Winter Men
Page 33
“They’re still in Rügen.”
“It’s good to see you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her voice sounded tired now. “Take whatever you want and go away. The desk drawer key is hanging on a nail underneath the table.” She turned to leave.
“What about you, Ingrid?”
She gave him a terse smile. “I’ll survive.”
“What about the factory?”
“It’ll earn enough that I can get away from this city and this country.”
“Where will you go?”
“Switzerland, I think. I’m through with Germany.” She looked him in the eye. “And I’m through with you.”
“But we can leave together.”
“No,” she said firmly.
“But . . .”
Ingrid turned and left.
Gerhard found the key where Ingrid had said it would be. He looked around the office. There wasn’t a trace of what Karl had done. Gerhard found some money in the locked drawer as well as several packs of Gauloises. There was enough money for him to get by for a while.
He walked to the bar. He took a slug from a random bottle, then found Karl’s flask squeezed between some cognac and a bottle of vermouth. He read the inscription and fought back his emotions. KS, Karl Strangl, deceased Karl Strangl, his brother Karl Strangl.
He filled the flask and stuffed it in his pocket. In the driveway he turned for one final look at the beautiful home. Behind one of the large windows, a curtain closed.
Coroico, Bolivia, May 6, 1983
Gerhard picked up a glass from the small kitchen table. His arm grew sore before he’d even filled it, and he set the glass on the nightstand indignantly, cursing his deterioration. Today was especially bad. He was completely drained. He’d been too tired to take his daily walk through town. No one would notice, he knew. The feeling that the life inside him was ebbing away grew stronger every day. Not that it would be today, tomorrow, or even next week, but the energy depleted from him would not return.
He went to the window. There was an ashtray on the windowsill. A cigarette had burned out. It still retained its shape, but the tobacco and paper had been reduced to ashes. He didn’t recall having lit it. His thoughts slipped back in time. It had been a foolish impulse, but it had seemed like a noble gesture at the time: after the war Gerhard began smoking Gauloises in honor of Karl. But getting his hands on French cigarettes in South America had been difficult, so he’d stopped that silly habit.
He thrust open the window and stood enjoying the sight of Cerro Uchumachi. Gerhard’s landlord, Esteban, trundled across the little plaza on his way toward the high point of the day, the siesta. A stray mongrel nearly knocked him over, and Gerhard heard him yell a few obscenities at the dog, which scampered off with its tail between its legs. As always, Esteban’s plump wife, Agnes, was sweeping the walk in front of their house across from the small taberna. She glanced briefly at Gerhard but didn’t say hello. A sense of loneliness washed over him. He’d begun talking to himself. He’d probably done so for a while but had only noticed it recently. He carried on long conversations with himself, and he liked hearing German phrases.
He removed his glasses and put them on the nightstand, then slowly lowered himself into his bed, his bones aching. He sighed as his head dropped onto the pillow. Out of habit he started turning his wedding ring around his finger, and then his thoughts began to flow. The same ones he’d had for the past thirty-eight years. There was nothing new to add. Even though he believed he’d scrutinized them thoroughly, they persisted in resurfacing. They always took the same path. They began with him leaving Hamburg and continued in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santa Cruz, or wherever he was at the moment. Then they would work their way through what his life would have been like had he not wound up in the Gestapo and SS—what course his life might have taken. Whenever his chain of thought reached this point, his mind began spinning in circles, if only, if only, if only . . .
A light breeze brushed against his feet and slowly up his body. He was freezing. Down on the plaza a dog barked. Once again he saw the image of the burned-down building on Jakobstrasse. He hadn’t written a word since that day. His ability was gone, vanished along with his desire. He had sat before a blank sheet of paper only once. Though his memory had diminished with age, he recalled clearly the few words that he’d managed to write.
When I enter a room, when I meet a person, I’m not just me. I am a whole life. I am my present, but I am much more my past. I am a traveler and I bear a heavy burden.
It was a tragic conclusion to his literary career.
