The Inconvenient German, page 7
‘Listen, Krosius. I’m up to my neck in plots. I’m stretched very thin. The closer the invasion gets, the more nervous my colonel gets. He wants this underground operation shut down. Get me something useful from your Ballitz, or I’ll put you out of business.’
Werner Krosius just smiled.
The Human Factor
You could take all the security measures you wanted – codes, secret names, arcane procedures – but once you were in the underground, there was no sure-fire protection. The human factor was always there, waiting to trip you up. Something always went wrong – a slip of the tongue, a petty feud, a grudge, a lax moment, a lie, a simple misunderstanding – and then suddenly everything was exposed, and the Gestapo pounced.
By now, the Gestapo and SS had expanded their stations even beyond those Clover knew about. And there were nearly fifty Dachau prison camps, so-called sub-camps, throughout Bavaria. Rosenheim had one. The one in Bad Tölz was less than fifteen kilometers from the hut where Charlie and Elke were waiting. On a clear day, you could just make it out in the distant haze if you knew where to look. Gmund, Tutzing, and a dozen more camps lay between them and the border.
In addition to Charlie’s bigotry, another human factor that threatened to get in the way was Joachim Ballitz’s love of foie gras. Ballitz had wanted to punish Dietrich for stealing the foie gras. But how can you punish a fifteen-year-old who runs with a wild crowd and is bigger than you? Once your son knew you weren’t going to hit him, the game was pretty much over.
Dietrich made good use of his newfound advantage over his father. Because Joachim detested Elke so vehemently, Dietrich decided to admire her. The old man would go on and on about how she was living in the basement without paying rent, how dirty she was, how her presence was polluting the building; how she was stealing food, he was sure of it, no matter what anyone said. Dietrich would praise Elke in return, just to get his father’s goat. ‘She’s smart, she’s beautiful, she knows her way around,’ he said. One day, his father was going on about Jews and then started on ‘that little black bitch,’ and Dietrich yelled at him to shut up.
Joachim’s face turned red with rage. ‘How dare you! I forbid such disrespectful impudence in my house!’
Dietrich laughed at him.
Joachim said his son had better not be carrying on with that black bitch. ‘You’ll end up in a concentration camp.’
‘That would be just like you, to turn in your own son,’ said Dietrich.
‘Who said anything about turning you in?’ said Joachim. ‘I’m talking about turning her in.’
‘For being black?’ said Dietrich.
‘For doing whatever she’s doing,’ said Joachim.
‘You don’t have any idea what she’s doing,’ said Dietrich.
Joachim looked hard at Dietrich. ‘You tell me, then,’ he said. ‘What is she doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Dietrich. ‘How should I know? I was just saying …’
‘But you just told me I don’t have any idea what she’s doing, which means you do.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Dietrich. They went back and forth like this a few times, with Dietrich becoming more and more rattled. Until he finally stormed out and slammed the door.
It now seemed to Ballitz that Elke might have enticed his son into some insane adventure. She was years older than Dietrich, but people did all sorts of crazy things these days. And he imagined a scenario where they were involved in a criminal gang. When Werner Krosius showed up after his most recent meeting with Laumann, Joachim offered him the black girl and, to throw the scent off his son, he offered up the warden Adolf Jobst as well. He didn’t really know whether either one was up to anything, but he wanted them both to disappear from his life. Denouncing them might just do the trick.
When Krosius asked whether Ballitz knew how Herr Meier fitted into all this, Joachim Ballitz said, ‘They’re all in it together.’ He waved his arms about to indicate a grand conspiracy too complicated for him to put into words.
‘And the American pilot?’ said Krosius, looking for anything to feed the SS lieutenant.
‘The American pilot?’ said Ballitz. This was the first time he had heard anything about an American pilot.
‘The SS is looking for an American pilot,’ said Krosius. ‘High-ranking, they think, with critical information about the invasion.’
‘Invasion?’ said Ballitz, realizing suddenly that his lies and fabrication had led him on to quicksand. ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about any invasion. Or any American pilot.’
Werner Krosius had gotten more than he could have hoped for from Ballitz. The invasion would happen soon, and when it did, every conspiracy theory would be half right. Krosius reckoned that even an implausible fairy tale would serve his purposes for the immediate future. And if it all turned out not to be true, it would be Ballitz who had given false information, not him. A plausible lie was worth more than the truth. Information only had to seem true to be useful. By the time Ballitz’s information – or rather Krosius’s reconstruction of Ballitz’s information – proved to be untrue, it would already have served its purpose. And if it turned out to be true, then so much the better.
Ballitz was very nervous about what he had just said. So Krosius offered him a jar of foie gras at a very good price. ‘It’s first-rate stuff from the French Perigord. I wouldn’t do this for everyone,’ he said.
Hans Bergemann was one of a few contacts Willi still had in the Munich police department. Willi had asked him about Werner Krosius after Krosius had followed him from Passau. What Bergemann found out seemed worrisome.
‘Until about a year ago, Krosius was a small-time operator,’ said Bergemann. ‘Now he’s expanded his business from food and goods to information. He’s made his customer base into a network of informers. He’s become indispensable to the SS and the Gestapo. The worrisome thing is he knows you, so they know you. Not everything, but enough to be dangerous. He’s got a customer in your building.’
