The Butterfly Boy

by Tony Klinger

  “How did you know?” “Does it matter, I know.” He replied, not bothering to conceal the triumphant look that surfaced on his face. “OK, we still need each other, what now?”

  “It’s time to leave Germany.” He answered, “OK,” I said, “But now, at the risk of everything, I have some conditions of my own, if we do this that’s it, no more money, no contact, we’re finished with each other, forever, agreed?”

  “Yes,” he said, “We have a deal.”

  As he said these words there was the sound of rolling thunder above us, and the bird songs seemed to stop as the shrill sirens sounded, the world held its breath and hell visited Frankfurt.

  The building exploded around us and as the room blew apart Ratwerller jumped over the desk to protect me from the mayhem. The next moments were chaos compounded by terror, screams and deafness. I didn’t realize that I was one of those screaming as we plummeted downwards with the building as it evaporated around us.

  When I regained consciousness I found myself trapped under Ratwerller and a mountain of rubble. I tried shifting my body away from us, but he was wedged on top of me. I suddenly remembered that Helmut’s existence would depend on my waking Ratwerller, if he was still alive, and getting him to find a telephone that was working, or Helmut would be murdered like so many others.

  “Help, help, we’re trapped!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, before I understood that I couldn’t hear myself, my eardrums were ringing but useless. No one came, but I felt Ratwerller stir groggily, “Wake up you bastard!” I shouted into his ear, but I didn’t know if he could hear me, or whether there was any sound coming from my mouth. “Ratwerller you little bastard, wake up!” I shouted, and at last he began to respond. He opened his eyes and we were staring at each other, inches apart. Now we were really conjoined I thought, unable to separate by even one centimeter. “What happened?” he croaked, and I could hear him a little, “we were hit by a bomb.” I replied, “Don’t shout, I’m right here on top of you.” I hadn’t realized that I was shouting. He tried to move off me, but something was trapping him on top of me. “I often thought what it would be like to be intimate with you Arnie, but this is not what I imagined.” We both grimaced at each other.

  “Can’t you at least slide off me, your weight is crushing me.” I said, “What do you think, I’m enjoying this, I have half a building on my back and I am protecting you from it and you are complaining.” We lay there, with acrid smells and dust choking us for what seemed like an age, but in truth wasn’t very long. However we tried to shift ourselves we were pinned helplessly to the ground. Ratwerller began to breathe erratically, “Do you think anyone knows we’re here?” He sounded panicky, “Of course they do, and the one thing about you Nazis, the record keeping is meticulous.”

  “When we get out what are you going to do with Marlene,” I asked, “So you do care?”

  “Of course.” What do I care? You can have her back, I’m finished with her now.”

  Not long after this we both heard the scrambling noise of the search and rescue teams, “Hello we’re here!” I shouted, and within another few moments we were being dug out of our tomb. “If you don’t get Helmut out of that camp in time all bets are off.” I hissed in his ear just before we were pulled out, “Don’t worry,” he said, “he’s been downstairs in a cell all along.”

  As always with Ratwerller I wasn’t quite quick enough to find out the truth before he was gone, vanishing in the confusion and mayhem that surrounded the days bombing. Over one thousand people had died in those few minutes, but I didn’t know where to begin to look for my friends.

  The only person I knew who might help me was still living in one of the finest addresses in town. The roads were all but impassable, cratered by the huge bombs. But nothing was going to stop me finding that house. Eventually I found my way to the house I remembered from my childhood, once it had belonged to my grandparents, but now it belonged to Ratwerller. It was untouched by all the devastation around it, as I staggered up the stairs to the front door it was opened and there stood Marlene. She saw the disheveled state I was in and brought me inside.

  As she cleansed my wounds with the easy familiarity of past intimacies she let me come to my senses in my own time. Initially I didn’t know what to say, but it felt wonderful and cathartic for her gentle hands to wash my wounds. “How are the boys?” she asked eventually, incongruously I answered with extreme formality, “My sons are well, thank you.” She finished her ministrations, and stood back from me. Our shared intimacy was over.

