Winter Men

by Jesper Bugge Kold

  “Gerhard?” he said in a questioning tone of voice. His brother didn’t respond, so he repeated his name.

  Finally Gerhard looked up. Karl saw the sadness in his eyes. He noticed that the corners of his brother’s eyes were moist and that his upper lip quivered slightly. Gerhard wet his lips. “My SS number is 324.584. I report to Major Walter von Amrath, transport division.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re colleagues now,” Gerhard said laconically.

  PART TWO

  Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 25, 1962

  He got off the bus at the Plaza de la República. He blocked the sunlight with his hand and stared up at the tall obelisk in the center of the plaza. He cast a glance over his shoulder and headed up Avenida 9 de Julio. The broad boulevard was overwhelming and loud, and the scale of it frightened him. Nevertheless, he pushed on. The Teatro Colón came into view to his left. A poster announced in large letters that José Neglia was the headliner for that evening’s ballet production. The blast of a ship’s horn down at the harbor made him think of Cap Arcona. If they had all moved to this wonderful city on that great ship before the war, they could have lived without the perpetual nagging of their conscience and the constant, uneasy fear of being tracked down. They could have avoided the war altogether. But they’d stayed put in Germany, and his brother had shot himself. And so he was lonelier than ever.

  His job at the German export company was mind numbing, though it occupied only four hours of his day. But time had become an odd thing. Although he was happy to have to work only a few hours each day, he didn’t know how to fill the remaining hours.

  He turned right and walked down Avenida Santa Fe. A group of schoolchildren blocked the entrance to Plaza San Martín as their teacher, a short woman in her early fifties, made sweeping gestures with her arms to explain the statue at the park’s entrance. He studied her and decided that she’d been beautiful once.

  He’d barely set one foot into the park before he caught sight of the jacaranda trees, whose flower-covered tops arched over the path like soft pillows. The subtle hue of the pale-violet flowers surprised him anew every spring. Though he’d lived in Argentina for many years, he’d never grown used to the shifting of the seasons. The only thing he lamented was that the beautiful trees didn’t have a scent.

  A man on a bench studied Gerhard over a copy of the Buenos Aires Herald. For a moment Gerhard thought of turning around and heading back the way he’d come. He felt as though he was constantly being watched—at work, in the bank, on the bus, in the square—as if a pair of eyes was resting on him forever and always. Even when he lay in his bed at night, he would search for an observer but could never locate him.

  He watched the man slowly fold up his newspaper and stick it under his arm. Gerhard continued walking, but the man remained seated on the bench. Outside the busy Estación Retiro train station, he boarded a bus bound for the Florida district. At the back of the bus, he found an empty seat beside a large woman. The press of her thigh against his made him uncomfortable.

  Gerhard got off at his stop; a man was standing there puffing on a pipe. It was a warm day, and his jacket was draped over his arm. He noticed that the man didn’t have armpit stains on his white shirt, as he himself did. He guessed him to be around thirty years old, and he didn’t look either South American or European.

  Gerhard began to walk. Again he sensed he was being watched. When he turned, he saw the man was going in the same direction as he was. Gerhard picked up his pace. Eyes flickering, he glanced about, hoping to find a side street, but he knew the area and was well aware there was no place for him to hide.

  It had been many years since he’d tested the limits of his body, and he was surprised that he couldn’t move any faster. His pulse raced, and before long he was gasping for breath. His legs seemed stiff and his joints sore, less flexible than they’d once been. He glanced over his shoulder. The man was still there. Sweat dripped from Gerhard, but the man seemed unperturbed by the heat.

  In a few hundred yards, he would be home. If he got that far. He would go through the house, into the backyard, and out the little passageway in the back. The man would have to walk all the way around and down the next side street to get to the passageway, so he might be able to get rid of him that way.

  A white Ford Consul was parked on the curb, idling. As he passed it, a cigarette butt was tossed on the sidewalk in front of him and the window rolled up. The man was still behind him. Dots appeared in his vision. His body was begging him to stop, but he forced it onward. A stitch formed in his left side.

