A Man Without Breath

From my window I had a nice view of the St Georg’s cemetery, but I didn’t mind that: the state hospital faces the Bohmisches Brewery on the other side of Landsberger Allee, which means there’s always a strong smell of hops in the air. I can’t think of a better way to encourage a Berliner’s recovery than the smell of German beer. Not that we saw much of it in the city’s bars: most of the beer brewed in Berlin went straight to our brave boys on the Russian front. But I can’t say that I grudged them a couple of brews. After Stalingrad I expect they needed a taste of home to keep their spirits up. There wasn’t a great deal else to keep a man’s spirits up in the winter of 1943.

Either way I was better off than Siv Meyer and her sisters, who were all dead. The only survivors of that night were me and Franz, who was in the Jewish Hospital. Where else? The bigger surprise was that there was a Jewish Hospital in the first place.

I was not without visitors. Renata Matter came to see me. It was Renata who told me my own home was undamaged and who gave me the news about the Meyer sisters. She was pretty upset about it too, and being a good Roman Catholic she had already spent the morning praying for their souls. She seemed just as upset by the news that the priest of St Hedwig’s, Bernhard Lichtenberg, had been put in prison and seemed likely to be sent to Dachau where – according to her – more than two thousand priests were already incarcerated. Two thousand priests in Dachau was a depressing thought. That’s the thing about hospital visitors: sometimes you wish they simply hadn’t bothered to come along and try to cheer you up.

This was certainly how I felt about my other visitor, a commissar from the Gestapo called Werner Sachse. I knew Sachse from the Alex, and in truth he wasn’t a bad fellow for a Gestapo officer, but I knew he wasn’t there to bring me the gift of a Stollen and an encouraging word. He wore hair as neat as the lines in a carpenter’s notebook, a black leather coat that creaked like snow under your feet when he moved, and a black hat and black tie that made me uncomfortable.

‘I’ll have the brass handles and the satin lining please,’ I said. ‘And an open casket, I think.’

Sachse’s face looked puzzled.

‘I guess your pay grade doesn’t run to black humour. Just black ties and coats.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ He shrugged. ‘We have our jokes in the Gestapo.’

‘Sure you do. Only they’re called evidence for the People’s Court in Moabit.’

‘I like you Gunther, so you won’t mind if I warn you about making jokes like that. Especially after Stalingrad. These days it’s called “undermining defensive strength” and they cut your head off for it. Last year they beheaded three people a day for making jokes like that.’

‘Haven’t you heard? I’m sick. I’ve got concussion. I can hardly breathe. I’m not myself. If they cut my head off I probably wouldn’t notice anyway. That’s my defence if this comes to court. What is your pay grade anyway, Werner?’

‘A3. Why do you ask?’

‘I was just wondering why a man who makes six hundred marks a week would come all this way to warn me about undermining our defensive strength – assuming such a thing actually exists after Stalingrad.’

‘It was just a friendly warning. In passing. But that’s not why I’m here, Gunther.’

‘I can’t imagine you’re here to confess to a war crime, Werner. Not yet, anyway.’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘I wonder how far we could get with that before they cut off both our heads?’

‘Tell me about Franz Meyer.’

‘He’s sick, too.’

‘Yes, I know. I just came from the Jewish Hospital.’

‘How is he?’

Sachse shook his head. ‘Doing really well. He’s in a coma.’

‘You see? I was right. Your pay grade doesn’t run to humour. These days you need to be at least a Kriminalrat before they allow you to make jokes that are actually funny.’

‘The Meyers were under surveillance, did you know that?’

‘No. I wasn’t there long enough to notice. Not with Klara around. She was a real beauty.’

‘Yes, it’s too bad about her, I agree.’ He paused. ‘You were in their apartment, twice. On the Sunday and then the Monday evening.’

‘That’s correct. Hey, I don’t suppose the V-men who were watching the Meyers got killed, too?’

‘No. They’re still alive.’

‘Pity.’

‘But who says they were V-men? This wasn’t an undercover operation. I expect the Meyers knew they were being watched, even if you were too dumb to notice.’

He lit a couple of cigarettes and put one in my mouth.

‘Thanks, Werner.’

‘Look, you big dumb ugly bastard, you might as well know it was me and some of the other lads from the Gestapo who found you and pulled you off that pile of rubble before the chimney came down. It was the Gestapo who saved your life, Gunther. So you see we must have a sense of humour. The sensible thing would probably have been to have left you there to get crushed.’

‘Straight?’

‘Straight.’

‘Then thanks. I owe you one.’

‘That’s what I figured. It’s why I’m here asking about Franz Meyer.’

‘All right. I’m listening. Get your klieg light and switch it on.’