“I didn’t know he would have this idea. I thought the files were destroyed. I would never betray them. Never,” he said, louder, aroused. “You understand, we are a team. It’s how we work. Von Braun did everything to keep us together, everything. You can’t know what it was like. Once they even arrested him-a man like that. But together, all through the war. When you share that-no one else knows what it was like. What we had to do.”
“What you had to do. Christ, Emil. I read the file.”
“Yes, what we had to do. What do you think? I’m SS too? Me?”
“I don’t know. People change.”
Emil stood up. “I don’t have to answer to you. You, of all people.”
“You’ll have to answer to someone,” Jake said calmly. “You might as well start with me.”
“So it’s a trial now. Ha, in this whorehouse.”
“The girls weren’t at Nordhausen. You were.”
“Nordhausen. You read something in a file-”
“I was there. In the camps. I saw your workers.”
“My workers? You want us to answer for that? That was SS, not us. We had nothing to do with that.”
“Except to let it happen.”
“And what should we do? File a complaint? You don’t know what it was like.”
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what? What is it you want to know? What?”
Jake looked at him, suddenly at a loss. The same glasses and soft eyes, now wide and defiant, besieged. What, finally?
“I guess, what happened to you,” he said quietly. “I used to know you.”
Emil’s face trembled, as if he’d been stung. “Yes, we used to know each other. It seems, both wrong. Lena’s friend.” He held Jake’s eyes for a second, then retreated to the chair, subdued. “What happened. You ask that? You were here. You know what it was like in Germany. Do you think I wanted that?”
“No.”
“No. But then what? Turn my back, like my father, until it was over? When was that? Maybe never. My life was then, not when it was over. All my training. You don’t wait until the politics are convenient. We were just at the beginning. How could we wait?”
“So you worked for them.”
“No, we survived them. Their stupid interference. The demands, always crazy. Reports. All of it. They took away Dornberger, our leader, and we survived that too. So the work would survive, even after the war. Do you understand what it means? To leave the earth? To make something new. But difficult, expensive. How else could we do it? They gave us the money, not enough, but enough to keep going, to survive them.”
“By building their weapons.”
“Yes, weapons. It was the war by then. Do you think I’m ashamed of that?” He looked down. “It’s my homeland. What I am. Lena too,” he said, glancing up. “The same blood. You do things in wartime-” He trailed off.
“I saw it, Emil,” Jake said. “That wasn’t war, not in Nordhausen. That was something else. You saw it.”
“They said it was the only way. There was a schedule. They needed the workers.”
“And killed them. To meet your schedule.”
“Ours, no. Their schedule. Impossible, crazy, like everything else. Was it crazy to mistreat the workers? Yes, everything was crazy. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it, what they were doing. In Germany. But by then we were living in a madhouse. You become crazy yourself, living like that. How can it be, one sane person in the asylum? No, all crazy. All normal. They ask for estimates, crazy estimates, but you are crazy if you refuse. And they do terrible things to you, your family, so you become crazy too. We knew it was hopeless, all of us in the program. Even their numbers. Even numbers they made crazy. You don’t believe me? Listen to this. A little mathematical exercise,” he said, getting up to pace, the boy who could do numbers in his head.
“The original plan, you know, was for nine hundred rockets a month, thirty tons of explosives per day for England. This was 1943. Hitler wanted two thousand rockets per month, an impossible target, we could never come close. But that was the target, so we needed more workers, more workers for this crazy number. Never close. And if we had done it? That would mean sixty-six tons per day. Sixty-six. In 1944, the Allies were dropping three thousand tons a day on Germany. Sixty-six against three thousand, that is the mathematics they were working with. And to do this, forty thousand prisoners finally. More and more for this number. You want me to explain what happened? They were crazy. They made us crazy. I don’t know what else to tell you. How can I answer this?” He stopped pacing, turning his hands up in question.
“I wish somebody could. Everybody in Germany has an explanation. And no answer.”
“To what?”
“Eleven hundred calories a day. Another number.”
Emil looked away. “And you think I did that?”
“No, you just did the numbers.”
Emil was still for a moment, then came over to the bedside table and picked up the cup. “You’ve finished your coffee?” He stood near the bed, staring down at the cup. “So now I’m to blame. That makes it easy for you? To take my wife.”
“I’m not blaming you for anything,” Jake said, looking up into his glasses. “You do it.”
