Winter of the World (8 page)

Erik followed him out and got into the passenger seat of the Tree Frog. He loved cars and was desperate to be old enough to drive, and normally he enjoyed riding in any vehicle, watching the
dials and studying the driver’s technique. But now he felt as if he were on display, sitting beside a Jewish doctor in his brown shirt. What if Herr Lippmann should see him? The trip was
agony.

Fortunately, it was short: in a couple of minutes they were at the von Ulrich house.

‘What’s the young woman’s name?’ Rothmann asked.

‘Ada Hempel.’

‘Ah, yes, she came to see me last week. The baby’s early. All right, take me to her.’

Erik led the way into the house. He heard a baby cry. It had come already! He hurried down to the basement, the doctor following.

Ada lay on her back. The bed was soaked with blood and something else. Carla stood holding a tiny baby in her arms. The baby was covered in slime. Something that looked like thick string ran
from the baby up Ada’s skirt. Carla was wide-eyed with terror. ‘What must I do?’ she cried.

‘You’re doing exactly the right thing,’ Doctor Rothmann reassured her. ‘Just hold that baby close a minute longer.’ He sat beside Ada. He listened to her heart,
took her pulse, and said: ‘How do you feel, my dear?’

‘I’m so tired,’ she said.

Rothmann gave a satisfied nod. He stood up again and looked at the baby in Carla’s arms. ‘A little boy,’ he said.

Erik watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion as the doctor opened his bag, took out some thread and tied two knots in the cord. While he was doing so he spoke to Carla in a soft
voice. ‘Why are you crying? You’ve done a marvellous job. You’ve delivered a baby all on your own. You hardly needed me! You’d better be a doctor when you grow
up.’

Carla became calmer. Then she whispered: ‘Look at his head.’ The doctor had to lean towards her to hear. ‘I think there’s something wrong with him.’

‘I know.’ The doctor took out a pair of sharp scissors and cut the cord between the two knots Then he took the naked baby from Carla and held him at arm’s length, studying him.
Erik could not see anything wrong, but the baby was so red and wrinkled and slimy that it was hard to tell. However, after a thoughtful moment, the doctor said: ‘Oh, dear.’

Looking more carefully, Erik could see that there was something wrong. The baby’s face was lopsided. One side was normal, but on the other the head seemed dented and there was something
strange about the eye.

Rothmann handed the baby back to Carla.

Ada groaned again, and seemed to strain.

When she relaxed, Rothmann reached under her skirt and drew out a lump of something that looked disgustingly like meat. ‘Erik,’ he said. ‘Fetch me a newspaper.’

Erik said: ‘Which one?’ His parents took all the main papers every day.

‘Any one, lad,’ said Rothmann gently. ‘I don’t want to read it.’

Erik ran upstairs and found yesterday’s
Vossische Zeitung.
When he returned, the doctor wrapped the meaty thing in the paper and put it on the floor. ‘It’s what we call
the afterbirth,’ he said to Carla. ‘Best to burn it, later.’

Then he sat on the edge of the bed again. ‘Ada, my dear girl, you must be very brave,’ he said. ‘Your baby is alive, but there may be something wrong with him. We’re
going to wash him and wrap him up warmly, then we must take him to the hospital.’

Ada looked frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know. We need to have him checked.’

‘Will he be all right?’

‘The hospital doctors will do everything they can. The rest we must leave to God.’

Erik remembered that Jews worshipped the same God as Christians. It was easy to forget that.

Rothmann said: ‘Do you think you could get up and come to the hospital with me, Ada? Baby needs you to feed him.’

‘I’m so tired,’ she said again.

‘Take a minute or two to rest, then. But not much more, because Baby needs to be looked at soon. Carla will help you get dressed. I’ll wait upstairs.’ He addressed Erik with
gentle irony. ‘Come with me, little Nazi.’

Erik wanted to squirm. Dr Rothmann’s forbearance was even worse than Frau Rothmann’s scorn.

As they were leaving, Ada said: ‘Doctor?’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘His name is Kurt.’

‘A very good name,’ said Dr Rothmann. He went out, and Erik followed.

(vi)

Lloyd Williams’s first day working as assistant to Walter von Ulrich was also the first day of the new parliament.

