The Human Pool (5 page)

FRANKFURT

I SLEPT BADLY BECAUSE
of the time zone difference, having flown into the future with a head too full of the past. I lay awake and fretted about why I was there. The face in the bathroom mirror looked rough when I got up mid-afternoon.

At my age, the simple day-to-day tasks get harder to negotiate—the reception desk, ordering the meal, the shop counter—but downstairs everything turned out fine. The receptionist was friendly and efficient, but didn't hurry in spite of the queue building up; she told me where I could get a tour bus, marking a street plan treating me like I was only a tiny bit simple, for which I was grateful. The waitress in the café humoured me by letting me try out my German. The afternoon was fine, very much like ones I remembered, the green of spring softer than back home, the sky more of a washed blue.

When I got back to the hotel there was a welcome message from Karl-Heinz suggesting dinner that evening, and apologising for not being able to meet before. There was also a letter for me. It was a copy of a fairly recent newspaper cutting, an obituary of a man named Jaretski. There was no note. The stamp was German.

According to his obituary, Jaretski had been a successful German financial businessman knocked down and killed by a tram in Strasbourg. It noted that he had served in the war, without specific reference to what he had done.

I had been in Strasbourg briefly during the war, but could not remember any Jaretski, although the name was vaguely familiar. There was no photograph. I felt the slow, familiar skin crawl of fear. Someone knew where I was in Florida. Now someone knew where I was in Frankfurt. Both book and obituary seemed to be messages specific to events that had happened over fifty years ago. Why now, and who was behind it?

 

Sometimes I catch sight of myself unawares. Nothing prepares you for the shock of discovering you are old, none of the gradual advances of age—wattle, white hair, pouches, and sagging—readies you for the moment when you look in the mirror and see nothing of the person you once were. I use an electric razor now as it avoids the need to look at myself. Pants I might once have worn with a sense of irony I now put on without thinking—with elasticised waists and comfortable pleats.

Where to begin? I find myself asking, not for the first time. And how to define what this might be about, given the prompts of book and obituary, without frightening anybody—because it will almost certainly turn out to be about human behaviour at its worst. The old, having less to lose, can give the young a run for their money any day when it comes to bad behaviour.

So here's me, back in Germany as a tourist. A cliché American, minus the wife most of them still have. Retired. Kids scattered, on Prozac, grandchildren on Ritalin.

Germany then, Year Zero, flattened; Germany now, the homogenisation of the economic miracle.

An old man with a bad stomach, in a cheap hotel. A fly on an upturned water glass. We are all old men now, and whatever outrage we did was done so long ago that it is beyond the reach of apology. Maybe.

FRANKFURT

STRASSE'S RESTAURANT OF CHOICE
was a
bierkeller
basement with rough whitewashed walls, Goldilocks furniture, the city's largest gingham reserve, and a staff of
zaftig
middle-aged waitresses in white peasant blouses with puffy sleeves. I got there early and waited at the bar. It was pure cartoon tourist-board, all loud jollity, oom-pah muzak and foaming steins. Everyone looked like regulars, all elderly to old, no women apart from staff. I wondered if it was a haunt of geriatric gays.

When my man arrived there was no mistaking Siegfried's warning. Loosely translated, Strasse was a fat mess. With his restricted speed there was plenty of time to study him. He was at least eighty and looked like he'd had a stroke, his movement reduced to a stick-shuffle. He appeared surprised when I introduced myself, and I had to remind him who I was and why I was there. His delayed greeting involved a tremulous double handshake, held too long, while he inspected me with pale eyes, confused still but angry and alert. He smelled of brandy and sickness. Whatever medication he was on gave him the physique of a big baby, but his eyes were full of history. Among the ruined looks you could see traces of a handsome man. He still had a full head of iron-filings hair, incongruously dyed boot-polish black, and an imperious beak. Under a smart old hacking jacket he wore soft convalescent clothes.