  “Why did you come here?” she asked me, “I don’t know.” And that was the first honest words from me to Marlene for as long as I could remember. “We were married, we loved each other, there was too much left unsaid, we never finished properly, we need to tie up everything. It was no way to end our marriage.”

  She looked into my eyes, “You’re right, but you knew what it was about. We did what was necessary.”

  “Will you help me this time, the movement has had enough of us don’t you think?”

  Without a moment’s hesitation she nodded her head, “Of course, what do you want?” “Just like that, no conditions?” I asked, “I’m not Mister Ratwerller. You want my help, now or ever in the future, you have it.”

  “Let me tell you what it is first, you might not be so quick to be so generous.”

  “I gave myself, body and soul for our country, you deserve whatever is left.” At that moment I wished I could wind back time, to what might have been had our lives not been contaminated by this poisonous war. Now we were two sad people looking to each other for comfort and memories.

  “Do you remember when our lives were simple, eating, breathing and making love?” I asked, “Yes,” she whispered wistfully, “Maybe one day it can be like that again.” On saying this she reached across the distance between us with her hand caressing my cheek. I’m not ashamed to admit that I wept for us. “I’m sorry Marlene, but I don’t think I’m mature enough to deal with the thought of you with him. Whatever the motive, I can’t deal with it.”

  She looked at me as if I was a silly boy, and she was a woman, full grown, mature and pitying my inadequacy despite her love and warmth. “What do you want me to do?” she asked, anxious to change the subject.

  “Get my sons to my mother.” Marlene was surprised by this, “To Palestine, why?”

  “There they can grow up as Jews, they can be themselves.”

  “But their mother wasn’t Jewish, or their grandfathers.”

  “Hitler made them Jewish. Will you do this for me Marlene?”

  “You know the answer Arnie, your boys will be safe with me.” I smiled, knowing that this was the truth.

  Hours later and I was with Ratwerller who was driving us in his open topped car fast down deserted country roads. He was dressed in full uniform. I watched the world as we sped past, it was as if the war had forgotten this corner of Germany, it was totally untouched. I looked at the Rat and wondered what twisted logic motivated him.

  He was singing a Wagnerian aria from the Ring cycle, apparently happy with the glorious winter day. “How do you sleep at night?” I asked him. He briefly looked away from the road, “Like a baby, I sleep the sleep of the just. Your problem Arnie, and it was always thus, is that you simply don’t understand the ways of the world.”

  “The ways of your world I don’t want to understand.”

  “Whatever system there is in control of our lives, and there will always be a system of control, the systems always need functionaries like me, we make it all go tick tock, tick tock. I do the smelly jobs, and we do them without question because someone has to take the shit out. I’m necessary, more necessary than some painter or poet.”

  “You believe that?” I asked, “Of course I believe that, don’t get me wrong, I was never a Nazi, not really. Oh of course they did some things right as histor
y will prove, but some of their ideas were plain stupid. But I had a great war and I have a lot to be grateful to them for. But I will serve the Communists or the Allies just as well. Make no mistake, they all have their little Ratwerllers, just like me.”

  Before I could respond to his cynicism he swerved the car off the centre of the road as bullets tore into the car’s windscreen. I looked up as we crashed into the bushes and trees and caught a swift glimpse of a lone British Spitfire fighter plane as it swept past our position and banked steeply preparing to attack us again.

  As we smashed into the trees I could see that Ratwerller had been wounded in the arm and was unable to steer, I sat helplessly as we hit the trees and although I braced myself with both my legs there was nothing I could do as the Rat’s head and shoulders smashed through the car windscreen.

