Hagen shifted on the bed. He did not intend, perhaps, to draw attention to the bonds at his wrists. Ingo's hand almost, almost, moved to the knife on his belt—as if for an instant it was controlled by a will other than his own. More likely, his own will was not the firm, dependable thing he might have wished. A very old problem.
“You are blind,” said Hagen. “Always, you were blind. You look at a thing and see…I don't know. Not what is there, truly. Also with a person—you look at him and you see a character from a story. The role, not the actor.”
“I don't think so,” said Ingo, which was honest enough. He could see what Hagen meant, though.
“Na ja. So, tell me, who then is Isaac? Who then am I? Not, what part do we play.”
Ingo considered. Remembered. He kept quiet a long time. Hagen kept quiet as well, though note that he does not take his eyes off you. He is making a point: he is stronger in captivity than you in freedom.
Well, fuck that. He's just a prisoner. He counts for nothing now, if he ever did. As far as you're concerned, he is faceless and nameless. You will conduct your interrogation, and once you're satisfied with his responses, you will leave.
“Here's what I think,” said Ingo, somewhat fortified. “For starters, I think you set us all up back then. Isaac especially. I think you tracked us to the Leuchtenburg and pretended to warn us that your Jungdo buddies were looking to kick our ass. But the whole thing was a con. Your plan was to tip your pals off, first chance you got, as to where they could find us. And that's exactly what you did, because that's how it all played out.”
You sit back, awaiting his reaction. It comes in his own good time.
“Tell me what you remember, exactly,” the prisoner said. “Not at the Leuchtenburg. After that, here, in Silesia. Tell me the story. Of this”— now a measured pause, holding at arm's length the fatal word—” betrayal.”
“No,” said Ingo. “I don't have to do that.”
“That is true.”
“I don't owe you anything.”
“Of course not.”
“You know, you're lucky I didn't kill you. Because I could have. I ought to have. Back in the woods.”
“Which woods?”— pinning you with his glance.
You understand, too well, that he is asking not where but when. The frozen woods of 1944? Or the enchanted forest of 1929? I don't know, you say, perhaps too quickly, and only to yourself.
Of course you're lying.
Es war einmal, that's how they begin. Once upon a time. Es war einmal, three boys went into the forest. It was a beautiful warm day. One boy was very pale, with hair as white as summer clouds and eyes as blue as the sky. The second boy had red hair and a comical face with freckles and a mouth that was too wide and a nose as big as Pinocchio's. And the third boy, though he must have been there, was invisible.
These boys walked for what might have been hours, or it might have been only minutes, for in the forest, in those days, time behaved differently than it does now. After a while they came to a river. The river was full of quick-moving water that sparkled like diamonds and tickled your skin like a thousand shivering elvers, because it had flowed down all the way from the land of werewolves and it still held the cold of snowy peaks and also a certain mysterious power, the magic of transformation: it could change truth into fantasy, happy dreams into nightmares.
The boys took off their shoes and stuck their feet into the water, but it was too shallow for swimming and the rocks too slippery to wade out on. Then the pale boy said, There's a place where the water is deeper, where we can jump in and swim. Swell, the red-haired boy said. And the other boy said nothing, because in addition to being invisible he had no voice.
Now you may ask how the pale one knew about the place where the water was deep. But you will never learn the answer, even if you think hard about it for fifteen years.
The boys followed the river downstream and finally came to an old wooden bridge, the sort of bridge trolls like to live under. But under this bridge there was only water, clear and deep and blue and cold, though not so cold you didn't want to swim in it. By now, the day had grown quite warm and the boys were tired from all that walking.
The pale boy said, I am going to dive in from up there, and pointed up at the old wooden bridge. And the red-haired boy said, You think it's deep enough? And the invisible boy thought, No, it isn't, but he could not say so.
So the pale boy began taking off his clothes, and so did the red-haired boy. As to the third boy, who can say?
Now, the pale boy's body was beautiful. Yet even so, you feared to touch it, on account of its hardness, and also because of a dangerous power it seemed to possess.
The red-haired boy was not beautiful, but really quite odd. His limbs were gangly and his neck too thin, his ears altogether too large. Yet you did not fear to touch this unlovely body, and in fact you would have enjoyed touching it, on account of its warmth, and also because of an attracting energy it seemed to possess.
As to the third boy, who can say whether he was fat or thin, handsome or hideous? Perhaps he had no body at all—only a pair of invisible eyes that watched the other two boys clamber onto the old wooden bridge, and a secret heart that swelled with envy and longing.
They climbed and dove and came up spluttering, and they dunked each other and floated on their backs and kicked themselves leisurely to shore. And so the hours passed or perhaps only an instant, for time was behaving so strangely that it might have stopped running entirely. At last they hauled themselves onto a big rock that was warm from the afternoon sunshine. But by then the sun was falling low, and the rock was mostly in shadow, and as the naked boys lay there they began to feel cold.
We ought to put our clothes on, the invisible boy wanted to say, though he had no voice to say it.
We ought to light a fire, the pale boy said, in a voice clear and strong.
All right! said the red-haired boy, who had no intention of putting his clothes on, even though goose bumps were forming on his unlovely but magically attracting skin. You got matches?
