You never hear a squeak out of him, and I’m quite sure he sees and hears everything, and probably has someone he reports to. And then if he reports that you can’t trust the Persickes, they’re unreliable, they don’t know how to keep their mouths shut, then we’ve had it. You anyway, Father, and I’m damned if I lift a finger to get you out of the concentration camp, or Moabit Penitentiary, or Plötzensee Prison, or wherever they stick you.”

No one says anything, and even someone as conceited as Baldur can sense that their silence doesn’t indicate agreement. To at least bring his brothers and sister round, he quickly throws in, “We all want to get ahead in life, and how are we going to do that except through the Party? That’s why we should follow the Führer’s lead and make fools of people, put on friendly expressions and then, when no one senses any threat, take care of business. What we want the Party to say is: “We can trust the Persickes with anything, absolutely anything!’”

Once again he looks at the picture of the laughing Hitler and Göring, nods curtly, and pours himself a brandy to indicate that the lecture is over. He says, “There, there, Father, don’t make a face, I was just expressing an opinion!”

“You’re only sixteen, and you’re my son,” the old man begins, still hurt.

“Yes, and you’re my old man, but I’ve seen you drunk far too many times to be in awe of you,” Baldur Persicke throws back, and that brings the laughers round to his side, even his chronically nervous mother. “No, Father, let be, and one day we’ll get to drive around in our own car, and you can drink all the Champagne you want, every day of your life.”

Old Persicke wants to say something, but it’s just about the Champagne, which he doesn’t rate as highly as corn brandy. Instead Baldur, quickly and now more quietly, continues, “It’s not that your ideas are bad, Father, just you should be careful not to air them outside the family. That Rosenthal woman might be good for a bit more than coffee and cake. Let me think about it—it needs care. Perhaps there are other people sniffing around there, too, perhaps people better placed than we are.”

He has dropped his voice, till by the end he is barely audible. Once again, Baldur Persicke has managed to bring everyone round to his side, even his father, who to begin with was offended. And then he says, “Well, here’s to the capitulation of France!” and because of the way he’s laughing and slapping his thighs, they understand that what he really has in mind is the old Rosenthal woman.

They shout and propose toasts and down a fair few glasses, one after another. But then they have good heads on them, the former publican and his children.

*Baldur von Schirach was head of the Hitler-Jugend—the Hitler Youth.

Chapter 3



A MAN CALLED BORKHAUSEN

Foreman Quangel has emerged onto Jablonski Strasse, and run into Emil Borkhausen on the doorstep. That seems to be Emil Borkhausen’s one and only calling in life, to be always standing around where there’s something to gawp at or overhear. The war hasn’t done anything to change that, for all its call on patriots to do their duty on the home front: Emil Borkhausen has just continued to stand around.

He was standing there now, a tall lanky figure in a worn suit, his colorless face looking glumly down the almost deserted Jablonski Strasse. Catching sight of Quangel, he snapped into movement, going up to him to shake hands. “Where are you off to then, Quangel?” he asked. “Your shift doesn’t begin yet, does it?”

Quangel ignored the extended hand and merely mumbled: “‘M in a hurry.”

And he was off at once, in the direction of Prenzlauer Allee. That bothersome chatterbox was really all he needed!

But Borkhausen wasn’t so easily shaken off. He laughed his whinnying laugh and said: “You know what, Quangel, I’m heading the same way!” And as the other strode on, not looking aside, he added, “The doctor’s prescribed plenty of exercise for my constipation, and I get a bit bored walking around all the time without any company!”

He then embarked on a detailed account of everything he had done to combat his constipation. Quangel didn’t listen. He was preoccupied by two thoughts, each in turn shoving the other aside: that he no longer had a son, and that Anna had said “You and your Führer.” Quangel admitted to himself that he never loved the boy the way a father is supposed to love his son. From the time Ottochen was born, he had never seen anything in him but a nuisance and a distraction in his relationship with Anna. If he felt grief now, it was because he was thinking worriedly about Anna, how she would take the loss, what would now change between them. He had the first instance of that already: “You and your Führer.”

It wasn’t true. Hitler was not his Führer, or no more his Führer than Anna’s. They had always agreed that after his little carpentry business folded, Hitler was the one who had pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. After being out of work for four years, in 1934 Quangel had become foreman in the big furniture factory, taking home forty marks a week. And they had done pretty well on that.

Even so, they hadn’t joined the Party.