A Man Lies Dreaming

by Tidhar, Lavie

  Higher and then lower and gently until they rose blinking as if they had been sleeping and were now awake and looking all about them in wonder and awe, at a world remade anew. They had called him the Drummer, then: and it was said that all of Germany marched to his tune.

  * * *

  In another time and place Shomer rises blinking. Shomer rises energised and refreshed from the bunk he shares with nine other men and he makes the bed exactly to specification and puts his feet into the wooden clogs with illicit paper padding them and the sores on his feet rubbing and pussing. With the others he shuffles to roll-call, with the others he stands in rows as they wait, and Yenkl stands beside him, puffing on his pipe.

  They wait for two hours in the cold before the SS officer arrives to take their numbers and tally the figures of the living and the dead. Shomer’s kommando once again marches to the same frozen piece of ground to continue the digging of the graves. The routine does not vary, and the graves do not end. At last Shomer is allowed to go to the latrines and Mischek, the scheissbegleiter – that is, the toilet companion or timekeeper – comes with. The latrines are cesspits divided into partitions for the Jews and the non-Jews: the common criminals and the politicals and the prisoners of war. Shomer goes into the Jews’ latrine and Mischek, the dirty little Russian Jew, keeps time.

  ‘Have you read my latest review?’ Shomer says to Yenkl, sitting beside him on the shared latrine and opening up the latest broadsheet from Berlin. He lets out a loud fart and laughs. ‘I must stop eating such heavy meals,’ he says, patting his stomach.

  ‘Soup!’ Yenkl says. ‘What is more wholesome than soup, with a slice of bread, to keep a man’s spirit up?’

  Shomer’s stomach rumbles but he pretends to ignore it. A ration of bread and margarine with a ladle of watery soup must serve: the bread is currency, with bread one may buy and sell and trade, but not in futures. There are no futures here.

  ‘I was mistaken for Freud, once, you know,’ he tells Yenkl.

  ‘Do tell?’

  Shomer shrugs. ‘It was at a literary party, I forget who for.’

  ‘Which means you remember exactly but resented their success?’

  Shomer laughs. ‘I had been to the washroom and stood pissing next to a young boy not long out of cheder, a young poet who blushed when he saw me and addressed me as Herr Freud. Of course I set the little blighter straight. Did he not know who I was?’

  ‘Did he not?’

  ‘Do you think yeshiva boys do not read shund?’

  Yenkl laughed. ‘I imagine they do, in secret.’

  ‘He apologised profusely when I told him who I was. Would have asked me to sign something if his pisser wasn’t in his hand. I told him to watch where he aimed and washed my hands and returned to the party. Half an hour later, I ran into Freud. ‘Hello!’ I said, civilly. ‘Someone just thought I was you, which is really stretching credibility to the limit!’’

  ‘You said that?’

  ‘Sure I did.’

  ‘And what did Freud say?’

  ‘He said, “He managed to insult both of us in the same sentence”!’

  Yenkl laughed. The Russian, Mischek, popped his head in and told Shomer in broken Yiddish to hurry the fuck up or the kapos will punish both of them.

  ‘Did I tell you about the time I was mistaken for Freud?’ Shomer asks Mischek, but Mischek shakes his head miserably and says, ‘Freud? Who is this Freud.’

  ‘Some people can’t take a joke, can they,’ Shomer says to Yenkl but Yenkl is no longer there and the other prisoners look away from him as though he is mad: do they not know who he is?

  He gets up and contemplates washing his hands in the foul water and at last does so, his belongings held tight between his thighs, rubbing his hands together to wash off, at least, the worst of the shit. Then back he goes across the camp with Mischek at his side, back to digging graves – ‘And what after all should we be digging for?’ he says to Yenkl, ‘turnips?’ and Yenkl laughs and so, with renewed spirit, Shomer returns to work, while his mind conjures up a different kind of cell and a different prisoner; one who, unlike Shomer, does not have a blue number tattooed on his arm.

