The purge, Operation Hummingbird, hadn’t bothered Heinz one bit when he heard about it. Röhm and his buddies had been trouble for the Führer and that was all that mattered. And they were perverts to boot. Hard measures were called for. The SA, the storm troopers, had been purified, and the new SA would be better than ever. There were still millions of them. End of story.
Heinz had failed to keep order in his own family. He thought he should have beat up his wife when she was disobedient, and she might not have run off. And Jürgen was right: he should have summoned that little pissant of a son with his fancy ideas and slapped some sense into his silly head. But it was too late for that too.
Now he had the building to look after. He was the guardian, after all, and now that Hitler was on his way to total power, Tullemannstraße 54 needed tending to. As Heinz saw it, Tullemannstraße 54 was a small version of Germany itself, a microcosm, his son would have said. The pissant liked fancy words. The building had fallen into disrepair and disrepute, and it was Heinz’s duty to restore and maintain order, to know, as best he could, everyone living there, to see that there were no malefactors among them, that everyone was living by the rules, living by German rules.
Heinz made it a point to know who came and went. He spoke to them, inquired about their well-being in a sufficiently friendly manner to learn what he could about them. He helped old Frau Schimmel carry her groceries up to her apartment and managed to learn that her husband had died forty years earlier as a result of wounds sustained fighting in the Franco-Prussian War. She lived on her war widow’s pension. Or at least that was what she said. She invited Heinz in for a glass of schnapps and told him, with a little prompting, what she knew about the building’s other inhabitants. And she knew quite a bit – who did what for a living, who feuded with their neighbor, that sort of thing.
She knew nothing about Karl Juncker, even though he lived across the hall from her. ‘I never see the man,’ she said. When he thought about it, Heinz realized that he hardly ever saw Juncker either. That was suspicious in itself. What was Juncker up to anyway?
Now, as a storm trooper, Heinz had a larger responsibility, not only to the building but also to the Reich. If Karl Juncker was getting letters from America, it was up to Heinz to find out why. ‘Is he getting letters from America?’ Frau Schimmel asked. She filled Heinz’s glass. ‘My, oh my,’ she said.
All Heinz knew about Karl Juncker was that he kept to himself. He came and went on an irregular schedule. When he and Heinz met in the hall, which was not very often, Juncker walked right past without so much as a hello. He got his bicycle out of the bicycle room and rode it wherever it was that he went. Heinz had not been able to find out where that might be. Frau Schimmel said she didn’t know. Juncker came and went at irregular hours. Did he have a job? What did he do every day? Now, with this letter from the United States, Heinz had the perfect opportunity to find out a little more about who he might be.
Heinz marched up the stairs to the second floor, planted himself in front of apartment 21, and rapped sharply on the door. He was about to knock again when Willi opened the door.
‘Herr Juncker?’ said Heinz, his arms folded across his chest, the letter held in front of him.
‘Yes?’ said Willi.
‘Heil Hitler,’ said Heinz.
‘Heil Hitler,’ said Willi. Heinz tried to look into the apartment, but Willi stepped into the hall and pulled the door closed behind him. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m Heinz Schleiffer, the building guardian.’
‘Yes. I know who you are.’
‘This letter came for you, Herr Juncker.’ Heinz waved it back and forth in front of his chest.
‘Give it to me,’ said Willi.
‘It’s from America,’ said Heinz.
‘Why wasn’t it left in my mailbox?’ Willi said.
‘Because,’ said Heinz, but he couldn’t think of a good answer to that obvious question. And suddenly he realized that his decision to take the letter from the postwoman and deliver it himself might not have been such a good idea.
Willi was taller than Heinz, and muscular. His thick eyeglasses made his eyes look small and narrow and menacing. The fingers of his left hand stroked his chin as he studied Heinz. As he moved his hand from his chin, a small rosette in the buttonhole of his lapel became visible. Heinz had seen such rosettes before in the lapels of high Nazi officials.
‘The postwoman … she … she dropped it in the wrong mailbox,’ said Heinz. ‘I wanted to … I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘See that it doesn’t, Herr Schleiffer,’ said Willi. ‘There are postal regulations, you know. Heil Hitler,’ he said with a salute, stepped back into his apartment, and closed the door. Heinz stood there for another moment. He remembered to mutter Heil Hitler, but the door was already shut. Jesus, he thought. What have I done now?
Willi listened at the door to the noise of Heinz Schleiffer’s boots clattering down the stairs. He wondered: was Schleiffer intimidated, or would he make inquiries about Karl Juncker? Did Schleiffer represent a danger, a nuisance, or no threat at all?
‘What did he want?’ Lola said.
‘I think he was just snooping,’ said Willi.
‘That’s not a surprise,’ said Lola. ‘It’s only a surprise it took him this long to get here.’
‘Did he see
