I prepared a guess, but the Colonel marched onward.
“Because it is a fact of nature that two animals of equal fighting skills are mismatched when of unequal stature. Our soldiers are as skilled as theirs, our equipment a match for theirs or better, yet it is a fact that we shall be overpowered by numbers and economics.”
I had rarely heard my master digress so into complex analysis. It struck me that he had the makings of a university lecturer.
“Germany simply does not have the resources.” He ground one fist into a palm, as if frustrated by his inability to shift the course of events. “We lack oil, steel, synthetic manufacturing capabilities. We have no remaining venues to harvest these necessities, while America is a vast field of factories and wealth and manpower. Respective to our size, we may be fine of form and in perfect shape, but in the end, she is the bigger boxer. She is a heavyweight, while we shall remain the bantam.”
“I see, Sir,” I said.
Himmel stood still then, and he smiled at me. “No, my young adjutant. You do not see.” He gestured at his own face. “But I will be your eye.” He moved to the plotting table again, pulled a chair from it and sat very close, and he leaned into me, which caused my posture to stiffen even further.
“I do not mind the fate of being killed in action,” he said. “But I shall not be taken prisoner. I shall not be shackled and bound and humiliated and tried for crimes, which has been the fate of the vanquished throughout history. I intend to live. I am a warrior, and I shall survive to fight another day.”
“How will you do that, Sir?” My voice sounded very small to me.
“The Allies shall storm these beaches, Shtefan.” He swept his arm across an imaginary shore. “There will be hundreds of thousands of them, and they shall swarm over Germany like a horde of cockroaches, like the plague of the ancients that is told of in your great-grandmother’s Bible.”
I merely sat, striving to prevent my eyes from bugging like a child’s.
“They shall come with their machines and their weapons and their endless supplies.” He raised his trigger finger. “And yes, they shall also come with their paymasters, for patriot or not, no soldier will fight for very long without his monthly stipend.” He paused for a moment, allowing me to keep apace of his logic. “And this troop shall fight them where we must. We shall take some of their lives, yes. But we shall also take a substantial sum of their American dollars. And then, my young adjutant, we shall depart for sunnier climates.”
Himmel looked at me closely, as if inspecting my expression for any hint of shock or rejection. I have absolutely no idea what my face might have revealed just then, for I could not believe what I was hearing. Yet apparently, my blank visage offered enough for my master to continue.
“So, Shtefan Brandt. Can you surmise the nature of my next question?”
I felt my chin wag imperceptibly.
“You are a noncommissioned officer of the Waffen SS. Soon, you shall be a war criminal. Do you prefer the prison camp, or freedom? Do you prefer the hangman’s noose, or a living fate with Erich Himmel?”
If anything in my life had ever been clear to me, it was that my master was not offering me a choice. He was extending two closed fists, yet each of them held the very same card. And I believe to this very day, that had I hesitated for a moment, or foolishly refused him, my skull would have hosted a pistol bullet on that very morn.
I raised my right arm in a crisp salute. Himmel grinned and extended his hand, and I shook it with the strength of one redeemed from the gallows...
X
IN LATE MAY of 1944, I was shackled to my master’s secret madness.
Through the waning days of that long month, I limped into a reluctant summer, as the seasons seemed to war no less than the millions of men under arms. Each dawn the sun would rise to take the fields of France, steaming the dew from the early flowers and drying the feathers of thawing songbirds. And then, often before noon, an assault of purple nimbus clouds would sweep our brilliant star from its battlement, pummeling us with winds and rains indiscernible from those of early March. It seemed that nature herself was gripped in a struggle with her very own soul, unable to clearly choose this side or that, and my own thoughts were in concert with her maelstrom.
