The Fellowship

by William Tyree

  *

  After calisthenics, the boys were split into their units and marched toward the lake. They marched everywhere, and always in neat columns. Despite the frigid water, Wolf looked forward to these morning swims. Upon his first visit to the Reich School, he had been stunned to see the picturesque community of yellow mansions situated on the verdant shore of Lake Starnberg. Although it was an easy train trip from his hometown, Munich, the campus felt refreshingly isolated from the political tension he had grown up with in the city. As far back as he could remember Munich had been a place of endless party rallies, political speeches, military parades and ethnic violence.

  Now the lakefront glistened orange as the sun rose over the surrounding hills. Wolf removed his clothes and leapt over a half-meter patch of semi-solid ice around the lake’s perimeter. None of the boys complained about the temperature as they swam the four laps between the shore and Rose Island. That was typical of the Reich School attitude. But with the high command watching, there were no pranks today. No boy dunked any other boy, and no boy pretended to be taken under by the ghost of Ludwig II, the Bavarian King who had drowned in the lake in 1886.

  A breeze had picked up by the time Wolf and Lang returned to shore and began dressing. As usual, Albert was still swimming his last lap. Albert was a slow swimmer, and Beck usually waited for him before moving the unit to their next activity. Not today. As Beck began marching the shivering unit across a wheat field that the cadets had harvested themselves in July, Albert was alone in the water.

  Wolf looked over his shoulder as they rounded the first hilltop. There was still no sign of Albert.

  “He better catch up,” Lang muttered. “Himmler will bring the dogs.”

  Stories of Himmler’s cruelty were legendary. One tale had him picking out a straggler from a line of boys and, after giving the student a 20-second head start toward a grove of trees, setting a pack of vicious dogs on his trail.

  “Nonsense. Maybe at the NAPOLA schools. But not here. They have invested too much in us.”

  It was true that the Reich School had the highest admissions standards of all schools in Germany. Exemplary achievement in either athletics or academics was mandatory. Another hurdle was racial qualification. A person born in Eastern Europe was not eligible for enrollment at the Reich School. Neither was a person whose family had been in Germany for less than 140 years. The bloodline, it was thought, needed at least that much time to be purified of other races. In addition, students were eligible for admittance only if they could prove that their family had been of pure German descent since the year 1800.

  Wolf’s mother, Gertrude, had hired a certified genealogist to create an extensive family tree showing that the family had been of Germanic descent since at least the 1500s. And even with all the right paperwork in place, doctors from the SS came to the family apartment in Munich to measure Wolf’s cranium. It was believed that the skull should be of a certain size as proof of intellectual aptitude and, of course, there were certain undesirable curvatures that were supposedly telltale signs of an ethnic minority. To Wolf, these requirements had seemed more ludicrous than sinister. After placing a set of very cold calipers against Wolf’s head, the doctor declared, “Your skull is not overly round.” Within two months, he had received his admission letter.

  *

  The unit did not catch sight of Himmler and Vogel until they neared a barn in a neighboring field. There was still no sign of Albert. Wolf offered a stiff-arm salute as he passed wordlessly, feeling the inspecting eyes of the German high command upon him.

  Moments later, Wolf spotted the longcoats. They were standing at the end of a barn with stone siding and a gambrel roof. They were setting up a movie camera.

  A movie camera could mean only one thing. They were going to jump today.

  Trust jumps. That is what Beck called them. In Wolf’s two years at the Reich School, he had leapt from a guard tower, several school and government buildings and, once, a gorge in the Austrian Alps. Trust jumps were always unannounced and, more often than not, they were also filmed. The footage of boy after boy leaping from great heights made terrific propaganda footage. It was nothing less than proof that the country’s next generation of leaders had already coalesced into a formidable, unified socialist machine. Germany’s future was bright indeed.

  What awaited the boys on the ground was always a mystery. Sometimes they landed on a sort of trampoline held by older boys. At other times, a safety net had been tied in place ahead of time. In the Alps they had landed in a deep river. There was no choice but to have faith in Beck’s preparation. That, of course, had been the point. To follow orders without hesitation.

