The end of it, p.3
The End of It, page 3
‘Let him go! He’s a prisoner. He must be interrogated.’ He lays it on. ‘He’ll have important information for us.’
The crowd moves away a little. He spots a policeman dithering on the edge of the group.
‘Officer, disperse these men at once!’
Finally having an instruction, the policeman, another elderly man, though suffering many resentful stares and comments, shoos them back to their rescue work.
‘Don’t we get a reward?’ the man with the spade says.
‘You’ve got his parachute, haven’t you? Silk.’
He’s left with the airman, a navigator by his brevet, with a Distinguished Flying Cross ribbon below.
‘Thanks,’ the man says in German.
‘Do you speak German?’
‘No,’ he says after a moment, still in German.
Jochen speaks English. ‘Do you have a pistol?’
‘No.’
‘Can you walk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Headache?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Luftwaffe is responsible for downed enemy airmen. Don’t try to escape or I’ll have to shoot you.’
‘Escape? Where to?’
Jochen laughs. He’s spotted a small hotel on the far corner of the crossroads. ‘We’ll go over there.’ He looks round. There are many eyes on them still.
They wait for a horse and cart to pass and then weave their way across the road between the bicycles of the early birds off to work. Two men in the uniforms of enemies with a gun between them. Quite bizarre in the middle of Berlin.
In the hotel he phones Luftwaffe HQ to arrange a pickup, then demands coffee and rolls for two, a bowl of warm water to bathe his prisoner’s face, and a downstairs room to wait in. The Englishman’s name is Richard Leonard, a flight lieutenant from Winchester, once capital of England, Jochen learns. Leonard is happy to give Jochen his address.
Walking home after he’s handed over his prisoner, Jochen stops near another mound of rubble. An old man is trying to sell a few items that he’s spread out along the pavement.
Jochen doesn’t want either of the dirty old saucepans, nor the coat hanger or the candle stick, but there are a few records that he picks up to look through.
‘I don’t know how they survived,’ the old man says. ‘The gramophone’s buried under that lot.’ He gestures at the rubble. ‘So I’ve got nothing to play them on now.’
It’s a treasure trove: Caruso and then – joy! – Schubert and Beethoven! He laughs.
‘You know this guy’s a Jew, do you?’ It’s Schnabel playing on the Beethoven.
The man is mortified. ‘No, sir, I didn’t. Give me them back. I’ll smash them.’
‘No, I’ll buy the lot.’
A car takes him the twenty-eight kilometres from Luftwaffe HQ Berlin to Rangsdorf airfield. On the hard standing there’s a night fighter Junkers 88 with radar antennae all over the nose. Not far away is a Gustav. No sign of the pilots. When he comes out of the latrines, another Gustav is landing. It taxis up and Jochen watches the propeller windmill to a stop in the silence after the engine is cut. Lucky bastard, whoever he is, to have flown here. The hood swings up. The pilot clambers out. He grabs his cap from the space behind the seat and a bag from the hatch in the fuselage.
His heart sinks when the pilot turns and starts towards him. It’s Krause. The man who threw him out of his staffel in France two years ago. He comes to attention and his salute is returned.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘You’re still a scruffy bastard, Murville.’ Krause doesn’t quite smile. ‘But it looks like Winter found the good in you that I couldn’t.’
In the bar, they find Rall, the pilot of the other Gustav, just flown in from Russia, and Prince zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, whose 88 it is outside.
‘You’re the Prince!’ Jochen says when they’re introduced. ‘I’ve heard of you. How do I address you? Your Highness or something?’
‘Sir’s the usual thing, since I’m a major. Or as we’re comrades, Heinrich will do.’
Later, in the Junkers transport, the night in Otto’s club catches up with Jochen and he sleeps the three hours north to the airfield at Rastenburg. In the circuit to land they surely pass over their destination, the Wolfschanze, Hitler’s eastern command centre, but it’s well-hidden among trees and impossible to see.
Goering’s limousine picks them up, swastika and Luftwaffe pennants fluttering on the wings, rain spattering on the shining black metal. They drive through three rings of security, each fenced with barbed wire, and each with a checkpoint to stop at. Armed guards examine their papers each time. Goering, as huge and ghastly as ever, greets them among the trees when they get out. He’s grumpy.