Walter and Maud were struggling frantically to save Germany’s fragile democracy. Lloyd shared their desperation, partly because they were good people whom he had known on and off all his
life, and partly because he feared that Britain could follow Germany down the road to hell.

The election had resolved nothing. The Nazis got 44 per cent, an increase but still short of the 51 per cent they craved.

Walter saw hope. Driving to the opening of the parliament, he said: ‘Even with massive intimidation, they failed to win the votes of most Germans.’ He banged his fist on the steering
wheel. ‘Despite everything they say, they are
not
popular. And the longer they stay in government, the better people will get to know their wickedness.’

Lloyd was not so sure. ‘They’ve closed opposition newspapers, thrown Reichstag deputies in jail, and corrupted the police,’ he said. ‘And yet forty-four per cent of
Germans approve? I don’t find that reassuring.’

The Reichstag building was badly fire-damaged and quite unusable, so the parliament assembled in the Kroll Opera House, on the opposite side of the Königs Platz. It was a vast complex with
three concert halls and fourteen smaller auditoria, plus restaurants and bars.

When they arrived, they had a shock. The place was surrounded by Brownshirts. Deputies and their aides crowded around the entrances, trying to get in. Walter said furiously: ‘Is this how
Hitler plans to get his way – by preventing us from entering the chamber?’

Lloyd saw that the doors were barred by Brownshirts. They admitted those in Nazi uniform without question, but everyone else had to produce credentials. A boy younger than Lloyd looked him up
and down contemptuously before grudgingly letting him in. This was intimidation, pure and simple.

Lloyd felt his temper beginning to simmer. He hated to be bullied. He knew he could knock the Brownshirt boy down with one good left hook. He forced himself to remain calm, turn away, and walk
through the door.

After the fight in the People’s Theatre, his mother had examined the egg-shaped lump on his head and ordered him to go home to England. He had talked her round, but it had been a close
thing.

She said he had no sense of danger, but that was not quite right. He did get scared sometimes, but it always made him feel combative. His instinct was to go on the attack, not to retreat. This
scared his mother.

Ironically, she was just the same. She was not going home. She was frightened, but she was also thrilled to be here in Berlin at this turning point in German history, and outraged by the
violence and repression she was witnessing; and she felt sure she could write a book that would forewarn democrats in other countries about Fascist tactics. ‘You’re worse than
me,’ Lloyd had said to her, and she had had no answer.

Inside, the opera house was swarming with Brownshirts and SS men, many of them armed. They guarded every door and showed, with looks and gestures, their hatred and contempt for anyone not
supporting the Nazis.

Walter was late for a Social Democratic Party group meeting. Lloyd hurried around the building looking for the right room. Glancing into the debating chamber, he saw that a giant swastika hung
from the ceiling, dominating the room.

The first matter to be discussed, when proceedings began that afternoon, was to be the Enabling Act, which would permit Hitler’s cabinet to pass laws without the approval of the
Reichstag.

The Act offered a dreadful prospect. It would make Hitler a dictator. The repression, intimidation, violence, torture and murder that Germany had seen in the past few weeks would become
permanent. It was unthinkable.

But Lloyd could not imagine that any parliament in the world would pass such a law. They would be voting themselves out of power. It was political suicide.

He found the Social Democrats in a small auditorium. Their meeting had already begun. Lloyd hurried Walter to the room, then he was sent for coffee.

Waiting in the queue, he found himself behind a pale, intense-looking young man dressed in funereal black. Lloyd’s German had become more fluent and colloquial, and he now had the
confidence to strike up a conversation with a stranger. The man in black was Heinrich von Kessel, he learned. He was doing the same sort of job as Lloyd, working as an unpaid aide to his father,
Gottfried von Kessel, a deputy for the Centre Party, which was Catholic.

‘My father knows Walter von Ulrich very well,’ Heinrich said. ‘They were both attachés at the German embassy in London in 1914.’

The world of international politics and diplomacy was quite small, Lloyd reflected.

Heinrich told Lloyd that a return to the Christian faith was the answer to Germany’s problems.

‘I’m not much of a Christian,’ Lloyd said candidly. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so. My grandparents are Welsh Bible-punchers, but my mother is indifferent and
my stepfather’s Jewish. Occasionally we go to the Calvary Gospel Hall in Aldgate, mainly because the pastor is a Labour Party member.’

Heinrich smiled and said: ‘I’ll pray for you.’

