“Zdeněk, it’s fine. But why are you sitting there?”
His usual stutter was much more pronounced when he was nervous. He stammered, “Have you not noticed, Handa, that when the buildings crumble under the bombs, the toilets all remain attached to the walls? Even when everything else falls down?”
I held his gaze and held his face in my hands as he sat hunched, wrapped in the blanket.
“You are right, Zdeněk. But I need you to come with me now,” I said urgently.
Zdeněk was correct. I had noticed it too. As the buildings were obliterated, the toilets withstood the bombs almost always unharmed and exposed. We had noticed and had laughed together at the randomness of it.
“Come, Zdeněk, come with me to the shelter.” I grabbed his freezing hand and tried to lead him out. “It’s still safer than the toilets.”
He continued to be frozen and looked at me without understanding. I put my hands under his legs and shoulders to carry him down. He was short and very skinny, but I was still surprised at how slight he felt. As we made it to the bottom of the stairs by the entrance to the shelter, he wrapped his arms around my neck and shook and sobbed.
“Remember, it’s Jan, not Handa, here,” I whispered.
As Traudl and Ursula made space for us I realized that I was shaking too.
Luck was still on Hans’s side. The world in which he lived continued to forge the haphazard boy poet into the robust and controlled man he had become by the time I came along. Others had always taken care of Hans—his parents, Zdenka, Lotar, and Míla. Lotar was the responsible older brother; with their parents gone, it fell upon him and Zdenka to keep Hans safe. Now, at twenty-three years of age, Hans was alone with a solitary friend, living among enemies in an unfathomably dangerous city. He had scarcely fed and clothed himself unaided before arriving in Berlin.
At times, he had to take care of others too. He had to help rescue victims of the bombs. He also had to be strong for Zdeněk. For the first time in his life, he could count only on himself. The sickening fear created by his life in Berlin must have been relentless. I had always thought my father’s nightmares had to do with Czechoslovakia, but as I read his writings about the war, it seemed to be his nights in Berlin that were the stuff of terrors.
The days brought a different kind of fear as Hans continued diligently to seek information that might usefully be passed on.
The Dutch student and I met again, and as we walked to the cemetery, I explained what we were working on with Högn. He said it would be best to get actual documents that he could get to the right people. The information was technical and most easily communicated in written form. It was tricky to get actual papers. I figured that I could take notes of conversations or transcribe documents. I started walking around the office with a notebook, a detail which I thought would be in keeping with Jan, the quirky Czech work-obsessed scientist. I constructed a plan to access material.
All the important documents were in a locked file in the office of the head of laboratories, a Prussian aristocrat named Von Straelborn. He had a secretary, Frau Bose, who sat in an anteroom to his office. I had heard colleagues say that she was unmarried. They had also mentioned that she was a racist and a ferocious Nazi. She had, however, flashed me a shy smile a couple of times when we passed in the hallway, so I retained hope that she might be open to a bit of flattery. She seemed to me to be my only way of accessing the information. The real problem was that all in the company knew I was spending time with Traudl, and starting a conversation would be tricky. But then everything fell into place. There had been a rumor that the company would be moving some operations to the plant in the south in Bavaria, away from the bombs. A few evenings later, Traudl cried as she told me that she was part of the team being moved. She had to pack and would leave with the others in the next days. She said that she was worried about me and made me promise I would visit her apartment. She wanted me to take care of it and also wanted to ensure I had a place to live. Sweet Traudl. We drank a bit of brew. It burned our throats but helped assuage our fears.
As soon as Traudl left for the south, I stopped by the desk of Frau Bose and asked her for help locating a file with the name of a compound for one of my experiments. At first she seemed suspicious and didn’t talk much. I started stopping by her cubicle every other day with one excuse or another. Eventually, the strategy began to work, and she told me to call her Inge. A few visits later she agreed to come with me for a Sunday stroll. It took only a few Sundays and a couple of beers to get the friendship established. She no longer found it odd that I lingered around her desk, which was always filled with interesting papers. I sensed that she finally trusted me when one afternoon she asked me to help her fix some loose floorboards in her apartment.
From then on, she even sat next to me when we were in the same shelter during the raids. She also lived alone. The apartment was stark, the walls mostly devoid of decorations except for a shelf by the table which held a few ornaments, postcards from the Black Forest, and a framed photo of the führer. As I worked to endear myself to her, he observed us with his dark eyes and expression of strained formality. It struck me then that I had rarely seen the führer smile. He was always shown shouting or fierce and unforgiving.
I mentioned this to Zdeněk, in part to allay his concern that I was spending time with a true Nazi and to change the subject from his anxiety for my welfare. We agreed that the only people smiling in German propaganda seemed to be little blond girls, their faces illuminated by laughter, their hair in two perfect braids, and their hands clutching wildflowers. It seemed to Zdeněk and me then that it was only German girls who were genetically capable of smiling. My assurances made little difference; Zdeněk continued to fear for my safety.
I had learned the useful skill of appearing to listen without letting the words get past my ears. I had to be able to hear without letting it affect me or betray my feelings. Inge was adamant that I understood her views on the war. She believed all killing could be justified as a means of establishing an empire governed by the superior Aryan race. She believed that this would ultimately be for the benefit of all people, as they would be led by the wise Nazis. Of course, it was true that those dominated would be serfs and subservient, but then they would all have the advantage of living in a world of order and general well-being. She claimed that the British and the Americans, who were not as pure of thought as the Germans but made of similar stuff, would soon see the error of their ways and align themselves with Nazi interests. She explained gravely that the Anglo-Saxons were currently fighting the Germans only because they had been conned into doing so by the wily Jews. She seemed entirely serious when she explained that Roosevelt’s name was originally “Rosenwelt,” and she suspected that Churchill too might have a few drops of Jewish blood circling in his veins. I tried to focus on the fact that she apologized before saying that the Slavs were so inferior as to not belong fully to the rest of the human race.
“Of course, there are exceptions, Jan. In some rare cases, Slavs can have a similar mental capacity to Germans. You, for example. I heard Dr. Högn say that you are quite bright. But in that case, it must be because your Czech ancestors had the foresight of mixing with Germans to improve their stock. Do you understand what I’m saying, Jan? Lots of Czechs have mixed in the past with Germans for this simple reason.”