Dishonour

Ruhrgebiet, Germany

Autumn 1939

Scarlet flags bedecking the Police Station hang from its gutters, all the way down to brackets each side of the entrance doors. They billow in the breeze, like sails on a battleship making headway across the dusty square to bombard the colliery administration buildings opposite. The acreage of flapping silk and sunlit pink-rendered facade make Paul’s eyes water as he crosses the road from the tram stop. Climbing the front steps, he keeps his gaze down, watching criss-crossing shadows cast by the great pit-head wheels spinning behind him.

Paul’s is the third of seven small, glass-walled offices that flank the Criminal Investigations briefing room, two of them already opaque with shifting cigarette smoke. As soon as he passes the labouring Xerox machine, he can see whether anything new has been left on his desk. This morning there are no files that weren’t there yesterday, but an official-looking envelope has been stuck into the keys of his typewriter, as though piercing it through the heart.

The envelope is made of that cheap grey paper Supplies have started ordering since the war began. It must contain pulped old newspapers, because sometimes a disconnected phrase still floats in the rough texture, perplexing the Xerox machine. When Paul extracts it from the keyboard, its sharp chemical smell undercuts the office’s homely sweat-and-tobacco-smoke reek. One of its corners has been stained black by the typewriter’s filthy innards.

Envelopes like this rarely contain anything good. Paul lays it aside to be looked at later, after coffee break, and turns his attention to the unfinished document still in his typewriter. It’s the fair copy of a statement he took yesterday from a miner’s wife in the colliery tenements, reporting the theft of a pound of smoked pork from her larder. She’d been outside on the green at the time, hanging up some whites. An unexpected fair wind was blowing the coal dust away from town for once.

When he’s finished the statement, Paul picks up the envelope, now seeming as good a time as any to face whatever it contains. He turns it over, pocket knife ready in one hand. As expected, his name is typed in the middle,

“Hauptwachtmeister Paul Werner, Criminal Investigations Dept. Room 105.”

The typist has hit the “0” key so hard that the middle of the figure has been struck away, leaving a tiny hole in the envelope through which better quality white paper can be glimpsed. But that isn’t what catches Paul’s attention. There’s a letterhead in thick gothic letters printed at the top right-hand corner.

“Geheime Staatspolizei.”

“Secret State Police.”

The Gestapo.

The superintendent, Kriminalrat Fegers, is in his office scribbling notes for the morning’s departmental meeting. As is often the case at this early hour, he’s left the door open. When Paul knocks, Fegers looks up through a red haze of cigarette smoke that glows in the rippling light behind the flags.

“Morning Werner.” He pushes his spectacles down his nose and squints at Paul over the frame. “What’s the mater?”

Paul is finding it difficult to breathe. He leans on the doorpost until an oncoming wave of dizziness abates.

“This letter sir. It’s from the Gestapo.”

Fegers frowns, holding out a hand.

“Give it to me.”

Peculiar lights are encroaching around the periphery of Paul’s vision and his hands are going numb. He grips a corner of Fegers’ desk to steady himself. The superintendent gestures to a chair with the penknife he’s just used to slit open the grey envelope.

“Sit, Werner. I won’t have you keeling over in here.” Returning his spectacles to their proper position, he unfolds the letter. His brown and white moustache twitches while he reads it. He sighs when he meets Paul’s eyes again.

“I’m sorry Werner. It was this or let them investigate you. You wouldn’t want that.”

It’s some time until the typed letter in Paul’s hands will remain still enough to see. Even then, it takes a second and third reading to make sense of what’s written on it.

Yesterday’s date is at the top of the page.

“Your service is required by the Geheime Staatspolizei with immediate effect. You have been assigned the rank of Kriminal Oberassistent. Report to Room 207 at 8am tomorrow morning.

It’s signed ‘Krahnendonk, Kriminal Sekretär.’

Room 207 used to be the personnel department before it moved to rooms in the basement. Here, pretty secretaries with shiny red lipstick once propped their chins on scarlet-nailed hands and smiled at younger Paul when they stamped his overtime claims. He hasn’t been up here since they left. It’s not that the hallway has been abandoned. The walls are freshly painted in regulation khaki-green, and his shoes squeak on shiny black linoleum that smells of floor polish. Nevertheless, without the secretaries’ feminine laughter, and clicking high heels, electric clocks in the empty waiting bays seem to tick louder than the ones downstairs, and cigarette smoke leaks under the doors instead of the secretaries’ floral perfume.