The activities of the Commando proceeded apace, without indication that this process of decamping for Paris might be different from so many relocations that had come before. The men repaired and prepared their equipment, crated up belongings that would not serve any immediate emergency, and stole some intervals to pen letters to homes which they could not be certain had survived the Allied bombings. These hardened combat veterans undertook their warrior tasks with somber professionalism, yet the unscarred portions of their hearts were still very young. Their missives to their mothers were never scribbled, for during that era the artistry of simple penmanship was instilled in every schoolboy, and even the lowest private from Bavaria was something of a calligrapher. I share with you my still-crisp image of the wiry Corporal Noss, sitting on a tree stump and carefully preening the blood rut of his commando blade, while nearby the giant Sergeant Meyer so carefully sketched a rose as letterhead to his sister.
When the sun shone, the men often chased a soccer ball before the call to a formation, engaged in spontaneous and silly grappling contests, and even practiced forgotten waltz steps to the accompaniment of their own a cappella hums. Once or twice, after long days of training, they captured young Frenchwomen from the town and engaged gleefully in their tradition of fornication for barter, a practice that no longer shocked me, yet engendered my pity for the stain upon their souls. Mutti plucked my sutures out with forceps boiled in his pot, and Captain Friedrich managed to acquire a camera and film from somewhere, and I was included in the practice of memento poses to be frozen forever in cracked emulsions of black and white, printed by a chemist in Avignon. For all the years since then, I have kept a small packet of these photographs, sealed in an envelope and taped behind the toilet tank of every dwelling I inhabited. And to this very hour, I have shown them to not a single soul.
Throughout these swirling days, the secrets I now kept in the caves of my heart roiled like a coil of serpents, threatening to overcome me and escape from my clenched mouth. I pitied myself, for I knew too much, and I so wanted to be a simpleton without the curses of love and conscience and betrayal. My master had kept the secret of my birthright, and I in turn now kept the secret of his planned treachery, and both of us loved the same woman, who slept with him while wanting at the very least my hand in her own. With each passing hour, my spirit curdled with the dread of a hopeless future, yet even in this accursed state there was a blessing. The constant activity and dedication to my assignments served as a welcome distraction, lifting me into a high pitch of physical motion, and without my even realizing it my leg healed quickly.
Contrary to my own emotional vortex, my master’s spirits seemed to lift and soar, and although he was ever the realist, I suspect him now of indulging then in a fantasy catalyzed by a suspicion of doom. While most of my assignments consisted of the comparatively mundane preparations for combat, there were other strange tasks he bade me undertake.
I compiled the detailed railroad reports for all of northern France, accompanied by aerial photographs from Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights. Then, like a fledgling stockbroker, I was made to delve into the values of all currencies presently in use on the European continent, and curiously, South America as well. The ranges and cargo capabilities of certain aircraft were added to the list, as well as the dimensions and volumes of various fuel containers. Much of this was gleaned in standard requests to the Abwehr, under the guise of mission preparations, and Himmel took great care in posing his questions beneath a camouflaging skein of apparently urgent demands. He summoned up numerous transcripts of the Gestapo interrogations of Allied aircrews, and I confess a cringe of nausea as I read them, imagining the method
s of coaxing used to elicit the guttural responses from these pitiable British and Americans. For Himmel, I underlined only the mundane facts of methods and amounts of conscript payments, for it was only I who knew what he was really getting at.
At one point I noted that American pilots based in Britain were remunerated not in American dollars, but in British pounds sterling. With this Himmel simply smiled and declared, “A pound is a pound.”
My master spoke often to me during these few days, perhaps more so than he had ever done before. His new practice of sealing us both together in his quarters became a strange ritual smacking of paranoia, albeit justified, and as I worked he would perambulate about the house and muse upon the subjects of patriotism, loyalty, morality and practicality. He offered up the certain conviction, without specific proof, that many officers of the Nazi hierarchy were like-minded in their postwar preparations. He whispered tales of plundered gold stores, collections of Jewish art, small factories of counterfeiters and even safe houses packed with conquered jewelry. He had no doubt that whatever the fate of postwar Europe, much of its wealth would be spirited away in the pockets of a few clever survivors. Yet he declared himself above such practices. He was not a thief, and he regarded our final mission as no more than a climactic commando raid, to be executed just once for the good of those who would risk it.