‘You’re late!’ he says. ‘I’ve been waiting.’
They have to hand over their pistols at the door. Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein refuses, makes a fuss, says it’s part of his uniform, and only desists when he notices they’re all staring at him. In an anteroom, Goering shouts at the orderly, who’s a second late in offering drinks.
When they’ve all got one, Goering disappears.
‘What’s up with Fatty?’ Jochen whispers to Rall.
‘He’ll be all right when he’s had a shot of whatever it is he sticks in himself.’
Three minutes later Goering’s back, beaming. Jochen remembers this transformation from his previous meeting.
Goering gives Krause a playful punch on the arm and flicks his thumb at Jochen.
‘How do you like your boy now, eh, Krause? Not done badly for a waste of space, has he?’ He turns to Jochen and through a loud laugh says, ‘He thought you were a waste of space, you know. Just a playboy.’
Jochen smiles. ‘I probably was, sir.’
Krause smiles, too. Is all forgiven?
They eat. ‘Just a snack,’ Goering says, as they enter the dining room with its gleaming ranks of silver cutlery laid out on snow white napery.
Two hours later they’re on coffee, cigars and cognac as Goering disappears again.
Jochen asks Rall about the Ivans he’s fighting. There are lots of them. A few good pilots in a few good units. Mostly useless, he hears. They compare the American fighters they’ve each faced: Jochen, Tomahawks and Kittihawks; Rall, Airacobras. Not as good as 109s but, with the right pilot, as always…
Goering returns. ‘Do up your buttons, he’s ready.’
Goering leads them in to the Führer. Still a funny looking man, with that lock of hair and the Chaplin moustache. They line up. Jochen is the youngest and the lowest rank, but he’s the last because his is the highest-ranking award. Krause and the Prince receive the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Rall the Oak Leaves and Swords, which Jochen is already wearing. It’s the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds that Hitler hangs round Jochen’s neck. Hitler’s chosen the diamonds himself, he tells Jochen. He does that for all recipients of the Diamonds. Jochen stares ahead, keeping his nose out of range of Hitler’s stinking breath.
They all sit with coffee, though Hitler doesn’t partake. Hitler has a private conversation with each in turn. He asks Jochen about his family and surprises him with the knowledge he reveals: his sister’s murder, his father’s death in Russia, his engagement.
‘You must marry soon, Murville. The Reich needs your babies.’
Then the Führer holds forth to the group. He’s weird. He talks about railway lines in the east. In Russia? How the gauge will have to be changed to run German trains to the new villages and towns that will be built there, what a vast enterprise it will be. They all glance at each other. Stalingrad is lost, the Sixth Army is lost, Africa is lost, Sicily too. Now railway lines in Russia?
‘But, excuse me,’ Rall says, ‘how long do you think the war will last? When we went into Russia, the papers said it would end by the first snows. Now the third year of snows is not so far off and we’re still there.’
Will he be arrested? Shot?
The Führer looks at Rall in a kindly way. ‘I can’t tell you that. This might be an open area. We have our settlements here. When the enemy comes from the Asian steppe, we’ll defend our homes as in the days of Genghis Khan. I see a deep valley, but I see a bright strip on the horizon. We are vastly increasing our production of tanks and fighters, as well as bringing millions more men into training. And we have weapons in development so powerful that I must keep them secret still. But I can tell you they will transform the course of the war overnight. Be assured, we will win.’
They all sit in silence for a few moments until an aide reminds the Führer of an imminent strategy meeting. He leaves them. They raise eyebrows at each other and then Goering comes in like a whirlwind.
‘Good time, boys? Did he go on? He does that, you know. He imagines you all rush back and tell your guys what you’ve heard. He likes to spread his thoughts and ideas. Come and have a drink.’
They all start to leave.
‘Can I see that?’ he says, as Jochen’s passing him. He pulls the ribbon of the Diamonds over Jochen’s head. He stares at the gems with the eye of an expert and tuts his disapproval.
