Mendelssohn is on the Roof (10 page)

During the interval Heydrich’s wife started a
conversation
with him. She questioned him about Berlin as if she were longing to return to the main city of the Reich. She tried to give the impression of being in exile among barbarians here, but her rounded, well-nourished figure suggested that life in the Protectorate suited her well. This time he was careful not to say a word about bombing. He talked about the inner workings of the Reich Chancellery, about the Leader’s cabinet, about receptions organised by Göring in the Karinhalle … And of course also about
Prague. He had come to appreciate its beauties, thanks to his most-competent guide. Even Frank joined the
discussion
about Prague, describing what the city had looked like during the Republic, when he’d fought against the thieving Czech parliament.

‘They stole this theatre from us. They took a theatre dedicated to German art and they degraded it with perverse French drawing-room comedies and yokelish hodgepodges by Czech authors.’

It was clear that hatred and spite were pouring out of Frank, that his words did not reflect the feelings of a ruler and master of the land such as Heydrich but rather those of a person who had finally quenched his desire for revenge.

The adjutants brought refreshments – French wine for the gentlemen and real orangeade for the ladies. They chatted easily in the comfortable box, everyone smiling. Only Heydrich stood to the side, his face expressionless.

When the head of the Central Bureau suddenly appeared, young and full of good spirits, as if exhilarated by the music, Heydrich interrupted the conversation in a commanding voice, without any regard for his guest: ‘I haven’t had a chance to read your report. Is Terezin in full swing? Have all the Czech inhabitants been moved out?’

‘Yes,’ announced the head of the Central Bureau. ‘The order has been carried out, the Czech inhabitants moved, and transports dispatched regularly. Some of them stop just briefly and then continue immediately to the East. The construction of a special Terezin-Bohusovice line is being considered, to facilitate the operation. But the Jews would have to put it up themselves!’

‘Good,’ said Heydrich, and then he thought of another thing. ‘Giesse’ – he turned around – ‘has the statue of that
Jew on the balustrade been torn down? You seem to have forgotten to inform me about it.’

‘I haven’t had a chance to do so, sir, but everything is in order. The statue was torn down this afternoon.’

Heydrich fell silent again. But the mood was spoiled.

Heydrich’s wife complained to the minister: ‘You men can’t stay away from business even in the theatre! And the Jews, on top of everything! Really, people shouldn’t speak of them in polite society.’ The rebuke was aimed at the head of the Central Bureau.

‘You can be sure, madam, that in the nearest future there will be absolutely no need to talk about Jews in any sort of society.’ The head of the Central Bureau smiled and stepped away so that the minister could resume his interrupted conversation.

The head of the Central Bureau looked around the hall which was beginning to fill up again. The gold of uniform and women’s precious jewels glistened everywhere. Some faces were joyfully agitated by the music, others were calm and cheerful. As if there weren’t a war going on at all, as if they had all met here to celebrate a victory, as if they had put on their dress uniforms and ordered their wives to wear their most expensive jewellery. How strange it all was … and at that moment he thought of his most recent trip to the East. He had just returned from there two days ago and now, as he stood in the box decorated with the sovereign emblem of the Reich, it seemed a different world.

A desolate countryside in the rain, a black, barren plain shrouded with smoke and fog, the loading platform of the railway station, the cattle cars out of which staggered the half-suffocated people with stars – men, women and
children with bundles and suitcases. And the SS policemen beating them with clubs, hurrying them along, pushing them into the thick mud and then stamping on them with their heavy studded boots. Cries and blood, screaming children, blows and pistols, the long road to the camp and the dead bodies lying along the roadside. And the smoke from the chimneys pouring out day and night, fog and mud, barbed wire and high towers with machine guns. Dirt and blood, the hiss of gas in tiled chambers that resembled bathrooms, ashes covering the earth, fields of the thousands cremated.

He smiled contentedly. They all pretend they know nothing. They don’t want to know anything. They can’t even bear to hear a word about the Jews. He is happy that he knows what is going on in the East. Heydrich, of course, knows, too, but he never lets on that he is pleased with the good work of his subordinates.

The orchestra was beginning to tune up. It was time to say their goodbyes, above all to the distinguished guest who was returning to Berlin that very night. A little later the sweet music of Mozart rang out through the theatre once again.

