I called the Heidelberg Union Insurance company. I made it clear that without the trip to America all I could do was write a final report and prepare an invoice. An hour later the clerk in charge called to give me the go-ahead.
So, I was back on the Mischkey case. I didn’t know what there was left for me to find out. But there it was, this trail that had vanished and had now re-emerged. And with the green light from the Heidelberg Union Insurance I could pursue it so effortlessly that I didn’t have to think too deeply about the why and wherefore.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and I figured out from my diary that it was 9 a.m. in Pittsburgh. I’d discovered from the ballet director that Sergej Mencke’s friends were at the Pittsburgh State Ballet, and International Information divulged its telephone number. The girl from the exchange was jovial. ‘You want to give the little lady from Flashdance a call?’ I didn’t know the film. ‘Is the movie worth seeing? Should I take a look?’ She’d seen it three times. With my dreadful English the long-distance call to Pittsburgh was a torture. At least I found out from the ballet’s secretary that both dancers would be in Pittsburgh throughout December.
I came to an understanding with my travel agency that I’d receive an invoice for a Lufthansa flight Frankfurt-Pittsburgh, but would actually be booked on a cheap flight from Brussels to San Francisco with a stopover in New York and a side trip to Pittsburgh. At the beginning of December there wasn’t much going on over the Atlantic. I got a flight for Thursday morning.
Towards evening I gave Vera Müller a call in San Francisco. I told her I’d written, but that rather suddenly a convenient opportunity had arisen to come to the USA, and I’d be in San Francisco by the weekend. She said she’d announce my visit to Frau Hirsch; she herself was out of town over the weekend but would be glad to see me on Monday. I noted down Frau Hirsch’s address: 410 Connecticut Street, Potrero Hill.
2 A crackle, and the picture appeared
From the old films I had visions in my mind of ships steaming into New York, past the Statue of Liberty and on past the skyscrapers, and I’d imagined seeing the same, not from the deck of a liner, but through the small window on my left. However, the airport was way out of the city, it was cold and dirty, and I was glad when I’d transferred and was sitting in the plane to San Francisco. The rows of seats were so squashed together that it was only bearable to be in them with the seat reclined. During the meal you had to put your seat-back up; presumably the airline only served a meal so that you would be happy afterwards when you could recline again.
I arrived at midnight. A cab took me into the city via an eight-lane motorway, and to a hotel. I was feeling wretched after the storm the airplane had flown through. The porter who’d carried my suitcase to the room turned on the television; there was a crackle, and the picture appeared. A man was talking with obscene pushiness. I realized later he was a preacher.
The next morning the porter called me a cab, and I stepped out into the street. The window of my room looked out onto the wall of a neighbouring building, and in the room the morning had been grey and quiet. Now the colours and noises of the city exploded around me, beneath a clear, blue sky. The drive over the hills of the town, on streets that led upwards and swooped down again straight as an arrow, the smacking jolts of the cab’s worn-out suspension when we crossed a junction, the views of skyscrapers, bridges, and a large bay made me feel dizzy.
The house was situated in a peaceful street. Like all the houses it was made of wood. Steps led to the front door. Up I went and rang the bell. An old man opened the door. ‘Mr Hirsch?’
‘My husband’s been dead for six years,’ she said in rusty German. ‘You needn’t apologize, I’m often taken for a man and I’m used to it. You’re the German Vera was telling me about, right?’
Perhaps it was the confusion or the flight or the cab ride – I must have fainted and came to when the old woman threw a glass of water at my face.
‘You’re lucky you didn’t fall down the steps. When you’re ready, come and I’ll give you a whisky.’
The whisky burned inside me. The room was musty and smelt of age, of old flesh and old food. The same smell had suffused my grandparents’ house, I suddenly recalled, and just as suddenly I was seized by the fear of growing old that I’m continuously suppressing.
The woman was perched opposite, and scrutinizing me. Shafts of sunlight shone through the blinds onto her. She was completely bald. ‘You want to talk to me about Weinstein, my husband. Vera thinks it’s important that what happened is told. But it’s not a good story. My husband tried to forget it.’
I didn’t realize straight away who Karl Weinstein was. But as she started to talk I remembered. She didn’t realize she was not only telling his story but also touching upon my own past.
She spoke in an oddly monotonous voice. Weinstein had been professor of organic chemistry in Breslau until 1933. In 1941, when he was put in a concentration camp, his former assistant Tyberg put in a request for him to be sent to the RCW laboratories, which was granted. Weinstein was even quite pleased that he could work in his field again and that he was working with someone who appreciated him as a scientist, addressed him as Professor, and politely said goodbye in the evening when he was taken back to the camp along with the other forced labourers of the Works. ‘My husband didn’t cope well with life, nor was he very brave. He had no idea, or didn’t want to know, what was happening around him and what was coming for him, too.’
‘Were you with Weinstein at this time?’
‘I met Karl on the transport to Auschwitz in nineteen forty-one. And then again only after the war. I’m Flemish, you know, and could hide in Brussels to begin with, until they caught me. I was a beautiful woman. They conducted medical experiments on my scalp. I think that saved my life. But in nineteen fortyfive I was old and bald. I was twenty-three.’
One day they’d come to Weinstein, someone from the Works and someone from the SS. They’d told him how he must testify before the police, the prosecutor, and the judge. It was a matter of sabotage, a manuscript that he’d supposedly found in Tyberg’s desk, a conversation between Tyberg and a co-worker that he’d supposedly overheard.
I could picture Weinstein, as he was led into my office, in his prisoner’s clothes, and gave his testimony.
‘He hadn’t wanted to at first. It was all false and Tyberg hadn’t been bad to him. But they showed him they would crush him. They didn’t even promise him his life, only that he could survive a little longer. Can you imagine that? Then my husband was transferred and simply forgotten in the other camp. We’d arranged where we would meet should the whole thing ever be over. In Brussels on the Grand Place. I came there simply by chance in the spring of nineteen forty-six, not thinking of him any more. He’d been waiting there for me since the summer of nineteen forty-five. He recognized me immediately although I’d become this bald, old lady. Quite irresistible!’ She laughed.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I was the one Weinstein had delivered his testimony to. I also couldn’t tell her why it was so important to me. But I had to know. And so I asked, ‘Are you certain that the testimony your husband gave was false?’
‘I don’t understand. I’ve told you what he told me.’ Her face turned cold. ‘Get out,’ she said, ‘get out.’
3 Do not disturb
I walked down the hill and came to the docks and warehouses by the bay. Far and wide I could see neither cab nor bus, nor subway station. I wasn’t even sure if San Francisco had a subway. I set off in the direction of the skyscrapers. The street didn’t have a name, just a number. In front of me a heavy, black Cadillac was crawling along. Every few steps it drew to a standstill, a black man in a pink silk suit got out, trampled a beer or coke can flat, and dropped it into a large blue plastic sack. A few hundred metres ahead I saw a store. As I came closer I saw it was barred like a fortress. I went in looking for a sandwich and a packet of Sweet Afton. The goods were behind grating and the checkout reminded me of a counter at the bank. I didn’t get a sandwich and no one knew what Sweet Afton was, and I felt guilty even though I hadn’t done anything. As I was leaving the store with a carton of Chesterfields, a freight train rattled past me in the middle of the street.