The waitresses made a fuss over him, helping him to what he called his table, in an alcove, away from other diners. We had just sat down when we were joined by another man, around Strasse's age, but rangier and fitter. He dressed like an American but spoke German, and looked like he had once been tough. Big reunion. They hadn't seen each other in a long while. The other man gave me a hostile glance, and Strasse offered an embarrassed explanation that he had double-booked dinner. His forgetfulness pained him. I offered to leave. The American looked relieved, but Strasse's sense of protocol won out. He told the other man in German I could just follow that they would land me with the bill. The American, introduced as Joe Hoover, remained uncharmed by my presence.

Strasse insisted on ordering pork knuckles and sauerkraut, and we drank heavily thanks to his indiscriminate ordering of steins of lager, punctuated with rounds of schnapps, and a metallic-tasting white wine served in green goblets which made it look even more acidic than it was.

Hoover sat there looking glum, making pellets of his bread. When I asked why he was in Frankfurt, he gave me a sardonic look and said, ‘I wish I knew.'

It turned out his wife had died not so long ago, which perhaps explained his distance.

For most of the evening Strasse acted as though I wasn't there. Siegfried's name did nothing to further conversation. He talked to Hoover in old friends' shorthand; their German too fast for me. In among all the compounds, I made out that they had a working relationship which went back to Egypt in the 1950s and Budapest in 1944 and 1956. They had also been together in Syria at some point. Strasse switched to English to complain that flying disagreed with his medication. Hoover said his own body clock was fucked from his flight. His daughter's recommendation against jet lag had been to line his shoes with brown paper. He rolled his eyes. ‘Karl-Heinz, what am I doing here?'

‘We'll talk later,' said Strasse. ‘First let's eat and drink and enjoy ourselves. Welcome back to Germany.'

Strasse's enjoyment consisted of pouring large quantities of alcohol down his throat to little apparent effect.

I couldn't work them out. Strasse was an old Nazi. Hoover was American, though he said he was originally from Belgium. I knew Belgium was occupied by the Nazis, and decided Hoover had been some kind of collaborator. Hoover said he had been working for the Red Cross in Budapest in 1944. ‘Among others,' said Strasse. They toasted a whole list of names which meant nothing to me.

Hoover asked if Strasse remembered anyone named Jaretski, which he did, after some memory fumbles. ‘He was DSK'.

The DSK, it was explained grudgingly, had been an SS currency division. A couple of drinks later, Hoover remembered coming across Jaretski in Brussels in 1942. ‘He pulled me in and questioned me. But why would anyone send me his obituary?' Strasse was unaware that Jaretski was dead. He hadn't heard him mentioned in years. Hoover asked if Strasse had sent him a book in America. Strasse answered, ‘Why should I send you a book?'

Hoover shrugged. Strasse held up his schnapps. ‘Let me give you a name. To Willi Schmidt.'

Hoover appeared jolted. ‘I saw a man who looked like Willi on television the other week.'

Strasse had seen the same item. Small world, I said. ‘Not really', said Hoover, eager to contradict. ‘When you get to our age, there's little to do except watch television.'

An argument followed over whether the man on TV had been Schmidt or not. Hoover was adamant. ‘I tell you, Karl-Heinz, Willi's dead as doornails.'

‘Did you ever see his body?' Strasse was starting to look choleric.

‘I saw the river he fell into. Betty Monroe saw the body.'

‘I know', said Karl-Heinz. ‘I fixed the death certificate, but that doesn't mean there
was
a body.'

Hoover: ‘Willi's dead. Let's drink to the living, or the half-living. I'm seeing Betty tomorrow.'

We were all drunk by then. Strasse and Hoover turned to riffing about the war. They compared the British love of smut and secrecy to the Americans' combination of guile and gullibility.

‘What about the Germans?' I asked.

Strasse turned to me with a hawkish gaze. Hoover said, ‘Big meat eaters, porkers to the last, drawn to the flame of genocide.' Strasse opened his hand in acknowledgement and knocked over his wine, which brought a waitress running. Hoover said, ‘They should have strung you up years ago,' and Strasse did a big ‘Who me?' shrug, like he was the funny one in a double act, and that set them laughing.