  As he struggled toward his garden gate, he heard a car door slam behind him. He turned around. He could no longer see the man. The white Ford Consul slowly rolled away from the curb. He peered at its windows, but it accelerated with a roar before disappearing down a side street, its tires squealing.

  He stood panting on the flagstones leading to his house. He looked down the street, imagining the car careening around the corner on two wheels. He pictured Adolf Eichmann at the gallows, captured in the same city. He’d been hanged in Israel just a few months ago. And now they had come for him! Was it Mossad? Why hadn’t they nabbed him? He was a tired old man unable to defend himself. Why hadn’t they apprehended him?

  Relieved and confused, he put his key in the lock. He retrieved two suitcases from the small space beneath the stairwell and immediately began to pack.

  Berlin, Germany, September 6, 1939

  Karl sat on the train as it moved toward Berlin. His cheek against the glass, he watched as the train flew past the flat landscape. The fields, the cows, the gardens all appeared unchanged, as though someone had forgotten to tell the people here that the war had begun. He thought of Gerhard and couldn’t believe his brother was so naïve. Everyone would be affected by the war; Gerhard wouldn’t be able to hide in a transport division. But that’s how Gerhard had always been. He lived in his own little world of numbers and books, a world Karl did not understand. Yes, they were bound by blood, but Karl occasionally thought that might be the only thing that connected them, because they often seemed like two strangers. Now they were two strangers heading to war.

  Late in August 1939, a few days before the invasion of Poland, Germany had mobilized its reserves, and Karl had been summoned. The conversation with Ingrid that followed had been anything but pleasant. He recalled it almost verbatim. Irritated, he’d asked her if she’d heard him. He knew Ingrid—she would simply pretend she hadn’t heard anything she didn’t want to hear.

  “Supply troops,” he repeated.

  She nonchalantly asked him when he’d be leaving, and he replied that he needed to report to his division in two weeks. She set a bouquet of roses on the table. There were many colors and varieties in her rose garden, but she’d plucked only yellow flowers that day. She asked him to hand her a vase as if they were talking about something as meaningless as the weather. He remarked on her beautiful bouquet and asked if the flowers were from the garden, immediately aware of how foolish the question sounded.

  “Of course they’re from the garden. No, the big one.” She turned and grabbed the vase off the mahogany countertop behind Karl, who was forced to step aside. She carefully arranged the bouquet and then tilted her head as she assessed her work. She hummed softly as she set the vase of flowers in the middle of the table. Karl followed her into the sunroom, where she began to snip withered leaves from the plants.

  “Say something.”

  “What do you want me to say?” she asked with affected wonder.

  “Don’t you even want to know where I’m going?”

  “You’re going to war. It’s the same everywhere. So one place is as good as another.” She stared out at the lake as she spoke.

  “I’m going to Berlin. I’ll be home again soon,” he said, putting his arms around her shoulders. He kissed her neck. She resisted, not much, but she resisted. “I’ll be home soon.”

  “That’s nice. Bring some bread hom
e for coffee, will you?” She pulled away from him and sat in one of the wicker chairs. She picked up the cigarette pack from the table and lit one. She looked past Karl, who sat facing her.

  He shook his head despondently. “I don’t understand you.”

  A junior officer met him at the station, and together they rode to the supply depot located outside of the city. The car came to a halt in front of an underground depot; the part of the building visible above ground level was windowless. The driver explained that the enemy’s bombers couldn’t detect them that way.

  Karl was stationed at the supply depot outside Berlin during the invasion of Poland. Daily life there was monotonous, and the glaring light of the ceiling lamps made people either crazy or depressed. The work reminded Karl of all the boring administrative assignments at the factory that he had always pawned off to Müller. In his absence Müller had assumed responsibility for day-to-day operations, so Karl knew the factory was in good hands. His honorary membership in the SS hadn’t demanded much of his time—he’d gotten a few invitations, shaken some hands, and toasted with some smiling faces—but the SS had tripled its orders with Strangl Clothing Factory as a result.

