night, nobody can ever be bothered to get out of bed and turn off the light. So we just grab our pistols and fire away until the light bulb's shot out!'

‘Then you'll soon be out of light bulbs!' observed my wife drily. ‘Us? Never! It's very simple. One of us just goes out and picks up light bulbs for the SA from electrical shops. We go and pick up whatever we need – these days nobody dares to say no to the SA any more!'

I didn't find these stories quite so amusing as these gentlemen, nor would I have wanted to be one of the party on today's jaunt to Rügen. It was all a little too coarse, too crude and too primitive for my liking. Eventually, when it was already dark, I showed them out, explaining that unfortunately I didn't have enough beds to put up such a large company. Someone remarked that the hayloft would have done for them, but I pretended not to hear. Enough is enough, and by now I had had more than enough of the brownshirts and the SA. I said that I had already contacted the best hotel in the local town, and that they were expected there. As they were leaving, little Black Meier took me to one side. There was a look of entreaty in his intelligent, friendly, owlish eyes. The truth was, he said, that they had no money left at all, not for the journey, not for their overnight accommodation, nor for breakfast. I laughed and said I wasn't in the least bit surprised. I rather assumed, I added, that they were not much better provided for when they embarked on their travels. Another case of just picking up light bulbs as and when, perhaps?

Little Black Meier grinned. I pressed a banknote into his hand, and he grinned even more broadly. They piled into their ancient car. They shouted all kinds of goodbyes – though ‘Heil Hitler!' did not figure
among them. The car leapt forward and disappeared into the night. As it left our driveway it took the sharp left-hand bend on two wheels. ‘What are the chances', I said to my wife, ‘that they'll get to the hotel in one piece, driving like that? But I expect their luck will hold. Come on, let's go and clean up the worst of the mess in my rooms before we get to bed.' And the night passed and morning came, and I had already been working at my writing for some time when I was summoned to the telephone. It was our fat hotelier calling me. What was the position with the fellows from the SA? Apparently they'd spent all their money on drink yesterday evening, and now had nothing left to pay for their accommodation, their breakfast or the rest of the journey. And none of them had the heart to come to the phone and tell me. What did I think? At first I was inclined to be difficult; I had given Black Meier a big banknote, and they had had plenty to drink at our house, but then I thought that if I refused I would never see the back of them. So I laughed and told the hotelier that I would stump up for the three items he had mentioned, but not for anything else, not a single schnaps, not a single cigarette! Was that clear? Yes indeed, came the reply, and I hung up with a feeling of relief.

Two hours later I was called to the telephone again. No, it's not what you are thinking, dear reader – they were not that predictable. They had not started to drink again, they had left punctually, they were now not far from Brandenburg. This time it was little Black Meier on the phone, and his voice sounded very pathetic and full of entreaty.

What on earth was the problem now? I asked.

Well, they'd had a bit of bad luck, they had driven the car into a closed level crossing gate, and the car had been a bit damaged, nothing too serious, but still, some minor damage . . . So what did that have to do with me? I wasn't a bit interested in their car and their crazy driving! Well, it seems that the car belonged to their doctor, the SA's own doctor, and they absolutely had to get it repaired, otherwise they'd really be in hot water. Could I perhaps . . . the repair costs – ?

I let out a howl of derision and hung up. I was then phoned repeatedly by all the SA men one after the other, then by the owner of a
garage, who had already towed the car in. I was foolish enough to ask about the repair costs. When the figure of 250 marks was mentioned, I laughed derisively once more and hung up again. My readers know me by now, and they know that if I am pestered for long enough, I give in. I agreed to cover the repair costs. When I eventually received the bill, it amounted to 378 Reichsmarks – so the damage to the car had not been all that minor after all. To round off the story, I got a letter of thanks from little Black Meier, which was both touching and cheery: he told me he was so happy that I had helped him out of a jam. He had driven the repaired car two kilometres back to the barracks himself, and had been greeted by his friends with a celebratory volley of gunfire; unfortunately he had been wounded, nothing serious, just a bullet in the leg . . . So much for the finer points of social etiquette in the SA following the Nazi seizure of power.

