The Company of Strangers. Robert Thomas Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ were lost, that fundamental military logic no longer applied, that more than honour had been handed over with the acquiescence to the Commissar Order. Our generals have been emasculated, we will be run by the Corporal from now on. That this abysmal state of affairs should have resulted in the death of my first-born son was more than I could bear. I am no longer young. The future looks bleak amidst the wasteland of my shattered beliefs. Everything I stood for, believed in and cherished has fallen.

      Two more things. At my funeral there will be a man called Major Manfred Giesler. He is an officer with the Abwehr. You will either talk to him if you believe in what I have said in the early part of this letter or you will not. That is your decision.

      My body will be cremated and I would like you to scatter my ashes on a grave in the Wannsee church cemetery belonging to Rosemarie Hausser 1888–1905.

      I wish you a happy and successful life and hope that you will once again be able to pursue your aptitude in physics in more peaceful times.

      Your ever loving father

      PS It is absolutely imperative that this letter be destroyed after you have read it. Failure to do so could result in danger for yourself, your mother and Major Giesler. If my predictions as to the course of this war prove to be correct you will see that letters containing such sentiments will carry heavy consequences.

      Voss reread the letter and burnt it in the grate, watching the slow, greenish flames consume and blacken the paper. He sat by the window again in a state of shock at this, his first intimate sight of the workings of his father’s mind. He gathered himself for a few moments; the conflicting emotions needed to be reined in before he went to speak to his mother. Anger and grief didn’t seem to be able to sit in the same room for very long.

      He went back to his mother who still sat in the same position, the light poorer but her scalp visible under her grey hair, which he’d never seen before.

      ‘So,’ she said before he had sat down, ‘he told you about the girl.’

      ‘He told me he wants his ashes cast on her grave.’ His mother nodded, and looked over her shoulder as if she’d heard something outside. The light caught her face, no sadness, only acceptance.

      ‘She was somebody he knew, an army officer’s daughter. He fell in love with her and she died. I think he knew her for all of one week.’

      ‘One week?’ said Voss. ‘He told you this?’ ‘He told me about the girl, he was a totally honourable man, your father, incapable even of omission. His sister filled in the details.’ ‘But you’re his wife and…I can’t do this.’ ‘You can, Karl. You will. If it’s his wish, it’s mine too. Just think of it as your father being in love with the idea, or rather an ideal, that was not complicated or tarnished by the grind of everyday life. That is the purest form of love you can find. Perfection,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I can think of no better thing after what your father went through, than for him to rest with his ideal. To him it was a vision of peace that he failed to attain in life.’

      

      The funeral took place three days later. There were few people, most of his father’s friends were at one front or another. Frau Voss invited the few back to her house for some tea. Major Giesler was one who accepted. At the house Karl asked for a private word with him and they went into his father’s study.

      Voss began to tell him the contents of his father’s letter. Giesler stopped him, went to the phone, followed the line to the wall and removed the pin from the socket. He sat back down in the leather chair by the window. Voss told him of his willingness to talk. Giesler said nothing. He had his hands clasped and was chewing on a knuckle, one of the few hairless regions of his body. He was very dark and his thick black eyebrows joined over his nose. He had a large, full-lipped, sensual mouth and his cheeks, razored that morning, already needed to be reshaved.

      ‘I would understand,’ said Voss, ‘if you needed to make some inquiries about me before we talk.’

      ‘We’ve already made our inquiries,’ said Giesler.

      Voss thought for a moment.

      ‘In Rastenburg?’

      ‘We know, for instance, how you felt about the…the death of the Reichsminister Todt,’ said Giesler, ‘and your…disappointment with the way in which good soldiers died needlessly at Stalingrad and, of course, you have an impeccable pedigree.’

      Voss frowned, replayed some reels in his mind.

      ‘Weber?’

      Giesler opened his hands, reclasped them.

      ‘Weber disappeared,’ said Voss. ‘What happened to him?’

      ‘We didn’t know he was a homosexual. There are some things that even the deepest of inquiries will not unearth.’

      ‘But where is he?’

      ‘He is in very serious trouble, which he brought on himself,’ said Giesler. ‘He behaved recklessly in a climate where scapegoats were eagerly sought.’

      ‘He must have been under pressure…’

      ‘Drinking is one thing.’

      ‘How do you know I’m not homosexual?’

      Giesler looked at him long and hard, that sensual mouth becoming unnerving.

      ‘Weber,’ he said after some time, as if perhaps that source hadn’t been as reliable as he’d have liked.

      ‘Well, he should know, although I’m not sure how. Women were not abundant in Rastenburg and those that were available…’ he drifted off, disheartened by the turn the conversation had taken; this dip into the ignoble was not what he’d had in mind. This was supposed to be a courageous act and here they were parting the dirt.

      Giesler had his answer. He didn’t need to pursue this discussion further. He gave Voss an address of a villa in Gatow with a meeting time for the next day and stood. They shook hands and Giesler hung on, which at first Voss thought was another sexuality test but, no, it was a sincerity hold, a brotherhood clasp.

      ‘Weber won’t talk,’ he said. ‘It’s possible he will survive, although he will never get back into Rastenburg. But it is something for you to think about before you come to Gatow tomorrow. It’s not easy to be an enemy of the State – not, I hasten to add, an enemy of the nation, but this State. It is dangerous and lonely work. You will be lying to your colleagues every day for perhaps years. You will have no friends because friends are dangerous. Your work will require a mental fortitude, not intelligence necessarily, but strength and it is something you may feel you do not have. If you do not come to Gatow tomorrow nobody will think any the less of you. We will go our separate ways, praying for Germany.’

      Voss slept badly that night in a torment over his part in Weber’s arrest. At four in the morning, the death and debt hour, he found his mind crowded with thoughts of his father and mother, Julius and Weber, and it was then that he had a sudden perception of the power of words, of the business of communication. Once words are said nothing is the same. His father didn’t have to tell his mother about Rosemarie Hausser, but he did. It must have established an unrecoverable distance, instilled a lifelong sense of disappointment in his mother with a short line, some words and a name. In his own crucial conversation with Weiss, which he had not been prepared for, he realized that it was not physics that СКАЧАТЬ