Read The Song Before It Is Sung Online
Authors: Justin Cartwright
26 AUGUST 1944, 8 A.M.
AXEL VON GOTTBERG and three other prisoners are taken from Haus III to the condemned cells on the ground floor, which is known
as
das Totenhaus,
the House of Death. They are in shackles and wearing only their trousers.
Since the Nazis came to power thousands have been executed here, half of them Germans. The House of Death is next to the execution
block, which is an outbuilding, almost a shed, with large opaque windows at one end. From the roof of this building an iron
girder was suspended in 1942. There are six meat-hooks attached to the girder. A guillotine also stood in this space, above
a drain set in the floor, until it was destroyed in an air raid on the night of 3 September 1943. Three hundred prisoners
were in Haus III that night. All these prisoners were hanged in the next four nights, although some had clemency proceedings
outstanding and some were awaiting trial. The order for execution was given by telephone, without waiting for the paperwork.
Axel von Gottberg has been kept by the Gestapo for eleven more days, tortured and abused.
In the execution shed, Wernher Steuben, the cameraman, and his assistant, Ernst Fritsch, set up their Arri cameras. Steuben
is close to a breakdown. This work is appallingly stressful: on the one hand the film is to be shown to the Führer and must
be technically perfect, and on the other the people he has to deal with at the prison are barbarians. They don't understand
the demands of film - lighting focus, reel changes, sound. The hangmen themselves are usually drunk. A bottle of brandy stands
on a small table to the side for their benefit. But worse for Steuben is the fact that none of the camera team at Wochenschau
want to do this work, and who can blame them? He has been forced to do it because the Reichs Director of Film has told his
boss that the Führer himself is insisting that these executions be filmed. And Steuben, without being specific as to the
consequences, has told Fritsch that it would not be in his interest to refuse, although of course he has only to say that
he has looked after him in the past, but he may not be able to do it for ever; things are very different now.
Five or six times Steuben and Fritsch go through the plan. It's simple enough, but has one unpredictable element: the condemned
take different lengths of time to die, depending on their weight and the hangmen's whims. Fritsch has to start running his
camera, B Camera, three minutes after Steuben's camera, so that there is time to change reels as A Camera runs out, or between
executions, whichever comes first. He could run longer magazines of film, but they are inclined to pick up dirt and hairs
which blemish the film.
Axel von Gottberg is cold. It has been a very warm summer, but in the House of Death it is always winter. He sits on a form,
his hands and feet shackled. He tries to imagine that he is with his family at his beloved Pleskow, and he tries to believe
that it has been worth it to sacrifice everything. Death, he hopes, will be like an endless swim in the warm, vegetable water
of the lake, of his own lake.
And now he is awaiting death shivering with the cold, as though he is perhaps anticipating the natural condition of the dead.
The pastor comes to visit him. Von Gottberg asks to write another note and the pastor opens his bible in which he has concealed
some paper and a pen. He returns half an hour later and takes the letter addressed to E.A. Mendel of All Souls College Oxford,
England. Because the guards have taken to searching him as he leaves the prison, he passes it to one of the camera crew, who
are decent enough people, when they meet at the urinals, and he asks him to mail it when he can: 'God will thank you for this
Christian act of witness.'
Usually executions take place at night, but the Führer is at Wolfschanze, and the film must reach him tonight. Steuben has
been told a plane is waiting.
Von Gottberg hears the guards taking the man from the next cell. He is a trade-union leader called Franz Liebherr, who was
supposed to call workers out on strike after Hitler's assassination. The guards shout at him, 'It's a short walk. You don't
want to be late for your next appointment.'
Near by someone is praying. After ten or fifteen minutes another man is led away. He calls out, 'Goodbye, friends,' but the
guards shout at him to be silent. His shackles scrape and clatter on the floor as he leaves the building.
Von Gottberg longs to die. Another minute of this hell is unbearable. The evidence of the degradation of his people, of the
descent into inhumanity, has already killed him. The prison grapevine has informed him that his wife has been arrested and
his beloved children taken away. And they have been taken away because of what Elya called his taste for intrigue, a remark
which Elizabeth reported to him in Stockholm. Surely this is the refutation, this Plotzensee, this House of Death, the hanging
that waits. It is common knowledge in Plotzensee that it takes some time to die by strangulation.
At last they come for him. He stands up, as straight as he can, well over six foot, despite the bruises and burns.
'Gottberg, your time has come.'
He nods. The two guards lead him, shuffling out of the building and across the courtyard, half-naked on these bare stones.
He is led through a door. Inside the execution room there is a blinding light, puzzling after the days and nights that have
collapsed into each other so that he has lived in degrees of darkness and shadow. There is a smell in here of excrement. He
has no idea what the lights mean or what the black, drawn curtains to his left are hiding. His death sentence, very formally
couched, is read to him:
Im Namen des Deutschen Volkes.
Now the hangman takes over. He holds von Gottberg by the arm. 'This way, my lanky friend. You should eat more, you know.'
