‘All right,’ said the short man, leaving his knuckles alone and opening his notebook, touching his pencil to his tongue, as though he were about to get to the heart of the matter. ‘So, tell us what you know about his associates.’
‘His associates? I don’t know anything about his associates.’
The man lowered his pencil and looked at Heinz in astonishment. ‘Did he have visitors?’
‘I suppose he did, but I didn’t see them.’
‘You’re the building supervisor,’ said the man. ‘How is it possible that you never saw his visitors? Didn’t you notice anyone?’
‘No, I didn’t. I never saw anyone,’ said Heinz.
The man spoke as he wrote: ‘Says … he … never … saw … anyone. What about friends? Did you ever see him with friends?’
‘I don’t remember ever seeing him with friends,’ said Heinz.
‘Herr Schleiffer, you are a loyal Party member, aren’t you?’ said the tall man while the second man continued making notes. He stepped up to Heinz and loomed over him.
Heinz regretted being in his pajamas and not in uniform. Still, how could they doubt he was a loyal Party member after everything he had done for the Party? ‘Yes, of course I am,’ he said indignantly. He wondered whether he should salute and say ‘Heil Hitler!’ to prove it.
‘I’d watch my tone, if I were you, Herr Schleiffer,’ said the short man, as though he had read his thoughts. ‘You’re on thin ice here.’
‘I still wonder, Herr Schleiffer,’ said the tall man, ‘why you filed so many frivolous denunciations. I haven’t heard a reasonable explanation yet for that.’
‘Frivolous?’
‘You know it’s a crime to denounce someone falsely. Our dockets are virtually filled with false denunciations, which makes it all the more difficult for us to catch the real malefactors. Making a false denunciation is a serious misdemeanor, Herr Schleiffer.’
‘Very serious,’ said the short man. ‘A false denunciation is tantamount to obstruction of justice.’
‘Well, you caught Herr Juncker, didn’t you?’ said Heinz. He assumed still that Juncker had been arrested for his crimes.
‘Caught him?’ said the tall man. ‘Who said anything about having caught anyone?’
‘You mean he wasn’t arrested?’ said Schleiffer.
‘That is none of your business, Herr Schleiffer.’
‘The point is, you led us down many false trails with all your denunciations,’ said the short man.
At that moment, as Heinz was wondering how he should respond to their accusations, he remembered Karl Juncker’s girlfriend, the redhead. What was her name? Lola! He had met Lola. Here was a name he could give them! And he was about to do so when he had the thought: how would it look now, right after they had accused him of making frivolous denunciations, if he mentioned Lola at what was obviously a convenient moment for him? And Lola who? He didn’t even know her last name. And not only that. What if she turned out to be a completely innocent bystander to whatever they were investigating? That would be another frivolous denunciation on his record. For the first time ever, but not the last, Heinz Schleiffer felt like the Gestapo was not his friend, and, instead of mentioning Lola, he remained silent.
Three weeks later, when the papers reported that yet another woman had been attacked and murdered by the serial killer, Heinz, who by this time knew from Frau Schimmel that Karl Juncker was in custody, wondered whether his accusations of Juncker had not been wrong after all. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘at least Juncker or Geismeier or whatever his name is must be guilty of something.’
‘What makes you think so?’ said Frau Schimmel.
‘Well, he was using a false name.’
‘He was a policeman, Herr Schleiffer. Maybe he was undercover. They use false names all the time. Maybe he was actually investigating the murders of all those women.’
‘Well, they arrested him, didn’t they?’ said Heinz. ‘He must have done something wrong, or they wouldn’t have arrested him.’
‘But they wouldn’t tell you what he had done wrong, would they?’ said Frau Schimmel. ‘And you know as well as I do, Herr Schleiffer, they arrest people all the time these days for very flimsy reasons.’
Even Heinz had heard those stories, and now he had come within a hair of being arrested himself, for what, he didn’t even know. And when he thought about it, he really had denounced Herr Juncker for what Frau Schimmel would have called flimsy reasons. ‘They must have their reasons, though, for asking me all those questions,’ said Heinz.
‘What reasons, Herr Schleiffer? They weren’t just asking you questions, were they?’ said Frau Schimmel. ‘They were interrogating you.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Heinz, trying, without success, to rehabilitate the Gestapo in his own mind and to make himself feel better at the same time.
Frau Schimmel knocked on his door more often these days. She needed help getting up the stairs; the grocery cart had gotten too heavy for her to manage. The doctor had recently told her she didn’t have much longer to live. You could see that just by looking at her. She had gotten thinner and thinner until she looked like a twig. She could hardly walk, even with her cane.
Heinz was always glad to help. He went to the grocery store for her now when she couldn’t go because of the pain. He looked in on her, to make sure she was all right. He always learned something useful when he did. Besides, he found that he actually enjoyed her company.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong, Frau Schimmel,’ he said. ‘I’ve been with the Führer since the very beginning.’ The Gestapo visit was weeks in the past, but it still stuck in his craw.
‘Well, we’ve all been with him since the beginning, Herr Schleiffer, haven’t we? Still, they did interrogate you … I worry about Herr Juncker,’ she added.
Heinz said nothing.
She slid another slice of strudel onto his plate. Pear again. His favorite. ‘I’m sure you had only the best intentions when you filed your reports,’ she said.
