One platoon parked outside the city, while the other two drove up the curving main street past the many small shops. Lieutenant Burchert and his men began herding people out of their houses, then forced them to march ahead of the trucks up the street toward the main square.
It was Saturday, and the square was teeming with people because the tobacco rations had arrived that day. Stalls had been set up with fish, meat, vegetables, and fruit for sale, and Karl immediately sensed the peaceful atmosphere of a place that had never had any contact with an enemy. Until this moment. A newly trimmed man stepped out of a barbershop and ran his hand gently through his dark hair, but his satisfied expression quickly fell away when he spotted the camouflaged trucks.
As people got off the bus, Karl noticed a young blond woman being greeted by an older woman with open arms and a kiss on her cheek. The young woman bore a slight resemblance to Hilde, and Karl swallowed a lump in his throat. He shook his head to rid himself of the feeling. He couldn’t be sentimental today. This day would require a lot from him, and he couldn’t allow his emotions to get in the way.
The cars stopped next to the mayor’s office, whose windows were concealed by colorful shutters. Karl ordered Darrah to find the mayor, and he heard someone shout: “Get Gariol.”
Darrah and another soldier accompanied the woman who had been sent to find the mayor. They soon returned.
“He’s refusing to come,” Darrah said.
“Refusing to come?” Karl shouted, surprised. “Take me to him.”
Meanwhile, the soldiers searched every house in the city with brutal thoroughness, and the throngs on the square quickly grew.
The woman guided them into a house and up the stairs to the second floor. She paused at the door, then indicated to Karl that the mayor was inside. He kicked the door open.
Karl looked down at the woman in the bed. Her legs were spread wide, and her fingers were clutching the sheets. The hair on her forehead was curled with sweat, and she released a long moan.
He heard Darrah’s guilty voice behind them: “What should we do? She’s having a baby.”
The man who was leaning over her straightened up angrily. “I am Auguste Gariol. The village doctor . . . and mayor. I protest.” The little man’s face was beet red. “I . . .”
Karl turned on his heels and exited the room before the man had finished his sentence. Outside, he lit a cigarette. He removed his cap and dried his forehead with his sleeve. This was an impossible situation.
There was a pistol aimed at his head, but this time he wasn’t the one holding it. Rudolph was. He grew resentful, and acid filled his throat. He spat on the ground, but the terrible taste in his mouth remained. Was that how guilt felt? But he didn’t have a choice. It was an order, and he needed to carry it out. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Shoot him.”
Darrah turned reluctantly to go.
“No, wait. Shoot them both.”
“But she . . .” He paused in the middle of his sentence, as if he hadn’t considered how to end it.
“We’re here to shoot them all, so what difference does it make that she’s having a baby? We’re to shoot everyone, and that means everyone.”
Schoolchildren came marching up in two orderly rows, their teacher out in front. The children were wearing wooden clogs, and the clapping of their soles against the cobblestones echoed off the buildings.
Half an hour later, all of the town’s residents were gathered on the square. Karl stood in the background, looking on. He sat down on some steps and lit another cigarette. Malinowski knew what to do. Karl had watched the company commander suddenly transform into someone else before. He shouted and screamed now like a man possessed. The relaxed, pipe-smoking commander was nothing like the brutal, efficient officer he became when it was required. The company commanders and the privates were clearly mesmerized by Malinowski’s aggressive tactics. The tension mounted. Gun butts slammed into spines and toes of boots against the backs of knees. Orders were barked at the terrified residents, and they were soon divided into two groups: men in one, women and children in the other.
The women and children, including the pupils, were led to the church. A frightened woman pushing a stroller at the head of the procession infected the rest with her fear, and many began to cry. The men were brought to three different warehouses around the town.
Karl went from warehouse to warehouse to make sure that everything was under control. In one of them, the men were ordered to unload the farmers’ carts. A broad-shouldered farmer asked in fragmented German: “Where are you taking the women?”