  * * *

  Wolf woke from a deep dark sleep, and dreams in which he fled from booted Jewish hordes, ugly and screaming, with hooked noses and yellow stars, and looking like a caricature from Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer. He, Wolf, was running, but run as he might the Jews like the living-dead were relentless, and they pursued him across a map of Europe, like in the pictures from America in which a dotted line grows across a map to symbolise flight. He sat up on the cot in the cell as the cell door swung open.

  The fat policeman, Keech, was standing there, no longer grinning. ‘Rise and shine. The Inspector wants to see you.’

  ‘It’s about time.’

  Wolf stood up. Outside it was growing dark. Once again he trod the corridor to the Inspector’s office. Morhaim was inside sitting behind his desk. ‘Sit down, Wolf.’

  ‘I prefer to stand.’

  ‘Keech?’

  The big policeman grinned. Wolf sat down.

  ‘Did you find it?’ he said.

  ‘Find what?’

  ‘The club. The body in the basement.’

  Morhaim rubbed his eyes. He looked tired, and mean. ‘My men and I have indeed visited the address you mentioned in Leather Lane,’ he said.

  ‘Full of them filthy foreigners,’ Keech said.

  ‘Quite,’ Morhaim said.

  ‘Them German refugees and whatnot.’

  ‘Indeed. Keech?’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘So?’ Wolf said – demanded. ‘You know I was telling the truth!’

  ‘We found nothing.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Morhaim shrugged. ‘We found an empty house. There were scuffmarks on the floors, as if furniture was hastily removed. A door opened onto a cellar like the one you described. However, there was no one there, and the cell doors were open and empty.’

  ‘They moved them …’

  ‘Who are they, Mr Wolf?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Morhaim said, and smiled a small, bitter smile. ‘But it does not matter. On the cellar floor we found marks, stains. Possibly something has happened down there, but what?’

  ‘I told you. She shot the man, Kramer. For … for taking me down there.’

  ‘A man named Josef Kramer is indeed on our list of alien residents,’ Morhaim said. ‘His occupation is listed as market porter. His whereabouts are unknown.’

  ‘No body,’ Keech said, and grinned. ‘No body, no crime. No crime, no nothing, shamus.’

  ‘But that’s—’ the reality of his situation sunk home for Wolf. They had cleaned up, and in a hurry. Moved the white slaves, the furniture, the still-cooling corpse. He couldn’t help it: he felt just a touch of pride. His people had always been efficient.

  But that meant he could not prove his innocence. He looked at Morhaim. ‘Are you going to charge me?’ he said.

  He saw the fat policeman look to the Inspector; look away. Morhaim was jittery, distracted. The silence lengthened in the room.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Mr Wolf,’ Morhaim said. ‘You are free to go.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Get this piece of shit out of here,’ Morhaim said. Keech said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and picked Wolf up. ‘Get your hands off of me, you fat pig.’

  The copper’s ugly face froze in a snarl. ‘You want more of what I’ve got?’ he said.

  ‘Leave him be, Keech.’

  ‘But Inspector—!’

  ‘We’ll be keeping an eye on you, Wolf.’

  ‘You do that,’ Wolf said. He half-turned and smiled. Touched the bruise on the side of his face. He felt like a piece of meat chewed by a giant angry dog. He leaned close to the fat policeman. ‘I’ll get you back for this, precious,’ he whispered. ‘That’s a promise.’

  Keech beamed at h
im. ‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see you try.’

  ‘I said get him out of here!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Keech pushed Wolf out of the door. Back into the corridor. Shut the door behind them, gently, as on a sickroom. ‘Tetchy, isn’t he?’ Wolf said.

  ‘He’s in mourning.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For you walking the streets free and all.’

  ‘You know I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘You’re guilty of something, Wolf. People like you always are.’

  ‘What are you, a Jew lover?’

  ‘No. Just someone who knows the difference between right and wrong.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re in the right line of work?’