‘Honestly! He’s got a greengrocer’s eye for diamonds. I wish he’d leave it to me. And these jewellers just rob him blind. I’ll get you another one. With proper diamonds.’
He hands it back. Jochen is perplexed.
‘What about this one?’
‘Keep it. They’re still diamonds, after all, even if inferior ones.’
In the car back to Rastenburg they’re all silent with their thoughts. How are they managing to push up production so much? Where are the millions of men coming from? Does the man running Germany always behave like this? Is he superhuman, as they’re all led to believe, or is he just delusional? And who is there around him who can bring him face to face with reality?
Night falls as they fly to Berlin and they all sleep. Krause and Rall will stay at Rangsdorf so they can return at first light to France and Russia respectively. They eat together and then the Prince borrows a kübelwagen that he can drive back to Rangsdorf later to collect his 88, and he and Jochen drive to Berlin. Jochen’s told him about the club.
On the way, they talk with disbelief and horror about Hitler’s ramblings. At the club, there’s no Willi to test whether the Prince has the balls to dance with him. They chat to Otto and then Jochen plays Schwarze Orchideen for the tango enthusiasts. Halfway through, he remembers their arrival at the Wolfschanze.
‘Why were you so keen to keep your pistol, Heinrich?’ he says when he re-joins the Prince at the bar.
‘I was going to shoot the crazy bastard guttersnipe.’
At the hospital he finds no sign of Willi or Lotte’s father. While he waits, he flicks through old copies of Luftwaffe. He’s in a couple of them. He studies his picture alongside those of other officers. Everyone calls him scruffy, but he can’t see it.
In the consulting room, the doctor reads the notes Jochen’s brought from the Munich hospital. Through the window he sees pigeons flapping in and out of a lime tree. The leaves are beginning to turn gold. It’ll get chilly soon.
‘Hauptmann, everything looks fine here but there are some checks I must do.’
Jochen says he’s had no headaches or dizziness for ages and though his legs pain him after an hour or so’s walking, otherwise there’s nothing. The doctor shines a light in each eye, looks in his ears, puts a stethoscope to his chest and listens, asks him to stand on one leg for thirty seconds and then on the other. Finally, he sits him in a revolving chair, swings it round and stops it suddenly. As previously directed, Jochen stands and immediately walks to the door without swerving from the direct path.
The doctor ticks various places on a form, dates it and signs with a flourish. He takes the carbon copy for himself and passes the form and all the notes back to Jochen.
‘There you are, Hauptmann. Fit to kill every one of those bastards up there.’
Free to fly again! But there’s no excitement, only relief. And will he still be able to do it? There’s anxiety in there somewhere, too. He hurries down flights of stairs and across a hall with the file of notes tucked under his arm. Outside he drops the notes in a bin and lights a cigarette as a noisy group of nurses emerges from another door. A couple of them catch his eye and laugh and wave. He waves back.
Now HQ. But another nurse comes out. Blonde hair dragged back tidily but emerging over her ears as if it was done many hours ago. She’s clearly tired but it’s the same face, though he didn’t know she was a nurse.
‘Hertha,’ he calls, as he starts towards her.
‘Jochen.’ She smiles. ‘Well, well.’
‘Still the girl I was in love with at kindergarten.’
‘You told all the girls that.’
They kiss on each cheek.
‘I’m sorry about Ilse. I was going to write but…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘When was it? That lunch in France? With Lilo? Nearly three years ago. Was that the last time we saw each other?’
‘You’d landed on the beach. Did you get in trouble?’
‘Terrible. But it’s all forgotten now.’
‘I can see.’
‘Nursing!’ He laughs. ‘Where’s Lilo?’
‘Married; child; in the country with her in-laws.’
‘Good.’
‘Not really. He was at Stalingrad.’
‘A prisoner?’
‘We hope so.’
‘Your guy?’
‘Ulrich.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He was killed.’
‘Oh, Hertha.’
They’re silent for a moment.
‘Walk me home. I’ll make some coffee.’
But he must get to Luftwaffe HQ. He arranges to go round to Hertha’s in the evening.
