Europe Central (78 page)

14

His wife implored him to resign from the
for her sake and the sake of the children. She took him by the hand and drew him to a mirror, murmuring: Look at yourself, Kurt! Look at what this is doing to you!

Proudly he said: I myself have chosen this road.

Then she said: How can you, a man of honor and a sincere Christian, stand by and watch these things?

His face hardened into helmet-flesh and he replied: I am glad to have seen these atrocities with my own eyes, so that one day, God permitting, I may be able to testify about them.

She laughed at him.

Then he swung round as though he were about to strike her; and he said: Perhaps I ought to sue for divorce. What do you think? That would save you, should anything happen to me . . .

No, Kurt, no—

Very well then. We mustn’t just think of ourselves.

But wasn’t that precisely what he was doing? The next time he went to Theresienstadt, on another secret mission for “Clever Hans” Günther, there weren’t as many boxcars as usual so he completed the registration early. Detraining at Prague, he thought to buy something for his family. He was an
man; he could go anywhere he chose! Czechs and Germans alike, everyone gazed at him with fear, which made him long to scream. Smiling coldly, he flicked an imaginary granule of dust from his death’s head cap. He called himself
a spy for God.
In those curving streets walled high with watchful windows, swastika banners hung down on either side with perfect regularity just as in Berlin, so quite often he could see three ahead on his left, three more on his right, until the street arrived at a squat black archway like a grave. Following a stone bridge across the Vltava, the Moldau we call it now, he came to a street where an old woman was selling honey. She was sitting on the cobblestoned curb, drowsily humming to herself. Something about her face reminded him of the Catholic nurse who’d cared for him in his childhood; she was the only one who’d been kind to him. When his shadow fell on her, she looked up and screamed.

15

The Anglo-Jewish Bolshevists label us “totalitarians,” and it’s true that all over our Reich, even at Wolf’s Lair itself, we express ourselves by means of the same signals; for example, the preliminary end of an air raid alert is represented by three high-pitched sounds within a one-minute interval; then, once the cessation of the enemy threat has been verified, a tone of the same pitch shrills out steadily for one minute; we have found this consistency to be quite convenient. I’d be surprised if the enemy didn’t have their own equally “totalitarian” system! For much the same reasons, we’ve elected to school every German boy, every decent one, that is, in the Hitler Youth; so that his response in these times of racial threat can be relied on.

Frau Hedwig’s twins, Erich and Edmund, were among the decent ones. They had just been studying the Teutonic Knights. When he entered the room, Edmund was reading aloud:
Long and wide went the forest through which he must make his way were he not to shun the combat to which, through no fault of his own, he had been called.

Laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Gerstein asked him how he understood what he had just read. Edmund replied:
Hard times, hard hearts!
That’s our Word of the Week. When a war gets foisted on us by international Jewry, we don’t have a choice. We have to fight. That’s what it means for us today.

Correct! laughed good blond Kurt Gerstein. By the way, have you dreamed about that dark forest?

Never, said Edmund.

Erich?

No, Herr Gerstein. Perhaps we don’t understand your question. It’s about good
versus
evil, isn’t it?

Clearly. Now read it again.

Long and wide went the forest through which he must make his way
. . .

Would you boys like to be knights?

Oh, yes! Like you, Herr Gerstein!

Continue.

Were he not to shun the combat
. . .

Against whom?

The Jews, Herr Gerstein.

And who else?

There is no one else! cried the handsome boy, proud to have solved the trick question.
The Jews are our misfortune.
The Slavs and Anglo-Americans merely follow them. Isn’t that right, Herr Gerstein?

That’s right, he said gently, remembering that time back in ’35 when the Hitler Youth insulted our Lord in their performance of
Wittekind
by Edmund Kiss. When the blond young actor on stage jeered:
We’ll have no Savior who weeps and laments!
Kurt Gerstein had stood up to shout: We shall not allow our faith to be publicly mocked without protest!—They kicked him to the floor, and kept kicking. That was when he’d lost three of his teeth.

Hadn’t he done everything he could? Wasn’t he still doing it? He told the boys the tale of Simple Hans, whose princely brothers despised him for a fool but who won the princess in the end because he saved the ants, ducks and bees from harm, a favor they requited by coming to his aid when he was set humanly impossible magic tasks in the castle of stone effigies: The ants gathered up and counted all the scattered pearls, the ducks dove down to find the lost key, and the bee queen tasted the lips of each sleeping princess to find out which girl was the most charming.

