by I V Olokita
“Look, look at those scum,” cried Otto, approaching me with an angry expression. “This is full documentation of every operation we carried out in the Camp from August the first to November the tenth. Just everything: figures, operations, sums of income.” His face grew extremely red while he was waving his hand which held the red notebook.
I snatched the notebook from him, throwing it into the fire. “Bloody bookkeepers!” I hissed through my teeth, and added calmly right away, “There’s no point in losing one’s head…either way, we’ll be living on the run for the rest of our lives. It’s all meaningless from now on.”
Coughing slightly, Albert lowered his head, as if hinting something to us, so we turned our eyes at him.
“Me, too?” our driver asked, with tearful eyes.
Both of us looked at him, at that poor fellow standing in front of us: Albert, of all the Camp’s staff, was the only one who never dealt with the Jewish prisoners. He was just a driver and nothing else.
“You have nothing to worry about,” I replied. “Even if the US Army gets you, nobody could give any testimony against you.”
He raised his head, giving me an embarrassed smile. “Thank you,” he whispered, even though he evidently disbelieved me. “And I’m sorry for the accident back then, I guess I was forced off the road by some flat tire…” He coughed slightly again. “It’s the thicket that killed the engine….”
“This is the least of our concerns right now.” I dismissed his words. “Now, since we can no longer reach the plane in Skipolen on time, we’re in big trouble!” I said, putting a hand on my head, pretending to think hard. Yet I was thinking of nothing at that moment, assuming we’re lost anyway. I would rather clear my mind of all cares, spending the hours to come in a little relaxation.
“There’s a plane!” Albert cried suddenly. “There’s a plane parked nearby!” he added excited, suddenly recalling that fact.
“Are you sure?” Otto asked menacingly, closing on Albert as if he forgot everything Albert has done for him a moment before.
“Definitely!” Albert replied.
“Curiously, you have never mentioned it,” Otto remarked angrily, sticking his face right next to the sweating face of my driver.
“It slipped my mind…,” Albert mumbled, turning his face slightly away.
“Leave him alone!” I finally ordered Otto, resorting to the little authority I had once we left the Camp. “Jan has already gone to check out. If indeed there is a plane nearby, the Americans will probably try to destroy it. So, let’s hope Jan comes back soon with the good news the plane’s intact!”
Yet, Jan has tarried, and as the minutes went by, I was increasingly convinced it was no time to worry about my fellow humans.
A few hours after Jan had gone away, giving us his last farewell unaware of us abandoning him. The three of us, forsaking him, took to the road once again, walking towards Holtzen Airfield. We left the barrel behind us, letting it burn out, as all Germany was about to, a few years after we left it. That moment, once Olson went out of our sight riding his stuttering motorbike, none of us had any choice. Our memories of us all, just like our lives, never were and never would be the same.
“We all knew about it, yet none of us had the guts it took to stop it.” Albert started mumbling excuses while we forced our way to the airfield through the thicket. “Perhaps, what it took was no guts at all, but realizing that no human should play God, and we, too, have never been gods.” Albert went on presenting excuses. I was well acquainted with my driver’s character. No, there was not an ounce of malice in him: even though he was talking to himself occasionally, assuming he was all alone in this world, he did it merely to appease his conscience. However, Otto didn’t share my insight: even if he responded to the driver’s words with some calmness, my aide could stand them no longer. Deep inside him, he was also consumed with a passion to finish him off.
“Leave him alone!” I commanded Otto as he jumped on Albert, pressing him to the ground and brutally beating him to silence.
“That renegade,” Otto hissed, “I knew right from the start he did it deliberately! Did you really believe it was the thicket that choked the engine?! Bloody renegade!”
Otto grabbed Albert’s neck and started pressing forcefully. My driver’s face reddened, and then his lips grew blue. Sneaking behind Otto while he was on his knees, I laid my hands on his shoulders when Albert’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. At first, I was about to ask him to stop that, yet I assumed he would take it for a sign of weakness which may not serve me well during our future life together, so I took my hands off him, turning around and getting far away from that sight.