At HQ an Oberst tells him they’ll have orders for him the day after tomorrow. Jochen’s anxious to get in the air again. A phone call arranges everything for tomorrow at eight.
‘Your Geschwader’s spread about around Wilhelmshaven at the moment to catch the heavy babies when they come over the coast,’ the Oberst says.
‘Major Beck?’
‘Yes. He’s keen to have you back, I hear.’
‘I was due to have a staffel.’
‘We know. Don’t worry.’
He calls for Lotte. She has work to do, marking and so on, but she comes to Hertha’s with him for an hour. Hertha’s in a green dress. Her hair’s down. She and Lotte are a German type. An Aryan dream. They get on well and sit together on a sofa with a pot of tea and they talk, he imagines, about him. He sits at the piano and plays Schwarze Orchideen. It’s a strange little tune, nothing much really but it’s got him caught for the present.
Hertha’s father, General Deichmann, is in the Balkans, her mother in the country with Lilo and the child and the in-laws. Hertha has the place to herself and has asked a few people to meet Jochen: another nurse, a plainer girl called Ursula; a young doctor in uniform, a leutnant, currently attached to the hospital; a couple of neighbours, a bit older. They dance to the tunes Jochen plays for them, then he plays a Chopin prelude and straight afterwards Lady Be Good because American music makes Lotte anxious. He’s rewarded with the scowl he expects and he grins back. He takes Lotte home then goes back to Hertha’s. The neighbours have gone and the leutnant doctor leaves with Ursula to walk her home. Jochen and Hertha sit for an hour and talk about their youth, not so long ago, and their families. Jochen has tragedies to relate, Hertha too. Everyone in Germany has, of course.
When he wakes, it’s three in the morning. As he’s pulling on his clothes, Hertha stirs and turns to him. He puts on a light by the bed. She screws her eyes up, dazzled.
‘Sorry,’ he says about the light. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Have you?’
‘I’ve got two planes to fly at eight o’clock.’
‘At the same time?’
He laughs. ‘Even I’m not that clever.’
He pushes a foot into a boot and pulls it up. ‘I wouldn’t be rushing off otherwise.’
‘Good. I’m glad you came back,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t lay claim to you. Don’t worry.’
‘No.’
‘You are a bastard, though, Jochen. Poor Lotte. She shouldn’t be marrying you.’
‘I don’t imagine she will be.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think I can go through with it. She’s a Nazi.’
‘That badge thing? Is that it?’
‘But she believes it all. Jews are evil, she thinks. She believes all that garbage. It sickens me.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell her?’
‘I don’t know how to. How will she take it?’
‘Better than if you just leave her standing at the altar.’
Berlin-Adlerhof. The ME 108 is a sports plane really, seats for four, but he’s on his own. He’s forgotten nothing, of course. It’s just like riding a bike. He goes up to three thousand metres. It handles like a 109 without the weight and the violence. It’s gentler, kinder. He stunts around, makes the earth spin and twirl, makes it rush towards him and slowly move away, grow smaller, makes the earth and sky change places. He opens the throttle and tears along at, he checks carefully: three hundred kilometres per hour, slower than any of their bombers. He turns back after an hour, does half a dozen touch and goes and then lands in a 109 style three pointer. The sun comes out briefly and makes the cockpit suddenly hot through the canopy. This is a wonderful day, like a childhood birthday. He wants to shout and cheer, ride through town whooping and yelling like a cowboy in one of those Yank westerns, waving his hat and firing a pistol in the air.
He hands back the 108 and signs for the Storch. He’s off the ground in about forty or fifty metres and climbs slowly straight ahead. The airfield’s disappeared behind him. The sky’s overcast. He stops climbing at five hundred metres, meadows and trees below, different shades of green. Cows in the fields, like a child’s picture. He feels like a bird; that’s why pilots all love the Storch. Glass to the sides, glass above, with the wings attached on either side above him, no wing below to block the view. The view below, around, above, is superb. He moves the stick to the right and the earth beneath swings slowly round, the airfield emerges then moves to the left and leaves his view. He opens the throttle wide. After a minute or two the dial reads 175. He slows back to cruising; 130. He sails on, looking around, looking down at woods to the left.