We don't need matches, the pale boy said. He dug into the pack he carried everywhere and drew out of it a magnifying glass such as a young naturalist might carry into the woods. All we need, he said, is kindling. And he looked at the invisible boy, whom he seemed to be able to see just then, and said, Go look for some dry leaves, and some little twigs, and some bigger branches for when it gets going.
The invisible boy did not think to ask why he should gather kindling while they just lounged on the rock. It might have been that he had no mouth to ask such a question, only a pair of eyes and a heart that caused him mainly sorrow. So he did as he was bidden and returned in no time at all, for time had stopped running. But while he was gone, a terrible change had occurred.
On the rocks before him, lower down than before, just at the edge of the water, the red-haired boy lay as one who is dead. His eyes were closed, and blood was all over his unlovely skin.
The pale boy was kneeling over him and the backpack he carried everywhere was open with its contents spilled about. In one hand the pale boy held a long strip of cloth such as a young assassin might use to strangle his victims. In the other, a knife of fearsome length and sharpness. Hearing footsteps, he froze like a statue, his face as cold as a snow-topped mountain, his eyes as blue and empty as the sky.
Now the third boy, who must not have been invisible any longer, did not give thought to the awful scene that lay before him. It might have been that his actions were guided only by a heart that pumped with horror and rage. But at least his voice had returned to him, and he let out a frightful bellow. Then he set upon the pale boy, heedless of his assassin's tools, and it seemed likely that one or the other must presently die.
Suddenly, the third boy felt a terrible sharp pain in his side and looked down to find that his body was visible once more, with a long and fearsome knife sticking into it. And he froze like a statue, if a statue that was magically bleeding.
At this, the pale boy leapt up and grabbed his clothes from the rock, then ran off into the forest.
The now-visible boy stood looking at the knife dangling from one side of his belly. And though it caused him pain and there was an alarming amount of blood, it seemed to him that the knife had not actually stuck in very deep. Certainly it had not penetrated to his vital organs, owing in part to the thickness with which these organs were girded with flesh around the boy's middle. And when he put a hand to the knife, it fell with a clang to the rock.
The boy made a bandage for himself, using a length of the assassin's cloth he cut to size with the murderous blade. It might have been that, by now, his brain had started to work again. And it is certain that time was running once more, because the sun dropped ever lower behind the trees. And still the red-haired boy lay on the rocks, as still as death.
Yet he was alive. His thin chest rose and fell, the heart beat strongly beneath his unlovely skin. The now-visible boy lifted him up like a child and laid him on a softer patch of ground, away from the water. Then he took his own shirt and dipped it in the stream and began to clean the other's wounds. As he wiped the blood away he saw that the wounds were mainly on the knees and the hands and the forehead, and that of these the one on the forehead was worst. It lay just under the thick red hair at the front, as if an assailant had bashed him with a rock. Though as the third boy's brain continued slowly to work, indeed as it worked without stopping for the next fifteen years, he began to see that there could be another explanation.
There was no question of moving the red-haired boy that night. Hours went by, and he lay there as one who has fallen into an enchanted sleep. Making a fire was now impossible, for the young naturalist's magnifying glass was useless without the sun. So the third boy did the best he could; he pulled the injured boy's clothes back onto the unlovely body and lay down beside him, holding the other boy close, sharing his own body's warmth. Thus they spent the night, and all that while the now-visible boy's heart was filled with strong feelings of many kinds. He felt confusion and fright. He felt anger. He felt hope. Despair warred with determination in his breast. Hatred for the one boy wrestled with a feeling for the other that he could not name, or perhaps chose not to.
Finally, at the first light of morning, the third boy stirred himself from the rock. He looked down one last time at his friend lying there in an enchanted sleep, then bent low and kissed him very lightly beside the mouth that was too wide. But whatever magic that may have had, it was not the sort needed to break the enchantment, or maybe he was not the right sort of person to attempt it. So he stood up and said, I am going to get help. Then he set off through the forest.
He never saw the red-haired boy again. Never, ever. Because when he returned later that day, with two companions, having fled the village where a gang of assassins had arrived, the boy was gone. And though they looked and looked, and called his name in the woods, he appeared simply to have vanished, like the morning mist.
It might have been that as he slept, the red-haired boy transformed into a kind of animal, a wild stealthy creature of the forest, and that he arose and slipped away to live among his kind in the woods. Which is a thing that happened in that part of the world, in those days, and perhaps it happens still.
“To begin with,” says the prisoner, having heard this story, or those parts of it that were any of his damn business, “you nearly frightened me to death. You were bigger than I was. Older as well. Already I had seen you break the nose of one of my comrades. What did you expect me to do? Stand there while you murdered me? You were going to, I believed. You believe so yourself, don't you?”
Don't answer him. Listen maybe, don't speak. You're confused just now. The shrieking of that poor girl down the hall doesn't make you any more clearheaded.
