Winter Men

by Jesper Bugge Kold

  At the dinner table that evening, he was still in a foul mood. Maximilian and Sophia had left the table, or rather, Ingrid had asked them to leave the table. The remark that followed came as a complete surprise.

  “I know you’re having an affair with another woman.”

  Karl slowly patted his mouth with his napkin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know you’re having an affair with another woman,” Ingrid repeated, this time more loudly. She tried to hold his gaze, but Karl evasively reached for the wine bottle and studied it. He poured some wine into his glass. Several times during the past few weeks he’d considered telling Ingrid about Helena. He’d prepared the story in his mind. “There’s something I have to tell you.” Then he’d reconsidered: “I’ve done something foolish.” He’d brooded and brooded and brooded on the best way to tell her, reflecting on how the same story could be told many different ways. It was all about finding the right words. He’d come up with a few possibilities, but in the end he’d chosen not to say anything. Now it was too late, and gone were all the mollifying speeches and variants that he’d considered—words meant to make what he’d done seem forgivable.

  “Ingrid, I’m not having an affair,” he said, his gaze still fixed on his glass. He knew his face was blank as a sheet of paper, and he feared even the slightest flinch or frown would expose him.

  “There’s no need.” She seemed calm, her voice firm. “We’re not like that, Karl. We don’t do such things.”

  Resisting her was pointless. He wasn’t sure whether he should nod or shake his head, but he settled on giving her a stiff smile. He swallowed a lump in his throat, thinking that the gulping sound must seem like a confession to her.

  “I’m taking Maximilian and Sophia to Rügen, and we’ll never discuss it again.”

  He nodded, but felt he needed to say something. “She wasn’t—”

  She held up her hand to stop him. “I don’t want to know anything about her.”

  They ate the rest of their dinner without saying another word. The food suddenly had no flavor, and he chewed in silence. He felt Ingrid’s glare on him, but he avoided her eyes. The silence was filled with contempt, a contempt for him and what he’d done. She stood and left the dining room.

  Immediately after dinner she began to pack. She planned to move back with her parents until the war was over. He couldn’t object to that. She and the children would be safe on Rügen, but he knew that his stupidity was the real reason she was leaving.

  They stood stock-still on the platform.

  “I’ll return.”

  Though he heard Ingrid’s words, he knew it wasn’t the truth. She might return physically, but she would never return to him, and their life would not return to what it had been. Their life together was irrevocably finished. He held her tight. She seemed limp in his arms, and he released her clumsily. She kissed him on the cheek, a dry, disinterested kiss, as if her lips were aiming for the least possible contact with his skin. He wanted to take her in his arms again, but she pulled away. He tousled Maximilian’s hair.

  “I’ll miss you three,” he said as he patted Sophia on the cheek. When they boarded the train, he walked along the cars and watched them take their seats. As he observed them through the window, he felt burdened by the question of whether or not he would ever see them again.

  The train chugged away from the platform. His throat closed up, blocking a lump that could go neither up nor down, but just expanded in his gullet. He turned away and started toward home.

  Hamburg, Germany, July 27, 1943

  Such incredible news! For the first time in ages, Karl felt alive. It was as if his blood had finally begun to circulate again. He just wished Ingrid were there to share his joy. It was one of those moments in life one shouldn’t experience alone. He suddenly felt old. Tomorrow he would turn forty-five, and soon he would be a grandfather.

  He hugged Hilde and felt the heat of his daughter’s body warm his own. His body and mind had waited so long for something positive to happen. It was a relief to finally feel good again.

  Heinz stood behind Hilde, looking a little shy. Karl let go of Hilde and offered him his hand.

  “Congratulations. Congratulations to you both.”

  They sat in the living room. Karl hadn’t seen Heinz since before the war, but he recalled the last time they’d been together. Heinz had just joined the SS, and he’d proudly shown off his uniform, demonstrating where his distinctions would go on his pockets. But the man who now sat across from Karl was the exact opposite of the Heinz who’d wanted to take on the world. Although no medals gleamed from his pockets, it seemed that sort of recognition no longer meant anything to him. Instead he appeared taciturn and damaged.

