by Max Schaefer
‘What was Germany like then?’
‘As I wrote. It was a furnace.’
Later he smokes in the Nivens’ upstairs bathroom, the one they use themselves. Since the morning’s initial boredom there has been no let-up in her conversation, and he takes the opportunity to linger for a second cigarette before dropping the fag-end in and watching it flounder. In the mirror he scans his eyes for whatever she has seen in them. They blink emptily back.
The radiator in the guest room has been left on high and there is an air of stale secretion. By her bed are some flowers and a glass of water; the afternoon sunlight shows up their dust! He has been sent for the smaller of her two cases, which stands unopened against the wall. It is very heavy, and he struggles to carry it to the sitting room, where she sits on the sofa, squinting patiently at the window.
‘I don’t know what you’ve got in here,’ he tells her, ‘but I’m surprised the ferry didn’t sink.’
‘A few books.’
‘You must read a lot.’
‘I can’t read at all any more. These are copies of my own books, for the Americans. I will go there after visiting my friend, to give some lectures.’
‘I’d like to go to America.’
‘Do you know my friend’s definition of an American? A mammal that cannot shut its mouth. Would you kindly open the case?’
The books occupy one half, beside a substantial folded coat. He picks one up: it is long and dense, printed on cheap, thin paper.
‘You wrote all these?’
‘Yes. But it is that coat I want. Please, be as careful as you can.’
It is an old trench coat in dirty cream, heavier and larger than it should be. He lifts it gently from below and places it on the sofa next to her. She turns and with her functional hand begins very carefully to unfold it.
‘In 1953, after I left Berchtesgaden, I travelled on to Munich. The Bürgerbräu Keller, where the putsch had once been planned, had become an American Service Club; and the shrines of the martyred Sixteen, which in the great days were guarded day and night, had been destroyed. But their foundation stones had withstood the dynamite. I touched them through the fence — as Christian pilgrims, or Muhammadans or Hindus, touch the tombs of their respective saints. And I repeated the names reverently in my mind. Alfarth. Bauriedl. Casella. Ehrlich. Faust. Hechenberger. Körner. Kuhn. Laforce. Neubauer. Pape. Pfortden. Rickmers. Scheubner-Richter. Stransky. Wolf.’
She takes from the coat a folded fabric, which she places on her lap. She regards him with her living eye, which glimmers like kindling.
‘The friend who entrusted it to me told me that Heinrich Trambauer was carrying it, and he was shot and fell, and when Bauriedl was killed he fell over him, and stained it with his blood.’
She unfolds the flag with fingers that tremble with more than mere age. The red field, the white disk.
‘At Nuremberg, at the great rallies, it would touch the new banners — thousands more every time — and, with its blood, give strength to them.’
The symbol, heavy and black, assured in its own inevitability.
‘It is the Wheel of the Sun,’ she says, ‘and we are Children of the Sun. The world believes us dead. There is silence around us like around the dead. There is silence around Him, whose name we dare not speak, save as one speaks in a graveyard. The night of death has closed on us and the Moon sheds its livid rays. But we know we are awake. We know the Sun will rise. Einst kommt der Tag der Rache. ’
Tony stares at her. ‘You’re joking.’
‘If I am joking,’ she asks, ‘why are you afraid to touch it?’
He says quietly: ‘How do you know I’m what you think I am?’
‘I know you as others have known me. I feel it.’ She smiles at him, and her voice becomes gentler. ‘In Uelzen I met a Sturmführer just released from Landsberg. He talked of Auschwitz and Treblinka, and the convoys of Jews that he had himself accompanied to the place of fate. And he described the activity of the crematoria, and the “great bright-red flames” that would spring from the main chimney when new fuel fed the furnace below. The Sturmführer and I, we had not known each other even half an hour, but still he said to me, “You would have loved to see those beautiful great red flames!” Because people of the same sort feel one another, you see. And of course he was right: those flames were the sunset purple announcing the twilight of a world I have hated for years — for centuries, perhaps — just as other flames, lit from isle to isle, once announced the destruction of Troy. And so I say: you too, you would have loved to see those beautiful great red flames. Give me your hand.’