There are spaces for two nameplates in the metal frame on 207’s doorpost, but only one is occupied. The printed card has a fresh look, and there’s a whiff of ink when Paul bends to read it.

“Kriminalsekretär Walter Krahnendonk, Head of Department”

Inside, personnel’s reception counter is still there, and the wooden card index drawers that line the back wall, but the secretaries’ jungle of ferns and spider plants has disappeared from the windowsills. Instead, piles of paperwork curl and yellow in alternate extremes of baking sun and dripping condensation. Glimpses of white rings in free spaces on the woodwork are the only signs that the flowerpots were once there. Overhead, the Gestapo’s snappy modern motto blares from a recently whitewashed wall in angular black gothic script:

“Meine Ehre ist Treue”

“My honour is loyalty”

In the paint underneath, morning sunshine picks out the shapes of letters spelling the old police motto, a ghostly reminder of how things used to be.

“Schützen und dienen”

“To protect and serve”

There’s only one man here. He crouches over the typewriter at a front desk cluttered with files. Lean, vein-roped arms emerge from his rolled-up shirtsleeves and a hard, narrow face with close-set eyes swings round when Paul comes in. A lit cigarette smoulders in one corner of a wide, downturned mouth. Paul offers his best stiff-armed salute.

“Heil Hitler. Herr Krahnendonk?”

Krahnendonk removes the cigarette from his mouth and taps the ash into an overloaded tin ashtray at his elbow. No handshake or answering salute is offered.

“You’ll be Werner then. Should have been here half an hour ago.”

Krahnendonk’s speech is a grating rural brogue from the border lands up north, where Germany sticks its toe deep into the mud of the Dutch polders.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see your letter until this morning.”

Krahnendonk sucks the last bit of life from his cigarette. He blows a column of smoke towards a desk by the window, empty except for a typewriter and a small metal disc. Sun glints on a four-figure number stamped into the steel.

“That’s yours. Go and put on a suit. Dress code’s plainclothes here.”

Paul glances down at the comfortable Prussian Blue uniform he’s worn every day these past fifteen years. The jacket is the same one he collected from the stores for his passing-out parade.

“Herr Krahnendonk, there must have been a mistake. I’m not the right man for this.”

Krahnendonk lights a fresh cigarette, blowing smoke up to to a burgeoning yellow patch on the ceiling. One of the files on his desk has a passport photograph stapled to the front. A new qualm of unease twists around Paul’s insides when he recognises the face as his own. Krahnendonk turns the folder round for Paul to see.

“That’s you there, in’t it?”

He leans back in his chair, fingers laced behind his head, revealing two damp patches on the underarm seams of his shirt. He nods to the folder with Paul’s photograph.

“Been having a look in there.” One corner of his mouth lifts, creasing the skin around it. “You used to be Union shop steward for this nick didn’t you?”

The sensation in Paul’s guts becomes more noticeable.

“Until the law banning Trade Unions was passed, yes.”

Krahnendonk coughs out a dry bark of laughter.

“Weren’t you treasurer of some commie Union Federation as well?”

The words go down like an accidental gulp of sour milk on Paul’s already disturbed stomach. He swallows hard, straightening his back, as though on the parade ground. He takes a breath to reply but Krahnendonk interrupts before he can speak.

“Best keep your mouth shut and make yourself useful Werner. Unless you fancy a stay in one of them camps.” He turns back to whatever he’s typing. “Go and get changed. We’re out in the field this afternoon. North End Road by the pond. Twelve sharp. Customs checkpoint.”

Downstairs in Criminal, Fegers and the comrades watch in silence from behind their desks as Paul strides through the briefing room with a cardboard box. With one stroke, he sweeps everything except the typewriter from the top of his desk. Pencils, framed photographs of Anni with the children, notepaper, and a penknife clatter into the box and are splashed with dregs of coffee from the tin mug he tosses on top. He pulls out the upper drawer and upends it, followed by the lower one. Last of all comes a well-worn red-bound book. Coffee cup rings stain its cover, and markers made from string and bits of torn newspaper hang from its dog-eared pages.

“A Layman’s Handbook of Public Service Law by Dr Anton Landauer.”