  But Wolf had no faith in Beck’s oversight of this activity. His stomach filled with dread with each new ascent. His mind exploded with questions. When had Beck prepared the landing? Had he scouted the landing himself, or had he delegated the task to a junior instructor? What if the conditions had changed in the hours since the landing had been prepared? Could a trampoline tie not break? Could a tree or an animal or a boulder not fall into their path?

  Now they were led inside a barn cavernous enough to hold at least 100 cattle. Beck instructed them to climb a wooden ladder to the hayloft, and then to ascend to the rooftop. Wolf measured his pacing as they made their way toward the rickety wooden ladder. He slackened his pace deliberately, falling back in line.

  Don’t be the first, he told himself. Be second, or tenth. Anything but first. To see a boy jump before him and land safely was marvelous for Wolf’s courage.

  By the time he reached the ladder, he was third in line. He climbed behind two other boys into a spacious loft that slanted sharply to accommodate snow drainage. A prominent steeple at the apex allowed for heat ventilation as well as an exit onto the rooftop for occasional repairs.

  Looking down, he saw that Albert had finally caught up. He had no shoes or shirt on, and he looked rattled, wet and out of breath as he stood at the bottom of the ladder.

  He soon found himself in the sunlight, standing near the steeple. He paused to admire the vast expanse of golden farmland. Hundreds of majestic acres bristled in the gentle morning breeze.

  Suddenly he was jostled forward. He found himself at the head of the line. Beck’s voice cut through the morning, urging them to jump. Wolf looked left, down the eastern slope of the roof. He saw Beck, his finger pointed toward the far edge of the roof. Himmler, Vogel and the two longcoats were by his side. All waiting for Wolf to leap.

  A flip of white-blond hair tottered back and forth on his forehead. Goose pimples rose over his legs as the breeze picked up. His peripheral vision was suddenly rimmed with darkness, as if looking through a pair of old binoculars. He stood on his tiptoes, but he could not see the landing zone.

  As each succeeding student exited the steeple, Wolf found himself bumped further down the rooftop. He felt Lang behind him, hands pressed against the small of his back, pushing him. He heard Lang’s breath in his ear. “Go on, Sebastian! Jump!”

  Suddenly Albert ran past him. Wolf was thrown off balance. He teetered, then felt Lang’s grip on his bicep. He recovered his footing just in time to glimpse Albert’s body disappear over the horizon.

  The boys held their collective breath, waiting for the sound of Albert’s inevitable war cry. It did not come. Only a crunching thud and a chorus of worried noises erupted from Himmler’s entourage. One of the longcoats rushed to the film camera and switched it off.

  Forgetting his fears, Wolf walked to the edge and peered over the side. Albert was a broken smear of skin and bones and flesh over a parked threshing machine. A large piece of torn netting was pinned between the body and the machine’s cylinder. The truncated ends were tied to nearby trees, flapping like windsocks in the morning breeze.

  Now there was no sound except that of the wind and the breathing of the other boys and their footsteps as they took turns walking to the edge to see Albert’s body. They had all, of course, seen other dead children. Outbreaks of flu,
tuberculosis, whooping cough and smallpox routinely thinned the ranks. But to see a cadet die in this way was truly novel. But Wolf detected no evidence of pity in the other boys. The boys’ overriding emotion seemed to be fascination. Except Lang, of course. He had always been a sensitive boy. Even now, his body convulsed as he tried to suppress his tears.

  The sharp report of a pistol broke the silence. Wolf’s eyes snapped toward the ground in time to see Beck’s breath cloud the chilly air. Then Beck fell face-first onto the field. The trigger man stood over the body. It was Heinrich Himmler.

  *

  The unit was relieved of duties until lunchtime. Lang held himself together until he and Wolf returned to their room. The sight of Albert’s bed and footlocker set him off. Wolf stood by idly as Lang came unglued, unsure whether he was more upset by the force of his friend’s emotion, or by the lack of his own.

  When Lang finally gathered himself, he said, “I’ll go first.”

  Wolf went to the door, leaning against it and holding the doorknob tightly with both fists. With the door secured, Lang kneeled before Albert’s bed and began to recite a psalm.

