“Yes, Yugoslavia,” said Schellenberg. “You were going to tell me about what happened down there.”
But before I could say a word he’d launched into an anecdote that seemed to reveal the younger man’s almost naïve ambition — I don’t suppose he could have been much more than thirty.
“Three years ago,” he said, “I had this idea that not having a doctorate in law might hold me back in my career in the SD. Anyway, I was thinking of trying for my own doctorate in law at the university here in Berlin, and I considered doing my dissertation on the government in Yugoslavia.”
“It’s lucky you didn’t pursue that,” I said. “Because there is no government in Yugoslavia. At least none that any German lawyer would recognize by that name.” I told him — with several examples — how I thought the country was in total chaos. “The place is one giant killing zone. Like something from the Thirty Years’ War.”
“Surely it can’t be as gloomy as that,” Eggen said.
“Actually, I think the situation’s probably a lot worse than gloomy. And I certainly don’t know what else to compare it to when you have Croatian priests cutting the throats of Serbian children. Babies murdered by the hundreds. For the sheer hell of it.”
“But why?” asked Schellenberg. “What’s the reason for such ferocity?”
“If you ask me,” I said, “it’s partly our fault. They’ve learned from our example in the east. But historically and culturally, it’s the fault of the Roman Catholic Church and Italian fascists.”
Schellenberg, who had recently returned from Italy to report to Himmler on the deteriorating fortunes of Benito Mussolini, confessed he was feeling gloomy about the Italians, too:
“Italy presents an awful warning for Germany,” he said. “After twenty years of fascism, the country that produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance is in a state of total collapse. In Venice even the gondolas aren’t working. Imagine that. I tried to buy an inlaid musical box for my wife and couldn’t find one. Switzerland looks so much better off, as you’ll see for yourself. Five hundred years of democracy and neutrality have worked very well for them. And they’ll work for us, too. The country might have no natural resources other than water, but it manages to produce a lot more than just cuckoo clocks. Everything works in Switzerland. The same things that used to work in Germany, I might add. The trains, the roads, the banks. And no one in Switzerland lies awake at night and worries about what’s going to happen when Ivan shows up at the front door. They worry about us invading them, it’s true. But between you and me, I see it as of vital importance to keep them out of the war. So does Himmler. So does everyone, except Hitler. He still entertains hopes of bringing them into the war on our side.”
We were all silent for a moment after that mention of the leader’s name.
“What did you choose in the end, Herr General?” I asked politely, to break the silence. “For your doctorate.”
“Oh, I decided not to bother with getting one. Originally I thought I should have a doctorate in law because half of the senior officers in the SD have one. Men like Ohlendorf, Jost, Pohl. Even some of the officers in my own department, like Martin Sandberger. Then we invaded Russia and several of those officers went off to command SD forces tasked with murdering Jews in Ukraine and Poland. And I thought, what’s the point in having a law doctorate if, like Sandberger, you just end up murdering fifteen thousand Jews and communists in Estonia? What’s the point of a doctorate in law if that’s where it takes you?”
Eggen looked at me. “You’re not a lawyer, too, are you, Gunther?”
“No,” I said. “I already have a good pair of gloves at home to keep my hands warm in winter.”
Eggen frowned.
“What I mean is, you won’t catch me with my hands in someone else’s pockets. It’s a joke.”
They both smiled without much amusement. Then again, they were both lawyers.
Twenty-six
The next morning I got up early, left my SD uniform at home, and went shopping.
Before the war, Rochstrasse, a few blocks away from the Alex, had been filled with Jews. I still remembered the several bakers’ shops there and the delicious smell of babka, bagels, and bialys that used to fill the street. As a young beat copper I’d often gone into one of those shops for breakfast, or for a quick snack and a chat; they loved to talk, those bakers, and sometimes I think that’s where I learned my sense of humor. What I wouldn’t have given for a fresh bialy now — like a bagel, except that the hole was filled with caramelized onions and zucchini. There was still an early morning market on Rochstrasse where fruits and vegetables were sold, but I wasn’t looking for oranges any more than I was looking for bialys. Not that I would have found any oranges there, either: these days, root vegetables were pretty much all there was to be had, even at five in the morning. I was looking for something that was almost as hard to find as a bialy or an orange. I was looking for good quality jewelery.
On Münzstrasse, at number 11, was a six-story redbrick building with a bay window at the corner of every floor. It was only a year or two since the ground-floor shop had been occupied by a Jewish-owned jewelry store. That was now closed, of course, and boarded up, but on the top floor was a man who I knew helped some Jews who were living underground somewhere in Berlin, and from whom it was possible to buy bits of decent jewelry at good prices that might help a family to survive. This man wasn’t Jewish himself but an ex-communist who’d spent some time in Dachau and had learned the hard way how to hate the Nazis. Which was how I knew him, of course. His name was Manfred Buch.
After an exchange of pleasantries I gave him a cigarette and he showed me a small velvet tray of rings and let me take my time.
“Have you asked her yet?”
“No.”
“Then if you don’t make a sale with this little lady, you bring the Schmuck back to me. No questions asked.”
“Thanks, Manny.”
“For you this is no problem. Look, the fact is, I can sell this stuff three times over. Most of the Schmuck you’ll find in the fancy shops like Margraf is poor quality and expensive. What you’re looking at here is the last of the good stuff. At least for now. Most quality merchandise has been sold already or is being held back until after the winter, when it’s generally assumed things are going to get much worse.”
“From what I’ve heard that’s a fair assessment.”
“And of course you can be quite sure that whatever you buy is going to help people who are in real need. Not profiteers and gangsters. That is, if you can tell the difference between them and our beloved leaders.”
“What about this one?”
“That’s a nice band. Good quality gold. Eighteen carat. Nice and thick. She’ll love you for the rest of her life if you give her that one. And if she doesn’t, you can always get her drunk and while she’s asleep, put a little soap on her finger and I guarantee you’ll sell it for twice what I’m asking.”
“There’s an inscription inside. In Hebrew script.”
“Is she anti-Semitic?”
“No.”
“Then you should think of that as a guarantee of absolute quality. No Jew would put a cheap ring on her finger.”
“Yes, but what does it mean?”
Manfred took the ring, put a glass to his eye, and scrutinized the inscription.
“It’s from the book of Jeremiah. It says, ‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you.’”
It seemed appropriate.
That night I arranged to meet Kirsten at Kempinski’s on the Kurfürstendamm. Unusually, in spite of being Aryanized and there being little on the menu, the place still managed to feel like a decent restaurant. I’d decided to ask her to marry me without mentioning anything of what Goebbels had told me; she was a nice girl and I figured she deserved to think that I was asking her for all the right reasons, instead of a desire to keep her out of the hands of the Gestapo. I was just about to put the question to her when the rise and fall of air-raid warning sirens sent us running to the nearest shelter; and it was down there I finally got around to proposing marriage.