The Good German (36 page)

Gunther looked down. “Because Marthe talked to her. A foolish slip, after being so careful. But what difference did it make in the end?”

“She talked to her?”

“She knew her. From school. Schoolgirls. ‘Renate, is it really you?’ she said. Just like that, so surprised to see her. Marthe must have thought she was in hiding too. Another U-boat. ‘So many years,’ Marthe said, ‘and just the same.’ Foolish.”

“And did Fräulein Naumann recognize her?”

“Oh yes, she knew. ‘You’re mistaken,’ she said, and of course that was right. Marthe shouldn’t have said anything. It was dangerous to be recognized. They tortured the U-boats sometimes, to find the others, to get names. But she knew.” He stopped, his eyes moving away, then began to talk more quickly, wanting it over. “She tried to leave then, of course, but they came, the coats, so she couldn’t get out. And that’s when I saw. They looked at
her
, one of them. First around the room, searching, then at her. To tell them. She could have said, she’s gone, she just left. She could have saved her. Her old school friend. But no. ‘That’s the one,’ she says. ‘She’s a Jew.’ So they grabbed Marthe. ‘Renate,’ she said, that’s all, the name, but the
greifer
wouldn’t look at her.”

“And you?” the lawyer said in the quiet room. “What did you do?”

“Of course people were looking then. ‘What is this?’ I said. ‘There’s some mistake.’ And they said to her, the
greifer
, ‘Him too?’ And she had no idea who I was, you see. So they were ready to take me too, but then Marthe saved me. ‘He’s nobody,’ she said. ‘We were just sharing the table.’ Nobody. And she moved away with them so they wouldn’t even think about it. Quietly, you know. No commotion. Not even another look to give me away.”

Jake sat up, his mind darting. Of course. If you didn’t know your victim, someone had to point him out. Mistakes could be made. A crowded café. A crowded market square. But nobody had been there to save Liz.

“Herr Behn, I’m sorry to ask again. So there’s no confusion—you state positively that you saw and heard the accused identify your wife for deportation. A woman known to her. There is no doubt?”

“No doubt. I saw it.” He looked at Renate. “She sent her to her death.”

“No,” Renate said quietly. “They said a labor camp.”

“To her death,” Gunther said, then looked back to the prosecutor. “And she went with them in the car, the same car. All the
greifers
together.”

“I didn’t want to,” Renate said, a stray detail.

“Thank you, Herr Behn,” the lawyer said, dismissing him.

“And then—do you know what?” Gunther said.

Bernie raised his head, surprised, something outside the script.

“What?” the lawyer said uncertainly.

“You want to know what it was like? Those days? The waitress came over. ‘Are you paying for both?’ she said. ‘You ordered two coffees.’” He stopped. “So I paid.” The end of the column, his final point.

“Thank you, Herr Behn,” the lawyer said again.

The defense attorney rose. “A question. Herr Behn, were you a member of the National Socialist Party? ”

“Yes.”

“Let it be entered that the witness is an admitted fascist.”

“All policemen were required to join the party,” the prosecutor said. “This is irrelevant.”

“I suggest that this testimony is biased,” the defense attorney said. “A Nazi official. Who enforced the criminal laws of the fascist regime. Who testifies for personal reasons.”

“This is absurd,” the prosecutor said. “The testimony is the truth. Ask her.” He pointed to Renate. Now both lawyers were standing, what formal procedures there had been slipping away in a crossfire that darted from lawyer to witness to accused. “Were you at the Café Heil? Did you report Marthe Behn? Did you identify her? Answer.”

“Yes,” Renate said.

“Not a stranger. A woman you knew,” the prosecutor said, his voice rising.

“I had to.” She looked down. “You don’t understand. I needed one more that week. The quota. There were not so many left then. I needed one more.”

Jake felt his stomach move. A number to fill the truck.

“To save yourself.”

“Not for myself,” she said, shaking her head. “Not for myself.”

“Fräulein Naumann,” the defense said, formal again. “Please tell the court who was also being held in custody in Grosse Hamburger Strasse.”

“My mother.”

“Under what conditions?”

