by I V Olokita
However, it took only Jan turning his face to me, letting me recognize him definitely, for me to pull the final curtain on him. Oh, if I only could definitely recognize that bastard standing with his back towards me, even Gabriel would have seen right away he’s no camp-survivor, but a Nazi, just like me, only driven by the desire to take revenge on a fellow-offspring of the same monster.
So, a few seconds before Jan looked me in the eyes for the last time, he pressed his pistol against the professor’s head, firing one precise shot even without letting him bid farewell. Then a fast-motion sequence followed. While Jan approached me with a smile all over his arrogant face, which looked exactly as I recalled it, except some tiny wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, another two troopers in black stormed in, with their guns blazing. Jan fell down instantly, keeping his smile even in death.
Chapter 10
God Works in Mysterious Ways
The very day she noticed his letter in the mailbox, Heidi went packing hastily. Despite realizing the time was too short, she still chose to go for it, hoping to get it done before the old man woke up. Her desire has been haunting ever since she read the first line of Deus’ letter. After struggling to suppress her under the pretext of her marital obligations to Gabriel, she finally decided to travel all the way to Deus, telling the old husband nothing. If he found out, she risked the death of not only her affair but of Deus, as well. She left the house too hastily to notice Gabriel standing at the door. “Won’t you take me along with you?” he asked with a triumphant smile.
“I…. didn’t…,” Heidi stuttered, with her eyes down.
He approached her with a surprising announcement: “It’s OK by me,” he reassured her. “I am not as foolish as you might think, my little one. Even though my eyes are not as good as they used to be, yet even a blind could see a passion as strong as we used to have!”
She blushed, totally embarrassed. “I don’t want you to think…,” she started excusing herself, yet her husband stopped her. “All I’m after is Klaus Holland, nothing else. As for you, if you desire a prince charming to live with ever after more happily than you do now, I won’t stand in your way. After all, you have granted me life once, so now I should pay you in kind!” he concluded, embracing her neck while she rested her head on his shoulder, clinging to the memory of the good old days.
“Let’s go!” he hurried her up, and they started off for the airport.
“Get up, dear!” Heidi asked the scholar, while the plane was rushing along the tarmac of Rio International Airport like a blazing comet. In response, he stretched a little, opening his eyes. Once on Brazilian soil, her old companion looked somewhat livelier than back home. “Are you thrilled?” Heidi wandered, noticing he was not his old self.
“Slightly more than expected,” Gabriel responded calmly, unbuckling his seatbelt when the plane finally stopped. “Here’s the address of our hotel,” the professor informed his wife, handing her over a folded note.” I’ll join you by the evening. Right now, I have an appointment with an old friend, who probably waits for me by the airport’s entrance.”
Embarking on this journey to pursue her own purposes, Heidi was happy not to have to suffer her husband’s company. So, she just placed the note in her wallet, seeing him off with a “see you tonight, dear” while they reclaimed their luggage.
“If I’m not back by tomorrow morning, go on your own quest,” he remembered to inform her after they had parted at the airport’s entrance.
Heidi stopped to look at him walking away and then shaking hands with somebody who seemed to be his old friend. The idea that his words indicated something was wrong crossed her mind, but the sight of him getting willingly into a luxury car waiting for him reassured her, so she walked on, searching for her beloved.
“You look older than ever, my friend!” Gabriel observed from his back seat, laughing while buckling up.
“You too, buddy, are not the lad you used to be!” Jan tried to repay the professor in kind, yet the latter ignored the teasing, only wishing to learn one thing: “did you get him?”
“Yes, I did!” Jan declared, raising his head proudly.
“Are you absolutely sure it was Klaus Holland?” Gabriel insisted.
“I’m positive about that,” he confirmed. The car stopped, letting them out. “Yesterday, I followed him all the way to his house, and into his house, unnoticed. The moment he turned around to face me, I put two bullets in his chest. Right after I made sure he was down, I ran, waiting nearby for them to come, as they did, in a few minutes. I saw them entering his house, hauling him to their car and driving off, in an attempt to unload him in their hideout in the edge of Rocinha favela, about an hour’s ride away. It’s right above where we’re right now!”
“Do you mean you killed him?!” Gabriel howled.
“My learned friend, it would take more than just two common pistol rounds to kill Herr Klaus Holland,” Jan reassured him, giggling.
“Good!” Gabriel smiled, calming down. “So, what is your Phase II Plan?” he enquired, speaking like the soldier he no longer was for many years.
“Tonight, my special forces team will storm their hideout, to get the whole bunch!” Jan explained with loud laughter. Startled a little, Gabriel gave him an awkward smile. He has never noticed such arrogance and resolution in him, throughout their decade-long acquaintance. “Now it’s time for me to brief my boys. Meanwhile, buddy,” he went on, interrupting the professor’s contemplations, “you stay put here, doing what you proved to be so good at, doing all the extradition paperwork, to make sure these scums will be handed over to the American justice system. It will be a screw up if we catch them all, only to see the Brazilian Government letting them go,” Jan concluded. He already walked off, yet immediately came back, bidding Gabriel farewell with a long hug, as he has never done before.