  Heinz had been in one of the special task units, and during the past year he’d been stationed in Maly Trostenets, an extermination camp outside of Minsk. Karl could see in his eyes that he was not the same person. His eyes were squinty, and he spoke more softly than he had before.

  At the hospital in Konstanz, Karl had met an officer who’d told him about all the gruesome things he’d experienced at a similar camp, in Majdanek. He described the film roll constantly unspooling in his head with images of the camp, like a horror flick or a war movie for madmen. No doubt the same was true for Heinz as well. Karl noticed that he didn’t finish his sentences, and he often gazed distractedly into the distance. Hilde excused him by saying that he was tired. And Hilde was happy because it didn’t appear that he would be deployed again. Couldn’t she see that he was no longer the same person? He’d been sent home. Karl could tell. Like an unstable mental patient, he’d been found unfit, then discarded.

  Hilde stood, and the two men looked at her. She excused herself and went to the bathroom.

  “She needs to use the bathroom all the time,” Heinz said quietly.

  For a moment they sat in silence. Karl lit a cigarette.

  “Do you know what we did there?” Heinz finally asked, scrutinizing his palms.

  “I do.”

  “We shot them. I shot them. So many. And when I wouldn’t do it anymore, they mocked me. They mocked me.” Their eyes met, and Karl noticed that Heinz’s were wet, glistening.

  “They called me weak. But wasn’t I the strong one because I said no?”

  “Yes,” Karl said. “Yes, you were.”

  Karl tried to find the right words to console Heinz, but he found that he didn’t want to console him. The man’s eyes were searching for forgiveness, for soothing words, but Karl couldn’t bring himself to say them. He simply couldn’t, because he hated his son-in-law, and it wasn’t until now that he realized it. He’d tried over and over again to convince himself that everything would get better, that Heinz would mature and come around. But he knew what the special task units had done; he’d heard the rumors about Maly Trostenets—and men who’d done what he did were contemptible. Unworthy of his daughter.

  Hilde returned.

  “Listen. Let’s go out to dinner tomorrow, the three of us. It’s my birthday, and we’ll have a pleasant evening and forget all about the war. Just the three of us,” Karl said, to say something.

  Hilde embraced him again, and he followed them to the door. Karl watched them go from the large window beside the main entrance. Hilde took Heinz’s hand, and they headed down Heilwigstrasse, their fingers braided together.

  Karl went to the sunroom, which made him think of Ingrid. Out in the garden, summer had turned everything green. Glancing at the copper beech, he thought of the unbearably dry Russian summers.

  Karl recalled an episode when the men in his company had celebrated a passing freight train outside of Minsk. “Hamburg” was written on the cars, and everyone had considered it a greeting from home. Later he learned that the train was filled to the gills with Hamburg’s Jews—Jews on their way to Maly Trostenets.

  Karl lay in the bed on the first floor, unable to curb his train of thought. It was absurd: Gerhard had sent the Jews from Hamburg,
Karl had waved at them en route, and Heinz had met them at the end of their journey. Karl could clearly picture what Heinz had done in the special unit and in the camp, and now Heinz was imprisoned by his own conscience. Karl was disgusted at his son-in-law, but maybe there was a trace of hope after all? Today he’d witnessed signs of another man living inside Heinz, a better man; it was visible in the tenderness he’d shown Hilde, as if he recognized that he needed to change. That only by being a good man could he remedy the things he’d done. No, Karl couldn’t delude himself. Heinz had declared his hatred of the Jews and his love for the führer before the war, and all the human lives he had on his conscience could not be removed, not even with kindness. But what was Karl to do? His daughter was married to Heinz, and if the choice was between seeing Hilde—and therefore Heinz as well—or not seeing either of them, then he would be forced to accept him as a part of his life.

