Spark of Life (38 page)

ONLY ONE COLUMN
had still been working in the town. They had gone on rummaging about in the ruins for bodies and had found eighteen more people. Now they were marching back.

They marched right through the town. The SS no longer took any trouble. They guarded the column but they no longer led them round the town or made detours through the least damaged sections to prevent the prisoners from seeing the devastation. They now led them out by the shortest route.

The streets were ruined. Walls of houses had been thrown from one side to the other as though they had leapt on one another for a petrified rape. In some places the rubble lay many feet high. A piano with its top torn off stood in the street half-buried in mortar and stone. The keyboard was intact and a few children were strumming. They were trying to play the Horst Wessel song. It sounded thin and more than half the strings had snapped. A roofless baker’s shop stood open. A queue of people jostled one another outside it. They were dusty and tired and patient. The prisoners marched past them. The SS shouted commands. There was a smell of bread. But even here the sweet putrid stench of corpses came through, mixed
with the bitter smell of acids and burning. The unnaturally warm weather was the cause. Water flowed from broken pipes onto the street. A few men in fire-brigade uniform were trying to break up the ground. They had tools with them to repair the water conduits. The pipes were new and glistened and it seemed strange that anyone should still give a thought to such things; it seemed so useless and unimportant amidst all the devastation. A field kitchen had driven up a side street. In front of it, too, stood a long queue of people.

The broken windows in the shops had already been boarded up again with wooden laths and planks and strips of cardboard. There weren’t many Nazi uniforms to be seen any more. There were more trousers and boots than tunics. The tunics had already given way to civilian jackets; the lower halves were still Nazi.

The prisoners came to the open section of the town. They crossed one of the bridges that had not been destroyed. At the end of it stood an ancient stone figure that had lost its head and one arm. On the Square beyond it the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great had tumbled off its granite base. It was tipped up so that Frederick the Great now rode straight towards the sky. His outstretched arm pointed at a few clouds glistening in the sun.

The column passed down a tree-lined street that was still entirely undamaged. It was a remnant of forgotten peace amidst the desolation. The trees had put forth their leaves, the houses were massive and without blemish, the sidewalk clean, the windows intact, and behind the windows hung curtains, neatly gathered and pleated. It seemed inconceivable.

A group of boys came marching along the street. They wore uniforms. They were strong healthy boys, sturdy and lively, the kind every mother desires. Seeing the prisoners, they stepped out of their way onto the sidewalk. The prisoners were marching down the middle of the street. The boys stood still and began whispering.
One of them was fourteen or fifteen, the others younger. The fifteen-year-old had a calm open face, slender with a narrow skull, blue eyes and a tuft of silky blond hair. He raised his hand and the whole group shouted: “Traitors to the Fatherland!”

They shouted it in high youthful voices. Once more: “You Jewish swine! Traitors!”

It resounded through the streets. For a moment the birds in the trees stopped chirping. A window was opened. Again the boys shouted. Then the fifteen-year-old stepped forward, pulled a revolver from his pocket, took two paces, raised it, aimed quickly at a prisoner marching on the outside and at close range shot him in the face. “One dog less!” he said in a clear voice and stepped back. “Pity I’ve no more bullets, or I’d finish off a few more!”

The prisoner lay in the gutter. The blood welled up from under his head. Painfully he raised himself onto his arms and turned his face toward the group of boys. His face was old and there were gaps in his teeth, and the blood ran into his mouth and dripped, and the eyes above it grew slowly blind. The good-looking fifteen-year-old did not avert his gaze. He calmly contemplated the wound. Finally the bleeding face sank down. The arms gave. The right foot began to twitch. Then this, too, ceased.

“My God, Helmuth,” said one of the boys.

Two SS-men approached. “What’s all this? What d’you think you’re doing?”

“One traitor less,” said Helmuth and brushed back his hair.

“You can leave that to us,” snorted one of the SS-men. “So?” Helmuth stared at him.

“Stop that,” said the second SS-man nervously to the first. “Don’t start any funny business just now.” He turned to the prisoners. “Forward! Get going! On with you!” he shouted at them, pulling out a revolver. “March on, I said. D’you want to leave another one here? Four men in the rear pick up the dead!”