‘What exactly did you two do?' I asked. Hoover appeared droll. Strasse gave a shrug and took a big swallow of schnapps. He had his elbows on the table, being past the stage of trying to sit upright. Hoover said, without irony, ‘We made it possible for the likes of you to sleep safely in your bed.'

‘Witnesses to human behaviour at its worst,' said Strasse.

‘Is he always so cryptic?' I asked.

‘We were the cryptic boys,' said Hoover.

Strasse snorted and hauled himself off to the toilet.

Hoover refused to be drawn. ‘It was a long time ago.' He asked who I worked for. I told him I was researching for a private source.

Hoover grunted. ‘Sniffing around old Nazis, also known as scraping the barrel.'

‘Who's Willi Schmidt?'

‘Who
was
Willi Schmidt.'

I obliged by repeating the question in the past tense, but all he would say was that Willi had been a shoe salesman.

‘A
shoe
salesman? How do a shoe salesman, an SS officer, and an American from Belgium fit together?'

‘Beats me,' said Hoover, refusing to budge. I said it sounded like Willi Schmidt had done the old Harry Lime trick of faking his death.

He looked at me wearily. ‘It was a coincidence. The guy on TV was some owner of a chemical plant that got burned down. He had the right height for Willi, that's all.'

When Karl-Heinz returned, Hoover announced that he had bad jet lag and wanted to go. Strasse dismissed the notion, ordered more schnapps, and washed down a handful of pills with a swill of wine. The mixture turned him bugeyed. He stared at me for so long I thought he was about to have another stroke, then he banged on the table and announced, ‘I was a black dossier man.'

I asked what that meant. After a long deliberation, Hoover said that Karl-Heinz had worked for Himmler. ‘Didn't you, Karl-Heinz?'

Karl-Heinz looked irritated and smug at the same time.

‘Top dog Nazi,' said Hoover. ‘Karl-Heinz kissed the Reichsführer's ass on many occasions.'

‘Worked for Himmler how?' I asked Strasse.

Hoover answered, ‘Horse buyer for the SS. Wasn't that your official title?'

Strasse nodded. ‘Eighty-seven years old, and I still ride every day!'

‘You old bullshitter, you haven't been in a saddle in years,' Hoover said with affection. He gave me a blank look. Perhaps the alcohol was doing its work. ‘Karl-Heinz was in the business of selling Jews.'

I humoured him, saying I had thought the Nazis had been in the business of getting rid of Jews.

Strasse shook his head. ‘You shouldn't believe everything you read in history books.'

‘Is he one of those guys who says nothing happened?' I asked Hoover.

Strasse gave an angry snort and grabbed my lapel. ‘I was there.'

We eyeballed each other as Hoover watched. Two old men who had been in tough situations. Finally Strasse let go and pinched my cheek. ‘Ransoming Jews was an insurance plan for when the war was lost. “Look, we saved Jews!”' He shrugged. ‘Cynical times, my young friend.'

‘It saved
your
neck,' said Hoover.

I asked what Hoover's job had been. ‘Just a runner. A go-between.'

‘You were Willi's shadow,' said Strasse.

‘Not really.'

‘Willi was running you.'

‘So were you.'

Strasse turned to me. ‘Joe worked for everyone, didn't you, Joe?'

Hoover drew a line with his hand, as if to say enough.

‘Cynical times?' I asked.

‘Not as cynical as what happened afterwards,' said Strasse.

‘He means we all ended up working on the same side,' said Hoover.

‘Which one was that?' I asked.

Strasse gave a mock salute. ‘U.S. intelligence.' He nudged me in the ribs and said, ‘No questions asked!'

He wouldn't say what had earned him his black dossier. We all ended the meal too drunk to talk straight. But they still had the edge, and managed to stiff me with the bill.