A Small Death in Lisbon. Robert Thomas Wilson

are ruthless and aggressive. But you must not be insubordinate, Felsen. In your business you might lose an hour’s production because somebody didn’t follow your orders. In the business of war it could be a thousand lives or more. There’s no place for the maverick. Control is the key. And I am in control,’ he said, swilling the brandy in his glass. ‘So why don’t you want this job?’

      ‘I don’t want to leave Berlin, sir. I have a factory to run.’

      ‘At least it’s not a girl.’

      ‘I’ve produced quality goods and I’ve shown my appreciation.’

      ‘Don’t start on a different question. What’s in Berlin for a Swabian like you apart from your factory? We’re not talking about Paris or Rome. It’s not a city you can fall in love with. Not like Nuremberg, my city. And Berliners? . . . My God, they think the world owes them a living.’

      ‘Maybe I like their sense of humour.’

      ‘Yes, well, you’ve always been a bit dry down in Swabia.’

      ‘I don’t follow you, sir,’ said Felsen, touchy.

      ‘Trampled to death by a pig. What was that?’

      Felsen didn’t respond.

      ‘Do you think I don’t know about your father?’ said Lehrer.

      ‘Yes, well, there you have two examples of Swabian humour.’

      ‘It gave me a problem, Hanke thought you were psychologically unsuitable.’

      ‘I should have tried harder with him.’

      Lehrer leaned across the table, his face flushed with wine, his breath sour and cigar-streaked.

      ‘This job is a big opportunity for you . . . a big opportunity . . . You will thank me for it. I know you will thank me.’

      ‘Then why don’t you tell me about it, sir?’

      ‘Not yet. Tomorrow. You’ll come to Lichterfelde. I’ll have you sworn in first.’

      ‘Into the SS?’

      ‘Of course,’ said Lehrer, until he saw Felsen’s frozen face. ‘Don’t worry, you’re going west, not east.’

      They drove slowly north through the fresh snow back to Berlin. That familiar smell had been the Lichterfelde barracks. On the few occasions a car passed in the other direction Felsen could see the shadows of the officers in the car in front, passing the girl between them. Lehrer didn’t speak. It stopped snowing. They cruised into Berlin and the first car peeled off to the Tiergarten and Moabit. Lehrer ordered the driver to do a small circuit of the city. Felsen stared out into the dark, the black parks, the flak towers, the lightless houses, the silent Anhalter station.

      ‘It’s the nature of war,’ said Lehrer, ‘that things happen. More things happen than could possibly happen in peacetime. In that respect it’s the most exciting time of a man’s life. One moment you’re running a factory, making more money than you could ever dream of as a farmer in Swabia. You dance with girls in the Golden Horseshoe, watch the shows in the Frasquita, walk the Kufu with all the other monied bastards. And the next moment . . .’

      ‘I’m in Prinz Albrechtstrasse.’

      ‘A new and radical regime must protect itself. Strength through fear.’

      ‘And the next moment . . . go on.’

      ‘Think international. Germany is not just Germany any more. Germany is the whole of Europe. A world power. Political and economic. Don’t be small-minded.’

      ‘It’s my peasant mentality. It’s how I get things done for the money.’

      ‘That’s good, but see the big picture too. The Reichsführer Himmler wants the SS to be an economic power in its own right within the new Germanic Reich. Think about that.’

      The car finally turned into Nürnbergerstrasse and pulled up outside Felsen’s apartment. He got out and went up the two flights of stairs and found his front door repaired. He let himself in and lit one of his own cigarettes. He looked from behind the blackout and found the car gone. He put on a coat and hat and went out into the night.

      It was a short walk to Kurfürstenstrasse. He walked in the street where it was easier. There was nobody out. The temperature had dropped sharply.

      Felsen went down the small lane at the side of Eva’s apartment building and in through the gate. The mounds of earth and rubble taken out of the cellar were covered in thick snow. The door was locked. He hammered on it and stepped back and up on to one of the mounds to see if there were any cracks of light around the windows. He roared her name. After a few moments someone opened a window and told him to shut his drunken talk.

      He went back home, soaked in a bath and got into bed. It was 2.30 a.m. He’d call her in the morning, he thought, as he drifted into his first hour’s sleep. He came awake four times, each time with a rush and a crack in his head as if he’d been hit with a brick. There was the smell of shit in his nostrils, and the last frames of his dream stayed with him; the white of the widening parade ground lengthening out for ever. He had to put the light on after that.

Chapter III

      26th February 1941, SS Barracks, Unter den Eichen, Berlin-Lichterfelde.

      Felsen sat in the polished corridor outside Lehrer’s office, watching two soldiers in vests and fatigues cleaning the corners with brushes too small for the job. Twice in the last fifteen minutes a sergeant had dropped by to kick their arses and salute Felsen, who was sitting uncomfortably in the uniform of an SS-Hauptsturmführer.

      An adjutant came out of Lehrer’s office and waved him in. Felsen saluted the Gruppenführer. Lehrer nodded him into in a high-backed chair on the other side of a desk with black leather inlay. Felsen took out his cigarettes, screwed one in his mouth and Lehrer reminded him that permission was required to smoke in front of a superior officer.

      ‘You’ll get used to it,’ said Lehrer. ‘You’ll even grow to like it.’

      ‘I’m not sure how.’

      ‘The greatest burden . . .’ he said, fixing him with the glare of his full authority, ‘the true burden, which is responsibility, is the cast-iron yoke across my shoulders. Your actions are an added weight. You, on the other hand, have the lightness of being of a man unencumbered in the field.’

      ‘Following orders.’

      ‘You’ll find yourself with more of a free hand than most.’

      ‘Now that I’m a fully paid up member of the SS . . .’

      ‘It’s only a mark a month off your salary and it all goes into the Spargemeinschaft-SS so you can draw interest-free loans and . . .’

      ‘A mark a month isn’t my problem. What am I being paid to do? Am I allowed to know yet?’

      ‘I wasn’t trying to bore you Hauptsturmführer Felsen, I was merely trying to give you a practical instance of what I’ve been talking about . . . what I mentioned in the car last night.’

      ‘The SS as an economic power in the new Germanic Reich, spreading from the North Cape of Scandinavia to the Pyrenees and the tip of the Brest Peninsula to Lublin.’

      ‘Don’t leave out Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, the Ukraine, the Black Sea states and on and on and on,’ said Lehrer. ‘The big picture, remember.’

      ‘I’ll settle for a thumbnail sketch for the moment. It’s the peasant brain, sir.’

      ‘You probably know the SS runs various businesses.’

      ‘I’ve only supplied couplings to the railways which are heavily used by the SS, but I don’t know much about their other business