The surface of the flag feels of nothing at all.
‘Blood touches blood,’ she whispers, gripping him to it. ‘Aum Shivayam! Aum Rudrayam! Heil Hitler!’
She says this with mounting intensity and on the last invocation inhales sharply, and her left hand, holding his wrist, clutches it tighter. Tony, who has had to lower himself to give her his hand, remains awkwardly crouched before her in this enforced novitiate posture, waiting for the passion to pass. But instead of subsiding her excitement now seems to increase, and her nails dig into him as her breath speeds up. Her eye, which just now fixed him with atavistic witness, widens differently in confusion and creeping panic, and she begins to gasp with shock. Tony asks, ‘Are you OK?’ and she shakes her head tightly. He says, ‘What’s the matter?’ but she seems unable to speak, struggling as she is to catch her breath, inhaling in violent stuttered chokes. Her hand drops his wrist and moves to the centre of her chest, where it begins to open and close, flexing like an insect, splaying then squeezing to a tight fist. She makes this gesture twice, then keeps it clenched, clutching tighter, so the wrinkles on her knuckles splay wide, opening long-sealed cracks. Between gasps she manages, ‘Pressure — on my chest.’ Tony says, ‘Are you having a stroke?’ and prods his thumb above her half-good eye, pulling the skin free of the socket, peering into its pearly swim as if things might clarify. He realizes he has no idea what to do. She shakes her head: ‘Choking.’ The grotesque skew of her slurring mouth is exacerbated by panic, as if her face is melting. He says, ‘But you haven’t eaten anything. It must be a stroke. You’ve had one already, haven’t you?’ Her eyes are watering now and her skin losing colour; she shakes her head again in desperate uncertainty, or perhaps fierce disagreement. She looks at him pleadingly. This is why Dave should be here. First-aid tips from school come back as daft non-sequiturs. If someone electrocutes themselves you have to make sure they don’t choke on their own vomit. The kiss of life: he imagines the flabby seal of their lips, the taste of mucus and cheese, vigorous shoves against her frail constricted chest, like an antique roll-top. He should call a doctor, but now sweat is slathering her face, and he can at least find a tissue for that. He had one in a pocket: standing over her, he begins to go through them. There are keys and coins, an old bus ticket: too small, and not remotely absorbent. Her gasps are going on and on; it seems impossible that each one will not be the last, and yet they continue. He says apologetically, ‘I thought I had a tissue somewhere,’ and then, ‘Must have chucked it away.’
He must make clear to the doctor she is having a stroke. He wonders what number to call. He looks about for the Nivens’ address book, standing on the spot, nummingly turning his head so she knows he is doing something. She is, he notices, dropping laterally across the couch. When she is horizontal she will be in the same position that she would have, might soon have, as a corpse. She might stain the fabric; Mrs Niven is house-proud. He hears her retch and sees a spray of sputum, followed by the dribble from her mouth’s dead corner of something cream-coloured, with lurid orange flecks. He realizes she might puke on the flag in her lap, and lifts it out of the way, placing it for now on a side table. He does not have time to fold it carefully. As he puts it down he looks at her again, still sliding and choking, and for the first time registers how disgusting the sight is, the shameless indiscretion of a failing body, its primitive leaks; and at the same time the old simplicity
of it, nature reasserting its course. He leans down to her face and says, ‘Can you hear me?’ and when she answers, ‘Yes,’ a puff of sweet-sour stomach gas hits him, and with it the feeling on his skin of a tiny spray like a sneeze. He says, ‘I don’t think there’s much point calling a doctor,’ and adds, ‘It’s all right, I’ll stay here with you.’ She stares, confusion bleeding into a new, compound fear as he pulls a chair close to her. She says, ‘Please call an ambulance,’ as loudly as she can, but the plea reaches him empty of fellow-feeling; he hears it like reported speech in a news story. Of course that is what she would say, this is the body in collapse, its desperate reflex in the basic state of fear. It is the physical symptoms that are most interesting. He realizes he has never seen this before, death in full assault, and it is as if what has long been present is just now surfacing, as if putrefaction started inside long ago, and now comes through where the vessel ruptures with strain. She is flat across the sofa now, still making her frantic gasping noise, still sounding surprised. So this is what happens to history and memory, her long proud catalogue of recollections sinking and silenced now, experience so gradually accreted gone in a gulp and rendered void. Tony takes her hand, which shakes inside his like a train leaving its tracks. ‘I fuck men,’ he tells her, ‘or they fuck me, all that stuff. I’ve always been like this, since I was a boy.’ Her expression does not change. ‘It’s ages since I’ve had my end away though. I’m going spare with it, wanking myself stupid. I could find some bloke in a toilet or whatever, I used to do that a lot, but I don’t feel like it so much no more. I’ve gone a bit soft for my mate Dave, the one you met. It’s stupid though, if anything was going to happen it would have by now.’