His assistants laugh. The assistants now lift him up and place the noose, which is attached to the meat-hooks, around his
neck.
'For our sacred Germany,' says von Gottberg calmly.
The hangmen remove his trousers, to speed the clean-up, and then they release him.
CONRAD LURCHES FROM the building. He is sick in the street, until bile appears in small, bubbled strings. When he has voided
himself, he sets off at a fast, snivelling jog, like a five-year-old.
Fuck that smiling bastard Mendel. Fuck you, you great toad, you amateur gentile, with your three-piece suits and your sly
charm and your hairy ears and you five languages and your house in Headington with tasteful English garden, loud with roses,
and your wonderfully urbane theories about how the world works and your barrowloads of honours and honorary degrees and membership
of every fucking rinky-dink order of letters and science in the whole fucking world and your illuminated addresses and your
knighthood - Sir Elya Mendel KBE and
macher -
and your love of Schubert and Beethoven and opera and the hampers spread on the grass at Garsington in the company of intelligent
women, who all fuck like rabbits after you have given them the warm-up of Herzen and Turgenev — in fact anybody they have
never read in English, let alone in Russian, Estonian or Aramaic. And your wonderful war in the Reform Club on Welsh rarebit
and devilled kidney and claret
-Just a little of the '36 left, Mr Mendel -
and your high-minded intrigue in the Foreign Office and the British Embassy in Washington, your elegant dispatches and your
cosy notes to Michael Hamburger:
A second-class intellect, I'm afraid, Michael, gets the wrong end of the stick; deep dark Teutonic forests, goose-girls, duelling
scars. By the way, can you come to All Souls
for a Mallard Supper? We sing a ridiculous song about the mallard
—
I will give you the words — and then we eat one. More conventional food is also provided. Absurd really, but I think symbolic
of this place, teetering on the edge of farce, but always self-aware.
Lovely war. Lovely old stones. Lovely gossip.
While your friend hanged slowly, his eyes bulging, his bowels opening.
Conrad reaches Westminster Bridge, his lungs gasping hopelessly for air. He leans over and looks down at the water. It's high,
although still running in from the sea. Why did you ask me to do this? Why? Why? His stomach produces aiwretched spasm, a
violent heave. Nothing but a clear, thin dessert spoon of liquid escapes him. His eyes are, by contrast, full of liquid. He
reaches into the bag and takes the film can and drops it over the side. For a brief moment it floats, turning once, and then
vanishes.
Hanged men are frequently priapic, Elya.
These also are human qualities.
' YOU LOOK A LITTLE peaky, if you don't mind me saying so.'
Tony is concerned. Conrad hasn't left the flat for days.
'I'm fine, Tony.'
'I'll
get
some food in, if you like.'
'No, it's OK. Emily's coming round later.'
'Blimey, that would cheer anybody up.'
'Tony, I'm going to be leaving soon.'
'I thought you and the missus was getting togever again.'
'We were. But it hasn't worked out.'
'Sorry to hear that, I really am. Come in for some bread. I'll do you a panino. I'm just about to do one for meself. Mozzarella,
tomatoes? 'Ow's that sound?'
'Great. You're a pal, Tony.'
He is touched by Tony's solicitude.
In the back of the bakery is a yard. Tony has a little table there, and a vine growing out of a tub. He sits Conrad down.
'This is nice, Tony.'
There are tubs of white and red geraniums, rosemary bushes and a bay tree. It's a secret garden, Tony's own
Hortus inclusus,
his own fellows' garden. The desire for an enclosed personal space, a small piece of your own paradise, is a powerful one.
He remembers the Maasai villages out on the plains beneath the Maasai Mountain of God, in all that vastness, round enclosures
of branches and thorn trees into which the Maasai retreated at sunset from the threat of lions, leopards and hyenas. In there
they and their cattle were safe, bathed in firelight, the night locked outside.
Tony comes back with two cappuccinos and two panini stuffed with mozzarella and plum tomatoes as he promised. Conrad takes
a bite.
'Any good?'
'Lovely. Fantastic'
'It should be, it's Naples buffalo mozzarella.
Mozzarella di bufala.
If you was fed this when you was a nipper, like I were, it is in your blood.'
Conrad begins to weep.
'You orright, my friend?'
But Conrad cannot reply. He nods.
'I'm sorry, mate,' says Tony. 'Don't worry, whatever it is, take your time. Just a sec'
He comes back with some paper napkins.
'It's Francine, is that it?'
Eventually Conrad is able to speak.
'Sorry, Tony.'
'No problem, mate.'
'Tony, it's not Francine. I have seen something no human being should see. I can't tell you about it, but trust me, Tony,
you're the only one I've even mentioned it to, it's something beyond imagination.'
That was my mistake, he thinks, insufficient imagination.
'Don't say no more, Conrad. Just eat if you can. I'm going to make you another. Mortadella? Prosciutto?'
'Whatever. Thanks.'
In all Conrad eats four panini. He discovers that he has been starving.
