‘Players are good.’
‘Your name?’
‘Bullard. Captain Roland Bullard. And yours?’
‘Thomsen. Lieutenant Angelus Thomsen. My English I hope is not too worse?’
‘It’ll do.’
‘I shall bring you Players or Senior Service. I shall bring them yesterday.’
‘… You already brought them tomorrow.’
I walked on for another ten minutes; then I turned and looked. The Buna-Werke — the size of a city. Like Magnetigorsk (a city called Sparkplug) in the USSR. It was due to become the largest and most advanced factory in Europe. When the whole operation came on line, said Burckl, it would need more electricity than Berlin.
So far as the Reich leadership was concerned, Buna promised not just synthetic rubber, not just synthetic fuel. It promised autarky; and autarky, it had been decided, would in turn decide the war.
Early evening in the anteroom (and bar) of the Officers’ Mess: sofas, armchairs, and coffee tables pillaged from the ten thousand Jews and Slavs we booted out of the Old Town two years ago, a handsome kitchen dresser with bottles of wine and spirits ranked up together with the fruit and the flowers, prisoner servants with white smocks over their mattress ticking, various lieutenants and captains, either in the early stages of insobriety or the late stages of recuperation, and a noisy guest contingent of Helferinnen and Special Supervisors, among them Ilse Grese and her new fifteen-year-old protégée, freckly Hedwig, with her pigtails coiled up under her cap.
You could eat here as well as in the dining room, and Boris was opposite me at our low table for two. We were finishing the second and ordering the third round of aperitifs (Russian vodka) and deciding on our appetisers (eighteen oysters each).
He laughed quietly and said, ‘Are you surprised that Ilse’s gone queer on us? I’m not. Tout s’explique. She always said schnell. “Schnell.” Did she say it to you?’
‘Yes. Always. “Schnell.” Now come on, Boris. Schnell.’
‘Well here’s what happened. I know the old prof wouldn’t think so, but it’s really quite funny. What happened was, Bohdan gave the Old Boozer a clout with a gardening tool. That’s how he got his black eyes. An accident, but still.’
‘This is according to who?’
‘According to Bohdan’s Blockaltester. Who got it from Prufer’s adju. Who got it from Prufer. Who got it from the Old Boozer.’
‘So. This is all according to the Old Boozer. And what became of Bohdan?’
‘Golo. Why bother to ask. A Haftling can’t brain the Commandant and expect to walk away. Imagine if it got around. And there’s also petty revenge of course. You should take a lesson from this. Don’t mess with the Old Boozer.’
‘How long before they came for him? Bohdan.’
‘That same night. Slung him in with the next trainload. And guess what. Before he knocked off work in the garden Bohdan mushed the children’s pet tortoise. With the flat of his shovel.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he knew he was for it.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Bohdan Szozeck was a professor of zoology. He looked like an old poet. Anyway, what do I tell Hannah? Finally.’
‘You could have done all this yourself. I’ll show you who to ask. You don’t even have to bribe her. Just a few smokes for her pains.’
‘What do I tell Hannah?’
‘Tell her what I’m telling you. Tell her it’s Doll’s version, but the only thing you know for sure is that Bohdan’s grave is in the sky… Look at Ilse. Christ, her tomboy can’t be any older than Esther.’
I said, ‘Is Esther behaving? How’d you get her out?’
‘Thanks for offering by the way, brother, but money’s no good here any more. There’s too much of it swilling around. It’s like the Inflation. Because of all the jewellery. With Off I bid a thousand RM. The little slag wanted ten. I’d already given five hundred to that old prick in the Postzensurstelle. So I said, Let her out or here and now I’ll break your face.’
‘Boris.’
‘I couldn’t think what else to do. The car was waiting.’
We both had our eyes on Ilse, who seemed to be teaching Hedwig how to waltz.
Boris said, ‘Well. There goes our Friday-night fuck in Berlin.’
This was a colloquial reference to the recent edict which forbade the running of baths, in the Reich capital, except on Saturdays and Sundays.
‘I’m in her bad books as it is.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Bit shaming. Let’s leave it for now. Alisz Seisser was the one I fancied… You know, Golo, today I came in at the end of a Behandlung.’
‘Ah. I thought you seemed a bit — a bit manic.’
‘The end of a Behandlung. You should see the way they get stacked.’
‘Quieter, Boris.’
‘Stacked upright. Sardinenpackung, only vertical. Vertical sardines. They’re treading on each other’s insteps. In a single wedge. With toddlers and babies slotted in at shoulder height.’
‘Quieter.’
‘That’s thrift, that is. Zyklon B’s cheaper than bullets. That’s all it is.’
A meaty face at the adjacent table swung round and stared.
Boris, of course, stared back. He said loudly, ‘What? What?… Oh. It’s the merry beggar, is it? You like pissing money away, do you?’
And the face stared on but then withdrew.
‘Remember, Golo,’ he said more quietly. ‘With Hannah. You’re her only friend. Work on that. But listen. Treat her like a wine. Lay her down.’
‘She can’t come to my place,’ I said, ‘but there’s this little hotel behind the castle. It’s down an alley. An enormous bribe would do it. And, all right, the rooms aren’t perfect but they’re reasonably clean. The Zotar.’
‘Golo.’
‘I know it’s in her.’
The main course was baby chicken with garden peas and new potatoes, served with a sanguinary burgundy, followed by peaches and cream and a glass or two of still champagne. Then Calvados with the walnuts and tangerines. Boris and I were by now the soberest German males in the room, and we were both very drunk.
‘A single mouthful,’ said Boris gravely. ‘How many prisoners here? Seventy thousand? Ninety-nine per cent of them would drop down dead after a single mouthful of what we’ve had tonight.’
‘That occurred to me too.’
‘I feel like beating someone up.’
‘Not again, Boris. Not so soon.’
‘I’m champing, see. I want to go east.’ He looked around. ‘Yes, I want a fight, and I want a fight with someone good. So it lasts longer.’
‘You won’t get any takers here. After what you did to Troost.’
‘It doesn’t work like that. There’s always some fat bastard who’s heard about me and is suddenly feeling brave. Him for instance. The farmerboy by the mantelpiece.’
When we were twelve years old Boris and I had a shouting match that turned physical — and I couldn’t believe the passion of the violence that came at me. It was like being run over by a frenzied but also somehow self-righteous combine harvester. My first thought when I finally got back to my feet was this: Boris must have always hated me very much. But it wasn’t so. Later he wept, and stroked my shoulder, and kept on saying and saying how sorry he was.
‘Golo, I had a kind of uh, anti-eureka in Goleschau. I heard… I heard that they were killing psychiatric patients in Konigsberg. Why? To clear bedspace. Who for? For all the men who’d cracked up killing women and children in Poland and Russia. I thought, Mm, all is not quite as it should be in the state of Deutschland. Excuse me for a moment, my dear.’