  The doors of the car were forced open as we hit a huge tree and seeing this opportunity for escape I leapt from the car. As I lay on my back looking up and panting from the effort I saw through the canopy of trees as the RAF plane completed it turn and came in for the kill. I braced myself to die, convinced that this was it, my time to die. I saw Ratwerller stir and instinctively I jumped to my feet and back into the car, Now I was operating on adrenaline as I raced against the aircraft as it swooped towards us and I tried to brace my back against the leather seat and use my legs to kick Ratwerller sideways from the car. Somehow his body began to slide half out of the car but it was so difficult.

  I looked up and the fighter plane seemed to fill the sky above me, I could see the pilots face as he pressed the firing button of his guns and the bullets tore into the car, tracing their way up the bonnet of the car just as Ratwerller’s body fell from his side of the car and I jerked in the opposite direction from it. The bullets tore the car apart but I hadn’t been hit. The Spitfire flew away, its engine noise reducing as it departed. Ratwerller was standing and shaking his fist, “British bastards!” he screamed, and then realizing the danger we were still in he rushed around the car and dragged me away as it’s petrol tank exploded in a ball of flame.

  For a long while we lay exhausted on the ground, unable to get up. We looked at each other and I wondered why we were like cats. Why did fate want the two of us to live?

  Later, the wreckage smoldered but the flames had burnt out an American army Jeep screeched to a halt. The two soldiers in it got out of their vehicle, pointing their weapons in our direction, suspicious of the circumstances. “Help me please, I’m trapped over here.” I called, in my best English. The older man, an officer approached me slowly, he looked like he would have been happier driving a taxi in New York. “Bill,” he called to his colleague, “Check the Nazi bastard out, any funny stuff and you shoot his head off, shoot first answer questions later, got it?”

  I lay very still, and hoped for the best. Bill called back to his officer, “Can’t we shoot the bastards anyhow, and no one’ll know the difference?”

  The officer ignored Bill and moved closer to the inert body of Ratwerller. He nudged him with his boot and Ratwerller grunted in agony. Meanwhile Bill knelt by me. “You look OK, kind of, but I think I’d best shoot you anyhow.” “What did I do to you?” I asked him, “Let’s show the bastard!” the officer shouted back. He dragged Ratwerller to his feet, and I was roughly manhandled and handcuffed my wrist to the Rat despite my trying to explain that I couldn’t use my arms. We were shoved into their Jeep and we rapidly drove off.

  The vehicle forced its way through an ever-increasing flood of hapless and ragged refugees. Signs of a recent bloody battle were all about us. Burnt out tanks and half tracks and unattended German corpses littered the roads. “Will you let me explain, I am not a Nazi!”? I tried again to tell the Officer. “Sure you’re not. You’re just out joyriding with your Gestapo pal here.”

  Ratwerller smiled, “I told you Arnie, every system has their own Ratwerller,” “And you can keep your smart mouth shut!” said the officer to Ratwerller.

  We were silent in the Jeep as we drove into a camp. It seemed innocuous enough and the only thing that struck me as strange was the wording of the slogan set above the gates, “Work will set you free.” We drove past two American guards. Large bonfires lit the area, casting weird shadows. It was then that we began to see and understand where we were.

  Emaciated men, women and children sat in small groups. They are skeletal; their eyes appeared huge in contrast to their sunken faces. Behind them, in a huge pile we could see something. At first we thought it might be piles of wood, or discarded clothing but as our eyes adjusted to the gloom we understood that these were thousands of unburied human bodies. We had entered a shadow world that I had dreaded, had partially imagined in my worst nightmares, but couldn’t believe was possible. Nothing could prepare a human being for the shocking totality of this.

  Medical orderlies were spraying disinfectant over the living and the dead with spray guns. Their masked faces lent an almost science fiction feeling to the scene. The officer turned to us, “Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t shoot you Nazi bastards here and now?”

  Ratwerller turned to face him, “Because you are a civilized man.” He replied. Bill raised his gun and aimed it at Ratwerller, who winced as he thought his life might finally end, “You can’t want to be like the people who did this.” I said to him.

