The Soul of a Thief

by Steven Hartov

  “Excuse me, Sir,” he said.

  Himmel looked up at him, his one eye squinting in displeasure. Edward clicked his heels with formality.

  “Might I have the honor of escorting the mademoiselle down the aisle?” the corporal asked as gently as he could. “After all, she has no father. And it is properly done so, in a church, with prayer.”

  Gabrielle looked up at Edward, seeing something, sensing something. She placed a hand on Himmel’s sleeve. “Yes, Erich. Please. At least that.”

  The Colonel shrugged and came to his feet. Edward offered Gabrielle his elbow, and she rose, taking it. He covered her hand tightly with his own, and they walked a mournful shuffle to the rear of the church. I kept my head bowed as she passed me there, but I clearly heard my corporal quickly murmuring to her, and her frightened whispers in return.

  “You must do this, Gabrielle, in grace and silence.”

  “No. Never.”

  “Yes. Now.”

  “But I would rather die.”

  “And so you shall, and all of us as well if you don’t comply.”

  “I hate him.”

  “Do this thing, child! It means nothing. He becomes reckless and he will not survive for long, but if you do not stop this foolish struggle, if you show one gram of what is in your heart, you’ll kill our Shtefan as surely as with a bullet!”

  There was silence after that, as she protested no more. I knelt inside my pew, staring straight ahead, my hand retreating from my holster, my quaking fingers interlacing, knuckles white upon the wood. I heard them turn behind me. Ahead, Himmel stood, erect and proud, waiting. The priest said something and the nuns rose. They began to sing a dirge in French, and Edward and Gabrielle passed me by in solemn ceremony, as Himmel lifted his head, calling out to me.

  “Come, Brandt. After all, you are my best man.”

  I do not recall the nuptials, for they were like an auto accident, a flash of images occurring between cognizance and wounding. The priest’s words were in Latin, a language I had failed to grasp in school. Yet I remember well my waking, as Himmel slipped a ring onto her finger, and I recognized the diamond that had flashed from Frau Himmel’s hand as she made her final château meals.

  My eyes sought out my boot tips as my master growled gleefully, “Mann und Frau!” I heard his kiss, and then his gentler tone as he explained to Gabrielle, “My apologies, my beauty, that we cannot consummate this bliss. Brandt and I must be off to a small venture. But we’ll be reunited tomorrow night, so be prepared to travel.”

  I could not believe that he actually thought that Gabrielle would wait for him. Had the frenzies of his fantasies turned his brain to madness? Had he failed to read in her eyes what was so plain and clear to all? Yet apparently, he had not, for he turned to Edward.

  “Stay with her. It would be a shame for her to wander off before the honeymoon.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Edward clicked his heels, and Himmel cocked his chin at me, and we strode together for the door.

  “Off to battle, Brandt.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s a shame we have to hurry. I would have loved to fuck her in that habit.”

  XV

  ON THE TWELFTH of June in 1944, my master’s race became his only war.

  He drove the Kübelwagen now, his black gloves tight about the steering wheel, his jackboot flattening the pedal to the floor. The roaring wind whipped summer dust about his cap and set his tunic’s epaulets aflutter, and the sun had risen sharp and hard, its burnished face reflected in his buttons and his eye. A fresh cigar was clamped between his easy snarl, and his squint revealed a focus only on the future, as the road between this place and that was fraught with obstacles to be dismissed. And I rode there beside him, hunkered down and helmeted, his only passenger.

  My breaths came shallow in my chest, my stomach sore as if bruised from within, for I had swallowed all too much this passing year. It was a task to summon recollections of how I’d once felt safety in his presence, and even charging into gunfire I had seen him as a shield. Once, between each of such frightening events, his mere shadow had assured me of protection. Yet somehow there along the way, he had grafted me into his decaying soul, and mortal danger hovered now, wherever he was present.

