The vienna writers circl.., p.30
The Vienna Writers Circle, page 30
Josef lit his own cigarette as Daniel—starting uncertainly at first, tremulously—related the events of that night: Schnabel threatening him, having just come from Brunnerman’s. Schnabel’s plans to leave Daniel’s body at the scene and make it look as if they’d shot each other in a robbery gone wrong.
“He already had Brunnerman’s stash of diamonds and cash from his safe, and wanted to add mine to that haul. If I didn’t go along with it, he’d kill Ivor... Alex as well, asleep in his room.”
“And that’s when he told you what had happened with Deya?”
“Yes. He was gloating about it, reveling in how ingenious he’d been. He’d also found a little black book in Brunnerman’s safe with a list of others in Lorenzo’s network who’d exchanged diamonds for cash, plus a collection of photos of Freud associates. He planned to work through that list and the photos, pick them off one by one.” Daniel shook his head grimly. “And I thought to myself, I can’t let this man live. I told Schnabel I was going to get the keys to where I had my diamond stash—but I was headed for the drawer with the gun Alois had given me. I could hear Schnabel not far behind me, warning me not to try anything. But I thought—if I turned quickly enough, I might catch him by surprise.” Daniel sighed heavily. “But when I opened the drawer, the gun wasn’t there!”
Josef looked across intently. Daniel’s mouth was slightly open, as if aghast again as he relived that moment.
“What happened then?”
Josef shook his head in disbelief as Daniel related the remaining events, ending with Piehler the other day peering under one of his paintings at home and asking about the fresh plaster patch where he’d covered up Schnabel’s stray bullet.
“I told him it was from where I’d initially put in the picture hook too low.” Daniel smiled uncertainly. “Something I’d used in a past book.”
“Did Piehler appear to accept that account?”
“I daresay I won’t know unless or until they return.” Daniel exhaled tiredly. Relating the events seemed to have drained him.
“But return, they will—of that you can be sure.” Josef stared the message home. “And the diamonds, money, this little black book and the photos?”
“I’ve got those safe.”
Josef nodded. He’d anticipated it would be bad, but it was far worse than he’d thought. And having said he might be able to find a way out of this mess, he didn’t have the first clue how to start. The weight of circumstances against Daniel was too damning, too conclusive. No possible escape route!
But at least he now understood why Daniel had been so reluctant to share those final details with him.
51
Dark, unfeeling and unloving powers determine human destiny.
—Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Andreas
The mood in the camp was tense, on a knife edge.
The rumors that the camp might be closing had spread, and the Sonderkommandos were particularly agitated, knowing that fairly soon they wouldn’t be needed and would also be killed.
On the third day after Toepfer’s informal hearing about Meisel’s manuscript, Dalit visited me at the end of a day’s laboring, told me that I should come to Meisel’s office first thing in the morning.
The grapevine whispers among Jan and some of the other Sonderkommandos were that a camp rebellion was brewing, which I viewed firsthand when I was in the tailor’s one day with Jan and saw a meat cleaver being sewn into a coat lining.
Picking up that I’d noticed, Jan commented, “You’d better hurry finishing Meisel’s manuscript. There might not be much more time left.”
Three or four weeks, Jan reckoned. Long knives and meat cleavers had to be sneaked from the kitchen gradually, so that their removal wasn’t noticed.
Under normal circumstances, that would have been more than enough time. But part of Toepfer’s conditions had been that work on the manuscript shouldn’t take place in normal camp working hours. So my mornings were taken up solely with handling official correspondence in Meisel’s office, then I’d put in a full afternoon’s laboring with Jan and the other Sonderkommandos before returning to Meisel’s office in the early evening to work on his manuscript.
To aid my workflow, not have it interrupted, Meisel would get Dalit to bring me stew and bread from the canteen at dinnertime; and often I’d work through solidly until almost midnight, Meisel getting a guard to come and escort me back across the compound so that I didn’t get shot by one of the watchtower guards.