“She was kept there so that I would come back in the evening, when my work was finished,” she said, resigned now, aware that it wouldn’t matter. But she had lifted her head and was looking at Jake, the way a public speaker pinpoints a face in an audience, talking only to him, a private explanation, the interview they probably would never have. “They knew I wouldn’t leave her. We were taken together. First to work at Siemenstadt. Slaves. Then, when the deportations started, they told me they would keep her name off the list if I worked for them. So many every week. I couldn’t send her east.”

“So you sent other Jews,” the prosecutor said.

“But then there were not so many left,” she said, still to Jake.

“To—what did you call them?—labor camps.”

“Yes, labor camps. But she was an old woman. I knew the conditions were hard. To survive that—”

“But that’s not all you did, is it?” the prosecutor said, pressing now. “Your superior”—he glanced at a paper—“Hans Becker. We have testimony that you were intimate with him. Were you intimate with him?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes on Jake. “That too.”

“And did he keep your mother off the list? For your good efforts?”

“At first. Then he sent her to Theresienstadt. He said it was easier there.” She paused. “He ran out of names.”

“Tell the court what happened to her there,” the defense said.

“She died.”

“But you continued your work after that,” the prosecutor said. “You still came back every night, didn’t you?”

“By then, where could I go? The Jews knew about me—I couldn’t hide with them. There was no one.”

“Except Hans Becker. You continued your relations with him.”

“Yes.”

“Even after he deported your mother.”

“Yes.”

“And you still say you were protecting her?”

“Does it matter to you what I say?” she said wearily.

“When it’s the truth, yes.”

“The truth? The truth is that he forced me. Over and over. He liked that. I kept my mother alive. I kept myself alive. I did what I had to do. I thought, there’s nothing worse than this, but it will end, the Russians will come. Not much longer. Then you came and hunted me down like a dog. Becker’s girlfriend, they called me. Girlfriend, when he did that to me. What is my crime? That I’m still alive?”

“Fräulein, that’s not the crime here.”

“No, the punishment,” she said to Jake. “Still alive.”

“Yes,” Gunther said unexpectedly from the witness chair, but not looking anywhere, so that no one was sure what he meant.

The Russian prosecutor cleared his throat. “I’m sure we’re all enlightened to hear that the Nazis are to blame for everything, Fräulein. A pity, perhaps, that you did their work so well.”

“I did what I had to do,” she said, still staring, until finally Jake had to look away. What did she expect him to say? I forgive you?

“Are you finished with the witness?” the judge said, restless.

“One more question,” the defense said. “Herr Behn, you’re a large man. Strong. You did not struggle with the men in the café?”

“With Gestapo? No.”

“No, you saved yourself.” A pointed look at Renate. “Or, to be exact, your wife saved you. I believe that’s what you said.”

“Yes, she saved me. It was too late for her, once they knew.”

“And after this you remained on the police force?”

“Yes.”

“Enforcing the laws of the government that had arrested your wife.”

“The racial laws were not our responsibility.”

“I see. Some of the laws, then. Not all. But you made arrests?”

“Of criminals, yes.”

“And they were sent where?” To prison.

“So late in the war? Most were sent to ‘labor camps,’ weren’t they?”

Gunther said nothing.

“Tell us, how did you decide which laws to enforce for the National Socialists?”

“Decide? It wasn’t for me to decide. I was a policeman. I had no choice.”

“I see. So only Fräulein Naumann had this choice.”

“I object,” the prosecutor said. “This is nonsense. The situations were not at all similar. What is the defense trying to suggest?”

“That this testimony is compromised from start to finish. This is a personal grievance, not Soviet justice. You hold this woman accountable for the crimes of the Nazis? She had no choice. Listen to your own witness. No one had a choice.”

The only possible defense left. Everyone was guilty; no one was guilty.

“She had a choice,” Gunther said, his voice thick.

The defense nodded, pleased with himself, finally where he wanted to be.

“Did you?”

“Don’t answer,” the prosecutor said quickly.

But Gunther raised his head, unflinching—a moment he’d expected, even if Bernie hadn’t, the other reckoning. Not to be put off, even by a bottle to blot himself out. He gazed straight ahead, eyes stone.

“Yes, I had a choice. And I worked for them too,” he said, his voice as firm and steady as the hand on the razor. “Her murderers. Even after that.”