“One more swim, we decided. One last dive, before the Schwuler gets back. I am sorry, we were cruel to you at times, I know we were. We… left you out. But again I ask you, what did you expect? We were boys, not angels. You may have had certain… ideals, certain illusions. About Isaac, especially. Don't say anything please, there is no need. I do not know or care, anymore, what you felt. What you wanted, or what held you back. I would like to say I do not care what you think of me now. Very much I would like not to care. But for some reason I cannot help it. I feel a need to…explain myself. To you.”
Not to Isaac?
The prisoner looks at you as if you'd spoken out loud. His eyes are bright but you have a sense, looking into them, there's something unhealthy about that brightness.
“Isaac and I …” Shaking his head, smiling; the smile as always defies interpretation. “Isaac and I have always had, from the start, an understanding. I mean this in no shallow sense. I do not mean a convenient mutual arrangement, though perhaps it began like that. When we met, you know, he was seeking information for his Communist friends.”
Socialist, you think. Though who could believe a good Republican would draw such fine distinctions?
“And I wanted… shall I tell you what I wanted? Perhaps not. Nothing more than the novel experience, at first. To be friends with a Jew, the most forbidden thing. To conspire together. Yes, I say conspire. You did not suspect this, I think. Isaac stole the papers and my comrades in the Jungdo vowed revenge on him—so went the story, and everyone believed it. Why should they not? Yet it seems funny to me that you fell for it. I would have expected… after all, you and I have certain things in common, have we not?”
No, you think, we have not.
You tell him: “Go on. Conspired to do what?”
“I had the access and it was natural that I should obtain the papers. Poor Cheruski, always the dotty professor. I so despised him! I thought him the summation of every filthy-minded schoolmaster I ever had known. Perhaps I despise him still. Yet I also have come to pity him, and over the years it is the pity that has weighed most heavily. So long, so wretchedly, did he wait for the call from Berlin! But there they would have eaten him alive. He never knows when to shut his mouth, he would have ended up at Oranienburg—you know, they say Stalin's son is locked up there. And that's only if he was fortunate. So I kept him in Prague, under wraps you might say, for as long as I could. Had my old classmate not been transferred out of Assignments, I might have gotten him safely to the West. Let the British figure out what to make of him, or you Amis.
“I'm drifting off subject, you say? No, you didn't, thank you, but so I am. I took the papers and gave them to Isaac, and I was so kind as to let him receive the credit as well as the blame for that. It might be, also, that he slipped a page or two from the other side into my hands, I do not remember.
“No—I shall lie to you no longer. I remember it perfectly. I remember everything. The truth is, it pains me, even now, to take from you your illusions. We all need our illusions, don't you think? God knows, I wish still to have some of mine. It would be a…a blessing to believe once more, to believe in anything. But you know what I mean. You of all people.”
Go on.
The prisoner smiles, an expression no more natural than the glow in his eyes. “Do you recall how we met? Do you recall where? It was Frau-Holle-Quell, mein Kamarad. You remember surely Frau-Holle-Quell. For myself, I will never forget it. Nor should I wish to. Many things that have happened since then I would happily forget, but not that. You were there, and I was there, and that tall fellow was with you, he was rather nice, what was his name? He came to the Leuchtenburg. And of course Cheruski was there with his little pack of disciples, and the impressive Count von Stauffenberg, about whom I could tell you a few stories. But Isaac—how did he happen to turn up there, do you suppose? Just in time to bump into our swinish Gruppenführer and get himself quite nearly killed. Might that have been a planned encounter gone wrong? Two little spies, conspiring to trade secrets, betraying their comrades, having their bit of fun? Playing— you have a wonderful term for this—playing both ends against the middle, isn't that right? Ah, but not so skilled at it, not quite yet.”
No.
“You don't believe me? Or is my English wrong? Believe me, my friend. Believe me, if for no other reason, because I am too weary to lie, I haven't the necessary concentration. Your friends will come soon and shoot me, if you don't shoot me yourself. But even were I to walk out of here alive— well, what would that mean? Five million Russians are waiting on the other side of the hill. And were I to run the other way, your Mr. Roosevelt has promised to bring whom he calls war criminals to what he calls justice, which is to say he plans to line the SS up in front of a wall somewhere. If there is a wall left standing at that point.
“But I am not afraid of death. I do not seek it, yet it holds no fear for me. We are too closely acquainted, death and I. Not friends. One might say, neighbors.”
I can imagine.
“I don't know what you think of me—as I have told you, I would prefer not to care—but you cannot possibly know the kind of war we have fought over here, on this side. You Amis landed in France five months ago, in a few months you will be riding your jeeps around Berlin, and history will record that the war was fought and won by you. But over here, my friend, we have been fighting for five years, we have lost entire generations— and surely not all our dead were war criminals. Count yourself lucky, you don't have time to hear that story. You may yet hope to fall asleep without dreading the nightmares that must come. You may hope to hold a child in your arms without thinking of other children…but perhaps we should simply leave it: You may hope. It is wonderful to hope. Another blessing.”
Don't give me that, Ingo thinks. You launch a war on three continents, and after it turns out badly you start looking for pity? You can do better than that.
“Tell me,” he says, “you've got nothing to lose. Tell me in plain language what you've done. How many of those ‘other children’ have you killed? Why does a bleeding heart like FDR want to stand you in front of a wall?”
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