A couple of older colleagues, who remembered him from before, made cynical remarks. He just laughed along, and was glad to see the boss grinning too.

The boss’s erroneous assumption that he had been beaten up for shirking had certainly helped with the management as well. He was summoned up there straight after the lunch break. He stood as though in the dock, and the fact that one of his judges was in a Wehrmacht uniform, one in an SA uniform, and only one in a suit, admittedly also decorated with army insignia, only served to heighten his fear.

The Wehrmacht officer browsed in a file, and in a voice equally bored and disgusted proceeded to throw the book at him. On such and such a day released from the Wehrmacht to the armaments industry, first reported in the appropriate works on such and such, worked for eleven days, reported sick with stomach bleeding, used the services of three doctors and two hospitals. Such and such reported fit for work, worked for five days, took three days off, worked for one day, reported recurrence of stomach bleeding, etc., etc.

The Wehrmacht officer put away the file. He looked with disgust at Kluge, or rather he fixed his eyes on the top button of his jacket and said with raised voice, “What do you think you’re playing at, you rat?” Suddenly he was screaming, but you could tell he was a habitual screamer, without any inner excitement. “Do you think you can fool a single one of us with your stomach bleeding? I’ll send you off to a punishment company, and they’ll pull your stinking guts out of your body, and then you’ll learn what stomach bleeding is!”

The officer went on shouting in a similar vein for quite some time. Enno was used to that from the military; it didn’t especially impress him. He listened to the lecture, hands correctly at his trouser seams, eye attentively on his scolder. When the officer stopped to draw breath, Enno said in the prescribed tone, clear and distinct, neither humble nor too cheeky, “Yes, First Lieutenant! Whatever you say, First Lieutenant!” At one point he was even able to push in the sentence—admittedly without any visible effect—”Beg permission to report, sir, volunteering for work. Ready and willing to work, sir!”

The officer stopped just as suddenly as he had begun. He shut his mouth, took his gaze off Kluge’s top button and redirected it to his neighbor in brown. “Anything else?” he asked, with disgust.

Yes, it seemed this gentleman also had something to say, or rather to scream—because all these commanding officers seemed only able to scream at their men. This one screamed about betrayal of the people and sabotage, of the Führer who wouldn’t tolerate any traitors in the ranks, and concentration camps where he would get his comeuppance.

“And how have you come to us?” screamed the brownshirt suddenly. “Look at the state of you, pig! Is this how you show up for work? Whoring around with girls! Come here sapped and drained, and we have the privilege of paying you! Where’ve you been, where did you get yourself those bruises, you miserable pimp!”

“They worked me over,” said Enno, shy under the other’s gaze.

“Who, who was it who worked you over, that’s what I want to know!” screamed the brownshirt. And he brandished his fist under Enno’s nose and stamped his feet.

The moment had come when any kind of thought left Enno Kluge’s skull. Threatened with fresh blows, he was deserted by caution and good intentions and whispered, trembling, “Beg to report, sir, the SS worked me over.”

There was something so convincing in the man’s fear that the tribunal immediately believed him. A comprehending, approving smile spread over their faces. The brownshirt screamed, “You call that worked over? Punishment is the term for that, just punishment.

What is it?”

“Beg to report, sir, just punishment!”

“Well, bear it in mind. Next time you won’t get off so easily! Dismissed!”

For the next half hour Enno Kluge was shaking so hard that he couldn’t work at his lathe. He hung around the washroom, where the boss finally ran him to ground and chased him back to work with a tongue-lashing. He stood next to him, and watched as Enno wrecked one piece after another with his clumsiness. Everything was spinning round in the little fellow’s head: the scolding from the boss, the mockery of his colleagues, the threat of concentration camp and punishment battalion; he could see nothing clearly. His normally deft hands let him down. He couldn’t work, and yet he had to, otherwise he would be completely lost.

Finally the supervisor saw it himself, that this wasn’t ill will and shirking. “If you hadn’t just been off sick, I would say go home to bed for a couple of days and get well.” With those words, the supervisor left him. And he added, “Mind you, you know what would happen to you if you did that!”

Yes, he knew. He carried on, tried not to think of his pain, the unbearable pressure in his head. For a while, the shimmering, spinning iron drew him magically into its spell.