Winter Men

by Jesper Bugge Kold

  August lay in one of the stalls. Though it was covered with hay, there wasn’t enough of it to cushion him from the hard stone floor. He tried to see out the broken windows, but they were filmed over with fine crystals of ice, turning the glass opaque. It reminded him of the Alster in winter.

  He heard Falkendorf telling his favorite story, the one about the children in Kraków. He’d heard it before, and so had the others, but this time it was for Kreidl and Lohmeyer’s benefit. They were new and so they listened, enraptured, to the officer’s tale.

  Stanislav Novak lay beside August. Stan was a Pole from Kunowice, near the Oder River. Before the war, the river had formed a natural border between Germany and Poland. Stanislav, whom Mertz disparagingly called “Polack Girl” because of his soft facial features, brown eyes, and heart-shaped mouth, was from a hardy stock not known for giving up. When everyone else was spent following a long day’s march and threw themselves down in the first good place they could find, Stanislav stood back with a cockeyed grin, as if he’d been resting all day. He said it was because his family had slogged in the fields day in and day out to put food on the table, so he was used to toiling from sunup to sundown.

  Stanislav was the youngest of six children. His five older sisters had married five brothers from the same family—which might make it quite convenient if they wanted to complain to each other about their in-laws. The two families were like a Gordian knot braided insolvably together. Unfortunately the family had no younger daughters waiting longingly for Stanislav to return from the front.

  Stanislav didn’t say much, but he and August were on good terms. They both frequently kept to themselves, but August noticed how the rest of the platoon respected Stanislav on account of his skills as a soldier, while the same was not true of him.

  He glanced at the others in the stall, all of whom belonged to his squad. He smelled the rancid stench of their clothes, which for weeks had alternated between clammy and dry, making their odor practically as visible as a thick mist around each of them. They were filthy as shit. His gaze landed on Rochus Gildehaus, whose big white teeth flashed every time he smiled, and he smiled often. He was leaning against the wall next to Rolf Mertz, a short, sinewy man with yellow teeth. August saw nothing redeeming in the man. He was a nuisance, the way a fly buzzing around the room is a nuisance. August hated that Mertz had dubbed him “Blondie” because he thought August deferred to others in the same cowed manner as Hitler’s dog. His gaze then fell on Eduard Hülsmann, who had a face like a professional criminal, though there was no wickedness in him. A piece of straw stuck to his cheek fluttered up and down with each exhale and inhale of breath. Bernd Carstens looked over at August, his eyes shining above his beard. Lorelei lay with his back to them. If he hadn’t been such an enormous man, he would have looked like a child sweetly curled up in the fetal position, both hands tucked under one cheek. Exhaustion was etched into Martin Wander’s face. His matted beard and filthy appearance made him look like an unemployed, down-on-his-luck chimney sweep. He sat with his arms around his knees, rocking gently back and forth. No one in Germany would have invited any of these men into their homes or offered them a heel of bread or something hot to drink. They looked like destitute good-for-nothings who’d stab a man in the back for fifty pfennig. August was fond of them. Apart from Mertz and Falkendorf, they were all good men.

  They had literally marched into Russia. Walked until their boots felt like lead weights. Now they could travel up to thirty miles a day on their own two feet—not in trucks, half-track convoys, or horse-drawn wagons, but by putting one foot in front of the other over and over again. Of course that was nothing compared to a panzer division, which could travel between sixty and ninety miles a day, or the motorized divisions, which could travel as far as one hundred and fifty miles in a single day. But when it came to raw human strength, the soldiers in the stall had reason to be proud. And reason to be exhausted. August wasn’t made for trudging. He could handle the first twenty miles, but after that it was torture. If it hadn’t been for Stanislav’s indomitable spirit driving them both forward, August would have been left behind long ago in some ditch in Ukraine. Falkendorf surely would have been okay with that.

