After Midnight (16 page)

And now began a period of feverish activity for Franz
and Paul. Franz didn’t want to write to me about it—it was to be a surprise for me.

But once they had the money safe and sound it looked as if the whole thing would fall through again. It was going to be extremely difficult to get the necessary permits. Both men plugged away at it until they were worn out. Even Paul ended up looking quite pale.

Finally, after taking endless pains, they got over that difficulty too. They managed to rent a dark little shop in a small side street off the Old Market. “Your Sanna will do it all up to look nice and neat and cheerful,” said Paul. “Women have a gift for that sort of thing.” There was a living room and a kitchen next to the shop, and we were going to live there. And there was one more room beyond the kitchen, where Paul would sleep. The shop had a gateway beside it where we could open the bookstall later. We’d have managed fine together. The room where Franz and I would live looked out on a little courtyard where white and slate-grey pigeons flew about or walked the uneven cobblestones, nodding and pecking. There was an antiquarian bookseller living near the shop, a widower who had gone in for pigeon-breeding after his wife’s death instead of getting married again.

When Franz opened the window of what was going to be our room for the first time and put his hand out, a white pigeon flying past let a dollop of its droppings fall on it. Franz was glad, in his quiet way, since pigeon droppings are supposed to mean good luck and money.

Paul and Franz were more feverishly busy than ever. Franz bought me three geraniums in pots—a white geranium, a pink geranium and a red geranium. He and Paul negotiated with cigarette firms and enormous numbers of commercial travelers. And after much inward struggle and
deliberation, Paul bought a wonderful nickel-plated cigar lighter to stand on the counter. The cigar lighter had a little blue flame that never stopped burning—like the haloes you imagine on the heads of the twelve apostles.

Franz and Paul had seen any number of tremendously grand and elegant tobacconist’s shops—but everything in them seemed, to them, ordinary and uninteresting. While all
they
could afford was very small and poor by comparison, and yet to them it was a miracle.

Three days before the great opening, Franz and Paul were arrested. At six in the morning. Franz had been sleeping on the sofa at Paul’s place, because his mother, Aunt Adelheid, was kicking up such a cantankerous fuss.

They weren’t taken to any court, either of them, they were taken to the Gestapo room at police headquarters, where I’d been myself already. They were accused of undermining the National Socialist state. Then Paul went quite stupid with fury, and said it was his dearest wish to do just that, and he felt ashamed of himself for not having set about it yet.

The unpleasant little magistrate had Franz and Paul taken into protective custody. They were separated, so that they couldn’t see or speak to each other.

The magistrate said leaflets containing attacks on the National Socialist government had been found at Paul’s place. Franz doesn’t know if that was true or not; he didn’t get a chance to ask Paul.

Franz was asked if he was against the war, and he said he hated the thought of war. He shouldn’t have said that. But it’s totally impossible for anyone in Germany to know what he ought to be, what he ought to want or what he ought to say.

Franz didn’t know why he was locked up, and when they let him go again three months later he didn’t know why they’d let him go. He got no answer to any of his questions. They said things to him which he didn’t understand. There was a flame of hatred burning in him that consumed all his thoughts. He couldn’t feel his heart beating or his brain thinking any more, all he felt was that hot, burning flame of hatred.

“Where’s my friend?” he asked. “Where’s Paul?” He asked thirty times, a hundred times. When his mind had stopped asking, his mouth still went on framing the question that the fear in his heart had taught him. “Where’s my friend?” And he realized he would never hear any more about Paul.

Franz put one foot in front of the other; his feet could still think. But inside his head it was all bleak and cold and untidily empty, like an apartment when the people have moved out. Franz’s feet took him to the little tobacconist’s shop in the Old Market.

There wasn’t a shop any more. A shop with nothing to sell is not a shop. All the cigarettes were gone, and so was the proud and lovely cigar lighter with the little blue flame that never stopped burning. The blankets and pillows were gone too, and the rooms looked bare and stricken. The three geranium pots lay on the floor, smashed and broken. A red geranium, a pink geranium and a white geranium. But all three geraniums were dead, and were the same indeterminate brown.