* * *
“I’m sorry. I should have said something sooner,” Meisel remarked on my second night’s work on the manuscript. “But I had little choice after Toepfer’s little hearing.”
He’d just returned from the officers’ dining hall, and I got the impression he’d had a few glasses of wine, which perhaps had made him feel mellow and inclined to open up more. I realized then that the three-day break had been imposed by Toepfer, it hadn’t been Meisel’s choice.
“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Well, you were left with little other choice, with Vogt about to burn it. And you didn’t directly say it was mine.” Meisel shrugged, smiled awkwardly. “Though I suppose once you’d said it wasn’t yours, by natural elimination they could have worked out it was mine. If they’d been a little smarter.”
I joined Meisel nervously with a smile. While Meisel no doubt had the privilege of taking verbal swipes at his fellow officers, I wasn’t sure it was one prisoners could partake in.
Meisel lit up his clay pipe, became more contemplative. “Of course, I’ll now have to put up with all the sly looks and whispers behind my back—Vice-Commandant Meisel is writing a book. And partly a love story too—isn’t that usually what women write?”
I grimaced sympathetically. While that trait, showing a softer, more emotional side, might be seen as admirable in some circles, that certainly wasn’t the case in a hard-edged death camp like Sobibór. “Is that why you were keen to keep your manuscript secret?”
“Partly that. But also a bit of history between me and Vogt.” He looked at me inquiringly. “You’ve probably heard some of the rumors about me yourself.”
“I’m not sure.” I chose safe, noncommittal ground.
Meisel waved his pipe hand. “Of no matter. I’m not blind to them, and the last thing I needed was something else to feed that—not only am I not attracted to women, but now I am acting like one too.”
“I understand. Not an easy situation.” I bit my tongue on commenting how my long hours in his office might have also added fuel to those rumors.
“Not that it bothers me much what Vogt thinks anymore.” Meisel puffed harder at his pipe, eased out a cloud of smoke. “Nor Toepfer for that matter. If you gave two Pfennigs for their worthwhile thoughts, you’d still be overpaying.”
This time I allowed myself a more open smile; it might have come across as obdurate or disapproving if I hadn’t joined in.
Meisel became more serious, reflective. “Although it wasn’t always that way between us...”
As Meisel started talking about the parties with camp girls that Vogt would organize, I realized this was the same story I’d heard from Jan, but from a different perspective.
“...I felt uncomfortable at first, but then I found a girl that I warmed to, felt a connection with. I think perhaps because some things about her reminded me of Helena. A warmth in her eyes, an endearing tease in her smile.”
No prompts about Helena were necessary between us. We’d spent the last weeks getting Tobias’s emotions right over Isabella in Eine Flackernde Kerze, who’d been based on Helena.
“Then the next day she was put in a death chamber with eight other girls from the party, while Vogt, Toepfer and some other officers looked on as they died. Smiling and self-congratulating over the efficiency of the motor pouring in the fumes.”
I nodded desolately, as if I hadn’t heard the story before, though my stomach churned and my hands clenched tight in anger and horror just the same this second time.
“I didn’t go to any more of the parties...and that’s when the rumors started.”
“Is that because you couldn’t face the thought of the girls being killed afterward?”
“Not only that. But because there was little point. If they’d been just any girls, I could have switched myself off, become impassive—the same way I’ve dealt with much of the death around here.” Meisel’s expression was bleak, lost for a moment. “But I knew at heart I’d only feel comfortable with these girls if I felt some connection with them. And part of that, as with the girl at that first party, might be due to seeing something in them that reminded me of Helena.” Meisel sighed dejectedly. “So them dying afterward would have felt like going through Helena’s death all over again. That’s what I felt I couldn’t face.”
* * *
We finished Eine Flackernde Kerze twenty days later and it was packed off to Julian with silent prayers and hopes.