  Manfred Falkendorf was a braggart. He told all and sundry of his achievements in Poland; if even half of what he said was true, he’d be more beast than man. But his efforts in Poland had won him the rank of sergeant, and that commanded a certain respect. His favorite story involved an evening shortly after the invasion of Poland. He and two others had wandered aimlessly through Kraków looking for a place to warm themselves up. They’d ended up in the Kazimierz district on the Vistula’s eastern bank, which was named after a Christian king who’d treated the Jews kindly. Jews were now the primary residents of the neighborhood, and he told of how they’d pissed on the splendid Corpus Christi Basilica before crossing the circular plaza in front.

  A number of the district’s houses had been abandoned in such haste that the former occupants had left behind all their belongings. With Falkendorf in the lead, they’d entered one of these empty homes, which they’d chosen because the façade’s lavish ornamentation suggested that the owners had been wealthy. They’d found nothing of value inside and decided to light a fire to warm themselves up. In their search for something flammable, or even some better alcohol, they’d gone down into the basement. A locked door piqued their curiosity, and they found eight frightened children hiding behind it. They were hungry, dirty, and afraid. The oldest among them, a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl, kept the door key on a necklace hanging from her neck. Falkendorf grabbed the necklace and pulled her toward him. He described her as having dark, snakelike curls and a small, delicate head that fit in the palm of his hand. At first she’d resisted his overtures, but because she was hungry, she quickly lost her strength. He put a package of chocolate on a table in the center of the basement, and she set her steely-eyed gaze on it. He groped her again, and once again she resisted, but after a slap or two with the back of his hand, she’d gotten in line. He ripped her dress off her and fondled her girlish breasts with his coarse, filthy hands. Her eyes, now veiled with tears, continued to stare at the chocolate.

  “Shut your mouth, Falkendorf. I don’t want to hear your disgusting story.” Reichel had awoken. The lieutenant was the only one who dared talk like that to the brutal sergeant.

  Falkendorf lowered his voice and continued.

  “Did you give her the chocolate?” Lohmeyer asked.

  Falkendorf raised his eyebrows and patted his chest pocket, as he was still carrying around the same package of chocolate. He smiled secretively, then went on. His buddies had picked two other girls, and when they were done, the soldiers locked and barricaded the three girls in the basement again. Falkendorf explained that they would have something fun to play with if they ever returned to the house. Lohmeyer asked what they did with the other children, and he told him they’d tossed them into the river. As the children floated around in the Vistula, they’d used them for target practice. In the end Falkendorf had thrown a hand grenade into the water, because it was time for them to go find some booze. He was clearly proud of this story. Whether it was true or not, no one knew, but it served to guarantee that no one challenged Falkendorf.

  Norbert Zollner, leader of the third squad, entered the cabin. His nose was red from the cold, and a fine layer of snow covered his shoulders. He brushed it off, and it fell to the floor, where it quickly melted into small puddles. He sat down at the table beside Reichel, who had pulled out a map and a compass. Falkendorf joined them, and August listened in on their subdued conversation.

  “What about the panzer troops? Where are they?” Zollner asked.

  “Who knows?” Reichel blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief, which he then rolled up and stowed in his pants pocket. “They’re rushing ahead and leaving us with the cleanup.”

  “That’s what my big brother always did, too.” Zollner laughed hollowly. Falkendorf just grunted.


  “They’re probably in China by now,” Reichel said.

  The panzer troops’ swift progress deep into Ukraine had left the infantry and the artillery with an almost impossible task. Large pockets of Russian soldiers still needed to be fought back as the infantry advanced, and they were falling farther and farther behind the fast-moving panzer divisions.

  “Get some sleep, Zollner, you look like a sack of shit,” Reichel said, patting the group leader on the shoulder. He turned to Falkendorf. “You, too, Manfred.” Falkendorf grunted again, then began to roll a cigarette.

  August hadn’t managed to get any sleep yet when Carstens poked him and indicated that it was his turn to keep watch. Reichel had posted two guards in the hayloft. It wasn’t actually necessary, since the third platoon had positioned machine guns to the east, south, and west of the little village, and a river created a natural shield to the north. But the lieutenant was taking no chances.