Catholics were not proselytizers, Lloyd remembered. What a contrast to his dogmatic grandparents in Aberowen, who thought that people who did not believe as they did were wilfully blinding
themselves to the gospel, and would be condemned to eternal damnation.

When Lloyd re-entered the Social Democratic Party meeting, Walter was speaking. ‘It can’t happen!’ he said. ‘The Enabling Act is a constitutional amendment. Two thirds of
the representatives must be present, which would be 432 out of a possible 647. And two thirds of those present must approve.’

Lloyd added up the numbers in his head as he put the tray down on the table. The Nazis had 288 seats, and the Nationalists who were their close allies had 52, making 340 – nearly 100
short. Walter was right. The Act could not be passed. Lloyd was comforted and sat down to listen to the discussion and to improve his German.

But his relief was short-lived. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ said a man with a working-class Berlin accent. ‘The Nazis are caucusing with the Centre Party.’ That was
Heinrich’s lot, Lloyd recalled. ‘That could give them another seventy-four,’ the man finished.

Lloyd frowned. Why would the Centre Party support a measure that would take away all its power?

Walter voiced the same thought more bluntly. ‘How could the Catholics be so stupid?’

Lloyd wished he had known about this before he went for coffee – then he could have discussed it with Heinrich. He might have learned something useful. Damn.

The man with the Berlin accent said: ‘In Italy, the Catholics made a deal with Mussolini – a concordat to protect the Church. Why not here?’

Lloyd calculated that the Centre Party’s support would bring the Nazis’ votes up to 414. ‘It’s still not two thirds,’ he said to Walter with relief.

Another young aide heard him and said: ‘But that doesn’t take into account the Reichstag president’s latest announcement.’ The Reichstag president was Hermann
Göring, Hitler’s closest associate. Lloyd had not heard about an announcement. Nor had anyone else, it seemed. The deputies went quiet. The aide went on: ‘He has ruled that
Communist deputies who are absent because they are in jail don’t count.’

There was an outburst of indignant protest all around the room. Lloyd saw Walter go red in the face. ‘He can’t do that!’ Walter said.

‘It’s completely illegal,’ said the aide. ‘But he has done it.’

Lloyd was dismayed. Surely the law could not be passed by a trick? He did some more arithmetic. The Communists had 81 seats. If they were discounted, the Nazis needed only two thirds of 566,
which was 378. Even with the Nationalists they still did not have enough – but if they won the support of the Catholics they could swing it.

Someone said: ‘This is all completely illegal. We should walk out in protest.’

‘No, no!’ said Walter emphatically. ‘They would pass the Act in our absence. We’ve got to talk the Catholics out of it. Wels must speak to Kaas immediately.’ Otto
Wels was the leader of the Social Democratic Party; Prelate Ludwig Kaas the head of the Centre Party.

There was a murmur of agreement around the room.

Lloyd took a deep breath and spoke up. ‘Herr von Ulrich, why don’t you take Gottfried von Kessel to lunch? I believe you two worked together in London before the war.’

Walter laughed mirthlessly. ‘That creep!’ he said.

Maybe the lunch was not such a good idea. Lloyd said: ‘I didn’t realize you disliked the man.’

Walter looked thoughtful. ‘I hate him – but I’ll try anything, by God.’

Lloyd said: ‘Shall I find him and extend the invitation?’

‘All right, give it a try. If he accepts, tell him to meet me at the Herrenklub at one.’

‘Very good.’

Lloyd hurried back to the room into which Heinrich had disappeared. He stepped inside. A meeting was going on similar to the one he had left. He scanned the room, spotted the black-clad
Heinrich, met his gaze, and beckoned him urgently.

They both stepped outside, then Lloyd said: ‘They’re saying your party is going to support the Enabling Act!’

‘It’s not certain,’ said Heinrich. ‘They’re divided.’

‘Who’s against the Nazis?’

‘Brüning and some others.’ Brüning was a former chancellor and a leading figure.

Lloyd felt more hopeful. ‘Which others?’

‘Did you call me out of the room to pump me for information?’

‘Sorry, no, I didn’t. Walter von Ulrich wants to have lunch with your father.’

Heinrich looked dubious. ‘They don’t like each other – you know that, don’t you?’

‘I gathered as much. But they’ll put their differences aside today!’