(4.X.44.)
I have always held the firm belief that there is some truth to the Latin saying ‘nomen est omen'. Names determine what a person is – very often at least – or what they become. People grow into their names, they change in obedience to their laws . . . Somewhere above I said that our new teacher, the successor to the wretched Ritzner, was called Stork. And I have never seen a clearer example of how a name can shape a person's destiny than in the case of this man. He wanted so badly to be a strong man –
ein starker Mann
– but he never quite had what it took, there was always a little something missing; he could never be
stark
, but only ever Stork. The last little bit eluded him. And that's how it was with him in everything. I'm sure he came to us in the village full of the best intentions. No doubt he had learned a thing or two in previous jobs, not all of it good, and he was determined to be both careful and patient. And then of course he had heard that Mahlendorf was a ‘difficult' village: the disputes between its residents, the feuds that were passed down from one generation to the next, were renowned throughout the land. You had to take great care not to be drawn into this maelstrom of hatred and malice. A single ill-chosen
word, a visit to the wrong house at the wrong time – these could ruin the standing of a newcomer for all time.

Schoolmaster Stork was on the short side, but broadly built, and he had nimble, slightly twisted legs like a dachshund, a legacy of rickets. His face was pale and wan, with a yellowish tinge, his eyes were dark and deep-set; you quickly became aware that the man could not look anyone straight in the face. He generally looked down when he was talking to you.

The wife of our new schoolmaster was round like a ball, and had a mercurial vivacity about her; but it was not the kind of comforting and contented obesity that comes from enjoying good food, and plenty of it, but rather the kind that stems from a glandular disorder, affecting the pituitary gland, I understand, in the cerebellum. She certainly had the volatile, over-excited manner of someone with glandular problems, alternating unpredictably with sullen moods or downright aggressive behaviour. But generally speaking she was lively, vivacious, full of laughter, and it was not long before she was known to every household in the village, as if she had lived there all her life. She was herself the daughter of a country schoolmaster, so she knew all about village life from an early age, and she knew the teaching profession inside out – better than her husband, so people were soon saying. Rumour had it that she corrected the children's exercise books for him.

He was the son of an agricultural labourer, who had subsequently been promoted to the stewardship of a country manor. The son too had worked his way up from humble beginnings, doubtless enduring all manner of hardships and deprivations along the way – hence the crooked legs, the physique that always looked somehow underdeveloped, the pale, liverish complexion that indicated bad blood.

Schoolmaster Stork's debut in Mahlendorf was not auspicious: in the first week after he moved in, his front door and door handle were smeared with human excrement in the night. The perpetrator or perpetrators were never found, and it remained unclear whether they came from our village, where actually nobody yet had cause to hate him so viciously, or from his previous place of employment. At
all events, this outrage, which was universally condemned, became the subject of the first heated quarrel between our old village mayor and the new schoolteacher: Stork demanded that the mayor send someone to clean up his soiled front door, since it was an insult to him as the village schoolmaster. The mayor said it wasn't his responsibility, and he refused. So the village looked on while the unsightly door decoration stayed in place for a couple of days – I don't recall now who removed it in the end. But the incident taught us that the new schoolmaster was a fiery, quarrelsome and self-righteous man, and we resolved to watch our step in future. Furthermore, unlike his predecessor, he was not content to be a member of the Party and the SA in name and uniform only, but was clearly determined to be very active in these capacities. The thing is, he was a ‘March Martyr', as we quickly learned, and he was intent on demonstrating his fervour at every turn. He not only took over all the posts held by his predecessor, but was also promptly appointed the ‘Political Leader' of the village and the local representative both of the Labour Front and of the NSV.
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In short, he soon held every official position going, and had also set his sights, so it was claimed, on the job of village mayor, which we felt was in the best possible hands already, the wise old hands of our small farmer. From the very first day schoolmaster Stork let it be known that he was not minded to be content with the quiet life of a village schoolmaster; he was ambitious, he was positively eaten up with ambition and envy. His sole concern was how to get on in the world and ingratiate himself with his superiors, and he didn't care what methods he used to further his career. We only discovered that later. But it was not long before we had seen and heard quite enough of this man to give very little away in our dealings with him. We only had occasional conversations in passing, and when it was strongly hinted that we should get to know each other better over coffee and cakes, we pretended not to hear – for which we were never forgiven.