Meisel wrote a covering letter, and with his approval I put a short, handwritten note on the third page under Meisel’s dedication—“Happy reading, Julian—hope this hits the mark! It’s been a joy working on it—Best Wishes, Andreas.”
But having finished, again I was hit with that concern I’d had earlier, though this time reinforced by Vogt’s hawkish stare at me as I crossed the Camp Two Yard, as if to say: Now you’re finished with Meisel’s manuscript, what earthly use are you?
52
Scharführer Kurt Lindner stood just beyond where Brunnerman’s body had been found and beaded a line to the position of Schnabel’s body and the two bullet holes in the shop wall behind. He voiced his thoughts out loud.
“So, not only do we have a different caliber of bullet from the gun found in Brunnerman’s hand, but those shots on the wall are a couple of yards wide.” He turned to the assistant he’d brought with him, SS Junker Helmut Siegl. “What are your thoughts on this conundrum?”
“Perhaps those bullet marks came from another time?”
“Perhaps. But Lanz from forensics said they are recent, at most a day before.” Lindner smiled lightly. “Mr. Brunnerman would have been very unlucky indeed to have two confrontations or robberies at his shop only a day apart.”
Siegl nodded a tame agreement. He hadn’t realized that Josef Weber was involved in the investigation until a couple of days ago and had started to comment, “That’s the inspector who...” Then broke off, thinking better of it. It had struck him as odd at the outset that Schnabel had instructed him to tail Weber and also keep it secret. Rumors were starting to circulate internally that Schnabel had been involved in something clandestine, was perhaps where he shouldn’t have been at Brunnerman’s that night.
Perhaps Schnabel had been hoping to get some dirt on Weber to blackmail him or ensure his investigation of whatever Schnabel was up to at Brunnerman’s was curtailed. Either way, investigating a police inspector without notifying superiors was decidedly against regulations, so the less Siegl said about being part of that, the better—if he hoped for a continued career with the SS.
“The inspector who what?” Lindner had looked at him sharply.
“Who...investigated the Holzer jewelry robbery a few years back,” Siegl had said, quickly pulling from his memory a high-society robbery that had been in the newspapers. Comparisons made to “Raffles” and “Lupin,” with Josef Weber named as leading the investigation.
Now Lindner considered again the position of the two bodies, then turned to look at the back wall with its array of clocks.
“If you can stay by the counter here,” he said to Siegl. “I’m just going outside to check something.”
Lindner went into the side alley, taking a step up on the storm-drain cover and looking through the high side window, just as he’d seen Schnabel doing that last observation night. Lindner could clearly see Siegl at the counter, as well as the back wall with its array of clocks. The only blind spot was the far left-hand corner.
Lindner pulled back from the window. But as he did so, looking along the length of the alleyway, he thought he noticed something odd. He looked back through to the shop again, then to the alley. Where the brickwork of Brunnerman’s shop ended and the one behind started didn’t seem to correlate with the space inside.
Lindner stepped down and paced the outside, then went inside and did the same.
“What is it?” Siegl inquired.
“The shop inside appears to be a pace or so short of where it should be.” Lindner went to the back wall and started knocking, coming to a hollow-sounding patch halfway along. He barged against it. It wouldn’t budge. He held his keys out to Siegl. “If you could get the tire lever and wrench from my car.”
It took only four minutes to break through, lift the lever to open the panel and see what was behind. Lindner went to his car to radio in for a safecracking team with oxyacetylene torches.
Josef
If the woman from Daniel’s apartment building had known the difference between the SS, Gestapo and standard police inspectorate, Josef might not have heard her crucial witness account; or, at least, he’d have been the last to hear it after the SS and Gestapo, if at all.
Although Piehler had clearly stated they should share information on the case, Josef knew the SS and Gestapo’s idea of “sharing.” Invariably, it meant you were expected to share all your information about a case, but little or nothing returned from their end. Usually excused under Reich or state secrecy rules. Their cards played close to their chest.