  Yet even now, I did not hate my master, no, despite the things I’d witnessed while enfolded in his cloak. The simplicity of that emotional excuse had left me, for both our childhoods had swept us to this road, he with his convictions firm, and mine just forming at his feet. At every turn he’d shown me another side of life, and left me to acceptance or rejection of its right, and what I had learned was simple: that choices were the only things a man could truly own. He had warned me once of destinies, and as I trembled there in silence for the bloody night to follow this bright day, I heard his echo in my head.

  In the end, your kind will find my kind. Yes, you will.

  That road rushed west toward Normandy, our tires flicking up its dust. The distant thunders of the night had turned to steady cannon rumble, and I recalled my father’s readings from the Bible, for the far horizons indeed held pillars of fire. Troops marched quickly on one shoulder for the front, while the other dribbled wounded stragglers returning in its ruts, and on my side of the car I did not comprehend why some who passed raised stiff-armed salutes directly at me. My master laughed at my confused expression.

  “They think that if a colonel’s driving the car,” he called above the engine noise, “then you must be a general, Brandt.”

  I looked at him, checking his expression from beneath my iron turtle shell, and as he shifted gears and glanced at me he laughed again at the absurdity. A smile crept into my lips, it seemed the first I could remember, and suddenly again it was just us two, together in nostalgic conspiracy. There were no women here, no bright blue eyes to capture, no heart to cause a war of our affections. We were once more the simple warrior comrades, separated only by rank, intrepid and carefree upon one last crusade, and for that moment I pretended she had never come to soil my subservience, or his paternity.

  An infantry lieutenant hobbled toward us down the road, his left arm in a tattered sling, and as we neared, he snapped his healthy hand toward me in perfect Nazi Party fashion. I flopped my palm up in return, an imitation of Hitlerian dismissal, and Himmel banged the steering wheel and laughed so hard the tears streamed from his eye.

  My mood was lighter for some time, as I released the burdens of the past. It would do no good to occupy my mind with Gabrielle, when soon just living through the night would summon every reflex. And certainly my master knew this marriage was a sham, merely one more conquest etched into his score book, without forethought to playing through.

  “She will tire of me,” he suddenly said.

  I started as he clearly probed into my mind, but thought he lacked perception here, for she had tired of his kind before she ever met him.

  “Yes, Sir,” I agreed without emphasis, and I knew my bold response was due to the proximity of death.

  He smiled. The engine’s roar had kept our conversation to a minimum till now, yet he had things to say.

  “If we survive this thing tonight, and make our way to South America,” he stated with a nod, “she’ll wake up one day in the sun and see me. These spring and autumn things don’t work for long, you know.”

  I wondered if just once since Montre Temps, he had thought again of his wife, or of his abandoned daughters. I nearly closed my eyes and shook my head, but instead performed those gestures in my mind. Himmel shrugged and shifted gears again, pushing the car along as quickly as he could.

  “But in the meantime.” He grinned. “We’ll have some fun.”

  I knew by now what such a concept meant to him. He was not picturing some frothy palms waving over sunlit beaches, or tangos in the moonlight to the strains of soft guitars. He was thinking of a gunfight, that precipice upon which his spirit soared, and ev
en true love was but a drink to quench the thirst after one such bloody sprint, and prior to the next.

  We drove on fast, and as we did, the countryside grew thicker with steel carcasses. Strafed and burning lorries had been pushed aside by Tiger tanks, and sometimes in the fields astride the road, shirtless troops dug shallow graves for comrades stricken from the air. The stench of petrol mixed with rotting flesh blew past our faces, and the troops we passed, riding upon half-tracks or hurrying on foot, lifted their sweat-streaked faces up whenever distant engines droned.

  We wound our way through heavy clusters of equipment, perhaps near Brionne, but all the road signs had been axed to foil Allied navigation. Yet my master seemed to always know his route, as if he’d battled here before in other incarnations. We reached a major crossroads, where panzer grenadiers waved traffic on with quick and jerky gestures, like policemen working in a thunderstorm. And then, the road was straight and nearly clear except for battle sundries dropped in haste. No vehicles moved on it, and those that had lay on their sides, their slowly spinning tires smoking.