  Soon he began to long for a spot closer to the war, if not on the front line. After Christmas—what was now called War Christmas—he applied for a transfer, and in February 1940 he became part of the Seventh Panzer Division’s supply troops. That same month the division got a new commander. His name was Erwin Rommel.

  His decision to transfer didn’t sit well with Ingrid. Karl’s division entered Belgium on May 10, 1940, with General Hermann Hoth’s Fifteenth Army Corps. On May 13 they crossed the Meuse River, on May 18 they occupied the northern French city of Cambrai, and on June 10 Rommel reported back to headquarters that the division had reached the English Channel west of Dieppe.

  On June 22 a French delegation signed a ceasefire agreement in the Forest of Compiègne. The Seventh Panzer Division was then ordered to Paris, where they were to prepare for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England. Herman Göring’s Luftwaffe was, however, unable to dominate the airspace above the English Channel, and the operation was called off. The division experienced a peaceful interlude after that, functioning as an occupational force in the Paris suburb of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where the German army had established its headquarters. The division was transferred later that winter to the Bordeaux region, where the ungodly cold of the capital was replaced with more hospitable southerly skies.

  Although most of the men missed the city and its many jazz clubs, variety shows, champagne, and beautiful women, Karl preferred Bordeaux. In Paris food had been a necessary evil, but in Bordeaux they enjoyed an abundance of wine, cheese, bread, and sausages. Before long he was introduced to a sweet white wine that put him in a state of culinary ecstasy when it was accompanied with dry cheese—and then of course there was the red wine. Fields in all directions were packed with row upon row of bare grapevines; people in this region didn’t waste their fertile soil on cattle or pig farming. Instead, they ate fish and poultry and duck. He often went to the market in the little fishing village of Blaye-et-Sainte-Luce north of Bordeaux to purchase vegetables, fish, cheese, ham, and sausages for the company cook to prepare. Karl enjoyed his time in western France, where he ate and slept well; the only thing that was missing was his family.

  Bad Godesberg, Germany, April 6, 1941

  Karl kicked a stone into the river. It flew in an arc and skipped once on the water’s surface before sinking without a sound. The Rhine, the old border of the Roman Empire, was as calm as the Elbe. It flowed quietly past as if trying to avoid discovery. Rivers had an untroubled quality about them, as if time wasn’t a part of their reality, as if the water stood still and instead the world around it was flowing past. In the water he saw the reflection of the gentle mountains on the opposite shore. His cigarette sizzled briefly when it struck the water, erasing the reflection. A filthy cargo ship carrying short stacks of coal floated silently upriver. A man in a wool cap was painting the rust-red stern as the ship sliced slowly through the water. The makeshift scaffold fastened to the hull had room for only the man and a bucket of paint. Dangling his legs like a playful child, he slowly coated the ship with black paint. At the other end of the ship, the wheelhouse rose like a watchful prairie dog, and a bald man—wearing tight suspenders that appeared to hold his belly in place—stood in the doorway gazing absently toward land. He rapped his pipe against the rail and disappeared into the wheelhouse.

  A ray of sunlight cracked the dense cloud cover. The air was warm, and Karl was happy they were approaching winter’s end.

  A bird trilled in a tree by the roadside, and he tried to locate it. But he soon gave up and turned his attention back to the river. He felt a keen desire to shuck off his uniform and leap into the clear water, which looked particularly enticing in the sunlight. He recalled the legend of Lorelei from his school days. A young woman, it was said, threw herself off the cliff in despair because her beloved had been unfaithful. She’d been luring seamen toward the cliffs ever since, ensnaring them with her beauty and her voice as she brushed her long, golden hair, and causing countless shipwrecks.

