Death’s Head Read online

  He felt the girl climb into the bed beside him. When he opened his eyes the room was in darkness and he felt dehydrated and unwell. She laid her hands on his body and he turned over, away from her. She sighed impatiently.

  ‘You make me sad,’ she said. ‘Don’t you like women?’

  He didn’t answer; he was too drunk to care what the answer might be. In the morning he woke to find himself alone.

  He left his surgery in the early afternoon. Walking around Berlin was like travelling through the wreckage of his own past. He had been a National Socialist and a Hauptsturmführer in the SS. He saw no shame in that. Rather he looked back upon it as something he had had a duty to do; and if he were given the choice again, he would have made the same decisions. He realized with some bitterness that it was impossible to convey to people like Eberhard what the country had been in the years of National Socialism. You couldn’t explain to Eberhard that there was no such thing as guilt. Nuremberg was a farce, a pantomime staged for the benefit of Europe’s conscience. A morality play based upon a soft and decadent liberalism that had become blind to the real dangers that existed in the world.

  He found his way to the cellar bar near the Prager-Platz where he had been with Broszat the previous evening. Katzmann was drinking alone, hunched as he always seemed to be, as if in the fear that someone might recognize his face if he held himself upright. As soon as he saw him, Schwarzenbach knew that something was wrong.

  Katzmann said, ‘Urbach was taken this morning.’

  ‘Taken?’

  ‘They picked him up at his work. Took him away for interrogation.’

  Schwarzenbach felt the familiar alarm. ‘Who took him?’

  ‘US Military Intelligence.’ Katzmann shrugged; ‘It’s becoming more and more difficult.’

  ‘Will he talk? Will he mention names?’

  Katzmann was silent for a moment. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘How should I know what to think?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a false alarm. A routine check. Perhaps it’s nothing to worry about.’ Katzmann smiled; ‘In any case, he knows what to do if they put too much pressure on him.’

  Schwarzenbaeh thought of the cyanide, the capsule of poison that Urbach was said to carry. Why should Urbach have to die? Why should any of them have to die? The men in the dock in Nuremberg – why did they have to die?

  ‘It’s outrageous,’ he said, and the word fell from him feebly.

  ‘It’s the new way of things,’ Katzmann said – always the realist.

  Outside, they walked from the Prager-Platz in the direction of the Kurfürstendamm, and as they walked Schwarzenbach wondered what he would do if, like Urbach, he were to be taken for interrogation. How would he react if it came to a straight choice between cyanide and trial? The possibility frightened him. He didn’t want to die; not that the prospect of death held any terrors for him but it seemed senseless to be provoked into an unnecessary death by men whom he still considered as his enemies.

  He left Katzmann on the Kurfürstendamm and walked for some way on his own. The danger was obvious now: the men at Nuremberg were distant figures, men he had always seen from afar – but Urbach was different, someone he knew, someone who had come to the weekly gatherings. What were they going to do with Urbach? And how much could Urbach tell them? Suddenly he felt as if the threads of his life were being gathered together by unknown hands and as he walked he was conscious of the growing obsession that someone was following him. It was absurd: whenever he looked round he saw no one.

  9

  The Jew. It was extraordinary that he should awake thinking of the Jew again. Opening his eyes he stared up at the ceiling and considered the coincidence of their meeting, the denial of his identity, the shock of recognition. And Grunwald – what had that little bastard felt? He remembered Grunwald as a patient once, a hypochondriac, suffering sometimes from nervous headaches, bronchial trouble, and adenoids. A grasping little Jew – an importer of some description, he recalled, dealing in cheap costume jewellery, little pieces of coloured glass, items that found their way into brothels and decorated the wrists and fingers of whores – a grasping little man who could talk of nothing else but his illnesses and his business problems. That was in 1934: the following year Schwarzenbach had the pleasure of refusing to treat him any longer. Jews should have Jewish doctors. The National Socialist Government had passed laws – didn’t Grunwald realize that? Didn’t he understand that now, factually and legally, he was a third-class citizen? But Grunwald’s dull eyes had remained dumb and uncomprehending: was he so stupid that he didn’t realize what had been happening since 1933? Nobody could now listen without laughing to his claims that he was a German first and a Jew next. If a man were Jewish, he could not be German: the implication was logical and irrefutable.