On the last day of the month, we received an official notice from SS headquarters for the address of our relocation. It was to be a château on the western outskirts of Paris. Immediately Himmel dictated a telegraphic form to be sent to the SS transportation element. He was summoning his wife to the château, and she should leave the children with their aunt near Munich.
As I typed up this new order, my brain twisted in confusion. My master was absolutely unpredictable, a trait that confounded his enemies as well as his troops. Why in heaven’s name was he summoning his wife at this juncture? I assumed now that he planned to bring Gabrielle to Paris, so did he dream of some erotic ménage with his wife and his new lover? He was planning an escape from this war, but did he intend to spirit both his favorite women to his new hideaway? And what of his poor children? Were they to be abandoned to relations, while he expected his wife to comply? And what role was I doomed to play in this seemingly endless tango of frustration and longing?
There was no way for me to ask my master of his intent. I was clearly nothing more than another passenger in his lifeboat, and he regarded me as lucky to be so.
Gabrielle made her appearance again on two evenings, each time fetched from her home by Edward. On the first of these nights, Edward sought me out in the carriage house before making for our Kübelwagen. I was sitting by the lamplight in trousers and braces, repairing a boot, and he leaned close and took my elbow.
“How is the leg?”
I looked up. “Very strong. I hardly need the cane.”
“Good. You should ride Blitzkrieg tonight.”
I furrowed my brow. “Why?”
“I am going to fetch the girl.”
“I told you, Edward...”
“Never mind what you’ve told me. Be gone, and save yourself from your own dour face in the Colonel’s presence.”
I nodded, having begun to appreciate the corporal’s wisdom. And I understood as well that he was entreating me for his own sake. My emotions, if unchecked, risked not only my own well-being, but that of everyone associated with me. And so, I rode that night, though modestly and in a controlled rhythm, so as not to damage myself once again. And although Blitzkrieg was pleased to be out on the meadows, I could feel his impatience with me. It was as if, like Edward, my steed chastised me for foolishness of heart.
On the next day, Himmel was of a foul mood, muttering his complaints about incomprehensible women. And I, assuming that Gabrielle had once more rejected his sexual advances, was both relieved and frightened by her boldness. I so wanted her to shun his touch, yet I knew so well that she should not dare it. As the afternoon approached, Himmel brightened somewhat, anticipating another go at his French beauty. And again, with evening, Edward bade me ride, and he crossed his fingers in the hope that the Colonel would have a better night of it. But it was not to be, and on the next day my master was full of fury.
When I entered his quarters just after breakfast, the mansion was rife with silence and tension. Gabrielle was not to be seen, and Himmel sat at his table, his shoulders bunched and his one eye burrowing into his metal coffee cup, as if fishing in that black swirl for the solution to his frustration. At last, the door to his chamber swung open, and Gabrielle emerged. She said nothing, but swept quickly to the kitchen door, and I winced with the anticipation that she might slam it home. Yet she let herself out, without so much as a blown kiss for the Colonel, and she closed it so carefully one might have thought her exiting a wake.
“What the hell do I need her for if she doesn’t fuck!” Himmel hurled his empty cup across the salon, where it banged and bounced upon the slate floor of the kitchen. “Am I some lovesick schoolboy?” He thrust his splayed fingers high into the air. “Was I made to endure the pathetic rejections of some reborn virgin?!”
He exploded from his chair, marching about the rooms, snapping his braces like rifle shots as he whipped himself into his tunic.
“Tell me, Brandt!” he spit. “You tell me! She’s much closer to your age than mine. Does her world turn upside down on a wave of teenage hormones? She’s as frigid as a fucking nun these nights. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
My own typing table trembled with the thunder of his howling. I sat very still for a moment, listening to my master snorting as fiercely as a wild bull.
