Which colonel?
The one I helped.
What is the colonel’s name?
Franjo could not remember the name Carl Schmitt. He had a good memory for names. Faces he forgot immediately, did not even remember those of people with whom he’d had much contact, but he remembered every name. Just then, however, all of a sudden, he could not remember. Was it fear? Nerves? What would happen if he could not remember the name of the colonel whose life he had saved?
Carl Schmitt, he pronounced, almost unconsciously.
Carl Schmitt, said the investigator, trying in vain to hide his surprise.
They did not return him to the basement. For the next two hours Franjo sat in the corridor, in a chair brought for him from the examination room. They served him coffee and homemade rose juice. The scent of the roses was enough to encourage Franjo to think nothing bad was going to happen to him anymore. The thought came to him, and he immediately believed it.
A car was waiting in front of the building.
It was not a police wagon but a beautiful, elegant Mercedes-Benz of the sort high-ranking German officers rode around town. A soldier opened the door for him.
Bitte…
The leather seat had a nice aroma. The scent of leather, gasoline, and jasmine. The driver wore a gray, very expensive suit, with a tie and a diamond pin. He had never seen such a driver. Where are we going? he asked in German. I’m taking you home, the man answered. I can walk, he said, it’s not far. I have my orders, said the driver. Besides, curfew starts soon. It would not be good to be caught on the street. People have been nervous lately.
This was their conversation.
What happened? Olga asked upon his return.
He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Her nose stood out like the beak of a bird of prey. The sort of nose Jews have. He had not noticed that before.
He told her what had happened. He said it was lucky he eventually remembered the colonel’s name was Carl Schmitt.
The next day he was back at work.
He sat at his writing desk and wrote a new letter to send to Dubrovnik:
* * *
—
Dear Andrija,
I have reason to believe you did not receive my letter. Times are hard, and we can no longer be completely certain about the mail. I’ll write again the most important parts from the last letter. Everyone’s well. Javorka is growing. It will soon be time for Dragan to go back to school, and we haven’t seen or had news from our Ilidža relations in months. It’s as if they’re on the other side of the world. I don’t know what’s happening with my bees. Opapa is taking care of them, but he’s old.
How are Lola and Branka? Željko keeps in touch by postcards. Will he get a transfer to Rajlovac? He hasn’t told us anything about that.
Warm regards to all! Franjo
P.S. I’ll try telephoning, if the lines are not down.
* * *
—
He thought about it and crossed out the postscript then made a clean copy of the whole thing. It was stupid to write in a letter that would get to Andrija in a week or two, if it got there at all, that he would be calling if the lines were not down, because that would happen before Andrija had read his letter anyway.
He was distracted. He kept looking toward the door. He had the sensation that what had happened a few days before would happen again. He would hear the thud of a head against the oak door and before his eyes would be the upturned face of a German officer. He would jump up, and the story would repeat. (Except this time it would not turn out well.)
Andrija’s reply arrived around the twentieth of August.
* * *
—
Dear family,
We are all well. I’m working, Lola’s taking it easy, and Branka goes to school. Everything’s as it should be. We have enough food, thank God. Željko writes to us when he remembers, which is not often. You know how he is.
Lucky you know how to handle an epileptic.
Greetings to all from Uncle Andrija
* * *
—
So he had received the first letter. But it was as if he was hiding it, keeping quiet, speaking in riddles, like that sentence: “Lucky you know how to handle an epileptic.” Andrija did not talk like that. No one did. Franjo was upset and afraid. The censor had read the letter but instead of holding onto it as proof had let it go on to the addressee. Why? Were they following Andrija in order to arrest him?
Franjo’s concern did not last long.
A few days later, a telegram arrived. Olga opened the door. A man’s voice said, I’m sorry, and she collapsed into a chair and went silent. Mladen was dead, buried in Andrijevci. Olga would visit her son’s grave. There she would cross paths with Rudi for an hour or two. But that is no longer important.
Horrified by his son’s death, Franjo forgot to warn Andrija Ćurlin that they might be following him, even though he knew Andrija was stirring things up in Dubrovnik, using his influence in the city, the reputation he had among the Italians and the Ustaše, helping people get to the Partisans, and maybe meeting with British spies. If they arrested him, he would be lost, and there would be one more death to drop onto him like a stone and drive him mad. Fortunately, no one arrested Uncle Andrija Ćurlin. And what remained was the story, that dream of Mladen’s, of deserting from the German army and fighting for the English. He had come to an agreement about this with his uncle…
Franjo lived in grief, and thought of hanging himself. But he did not have the strength, and he felt sorry for his other son, who at first hid in the attic to avoid being drafted and then worked as a miner in a Kakanj coal mine under a false name. He did not want to leave his daughter without a father, his little girl who was not yet conscious of anything. So he continued with his life, and started to think about his bees again. When he did not think about them, he dreamed of hanging himself and of Olga finding him. At that instant, Mladen’s death would fall completely onto her soul. And when he grew fed up with this, disgusted with himself and his own cowardice, for he did not dare hang himself, Franjo would again think of his bees. In his thoughts he would build hives, arranging them in Želeće, in Ilidža, on Glavatičeva…
In the first days of January 1944 Franjo ran into Colonel Carl Schmitt once again. He saw a tall, worn-out man on the street, resembling one of the spectral figures in a Alberto Giacometti painting. He swerved as he walked, as if he was about to collapse at any moment. He was not swerving like a drunk man, but like someone whose feet felt the earth slipping away with every step. He did not look at his face. He did not know any German officers and did not care to meet any, and he would have passed him by had Carl Schmitt not grabbed his arm as he passed.