The walls of the new little apartment were daubed in the most disgusting way. The sight struck terror into Franz. Why do people hate to see a nice, clean start? Perhaps it’s natural to hate the people and the places you are robbing.
You can’t bear the thought that your victim is not a thief himself, and being just the victim he won’t have a guilty conscience.

Franz falls silent here. His breath comes thin and whistling. His shoulders are hunched, as if he were trying to pull them around him like the collar of a coat. His hands are folded, limp and powerless. We walk up and down in the little shrubbery, up and down, up and down. Sometimes the headlights of a car in the nearby street break through the bleak blackness of the trees and bushes, like huge, hostile, searching eyes.

I would like to kiss Franz, but it’s not always or in all circumstances as easy to comfort a man with kisses as a woman. “Franz?”

I’m freezing. I wish Franz would notice I’m wearing a thin, pink silk dress, and I smell of roses, and my hair is curled. Well, the curls are beginning to come out of it in the damp air.

“Franz, it’s all terribly sad. Dear Franz. But now we’ll stay together, Franz, do you hear? We’ll find a way together. Everything will be all right again.”

“It can’t be all right again,” says Franz. “You haven’t heard everything yet, Sanna.” And Franz goes on with his story.

He stood by the window, on the broken geranium pots. Pigeons were nodding and pecking and fluttering about in the yard. They were fat and feathery and a soothing sight to see.

Then the old widower, the antiquarian bookseller who bred the birds, came out into the yard, rubbing his hands and letting the damp, cool morning air fall on his wrinkled old bald pate and into his mouth.

He saw Franz standing at the window, he looked all
around him, cast quick, darting glances up and down the walls of the buildings, and then came slowly towards Franz and held out a hesitant and shaking hand. The two of them had never actually spoken to each other before.

“What was it like?” the old man asked in a hoarse, timid whisper. “No, don’t tell me,” he added, “don’t tell me anything, I know you’re not allowed to—nobody who comes out of there is allowed to say anything. They took my nephew too, my nephew who helps me in the shop, and they kept him longer than you. He keeps quiet about it. He hangs out the swastika flag—well, you have to. We have to go along with it all, we want to live. They’re stronger than we are, you can’t do anything against them on your own.”

And then the old man told Franz that the whole thing was Willi Schleimann’s doing. This man Schleimann was about forty years old and the father of a family, but he was always chasing strange women and girls who were nothing to do with him. He was tall and dark and well got up, and he wanted to make conquests of them all. He had an allotment in the Sülz district, of which he was very fond. He worked in it for the fresh vegetables, and because gardening is healthy and keeps you slim, and also because he could take girls to his allotment on summer evenings. He even used to shut himself up in his tool shed with women in winter. Besides this, he had a small tobacconist’s in the same street as Franz and Paul’s new shop, seven doors away. The business wasn’t doing very well, because Schleimann had other things on his mind and his wife always had to serve in the shop. She was a glum, sickly, embittered woman, and put the customers off. Well, a customer is not going to stop and wonder what’s made a woman nasty and unpleasant like that, why would he?

Schleimann was extremely nice to Franz and Paul at first. He went to the pub with them and gave them his expert advice on their shop. And he talked politics, saying things against the Nazis. He was in the SA, and found his uniform brought him more success than ever with women, and he was on the point of getting another pip when rumours began going around about him, to the effect that his grandmother had been Jewish. That meant he was flung out of the SA for the time being. The bit about the Jewish grandmother couldn’t be proved for sure, so after going to a great deal of trouble Schleimann managed to get back into the SA. But his position was now a dubious and uncertain one.

He wanted to do something which would bring him back into favour and good standing with the Nazis again, and he also wanted to stop Franz and Paul opening their tobacconist’s shop, so as not to have any competition in the street. So he went to the nearest Party office and informed on Franz and Paul for Communist intrigues and seditious language. It’s easy enough to get rid of any competition this way. Unless your competitors stand remarkably high in Party favour, they’ll at least get taken into custody for a while. And even if they’re let out later because nothing can be proved against them, a little business just starting up will naturally be ruined and has no chance of recovery.