  He let the thought go and rolled over in bed. He didn’t think there was anyone else in the house. It was possible that Karin was in her room, but she usually stayed with her sister on the outskirts of the city. The cook, Mrs. Hanke, was with family, and Albert and Mr. Nikolaus had gone.

  All at once his bed seemed enormous, and he felt like a boy who’d sneaked into his parents’ double bed. He felt lonely. It was a hot evening, and he knew that between the heat and his ruminations, he’d never fall asleep. He got up.

  He pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt. In his office he found an unopened bottle of schnapps. With the bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, he went upstairs. All the furniture and other flammable objects had been removed from the second floor, and all that remained were bare floors and walls with faded squares where pictures had once hung. It was his house, goddamn it, and it vexed him that others—the English and American bombers—had any influence on how it was furnished. That was exactly what he’d told Ingrid, but she’d just shaken her head in resignation and continued carrying things downstairs.

  A music box stood on the floor in Sophia’s room. A ballerina had paused in the middle of a pirouette. He turned the little key on the back of the box, and she began dancing to some piece of classical music that he recognized but couldn’t remember the name of. In Maximilian’s room rows of tin soldiers were positioned in formations, ready for battle. A single wooden floorboard divided the two armies, who would attack each other as soon as Maximilian returned. It would be a bloodbath, Karl thought. He was seized by the knowledge that he would never see Maximilian again, or Sophia or Ingrid. But he had only himself to blame. Irritated, he kicked the soldiers, which scattered and fell. There were no survivors.

  He went into his old bedroom. It was empty. He opened the door to the balcony and sat in a patio chair. The air was still warm. Slowly, but purposefully, he began draining the contents of the bottle. He gazed across the city and its many towers. It was an impressive sight. The church towers—St. Michael’s, St. James’s, St. Peter’s, and St. Catherine’s—and the pointy courthouse tower all bore witness to a city that refused to be broken.

  He glanced over at the slender clock tower of St. Michael’s Church. I wonder if Gerhard’s home, he thought, but he knew deep down that he was in Neuengamme. They hadn’t spoken since Karl returned. Before the war they’d lived in the same city but inhabited their own little corners of the world. The gulf between them had only widened since the war began. Gerhard would never understand what Karl had experienced on the eastern front, and Karl had no idea how Gerhard wound up in a concentration camp. Gerhard, of all people.

  He felt a kind of relief as the schnapps began to take effect. His feet prickled, and a stream of giddiness flushed through him. He decided that he didn’t want to think anymore that day, but just go wherever the alcohol took him.

  That’s why he did nothing when the air raid sirens went off. The oil refineries and the shipyards were usually the targets. So why should he be afraid? He filled his glass to the rim, and some of the liquid sloshed onto his hand. The alarm—a piercing screech with a light vibrato—continued to sound and eventually died out, like a car engine, only to start again, building toward the siren’s insistent note. There were two kinds of siren: first a warning and then the full alarm, which meant that it was time to take cover. But in his mind the two merged into one. He could hear the drone of the airplanes now. The noise grew louder and louder in his head. He looked up. The illumined night sky was full of black shadows. They came from the south like migratory birds returning home to breed.

  As the bombs began to fall on the other side of the Alster, a voice inside him told him to run. But he didn’t want to go to the bomb shelter alone. So he sat there with his eyes wide, spellbound by the spectacle unfolding before him. The sky was illuminated and filled with a sound that rose above the lake with unabated strength, causing the house to tremble. The deafening impacts and the thundering, pounding booms from the city’s flak cannons—in tandem with the blinding flashes and missiles racing across the sky—lifted his spirits. There was something extraordinary about this catastrophic scene. He started to laugh. A night fighter crashed into the lake, drawing a tail of fire in its wake. He laughed again but couldn’t hear himself above the infernal racket emanating from the harbor and the inner city. He nonetheless managed to hear a thin voice behind him.

