The Draughtsman. Robert Lautner

questions. And we became calm again. I had been paid. We went to café lunches at weekends and paid our rent and Frau Klein even curtsied to me. I bought wine in bottles not closed with a beer stopper and no label. I signed off from subsistence. Etta quit her waitress work. I provided.

      And then Hans Klein called me to his office. On a Friday morning. The favourite day to fire an employee I had heard. The way of business.

      I had to wait before my knock on the door was acknowledged. Seconds only. Enough time to think of every horror behind the door. From yelling to gunshot, all extremes and everything in-between, and every one of them ending with Etta’s sobs. But there was only the sound of cabinets closing. The usual sound in Topf’s corridors. The sound of muffle doors closing ovens. Only people without imagination do not doubt and fear.

      ‘Ernst!’

      Klein blew out my name happily with his smoke. I could almost see my name form in the cloud. He pushed his orb of cigarettes to me. I bowed and took an American Camel. My first in three years. I ran it under my nose. It did not smell as well as expected, hoped. Perhaps they were never good. Or nothing was how it was before.

      ‘I am pleased with your work, Ernst. We all are.’ He passed his onyx table-lighter to my hand. ‘And I have grand news.’

      ‘Thank you, Herr Klein.’

      ‘You have not heard it yet.’ He gave me that grin. ‘You may not like it.’

      He was in grey today. A Hugo Boss. The couturier for the SS. I had begun to notice such things. Begun to notice shoes in windows beyond the sureness of their soles. I looked at their stitching now. Owned my own pair of black wing-tips.

      We sat, the desk between, and shared an ashtray, which Klein pushed to favour my side.

      ‘Your name, lately, Ernst, has caused even Herr Topf to take notice of you.’

      I coughed on my cigarette. Harsher than my tobacco.

       This? This the knock on the door?

      He watched me cough. Waited for me to settle.

      ‘Your name stood out to him. It would. Would it not?’

      My mouth too dry from the cigarette to speak. Drawing on it again the automatic solution. I must have seemed sick to Klein. A parental concern on his face.

      ‘I mean your names, Ernst. Your names are the same. Ernst Topf. Ernst Beck.’ He studied me behind his cigarette. ‘Why? What did you think I meant?’

      I apologised.

      Fool. Idiot. A kid coughing on his first cigarette.

      I sat back with him. Copied his pose and he grinned.

      ‘Don’t you want to hear my grand news, Ernst?’

      *

      ‘A house, Etta!’

      I had run the stairs. She had panicked at the rushing sight of me, not heard what I said, only the door crash, her hand on her chest.

      ‘Topf has given us a house!’

      ‘What are you talking about? What house?’

      I held her shoulders, gasped for air, grinning like Klein.

      There were fine houses opposite the Topf factory, I had seen them on my first day, on my first walk to work. They were near the ghetto, but the ghetto was not there when they were built and the ghetto empty now anyway, not there now. Open suitcases left in doorways, in the streets, along with the single shoes as if the rapture had come here. A decade of rain and dust breaking the shoes to corruption.

      Topf senior had bought these houses for his workers during the Great War, for his top men. A benefit. He had his own villa nearby. He could walk to work. And he wanted his best men to do the same; did not want them to have an excuse to be late. And they would have no excuse to not be early if he so chose or work as late as he so chose. Topf the juniors kept the same ideals. Keep work close to home. Early and late. The benefit of no unions.

      Klein had shaken my hand. His other passed a set of long keys. An aged paper tag.

      ‘These are yours, Ernst. The house has been professionally prepared. I will have one of our trucks move you in whenever you are ready. Congratulations.’

      *

      ‘But why, Ernst?’ Etta’s hands flat on my shirt, against my chest, and I could feel my heart beneath.

      ‘My work is to increase. The SS have been pleased with my explanations of the designs. My work has gone to Berlin! And Topf have more of them every day for me to work on. I have become their preferred man for the task. Klein says I will go the top floor once this job is done!’ That was an exaggeration. But it was a time for such.

      ‘But a house?’ She stood back, a hand to her face. ‘Why would they do such?’ Concern on her face more than elation.

      *

      Klein had said it straight enough, as if it was his good work, his plan.

      ‘Topf has expressed to Sander that a workman such as yourself, one in demand, approval from Berlin, should not be exploited by having to pay the rents of the common. These houses used to be for the top-floor only. Rent free. You are too new to be promoted, to pay you more, but your work is important enough that you should gain some benefit. As good as promotion. This from the Topfs themselves. Six weeks you have been here. Well done. I am proud to have you on my floor. It makes practical sense to have you closer to the factory. And in a place of comfort where you could work from home. Sander and Prüfer agree. You could work in privacy.’

      ‘You said I might not like this, sir? Herr Klein! You have changed my life!’ I blushed at my exclaim. Foolish words, no matter how honest. Childish.

      ‘I meant,’ he said, ‘that I like to go far away when I leave work, Ernst.’ He went back to his desk. ‘You are across the road. You will be first in and the last out. An eye upon you all the time. That might dampen your spirit.’

      I could not pocket the keys. I was weighing them in my hand. I am twenty-four years old. I have a house. Rent free. My wage doubled simply by walking through its door. Maybe short term, maybe not. You do not think like that when someone puts keys in your hand. The top floor had been mentioned. That was enough. If Klein and Topf had me in their pockets I could justify that scrutiny.