Otto caught up with me just a few minutes later, heaving slightly and walking next to me silently.
“I think it’s here,” Otto finally broke the silence when we finally faced a vast lake bound by a wide jetty.
“Holtzen airfield,” I added, and both of us smiled at each other, all the grudge built up during our journey disappearing.
A small plane stood there, tied to the end of the jetty, gently rocking on the ripples, seemingly with nobody near it.
“It’s an Arado-195,” Otto declared with a joy. “Fortunately for you, I can fly it,” he added, breaching the wire fence with the small cutter he always carried on him. Now, the only thing standing between our deliverance and us were a few meters to run to the plane, and the time we would be waiting for Jan to rejoin us.
“He’s dead,” Otto stated, as he was trying to start the small craft.
“Who, Jan?” I asked while climbing into the cockpit.
“Albert,” Otto replied. “I had to do that, you know.” He attempted an apology.
Standing on the floats, Otto rotated the propeller once again, and the engine suddenly revved up, belching black smoke. Otto laughed and then hastily climbed into the cockpit.
“What about Jan?” I enquired.
“Another casualty of war,” Otto replied with an awkward smile, shrugging his shoulders, while the floats started plowing the water, speeding up, finally breaking away from it and ascending to heaven.
The fierce gale at our face helped us survive through the long flight. Once in a while, we landed on some great lake in countries that still let in aircraft bearing the Reich’s insignia. After flying many hours with no trace of land below, Otto gestured that the blue watery desert was behind us, spotting far away a piece of land with shorelines suggesting South America. I was thrilled with joy, a big smile spreading all over my face, which persisted until the moment we got off the plane to stand on terra firma.
There, in an irrigation canal bound by a vast wheat-field in the Pantanal floodplains, in the heart of a country we hardly knew anything about, we got off our plane. We walked to the nearest road, expecting some driver to give us a ride where there was a trace of civilization. Otto uttered a short sigh, making me look at him and notice he was struggling to carry our hand luggage.
“Only take what is absolutely necessary,” I begged him before we started off, yet he insisted on carrying all the clothing and shoes. Now I had to sigh, passing my bag to my other hand, to save my stronger shoulder from being crippled. We kept walking until we reached a road, which seemed so forsaken I suspected it wasn’t even marked on the maps. Otto put his luggage on the ground and sat on it.
“Water…we forgot to take water with us,” he said in a parched voice, wiping his sweaty forehead. Indeed, it never occurred to us that our four-piece suits were ill-suited for that hot clime, and there was no water in sight.
“What’s the use of all our gold if we die of thirst?!” I thought, frustrated.
Finally, Otto stood up, taking a stand on the roadside. Spotting a cloud of dust, he made up his mind that if it means a car, we must stop it now, come what may.
“A car!” he cried, making me stand up instantly. “Stand in the middle of the ro
ad!” he told me, in a somewhat commanding tone, yet I did as he said right away.
Otto was a tall man, with a sunburned short-cropped hair which gave him a gentlemanly appearance. Yet a scar ran from his right eye down to the tip of his chin, giving his look a touch of menacing awe, while his low voice and the sinewy muscles all over his body endowed his figure with an evident aspect of power.
When the car approached us, Otto drew his pistol, signaling the driver to stop with a shot in the air. I drew my weapon, too, aiming at the center of the vehicle dashing towards me. The small truck stopped nearby with its brakes squealing. At first, the terrified driver tried to engage the reverse gear in an attempt to flee from the two highwaymen who came upon him out of the blue. But once Otto jumped at his window, pressing the muzzle against his temple, the driver finally surrendered his vehicle and climbed out. He saw us off with a burst of juicy abuses in his mother tongue while a cloud of dust raised by the car slowly coated his clothes, leaving him all alone on the roadside.