Meanwhile, Heidi was on her way to the motel mentioned in Deus’ letter, where she spent hours waiting for him, in vain. He didn’t even leave any address for her at the reception. “Are you sure nobody left any letters or address for me?” she enquired once again after the night receptionist started his shift.
“Sorry, Senhora,” he responded most politely, “That man left nothing for you except bills if you care to pay them.”
Therefore, once the notion that her reunion with her beloved will not take place that night settled in, Heidi looked at the old professor’s note and headed for the hotel room reserved for them.
“Oh, I’d hate to spend the whole night all alone in such a vast bed!” Heidi thought while hiding under the warm blanket, listening to the torrential rain flooding the street and pounding on the windows. Lightning flooding the room with white momentary brightness startled her, so she cuddled up and hid her eyes under the blanket, where she waited for the thunder, which she feared even more. Thunderstorms always evoked in her memories long suppressed yet still familiar, which she never figured out why they were still on her mind. However, this time, the thunder seemed to have passed by her. Instead, she heard a thud-like knocking on the door. Nearly suffocated in her den, she slightly budged out of the blanket and listened for another moment, only to hear that faint knocking once again. “Well,” she concluded, “It must be the professor, standing out there soaking wet, so I should open the door.”
“Hello,” a beloved voice welcomed her, just before she opened the door wide.
“Hello,” Heidi greeted him back, giving him a hearty smile once she saw his face.
“How did you manage to track me down?” Heidi finally remembered to ask, only when Deus got out of the double bed to take a shower. She watched his naked body until he was hiding behind the door, his brown buttocks and tall back reminiscent of those boys whom she lived with under one roof back then near Jerusalem, and always got her bored after a short while. Remembering all the carnal pleasures she had just experienced, she was overwhelmed with a momentary excitement, yet right a
fterwards she burst into sobbing as if regretting letting him conquer her body this way. Even though it was just an hour ago that he knocked on her door, once inside the room, he dominated her mind, chasing away any other thought, even the one tormenting her right now: what if her scholar catches them in the act? Whenever Heidi tried to reflect over her sinful act, it was chased away by a fresher and stronger memory, from the last moment. Once she let Deus in the room, her heart was reassured, as if his silence guaranteed her that all her demons were gone, stopping the rain and the devilish thunder. Then he bent his head down to her, intoxicating her lips with his hot kiss. Resting her head on the pillow, Heidi closed her eyes, lying silent while he fondled her hair, opening her buttons one by one to kiss every inch of her exposed skin. Moaning with ecstasy, Heidi stretched her neck until it seemed endless to him. Now Deus undressed, lying down next to her, and she followed suit. He stared at her while she lay on her back, letting her eyes penetrate his brain to ask all the questions she never dared ask aloud; questions her body was learning the answers to right now, once her man started caressing her thighs and breasts, back and forth, along her stretched body, arousing in her every possible emotion. Then he bombarded her with a hail of kisses, until she finally surrendered to his passion, spreading her legs for him to make his triumphant entry. Deus kissed her cheeks gently, descending to her neck before penetrating her. Now he, too, closed his eyes, stretching his neck high. Heidi remembered all the many times she enjoyed his body in her dreams: now, he touched her in reality, yet there was nothing here to stop them from dreaming the moment. Suddenly, while she reclined, Deus bent over her, and then stopped, letting his head drop. A warm, gentle gush overwhelmed her, rising from her lower regions all the way to her giddy head. That moment Deus withdrew from her body, escaping to the bathroom to wash away the ecstasy. All the while, Heidi struggled to remember what frightened her so much a while ago.
Since the night she and her lover spent together waiting for Gabriel to come back, their horizon grew increasingly brighter. At first, Gabriel’s disappearance made her somewhat concerned, but once she sensed the new life palpitating inside her, her concerns for her husband gradually died out. “Either way, he could no longer find out where I stay,” she used to dismiss her concerns, whenever she visualized him.
“Heidi!” Deus cried all the way from the bathroom to the living room.
“What’s the matter!?” she tried to cry back at him, but failed to imitate his thunderous voice, so he didn’t hear her. Hastily putting his pants on, Deus dashed from the toilet straight to living room, nearly tumbling down. “Darling, look!” he said with a look as serious as she had ever seen in his eyes while showing her the wrinkled newspaper. The small headline, just below my picture, read “A Nazi War Criminal Detained in Rocinha favela. Klaus Holland, Hiding under the Name of Mateus Esperança, Was Extradited to the United States Government, and will be tried in January.”
“Does it say anything about Gabriel as well?” Heidi asked, worriedly.
“No, why should it?” Deus said, walking away towards the kitchen.
“Because he disappeared the day we arrived here, and I never heard of him since then!” Heidi explained calmly.
“We?!” Deus wondered, but she only responded with an amazed look. “Haven’t I told you about it before?”
Deus stood still for a moment, and then went back to the living room. After a moment of confusion, he remembered why he headed for the kitchen in the first place; “Can’t you remember whether you told me or not?” he asked, irritated.
