The Knife-Edge Path

by Patrick T. Leahy

  “You know how anxious Herr Himmler is to speed things up,” Stumpff said. “You should know our new Zyklon works five times as fast as what you have been used to.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Wirth said.

  Stumpff grunted, turning up his collar as he looked out across the yard. He raised his arm, waggling a finger at the trucks. “Today’s delivery, I take it?”

  Wirth gave his pants a quick slap with the riding crop. “Today we’ve got a little problem on our hands.”

  Stumpff stared at him incredulously. “What kind of a problem?”

  “A number of the containers were found to be contaminated, and had to be disposed of.”

  “Disposed of?”

  “Yes. Buried, as a matter of fact.”

  Stumpff’s bulging eyes stung with keeping them on Wirth’s steady leer. “Who was the officer in charge of this shipment?”

  “Why, he’s still here. Right over there. Lieutenant Langsdorff.”

  Stumpff felt the name like a blow out of nowhere. He said, “Surely there are enough containers to go through with today’s operation.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Impossible. What am I supposed to tell Berlin?” he fretted.

  “Don’t get too exercised,” Wirth said. “We’ll proceed as usual. In the end it’s all the same.”

  “No! I want an explanation, Wirth.” He turned his head to look across the yard again.

  The tall young officer came around the front of the lead truck, lifted one boot up onto the running board and spoke to the other men. The left sleeve of his tunic had been torn away at the shoulder.

  Wirth blared across the yard, “Hold up there a minute, Lieutenant! A word before you go!”

  “No, no!” Stumpff bleated. “Just tell me -”

  “You want an explanation? Why not get it from the horse’s mouth?”

  The young officer, now up in the cab, stared over his elbow through the open window. The door swung open and he climbed down. As he began to march this way Stumpff watched him, and the haze of time stirred in his mind around the height of him, the blond hair under his cap, the strangeness of his swinging one clothed and one bare arm; cobalt blue eyes and the scar that cut through his right brow closing like a short-cut from the past. Pulling up breathlessly the young man said, “Yes, sir?”

  “The Captain here would like to know what happened to your sleeve.”

  “It’s perfectly all right, sir. No harm done.”

  “I know that,” Wirth said, “but why don’t you go ahead and tell the captain how it happened?”

  The young officer started hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure which man to address, and as his eyes came over onto Stumpff, something in him jumped. “Well, sir, it started at the supply depot in Kolin when we were being loaded up, and the foreman mentioned to me, by way of a reminder, that they had been directed to use up their oldest supplies first. That being the case, it occurred to me that an inspection was in order, but rather than hold things up there in the warehouse -”

  “Inspection why?” Wirth cut in peremptorily.

  “Yes, sir. You see, the crystalline form of potassium cyanide tends to become unstable with age: the older, the more dangerous. So I waited until we were several kilometers out on the road before I stopped the convoy. After inspecting seven or eight of the containers I found exactly what I’d been afraid of.”

  “Which was?” Wirth prompted.

  “That we were carrying material which had reached a dangerous state of deterioration.”

  “There you are!” Wirth brayed. “He saved our asses, and in the process splashed some of the acid on his sleeve and had to tear it off. He could have unloaded all those bad containers on us, but no, he ordered his men to bury them right there on the spot. Good goddamn thinking, if you ask me. We can thank our lucky stars he wasn’t some ignoramus who just wanted to get things over with and breathe easy.”

  The same thing reported by the commandant at Sobibor, Stumpff reflected, in connection with the name, Langsdorff. He looked at Wirth. “Do you mean to say that every last one of the containers were buried?”

  “Ask him.” Wirth flipped his riding crop at the lieutenant.

  “No. But the seven or eight we did bury convinced me that most if not all of the others had to be bad. It was a matter of degree, depending on the dates on the containers. We held some out to be used up as disinfectant.”

  Stumpff watched the lieutenant’s eyes. They were hard. Too hard, he thought, to be the man he used to know. He said haltingly, “So that means this delivery, on top of yesterday’s, leaves us too short for today’s procedure.”