  But for our Kübelwagen, nothing seemed to stir. No starlings flew, no hungry field dogs wandered. We raced along the broken tarmac, and Himmel bent a bit into the windscreen and touched his cap to set it firm. I looked at him as his eye glanced up and flicked from left to right.

  “Fighters,” he said.

  And sure enough, a dot appeared before us in the hazy sky. It skewed in from a northern field, and as it turned and showed its wings and settled on its course, my master shifted gears again and stamped down twice upon the pedal. The shape took form out there ahead, its wingtips forming sharp and clear as bayonets, its propeller spinning sunlight, and I felt myself grow smaller in my seat. I gripped the door ledge tightly and my other hand squeezed seat leather, and Himmel only pushed the car, faster and faster, throwing down his gauntlet.

  The plane sank low, perhaps to just ten meters there above the road, its wingtips nearly scraping treetops, and I bit my lip and clenched my teeth as its engine screamed and its guns began to flash and spit. A line of spewing clots and chunks sprang up as heavy bullets carved a churning furrow in the macadam, and Himmel raced straight at that raking death, and I opened my mouth and yelled as he suddenly spun the wheel.

  The horizon blurred as we careened to the right and bounced hard over the shoulder, skidding in the soggy field, our tires throwing mud and stone. I fell halfway against him, yet just as quickly he reined the car back to his will and I smashed the other way against my door. We bounced once more, screeching back onto the road, and he resumed his drive.

  I twisted around in my seat, my lungs gasping for air, my helmet half-askew. The fighter droned away behind us, banking for some other prey and leaving a double track of smoking scars. Himmel merely raised one gloved finger to his forehead and stroked away a bead of sweat. He kept his gaze ahead and grinned.

  “The trick,” he said, “is knowing when to turn.”

  * * *

  The day grew dim that afternoon. As we raced west a growing pall of combat smoke mixed with swelling clouds and drizzle, and I was grateful to inhale that noxious mix, for above it engines droned yet pilots found it hard to spot their prey. The trees were thicker here along the road, and panzers rested in the camouflage like napping elephants, their crews crawling over their thick hides. A mix of vehicles came our way, strange contraptions I had never seen before, some small tracked things and even some with hulls like boats, and many army ambulances. All of them held wounded on their litters, but they rumbled without haste, as if knowing they would soon be simply hearses.

  It was nearly night when we reached Thiberville, nothing more now than a cluster of abandoned village buildings at a crossroads. A pair of privates from the Commando had no doubt stood their watch for hours, and although grateful at our arrival, their salutes were weary. Without a word they mounted dented French bicycles, and we followed them along a slim and twisting lane until the houses faded and we reached a small and darkened field embraced by a half circle of trees.

  Himmel stopped the car and sat, displeased with what he saw and clearly reassessing. There was but a single truck among the trees, its canvas pocked with bullet holes. Where forty men should have been saddling up their gear and ready, no more than twelve stood helmetless and hunched. Between them Heinz the armorer and Private Donau stood knee-deep in a short and shallow trench, stabbing at the earth with spades and making a black mound of sodden soil.

  Captain Friedrich walked toward us from the men, and as my eyes followed him I saw a heavy double line of bullet punctures in the field. The furrows made off straight from left to right, into an open area, and ending with a form lying prone beneath a rain cape. Close to that sat Mutti’s cooking basin, resting on a triangle of broken logs, some twigs beneath still wisping smoke. Just then a thunderous crack made me nearly grip my chest, a battery of 88s opening up from somewhere near. The reverberations sent leaves spinning from the trees, and for a second the flashing muzzles lit the scene like lightning, but Himmel did not flinch, nor Friedrich, who stopped and saluted, his jaw muscles clenched.

  “Where are the rest?” Himmel asked, his manner quiet in anticipation of bad news.