Paul resists the temptation to slip the Handbook into his inside pocket. The days when he could produce it at hearings on behalf of embattled colleagues are long gone. Banned now, the book should have been burned six years ago, but the regulations listed in it still stand. Perhaps a way out of the Gestapo is buried somewhere among its footnotes. He lets it slide down and vanish in the depths of the box.

The damp cardboard is heavy now, in danger of tearing. Paul swings it onto his shoulder and spins away, letting the door slam shut behind him.

An intoxicating meaty aroma pervades the outer hallway where Paul leaves his shoes by the family’s front door. His shiny black brogues take their place a row of small rubber boots and gym shoes in assorted sizes. As he passes the kitchen door, his mother-in-law hails him, her broad hips resting against the dresser while she watches Hermann lining up toy cars under the table. The big soup pot bubbles on the gas stove behind her.

“Hallo Paul love. Is that you back already?”

“I’m not staying.”

When Hermann looks up at him, there’s hope in that small tired face.

“Papa? Oma won’t put the baby back in Mama’s belly. Can you?”

Paul pauses in the doorway. No-one has combed Hermann’s hair this morning. Tangled feathers of it stick out at the back where he’s rubbed it, the way he always does when he’s sleepy. Under his eyes, pale round cheeks are scored by dark half-circles.

“I’m sorry son. I can’t stay now. We’ll see about reading a story after dinner.”

In the bedroom, Anni’s bulk is supported by pillows and the cushions from the living room sofa. Her yellowish birth-pallor is beginning to recede, two spots of pink that weren’t there this morning spreading over her cheeks. She’s cradling the new baby in her arms, one blue-veined breast hanging from the unbuttoned front of her nightdress. The only difference from early this morning is that she’s sitting up now. She calls to Paul without raising her eyes from the baby.

“Come quick. Say hello to him. He’s awake.”

Paul doesn’t answer. He opens the wardrobe, pushing everyday clothing aside to reach something wrapped in muslin on the far side, behind Anni’s long-outgrown wedding dress. He tosses the package onto his side of the bed and begins opening the safety pins holding the camphor-infused outer layers in place. Anni still hasn’t looked at him.

“Quick. He’s smiling. Oh, you missed it. It was a proper smile. Not just wind.”

Anni reaches for a checked cotton cloth marked “Marie Lina Colliery” that’s lying on the bedside table. She slings the towel over her shoulder and hoists the baby into position over it to be jogged and patted. At last, she turns a flushed face to watch Paul removing safety pins from the muslin coverings, unwrapping fine dark-grey cloth.

“What you doing with that? Going to a funeral?”

“I have to wear plainclothes this afternoon.”

Her smile reveals the gap left by a recently lost tooth, victim of this latest pregnancy.

“Oh good. You’ll look nice for a change.” As she continues to stare at him, her placid expression is ruffled by a frown. “What you got that face on for?”

The pins are all undone now, Paul’s wedding suit spreadeagled on the bed, its mothball smell filling the room.

“They transferred me. To the Gestapo.”

Anni’s patting hand, hardly smaller than the baby’s back, stops in mid-air. A pantomime of disbelief plays across her face, and her voice rises an octave higher than usual.

“The Gestapo?”

Paul pulls the envelope from his inside pocket and tosses it to her.

“They left me this yesterday.”

He plucks his new son from her shoulder, and holding the rank-smelling infant at a safe distance from his shirt, carries him into the kitchen. Hermann, a recent convert to the use of a water closet, gives a passable imitation of choking.

“He stinks.”

Mutti welcomes her latest grandson with open arms.

“Does the little mouse need a change? Come to Oma my sweetheart. Mustn’t get Papa’s nice uniform dirty. Oma will clean you up.”

When Paul returns to the bedroom, Anni is running her fingers over the printing at the top of the letter.

“Look at this nice letterhead. Really distinguished.” She gazes up at him. He can’t remember the last time her smile was bestowed on him alone like this. “Imagine my Pauli being chosen for the Gestapo. What a thing. Wait till they hear about it at church. Mind you, it’s about time you got something decent. You always get overlooked.”

Paul sits down on the bed beside her. She shifts her legs to make space for him.

“I don’t want this. I’ll apply to be transferred back.”

Anni scowls. Her feet under the bedclothes push hard at his thigh.

“Oh for goodness’ sake. You never like new things, do you? You’d go backwards if you could.”