  “Listen, Stumpff.” Wirth moved up close to Stumpff’s face, “Imagine if we’d broken into any of those bad drums. Some of us could have been killed. I won’t write up a man for breach of conduct when he spared us the surprise of choking on the goddamn stuff that really wasn’t meant for us, now was it?”

  Stumpff backed away from the fetid vodka breath, saying in a weak voice, “This isn’t going to cut much ice with Berlin.”

  “Never mind Berlin,” Wirth said. “Who’s the expert on toxic gasses around here – if you’re thinking of contradicting my report commending the lieutenant for his initiative?”

  Stumpff stood up straighter pulling back his shoulders. He felt the young man’s eyes on him, watching from two places: there so close he could reach out and touch him, the other from the distant murky nightmare of a prison cell, waiting to be claimed. He said crustily to Wirth, “My own report, as you well know, must be confined to the efficiency with which you have been carrying out Herr Himmler’s orders.”

  Wirth sighed heavily, rolling his eyes. He looked down at his watch. “We’re running short on time for our tour. Stick around, Lieutenant. I’ll dig out one of my spare tunics for you to wear on your way back to Kolin.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I’ve been told to get the trucks back to the warehouse before dark.”

  Wirth looked up from under baleful eyes. “Let that foreman bite his nails. You’ll get back when you get back. We’re all in this together, you know. Go on and tell your men, then catch up to us. Clear enough?”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant turned and took off at a quick-step, then broke into a jog across the yard.

  Three men pacing around the trucks sucked on their cigarettes and let them drop.

  Stumpff watched him talking to the men. Something was getting away from him. What were the odds? He felt glad, for a change, that he had gained a lot more weight than rank in these past years. He said to Wirth, “How well do you know that man?”

  “Langsdorff? He’s one of Colonel Fritch’s darlings. Recently promoted to Head of Technical Disinfection. Heard of him?”

  Stumpff let a stare at Wirth break off the sight of him. A voice came to him from long ago when he had saved a boy from rotting in a prison cell forever, knowing he could make him almost from the bottom up like one of Arno Breker’s sculptures. From the wet clay of the Church to the sentinel at the Ordensburg Vogelsang. This didn’t seem to fit – that jarring unexpected air of hardness, some almost ruthless undertone. Nothing like the desperate man of God he’d saved from martyrdom. Which one of them was he, now?

  “I did know a Langsdorff once, before the war,” he said.

  Suddenly a clanking sound came from a troop-truck backed against the concrete building several yards beyond the shacks. A burly sergeant was draped over the fender, half-buried in the chassis.

  “What’s going on up there?” Stumpff said.

  “Ah, that’s Heckenholt, our mechanic. We’d be lost without him. Berlin does nothing but ignore our requests for spare parts.”

  “Spare parts? Surely you’ve given up on that since Himmler’s orders came down.”

  Wirth didn’t answer. He wheeled and began to move away in the direction of the truck, saying, “Just a moment, Stumpff. I’ll be right back.”

  Stumpff watched him striding purposefully away, switching his riding cro
p like a tail to keep flies off.

  All at once a voice beside him said, “All squared away, sir.” Langsdorff stood there stoically, tugging down his cap.

  “Ah, yes. Wirth’s gone up there,” he pointed, “to have a word with the mechanic.”

  Langsdorff stared at him for a moment, then said breathlessly, “I’m very sorry, sir, I didn’t recognize you before.”

  A strange wind swept in across Stumpff’s heart, stirring up the past.

  They were alone. It was his turn to apologize.

  There was a troubled smile on the young man’s face. “Don’t you remember me, sir? Kurt Langsdorff. Welzheim Concentration camp, 1938.”

  Stumpff let his face split open suddenly, feigning surprise. “By God, of course! It’s been so long. And you in that uniform. It just didn’t register. I thought I’d seen the last of you - what has it been? Five years, now?”

  Stumpff thrust out his gloved hand, Langsdorff took it and they shook lustily. “I must say you look splendid, splendid. I’ve often thought of you, you know, with every confidence in the outcome of your plans. Of course I never knew, because we parted ways. Who’d have thought, back in that dreary prison - I can tell you, I knew from the start you had it in you to become somebody. And look at you! I should have tried to look you up, but you know how it is, the war, and, well, by not hearing anything I knew damn well you must have made good, somehow or other.”