“Flowers, Sir?” I finally proposed in a half whisper.
He looked at me for a moment, and then he threw his head back and laughed so hard that it caused the windowpanes to vibrate.
“Flowers?” He nearly choked with it, holding his hard belly and letting his shoulders roll in waves of bitter mirth. “Flowers?! I’ve given the little bitch food and sweets and gifts and everything else no damned French whore could even dream of in this place! And you know what else, Brandt?”
I sat still, looking at him, waiting while he swung his arms wide like a deranged orchestral maestro.
“I’ve given her power! Yes. Something no other man on this continent can give her. She comes and goes as she pleases, she works when she likes, and she can tell any Wehrmacht officer at that damned hospital to go screw, because they all know that she’s the chosen one of an SS colonel!”
He moved toward me then, facing me directly and gripping the edges of my table, and I glanced down at his white knuckles and then quickly back to his face, for I could not react as a cowed puppy. He was not scolding me, but confiding in me, and to act in any way responsible for his misery would not do. I do not know from where I summoned the strength to regard him with apathy and commiseration, but I held that blazing eye with both of my own, even though I thought he might lift my table and hurl it through a window.
“I’ve given her life, Brandt!” It came out as a roaring airburst, and knowing too well the frustration of not being able to have Gabrielle, I actually pitied my master. “Yes. Life.” He banged my table legs once on the wooden floor. “And if she thinks that merely the presence of her beauty is enough to satisfy me, she’s making a fatal mistake. I can take that life away from her, yes, with the snap of my fingers.”
My heart began to flutter as Himmel slapped my desktop once, then turned away from my table. Almost instantly, he spun back on me, jabbing a finger.
“You, Brandt!”
I swallowed, frozen as an army deserter in a Gestapo lineup.
“Yes, you.” He stabbed the finger repeatedly. “You’ll go and fetch her tonight. You’ll talk some sense into her. Maybe she can be made to understand my limits, if the other side of my character is painted by someone like yourself.”
I did not move, but only squ
eezed my fingers into my palms, which began to immediately sweat like Blitzkrieg’s flanks in the heat of a gallop. Himmel’s face eased into a smile as he tucked his thumbs into his belt and regarded me with a raised eyebrow.
“You remember Salzburg, Shtefan?” he asked. “When I forced you to lose your virginity?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well, tonight, your assignment is to make sure I enjoy a similar ecstasy.”
And with that, he laughed with the conviction that I would execute this order as perfectly as any other, and he made off to inspect a formation of the men. And I was left, as he had been only moments before, gripping the sides of my table and barely managing to stop myself hurling it through a windowpane...
* * *
My evening ride upon Blitzkrieg to the house of Gabrielle Belmont was a misery veined with hungry anticipation. I brimmed with anger and slaughtered pride, having been turned into the messenger whose purpose I despised. And yet, the very image of her appearance growing near set the strains of my love for her echoing in my ears. Halfway to the town, I realized that my choice of the horse, rather than the car, spoke volumes of my subliminal intentions. I had been ordered to fetch her and bring her to his bed, yet I’d chosen no anonymous or comfortable way to do so. If she was to accompany me en route to another betrayal of what we felt for each other, then she would do so pressed up behind me on the saddle, forced to embrace me, at the very least like this.
The early moon threw sharp shadows from the steeple of the broken church, and the bomb in Gabrielle’s garden had become twined with soft vines from the earth she somehow found the time to turn. I reined Blitzkrieg to the splintered fence post, and he looked at me from those huge black eyes and shook his head just once, as if to warn me off it all. I was fully in uniform, my tunic buttoned to my throat, my cap set straight and with purpose on my blond scalp. My pistol nestled in its holster, loaded and the leather flap unlatched. There were partisans in the town and invasion in the air, and any SS corpse would somewhat quench a thirst for revenge.
The Soul of a Thief Page 15