  “Division Hitlerjugend took them, Sir.” Friedrich’s voice was hoarse, and I knew his day had been a nightmare. “For Caen.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “A general, Sir.”

  Himmel nodded. He looked at the line of punctures in the field and raised his chin off toward the distant corpse.

  “I told him not to do it, Sir.” Friedrich sighed. His bright blue eyes looked pewter dull and glistened. “But you know him. One last meal, he said. He made the fire small, but a Mustang smelled it and came in and killed him, just before dinner.”

  I got out of the car and walked. Yes, many men had died this year, and I had seen some flutter with their final breaths. But Mutti, he was nothing of a soldier to me, and I had always thought of him, like Edward, as an observer, here to watch and help and bind the wounds of others who deserved a combat fate. Not him.

  His body lay beneath the rain cape; the sudden end of life had finally stilled the ooze from wounds I could not see. But his face was there, his eyes closed by some gentle fingers, the drizzle bouncing from his forehead and beading in his beard. I knelt beside him, the blood and water soaking through my knees, and I would have said a prayer had I been able to recall the words in any language. Nearby his cooking basin sat half-full, its nourishment gone cold and lifeless as his form. And as my trembling hand pulled on the cape to cover up his face, I saw that in his fist he clutched his wooden spoon.

  I could not rise, until some of the men appeared to lift him from the ground. And then I staggered after them, looking at his boot soles, while soft rain dripped from my helmet rim and blended with my silent tears. And as they laid him carefully into his hasty grave, a thin vision from my childhood appeared, some distant memory of the funeral of my mother’s mother. I knew nothing of tradition, yet the ritual seemed right to me.

  I eased the spade from Donau’s blistered hands, heeled it into the mound of black earth and let the soil spill on Mutti’s chest. And then I passed the task to Heinz, and he to Corporal Noss, and he to Lieutenant Gans, and so it went as the artillery boomed nearby and flashed the treetops white, until at last the grave was nearly done and Himmel tossed the final shovelful.

  He slowly knelt near Mutti’s buried head, and as the cook had carried neither rifle nor bayonet, the Colonel plunged the wooden spoon to half its hilt and hung his servant’s sodden cap upon the ladle. He rose then, and looked about at all the men, their hatless heads hung low, their chins brooding on their chests. And then he looked once more at what was gone.

  “Leider, ist die Küche geschlossen,” he whispered without irony. “Alas, the kitchen is closed.”

  No one spoke, nor dared a sob, although I know those words and tears were
choking in our throats, young wild wolves who’d lost our only semblance of a mother. But Himmel always knew the precise allowance for emotion he should spare, before things turned to gloom, and he nodded sharply at the roaring 88s and barked, “Gentlemen, this war’s not over yet!”

  The Commando split and snatched their gear and vaulted quickly then into the battered truck. And I think now, if one could view that scene again, it might appear that vengeance stirred their haste and flushed their muscles with some itching for a fight. But I knew clearly it was time and the proximity of death that made them hurry, for with every passing minute our numbers dwindled, and no mission could be carried out with fewer men than this. In half a minute, I sat beside my master in the Kübelwagen, with Sergeant Meyer now manning the machine gun in the rear, and we roared off for the road again with the lorry straining to keep up.

  The night was thick and black above now, its clots of interwoven clouds spilling waves of rain and offering a fine protection, putting the absent Luftwaffe to shame. German vehicles and men warily poked their snouts from clumps of trees and came into the road, moving west as we did, headlights doused and shoulders tense. Yet Himmel drove as if his single eye had been inherited from a bat, skirting obstacles and slower tanks and transports, on through Lisieux and following the roadway as it thinned and twisted, his only guide the nearby flashes of artillery and combat flares that streaked up between dueling clumps of infantry in nearby fields. Only once, after an hour, did he ask to see the map. I held it up for him, beneath the crimson glow of a night lamp, and he glanced at it and nodded and drove on.