  And Grunwald was now in Berlin. What did that mean? Now that Grunwald was regarded internationally as one of Europe’s martyrs, what did it mean? Schwarzenbach felt suddenly angry. He rose from his bed and went through to the kitchen. It was just after eight. He opened the bottle of cognac he had bought the previous evening from a black marketeer. The prices they asked these days were extortionate. He sat at the table and sipped it slowly, turning the glass round and round in his fingers.

  He went into the empty surgery. The air was frozen and he shivered. He looked at the instruments and bottles behind the glass front of the padlocked cabinet and he remembered how in Munich he had prided himself on possessing the most modern equipment available. Now everything was crude and primitive: the stethoscope, for instance, was an old one – it had been the property of the Reich, and he had hurriedly packed it amongst his belongings before the long journey back from Poland.

  He finished his drink and sat for some time behind his desk, gazing at the smudged impressions left by his fingers on the surface of his glass.

  In the summer of 1941 he had been summoned personally by no less an individual than Gruppenführer Rudolf Brandt to attend an interview in connection with his future posting. Brandt had congratulated him on his dedicated work during the Reich euthanasia programme, for his contributions to what Brandt called ‘death experiments’. Schwarzenbach, strangely nervous, waited. The meeting with Brandt both elated and puzzled him and yet the Gruppenführer, who clearly had something on his mind that he wanted to express, seemed somehow unable to find the correct words. For some time he discussed the nature of medicine and the importance of scientific advance: progress depended upon discovery, he said, and one could hardly hope to discover if one were not to experiment. All human endeavour in the scientific field was like a huge black map: little by little, as new advances were made, the map began to have tiny white areas. And yet these areas were infinitesimally small, pathetically minute. Black was ignorance, white knowledge. The history of progress depended upon the white areas dominating the black. And then the Gruppenführer, his imagery apparently exhausted, mentioned that he had in mind a very special posting for Schwarzenbach. It was assumed in some quarters that certain parts of the human body were more sensitive than others – common knowledge, really. The erotogenic zones, for example, were extremely sensitive. They were more sensitive than, say, the feet; and yet the base of the feet were in turn more sensitive to touch than the base of the throat. Again common knowledge: but the Gruppenführer was coming to the point: pain – which areas of the body were most sensitive to pain and how could reactions to pain be quantitively measured? Research in the area of pain response was lamentable. People understood very little in that field of study. And wasn’t pain part and parcel of human existence, after all? Why, therefore, wasn’t more research being conducted into it?

  Schwarzenbach was fascinated. When the Gruppenführer then announced that he was being posted to Chelmno, in Poland, where it was expected of him that he would make use of the facilities there to conduct research into the field of enquiry that had just been mentioned, he expressed his pleasure. The facilities were primitive, the Gruppenführer said apologetically, but much
human progress in science had been born in the least likely circumstances. Chelmno, however, could provide one amenity, indeed was especially rich in that amenity – human beings.

  In October 1941 Schwarzenbach travelled in the relative comfort of a passenger train to Chelmno, north-west of the Polish town of Lodz. His instructions weren’t entirely clear but he took that to mean he had been given a free hand; he could conduct his enquiries as he wished. Pain was a subject that had never interested him very much; the fact that he had been trained to cure it did not mean that he actually understood it. He knew only that it was very easy to induce, if not exactly to measure.

  A car had drawn up outside. He went to the window and drew the blind back a couple of inches. When he saw Eberhard emerge from the vehicle, his first impression was that Urbach had talked – and yet that was ridiculous. Urbach wasn’t the kind of man who would reveal anything of importance to the Americans. He knew how to handle interrogation. Schwarzenbach went to the front door and waited until he heard Eberhard’s hand upon the bell.

  For the first time, Eberhard was not on his own. Behind him stood another man, small and muscular, someone who gave the impression of considerable physical strength.