The crowd moves away a little. He spots a policeman dithering on the edge of the group.
‘Officer, disperse these men at once!’
Finally having an instruction, the policeman, another elderly man, though suffering many resentful stares and comments, shoos them back to their rescue work.
‘Don’t we get a reward?’ the man with the spade says.
‘You’ve got his parachute, haven’t you? Silk.’
He’s left with the airman, a navigator by his brevet, with a Distinguished Flying Cross ribbon below.
‘Thanks,’ the man says in German.
‘Do you speak German?’
‘No,’ he says after a moment, still in German.
Jochen speaks English. ‘Do you have a pistol?’
‘No.’
‘Can you walk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Headache?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Luftwaffe is responsible for downed enemy airmen. Don’t try to escape or I’ll have to shoot you.’
‘Escape? Where to?’
Jochen laughs. He’s spotted a small hotel on the far corner of the crossroads. ‘We’ll go over there.’ He looks round. There are many eyes on them still.
They wait for a horse and cart to pass and then weave their way across the road between the bicycles of the early birds off to work. Two men in the uniforms of enemies with a gun between them. Quite bizarre in the middle of Berlin.
In the hotel he phones Luftwaffe HQ to arrange a pickup, then demands coffee and rolls for two, a bowl of warm water to bathe his prisoner’s face, and a downstairs room to wait in. The Englishman’s name is Richard Leonard, a flight lieutenant from Winchester, once capital of England, Jochen learns. Leonard is happy to give Jochen his address.
Walking home after he’s handed over his prisoner, Jochen stops near another mound of rubble. An old man is trying to sell a few items that he’s spread out along the pavement.
Jochen doesn’t want either of the dirty old saucepans, nor the coat hanger or the candle stick, but there are a few records that he picks up to look through.
‘I don’t know how they survived,’ the old man says. ‘The gramophone’s buried under that lot.’ He gestures at the rubble. ‘So I’ve got nothing to play them on now.’
It’s a treasure trove: Caruso and then – joy! – Schubert and Beethoven! He laughs.
‘You know this guy’s a Jew, do you?’ It’s Schnabel playing on the Beethoven.
The man is mortified. ‘No, sir, I didn’t. Give me them back. I’ll smash them.’
‘No, I’ll buy the lot.’
A car takes him the twenty-eight kilometres from Luftwaffe HQ Berlin to Rangsdorf airfield. On the hard standing there’s a night fighter Junkers 88 with radar antennae all over the nose. Not far away is a Gustav. No sign of the pilots. When he comes out of the latrines, another Gustav is landing. It taxis up and Jochen watches the propeller windmill to a stop in the silence after the engine is cut. Lucky bastard, whoever he is, to have flown here. The hood swings up. The pilot clambers out. He grabs his cap from the space behind the seat and a bag from the hatch in the fuselage.
His heart sinks when the pilot turns and starts towards him. It’s Krause. The man who threw him out of his staffel in France two years ago. He comes to attention and his salute is returned.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘You’re still a scruffy bastard, Murville.’ Krause doesn’t quite smile. ‘But it looks like Winter found the good in you that I couldn’t.’
In the bar, they find Rall, the pilot of the other Gustav, just flown in from Russia, and Prince zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, whose 88 it is outside.
‘You’re the Prince!’ Jochen says when they’re introduced. ‘I’ve heard of you. How do I address you? Your Highness or something?’
‘Sir’s the usual thing, since I’m a major. Or as we’re comrades, Heinrich will do.’
Later, in the Junkers transport, the night in Otto’s club catches up with Jochen and he sleeps the three hours north to the airfield at Rastenburg. In the circuit to land they surely pass over their destination, the Wolfschanze, Hitler’s eastern command centre, but it’s well-hidden among trees and impossible to see.
Goering’s limousine picks them up, swastika and Luftwaffe pennants fluttering on the wings, rain spattering on the shining black metal. They drive through three rings of security, each fenced with barbed wire, and each with a checkpoint to stop at. Armed guards examine their papers each time. Goering, as huge and ghastly as ever, greets them among the trees when they get out. He’s grumpy.