Francine was extremely honest: John had reflected during their separation and then he had left his wife, without first discussing
his decision with Francine. It was the only decent way, he said, leaving her free to decide.
'So you both cleared the decks. How fucking noble.'
'You're a shit, Conrad.'
'Good luck with the rest of your life.'
But she was not done: three estate agents will value the flat; he can choose any agent he likes. And she will buy him out
of his half at the median estimation. It is this detail, this coolness —
the median estimation
— which finally allows him to squeeze Francine from his being. And just a day later Emily rang, as if aware of a vacuum. She
has a sad story: she crashed the car on the way to Notting Hill to pick up the children. She was drunk - totally mashed -
at two o'clock in the afternoon. She's been fined and has lost her licence. It was just the wake-up call she needed. It's
only been a few weeks but she's clean now and she wants to see him. He has been unable to sleep for more than twenty minutes
at a time and now he hopes that her frail but sexually knowing body will soothe him. It's the sort of arrangement she understands.
He has offered to drive the car when she picks up the children, if her mother can't do it. They will help each other at a
time of need in this utilitarian fashion.
In the past two weeks he has asked himself if he has any grounds for complaint against Mendel. He has come to think it was
wrong to hope that Mendel had any aim in mind for him, other than to have him complete, perhaps write, the story of his friendship
with von Gottberg. And, he has also come to see, he led himself into this: he has a regard for his own ideas and sins and
afflictions: they are, after all, just about all he has that he can call his own. And he has always had a certain arrogance,
readily picked up by Francine, about the importance of his inner life, his human qualities. Now that confidence has taken
a blow, perhaps a mortal blow.
He goes back to Elizabeth Partridge's papers, and finds a thirty-year-old obituary for her husband, Lord Dungannon. He is
survived by his widow Elizabeth, Lady Dungannon, and is succeeded by his only son, Erroll O'Brien, as the seventh Earl of
Dungannon. There is nothing, apart from the one letter with
No!
written on it, about Stockholm. He finds the phone number on a sheet of paper. The paper is quite thick and the address and
phone number, Dungannon 23, are embossed in cerulean blue, lying on the paper in serpentine filaments. It takes him no time
at all to establish the dialling code. He speaks to the estate manager, who tells him the Earl is presently in Dublin, but
that he rings in every evening to see how the harvest is going - they are harvesting at the moment - and he will pass on the
message to call Mr Senior. Conrad has the feeling that he is phoning not another country so much as another time in history.
But the death of von Gottberg has left its appointed time, and projected itself into his consciousness. It is inhabiting not
just his mind, but his skin and his clothes. He remembers a film in a Polanski retrospective at the National Film Theatre,
where he often used to go with Francine. In this film Franchise Dorleac, or her sister Catherine Deneuve, finds the material
world disturbingly motile, refusing to obey the laws of physics. At the time he thought that it was an interestingly surreal
conceit. He knows better now. In this way, von Gottberg's death has defied all physical laws and become present in his own
time. It's come to inhabit and possess what should by rights be his to control. He understands now Fritsch's anguish: nobody
can understand. He has been given, maybe he sought, just an inkling of what true horror means, what human beings are. That's
it. That is what has happened to him: he has been given a lesson in reality. Never mind what philosophers say about the reality
of things.
He longs for Emily to still his mind with - how to put this honestly? - her body. When Emily finally arrives, he sees that
the two of them are ghosts.
Dungannon does not call him immediately. Perhaps he has aristocratic insouciance: vulgar to thrust, old chap. But Conrad feels,
as he had hoped, more calm. Emily's children are still with her mother and she stayed the night. Their love-making was subdued
but intense as if both of them required something beyond physical pleasure. They both need in their own way to re-enter the
world of the familiar. Her breath had a slightly chemical scent, not unpleasant, but artificial, perhaps from the pills she
is taking. He too is taking pills, tranquillisers. Her body had somehow changed from the sexually active to the defenceless.
They are like two survivors of a plane crash finding each other in the jungle and thanking God they are not alone.
She asked him no questions about his absence. She said she called because she felt he was the only person she wanted to see.
'I rang you because, like, I knew you would not judge or criticise me, but that you would accept me. You were always on my
mind when I was in the bin. I heard your voice in my dreams.'
He feels a little irritation at her self-centredness, but then he has no wish to talk about von Gottberg to her, so he is
happy for her to ramble on, and describe her own feelings in detail for him. Without drink or drugs - he realises he has never
seen her completely sober before — she seems very vulnerable, even puzzled, as though the business of life is a mystery. They
have arrived at the same point by different routes.
She tells him she has a cottage in the country and she is going to live there with the children and be a proper mother. The
notion of being a proper mother seems to be the only aim she can conceive of in this new, blank, featureless world, other
than an inchoate appreciation of his human qualities. His cursed human qualities.
Conrad could warn her now that there is no symmetry in this world, although we are always looking for it, but he has come
to understand that the looking for it is also a part of being human, and unavoidable.