The room, suddenly embarrassed, was silent. Not the answer any of them had wanted, a little death, pulled out of him like Liz’s gasp. One cut.

He turned to Renate. “We all did,” he said, his voice lower now. “But you—you could have looked away. Your friend. Just the once.”

At this she did look away, facing the stenographers, so that her words were almost lost.

“I needed one more,” she said, as if it answered everything. “One more.”

Another awkward silence in the room, broken finally by the judge.

“The witness is not on trial here,” he said. “Are you disputing what he saw?”

The defense shook his head, as eager as everyone else now to move on.

“Good. Then you’re finished,” the judge said to Gunther. “Step down.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “We will meet tomorrow.”

“But we have other witnesses,” the prosecutor said, anxious not to let his momentum stall.

“Then call them tomorrow. It’s enough for today. And next time stick to the facts.”

Which were what, Jake wondered. Another column of numbers.

When no one moved, the judge waved his hand at the room. “Adjourned, adjourned,” he said irritably, then rose, motioning for the other two to follow.

Jake heard the sound of chairs being moved, a low buzz, lawyers gathering papers. Gunther stayed in his chair, still looking straight ahead. The guards, surprised by the abrupt dismissal, nudged Renate away from her railing and began to lead her at gunpoint out of the room. Jake watched her pass in front of the bench, her eyes meeting his as she approached the prosecution table. She stopped.

“So it’s really you,” she said to him, her old voice. “You came back.”

The guards, not sure whether she was allowed to speak, looked around for instructions, but the judges had gone, the room emptying with them.

Jake nodded, not knowing what to say. It’s good to see you again? Collarbones sticking out.

“It wasn’t for myself,” she said to Jake, her eyes on him, waiting.

Jake looked down, unable to respond. Bernie was watching from the side, waiting too. But what could anyone say? A guard took her arm. In a minute she’d be gone. One word, something.

He fell back on the empty courtesy of a prison visit. “Can I get you anything?”

She looked at him for another moment, disappointed, then shook her head. More Russian, insistent now. The guards pushed her away from the table.

Jake stayed until the room was almost cleared, just a hum coming in from the hall. Gunther was still in his chair. When Bernie went over to get him, he looked up once, then brushed him aside, getting up stiffly, and walked toward Jake, one deliberate foot in front of the other.

“I’ll give you a lift,” Bernie said, but Gunther ignored him.

He stopped for a second at the table. “I’ll talk to Willi,” he said to Jake, then kept walking out of the room.

Bernie, disconcerted, went over and began putting files back in his briefcase.

“What about you?” he said.

Jake looked up. “I have the jeep.” He stood up to leave, then turned. “Still think all the stories end the same way?” he said.

Bernie shoved the last file in the case. “Marthe Behn’s did.”

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OUTSIDE, JAKE AVOIDED the Alex, where everyone had parked, and took one of the side streets instead, too numb to face Ron and the others swapping notes. Gunther had already disappeared somewhere in the rubble. A walk, anything to get away. But the courtroom followed him, a dead hand on his shoulder. What happens when it’s over. He looked around. No one in the street, not even the usual children climbing over bricks. The raids had done their worst here—not a wall standing, the air still thick with sour dust. Flies buzzed over a deep bomb crater, now a gray pond of sewage from a broken main. But poison had been seeping into Berlin for years. When had Hans Becker told Renate about her mother? While they were in bed? Always something worse, even when it was ordinary. A waitress collecting her check, knowing. What it was like, day after day. For the first time Jake wondered if Breimer might be right, if this wasteland was what they deserved, some biblical retribution to wipe out the poison once and for all. But here it still was, a giant hole filling with sludge.

“Uri.”

The Russian startled him, coming out of nowhere.

“
Uri
,” the soldier said again, pointing to Jake’s arm.

“No watch.”

The Russian scowled. “
Ja, uri
,” he said, pointing to the old Bulova on Jake’s wrist. He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and held them out.

“No. Now piss off.”

A hard stare, menacing, so that suddenly Jake felt his blood jump, a spurt of fear. A deserted street. It could be this easy, capricious, like shooting at rats. Another incident. But the Russian was turning away, disgruntled, stuffing the notes back in his pocket.