  August crawled unsteadily up the rickety ladder and crawled up through the narrow hole. The old wooden loft was in such terrible condition that it looked like it might fall on the heads of the sleeping platoon below. At the other end of the loft, Hülsmann was staring out at the slumbering countryside. August scuttled over to the cast-iron window and peered out. The moon dangled on its cord like an incandescent bulb someone had forgotten to disconnect, illuminating the terrain below. He stifled a yawn. The firewood that was to keep the men warm was stacked just below the window, and the remains of a Volkswagen Kübelwagen sat like a naked skeleton beside a dead horse with a missing hind leg. Someone—maybe a hungry farmer or soldier—had probably cut it off before the body had become a deep-frozen lump. The rest of the poor animal now lay waiting to be discovered by the birds, its large, square teeth set in a grin as if it found the whole absurd scene comical.

  He scratched his groin. The day’s harvest: twenty-six lice. And there were more. It had become almost as natural to pick lice from his body as it was to piss or eat. He’d never imagined that such tiny insects could be so irritating. In fact he’d never imagined he would ever get lice or that he would have to accept it like some dog that was too lazy to get up from its nap. He yawned at the thought of a nap.

  He heard Hülsmann coughing on the other side of the loft. Suddenly the servant girl Karin peeked around the woodpile. The snow had begun to fall heavily, but the large flakes melted on her black uniform. Her white, starched apron fluttered lightly in the wind, and though she was wearing only knee-high stockings, she didn’t seem to be cold.

  He frequently dreamed of Karin. He didn’t know if it was love, but he’d thought of her constantly since the day he’d surprised her in the bathtub. That day remained vividly etched in his memory. Not like an old photo with yellowed edges, but with sharp contours and a richness of detail that most of his thoughts lacked.

  It had happened one autumn morning in 1938, in late September or early October. The red, yellow, and orange leaves had dropped from the copper beech to blanket the front lawn. His mother said the leaves had turned early that year. While the others slept, he’d stood on the dock watching the cauliflower-like cumulus clouds drift across the sky to determine the direction of the wind. Satisfied with what he saw, he crawled into the moored skiff, tied the big sail to the boom, and hoisted it up on the mast. After cinching the foresail, he cast off and shoved the boat away from the dock. Using his hip as leverage, he drew in the boom, ducked under it, and made sure to get the wind astern so the boat could travel at a good clip. The city slept as he sailed around the lake, the stillness broken only by the pleasant sound of the keel slicing through the water. Everything else fell away, and he thought only about bringing the skiff and the wind into harmony and striking the optimal airstream. It was that same quest for perfection that he noticed in his father whenever he sat at his shiny Steinway playing “Clair de Lune.” When he forgot all about Debussy and heard only his own music. He loved to hear his father play. When he’d been out on the lake for some time—just how long, he wasn’t sure—he turned the boat around, trimmed the sails, and set course back toward the house.

  He walked through the kitchen where the servants had their rooms, hoping that he might run into Karin. On Sundays they were allowed to sleep in, so there was no one around. He slathered honey on a piece of bread, which he ate at the table in the middle of the enormous kitchen. It was strange, he thought. On the one hand he wanted to see Karin more than anything, but on the other, he was afraid to see her. What would he do? What would he say? He slathered another hunk of bread with honey, then headed to the bathroom to wash his sticky fingers. He pressed down the door handle with his elbow, and there she stood.

  She was naked, completely naked. Standing in an oval zinc tub, steam enveloping her. In her hand she held a porcelain jug, which she’d just emptied over herself. She didn’t look startled. It was more like she’d been expecting him—or at the very least hoped he’d come.

  Although it had lasted no more than a few seconds, he still recalled every detail. Her smooth hair had looked even smoother when it was wet, framing her round face and making her underbite a little more evident. One of her breasts appeared to be larger and heavier than the other. One nipple had pointed directly at him. The other had pointed straight up in a more lively way. His eyes had rested briefly on the larger of her breasts, and he’d immediately felt the blood rushing to his head. He’d never imagined that a woman’s breast could be so compelling, so captivating. His gaze wandered down her abdomen, lingering on her navel, a dark cave the size of a coin. His eyes traveled farther down, along with the water slowly trickling down her body. The warm water had streamed in a thin jet from the dark hair between her legs into the tub until only droplets remained on her skin.