‘You’re late!’ he says. ‘I’ve been waiting.’
They have to hand over their pistols at the door. Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein refuses, makes a fuss, says it’s part of his uniform, and only desists when he notices they’re all staring at him. In an anteroom, Goering shouts at the orderly, who’s a second late in offering drinks.
When they’ve all got one, Goering disappears.
‘What’s up with Fatty?’ Jochen whispers to Rall.
‘He’ll be all right when he’s had a shot of whatever it is he sticks in himself.’
Three minutes later Goering’s back, beaming. Jochen remembers this transformation from his previous meeting.
Goering gives Krause a playful punch on the arm and flicks his thumb at Jochen.
‘How do you like your boy now, eh, Krause? Not done badly for a waste of space, has he?’ He turns to Jochen and through a loud laugh says, ‘He thought you were a waste of space, you know. Just a playboy.’
Jochen smiles. ‘I probably was, sir.’
Krause smiles, too. Is all forgiven?
They eat. ‘Just a snack,’ Goering says, as they enter the dining room with its gleaming ranks of silver cutlery laid out on snow white napery.
Two hours later they’re on coffee, cigars and cognac as Goering disappears again.
Jochen asks Rall about the Ivans he’s fighting. There are lots of them. A few good pilots in a few good units. Mostly useless, he hears. They compare the American fighters they’ve each faced: Jochen, Tomahawks and Kittihawks; Rall, Airacobras. Not as good as 109s but, with the right pilot, as always…
Goering returns. ‘Do up your buttons, he’s ready.’
Goering leads them in to the Führer. Still a funny looking man, with that lock of hair and the Chaplin moustache. They line up. Jochen is the youngest and the lowest rank, but he’s the last because his is the highest-ranking award. Krause and the Prince receive the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Rall the Oak Leaves and Swords, which Jochen is already wearing. It’s the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds that Hitler hangs round Jochen’s neck. Hitler’s chosen the diamonds himself, he tells Jochen. He does that for all recipients of the Diamonds. Jochen stares ahead, keeping his nose out of range of Hitler’s stinking breath.
They all sit with coffee, though Hitler doesn’t partake. Hitler has a private conversation with each in turn. He asks Jochen about his family and surprises him with the knowledge he reveals: his sister’s murder, his father’s death in Russia, his engagement.
‘You must marry soon, Murville. The Reich needs your babies.’
Then the Führer holds forth to the group. He’s weird. He talks about railway lines in the east. In Russia? How the gauge will have to be changed to run German trains to the new villages and towns that will be built there, what a vast enterprise it will be. They all glance at each other. Stalingrad is lost, the Sixth Army is lost, Africa is lost, Sicily too. Now railway lines in Russia?
‘But, excuse me,’ Rall says, ‘how long do you think the war will last? When we went into Russia, the papers said it would end by the first snows. Now the third year of snows is not so far off and we’re still there.’
Will he be arrested? Shot?
The Führer looks at Rall in a kindly way. ‘I can’t tell you that. This might be an open area. We have our settlements here. When the enemy comes from the Asian steppe, we’ll defend our homes as in the days of Genghis Khan. I see a deep valley, but I see a bright strip on the horizon. We are vastly increasing our production of tanks and fighters, as well as bringing millions more men into training. And we have weapons in development so powerful that I must keep them secret still. But I can tell you they will transform the course of the war overnight. Be assured, we will win.’
They all sit in silence for a few moments until an aide reminds the Führer of an imminent strategy meeting. He leaves them. They raise eyebrows at each other and then Goering comes in like a whirlwind.
‘Good time, boys? Did he go on? He does that, you know. He imagines you all rush back and tell your guys what you’ve heard. He likes to spread his thoughts and ideas. Come and have a drink.’
They all start to leave.
‘Can I see that?’ he says, as Jochen’s passing him. He pulls the ribbon of the Diamonds over Jochen’s head. He stares at the gems with the eye of an expert and tuts his disapproval.