‘Of course,’ said Willi, remembering Ballitz and his fancy food.
Clover
The rain drummed mercilessly on the stone roof and poured off the corners in great gushes. Elke sat in her corner of the hut reading a book. Charlie wiped the fog from the window and scowled out at the pasture. Rivulets of water coursed down the hill, over pasture, over stones, around boulders, running together, gathering strength and volume, joining a larger stream that rushed into the forest below. The pasture was vivid green. The lush grass was tall, and it had been knocked flat by the rushing water.
Elke had brought food with her – bread, cheese, sausage, and some cherries the Zoellners had given her. She had also brought tea. She used a small camping stove to heat water. She put the food on the table and took her share back to her corner.
‘You can eat at the table,’ said Charlie.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m fine here.’ She went back to reading.
Charlie returned to his silence.
Charlie was trying his best not to be sullen or hostile or anything of the kind. But, damn it, she met every effort he made with indifference and hostility. There was only one path to her good graces, as far as he could figure out, and that was to surrender to her authority. He understood that would be like plowing deep furrows across the graves of his ancestors, leaving desecration and ruined ground behind. His parents would never forgive him. He would never forgive himself.
The border seemed far away, but this – the defeat of his own ignorance and prejudice, the rejection of his own past; no, not just his past, but his here and now – seemed beyond imagining. And the colored girl seemed to delight in his misery.
‘What’s your name?’ said Charlie.
‘Clover,’ said Elke, without looking up from her book.
‘No. I mean your real name.’
‘I won’t tell you that,’ she said.
Not I can’t tell you, but I won’t tell you. Her response made him mad. For some reason, he thought of the Red Tails, the black pilots, again. ‘You know there are colored pilots in the American Army.’
Elke looked up from her book.
‘Black American pilots,’ he said.
She did not answer and went back to her book.
What did she want from him? Charlie wondered. He was making every effort to be cordial – against his upbringing, against everything that meant something to him – and she was cold and indifferent.
‘Listen, Clover,’ he said. He pronounced her name with a sneer, but when she looked up from her book again, he didn’t have anything more to say.
‘I’m reading,’ she said. And she turned back to her book. Then she thought a moment and closed the book with her finger marking the page. ‘No. You listen, Captain. You and I have to cooperate and work together if we’re going to get out of here safely, but we don’t have to be friends. Neither one of us even wants to be friends.
‘Maybe you’re sorry you said some of the things you said to me. And, I don’t know, maybe you even want to cooperate. Good. But you’re not the first white man to curse and abuse me. It’s happened over and over, more times than I can count. The things you said were stupid and mean, but I’ve learned not to let such things hurt me. It’s your stupidity, your hatred. It’s your problem. It doesn’t touch me.’
Even Charlie could see, in that moment, that it did touch her. He took some satisfaction from that, and then felt shame for taking satisfaction in hurting her. Still, saying I’m sorry was the last thing he could imagine doing.
She said it for him. ‘Maybe you’re sorry. And now you want to do something about it, something to make things right. Well, you can’t. It’s done, it can’t be …’ She couldn’t find the English. ‘Ungetan.’
‘Undone?’ said Charlie. ‘It can’t be undone.’
‘Yes. It can’t be undone. You want to make yourself feel better. If I’m friendly now, that makes you feel better. Maybe you feel you are doing something good by being friendly. And maybe you think I should be friendly back.’ This was exactly what Charlie thought. ‘But why should I? You want to feel better, and you think I should help you?’ He thought that, too.
‘Maybe you think you’re having a great awakening. I’ve seen people change, but I’ve never seen any great awakenings. People change slow. They change when they work to change. You change by working, not by me working for you. You think talking about black American pilots is work? Why do you want to talk to me about them?’
‘I thought you would like to know that …’
‘I am not a pilot, and I am not American.’
‘But you are black,’ said Charlie.
‘And that makes the pilots and me the same?’
‘I thought you’d be … interested.’ That was a lie, and he knew it as he said it.
‘Are you interested?’ she said.
‘I am,’ said Charlie. ‘They’re damn good pilots.’ Another lie. It even sounded like a lie.
‘And because you think they’re good pilots, you think I should believe in your good intentions?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Charlie, getting angrier. But she was right again.
‘You didn’t have to say it,’ said Elke. ‘Why should I be interested in black pilots?’
He wanted to lash out again but bit his tongue. Then he gave it one last try. ‘Well, you should be proud when your people are good at something.’
She studied him for a long moment before she said, ‘You have a lot of work to do, Captain Herder.’
The Hikers
Elke led the way. She walked with a slow and steady step, and Charlie could tell she had hiked in the mountains before. She could maintain that pace indefinitely without getting out of breath, and he got in step four or five meters behind her.
The path had gotten steep right away at the top of the pasture. Then it led on to stony ground and got steeper still. Little yellow wildflowers had come up among the stones across the slope. The few trees and shrubs were short and gnarled. The path was narrow and switched back and forth. They paused after climbing for thirty minutes and turned to look. The hut’s roof was visible eight hundred meters below. The temperature had dropped and there was a breeze.