  The American officer forced Bill’s gun arm down to the ground, he seemed to realize that I wasn’t like the Nazi’s he had encountered up to then. “Undo that one’s handcuffs.” He instructed, which Bill then did. “What’s wrong with your arms?” the officer asked, “Why do you ask?” “Because a normal person rubs his wrists when we take the cuffs off, everyone does that.”

  “I haven’t been able to use my arms since I was seven years old. Polio.” The officer was baffled, he looked at me thoughtfully, “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Would you have believed anything I said?” “No, I guess not, I wasn’t in the mood to listen. Come on, follow me.” He said to me, and then led me away from the horrific backdrop. “What about me?” called Ratwerller, “I’m bleeding to death!”

  The officer looked back over his shoulder at Ratwerller, “Good.”

  I followed the man into a large prefabricated hut that the Americans had erected inside the camp. It was clean and full of the best American supplies; in fact it was like being in an American microcosm. Everything had been shipped from the USA. We sat on two stools with our backs resting on the bar. The windows were blacked out by closed shades and the walls decorated with posters and pictures depicting American scenes. The officer was soon swigging beer from the bottle and occasionally held another bottle for me to do the same. He gestured to the room and the other men who were also taking some time out to have a drink, “This keeps us sane, this little bit of home.”

  “It’s very nice.” I commented, “My name is Hank Aaronson. Henry really, but you can call me Hank.” “You come from New York Hank?”

  He took another long pull from his bottle and gave me one from the other bottle, “Near enough Arnie, Philadelphia, how about you, where are you from?”

  “Darmstadt, it was a little city, but now its gone. Do you think you are going to let me go Hank, I really was one of the good guys?”

  He sighed and looked at me intently, as if studying my face would give him some answers. “You know what my job is going to be. I am a combat marine but now they have me sorting through this place to find out who were the Nazis and who were the good guys, someone has to run things in the future, maybe someone like you could help me, maybe I could get a handle on how this all happened.”

  “You’re in intelligence?”

  “Well kind of, but you’ve got nothing to worry about from me have you. I need to talk with you, folks like you anyhow. How could this have happened, you people seem like regular folks back home. You seem normal, a stand up guy. Tell me, did you all just go crazy one day?
”

  “No,” I shook my head, “it happens inch by inch, the madmen take over a place and turn it into an asylum where they, the mad people are in charge. Once you believe that black is white and white is black, then anything begins to seem the wrong way around. It’s their big lies. Once the big lies become an accepted fact then everything follows that madness. It’s as if the country was a tree and the tree was poisoned, then all the fruit that comes from that tree will also be poisoned.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully, “What’s your story, how did you end up sharing a car with that piece of garbage?”

  “Is this an interrogation Hank?” He smiled, and he shook his head, “More like some friendly questions and answers. I can’t help it; I was an attorney before this war interrupted my career. Now take another swig of this excellent beer and answer my questions.”

  I did as he suggested, the beer was cold and although not to my normal taste, it was fine. “It’s a very long story,” I began, “We’ve got nothing but time.” He encouraged me.

  A long time and a great many beers later we were still talking, but we were now both loosened up by the booze. “One thing is for sure Arnie, no two things,” he slurred his words slightly, “One is that if you’re a woman its really not a great idea to get too close to you, it is dangerous, no question, and two is, you need legal representation. Did I give you my card?”

  “I don’t need a lawyer right now.” Was all I could think of to say. He smiled and continued, “If you’re thinking of doing any business in the United States you need a lawyer or you’ll be skinned alive.”

  “Why? I don’t need one here unless there’s a special contract.” He looked at me with pity, “Bubela, you’re going to have register as a charity, no tax that way, what a wonderful scam, a business for the handicapped, run by the handicapped, for the benefit of the handicapped, its beautiful. You’re going to need headquarters, staffing, expanded funding, political connections, they’ve got to be vetted, and you’ve got to be protected.”