‘Honestly! He’s got a greengrocer’s eye for diamonds. I wish he’d leave it to me. And these jewellers just rob him blind. I’ll get you another one. With proper diamonds.’
He hands it back. Jochen is perplexed.
‘What about this one?’
‘Keep it. They’re still diamonds, after all, even if inferior ones.’
In the car back to Rastenburg they’re all silent with their thoughts. How are they managing to push up production so much? Where are the millions of men coming from? Does the man running Germany always behave like this? Is he superhuman, as they’re all led to believe, or is he just delusional? And who is there around him who can bring him face to face with reality?
Night falls as they fly to Berlin and they all sleep. Krause and Rall will stay at Rangsdorf so they can return at first light to France and Russia respectively. They eat together and then the Prince borrows a kübelwagen that he can drive back to Rangsdorf later to collect his 88, and he and Jochen drive to Berlin. Jochen’s told him about the club.
On the way, they talk with disbelief and horror about Hitler’s ramblings. At the club, there’s no Willi to test whether the Prince has the balls to dance with him. They chat to Otto and then Jochen plays Schwarze Orchideen for the tango enthusiasts. Halfway through, he remembers their arrival at the Wolfschanze.
‘Why were you so keen to keep your pistol, Heinrich?’ he says when he re-joins the Prince at the bar.
‘I was going to shoot the crazy bastard guttersnipe.’
At the hospital he finds no sign of Willi or Lotte’s father. While he waits, he flicks through old copies of Luftwaffe. He’s in a couple of them. He studies his picture alongside those of other officers. Everyone calls him scruffy, but he can’t see it.
In the consulting room, the doctor reads the notes Jochen’s brought from the Munich hospital. Through the window he sees pigeons flapping in and out of a lime tree. The leaves are beginning to turn gold. It’ll get chilly soon.
‘Hauptmann, everything looks fine here but there are some checks I must do.’
Jochen says he’s had no headaches or dizziness for ages and though his legs pain him after an hour or so’s walking, otherwise there’s nothing. The doctor shines a light in each eye, looks in his ears, puts a stethoscope to his chest and listens, asks him to stand on one leg for thirty seconds and then on the other. Finally, he sits him in a revolving chair, swings it round and stops it suddenly. As previously directed, Jochen stands and immediately walks to the door without swerving from the direct path.
The doctor ticks various places on a form, dates it and signs with a flourish. He takes the carbon copy for himself and passes the form and all the notes back to Jochen.
‘There you are, Hauptmann. Fit to kill every one of those bastards up there.’
Free to fly again! But there’s no excitement, only relief. And will he still be able to do it? There’s anxiety in there somewhere, too. He hurries down flights of stairs and across a hall with the file of notes tucked under his arm. Outside he drops the notes in a bin and lights a cigarette as a noisy group of nurses emerges from another door. A couple of them catch his eye and laugh and wave. He waves back.
Now HQ. But another nurse comes out. Blonde hair dragged back tidily but emerging over her ears as if it was done many hours ago. She’s clearly tired but it’s the same face, though he didn’t know she was a nurse.
‘Hertha,’ he calls, as he starts towards her.
‘Jochen.’ She smiles. ‘Well, well.’
‘Still the girl I was in love with at kindergarten.’
‘You told all the girls that.’
They kiss on each cheek.
‘I’m sorry about Ilse. I was going to write but…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘When was it? That lunch in France? With Lilo? Nearly three years ago. Was that the last time we saw each other?’
‘You’d landed on the beach. Did you get in trouble?’
‘Terrible. But it’s all forgotten now.’
‘I can see.’
‘Nursing!’ He laughs. ‘Where’s Lilo?’
‘Married; child; in the country with her in-laws.’
‘Good.’
‘Not really. He was at Stalingrad.’
‘A prisoner?’
‘We hope so.’
‘Your guy?’
‘Ulrich.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He was killed.’
‘Oh, Hertha.’
They’re silent for a moment.
‘Walk me home. I’ll make some coffee.’
But he must get to Luftwaffe HQ. He arranges to go round to Hertha’s in the evening.
At HQ an Oberst tells him they’ll have orders for him the day after tomorrow. Jochen’s anxious to get in the air again. A phone call arranges everything for tomorrow at eight.