He thought of Karl. They’d always been so different, and yet they were the same. He had always viewed Karl as summer—outgoing, upbeat, radiant—while Gerhard himself was withdrawn and shy, like winter. The thinker consumed by his own thoughts. Karl was light, and he was darkness. Two polar opposites who shared the same blood. That’s how it had been once, but then they’d each gone into hibernation in their own minds. They had tried to suppress the world. They had lived in darkness, and like people freezing with cold, they had done everything they could to get warm. But they were still frozen solid. Karl in death, him in life. They felt nothing; they sensed nothing. Karl had found his peace in this state, while Gerhard remained stuck. For him there was only one natural way out. And that was what he was waiting for.
The last time Gerhard saw Karl, he had seemed so lonely, so vulnerable. He’d known his brother well at one time, and he ought to have known that Karl was considering taking his own life. But so much had come between them. He didn’t know Karl anymore. He barely recalled his face. He felt the same way when he saw himself in the mirror. He didn’t recognize the eyes that stared back at him. He’d become a stranger to himself. And he’d grown cold. It was a measure his mind had taken of its own accord: to become cold and emotionless. He now remembered only vaguely who he had been before the war. There had been no “before the war” for decades. In his mind he saw only the war. What he buried within was terror and destruction, and all that had once been beautiful in his life was now so distant that it was hardly a memory.
He thought of the Alster. The lake was so lonely, utterly abandoned in the wintertime. It was like his life, the summer of his youth and the winter of his old age. He was a winter man. That was what they were, he and Karl: winter men. Deep-frozen winter men. He thought of Emma, and then his head stilled like an old clock that had counted its final seconds. Finally. Stillness. Silence.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An exhaustive amount of research went into this book, and everyone who helped with its genesis deserves a huge thanks. Some provided professional expertise, while others provided subject-specific knowledge. Therefore I would like to thank Ronny Ritschel, photographer; Christoph Awender; Svetlana Karlin; Marcus Wendel; staff members at KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme; the University of Hamburg; Hamburg Museum; Das Bundesarchiv; Maria Mackinney-Valentin, Kunstakademis’s Design School; Karsten Skjold Petersen, Tøjhusmuseet; Peter Sorensen, associate professor at Architektskolen; Søren Hjelholt Hansen, lecturer at Vestfyn’s Gymnasium; Dr. Lars Kensmark; Anders Beckett; Bjørn Lemming Pedersen; and Jesper Richard Christensen.
In addition, I would like to thank all the people who read the manuscript along the way, fixed my mistakes, suggested improvements, or in some way inspired me to write this story: Karina Bugge Kold, Torben Herrig, Henrik Hagsholm Pedersen, Søren Lind, Jess Dalsgaard, David Becker, Thomas Lyngdorf, Søren Vad Møller, Mads Rangvid, Asbjørn Bourgeat, Tage Kold Jensen, Niels Rosenkvist, Charlotte Hinze Nørup, Anni Jensen, Trine Toft, Allan Gylling Olsen, Mark Linkous, Steven Galloway, Sine Norsahl, and Marie Brocks Larsen.
In memory of the millions of Jews who lost their lives during the war, all the names that appear in the deportation section are names of real persons who were transported from Hamburg to Lodz, Poland, on October 25, 1941. Of the nearly six thousand Jews who were deported from Hamburg during the war, around five hundred survived.
Any mistake
s that have found their way into the novel are my own.
Jesper Bugge Kold
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016 Peter Clausen
Jesper Bugge Kold was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and worked as a journalist before becoming a librarian and website designer. His deep interest in the Second World War inspired him to write Winter Men, which was first published in Danish as Vintermænd and nominated for the debutant prize at Denmark’s Book Forum in 2014. He now lives in South Funen with his wife and two children.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © Eric Druxman
K. E. Semmel is a writer and literary translator whose work has appeared in the Ontario Review, Washington Post, World Literature Today, Southern Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. His translations include books by Naja Marie Aidt, Karin Fossum, Erik Valeur, Jussi Adler Olsen, and Simon Fruelund. He is a recipient of numerous grants from the Danish Arts Foundation and is a 2016 NEA Literary Translation Fellow.