He drops her hand, stands. She is spent, her gaze dropped to the cushion by her head. Outside it is getting dark and the streetlamps have come on. He turns on the ceiling light and the one on the table. He picks up the flag and lets it fall open, the far edge tumbling to his feet. It is much wider than his arms can span. The material is thick and old, the design assembled in solid shapes edged with heavy stitching. Its colours and obscure stains are both faded. He asks her: ‘Is this really what you say it is?’ She says, ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘I’d like to have it. Are you feeling better?’ Her breathing has become shallower and less desperate. She says, ‘I think the pain has passed.’
He fetches her a glass of water and raises her to a sitting position so she can drink. She takes tiny sips in between long pauses holding it in her lap. He folds the flag and rolls it in a bundle. It will fit in his duffel bag.
He says, ‘You never went to Germany until after the war?’
‘No.’ It is a wet sound, and she wipes her mouth with the section of toilet roll he has given her.
‘So you never really met anyone.’
‘No. Except …’
‘Go on.’
‘When I was in London after the war, when things were at their worst, I stayed for a few days in a nurses’ hostel.’ Her voice is faint but calm. ‘One night I dreamed that I travelled to Nuremberg. I found myself in Goring’s cell. I told him that I wished I could save all of the martyrs, but I had been granted leave to help only one. I had chosen him because of his kindness to animals. I felt something in my hand — I did not know what — and gave it to him, saying, “Take this, and do not allow these people to kill you as a criminal. Heil Hitler.”
‘The next morning I woke up late, which was very unusual for me. It was raining outside, I remember, the sixteenth of October, and as I walked out I saw a newspaper kiosk. The headline was: goring found dead in his cell at 2.30 a.m. no one knows who gave him the poison. potassium cyanide.
‘That’s a strange story.’
‘It’s entirely true.’
‘It’s today’s date. The sixteenth of October.’
He helps her to the bedroom. ‘Should I leave the light on?’
‘No, please, turn it off.’
‘You should have Arthur call a doctor, get yourself checked out. It was a nasty episode you had. How much do you reckon that flag is worth?’
‘A great deal, I would imagine. But only to someone who would sell it.’
‘You be able to get to sleep? You should think about something nice.’
‘I will think about tomorrow. I haven’t seen my friend in many years.’
‘How long have you known her?’
‘Since 1946.’
‘You two go back a long way.’
‘Yes. I’m looking forward to seeing her very much.’
The Nivens do not arrive back until midnight, and there is much debriefing to be done. Niven is shaken and grateful in equal measure, and furious with Dave, for whom Tony invents a family emergency. He walks out into silence and a moonless sky. A few feet on he hears a whistle and there is Dave, sitting beneath a tree. He waves a shopping bag, which clinks: ‘Had a few already.’
They walk towards the woods. Tony says, ‘So how’s the brave new party?’
Dave shrugs. ‘More of the same isn’t it. They like a good sing-song anyway. Gave out the lyrics and everything.’ He digs a cyclostyled hand-out from his pocket and gives it to Tony, who stops under a lamp to read:
‘The time is near when those streets we’ll clear / Of those foes of our race evermore. To the tune of “Keep Right on to the End of the Road”. What one’s that?’
‘You know. Pa pa pum pa di pa diddi pum.’
‘Don’t know it. Now we are coming / See them all running. Doesn’t rhyme.’