In the case of Paul and Franz, Paul had indeed said all sorts of things against the Nazis, and Franz had agreed with him. They were both so trusting. Perhaps Paul really did go in for Communist activities, perhaps they really did find leaflets at his place—how shall we ever know? But Franz at least knew nothing about it; he has no talent whatsoever for politics. His only talent is for love and friendship, and he loved Paul.

The old antiquarian bookseller was telling him what the whole street knew, for Schleimann himself had boasted, in the pub, that he had been too clever for those bloody Commies, he’d done for them all right. And yet Schleimann too had been an active member of a now banned political party not long before the Nazis came to power.

We are sitting on the cold, wet bench now. A chill runs up my spine. “I killed him,” says Franz. I feel as if my brain has been numb and frozen, and is now gradually thawing out. I am beginning to understand, and to believe him. I want to hear more, more, more. I hear a tram going up the Bockenheim Road; is it the last tonight? I see the light go out inside a building, the grey, vaporous breath of all the sleeping people lies heavy on the city, it wafts over my hair, it settles with the light pressure of a veil on my shoulders. This is all so unreal. Am I still alive? Tunes are humming in my ears. I dream I’m hearing the music of Liska’s party.

I put my hand in Franz’s loosely clasped hands. They
are
his hands. It
is
all real, very real. Franz tightens his hands around my hand. He knows I’m here with him.

Franz listened to the old man. It was a cold, grey morning. When a ray of sun pierced the clouds like a sword, the old man hurried back to his own place, tottering along, without even giving Franz his hand. The pigeons were nodding and pecking. Was their hunger never satisfied?

Franz had been given his suit back. He had been given his wallet back too. Franz counted the money in it. He counted nineteen marks, seventy-five pfennigs. He leaned against the hideously daubed wall of his shop and ran his hand over the bare counter. He had bought it second-hand, but still in very good condition. Now, however, it had been hacked about with choppers. Perhaps they’d been looking
for money, or Communist leaflets, or perhaps they just wanted to spoil the counter because it wasn’t spoilt yet.

Franz was filled with sadness. He was cold and hungry. He tried to think, but he couldn’t, so he gave up and let the sad waves of his misery sweep over him. He stood quite still, waiting for himself and whatever decisions his mind and heart would take. Then the soft, misty melancholy melted away from him, and he felt hatred in his body, hot and burning hatred, as if he had swallowed the sun.

Franz went to the main railway station. First because he was near it, and second because desperate people always feel drawn to railway stations. And third because Franz wanted to write me a letter which would get to me soon, though he didn’t think of that until he was in the station. And fourth because he was already fleeing from the consequences of a deed he had yet to do.

In the station post office he wrote me the express letter I got in the afternoon. I do love him—he thought of me, and then he entirely forgot me again. Women can never forget men quite so entirely. On the other hand, a woman can never be quite so steadfast as a man.

When Franz had written me his letter he went to a bar in Komödien Street, near the cathedral. He sat there eating liver sausage and drinking gin. He had seven gins.

“Just now Schleimann goes off to work on his allotment every afternoon,” the old antiquarian bookseller had told Franz. “He’s digging it over.” So Franz took a tram out to Sülz from Wallrafs Square.

He found the allotment. Factory chimneys rose into the air, dark and tall. They were a long way off, but they filled the whole view. The allotment gardens were a bleak wilderness of a valley among great mountains of rubbish. The
waste ground was used for a tip, and the allotments had acquired walls made of ash, threadbare carpets, rusty pots and pans, boots without soles.

And in the shelter of these weird towers of refuse, strawberry plants grew, with dark green leaves. Later they would get bright, white blossom and fat red berries.

Runner beans, with fresh green foliage and small but bright red flowers in summer, clambered over dilapidated little arbours drenched with lingering, grey autumn mists and the dull, stale cold of winter without frost and snow.

The door Franz opened was rusty. All the allotments seemed to be an ocean of rotting cabbage stalks. Here and there, white snowdrops came creeping quietly out from under the rubbish. You didn’t see them creeping, just their whiteness.