“They’re safe . . . in the woods,” Karl responded promptly. He heard Danek chuckle behind him, and he turned, glowering at him in reproach. Danek fell silent.
Once all the men were in the warehouses, he went back to the square. He unholstered his Luger, then slowly lifted it out. He removed the safety. What if he didn’t shoot? If no one got the signal? He could stroll slowly down the street, out of the town. No one could reprimand him because he wasn’t the one who’d started all this. He glanced at his hand holding the Luger, and for the first time he wished that his arthritis would help him. That it would stop what was about to happen. But no, it was his duty.
He pointed the pistol in the air and pulled the trigger. Then an infernal racket erupted. Shots and explosions could be heard from every corner of the city. Fifteen minutes later, the lieutenants reported back to Karl. Those in the first warehouse had been shot and the warehouse set ablaze. The second warehouse, too, and so on.
Karl headed to the front of the church, which smelled of gas and petroleum. Guards were stationed all around the building, and he heard gunfire from their pistols when some of the women tried fleeing through the windows. The fire inside the building was already raging. Laub stared in thrall with his handiwork.
Malinowski rapped his pipe against the cobblestones. Wiessmeier and Schröder stood smoking silently beside him. No one said a word. Malinowski had once again become the relaxed version of himself, though Karl noticed he seemed a bit more tense than normal. Bundles of hand grenades tied together with yarn lay nearby. Judging by the empty boxes, several of them had been used inside the church.
A thick, suffocating smoke billowed from the empty windows, and there was a shrill, penetrating crash when the church’s large bell tumbled down onto the flagstones inside.
“God is dead now,” Malinowski said drily. The others grinned.
Karl recalled the church outside of Minsk. The injustice he’d felt watching that building go up in flames. What did he feel now, he wondered? Nothing. And what did that mean? He had nothing left inside. Nothing had any meaning anymore. So many of the people he loved had been killed—why shouldn’t he in turn kill people loved by others?
He hadn’t noticed that evening had arrived. He looked around. The entire town was engulfed in flames. They’d done their duty, but they hadn’t found any of the weapons supposedly concealed in the village. Soldiers from the second platoon had found a wine cellar in one house, and the entire company was now drinking heavily. He heard songs and accordion music. Someone handed him a bottle. He put it to his lips.
Neugraben, Germany, February 6, 1945
Snow lay in tall drifts outside Gerhard’s window. The heavy snowfall in December and January had nearly buried the camp, and many prisoners had died. Now he was to shut the entire camp down and transfer the remaining inmates to Hamburg-Tiefstack. He wasn’t sure whether it was a change for the worse or the better, but he’d stopped expecting anything and now just accepted whatever happened.
Behind him a voice on the radio said that German troops were fighting heroically near Colmar, and that Budapest was refusing to surrender to the Russians. He snapped the radio off. The war would soon be lost. You didn’t need to be a university professor to figure that out, though he hadn’t thought of himself that way in some time. As a well-educated man. He’d stifled any thought of his future because it was doubtful he even had one. Not in
Hamburg, in any case, because the university had been bombed. Only one thing was certain: he had to retrieve his book. It had been lying inside his desk drawer in his apartment on Jakobstrasse for almost four years. He had typed the final period, and he still thought of it with a touch of pride. At least he could be proud of that.
When they reached Tiefstack, the women were immediately tasked with digging antitank ditches. Many more of them died, and on April 7 the surviving prisoners and personnel set off for Bergen-Belsen on foot. As the prisoners stumbled and lurched forward, the guards thrashed them with ritual precision. Brunner had gotten a new dog, a fierce German shepherd, and its leash was always wrapped around his wrist so that the beast was like an extension of his evil. Gerhard’s suspicions had been correct. Brunner and Möhlmann were lovers, a fact they no longer even tried to conceal.