Dave smiles. ‘A lot of the old BM boys were there. People I hadn’t seen for a while. Might be worth keeping a toe in.’
‘Tyndall’s an old git though.’
‘At least he’s not a fat poof.’
‘True enough.’
‘Some of the boys are going down the 100 Club next Thursday. It’s meant to be Skrewdriver’s comeback gig. I might head down — you interested?’
‘Yeah I’ll come to that.’
They continue in silence until they are out of the houses, then settle on a verge beneath the woods and crack open new beers.
‘Anyway,’ says Dave, ‘how was Eva Braun?’
‘Well apart from her nearly dying on me we had a lovely time.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I’m not as it happens.’
‘Shit. Well go on then.’
Tony pauses. ‘I can’t remember. Honest. It’s like a gap.’
‘You’re having me on.’
‘Not really. I remember her gasping a bit and I remember her looking better, but the stuff in the middle’s gone.’
‘That’s weird.’
‘It’s been a weird day.’
Dave nods, takes a long pull on his beer, belches. ‘What’s that in your bag?’ he asks, and then: ‘What else did you do with her?’
‘Chatted mostly.’
‘What about?’
‘This and that. Old-lady things. You know, cats. Holidays. Auschwitz.’
‘What did she have to say about Auschwitz?’
‘Auschwitz? It was the dog’s bollocks.’
Dave looks down at his can. He says: ‘My grandad died at Auschwitz.’
‘Oh here we go.’
‘No we’re all dead cut up about it. apparently he got drunk and fell out of the machine-gun tower.’
It’s an old joke, but he still cracks up before he finishes the punchline.
Before the Night Falls
I woke, again, with a dead arm. I pulled it from the pillow by Adam’s head and unpeeled myself from his sleeping body, hot against my front: he shifted, with a little cough. My arm lolled like a dead fish. I flapped it about to shake the circulation back, then trailed its working counterpart overboard, dragging the floor for my glass of water. In this weather Adam insisted on keeping the windows closed and the heating on, and I was always thirsty.
Around the curtains bled orange light from an outside streetlamp, fissured by the branches between. Adam’s clock/radio flashed 3:14. When I woke alone s
uch hours had always brought with them mortal intuitions, from which being with Adam had so far protected me; for this I kissed the back of his head. Turned, as usual, away from me, his arms drawn to his chest, he resembled, with that hairless skull, an elongated baby.
I finished the water and needed more. In the kitchen, the fridge bathed my naked body in its morgue light. I replaced the Brita jug and shut it fast, and went to the warmer living room, where our laptops slept together on the dining table, mine with its soft white pulse, and Adam’s, its green blink. (I’d been momentarily excited by the discovery that, filming the 1984 ad that launched the Mac, Ridley Scott had bussed real skinheads to Shepperton Studios, and I’d scoured footage of the shoot for a glimpse of Nicky: but ‘1984’ was made in 1983, and he was in prison that whole year.)
Adam’s computer winked jealously. Sometimes we’d sit across from each other, screens raised like shields with opposing ensigns, checking our messages. In such moments were his truancies arranged. When I touched Adam’s laptop I saw his cat eyeing me from the sofa. I reached for mine instead.
Word was still open to my notes on the Hamborough Tavern riot, after which the Mail had exposed Nicky as the cover star of Strength thru Oil. In the hiatus between initiating violence (smashed storefronts, street fights) and the full eruption, an oddly silent image: Asians gathered round the pub watch the skins inside write NF slogans in condensation on the glass. Then bricks, petrol bombs, 600 police, a smoking husk.
I closed Word and checked my email: only spam. I had been getting a lot more recently, some of it quite unpleasant. As part of my research I had joined a few nazi websites, and should have been more careful with my email address.
Scrolling through my purged inbox, I recognized the impulse I now felt: it was a familiar ritual at times like this, the luxury of personal archaeology. I still had Adam’s first email to me (‘told you research was a piss-easy job!’), and all our correspondence since: arrangements to see forgotten films, invectives about work, the occasional blush of amateur porn. And dating further back, in batches carefully transferred from older machines, earlier mail clients, most emails I had ever sent: