‘Who are you?’
The Kapo looked me up and down. And who was I, for that matter, with my height, my frosty blue eyes, my landowner’s tweeds, my Obersturmfuhrer armband?
‘Name.’
‘Stumpfegger. Sir.’
‘Well leave us, Stumpfegger.’
As he turned to go he made a half gesture, raising his arm for a moment and then letting it drop. It seemed to me that he wanted to pass a proprietorial hand over the fuzz of the boy’s black hair.
‘Dov, walk with me a while,’ I said carefully. ‘Master Dov Cohn, I want to talk to you about Bohdan Szozeck. You may be unable to help me, but you should not be unwilling to help me. No harm will come to you because of it. And some good will come of it whether you help me or not.’ I took out a pack of Camels. ‘Have five.’ What was the value of five American cigarettes — five bread rations, ten? ‘Salt them away somewhere.’
For several paces the boy had been rhythmically nodding his head, and I started to feel almost sure he would give me my answer. We halted, under the ensnared lamps. It was now night, and the black sky very faintly crepitated with coming rain or coming snow.
‘How did you end up here? Relax. Have some of this first.’
It was a Hershey bar. Time slowed… Carefully Dov freed the cellophane wrapping, stared for a moment, and gave the brown nub a reverent lick. I watched. He would be an artist with this delicacy; it would probably take him a week to carve it to nothing with his tongue… Hannah had talked about Dov’s eyes: rich dark grey, and perfectly round, with little inlets on the line of the diameter. Eyes made for innocence, and confirmed in innocence, but now protuberant with experience.
‘You’re German. Where from?’
In a firm voice that nonetheless occasionally leapfrogged an octave, he told me his story. It was unexceptional. Flushed out of a Jews’ House in Dresden, along with the rest of his family, in the autumn of ’41; a month in the holding camp of Theresienstadt; the second transport; the leftward selection, on the spur, of his mother, four younger sisters, three grandparents, two aunts, and eight younger cousins; the survival of his father and two uncles for the usual three months (digging drainage ditches); and then Dov was alone.
‘So who looks out for you? Stumpfegger?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, with reluctance. ‘Stumpfegger.’
‘And Professor Szozeck for a while.’
‘Him too, but he’s gone.’
‘D’you know where?’
After a still moment Dov again started nodding.
‘Bohdan walked here from the Stammlager to say goodbye. And to warn me not to go looking for him at the villa. Then he went back. He was waiting. He was sure they’d come.’
Dov knew everything.
On his last morning, Bohdan Szozeck went to the Ka Be (to have the dressing changed on his infected knee) and got to the villa garden later than usual, about half past nine. He was in the conservatory when the Commandant, with one hand pressed to his face, came reeling out of the glass doors of the breakfast room — in pyjamas. At first (and here I felt stirrings on the back of my scalp) Bohdan thought that Doll, swaying there in his blue and white stripes, was a prisoner: a Zugang (his stomach still fat, his clothes still clean), drunk or mad or just wildly disorientated. Then Doll must have caught sight of the tortoise as it inched across the lawn; he picked up the shovel and brought the flat blade down full strength on its carapace.
‘And he fell over, sir. On the gravel — really hard. Backwards. His pyjama bottoms, they’d come undone and tripped him up. And he fell over.’
I said, ‘Did Doll see the professor?’
‘He should’ve hid. Why didn’t he hide, sir? Bohdan should’ve hid.’
‘What did he do?’
With a pleading face Dov said, ‘He went out and helped him up. And put him on a stool in the shade. And fetched him a bottle of water. Then the Commandant waved him away.’
‘So…’ I considered. ‘Bohdan knew. You said he knew they’d come for him.’
‘Naturlich. Selbstverstandlich.’
‘Because?’
His eyes were exophthalmic with all they knew.
‘Because he was there when the Commandant showed weakness. He saw the Commandant cry.’
We walked back up the slight slope of the defile. Halfway to his Block I gave him the rest of the Camels plus ten US dollars.
‘You’ll put that somewhere safe.’
‘Of course,’ he said (almost with indignation).
‘Wait. Does Doll know you were Bohdan’s friend?’
‘Don’t think so. I only went to the garden twice.’
‘… Okay. Now, Dov, this is our secret, all right?’
‘But sir. Please. What should I tell him?’
‘The Blockaltester?’
‘He doesn’t care. No. What should I tell Stumpfegger? He’ll want to know what we talked about.’
‘Tell him…’ I must have been thinking about this, on some level, because the answer was ready and waiting. ‘All day yesterday at the Stammlager,’ I said, ‘there was a man standing in the corridor between the wire and the fence. A Kapo. In handcuffs. He had a sign hanging from his neck. It said Tagesmutter. Kleinaugen. You know what that means?’
Dov knew.
‘Tell Stumpfegger that I put him there. Tell him I’m conducting an investigation ordered by Berlin. Can you tell him that?’
He smiled and thanked me and hastened off into the dusk.
And into the snow. The first grey snow of the autumn, grey snow, the colour of ash, the colour of Dov’s eyes.
Tagesmutter. Kleinaugen. Childminder. Short Eyes.
It seemed to be intermittent and non-systematic, but I was being followed. Being followed had happened to me often enough when I worked for Military Intelligence (the Abwehr), and you quickly developed a subsense for it. When you were being followed, you felt as if an invisible string connected you and your monitor, your sharer: depending on the intervening distance, you felt it loosen or tighten. When it was tight: that was when you twisted your head round — and saw, in your wake, a certain figure jolt or stiffen.
The man who walked behind me was a Haftling, in stripes. He was a Kapo (evident from his girth alone), like Stumpfegger, but he wore two triangles, green and red; he was a criminal and a political. This could mean a lot or it could mean almost nothing; it was possible that my shadow was merely a persistent jaywalker who had once shown some interest in democracy. But I didn’t think so — he had a dour, sour look to him, a penitentiary look.
Why was I being followed? Who was the instigator? It was always foolish to underestimate the paranoia of the Geheime Staatspolizei (which here meant Mobius, Horder, Off, etc.), but they would never enlist a prisoner, let alone a political. And the only subversion I had committed so far was the tendering of bad advice.
Common sense pointed to Paul Doll. That there had been illicit contact between Hannah and me was known to only four people: the principals, plus Boris Eltz and the Witness, Humilia. Only two people, then, could have alerted the Commandant — and it wasn’t Boris.
This coming Sunday Hannah and I would both attend a piano recital and drinks party in the Officers’ Club, to honour the signing (with Italy and Japan) of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940. I hoped to be able to tell her that Humilia had been turned.
More promisingly, the day after that, at five-thirty, I was scheduled to bump into Hannah at the Equestrian Academy. I would be feigning an interest in riding lessons. Hannah would be making inquiries about buying or leasing a pony: Paulette and Sybil had their eye on a shaggy Shetlander called Meinrad. In my thoughts I was mapping out a letter; it would be a heavy call on me to write it; I was going to say that for prudential reasons our friendship, or whatever it was, would have to end.