  ‘Enough wisecracks, shamus. Get dressed.’ They were back in the cell. The door was open. Wolf’s blood-spattered clothes lay on the bed, neatly folded.

  ‘Can you turn round? I’m shy.’

  ‘Just do it already, will you, Wolf? You have guests and we don’t want to keep them waiting.’

  Wolf did as he was told. He folded the clothes they had given him, neatly, and put on his suit and his coat and his hat.

  He assumed they’d gone through his clothes: it was just a shame no one had bothered to clean them after.

  Lastly he put on his shoes; they were good English shoes.

  He followed Keech out and Keech opened a door and though they merely transitioned from one room to another room it was a transition from captivity into freedom; and he felt the need for air and drew it in, in a big shuddering inhalation. Somehow the air tasted different this side of the door: more sweet and more pure.

  Behind the reception desk a bored policeman was reading Black Mask, an American pulp Wolf himself was fond of. The lurid cover showed a woman lying in a pool of blood, a faceless assassin standing over her with a knife. Wolf scanned the people waiting patiently, eternally, on the benches beyond the desk. They were lined with whores and drunks and thieves: the people he now lived amongst.

  One who stood out was unfamiliar to him. It was a man decked out all in black leather with black boots and black gloves and a black peaked cap. He marched up to Wolf and gave a Prussian click of the heels.

  ‘Herr Wolf?’

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘I am your chauffeur.’

  ‘My chauffeur.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But I do not have a chauffeur.’

  The man almost smiled, but not quite. ‘Please, sir. You are tired. I have been instructed to take you to your flat, where you will no doubt wish to wash and change. Do you have the invitation?’

  ‘The invitation?’

  ‘To tonight’s soiree, sir.’ The chauffeur sounded almost reproachful.

  ‘Mosley’s soiree?’

  ‘Sir Oswald would be delighted to see you, mein herr,’ the chauffeur said. ‘As will Lady Mosley. It promises to be quite the night, sir.’

  ‘Did … did Oswald have me released?’

  ‘I am sure it is not my place to comment, sir.’

  Wolf kept a calm expression. You had to, when dealing with the help.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  ‘Sir.’

  Wolf followed the chauffeur out of the police station and into the night.

  Wolf’s Diary, 3rd November 1939 – contd.

  I was furious, though I tried not to show it. The chauffeur drove me the short distance to my apartment. Outside, the whores were at trade as usual. It would take more than a murder or two to stop them.

  How I hated whores!

  I well remembered, as a young man, the prostitutes of Vienna, walking one night with Gustl along their Sink of Iniquity, after the opera. How I loved the opera!

  And yet worse was the time we had been approached in the street by an older man, on the corner of Mariahilferstrasse-Neubaugasse. Well-dressed and prosperous-looking. He spoke to us pleasantly, asked us about ourselves. When he learned that we were students he invited us to dinner. I was studying architecture at the time, while Gustl studied music. Sometimes I missed Gustl. He had been my only friend.

  The man took us to the Hotel Kummer. I was very poor at the time and he let us order whatever we desired. I must confess I had at the time a predilection for pastries and tarts and I had sated myself at the man’s expense. He was a manufacturer from Vöcklabruck, in town on business. Over dinner he told us of his indifference to women. He wanted nothing to do with them, for they were all gold-diggers. He and Gustl discussed music. Towards the end of the meal, as Gustl was stuffing his face obliviously, the man slipped me a carte de visite. At the end of the meal we thanked him and then left. Gustl was entranced, the infantile. Charmed by the man. ‘Did you like him?’ I said, as we were walking home.

  ‘Very much,’ Gustl said. ‘A very cultured man, with pronounced artistic leanings.’

  ‘And nothing else?’

  ‘What else should there be?’

  I took out the carte de visite and showed it to him. ‘That man,’ I said, calmly, ‘was a homosexual.’