Meanwhile the time had come when we had to send our six-year-old son to school, and who was going to teach him but schoolmaster Stork? What we saw and heard there, however, went a long way towards
reconciling us with Stork. He was not only a good teacher, but he also loved children, knew how to put things across to them, and to win their affection. We were very pleased with the results, our boy really liked going to school – and that was no small thing! Sometimes we stayed behind chatting with the Storks, discussing this and that, and I discovered a certain urbane quality in the man, a great facility for engaging with other people's way of thinking and seeing things from their point of view. In short, schoolmaster Stork was a good conversationalist, who knew how to listen as well as talk. I've always found this very appealing, and one day to my astonishment I found myself having a conversation about politics with Stork in which I no longer made any secret of my anti-Nazi sentiments. We spoke about the Jewish question, and I reminded him of what the Führer had said: that to be a true man you had to keep faith with your friends in their hour of need. The fact was the Jews had been my friends in good times, and I was not about to break faith with them now that times for them were bad. His eyes wandered, but he smiled suavely and said that the Führer had assuredly not intended his remark to be applied to criminals, gypsies, Jews and similar riff-raff. But he wanted to hear what I thought about it . . . I was stupid enough to think he really was interested in my opinion. But I had an uncomfortable feeling about it all the same, I had undoubtedly let down my guard, and my wife, who had listened to our conversation with mounting alarm, said the same thing. But as the weeks went by and nothing happened, I almost forgot about this conversation. I only discovered later that Mr Stork made a habit of initiating compromising conversations of this kind, subsequently reporting what was said either to the Party or to the district council leader, as appropriate. He was constantly gathering material – to incriminate others, and to assist his own advancement. Soon there were growing indications that Mr Stork was not the affable and agreeable man that he liked to appear. I heard from my six-year-old son that his teacher had had the gall to ask him where his father had hung the portrait of Hitler at home, and whether he saluted it morning and evening with a ‘Heil Hitler!' Very soon afterwards a big change then took place in our village; our old mayor
was ignominiously removed from his post, having faithfully discharged his office for decades, and replaced by the new schoolmaster Stork. The teacher used the handover of administrative and financial responsibilities to humiliate the honourable old man further. He shamelessly raised doubts about the honest conduct of mayoral business, and had the brass neck to say, when his accusations were shown to be groundless, that it was his bounden duty to carry out a scrupulous audit, and anyone who felt insulted by that simply showed that his conscience was not clear. It was quite apparent that he now felt himself to be the lord and master of the entire village, and so in a way he was, since he had the district council leader and the Party behind him, backing up his every move. Stork was determined now to play the strong man, and to use the power that he had. He publicly announced that a wind of change was blowing through Mahlendorf, and that certain lukewarm, not to say subversive elements should tread very warily from now on. Supported by his mercurial wife, he promptly gathered about him all the village gossips of both sexes, nosed into every piece of idle tittle-tattle like a duck foraging in a pool of murky water, diligently wrote up reports, conducted interrogations, agitated and plotted, and managed within a short space of time to re-ignite all the ancient feuds in Mahlendorf that had virtually died out, while simultaneously inciting new ones. From now on the whole village was constantly permeated by a foul miasma of calumny, as every informer now found a willing ear. This was the time when the German population was starting to feel the effects of cutbacks and economies in their daily lives as a result of the government's accelerated program of rearmament, and even the quantity of grain that could be fed to pigs was now rationed. One morning, not long after schoolmaster Stork assumed his duties as mayor, a couple of pitiful dead piglets were found dangling from the war memorial in the churchyard, erected to commemorate the dead of the First World War. Strung between them was a cardboard notice: ‘Because you've taken the corn we eat, we lay down our lives at the Fatherland's feet!' This sent our new mayor into a frenzy of rage. The mere fact that his community harboured such a degenerate reflected badly on him and the discharge
of his office. He moved heaven and earth to discover the identity of the perpetrator, but he was never found. He had better luck in another case. A farmer who had had too much to drink told people in the pub that he had a cow in his shed that looked just like Adolf Hitler. The farmer was taken to court and given a lengthy prison sentence. Later on he was transferred to a concentration camp, and if he is not already dead he is probably still living there today. This was an early victory for Stork's conduct of village affairs, but it was nowhere near enough to satisfy his vaulting ambition. Many more lukewarm brethren must yet be sent to their doom. I had long known that he had his eye on me too, and his confidantes, old women for the most part, had been leaking information for a long time. He started by going through the records of his predecessor and claiming that I'd been let off paying some tax bill or other by mistake. He now demanded payment of the outstanding amount. I refused; the tax rebate had been correct because my income had fallen. In the course of our discussions I saw the true character of the man for the first time: the thin veneer of urbanity vanished in an instant and a threatening bully now stood before me, consumed with envy and lust for power, cunning and yet stupid, utterly stupid, incapable of following a simple argument or understanding a tax document. A dangerous fool, completely incapable of thinking through the consequences of what he was doing. When I had explained my reasoning for the tenth time and saw that my arguments were not making the slightest impression on him, I gave up and told him to do what he liked. He threatened me with immediate foreclosure, accusing me and the old mayor of collusion and corrupt dealings. I slammed the door and left.