‘Your Geschwader’s spread about around Wilhelmshaven at the moment to catch the heavy babies when they come over the coast,’ the Oberst says.
‘Major Beck?’
‘Yes. He’s keen to have you back, I hear.’
‘I was due to have a staffel.’
‘We know. Don’t worry.’
He calls for Lotte. She has work to do, marking and so on, but she comes to Hertha’s with him for an hour. Hertha’s in a green dress. Her hair’s down. She and Lotte are a German type. An Aryan dream. They get on well and sit together on a sofa with a pot of tea and they talk, he imagines, about him. He sits at the piano and plays Schwarze Orchideen. It’s a strange little tune, nothing much really but it’s got him caught for the present.
Hertha’s father, General Deichmann, is in the Balkans, her mother in the country with Lilo and the child and the in-laws. Hertha has the place to herself and has asked a few people to meet Jochen: another nurse, a plainer girl called Ursula; a young doctor in uniform, a leutnant, currently attached to the hospital; a couple of neighbours, a bit older. They dance to the tunes Jochen plays for them, then he plays a Chopin prelude and straight afterwards Lady Be Good because American music makes Lotte anxious. He’s rewarded with the scowl he expects and he grins back. He takes Lotte home then goes back to Hertha’s. The neighbours have gone and the leutnant doctor leaves with Ursula to walk her home. Jochen and Hertha sit for an hour and talk about their youth, not so long ago, and their families. Jochen has tragedies to relate, Hertha too. Everyone in Germany has, of course.
When he wakes, it’s three in the morning. As he’s pulling on his clothes, Hertha stirs and turns to him. He puts on a light by the bed. She screws her eyes up, dazzled.
‘Sorry,’ he says about the light. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Have you?’
‘I’ve got two planes to fly at eight o’clock.’
‘At the same time?’
He laughs. ‘Even I’m not that clever.’
He pushes a foot into a boot and pulls it up. ‘I wouldn’t be rushing off otherwise.’
‘Good. I’m glad you came back,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t lay claim to you. Don’t worry.’
‘No.’
‘You are a bastard, though, Jochen. Poor Lotte. She shouldn’t be marrying you.’
‘I don’t imagine she will be.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think I can go through with it. She’s a Nazi.’
‘That badge thing? Is that it?’
‘But she believes it all. Jews are evil, she thinks. She believes all that garbage. It sickens me.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell her?’
‘I don’t know how to. How will she take it?’
‘Better than if you just leave her standing at the altar.’
Berlin-Adlerhof. The ME 108 is a sports plane really, seats for four, but he’s on his own. He’s forgotten nothing, of course. It’s just like riding a bike. He goes up to three thousand metres. It handles like a 109 without the weight and the violence. It’s gentler, kinder. He stunts around, makes the earth spin and twirl, makes it rush towards him and slowly move away, grow smaller, makes the earth and sky change places. He opens the throttle and tears along at, he checks carefully: three hundred kilometres per hour, slower than any of their bombers. He turns back after an hour, does half a dozen touch and goes and then lands in a 109 style three pointer. The sun comes out briefly and makes the cockpit suddenly hot through the canopy. This is a wonderful day, like a childhood birthday. He wants to shout and cheer, ride through town whooping and yelling like a cowboy in one of those Yank westerns, waving his hat and firing a pistol in the air.
He hands back the 108 and signs for the Storch. He’s off the ground in about forty or fifty metres and climbs slowly straight ahead. The airfield’s disappeared behind him. The sky’s overcast. He stops climbing at five hundred metres, meadows and trees below, different shades of green. Cows in the fields, like a child’s picture. He feels like a bird; that’s why pilots all love the Storch. Glass to the sides, glass above, with the wings attached on either side above him, no wing below to block the view. The view below, around, above, is superb. He moves the stick to the right and the earth beneath swings slowly round, the airfield emerges then moves to the left and leaves his view. He opens the throttle wide. After a minute or two the dial reads 175. He slows back to cruising; 130. He sails on, looking around, looking down at woods to the left.
