Someone once said there’s no fool like an old fool in love. But middle-aged fools aren’t any less foolish. I walked home and thought some more about taking Arianne with me to Prague. No matter how smart you are, sometimes you just have to sit down and lay out a balance sheet to help you decide on something. On the credit side Arianne was a potential liability; and on the debit side, she gave me a lot of pleasure, and not all of it horizontal. They say that if, in every transaction, you can identify what you received, where it came from, and what it cost, then you have debits and credits mastered. But what they don’t say is that sometimes you just figure the world owes you a little bit extra and to hell with the consequences. In truth, that’s how most people handle life’s book-keeping. If you believe Prince Hamlet, conscience makes cowards of us all; but I can attest that it’s just as likely that conscience, especially a guilty one, can make you just a little bit reckless.
I got down to Berlin’s Anhalter Station about an hour before the train was due to depart so that I could meet Arianne and make sure that we both got a seat in a compartment. The newspaper vendors were shouting about the greatest victory in all military history at Kiev, and now and then about some smaller Italian air success against the British at Gibraltar. A squadron of pigeons up in the rafters of the station roof must have been listening because they flew south across the station concourse in formation, as if in honour of our wonderful armed forces and their brave Italian allies.
The station was busy with people. Nowadays, Anhalter was always busier than Lehrter or Potsdam: Germans were not travelling west toward RAF targets like Hamburg and Cologne if they could help it. South was better and south-east was better still. Even the pigeons knew that much.
The train filled. Among the other passengers with a seat in our compartment was an old Jew, easily identified by the yellow star recently sewn onto the left breast pocket of his suit. Nothing else about him was Jewish according to the filthy caricature of a Jew you saw in the newsreels or on the front of
By now people were standing in the corridor and a man wearing the uniform of a Labour Corps leader loudly demanded that the old man give up his place to ‘a German’. From his substantial girth, his relationship with real work looked tenuous to say the least.
Normally I didn’t interfere in these matters; maybe it was the sight of the Knight’s Cross around the old man’s neck – maybe it was just that like a lot of other Berliners I didn’t like the yellow star – but I was feeling more querulous in the face of Nazi bullying.
‘Stay where you are,’ I told the Jew and stood up to face down the Labour leader.
His face reddened like a Muscovy duck as he tried and failed to lift his chest above the polished brown belt around his waist.
‘And who the hell are you to interfere?’
It was a fair question. I wasn’t in uniform. That was in my suitcase and, for once, I was almost regretting not wearing it. But I had the next best thing in my pocket: my warrant disc. I showed it to him in the palm of my hand and it had the usual effect of cowing the man and the rest of the carriage into respectful silence.
‘Do you see a sign that says this carriage is forbidden to Jews?’
The Labour leader glanced around, redundantly. There was a small printed panel that read
He shook his head.
I pointed at Arianne. ‘This woman worked for BVG until about a year ago.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I was secretary to the director himself.’
‘Is there anything in the BVG railway rules and regulations that says a Jew must give up his seat to a German?’
‘No. There isn’t.’
‘So there,’ I said. ‘Let that be an end of it. Go away and keep your ignorant mouth shut.’ I might also have mentioned the decoration around the old Jew’s neck, but I didn’t want anyone in that compartment thinking that this was the only reason I was interfering on his behalf.
There was a murmur of approval as the Labour leader barrelled his way out of the compartment and down the carriage. I sat down.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the old man, tipping his hat.
‘Don’t mention it,’ I said and tipped my own in return.
Someone else said, quietly, ‘No one likes that yellow star.’