  This act – standing guard for each other during prayer – was a daily ritual. The two boys shared a secret. They were practicing Catholics.

  Being Catholic was not yet an official crime, but Wolf knew that someday soon, it would be. He had not seen a priest since 1939, when the government had closed the Catholic school he and Lang had attended in Munich, and along with it, every parochial school in the country. Their parish church had been closed later in the year and converted into a government building. And yet priests still presided over the weddings of high-ranking German officials, a fact he knew only because of occasional photographs in the newspaper. It was all very confusing.

  When Lang was done, Wolf took his turn kneeling at the foot of Albert’s bed. He clasped his hands before him, but when he closed his eyes, he did not see Albert, and he certainly did not see God. He instead saw Himmler, eyes peering through wireframe glasses, standing over Beck’s body. Resting his boot on the man’s chest as if he were a hunting trophy. He then looked up at the barn and saluted the boys on the rooftop. I punished this man for his negligence, the gesture had seemed to say. I did this for you, boys. This is how much you mean to the Fatherland.

  *

  Later that morning, the cadets washed and dressed in brown shirts, brown pants and black ties. Although they were too upset to feel hungry, the daily rituals of the Reich School remained unbroken. When Wolf and Lang made their way to the dining hall, however, they quickly found their appetites as they sat down to a lunch of smoked trout, potatoes and milk.

  “Something’s up,” Lang said as he regarded the meal before him with suspicion. Although the students at the Reich School had the best of everything, to see fresh fish was unheard of. The whole of Germany had been on rationed food portions for some time. The Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, had recently set civilian rations of meat at one-tenth of one pound per day and had also downgraded portions for bread. Vegetables were impossible to find, especially in the cities.

  “Putting on a show for Himmler,” Wolf speculated.

  “No,” Lang said. “Himmler’s been here before. He’s impressed by performance, not nutrition.”

  Wolf bumped Lang with his elbow and motioned across the dining hall. Two soldiers were erecting a poster depicting a proud cadet brandishing a dagger. The slogan read:

  THE SONS OF GERMANY GIVE THEMSELVES FREELY FOR FÜHRER AND FATHERLAND

  “You’re right,” Wolf said. “Something is up.”

  *

  In mathematics, Wolf and Lang sat before a slab of varnished pine that was angled at 15 degrees. There were 39 other students in the class. Albert’s chair was empty.

  The math instructor had written this word problem on the chalkboard:

  German armor enjoys vast superiority over Soviet ground defenses. At an average loss rate of just three German tanks in exchange for the destruction of 35 Soviet pillboxes, how many tanks would be required to break through a front line consisting of 607 pillboxes?

  Wolf opened a black leather-bound notebook and began to work out the problem with a deftly sharpened pencil. Academically, Wolf took after his scholarly father, who had, before the war, been a professor of Indo-Germanic studies at the University of Munich. Wolf was far above average in all subjects, but especially in biology, math and foreign languages. He credited his early education for this, having studied under a handful of strict, but scholarly, Jesuit teachers, all of whom had been excellent linguists and mathematicians.

  But the Reich School curriculum had dulled Wolf’s passion for numbers. The mathematics problems were always war-centric. He found these exercises disturbing. When party leaders spoke about the French threat, or the Russian threat, Wolf felt anxious, like all Germans. But he did not possess the bloodlust of the other cadets. He had no desire to kill. He wanted to teach in a university, like his father.

  Lang edged closer to Wolf’s elbow, sneaking peeks at the equation. He was not a particularly gifted student. He had gained admittance to the school primarily through his strength as a sprinter. Until the war had broken out, he had been considered a lock for the track and field team in the 1944 Olympics, which were to be held in London. The war threatened to ruin all of that. They spent hours each week discussing it. What if Churchill was beaten by 1944? If London could be occupied and secured by then, couldn’t the Olympics then go on as scheduled?

  Confident that his calculations were correct, Wolf left his notebook open for Lang’s wandering eyes.

  Minutes later, the math instructor stood, his walrus-like torso filling the space between his desk and the chalkboard. “Stand up!” the instructor barked. “Leave your tests where they are! We will march in an orderly fashion to the gymnasium.”