Now you’re sorry you saved me?
He raised his eyes in surprise. At first he did not recognize him.
I’m not sorry, I just don’t look around when I’m walking.
Don’t worry.
I’m not worried.
How is it you’re not worried. Aren’t you a patriot?
No, not in any way. My son died.
As a Croatian soldier?
No, Mr. Schmitt. As a German soldier.
I’m sorry.
It’s not your fault.
When did this happen?
At the end of August, in Slavonia.
People passed them as they stood there in the middle of Ferhadija, a few paces from the city market. The street was suddenly full, and like in a nightmare, all the people were acquaintances. They pretended not to see them, but Franjo could tell they did. And he knew they would talk about how they caught him talking, smiling, and joking with an SS colonel. With Carl Schmitt.
They said goodbye after the German once more expressed his sympathy. Franjo found it unbearable to hear this. He went away without saying almost anything. The col
onel looked after him, his mouth partly open, as if he was going to call him back. It was cold and sunny. One of those rare sunny days in Sarajevo without fog or snow, without smog.
Do you know who Carl Schmitt is, you poor sot?
Matija Sokolovski was upset and afraid. The devil only knew who had told him he had seen Franjo in the middle of Ferhadija discussing something with Colonel Schmitt.
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Why didn’t you tell me who he was when I was pulling his tongue out of his throat? Maybe I’d have thought better of it. But you just stood there and said nothing.”
Sokolovski looked at him with worry and shook his head.
He worked in the next office over from Franjo’s. He’d been at headquarters longer than Franjo. When he had arrived at the Chief Inspectors Division, Sokolovski had been there to meet him and show him where to sit. Matija was a Pole, a quiet, withdrawn man, a nonbeliever. It was unusual that a Pole should not believe in God. But he was excellent at preferans. He would have been the best if he did not usually sit at the same card table as Franjo. Nonbelievers were unbeatable at preferans. God did not get in the way of their mathematical games. God despised mathematicians.
He told Franjo everything about Carl Schmitt.
Where do know this from? Franjo asked. He didn’t believe him. He thought Sokolovski was trying to shock and scare him. This made him angry. Matija wasn’t like this usually. But maybe he had changed. Many people had changed lately. The winter had been hard. Hunger. Everyone treated him differently since Mladen’s death. They were waiting for him to do something. They shrank from him. Maybe they were expecting him to hang himself, wondering why he hadn’t already. In evil times people were evil. But if Matija Sokolovski had turned evil, there was no one left. Who would he play cards with?
How do you know all that about Carl Schmitt? he asked angrily.
Matija Sokolovski looked at him with his moist blue eyes, which seemed to be welling up with tears. What was it with Matija that his eyes were so wet? Were they this wet before the war? He didn’t remember that.
I know, Sokolovski answered, touching his arm as if to calm him.
Franjo did not like it when people tried to calm him. And he did not like to be touched.
But he put up with that too. He calmed down and didn’t yell at Sokolovski. He agreed to listen to his story, not because he was interested in Carl Schmitt, but because he didn’t want to lose his preferans buddy.
The engineer Carl Schmitt had been an activist for Hitler’s party since the time when the National Socialists were preparing to take power. Until the beginning of the war he had worked as a designer of furnaces for the Kruppove Steelworks, and then in the fall of 1939, on joining the SS, he was given the rank of colonel and took part in the eastern operations. He was seen in Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. The traces he left behind could be described by only one word: silence. Whoever saw him even once would dream about him until the end of his life.
But what does that mean? Franjo interrupted.
I don’t know. It’s what I was told, and I’m passing it on to you.
Schmitt was wounded in the winter of 1942 when he fell into an ambush with his driver and two adjutants. This had happened in Ukraine. It was unclear where. They were killed; he was riddled with machine gun fire, but he survived. A Red Army soldier shot him in the head at close range to put him out of his misery. The bullet blew apart the bone above his right eye and came out the back of his head. He lay in the mud for twelve hours until they found him. They thought he was dead, so they were in no hurry to get him to the hospital. Only the next morning, when it was time to start burying the bodies, did someone notice that Colonel Schmitt was alive.
For several weeks he lay dying, and then, over the next six months, his condition improved. His brain’s right hemisphere, which controls the left side of the body, was dead. All sorts of other things were also dead in Carl Schmitt. The centers of his brain responsible for memory were not damaged. He even remembered things he had not remembered before.