  Stumpff noticed a pained look coming into Langsdorff’s eyes. He changed his tone and said, “Did you ever marry that girl you were engaged to, Kurt? The pastor’s daughter?”

  “Yes, sir, the year after I got out of Welzheim.”

  “Well, that’s - any children?”

  “No sir, not yet.”

  Stumpff shook a finger at him. “Better not let any grass grow under. You’re still living in -?”

  “Tübingen, sir. Not me, my wife is there. I’ve got a flat in Berlin. Elfriede will remain in Tübingen for her safety.”

  “Ah, yes, Elfriede. How could I forget that day -”

  Wirth’s voice across the yard brayed, “Good man, Heckenholt!”

  Just then in the distance a train’s whistle shrieked.

  “Do me a favor, Kurt,” Stumpff said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Wirth doesn’t need to know about our past acquaintance. So not a word about that if you don’t mind, all right?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  There was a crunch on gravel to their left.

  Wirth came up to them, shaking his head. “That Heckenholt. A miracle worker if there ever was one. All right, gentlemen, we haven’t got much time. Follow me.”

  Wirth made a wide arc with his riding crop as he set off toward the idle row of shacks, enclosed by wire, and Stumpff, motioning Langsdorff to go ahead, fell in behind and they caught up to Wirth just as he reached the entry to the wire corridor, behind which signs identified the row of shacks one after another like store-front shingles: VALUABLES, CLOAK ROOM, HAIR DRESSER. A sign strapped to the wire read: TO THE BATHS AND INHALATION ROOMS. Over the door to the final, larger building Stumpff made out the words: HECKENHOLT FOUNDATION. Wirth stopped and swept his hand out with the flourish of a swelling Italian tenor. “We call this the bank. They’re told to turn in all valuable items at this wicket – jewelry, watches, currency – to be returned of course after they’ve stood under the showers.”

  Stumpff looked in at the rain and dust spattered wicket. With a glance back at the few men milling aimlessly around the trucks he was about to speak when jets of steam came into hearing from the train, and he hurried on, slick leather soles slipping on the frozen pebbles.

  Abreast of the shack called the Cloak Room, Wirth turned to say, “This is where we make them take their clothes off. We tell them we’ll be sending their things to the laundry, and they’ll get them back as soon as they’ve had their baths. So they come out of here, and then…”

  Wirth leaned around into the hand in his pocket and the arm under which his riding crop was pinned, strolled on a few more yards. “…from here the men are herded on, but the women are detained to file into this room quite naked, except for their hair, and we take that from them, too. You’ll be amazed at what we do with this hair. We stack it in bales and ship it out of here. It’s finally converted into industrial felt. That’s right! Woven into slippers for our U-boat crews! Nothing goes to waste! They have no idea how much they’re helping our war effort. What do you suppose our U-boat men would think if they knew they were walking on the tresses of Jewish bitches!”

  With a twisted smirk Wirth waited for a response, got none and then moved on until he stopped again a few feet from a dented, tin-plated door on a large concrete building with no windows.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Wirth said, “I’ll only be a moment.” He walked around the corner and strode up to Heckenholt, who slid off the fender of the troop truck, holding a wrench, nodded at some words Wirth spoke, took a pat on the shoulder and climbed up into the cab on the driver’s side.

  Wirth turned and, planting his boots widely apart, swatted the side of his trousers with the riding crop. The tin-plated door opened and a tall, barrel-chested sergeant stepped out, snapped to a salute. Wirth’s arm rose languidly, he smacked the palm of his free hand with the thick of his riding crop.

  Stumpff watched the sergeant’s sooty, well-fed face for some fulsome expression, but just then Wirth turned to come back, haughtily lifting a thin, cold smile. In a loud voice he said, “Who needs Berlin when we’ve got Heckenholt, that’s what I say!”

  Stumpff pointed at the top of the building where the barrel-chested sergeant stood. “That sign,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. You really ought to take it down.”