The column marched on. One SS-man stayed behind to take down the dead man’s number. “You’re a sharp one, what?” he asked Helmuth.

“Werewolf,” said the boy, off-handish.

His comrades stared at him in admiration. The window above them was slammed shut so that the panes rattled. The SS-man reached into the dead man’s pockets and got up. “Heil Hitler!” said Helmuth, sharply.

The SS-man turned around. “Heil Hitler!”

The prisoners seized the dead man’s legs and arms and raised him up. The boys formed a group again. Helmuth took the lead. “Sing!” he ordered.

They marched off. Their high youthful voices could still be heard from afar.

It had already become almost a folksong. They had never learned anything else.

“Bruno,” said Selma Neubauer calmly. “Don’t be a fool. Think sensibly. Think before others begin thinking. That’s our chance. Sell what you can sell. The building plots, the garden, the house here, everything—loss or no loss.”

“And money? What’s the good of money?” Neubauer shook his head, annoyed. “If your prophecies should come true, what value would money have? Have you forgotten the inflation after the last World War? A billion was worth one mark. Real estate, that was the only thing even then.”

“Real estate, sure! But real estate you can put in your pocket.”

Selma rose and walked over to a cupboard. She opened it and removed several stacks of linen. Then she took out a box and unlocked it. It contained gold cigarette cases, compacts, a few diamond clips, two ruby brooches and several rings. “Here,” she said. “I bought these during the last few years without your knowing. With my money and with what I’ve saved. To buy them I sold the shares I had. Today they’d no longer be worth anything. The factories are in ruins. But this keeps its value. It can be taken along. I wish we had nothing but such things!”

“Taken along! Taken along! You talk as though we were criminals who had to flee!”

Selma put the things back in the box. She polished a cigarette case with the sleeve of her dress. “The same thing can happen to us that happened to others when you came to power, or don’t you think so?”

Neubauer jumped up. “If one were to listen to you,” he said, furious and helpless, “one might as well go and hang oneself. Other men have wives who understand them, who are a comfort when they come home from work, who cheer them up—but you! Nothing but prophecies of doom and howls of disaster! All day long! And at night as well! Not even then do I get any peace! All the time, Sell! Sell! Sell! Gloom! Gloom! Gloom!”

Selma didn’t listen to him. She stowed away the box and rearranged the linen in front of it. “Diamonds,” she said. “Good clear diamonds. Unset. Only the best stones. One carat, two carat, three carat, up to six or seven, if you can get them. That’s the thing. Better than all your Blanks and gardens and plots and houses. Your lawyer has gypped you. I’ll bet he took double commission. Diamonds can be hidden. They can be sewn into dresses. Even swallowed. Not so your building plots.”

Neubauer stared at her. “The way you talk! One day you are
hysterical with fear of a few bombs—and the next you talk like a Jew who’d cut one’s throat for cash.”

She measured him with a contemptuous glance. She looked at his boots, his uniform, his revolver, his mustache. “Jews don’t cut throats. Jews look after their families. Better than many Germanic supermen. Jews know what to do in dangerous times.”

“So? What did they know then? Had they known anything they wouldn’t have stayed here and we wouldn’t have caught most of them.”

“They didn’t believe you’d treat them as you did.” Selma Neubauer dabbed her temples with eau-de-cologne. “And don’t forget that money has been blocked in Germany since 1931. Since the Darmstaedter und National Bank got into difficulties. That’s why a lot of them couldn’t get away. After that you caught them. All right. And now you want to stay here for the same reason. And for the same reason they will catch you.”

Neubauer glanced quickly round. “Take care, for God’s sake! Where’s the maid? If anyone hears you, we’re lost. The People’s Court knows no mercy. One denunciation is enough.”

“It’s the maid’s day off. And why can’t the same be done to you as you did to the others?”

“Who? The Jews?” Neubauer laughed. He remembered Blank. He had a vision of Blank torturing Weber. “They? They’ll be glad if they’re left in peace.”

“Not the Jews. The Americans and British.”

Neubauer continued laughing. “They? They even less! That’s none of their business, anyhow. Inner political affairs like our camps don’t interest them in the least! With them it’s purely a matter of military affairs and foreign politics. Don’t you understand that?”

“No.”