  Karin was shouting at him, though the thick wall of noise eclipsed her words. She walked across the terrace to him. Fear made her eyes small. She put her mouth close to his ear.

  “You can’t sit out here, Mr. Strangl,” she screamed. He could tell she was terrified.

  He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t budge. He teetered for a moment. Karin helped him up and supported him as best she could. They went inside but stumbled onto the floor. Karin tried to lift him, and he wobbled uncertainly to his feet again. Another tremor that felt as though it came from the center of the earth shook the house. Plaster rained down from the ceiling, blanketing them under a fine, snowlike layer. He looked at her and laughed, and they fell to the floor again just as an enormous boom resounded above the lake.

  Neuengamme, Germany, July 28, 1943

  The deep, distant rumble of the countless bombers faded, and a strange silence settled over the camp. Gerhard and the others emerged from the bunker, where they’d taken refuge when the wind carried the sound of the first air raid sirens across the marshland. Now it was almost three in the morning. The people, the heat, and the certainty that family members were in the city made it impossible to sleep in the bunker. They went outside and took a few deep breaths before going back to their beds in the barracks.

  Gerhard climbed up one of the guard towers to view the city. The sky was illuminated in a radiant orange sheen, and searchlights continued to flicker nervously. The powerful light from the city made several of them think that it was morning, and some of the officers glanced at their watches in confusion. An enormous mushroom cloud of smoke hung above Hamburg. Gerhard guessed that the oil depots on the harbor had been hit.

  “Holy shit,” Borg said. He’d climbed the tower, too, and now stood wide-eyed, staring at the terrible scene, flames reflected in his pupils. “The city really took a beating this time,” he mumbled softly.

  They watched the burning city in silence. Gerhard had trouble focusing his mind. He thought of his apartment on Jakobstrasse, of his book, and of course of Karl and Ingrid. Thank god they lived on the Alster’s southern bank a good distance from downtown, but it appeared that the entire city may have been bombed. Everything was on fire—at least that’s what it looked like—and an acrid stench filled the air.

  Borg put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a catastrophe. Nothing less. No one could’ve survived that.”

  “Is your family there?” Gerhard asked, uncomfortable with the doctor’s touch.

  “My old mother.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “She’s dead,” Borg replied.

  “Mine, too.”

  And maybe my brother’s dead now, too, Gerhard thought. He was overw
helmed by a devastating certainty, and he knew of only one way to rid himself of it. A few minutes later, in the Führer’s Lodge, he poured himself a tall glass of schnapps.

  Hamburg, Germany, July 28, 1943

  His mouth was dry, and his eyelids were tacky and opened quite slowly. When Karl forced them all the way open, he was startled by what he saw, then realized it was only one of Maximilian’s tin soldiers aiming its gun at him. He looked around. He lay on the floor in Maximilian’s room, his cheek wet with drool. He stumbled to his feet and discovered that his fly was open. He glanced down at himself and noted tiny splatters of blood on his pants. A few drops had worked their way into the light gabardine fabric and now rested there raising questions he couldn’t answer.

  Vague images from the evening before started coming to him—the bombs, the booms, the brilliant flashes of light, the empty bottle of schnapps. The chubby servant girl had been with him. He remembered falling. His knee was filthy. The horrible realization of what must have transpired gradually came to him. He raced downstairs into the kitchen in a panic. He had to find Karin and determine what had happened, or apologize for what had happened. He didn’t know which.

  The sun had yet to rise, but Mrs. Hanke was already there. The cook told him that Karin had gone. She’d left the house a half hour earlier carrying her suitcase. A smile that might have been masking reproach transformed into one of relief. “I’m glad we made it through the night.”

  “Yes, me, too,” Karl said, disoriented by the realization that it wasn’t even five o’clock.

  “It’s a good thing your wife and children are safe,” the cook said, handing him a cup of coffee. “This is one of those days we should have a real cup of coffee,” she rambled on, though she didn’t pour herself a cup.