The ride allowed me to rest my weary head on the back of the driver’s seat for a little while. By nightfall we switched, Otto taking the wheel while I got some sleep. Little by little, my thoughts gave way to nightmarish memories of the ordeals I have been through for the last few days. The faces of Jan and Albert, invoking me to avenge them, never left my mind, eventually waking me up startled and washed with cold sweat all over me.
“We’re there,” Otto said, smiling and yawning, adding, “Are you all right?”
“Definitely,” I confirmed with a smile of my own.
Taking our luggage, we got off the truck, leaving the engine running.
“Shouldn’t we at least turn it off?” I suggested.
“It’s Brazil,” Otto dismissed the idea, smilingly. “Thieves’ paradise. In a moment, it will have a new driver, who will clear away any incriminating evidence of what we did,” he whispered, even though he realized that nobody could have understood our language here.
“It has been my fourth shower today!” I joked while sitting down on the bed of my filthy hotel room.
“I can’t see why you must take so many showers a day,” Otto responded, despite being utterly uninterested in this small talk.
“Had we as much as a breeze of air or an ounce of German summer coolness, I wouldn’t need them at all,” I explained. “And I certainly wouldn’t have anything to complain about in this hellhole!”
Otto just kept smiling at me silently, fixing his eyes on the floor, to avoid my looks. This immediately raised my suspicion, since, as I have noticed long ago, I could read Otto like a book. Right now, just as back then in the Camp, when he finished off that Polak without breathing a word about it to me, I sensed something was unusual about him. Therefore, when a few minutes later that thing happened to my side-bag, I could no longer hold my tongue, bursting angrily, “What may be your business with my bag?!”
Otto rose, frowning: “Do you suggest I am a thief!?” he exclaimed insulted.
“I said nothing of the kind. I just wondered why you moved it,” I replied, in an attempt to reason with that massive fellow facing me, who was capable of anything. “It’s unwise to irritate a bull while facing its horns,” I thought, letting the storm subside as if nothing happened.
Little by little, Otto calmed down too, resuming his occupations, yet I suspected him of scheming to finish me off, just as he did back then. “If so,” I resolved, “I must act first.” Thus, while he was in the bathroom all alone, indulging in the water flowing down his body, I removed my aide’s pistol from the holster attached to his belt, opening the bathroom door. I stared at him until he looked back at me, and then, with one perfectly aimed shot at the center of his wide forehead, saw him off forever. Then I gathered my belongings, adding my dead companion’s load of gold to mine, and vanished from that town, never to come back or give it another thought.
Chapter 3
Jesus the redeemer
The sun was about to bid the earth farewell, with one last golden strip separating it from the skyline which blackened almost completely. Myriads of stars were twinkling above the colossal Jesus the Redeemer which overlooked the enchanting beaches of Rio. It was my favorite time of day, when the filthy city assumed a somewhat cleaner appearance, thanks to the dark covering up all the scum of the alleyways. I used to pay this colossus at least two weekly visits, where Carmela, the prettiest of all Cariocas, used to wait for me. Well, she didn’t wait exclusively for me, yet this is what I preferred to believe back then. That lady was just one of the thousands of harlots roaming the alleyways, who would humor just any desire of yours for a few Reals in advance. I found my frequent rendezvous with Carmela at the feet of the colossus to be a great pleasure, while she probably liked the steady income.
“Well, it’s Rio,” she used to retort whenever she noticed my scornful look at the city she called home. “I’m afraid you’re not in neat and tidy Germany anymore, Senhor Esperança.” Resorting to philosophy, she used to quote with a touch of indignation, “Morality is largely a matter of geography,” and then she would count the money I handed out to her: “Twenty, thirty, forty Reals! You are most generous today, Senhor Esperança,” she repeatedly said as if I forgot it was the price she fixed herself.
She had a great belly indicating an advanced stage of pregnancy. I had no idea whom she got it from or got attached to, and I considered it none of my business until that night. That night, she seemed to have the world’s largest stomach, and it was just about to fire a bastard, blowing apart into countless pieces of flesh and fluids, as corpses in the Camp did if they weren’t covered with a sufficiently thick layer of lime. I guess I have seen some women in similar conditions, yet they were nothing like Carmela. Those looked emaciated, bald and significantly older, despite being her juniors. I, just like the rest of the Camp’s guards and even its officers, regarded many female prisoners as “handmaids”: despite their appalling appearance, we would use them to quench our needs, occasionally.