“Oh, darling, does it really matter now!? It has been nearly eight months since he went without a trace. He must have gone home, after he had lost me,” Heidi reassured him, looking with her little eyes straight into his. Deus just adored those eyes, mostly when she reduced them to tiny notches, with her lips following, assuming the appearance of a woman desperate to be loved and forgiven. To complete the impression, she also raised her hand to remove her red lush hair, which covered half of her face.
“So, the professor is no more?” Deus wanted to make sure.
“Professor is no more!” Heidi confirmed, resting her head on his chest while he sat down next to her on the sofa.
“What shall we do about my father?” Deus betrayed the question long haunting him.
“And what about the child who’s about to come out of me any moment?!” Heidi said, hinting for him to immediately adjust his priorities to her own.
“I see,” Deus tried to appease her. “First, we handle your belly, and then, my daddy,” he finally promised.
“Push!” the midwife shouted her instructions, yet Heidi disobeyed her, resting her head sideways with a little sigh instead. “Push! Now!” she ordered Heidi again, this time more assertively, and in English. Giving the midwife a look, Heidi realized that in a moment that woman would cut the baby out of her belly with a scalpel. “I must push!” an increasingly intense voice in her mind kept telling her until she finally obeyed it. “Ooooh!” a loud cry rent the air, making Deus spring from the bench in the maternity ward’s corridor.
“Good! That’s how a birth should be sound like!” a novice nurse passing by him remarked with a smile. “Is she your wife?” she pried.
“Well... Yes,” Deus mumbled. After all, what could he say, “Actually, she is a friend’s wife I slept with while he was away?!” This would have given him a bad reputation in her eyes, the same reputation I had in his eyes the day after Klara’s departure.
“Congratulations!” another midwife running by Deus called at him, so he sprang up and ran following her. “No, Senhor, you don’t have to follow me!” she tried to cool him down, to no avail: he already caught up with her, nearly sticking to her waist.
“Why isn’t it crying!?” Deus enquired while the nurse placed the baby on a large wooden table in a small and quiet hospital room.
“Look at his face. Why is it blue!?” he wondered.
“Because he doesn’t breathe!” the nurse yelled at Deus, trying to force him away.
“Let me try!” Deus ordered her, pushing her aside and putting his mouth next to the baby’s face. After blowing intensely a couple of times, he withdrew. “He does breathe, look, he breathes on his own!” he shouted at the nurse when the baby’s chest started heaving on its own. At that moment, my grandson cried for the first time, while nearby, in the maternity room, Heidi too started crying as if foreseeing what fate had in store for them all.
Chapter 11
Facing my Demons
In the beginning and the end was the word. It’s all about the right choice of words. The right word can make the difference between a success and a failure, and even between life and death. Well aware of that all my life, I tried to choose the right words now, while sitting all alone for hours on end, facing the countless scattered pages densely covered with my handwriting. It was crystal-clear that once I face the mob gathered to watch my death, I could only share with them a handful of those endless words I have been writing down for the last hours of my life. If I fail to choose my words carefully, I’ll be facing the firing squad: once the guns blast and the smoke rises, all the beautiful words I wrote so meticulously will just fly away, like the birds scared away by the shots, leaving no trace of my life on earth.
Nearly thirty hours have passed from the moment I started writing my life story, as I was sentenced to do, and I am about to complete my work. I have been haunted by concerns: just another thirty hours- I couldn’t prolong my life any further. This was the price of writing down my story.
“Guard!” I cried, despite knowing he has been standing just behind me, waiting for me to fail my task so he could finally put the bullet in my head, as he probably visualized himself doing once in a while during his watch. “I am about to put my pen down, I have nothing to write anymore!” I informed him loudly as if talking to a person with a hearing problem. “I said it all,” I added, to make sure he
wouldn’t mistake it for me failing my task. In those last hours of my life, during which I wrote my biography, I reflected upon my fear of failure which drove me to keep writing, since I knew that if I didn’t, I was as good as dead. “Don’t succumb to physical weakness, don’t give up! Certainly not now!” I told myself whenever I was about to break down. “This is my most glorious triumph!” I thought on, and this conviction aroused an uncontainable rage in me: the mere acknowledgement of this means that every time a prisoner in Udenspul read out the summary of his life story in front of all prisoners, he won, that is, he defeated me!
“The Judge ordered to allow you to have a supper and a sufficient night sleep,” I finally heard a response behind me, after a considerable delay. “Tomorrow morning we’ll be back in court, where you could speak out your last words before your execution,” another guard explained in refined English a few minutes later, while entering the room. But while I approached death row, with my arms and legs cuffed and the guards gripping me tightly, it occurred to me that right now, my strongest desire was neither eating nor sleeping. It was completing reading the letter Deus had left on my commode after Klara passed away, just before he went on his journey to meet his American professor. Indeed, among the few belongings waiting for me in my cell was that letter, which I always carried in my pocket during my yard walks. Yet this time I noticed something new to read: a morning paper in English, resting on the guard’s bench. As keen as always, my hawk eye spied my picture on the front page.
“Toilet, please!” I begged the guard, and when he yielded, walking towards the keys on his desk, I sneaked the paper under my pants. “Five minutes!” he warned me.