Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ its position in the district. Phones connected the room to the police, fire, gas, electricity and water officials in various parts of the town and there were special lines to the rescue and repair service and to the senior air-raid precautions officials in Dortmund. Official visitors to Altgarten were always taken to see the Control Room and Herr Ryessman was very proud of it, although some of the ruder clerks called it ‘the eagle’s burrow’.

      His office had been moved up to the top floor along with the marriages, births and deaths registry and the housing department. Artfully they had put benches in the corridor outside the marriage registry so they had been able to convert the waiting room into the office of the Burgomaster’s clerk – Andi Niels, a solemn young man with a gastric ulcer which, together with a certain amount of string-pulling by the Burgomaster, had released him from Army service. Downstairs there were the tax, street-cleaning and ration-card offices, and the east wing of the building was given over to the police, although the Oberwachtmeister had his office on the same floor as the Burgomaster so that he was available for conference.

      The Burgomaster went next door to his assistant’s office, noting with satisfaction that in the corridor sandbags and a rope, axe and stirrup pump had been placed according to his most recent order.

      His clerk’s office was smaller than the Burgomaster’s and was crammed full with filing cabinets, but he envied his clerk the view he commanded. From this window he could see the tall spire of the Liebefrau rising from the medieval roofs of the town centre. Beyond, where the open country began, there was the Wald Hotel tucked into a patch of dark woodland, and to the north, catching the sun, were four long glasshouses that were a part of Ryessman’s own property.

      He was still enjoying the view when his assistant came into the room. He was startled and to Ryessman’s surprise he flushed.

      ‘Herr Ryessman,’ said the clerk politely. ‘Is there something you require?’

      ‘No,’ said the Burgomaster, watching with amusement as the clerk hurriedly pushed the files he was holding into the nearest filing cabinet. By the time he turned back to the desk he was more collected.

      ‘Today is my birthday, as you well know since you have been sending the invitations. I wanted to ask you to join our party this evening at Frenzel’s.’

      ‘The Herr Bürgermeister is very kind,’ said Andi Niels. ‘I shall be honoured.’

      ‘It’s a small affair,’ said the Burgomaster. ‘This is no time for ostentatious display, but there will be smoked eel to start and Frenzel’s special roast duckling to follow.’

      The Burgomaster was puzzled by the young man’s behaviour. Usually a relaxed and self-composed fellow, today he seemed anxious and neurotic. He straightened a picture on the wall, wiped dust from a shelf and moved around the room. Perhaps his ulcer was playing up, thought Ryessman.

      ‘If you will excuse me, Herr Bürgermeister,’ he said. ‘You have an appointment with your tailor and I have a meeting too.’

      ‘I was forgetting the time,’ said the Burgomaster. He nodded to Niels and left the room. Outside in the corridor there were five people. At first the dark clothes of the older people suggested that they had come to register a death. Probably, thought Ryessman, they have these same clothes for weddings, births and deaths. It was the young couple who showed that this was a wedding. There was no doubt about them. They were so clearly in love that they were oblivious of everyone and everything around them. The young man was dressed in a dark well-cut suit with a small spotted bow tie. He was a handsome boy with big eyes and a strong jaw. There were not so many young men like that still in civilian clothes, thought Ryessman. The girl was pretty. She did not have the wide pelvis, heavy bones and strong arms that were common to the local girls. She was petite with jet-black hair cut short and a heart-shaped face that was pale and doll-like. The parents shuffled uneasily as Ryessman walked down the corridor. Here in the country older people had never lost their fear of authority, thought Ryessman, and that perhaps was a good thing. Young people were less respectful and as he passed he heard someone whisper and the young man looked up and stared him straight in the face.

      Perhaps if the Burgomaster had been busy that afternoon he would have never pursued the matter or come across it in the first place. But the afternoon was quiet and sunny as he sat at his desk idly turning over the carbons of letters passing between departments in the Rathaus.

      Dear Sir,

      The Burgomaster thanks you for your letter of the twelfth of May and confirms that MEYER, Hans-Willy, of Rheinprovinz Altgarten Florastrasse 36 is now officially down-classified to Jew of two-thirds Jewish blood.

      Your department will ensure that his employer is informed and that any privileges that he had due to his former status as a Jew of one-third Jewish blood should now be withdrawn.

      A. NIELS

       for the Burgomaster

      Niels had initialled the carbon as was his usual practice. Acting on impulse the Burgomaster phoned through to police records and asked them for their file on this man Hans-Willy Meyer.

      ‘You have it already,’ said the police constable.

      ‘You are sure?’

      ‘I am certain, Herr Bürgermeister. Herr Niels came down for it personally. He said you had asked for it.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘Is everything in order?’

      ‘Yes,’ said the Burgomaster. He knew the man with whom he had spoken, an elderly constable who had been put in charge of records after being badly injured in a fight with two drunks at the beginning of the war. He was a man of experience and would have made no mistake. The Burgomaster picked up the phone but replaced it and walked along to Niels’ office instead. The wedding party were still waiting in the corridor.

      Niels was not in his office and although at first Ryessman was about to dismiss the matter from his mind he had second thoughts and went through the cabinet to find Meyer’s police file. It was not there. There were in fact none of the grey-covered police files anywhere in the cabinet. It was then that he remembered that Niels had been carrying a grey file when he had come into the office and found Ryessman behind his desk. Yes, there it was, stuffed into a cabinet of purchase agreements so carelessly that its cover was bent double.

      The Burgomaster read through the file of documents. Meyer was a twenty-one-year-old Jewish farmworker. He was not permitted to serve in the Wehrmacht. His file was a very ordinary one that could have been that of any of Altgarten’s two dozen Jews. Ryessman had hoped that his data card with its identity photo and fingerprints would have been there, but it was not. Perhaps police records filed them separately.

      Meyer had been down-graded because his grandfather, a butcher from Lübeck hitherto listed as an Aryan, had now been classified as purely Jewish. This made Meyer’s father two-thirds Jewish like his mother, and, as everyone knew, the offspring of two such Jews was a two-thirds-Jewish son, not a one-third-Jewish son. What puzzled Ryessman was where the information had come from. Usually in cases of this sort one found in the file a short unpleasant note from a neighbour or fellow worker. Typed sometimes, or written in block capitals to conceal the writer’s identity. Often they contained obscenities, sometimes they ended with Nazi slogans instead of a signature. This file had no such note. The grandfather had been dead since before the Party came into power and these documents had originated with the Lübeck police records office. It seemed unlikely that they would have made a mistake but then perhaps in 1933, the first year of Hitler’s power, they had been overworked, for СКАЧАТЬ