“Are you going to fuck me or not!?” she asked unceremoniously, waking me up from my contemplations as if I have been wasting her precious time.
“Certainly! Sorry, Senhora Carmela,” I made an uncharacteristic, quiet apology.
“But no foul-mouthing today,” she remarked, turning around.
She kept her face away from mine, staring at the rear of my new Mercedes I loved so dearly, and no wonder – I was the only resident of Rio to possess such a luxurious car: a white 1948 model Mercedes, a real masterpiece. I knew it was extravagant of me, yet extravagance was just another vice I couldn’t kick. When I had to run for my life, I abandoned in my home country a car almost identical to that one. If it wasn’t for my escape, I would’ve never traded it for anything, not even a woman’s true love.
Carmela rested both of her hands on the bonnet, slightly spreading her legs. I uttered a little sigh since I hated to see her dirty handprints on the pristine white body of my beloved Mercedes. “Were we anywhere else,” a thought crossed my mind while I hoisted her dress up, “I would’ve wasted her long ago.” Always very practical, Carmela never wore any underwear. “Time is money,” she kept reminding me, hurrying me up, and I greatly appreciated her attitude. Yet now, when we stood so close together, shrouded by the moonlit night, all my thoughts gave way to the passion aroused by the sight of her brown buttocks. Caressing her a little, I quickly spread her thighs wider, in an evidently aggressive gesture, like a man overpowered by lust. “Wider!” I told her in my poor Portuguese, pushing her legs apart until I nearly made her fall.
“Watch it!” she cried, “or I’ll have my baby even before you get your pants down!”
“I’ll fuck you so hard that your miserable bastard will be born with holes all over,” I replied furiously, yelling at her as if she were one of the Camp’s handmaids.
My words seemed to have hurt her. She probably already had more than her share of harsh
abusive words, but nothing like this time. At first, she fell silent, shrugging herself until all our interaction was reduced to painful contact.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, realizing I have stepped far beyond the pale. “I didn’t mean it.”
Carmela kept her defiant silence, tightening her legs together, and turning her face towards me. “Do you know?” she remarked quietly, “Sometimes I believe all the stories about you are much truer than the lies nobody tells, Senhor Esperança.”
“Stories?” I enquired. “What stories?”
“Well, the girls say you used to be a top Nazi, who fled Germany with a lot of money and killed people. A lot of people.”
I looked straight into her eyes, only now realizing how beautiful she was. “Somewhere else, in some other time,” I thought, “Even her great belly couldn’t have hidden her tall and beautiful figure.” I gave her another look, this time focusing on her erect nipples, which popped through her sloppily worn suspender dress, stressing her ripe, bountiful breasts, her brown skin wrapping her perfect body like a present. “She’s just a pretty slut, nothing else!” I was carried away to a conclusion, “she’s in no position to lecture me!”
“You’re dumb!” I cried, making her startle. “Does it make any sense to you that in such a case I would have been driving around in such a fancy car or bragging with all these designer clothes?! Would a fugitive Nazi dare to enjoy a whore, in plain sight!?” I added, furiously.
Carmela cast her eyes down. “I’m sorry, Senhor Esperança, I’m sorry,” she uttered submissively, and instantly bent on her knees against the gravel, allowing it to scratch her. Looking up at me, for a moment, her eyes were overwhelmed with sorrow and remorse and then wandered to the monumental Redeemer overlooking our backs. “Ay, Deus, Deus!” she invoked her Lord with a sigh as if he could hear her while she stripped me of my pants and pressed her lips against my loins. Lifting my head heavenward, I grabbed her by the hair. The brilliant stars were shining at me in pale blue, just like in the good old days on Mahler’s balcony, back home.