They tramped down a country road with ditches on either side. Birds twittered, and the countryside was in bloom. They’d just passed through Soltau, making no attempt to hide what they were doing but herding the prisoners right through the center of the city. All of Germany had grown used to seeing ragged prisoners marching through their towns by then. Though the Germans ought to have thanked them for their incalculable contributions, everyone turned the other way and acted as though the prisoners didn’t exist. As if the columns were invisible except to those in SS uniforms.
A woman at the back of the column fainted, and Möhlmann was on her at once. Brunner waited for her patiently as she finished her work. That’s when they heard it, first as a low whistle, then louder. Then Gerhard spotted it. A single airplane was approaching. Gerhard commanded everyone into the ditch. Irritated, Möhlmann glanced over her shoulder. Brunner tried to hurry her as the plane opened fire. A barrage of gunfire rained down on the asphalt road, and Gerhard watched from the ditch as Anneliese Möhlmann and Armin Brunner were shredded by bullets. Then all was quiet. He watched the plane fly off, banking to the right and then disappearing out of sight.
Shaking, Gerhard got to his feet. “Gather the prisoners and continue,” he shouted at one of the closest SS guards. The subordinate dutifully commanded that everyone get up, and the column continued its slow march.
Gerhard remained standing in the middle of the road, studying the two dead officers. One of Brunner’s arms, the one with the hand missing three fingers, clung to his shoulder on thin filaments, and his face was pressed flat against the asphalt. The dog leash was still wound around his wrist, and the dog lay on its side next to him. It raised its head a little, growled, then dropped its head back to the ground. Möhlmann lay a few yards away. Her short pageboy hair was tangled and bloody, her refined features obliterated by a gaping exit wound. Steam rose off her. Gerhard turned and surveyed the column.
He started walking back in the direction of Soltau. He tried to appear natural, but he knew that he was deserting. Heart thumping, he hid in a basement stairwell until nightfall. He found a pair of overalls and a smock in a nearby workshop and set off down the main street in his new clothes. The city was just waking up. A baker said hello to him through a window. He had to get going, had to start walking, but in which direction? If he went south, he’d run into the Brits. To the east, the Russians. And to the west, Americans. So he headed north toward Hamburg. The city hadn’t fallen yet, and he had to retrieve his book.
A few days later he heard that Bergen-Belsen had been liberated by the British. He was quietly pleased to learn that some of the women had been saved.
Shortly after reaching Hamburg, he stood studying the remains of the building that had once been Jakobstrasse number 7. He threw himself on the ruins and began to dig with his hands. He worked feverishly, chasing hopefully after every scrap of paper he saw.
An old man came by. He removed his hat, dried his forehead with the sleeve of his coat, and looked at Gerhard sympathetically. “Your wife?”
Gerhard didn’t hear him, so the man shouted. Gerhard turned and shook his head slowly. He inspected his hands. They were bleeding. He caught sight of St. Michael’s tower between a couple of lonely façades. It was still standing. Uncertain what to do, he sat amid the rubble, staring in disbelief at the stubborn tower. Then he started to cry.
Hamburg, Germany, April 20, 1945
The sun had begun to set as he turned into the driveway. All at once a surge of relief expunged his exhaustion: the villa was still standing. For some time he simply stood there admiring the house, which gleamed pink in the setting sun. He walked around it. The mortar was peeling in some places, and several of the balusters on the balcony were cracked, but otherwise the house was intact. He inspected the yard; there was a crater in the center of it, and the tall willow lay upon the grass like a fallen soldier, its trunk splintered. He recalled the pale-green leaves that turned orange in late summer, until they dropped to the ground, lifeless and bronze colored, every autumn. Now the tree had fallen like the rest of Germany. He strolled down to the lake. Some of the mooring posts were still standing, but the pier was gone.
