‘Oh. Excuse my manners, Ernst. Please take a seat. I am so often on my own here – excepting meeting with Topf – that I sometimes forget myself with my staff.’
He said, ‘Topf’. Not ‘Herr Topf’.
‘Cigarette?’ He waited until I was seated to offer. I would have to stand to take one.
‘No thank you, sir.’ He closed the orb, the cigarettes drawing in magically.
‘Please. Call me Herr Klein. No formalities on my floor. Do you not smoke? I can smell it on you? Or maybe it is just from walking through the station and the streets?’
‘Yes, but I did not know whether … I did not know the rules for the building. I am so used to the ban.’
He took his black leather chair, his suit disappearing within.
‘Fortunately we are not a public building yet. I do not travel publicly so I suppose the smoking ban does not bother. Although we have many contracts with the SS so I would not smoke around them should you see them, or around Prüfer or Topf who are Party members. And you are not permitted to smoke on the draft floors or public areas.’ He leaned back, put his feet up on something I could not see and exhaled hugely. ‘Coffee?’
‘No, thank you. Unless you are having one, Herr Klein?’
‘I never drink coffee.’ He waved his cigarette. ‘I find it disagrees with my Martinis!’
That grin again. I did want coffee. I was lucky if I could afford three cups a week. To be offered it free and to turn it down. Still, my first day. Be a polite fool. These were successful men. Confident men. Not in war. Ernst Beck the young one amongst them. The apprentice. These were not people I knew, not my world.
As a boy I played football – my father’s encouragement – before the first war that was all the entertainment he had. Football a German invention to him. A game that marked towns above each other more than harvest.
I played on the wing, but would always want to be a striker, every boy did. Sometimes we would play against the boys from Weimar, the richer boys. Weimar paid for us to play. Bought our footballs, bought our kit.
‘Let them win,’ my father would say. ‘Ernst. Play the game.’ His finger stern above me, bent to me, breath like stale meat. ‘Do not be the hero. We are not here to always score goals. To win. If we always beat them too much less money they will give. Do you want to play next year or win today? What is for the better?’
The polite fool. Know what you will gain. And what you will lose. The democracy of the football match. Sometimes you cannot afford to be the best team. But you will play next year. I could have scored five times against those Weimar boys. Sometimes a goal is just a goal. Two posts without a net.
‘It is polite,’ my father would say. ‘You win by making it better for next year. By losing today. By abiding.’
I became a good German because of that. Got new kit the next year. Played the game.
‘Do you have your identification card?’ He put out his hand. I fumbled inside my jacket, gave across the rough cardboard we all hated to carry. Not obliged to carry. Preferred. It would go back in a drawer that evening. I had been asked to bring it. Normal to be copied for employment purposes.
‘Thank you, Ernst. I’ll have it back to you today.’ He did not put it away, placed it on his desk, and then it sat between us like a brick. ‘You’ll be given a worker’s pass as an alternative to use.’ He blew his smoke towards me. ‘I have looked over your qualifications. Prüfer and Sander are sure you will be competent. Understand that we have lost a great deal of men to the service over the years. We have to make do with less experienced men, but it is a great opportunity for yourself. I hope you understand?’
‘It is the opportunity I seek and am grateful for, Herr Klein. I will do my best.’ Polite fool.
‘You will have to. These recent months we are often using prisoners from the camps, from Buchenwald, so the plans are ever simpler and of cheaper construction for them to comprehend. Still, the labour is cheap.’ He put out his stub that I would consider not done. ‘I believe that Sander – you will meet him tomorrow – is most looking forward for you to work on his new designs. They are patented but need … clarifying. To be presented to the SS. His originals are too complicated for the layman. We need someone to present them efficiently and more simplified. With our shortened workforce all our best draughtsmen are working on the malt works and silos and they have been with the designs for years so that is where our best men need to be. Which is why we have hired yourself, Ernst.’
I straightened in my seat.
‘Am I not to be working for the silo department?’
‘No. Sander is our chief designer for the crematoria. My department. “Special Ovens.” Our smallest department. The smallest part of our business. But we are one of the foremost in the world. And getting ever busier, thanks to the SS. The more camps they build the more ovens they need. And because they want them so cheap they are always wanting repairs. Repeat business. The best business. Prüfer and the engineers are always fixing something at Auschwitz or Buchenwald and beyond. I limit myself to Buchenwald if I can.’ He stood and I followed. ‘Come. I will show you the floor. Not the floor with the skylights I’m afraid. That is for our top draughtsmen. But the second floor is pleasant enough. There is a fine view of the hills. All day you can see the smoke from Buchenwald rising to them. It is a pleasant room.’ His hand on my back again, his other already on the door.
I did not know how to mention the ovens to Etta at dinner.
Bern sausage, sauerkraut and swede. Etta put the meal on the table with pride. Pride for me.
‘Ernst, we should see your parents this weekend. Celebrate your good news now it is official.’
I found an orchestra on our ‘people’s radio’. No long-wave any more and you paid two marks a month to listen to Wagner or Kraus. As a boy we used to have these great jazz stations. My mother and father danced then. Waltzed around the floor amid my electric train set that never truly worked but that I pretended did should my father punish me for breaking it. All other music gone now, all too degenerate for our sensibilities. The kids still listen somehow. A black-market in music they record on their Tonfolien machines and share. Swing-kids. That is what we call them. You cannot keep kids from music, no matter how black you think it is. Our leaders forget that’s how they came to be. Older people told them ‘no’ once too. They should be proud of the youth emulating them. And I have to listen to Wagner.
‘My parents? You want to put that upon us on a Sunday?’ I sat at the table. Wished I had wine.
‘It’s been months since we saw them. At least now we have something to see them for instead of just borrowing money.’ A snipe at me? No, she was smiling. I do not think she meant to offend. Just married talk. ‘Don’t you want them to be proud?’
‘Hardly proud.’
‘And why not? You are in a company in wartime. Would they rather you were at the front?’
‘Which one?’
I was at university, had missed conscription. And Erfurt had no military attachment or demand for young men to serve. Too deep in the country for administration then. The first war different. Men had come from the forests to fight, my father amongst. Someone considered that if the enemy were faced with these giant axe-wielders they would drop their guns and run. Not now. These were the places that needed to be protected. We were the Germans of Germany. The heart that the rest fought for. The war distant from us, protected by mountains of pine bastions like a great wall. During the summer