16

Once more he succeeded in meeting the Swiss consul, Hochstrasser, and furtively spewed out his disgusting secret, while Hochstrasser gazed upon him with resentment.—I’ll pass on your story to Berne if you insist, Herr Obersturmführer. But you continue to require that it remain unattributed!

For the love of Christ, sir! Don’t you comprehend the situation of my wife and children?

As you prefer, then. But unattributed rumors of this kind, well—

What do you want me to do? Must I bring you a trainload of corpses?

Herr Obersturmführer, good day.

17

Again the prussic acid has decomposed! reported Obersturmführer Gerstein. There is nothing to do with it now except bury it.

It seems to decompose awfully frequently these days, said “Clever Hans” Günther.

There’s wartime quality for you! his
-man replied with a ringing laugh. I’ve complained to the factory in person several times.

Someone should be shot.

Naturally they use Jews and Slavs on the production line! But for the sake of our transportation personnel—

18

Your father hasn’t yet forgiven you, reported his wife the next time he visited; and even though he didn’t know what he hadn’t been forgiven for, the knowledge of being in the wrong came as easily as ever. Towering over her, he shot her that look which she would never see as anything other than stern; and then he waited.

For cutting off his little story, she explained.

Oh, said he, placing another log upon the fire. The one about the Jew they caught.

He knew how it must have been for that Jew, because it had already happened to him twice, the first time back in 1936, that time he’d sent out the seven thousand anti-Nazi religious pamphlets and then they took him away in one of the Green Minnas, where through a small square barred window on the righthand side he saw clouds, darkness and windows; then it was right face and forward march with the others into Columbia House where the Blackshirts tortured him with wet horsewhips. In 1938, because they absurdly suspected him of monarchism, another Green Minna carried him to a concentration camp, where he quickly learned to tell the smirking doctor: I fell downstairs.—In short, he overcame all his previous ideological errors. A certain Gestapo man had gotten him out, but his father had also helped by insisting that Kurt Gerstein had always been a sincere anti-Semite. He’d never forget those weeks at Welzheim, his vacation they called it; and in particular the thing which he’d never tell anybody about, the thing that the
-men had done to him. Of course all this had taken place back in the days when we still played around, when we beat them instead of liquidating them. Once upon a time, Röhm’s portrait still hung in all our concentration camps. Then we shot Röhm and got serious. We commenced Operations Reinhard and Barbarossa, and set up shop at Belzec.

His wife said: You really ought to apologize.

As you wish, Friedl, he said, and he went up to Ludwig Gerstein’s room. Didn’t he owe his life to his father twice over?

Ever since he was a little child, his father’s presence had always reminded him of Berlin’s Zeughaus, which is square and reddish-tan, an immense stern cube studded with figures.

The old man was lying down. Half-opening his eyes, he gazed at his son with wolfish hostility. There was nothing to do but kneel down, kiss the father’s hand, and beg his pardon: You know I’ve always been a bundle of nerves, and what with the war . . .

His father gazed at him stonily.

Inspired, the blond man leaned over and whispered: Not to mention my
secret work
. . .

This won the day. His father said: I do forgive you, Kurt. And now we’ll never talk about it again.

Thank you, father. Once again, I’m sorry I—

Nowadays people are trying to accomplish so much. I trust that you also are doing your utmost.

Yes, father.

For whoever desires the Grail must approach that prize with the sword,
his father recited, and Kurt Gerstein nodded submissively.

And have you been traveling? What do they tell you about the situation on the Ostfront?

Shall we talk about it by the fire, father? Friedl’s soup should be ready about now—

Just tell me this, Kurt, before we go down to the others. From what you’ve heard, will Paulus be able to hold out?

I can hardly say, said Gerstein, and then at once, perceiving the ghastly fear upon his father’s face, he amended himself: The Führer has promised us that Fortress Stalingrad will never be conquered.

You’re right, his father said after a pause. That’s the only way to think about things now. Now we’ll go down to the others.

Seeing them descend the stairs together, his father’s arm around his shoulder, Elfriede smiled with gladness, and he suddenly thought: Why, how much like Berthe she looks!