Neither Piehler nor Lindner had announced their visit to Daniel either before or after, and no doubt that pattern would continue.
For that reason, Josef had contacted Assistant Prosecutor Martin Engel to lead the case. Possibly jumping the gun, since normally Engel wouldn’t get involved until a prosecutable case had been prepared. The exceptions being notable or complex investigations with more than one party involved, which Josef felt was warranted here. And in those cases, Engel would act like an examining magistrate, pulling the disparate threads of the investigation together.
Most importantly, because Engel outranked Piehler, he wouldn’t dare sideline him or withhold information, which Josef felt he had been subject to. Finally, having worked with Engel before, Josef had found him to be thorough but fair. Josef trusted him, whereas he didn’t trust Piehler or Lindner one inch; nor practically anyone in the SS or Gestapo, for that matter.
Josef turned his attention to Mrs. Sommer, the woman he’d come to see at her local police station.
“Can you please describe again this uniformed officer you saw visit Mr. Lendt’s apartment on the night in question?”
In her late fifties and wearing a distinctive burgundy hat—perhaps she thought it was important to dress up to see the police—her account was at first faltering, but became steadier and clearer as she progressed.
Midthirties. Sandy-blond hair. Quite tall. Senior SS from her description of his uniform. Certainly it sounded like Schnabel.
“And you’re sure of the time? It was after nine in the evening?”
“Yes. Possibly even closer to ten o’clock. I’d cleared up after dinner at least an hour or so beforehand.”
Josef looked back over his notes after she left. Upon returning from some shopping, she’d heard from some neighbors that uniformed officers had been making inquiries in the building about “anyone suspicious or noteworthy visiting Mr. Lendt at number 14, especially on the twenty-first?” Something else Piehler hadn’t shared with him.
So she’d gone to her nearest police station. They’d in turn contacted Josef, who came over immediately to interview her about what she’d seen: “I noticed him in particular because he seemed to be waiting a moment anxiously outside Mr. Lendt’s door, as if uncertain whether he’d open it.”
Josef knew that he’d have to share this immediately with Martin Engel, but he’d at least wait until he got back to Kärntnerstrasse. Although as he walked into the station, Niklas Krenn hit him with the news that Engel had just phoned.
“Lindner’s apparently found a small secret room with a safe at the back of Brunnerman’s. Piehler and a safecracking team are there now.”
“Thanks.”
Josef cradled his head in his hands as he sat in his private office. Combined with the information he had now, Piehler and Lindner would be at Daniel’s door in no time. Josef picked up the phone and dialed Daniel’s number. It answered after two rings.
“Mr. Lendt. Josef Weber at Kärntnerstrasse. I need to see you regarding the Brunnerman investigation.”
“I... I have to go out right now. But I will be back in a couple of hours.”
Josef checked his watch. “Okay. I will be there at seven o’clock sharp.”
To anyone listening in, a totally innocuous call that tied in to the investigation. Already Josef feared the Gestapo might be tapping Daniel’s line.
But the call was in fact the signal he’d agreed with Daniel at the end of their last meeting: the SS or Gestapo are on their way. Get out of there now!
53
All Jewish citizens, regardless of age, are to wear a yellow-star armband. The stamped letter J should also be denoted in the identity cards of all Jews. All male Jews shall add “Israel” to their names and all female Jews “Sarah.”
Julian Reisner’s hands trembled on the large package as he opened it. Having seen the Lublin postmark, he’d quickly picked it out from the pile of seventeen packages Krisztina had handed him that morning.
Some mornings he’d get as many as thirty manuscripts to read. Always the same routine: he’d put manuscripts from his regular authors and recommendations to one side to personally read, then skim the first few pages of the remaining manuscripts. If they showed merit, he’d pass to Krisztina or one of two regular outside readers for a full read and report.