The lake, in contrast to his emotions, was calm and unperturbed. He’d left his unit in the lurch. He’d deserted them. In France he’d cursed the Alsatians who’d deserted when they reached Normandy. Now he was the deserter. He’d committed the most ignoble act a soldier could: he’d bailed. Like a coward he’d left the others on the battlefield. But his days as a soldier were over. He’d never fit in. He wasn’t SS material. He had the tattoo—which like a family’s coat of arms connected him to them—but he wasn’t one of them. Not him.
Still, his conscience nagged him. But so did thoughts of home. The uncertainty of not knowing whether there would be anyone to return home to. He felt he would perish if he didn’t resolve that burning question. He looked up at the house. Deep in his chest was the hope that Ingrid was inside. He knew better, but the hope wouldn’t go away.
He opened the door cautiously and switched on the light: the electricity still worked. He cocked his head and listened, but all he heard was the faint crackle of the outlet. He went slowly from room to room in the empty house, which was filled to the brim with memories. The staircase creaked loudly, as if feet hadn’t touched it in years. He wondered how long it had been since anyone had been here.
In the living room he snapped on the radio and dropped heavily onto the couch. British troops had reached the Elbe and were now attacking Bremen; American troops were in Nuremberg, Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Halle, and Magdeburg; and the Russian artillery was in the vicinity of Berlin. When Bremen fell, the English would have access to Hamburg. The only thing left, he thought, was self-deception: people’s belief that it would all work out, though they already knew everything was lost. He stood up mechanically and switched off the radio.
It had grown dark outside. He could no longer see through the windows. They’d become mirrors, and he was in every reflection. Now he saw himself as he was. Self-deception was also his worst enemy. Delusion was a widespread disease, but he refused to suffer from it any longer. He’d let it happen; he’d been weak. The questions had always been there, inside him, but he’d suppressed them as if he feared what they might lead to. In the same way he’d stifled his imagination as a child, trying not to think about scary things.
He was alone, and now he would forget the Nazis. He’d been their loyal servant; he’d fought their fight; he’d been their henchman, their equal. He’d taken their money; he’d carried out their orders. He should have refused. He should have. But he had been no better than the rest. The only difference was that he’d imagined he was better than the others. But not anymore.
Hamburg, Germany, May 2, 1945
Gerhard gazed across the lawn, then the lake, from Karl’s office window. Beyond the lake was downtown, but the painting was incomplete. Several of the towers that had once stretched toward the sky were gone, and he could tell that the harbor had been transformed. His eyes roamed across the once-immaculate lawn—the knee-high grass, the dandelions, the overgrown bushes, and trees. The willow that had always loomed over them
like a tall shadow now lay on its side like a beached whale. Mr. Nikolaus would cry if he set eyes on what Gerhard saw. Or maybe he would turn in his grave? What had become of the old gardener?
At least the villa was still standing. He hadn’t bothered to knock. He figured that Ingrid and the children were still in Rügen, and that Karl was away defending the fatherland—if he was still alive, that is. The house was empty. Everything was abandoned, unlived in.
He picked a cigarette out of the walnut box on the table. He lit it, then sucked the gray smoke leisurely. He stared across the lake again, enjoying the silence.
“That’s where I found him.”
Gerhard turned, startled.
Ingrid was leaning against the doorjamb. Her face bore no sign of grief but was steely and calm. She wore a simple pantsuit and appeared relaxed.
He wasn’t shocked. So Karl had done it after all. The last time they saw each other, he’d seemed so tired of life. The news seemed more like a confirmation of what he already knew, just like when he had learned of Hitler’s death. The broadcaster had explained in a hesitant voice that Adolf Hitler was gone, that the führer had fought against Bolshevism and for Germany until the very end. It had felt more like hearing that someone had died following a long illness than hearing news that someone had died unexpectedly. Years ago he would have been relieved to hear of the führer’s death. Such news would have opened up a world of opportunity. Now it closed all opportunity. And now he was alone. Without Karl.
“When did you find him?” He swallowed.
“Ten days ago.” Her voice was calm and composed.
“And the children?”
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