Fatherland

The Chancellery slowly uncoiled as the bus drove by marble pillars and red mosaics, bronze lions, gilded silhouettes, gothic script- a Chinese dragon of a building, asleep at the side of the square. A four-man SS honour guard stood at attention beneath a billowing swastika banner. There were no windows, but set into the wall, five storeys above the ground, was the balcony on which the Fuhrer showed himself on those occasions when a million I people gathered in the Platz. There were a few dozen i sightseers even now, gazing up at the tightly drawn shutters, ! faces pale with expectation, hoping …

March glanced at his son. Pili was transfixed, his little dagger clutched tightly in his hand like a crucifix.

THE coach dropped them back at its pick-up point outside the Berlin-Gotenland railway station. It was after five as they descended from the bus, and the last vestiges of natural light were fading. The day was giving up on itself in disgust.

The entrance to the station was disgorging people — soldiers with kitbags walking with girlfriends and wives, foreign workers with cardboard suitcases and shabby bundles tied with string, settlers emerging after two days’ travelling from the Steppes, staring in shock at the lights and the crowds. Uniforms were everywhere. Dark blue, green, brown, black, grey, khaki. It was like a factory at the end of a shift. There was a factory sound of shunting metal and shrill whistles, and a factory smell of heat and oil, stale air and steel-dust. Exclamation marks clamoured from the walls. “Be vigilant at all times!” “Attention! Report suspicious packages at once!” “Terrorist alert!”

From here, trains as high as houses, with a gauge of four metres, left for the outposts of the German Empire — for Gotenland (formerly the Crimea) and Theoderichshafen (formerly Sevastopol); for the Generalkommissariat of Taurida and its capital, Melitopol; for Volhynia-Podolia, Zhitomir, Kiev, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Karkov, Rostov, Saratov … It was the terminus of a new world. Announcements of arrivals and departures punctuated the “Coriolan Overture” on the public address system. March tried to take Pili’s hand as they wove through the crowd, but the boy shook him away.

It took fifteen minutes to retrieve the car from the underground car park, and another fifteen to get clear of the clogged streets around the station. They drove in silence. It was not until they were almost back at Lichtenrade that Pili suddenly blurted out: “You’re an asocial, aren’t you?”

It was such an odd word to hear on the lips of a ten-year-old, and so carefully pronounced, that March almost laughed out loud. An asocial: one step down from traitor in the Party’s lexicon of crime. A non-contributor to Winter Relief. A non-joiner of the endless National Socialist associations. The NS Skung Federation. The Association of NS Ramblers. The Greater German NS-Motoring Club. The NS Criminal Police Officers Society. He had even one afternoon come across a parade in the Lustgarten organised by the NS-League of Wearers of the Life-Saving Medal.

“That’s nonsense.”

“Uncle Erich says it’s true.”

Erich Helfferich. So he had become “Uncle” Erich now, had he? A zealot of the worst sort, a full-time bureaucrat at the Party’s Berlin headquarters. An officious, bespectacled scout master… March felt his hands tightening on the steering wheel. Helfferich had started seeing Klara a year ago.

“He says you don’t give the Fuhrer-salute and you make jokes about the Party.”

“And how does he know all this?”

“He says there’s a file on you at Party Headquarters and it’s only a matter of time before you’re picked up.” The boy was almost in tears with the shame of it. “I think he’s right.”

“Pili!”

They were drawing up outside the house.

“I hate you.” This was delivered in a calm, flat voice. He got out of the car. March opened his door, ran round and followed him up the path. He could hear a dog barking inside the house.

Pili!” he shouted once more.

The door opened. Klara stood there in the uniform of the NS-Frauenschaft. Lurking behind her, March glimpsed the brown-clad figure of Helfrerich. The dog, a young German shepherd, came running out and leapt up at Pili, who pushed his way past his mother and disappeared into the house. March wanted to follow him, but Klara blocked his path.

“Leave the boy alone. Get out of here. Leave us all alone.”

She caught the dog and dragged it back by its collar. The door slammed on its yelping.

LATER, as he drove back towards the centre of Berlin, March kept thinking about that dog. It was the only living creature in the house, he realised, which was not wearing a uniform.

Had he not felt so miserable, he would have laughed.

FOUR