“They’re democrats. They’ll treat us correctly if they win—which is still debatable. Soldierlike. Correct. We’ll just be honorably defeated. They can’t do anything else. That’s their ideology! With the Russians it would be a different story. But they’re in the East.”

“You’ll see for yourself. Just stay here.”

“Yes, I’ll see. And I’m staying here. Would you mind telling me where we could go anyway, if we wanted to get out?”

“With diamonds we could have gone to Switzerland years ago—”

“Could have!” Neubauer banged the table. The beer bottle in front of him trembled. “Could have! Could have! There you go again! Would you mind telling me how? I suppose we could have flown across the frontier in a stolen airplane? You’re talking nonsense.”

“Not in a stolen airplane. But we could have taken a few vacation trips. Taken over money and jewels. Two, three, four vacation trips. Left something behind each time. I know people who have done it.”

Neubauer went to the door. He opened it and closed it again. Then he came back. “D’you realize what you’re saying? Sheer high treason! You’d be shot on the spot if one word of it leaked out.”

Selma looked at him. Her eyes glittered. “Well—? Wouldn’t that be a good way for you to show what a hero you are at the last moment? You could get rid of a dangerous wife into the bargain! Maybe that’s just what you’d like—”

Neubauer couldn’t stand her gaze. He paced up and down the room. He wasn’t sure whether she’d heard anything about the widow who came to visit him off and on. “Selma,” he said finally in a different voice, “what’s all this about? We must stand together! Let’s be sensible. There’s nothing to be done now but hold out. I can’t run away. I’m under orders. And where could I flee to? To the
Russians? No. Hide in unoccupied Germany? The Gestapo would soon find me there and you know what that means! To the other side, to the Americans and British? That wouldn’t do, either. All things considered, it’s better to wait for them here. Otherwise it would look as though I had a bad conscience. I’ve thought it all over, believe me. We’ve got to hold out, there’s no other solution.”

“Yes.”

Surprised, Neubauer glanced up. “Really? Do you understand at last? Have I proved it to you?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her cautiously; he didn’t believe in such an easy victory. But Selma had suddenly given up. Her cheeks seemed to sag. Proved, she thought. Proofs! What they have proved they believe—as though life consisted of proofs! There’s nothing to be done about them. Clay gods. Believe only what they want to believe. She contemplated her husband for a long time. It was with a strange mixture of pity, contempt, and a remote tenderness that she looked at him. Neubauer grew uncomfortable. “Selma—” he began.

She interrupted him. “Bruno, only one more thing, the last one—I ask you to do.”

“What?” he asked suspiciously.

“Have the house and the building plots made over to Freya. Go to the lawyer at once. Just that, nothing else.”

“Why?”

“Not for ever. For the time being. If everything goes well, they can be transferred back. You can trust your daughter.”

“Yes—yes—but the impression! The lawyer—”

“To hell with impressions! Be practical. Freya was a child when Hitler took over. One can’t reproach her for anything.”

“What d’you mean by that? Are you suggesting that I can be reproached for something?”

Selma was silent. Again she cast that strange glance at Neubauer.

“We’re soldiers,” he said. “We act on orders. And an order’s an order. Everyone knows that.”

He stretched himself. “The Führer commands. We obey. The Führer takes full responsibility for his commands. He has declared that often enough. That’s sufficient for any patriot. Or isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Selma, resigned. “But go to the lawyer. Have our property made over to Freya.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll go and talk to him.” Neubauer had no intention of doing so. His wife was just hysterical. He patted her on the back. “Just leave it to me. I’ve always managed so far.”

He stamped out. Selma Neubauer went to the window. She watched him get into the car. Proofs! Orders! she thought. That’s their way out of everything. All very well as long as it worked. Hadn’t she herself played along? She looked at her wedding ring. Twenty-four years she had been wearing it now. Twice it had had to be enlarged. At the time she’d received it she’d been a different person. There’d been a Jew then who had asked her to marry him. A small efficient man who lisped and didn’t shout. Josef Bornfelder was his name. In 1929 he had left for America. Clever man. At the right time. She’d heard of him once again through an acquaintance to whom he had written. He was doing very well. Mechanically she turned her wedding ring round and round. America, she thought. There they never have an inflation. They’re too rich.