It was unbearable for him to sit at home. His wife was afraid. His children were small and did not understand anything. There was no one he could speak to about what had happened to him. When everyone would go to the bomb shelter because the British bombers had appeared, he would sit in the apartment. He could not go on for long like this. He asked to be returned to service, sent somewhere at the front, where his own death would feel at home among the others. They took pity on him and sent him to Sarajevo. In Sarajevo he would not bother anyone.
It was unknown what Carl Schmitt’s assignment was in the city, who reported to him, or what his goals were. Schmitt’s appearance, more than his SS rank, which gave him absolute control over all the German officers in town, as well as every Ustaše and Home Guard commander, even of the highest rank, aroused fear and a certain strange unease among people. They would lower their heads before him.
Some people believed Colonel Schmitt was the grim reaper of Sarajevo, and some pitied him, an invalid sent to Sarajevo to die in peace. Or they believed Carl Schmitt was bait for communist assassins – if anyone killed him there would be retribution, and the Germans would raze Sarajevo to the ground.
* * *
—
The winter of 1944 lasted a long time, extending to the end of April, when it suddenly grew warm, the sun burning as if it was already summer. A long, parched Sarajevo summer followed, which dried out the vegetable gardens and orchards. Only the walnuts ripened, as they did every year without regard to wars. Franjo did not know how he passed the time between Mladen’s death and the end of the war. He did not remember anything from that time, except that everything was hunger and apathy and there was no life in anything around him. This was how it seemed to him, and this was perhaps how it was. He rarely recalled Carl Schmitt. Did he ever think that after the war someone might look badly on the fact that he had stood in the middle of the street talking with SS Colonel Schmitt? Probably not.
In the first days of April 1945, when the Germans had for the most part pulled back from the city, the Ustaše remained to take bloody revenge against all who had worked for their downfall. The Partisans in the neighboring forests were just waiting for the day when they would all emerge. The attack on the city had been planned for a long time, and they had long known the day would be theirs. They just needed to live to see it.
Franjo was returning from the night shift at headquarters and he was tired and a bit crazy from all the news and rumors flying all about. He could hardly wait to lie down.
He went into the entrance hall, climbed the steps, and at the top step, in front of his door, found Carl Schmitt sitting, his legs before him, his elbows resting on his knees, as if he had been there for a long time.
He held out a rectangular box of brown Morocco leather.
Franjo held it in confusion. He did not ask anything, waiting for the colonel to get up so he could go into his apartment.
You’re not going to open it?
What is it?
Open it. Look. It’s a stylograph. A very nice one. If you recall, I was once in your office. When you saved my life. I am certain I saw a stylograph on your work table. So I thought you might be able to use this. I used it only for official signatures. Nothing else. I signed perhaps twenty times in all.
He opened the box. A fountain pen lay on a small pillow of red silk. The pen body was also red, while the cap was gilt.
Try it, Schmitt urged.
He removed the cap and wrote down, in the notebook that was offered to him, in blue ink, his first and last name and his place of birth: Travnik.
See how nicely it writes. It settles quickly into your hand.
He said this as if he were talking about a living creation.
Why are you giving it to me now?
Don’t worry. It’s not a sign of gratitude. You shall be rendering me a service if
you accept it. Where I am going I won’t need a fountain pen, and I would not like it to fall into the wrong hands.
He extended his hand and stood up. His steps resounded with an improper rhythm, as if a piece of furniture was tumbling down the stairwell. Franjo stood there without moving until he heard the stairwell door close. A silence came that would last until the early morning, when the alarm clocks in the apartments began to ring. After that the first morning siren was heard: the signal for aerial danger from the last Allied bombing of the city.
Franjo Rejc rarely used the fountain pen he received from SS Colonel Carl Schmitt that early morning of April 2, 1945. He did not take it with him to the office. He signed his name perhaps two or three times with it, considering what might have been written on the documents Colonel Schmitt had signed. Once, in the summer of 1945, it occurred to him that the Partisans might have robbed the SS colonel of his things and found his notebook with “Franjo Rejc, Travnik” in it. This concerned him. But then he forgot about it.
The name of the stylograph was Parker 51. Franjo emptied and cleaned it, and intended to keep it for a time when no one would be burdened by his story, for no one would remember Carl Schmitt or think of the documents he might have signed. When his grandson was born in 1966, he decided that if the boy turned out to be kind and intelligent, he would give him the fountain pen as a gift. It would be a valuable gift, a great treasure, and one unused stylograph produced in 1939 on the occasion of the Parker anniversary, would at least find a hand to which it could become accustomed and follow. The unique hand of a fountain pen. People differ according to fountain pens and fingerprints.
He was afraid of thieves. They could break into the house and take the fountain pen. He was not worried about other valuables. Nothing but that pen was valuable anymore. For this reason he decided to carry it everywhere with him. It was the only way to be sure no one would steal it.
It was the last year of his life. He walked down from Drvenik to Zaostrog, sat down at a bar, and ordered a glass of rakija and mineral water. He felt healthy, as if he could live for another hundred years. Everything was good, all misfortunes far away from him. As he was taking out his money to pay, the edge of his wallet caught against the stylograph. He did not notice, not even as the fountain pen popped out of his coat and slipped lightly and silently to the floor.
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