  He heard a Zarah Leander song, as alluring as Lorelei’s, and turned and glanced up at Hotel Dreesen. Paul Piroska had dragged a portable gramophone onto one of the balconies and was waving down at him. Four soldiers sat playing cards at a folding table on the rocky riverbank. Coins clinked, and one of the players, a man with a low forehead and a Frankfurt accent, hurled obnoxious expletives. Karl recognized the man beside him, or at least knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was—even before he’d been reassigned to the division. Lieutenant Alfred Wasner had wound up in the hospital in Paris with two bullets from a prostitute’s .22, one in his derriere and the other in his femoral artery, which had nearly taken the horny young man’s life. Only a quick intervention by one of the regiment’s doctors had saved him. When Karl heard the story from Piroska, he’d wondered why the doctor was there at the brothel, but that was never explained.

  All the men around the table were from the panzer divisions and had that all-or-nothing attitude characteristic of the tank commandos and their men. Some were braggarts who didn’t view the supply troops as real soldiers, least of all Karl, who was an old man compared with the others. Other men his age were majors, generals, and the like—but what did he have to prove? It didn’t seem to matter that he’d won medals for his fighting in the last war—they had no respect for him. Until he’d been called up, Karl had harbored a romantic dream that he was still an eighteen-year-old soldier who could march sunup to sundown. He’d since realized that he was an old-timer; his legs were sore, his back ached, and his entire body hurt. And then there were his hands, but only he knew about that. They had no use for old men like him on the front line.

  In February 1941 the Seventh Panzer Division had been transferred to Bad Godesberg on the Rhine, where they were to await further instructions. Erwin Rommel was called to Berlin, where he was appointed commander of the German Africa Corps. A general major with an impossibly long name—Hans Emil Richard Freiherr von Funck—assumed responsibility for the Ghost Division. The very opposite of Rommel, von Funck hailed from an old Prussian military school where battles were led at a command station a safe distance from the fighting and not, as Rommel had, from the front line.

  The division had been built so that it operated almost like a living organism. Everything was controlled at the division headquarters by the top officers, with General Major von Funck as commanding officer. The division’s top supply officer was Major Helmut Strunz, an upstanding man from Duisburg who, like Karl, had fought in northern France during the Great War. The supply service consisted of six smaller truck companies—also called “columns”—and three large companies that transported fuel. Karl had been promoted twice and now commanded one of the latter fuel companies.

  The column was made up of more than sixty men and twenty-six vehicles. Twenty trucks for transportin
g gasoline—divided into four groups—two trucks for transporting other materiel, a small personnel carrier, and three motorcycles. Each of the group’s five trucks had a driver and a soldier armed with a carbine. The unit also had a medical officer, a cook, kitchen assistants, staff to distribute gasoline to the panzer regiments, and personnel from the transport division to convey the column’s weapons, supplies, reserve parts, and more.

  Sergeant Major Paul Piroska was the supply column’s second in command, and he quickly became indispensable to Karl, who viewed him as the military counterpart to Hans Müller. Administrative work bored Karl—numbers, numbers, numbers, trucks, trucks, trucks, everything on wheels—but Piroska threw himself into every assignment with an enviable eagerness. It was his job to ensure that everything functioned properly, and that’s what he did. Piroska was a plainspoken, jovial man of twenty-eight, with a long, pronounced face that culminated in a strong jaw beneath a large, broad nose and smiling, narrow-lipped mouth. He tried combing back his hair, but his thick brown curls couldn’t be tamed with pomade or brilliantine or Brylcreem. Although he was small of stature and build, his face gave him a commanding presence. He had a master’s in law from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. On the day after his final exam in 1937, Paul had packed his suitcase and bought a return ticket to Passau. His birth city and a girl by the name of Liesel were tugging at him, but his hatred of Munich also played a role. According to Paul, the city of Munich buzzed with evil. The Nazis were in charge, and if you didn’t say “heil Hitler” with the appropriate conviction in your voice, it was a dangerous place to live. For a lawyer who didn’t work for the party, Munich was not the best place to be.

  He and Liesel were married in 1939, the same year as Hilde and Heinz, and Karl often regretted that his elder daughter hadn’t found a man like Paul. He took solace in the fact that Heinz was in Poland now. He’d joined the SS and belonged to some kind of special deployment group. Karl didn’t know what those task forces did; truth be told, he didn’t care.