  Her belly was plump, her hips broad and ample; she didn’t resemble any of Fritz Klimsch’s female statues that he’d sneaked peeks of in books at the library. He’d been fascinated by those statues, but nothing compared to what he’d seen that day. She saw him staring at her, and she did nothing to cover herself, but instead let him study her body. His eyes met hers, and he admired her shiny cheeks and her mouth with its slight underbite—which he’d since kissed thousands of times whenever he was alone.

  She pulled a towel off a hook, then carefully wrapped it around herself. August had mumbled an inaudible apology before closing the door. He remembered how he’d stood by the door, his heart hammering and his body trembling. He often dreamed that he’d opened the door again, gone into the bathroom, and closed the door behind him, but he didn’t know what was supposed to happen after that.

  They hadn’t been able to look each other in the eye after that, but then August didn’t recall whether they’d ever been able to do that. Now, though they shared something, their eyes fled from each other, brushing only a back, an arm, the nape of a neck. It had been a wonderful experience, but maybe he was the only one who felt that way? He didn’t dare think about what she might feel for him, for fear that he would be disappointed.

  He frequently replayed the fantasy when he was awake, starting over from the beginning if he forgot a detail, as though to avoid reaching the end.

  He awoke to someone thumping him on the back. The blow knocked the wind out of him, and he gasped for breath. His eyes struggled to focus in the darkness, but he saw only the outline of a figure.

  Falkendorf hissed between his teeth, “You better not be fucking sleeping.”

  “I—”

  “Shut up,” he said, and shoved August toward the ladder. August crawled ahead, but Falkendorf leaped on him and sat down heavily on his chest, pinning August’s arms down with his knees. He punched August. Once, twice, three times. Hülsmann turned his head and saw them, but quickly looked away.

  Falkendorf put his mouth close to August’s ear. “If the Russians don’t kill you, I’ll do it someday.”

  Hamburg, Germany, October 25, 1941

  “Names?”

  “Abraham and Gretchen Markowitz.”

  The Gestapo man stampe
d the paper and nonchalantly waved the couple on. He’d laid his cap on the table in front of him, next to two stamps and a black ink pad. Gerhard had seen him use only one of the stamps so far. He doubted the other one was ever used. He stood behind the Gestapo man and couldn’t help but look down at the back of his head. The man’s hair was thin and blond and wispy as a doll’s and didn’t conceal the tiny orange freckles on his scalp. His ears jutted out unnaturally, and Gerhard imagined that he must have been teased in school. His neck bobbed a bit whenever he spoke.

  “Names?”

  “Max and Elsa Bromberger.”

  Before people had begun to arrive at the station, Gerhard had exchanged a few remarks with the Gestapo man, who indicated that he wasn’t happy about the work he was supposed to carry out. Maybe he felt compelled to say that. Or maybe he’d been speaking to himself, to justify his own involvement, and not to Gerhard at all.

  “Names?”

  “Kurt, Frieda, Rolf, and this one is Denny,” said the man who held a little boy.

  “Surname?”

  “Hirsch. Are we really heading to Lodz?”

  The Gestapo man shrugged lethargically.

  In the middle of October, rumors had begun circulating among Germany’s Jews that they were to be expelled from the country. The chairman of the Jewish Union in Hamburg, Dr. Max Plaut, had asked the Gestapo if the rumors were true, and he’d been relieved to hear them deny it. Two days later, however, he’d gotten a call from Claus Göttsche from the Gestapo’s Jewish Department. A thousand of the city’s Jews were to be relocated to Lodz, Poland, the following week. The detective sergeant asked Plaut to create a list with a thousand names, and the doctor refused, declaring that they could put his name at the top of the list.