  “What are you talking about?” Wirth snarled. “Do you know where this place would be without Heckenholt? The sign stays.”

  “I wouldn’t insist on that, Wirth.”

  Langsdorff started to speak, but his mouth became a soundless cavern in the sudden deafening screech of iron wheels on tracks.

  Steam sprayed the cold with more steam, the couplings slammed and strained, the locomotive backed a little, settling into a long echo of iron across the stillness of the fields. The train jolted once more, then stopped. Ukrainians, pouring out of a barrack, came running toward the boxcars, knocked out bolts, pulled back the heavy carriage doors. Faces packed the frames of sudden air and light. The Ukrainians shouted orders, men and women began to jump down. On the ground they held their arms up to the elderly and the smaller children. Some women handed infants down. The Ukrainians laid about them with their whips. A bearded old man stood apart, picking bits of straw from his hat. A Ukrainian jabbed him with the thick end of his whip. The old man stumbled and in his eyes there was a groveling for dignity as if it were a pair of spectacles he couldn’t see without. A little boy wandered this way and that among them, handing out bits of string.

  Among the heaps of dead left in the boxcars, some of the bodies were small. A little girl, her tangled hair pinned with a bow, lay on top of a woman.

  One of the Ukrainians climbed into the boxcar. He whipped at several corpses. When none of them moved, he picked up the arm of a slender young man who was dressed as if for some occasion. His shoes were missing and one side of his boiled collar had sprung away from its attachment to the shirt. The Ukrainian dragged the corpse to the edge, gave it a shove with his boot. It made no sound as it hit the ice-hard ground.

  The Ukrainians were barking orders: “Hurry, now! It’s cold out! We’ll get you into a warm place! Your valuables will be returned to you!”

  From the far end of the Cloak Room people were already stepping out, naked, onto the frozen gravel walk that led to the Hairdresser’s. Women hugged themselves. The barrel-chested sergeant beckoned them on toward the building containing the baths and inhalation rooms, where the three officers stood outside the wire, watching. The sergeant spoke in his dulcet, priestly voice, “All the way up here! Don’t be afraid! You’ll h
ave a bath for disinfection! You’ve been a long time on that train! Come along, nothing will happen to you! Breathe deeply! It’s good for the lungs!”

  “My God,” Stumpff said, “naked in winter. They’ll catch their death.”

  Wirth rolled his shoulders, saying, “That’s what they’re here for, isn’t it?”

  The line began to pack together between the Hairdresser’s and the Bath House, where the tall sergeant waited. A little girl dropped a pearl necklace. She tried to pick it up but was shoved on and she began to cry. Another child asked his mother for a drink of water. She bent down and told him softly that he would have to wait. There might be some after their shower. A man was speaking to a boy of about ten. The boy began to cry and the man pulled him close, pointing at the sky. Suddenly from the Hairdresser’s a beautiful young woman stepped into the cold.

  Stumpff’s eyes dropped from her lovely dark face down the length of her body, along her tawny legs to a pair of delicate ankles, in which he saw the tendons flex as she stepped on the gravel, and the drizzle glistened on her shoulders where, just over the left collarbone, a dark mole dotted the smooth waxen slope to her breast. He hauled in his glance, then held his eyes on her face. A face that now stared back at him with hatred. She made no attempt to cover her breasts, or to wipe away her tears. The crowd behind her shoved. She stumbled on ahead. Stumpff saw her prettiness drawn up into hiding from the light of a piano lesson, a girl long ago where he’d been visiting, and he walked in on her but hung back, waiting for that smile at the sight of him, ‘Come over here, Willy, I’ll show you how.’ The ugly needn’t wait. She’d made fun of him out by the pond. Somehow he’d make her cry. Like this girl now where in his mind she lay on a pillow in the dark, looking at dreams into which her father would soon whisper, unheard, ‘Good-night.’

  All at once the girl’s blazing eyes found Langsdorff. She laid her finger on her chest between her breasts, stabbed the finger into her bare skin and cried bitterly, “19!”

  Stumpff swallowed. A voice so close it startled him like thunder moaned, “Jesus!”