K
RUG KNEW THAT the statue must be torn down today. Heydrich forgot nothing. He was not the sort of person to wait for a report from a subordinate. Schlesinger had failed abysmally – now Krug had to take matters into his own hands. He ordered the workmen to stay at Municipal even if they had to wait all night, and he went home to get his wife’s advice. He couldn’t borrow an official car and there was little time left. Fortunately, he didn’t live far away.

His wife was frightened when he burst into the apartment so unexpectedly. She thought they must be sending him to the front. How terrible it would be for her and the children to be alone in this hostile city! Everyone had envied her when her husband got the job in the Protectorate. People said that this country was a paradise on earth, that there was plenty of everything: food, clothes; that German children received fruit, even oranges and lemons! They gave them a nicely furnished apartment with central heating where there truly was everything you could possibly want – modern furniture, nice linens, books in gilded bindings, rugs, paintings, dishes, a refrigerator and kitchen
equipment
. Everything became their property and it cost them almost nothing. They even received toys for Horst and Hildemarie. At first all those beautiful things hadn’t made her happy, because she hadn’t chosen them herself;
somehow
, they seemed to resist the hands of a new owner. Then she grew accustomed to them and felt as if she had owned them for ever.

They told her it was a German city, but it wasn’t German. They lived here as if in a besieged fortress. Everywhere, whether in the lift or at the local shops, she was met with looks full of hate. She saw that everyone detested her, even inanimate objects, stone houses, bridges and parks. As long as her husband was with her he could defend her. But what if he had to leave?

The morning paper which Krug had left as he hurried to his office was lying on the table, waiting for him to finish reading it in the evening. It was folded to the last page, which was covered with military crosses. The death notices. Lately the number had been mounting. If her husband was to fall on the field of honour and glory too, what would become of her then?

But it wasn’t a transfer to the front. Something else was bothering Krug. His wife sighed with relief.

‘A composer, a composer,’ she repeated. ‘That’s very easy. I’m surprised it didn’t occur to you. Don’t you remember the Ohnesorgs – they had dinner at our house a while ago. He’s an official with the same rank as you and comes from a Prague musical family. His brother is a famous pianist and his wife studied at the Prague conservatory – she plays the harpsichord.’

‘But I can’t go to see him at the Protectorate office. That would be very dangerous. I’d have to explain to him what this is about. Who’s to guarantee that it wouldn’t get back to Giesse or Heydrich?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said his wife. ‘I’ll take care of it. Wait right here for me. I’ll run over to see his wife – it’s just around the corner. She knows all the composers and musicians as well as her husband does, and she’s also from Prague. She’ll tell me where that statue is. I’ll make you some real coffee –
that’ll calm you down.’ Coffee was a great rarity and they drank it only on special occasions.

His wife came home before long and immediately spilled out her news. It would be easy to identify the statue; she had written down its description and location. Krug ran to Municipal.

Antonin Becvar and Josef Stankovsky had been sitting in the guardhouse for over two hours, holding the noose. That’s what they’d been told to do. They were waiting for Krug and for further orders. They were rolling cigarettes out of local tobacco.

‘Yeah, sure,’ said Becvar. ‘This statue business is endless. Maybe they’ll send us out on the roof again to look for that statue and it’ll be the wrong one again.’

‘Those Krauts are all crazy,’ Stankovsky reflected aloud. ‘Like that Schlesinger. Now, if he was some kind of official, that would make sense, but he was a working man before, a locksmith. He went crazy, too. I’m telling you, it’s just something inside them, and nothing you can do about it.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Becvar exhaled smoke. ‘They’re a real pain. I’ll tell you something – that Krug is even worse. He’s from the Reich – those are the worst bastards, because if he was a decent person he wouldn’t come crawling here. A decent person always stays in his own home.’

‘Do you know what happened?’ The guard spoke to them through the little window. ‘They fired Schlesinger and he’s going to the front.’

‘You think we don’t know that?’ Stankovsky frowned. ‘We’ve got Krug leading our Wild West round-up. Don’t you see our lasso?’