  A confused silence fell over the room. The cadets were scheduled to be in class for another 40 minutes. “What’s going on?” Wolf whispered.

  “Told you,” Lang said quietly. “Something’s up.”

  They filed out of class and crossed the athletic field en route to the gymnasium. It was already crowded with students. Red tapestries featuring enormous swastikas hung from either side of a stage. A pianist manhandled an upright piano, playing a Wagner-esque march that Wolf recognized as one of Puzzi Hanfstängel’s compositions for Hitler. He had last heard it at the annual midnight rally in Munich’s Odeonsplatz – a large outdoor plaza just outside Munich’s urban palace – where thousands of newly minted SS officers pledged their loyalty to the führer.

  Lang, the taller of the two boys at six foot three, stood on tiptoe and peered over the crowd. “I see Himmler,” he said. “Vogel is there too.”

  They were suddenly pushed by a wave of students arriving behind them. Older boys who lived in one of the other school houses. The crowd surged forward, then sideways. Wolf was swept toward the far wall. He had lost Lang. In an institution that did everything in an orderly fashion, this was an unusual moment of mayhem.

  The music suddenly stopped. A voice came over the public address system. It was Himmler’s.

  “In war,” he said, “Possessions are destroyed. Entire families may die. There is but one thing that survives, and that is the glory of a boy’s deeds for his country. Today Albert Hoppe demonstrated his courage in front of my own eyes. Albert Hoppe is an inspiration for all of us!”

  Wolf was suddenly filled with pride. It was true that he feared Himmler. Every rational German did, and Wolf did more than most. But there was no denying that he was a natural-born leader. Hearing Albert’s name spoken by such a man was exquisite.

  The reichsführer then read from the Oera Linda book, a text written in Old Frisian that the cadets had read in their Germanic studies classes. Himmler’s interest in ancient Germanic religions was well known. Wolf’s own father, who had once worked under Himmler, claimed that the reichsführer not only believed in reincarnation, but also believed that he was the re-embodiment
of King Henry the Fowler.

  Some said that Himmler was in fact a warlock. They talked of his magical ability to motivate people to do things that were against everything they had ever been taught. Wolf did not find this so difficult to believe. The regime had come into power when he was only a toddler, but when people spoke of the transformation of Germany since the Treaty of Versailles, the poverty they described was unfathomable today. He had only ever known Germany as a strong, spirited and seemingly invincible force. And all he had known since the age of 11 was victory. Since 1938, war announcements had rolled through school like sporting news. Victory in Poland. Victory in France. Victory in the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Norway. Alliance with Romania. It was assumed that each new invasion would automatically be followed by a victory within days or weeks.

  Wolf refocused on the stage, where Himmler was still talking. “We must find a new set of values for our people,” he said. “We must once again be rooted in our ancestors and grandchildren, the eternal sequence of our destinies. Let us follow the example of this brave boy who cared nothing for the physical world, and gave everything for society.”

  Wolf felt a hand on his arm and looked up. It belonged to a black-uniformed SS soldier with two parallel silver stripes and two silver pips on his lapel. A scharführer. Not quite an officer, but nevertheless, someone deserving of wide berth.

  “Sebastian Wolf?” the soldier said even though the reichsführer was not yet finished with his speech. “How would you like to meet Himmler?”

  Wolf did not hear himself say yes. Nevertheless he found himself following the scharführer outside, where the sun had given way to a cold drizzle. He was escorted across campus to the third floor of the yellow mansion, where he was seated on a bench in the hallway outside the headmaster’s office.

  *

  He sat alone for nearly an hour. His legs felt rubbery. He was thirsty. He had not been filled with this much anxiety and dread since his father’s funeral, when Gertrude had asked him to go to the coffin and kiss his father’s corpse on the forehead. He had not wanted to feel the coolness of the skin. Had not wanted to face the unbearable stillness of the hands folded across his chest. And yet he could not disappoint her. She pleaded with him. It was somehow important. As if to prove his devotion. Or perhaps just to verify that it was real.