  Poor Gustl! He had never even heard the word. I had had to explain it to him, in some detail. His poor little eyes opened up in horror. The idea of two naked, sweaty men engaging in unnatural copulation, grappling with each other, muscles straining, their hard bodies rubbing against each other, fingers and tongues working over buttocks and nipples, a hard thrust and I …

  It disgusted me. The card went into the fires of our oven.

  If it were left up to me all homosexuals, along with communists and Jews, would be sent to specially built camps for their kind.

  But the world I had once envisioned was not to be. The future I had envisioned had been robbed from me.

  I washed, wincing with each movement as my bruises began to turn dark. I dressed carefully, in my one remaining suit.

  There was this, too, about Gustl: he was a compulsive masturbator. At any given opportunity, in his bed, in his wash, behind his piano, sometimes at his desk in class or even on the corner of the street, his hand in his pocket, Gustl would relieve himself the way I had denied myself. He was a sweet, innocent boy; I wondered how he fared under communism.

  Germany was lost to me. I put on my tie and my hat. Touched my face. My eye was swollen. I was angry. Not at Keech. He was a mindless thug, and mindless thugs I understood. Not even at Morhaim, the Jew. He only did what was his nature, as the personification of the devil, the symbol of all evil, assumes the living shape of the Jew. No – I was angry at being obliged to Mosley. I refused to be in anyone’s debt, and least of all an inferior man’s.

  I took a last look in the mirror. An old, broken man stared back at me. I took a deep breath and felt the hatred fill me, animating me. I would not be broken that easily. I raised my hand, fingers outstretched, in the old salute. I straightened my shoulders. Then I went downstairs to the waiting car.

  It was a black Rolls-Royce and it fair glided through the London streets, heading for Belgravia.

  Wolf sat at the back and schemed, thinking furiously. He had not given the girl’s murder enough consideration. The location of the attack, the swastika carved into flesh, and the final insult: that damned wind-up toy.

  The little tin drummer.

  How dare he!

  Somewhere out there, beyond the car’s window, out there in the dark city, there was a man not unlike himself. Wolf did not want to admit it but it was true. And Wolf was a man who seldom deluded himself. He knew who he was; he was always true to himself.

  He felt hatred, yes. But it was hatred in service of a greater power: of destiny. Wolf had been shaped into a weapon by the circumstances of life. But a weapon did not kill indiscriminately. It was used, for a purpose.

  What, then, was the killer’s purpose?

  He was talking, Wolf realised. He was communicating, but his communication was not meant for the police.

  No. It was meant directly for Wolf himself.

  They were driving through St James’s Park. Wolf re
sted his head on the glass and looked out of the window at the dark trees as they passed. He had made little progress with the missing Jewish girl, though it was early days yet. Did his former associates hold her? And which of them owned the club he had visited? He determined to have another little chat with Rudolf Hess. He tried not to think of that woman, Ilse, and her cellar. He winced and shifted in his seat and his thoughts were as dark as the night.

  The drive went smoothly. The driver spoke little; Wolf appreciated that. At last the chauffeur indicated and pulled onto Ebury Street. Wolf had been there once before, shortly after his arrival, a landless, penniless refugee on this cold and foreign island. Then, Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley had owned a flat in the building. Now, Wolf saw as they approached, they must have owned the entire bloody thing.

  Torches were burning outside. Wolf wound down the window. The air smelled warm and scented as though he had crossed some invisible meridian line by coming here and was now in another country entirely, some tropical land divorced from both space and time. The flames of the torches reflected in the neighbours’ windows across the road. In their light Wolf saw Blackshirt foot soldiers standing to attention like an honour guard, and the flags of the lightning bolt that was the symbol of the British Union of Fascists waved in the breeze to either side of the grand entrance with its faux-Doric columns. The driver stilled the engine. Spilling from the house Wolf heard music, laughter, the tinkling of glass and the hum of conversation. The Mosleys’s party, it seemed, had been going on for a while.