‘You know, that Schlesinger wasn’t necessarily bad, he
was just totally stupid –’ Becvar chimed in. ‘You didn’t know him the way I did. He kept going to those courses on World View and they went to his head. And then he decided he’d conduct a course for us in Czech so we’d understand the Reich way of thinking. You were lucky you were in Vrsovice that time, but I had to sign up. I’m not going to tell you all the stupid things he lectured about there; I hardly remember a single thing, because I slept through most of it. But once I did have a run-in with him about Gypsies.’

‘What do Gypsies have to do with the Reich World View?’

‘You’re really out of it – Gypsies are very important. So he was telling us about race and Aryans and all, and he said that Jews and Gypsies are a hostile element because they’re not Aryans and that the Leader had expelled them from public life, so nobody is supposed to have anything to do with them. Well, I knew all about the Jews. Don’t we see new announcements about them all the time here at Municipal? But that stuff about Gypsies – that was news to me. See, I once read some kind of book, or maybe it was in a news magazine, I can’t even remember, saying that the Gypsies come from India and that in India they’re Aryans. Somehow the whole thing didn’t make sense to me. So I went and said to Schlesinger: “Those Gypsies come from India, right? So I read somewhere that Indians are Aryans.” Well, you should have seen him begin to yell and scream: “That’s treason! You can be punished severely for that. If the Leader says Gypsies aren’t Aryans, then that’s the way it is and no dimwit is allowed to open his trap about it around here.” After that I never asked him about anything. I preferred to sleep.’

‘Well, since Schlesinger is so well educated, now he’ll
have a chance to pass this information along to his army buddies,’ added Stankovsky. ‘Except I don’t know how much good it will do him when he gets knocked off.’

They chatted a while longer, then they fell silent and dozed a while.

Suddenly Krug burst into the guardhouse and immediately began to yell: ‘
Marsch
! Auf!
’

Krug spoke only German. Becvar and Stankovsky knew hardly any German, but they were used to orders like that.

He hurried them along. They knew where they were going, and they knew what they were supposed to do. On the roof he showed them which statue they were supposed to knock down.

They threw the noose around Mendelssohn’s neck. Then Becvar had an idea.

‘Look, pal, the Kraut’s gone back to the guardhouse, so he can’t see what we do. I’ll tell you what. That statue must be important since they’re making such a fuss about it. We’ve got to knock it down, obviously, but let’s do it really carefully. We can just, like, roll it over, so we don’t break it. And then, when this is all over, our fellows can put it back up again. Okay?’

‘You bet,’ Stankovsky agreed. ‘Let’s go.’

They tugged at the statue carefully. It came down so slowly that only a hand broke off.

‘Who cares about a hand. That doesn’t matter. That can be glued back on.’

Then he called out one of the German words he knew in the direction of the gate:
‘Fertig!
’

Krug looked out. The statue was lying on the floor of the roof. It would not be visible from the street. The order was carried out.

‘Marsch
! Auf!
’ Krug yelled. He hurried to Municipal to make a telephone call.

Becvar and Stankovsky raced out so that Krug couldn’t change his mind and return to inspect the statue. But dusk had fallen by now, and it was hard to see its features. They hurried home. Stankovsky had the rope under his arm.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ asked Becvar.

‘Nothing, but it’s a good pre-war rope, it’s not made of paper. Maybe my old lady will hang clothes from it.’

‘It’s no good for clothes, it’s too thick, she’d never get the clothes-pegs on it. And besides, it belongs to the Reich.’

‘Well, if not for clothes, then it’ll be good for something else. And as for it being the property of the Reich, don’t worry. In all that rush I never gave them a receipt for it. So they’ll never find out I kept it.’

‘See you later,’ said Becvar in parting. They lived in different sections of town.

Krug rushed into the office all in a sweat and grabbed a telephone. It was already late, extremely late. What if Giesse wasn’t in his office? Luckily he remembered that an important visitor was scheduled for today – the Reich minister had arrived. One of the officials must still be on duty. If Giesse wasn’t there, someone else would be who could take messages for Giesse.

He couldn’t get through for a long time. Finally one of Giesse’s assistants answered. Krug told him emphatically that the order given by the Acting Reich Protector had been carried out and that he must get this information to Giesse immediately. The assistant promised that he’d call Giesse at home. He’d surely be home because he was getting ready for a gala performance at the Stavovsky Theatre.