  Schwarzenbach said, ‘I heard the car.’

  Eberhard smiled. He stepped inside, removing his cap. The other man followed. They went together into the surgery.’

  Eberhard said, ‘Dr Lutzke – may I introduce Major Spiers.’

  Schwarzenbach extended his hand but the Major had turned away and was walking round the room like someone taking an inventory.

  ‘You seem to enjoy calling here,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘How can I help you this time?’

  Eberhard sat down. Schwarzenbach noticed that today he wasn’t carrying his briefcase. He was turning his cap round and round on his knees nervously.

  ‘Well, this isn’t a professional call from my point of view,’ Eberhard said. Schwarzenbach watched the Major, who was still stalking the room, covering the same area again and again in a circular fashion.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Schwarzenbach said. But he remained distrustful: why were there two of them suddenly? And what was the Major hoping to find?

  ‘Major Spiers asked to be introduced to you, Dr Lutzke.’

  Spiers spoke for the first time. ‘That’s right. I wanted to meet you.’

  ‘May I know the reason why?’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ Eberhard said. ‘He wants your professional advice.’

  ‘I’m flattered, of course. But don’t you have perfectly competent physicians of your own? I’d also imagine that they were better equipped as well.’ Schwarzenbach picked up his empty glass. There was a sense of dry tension in the air, and he found it impossible to keep his hands still.

  ‘Well, the Major has this thing, Doctor. He thinks that European physicians are generally better trained to heal. We disagree on this point, because I can’t see the difference between an American medico and a German one, but he insists.’ Eberhard seemed to want to apologize for his superior officer.

  Spiers said, ‘That’s right. You guys have been at it much longer.’ He was standing by the window, perfectly still now.

  ‘And what’s the trouble?’ Schwarzenbach was unconvinced. It was a charade, but he could play it as well as they could.

  ‘It’s my back.’ The Major was undoing his coat.

  ‘Let me take a look at it.’

  Spiers removed his shirt. Stripped to the waist, he did not seem to feel the cold. Schwarzenbach touched his flesh.

  ‘Where does it hurt?’

  ‘At the base of the spine,’ Spiers said.

  The man’s body was in almost perfect condition. He was about fifty and looked thirty. ‘You keep yourself in good shape,’ Schwarzenbach said.

  ‘I don’t eat meat, Doctor,’ the Major said. ‘I live on health foods. Honey, fruit, cereals. That’s how I do it.’

  ‘Have you been doing any exercise lately?’

  ‘I play some tennis.’

  ‘You’ve probably strained a muscle,’ Schwarzenbach pressed his fingers against the Major’s spine and Spiers became rigid.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Spiers said. ‘That’s what I guessed had happened.’

  ‘Your own army doctors could treat this far better than I. It’s a question of having the right medical supplies, and they would be better stocked than I could hope to be.’ Schwarzenbach turned to see that Eberhard was examining something on his desk. He tried to control the sudden sensation of uneasiness that he felt. It was all a pretext of some kind; there was probably nothing wrong with the Major’s back.

  Spiers put on his shirt. ‘Thanks for the advice. I don’t trust some of those guys we’ve got. They’re all young, fresh out of medical school. I wanted somebody experienced.’

  ‘A strained muscle, nothing more than that.’

  ‘That’s great, that’s all I wanted to know.’ Spiers was doing up the buttons of his shirt.

  Schwarzenbach moved towards his desk and saw what it was that Eberhard was looking at. Absentmindedly he had been scribbling on a scrap-pad: alarmed, he realized that he had covered the top sheet with the runic insignia of the SS.

  ‘That’s interesting, Doctor,’ Eberhard said. He passed the pad to Spiers. ‘Isn’t that interesting, Major?’

  ‘That’s really interesting,’ Spiers said, and stared at the pad. ‘It’s amazing what people doodle.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Eberhard said. ‘Why would you scribble something like that, Dr Lutzke?’