They climbed some more, and after a while the hut and the pasture were out of sight. There were no longer any trees, only boulders and stones. The path became harder to see. Occasionally, there was a faded blaze to indicate a change in direction. An hour and a half out, they found themselves in a vast stone field. There were a few grasses and small wildflowers between the stones, but that was the only growth.
They came upon a marker, an iron crucifix. ‘This is where somebody died,’ said Elke.
‘How do you know?’ said Charlie.
‘That’s what they do in the mountains,’ said Elke. ‘They mark where somebody died. Maybe a … a … eine Lawine. A snow slide?’
‘An avalanche?’ said Charlie. He looked up at the steep slope above them.
‘Avalanche. Yes,’ said Elke. ‘Snow. Or stone.’
‘Why is your English so good?’ said Charlie.
‘Because a “colored girl” shouldn’t speak good English?’ said Elke.
Charlie thought about it for a moment. Maybe that was it. But her saying it made him mad. Everything she did made him mad.
They continued up the mountain. The trail was barely visible, and the blazes had all but disappeared. They came to a small pile of stones where another trail crossed theirs. ‘If we have to go this way, this is where we’d turn,’ she said, pointing. ‘Let’s go back.’
It had been a strenuous hike. It was cold, and there was a steady, sharp wind coming across the face of the mountain. The stones were loose. Going down was more difficult than going up. Sometimes their walking would make a stone start rolling down the mountain. It was easy to see how an avalanche might happen.
After what seemed to Charlie like a very long time, the hut came into view below. Elke stopped suddenly and dropped down, signaling with two quick waves of her hand for Charlie to drop, too. ‘Two men,’ she whispered. She took the binoculars from her rucksack and studied the figures. ‘SS,’ she said. ‘They’re trying to get in.’
The wind brought their voices up the mountain, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. The men circled around the hut, trying the door and shutters several times. They were solid and secure, and there was no way in. One of them kicked the door in frustration. Then they sat on the porch smoking. They laughed about something. They ground out their cigarettes on the edge of the porch and dropped the butts. They shouldered their rifles, walked back down the pasture, and disappeared into the woods.
‘What now?’ said Charlie.
‘We wait to be sure they’re really gone,’ said Elke.
And so they sat there watching for someone to emerge from the forest below. The sun was low in the sky, and then it went behind the mountain, turning everything scarlet and purple. The temperature dropped. Charlie pulled the sheepskin from his rucksack and put it on. The moon rose. It was nearly full. They could still see the hut clearly, the pasture, and the dark forest below. They took turns watching.
It was nearly dark when Clover saw a single figure emerge from the forest and make its way to the hut. She peered down through the binoculars. ‘It’s Geranium,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
Fedor was waiting on the porch. They all went inside. As he unloaded provisions from his rucksack, he told them how the SS had questioned the Zoellners about the summer pasture.
Helga Zoellner told them she hadn’t said anything about the Alm because they hadn’t asked. How could they know about summer pastures? they said. Helga said she couldn’t know they didn’t know about summer pastures. How could she know what they knew or didn’t know? The two SS men seemed mollified but still insisted on going up to the Alm. ‘The lieutenant,’ they said.
Jürgen Zoellner grumbled but took them as far as the forest and gave them directions from there. He sent them by a longer route, the route he used when he was bringing up the cows, but they didn’t know that. Geranium came up as soon as he heard from the Zoellners.
Geranium and Clover discussed whether the SS men were likely to return or not, and whether Clover and Charlie would be safe staying in the hut. Geranium thought the SS men would probably not come back. They were lazy and undisciplined. They had left their cigarette butts outside the hut. What kind of soldier did that? In any case, Clover and Charlie should be safe until sunrise.
Clover suggested that they leave early in the day, taking all their things with them, and return in the evening.
The three ate supper without talking further, then slept. The next morning, Charlie, Geranium, and Clover ate the same thing they had eaten the night before: black bread, hard-boiled eggs, and tea.
Geranium was worried. If the invasion didn’t come soon, they would have to move on anyway without the diversion the invasion would have offered. The morning was clear and cold. Geranium shook their hands. He held on a little too long for Charlie’s liking. Then he went back down the mountain. Clover and Charlie packed their rucksacks, slung them on to their backs, and went back up the mountain. They walked more slowly with the loaded rucksacks than they had the day before.
They climbed for much of the morning, past the iron crucifix, to the trail junction where they took the right turn. Clover said it would be a circuitous route, and it was a difficult trail mostly used by hikers. The advantage, she said, was that there was a hiking hut further along. And no one would be using it this early in the season.
‘Who planned the route?’ said Charlie.
‘Geranium and Dandelion,’ said Clover. Geranium was an avid hiker, she said, and knew this part of the country very well.
‘He doesn’t look it,’ said Charlie. ‘Like a hiker, I mean.’
They walked on in silence again. Then Clover said, ‘We have a plan for the first two days out. Contacts, places to hide. Beyond that, we will have to improvise.’
‘How long to the French border?’ said Charlie.