Krug sighed with relief. The statue was down and there’d be no more unpleasantness. Or would there? That imbecile Schlesinger had got him involved with Wancke, and in addition Wancke’s little flunkey had kicked up hell at the Jewish Community. The head of the Central Office would surely have something to say about that. What would it take to get the Elite Guard off his neck? The garrison was here on leave, in any case, and would soon be leaving for the front. Of course he might end up the same way Schlesinger did. Good thing he’d got rid of him – now he could blame everything on him. Though it was actually he himself who had dealt with Wancke, acting as Schlesinger’s superior. No, the whole business with the statue was dangerous and would lead to no good for anyone.

Dr Rabinovich went home at the end of his working hours. Like everyone else, he worked until seven in the evening – no exception was made for him. Indeed, he had very few extra privileges, though he had quite a high position in the Community. He was able to take advantage of a little fresh air at the cemetery during the workday to study the Hebrew inscriptions on the gravestones – that was a part of his scholarly work and nobody could hold it against him. Nonetheless, there were those who were jealous, people confined to their desks in offices who worked uninterruptedly from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, and had to be home by eight because there was a curfew. The curfew applied to Dr Rabinovich also. But every so often, when he had extra work to do at night, he’d receive permission to exceed the curfew. He had the same food allotments as the others and bought nothing on the black market, but it wasn’t hard for him to
live on a vegetarian diet – at least he could observe the dietary laws that way. It was worse for his sons. There was nothing else for them to do but get used to slim pickings.

But now he knew there was no escape. He was mixed up with murderers, he served them, and yet he’d always thought he’d get the better of them. Though he had set up this museum according to their wishes, as a memorial to an extinct race, in reality he had hoped to save the sacred articles which would otherwise be destroyed as they had been in the other conquered countries. Now he knew that the articles would remain but not the people. Whoever gets mixed up with evil types commits evil deeds and becomes their accessory whether he likes it or not, no matter what excuses he might make to himself, even if his intention had always been to deceive them. For evil is their dominion and Death is their companion. They assign Death to guard each person: guard and bark, they command. And Death guards his victims and his barking increases their fear. Fear makes his victims sink deeper and deeper into the mud from which they can no longer fight back, from which they can no longer even deceive themselves into thinking that they are doing it for a good cause. He said to himself: ‘My heart is sore pained within me and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.’ But repeating the words of the Bible was useless – the words brought no comfort. For if he was cast out, what help could the Bible bring? Just one more day of life, a bad, bitter day. Just one more day of life for his wife and sons, a hard day in a time of shame.

Following orders, Julius Schlesinger handed over his schedule of affairs to Dr Buch. Dr Buch was a runty fellow, always complaining of stomach troubles. He wore glasses
and false teeth. Nobody’d ever get him to the front, you could be sure of that. He was evil and mean-spirited, clearly pleased that things had turned out so badly for Schlesinger. Let him wallow in mud at the front, let him freeze to the bone – all those things Buch wished him, and more – let him hang as a deserter. He didn’t even wish him a hero’s death.

Schlesinger saw how happy Dr Buch was and it filled him with fury. They’re all evil, especially that bastard Krug, who had promised him the Iron Cross and then sent him to the front, in spite of the fact that the whole business had turned out all right, as he later discovered. Somehow Krug had managed to identify the statue. And the statue wreaked its revenge on Schlesinger, a heavy revenge. The end of the good life at Municipal. But if everyone is evil, if
everyone
is out to harm him, why shouldn’t he be evil, too, why shouldn’t he let out his anger on someone else, someone lower? Becvar and Stankovsky, those Czech dimwits who ran to Municipal right behind him to see him taken away in the black car. He must have his revenge on them
somehow
while he still had the chance. He just needed to say a word to Dr Buch and he’d take care of it – to do a bad deed was a pleasure for him. But he couldn’t turn him loose on both of them – that would be too obvious. He had to pick one of them. Becvar had ridiculed him about those Gypsies. Yes, Becvar was the right one. If the statue had its revenge on him, then let it hound someone else as well.