  Schwarzenbach hesitated. A sequence of possibilities flashed through his mind. The Jew, Grunwald, had talked. Or Urbach had opened his mouth. Or perhaps they knew something anyway, something they had discovered by themselves, and he wondered where he had failed to cover his tracks. And then he realized that he was being foolish: they knew nothing, they had only their suspicions to go on, because if they were certain of their ground they would have arrested him long ago. They were trying to harass him: it was an obvious strategy.

  ‘Let me see.’ Schwarzenbach took the pad from the Major. ‘I must have been thinking about the past.’

  ‘Whose past?’ Eberhard asked.

  ‘Germany’s.’ Schwarzenbach laughed. ‘We Germans had to live with these initials for many years. We were terrorized by them.’

  Eberhard shrugged and looked at the Major. Spiers breathed heavily, inhaling through his nose, exhaling through his mouth, like someone exercising his lungs.

  ‘Yes – we lived in terror of the SS.’

  ‘Do you think of the past often?’ the Major asked.

  ‘Much of the time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Like everyone else I wonder what went wrong.’

  Eberhard smiled, that inane smile, that idiot expression. ‘Were you ever a Party member?’

  ‘No.’ Schwarzenbach put the scrap-pad on his desk. ‘I didn’t agree with the Party on many issues.’

  ‘For instance?’ Eberhard frowned like a student trying to understand his lecturer’s argument.

  ‘Need I go into it all?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I disagreed with the Party’s policy on the Jews. I also felt that it was wrong, muddleheaded, to start a war. I didn’t believe in Lebensraum.’ Schwarzenbach bit the lies off easily, smiling as he spoke.

  ‘Come on, Doctor,’ Eberhard said. ‘Didn’t you get a surge of national pride when Adolf walked into Austria?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘And then Poland?’

  ‘That was a mistake.’

  There was a moment’s pause. The Major was circling the room again, his hands clenched behind his back. He asked suddenly, ‘Have you ever been in Poland, Doctor?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Not even as a tourist – I mean, when it became a part of the Reich?’

  ‘I didn’t especially want to go, Major.’

  Spiers thrust his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. ‘I can understand that, Doc
tor. I can easily see it wouldn’t have been much fun.’

  Schwarzenbach picked up the pad again. ‘We lived with these initials for many years. They are almost a part of every German’s nightmare. How could it have happened?’

  ‘Search me,’ Eberhard said. ‘But happen it did.’

  Spiers looked at his wristwatch. ‘Thanks for looking at my back, Dr Lutzke. I feel relieved to know that it’s nothing more than a strained muscle. I guess one tends to imagine the very worst.’

  When Eberhard and his Major had gone, Schwarzenbach drank some more cognac. It disgusted him to see that he was trembling again. But why? They didn’t scare him. They could ask questions endlessly. They could probe as much as they liked. They would discover nothing. Ultimately all they could ever hope for was that someone would come forward with positive identification. And that thought brought him back again to Grunwald. Only Grunwald could tell the truth: Grunwald’s was the only finger that could be pointed at him. And how could Grunwald speak, without revealing his own complicity?

  But he was still uneasy. The thought of Grunwald lay across his mind like a terrible shadow. It only needed a stirring of conscience on the Jew’s part – it needed only that, and the entire past would be laid bare like some hastily buried skeleton. Facts and facts: they stretched backwards, always backwards, groping towards a point in time when the first crime had been committed. But it was impossible to remember everyone and everything now. His memories were thick with the recollected faces of the anonymous, nameless people, the sounds of crucifixion, the agonies, his memories ran one into another as blurred as an overexposed photograph. The past was buried and, being buried, was a meaningless thing that could never be reconstructed in its entirety.

  In Chelmno he had been given a miserable wooden hut that had been designed as three rooms. One contained a primitive latrine that smelled in warm weather. The others were larger: one he used as his living quarters, the second as his surgery. It became clear to him very quickly that nobody was particularly interested in the work he was doing, nor in the results. At first he made copious notes, filling more than a dozen foolscap folders with the results of his research. The camp commandant, Hans Bothmann, was interested only insofar as the work being done would impress his rival Hoss at Auschwitz, but after a few initial enquiries he was rarely seen by Schwarzenbach.