A Quiet Genocide

by Glenn Bryant

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m okay,’ he croaked, gradually regaining his voice. His throat burnt from the slug of liquid which had scythed down the moment he had heard the professor’s last statement.

  ‘Professor?’ asked Jozef. ‘How many did they kill in two years?’

  ‘Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D, who did not total 3,000 men, killed more than one million in two years of operation behind the Eastern Front. Could we have some water, please?’ the professor said to the girl waiting on tables outside the café.

  ‘There is a report Michael has written here,’ continued the professor. ‘It is about what he observed during those two years. He signs it ‘Dr. D’. It reads, ‘I found myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of one another so their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show they were still alive. I estimated the grave contained 1,000 people. One of the men was doing the shooting. He sat at the edge of the great grave, his feet dangling. He was smoking a cigarette. People, naked, climbed into the pit and clambered over the heads of people lying there to the place the shooter directed them. Some caressed those still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. I walked away and noticed another truck load of people had arrived. I drove in my car back to camp’.

  ‘The next morning I again visited the site. I saw 30 people lying naked near the pit, 30 to 50 metres away. Some were still alive. They had a fixed stare and seemed to not notice the chill. I moved away from the site. I heard shots from the pit. The Jews who were still alive had been ordered to throw the last corpses into the pit. Then they had themselves to lie down in it to be shot’.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  It was dark. Hushed.

  Michael stood in the street, which was deserted, with his three associates. One of them was picking the lock to the door to the butcher’s beneath Janus’ flat. Another had patiently kept watch outside all afternoon and confirmed Janus and Catharina were now safely inside and vulnerable.

  A street light overhead was uncomfortably bright, highlighting their activity to the world if it was watching.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ hissed Michael.

  This was critical. It was his side of the bargain he had made with Gerhard. His reward was Jozef.

  ‘Sir,’ said one of the men. He had spotted someone, walking a dog late at night. He was approaching from 50 yards. He was not altering his course.

  ‘Scheisse!’ said Michael. ‘Come on, come on!’

  The door clicked open and the three men flooded inside. Michael quickly followed, immediately closing the door behind him. Michael would have happily cut the man’s throat. Jozef, he thought. The men crept silently through the butcher’s shop, which was dead to the world. None of them spoke. There was moonlight, macabrely shining on the hanging carcasses. The men reached the back of the premises and saw the stairway pointing up to Janus’ flat. Michael nodded so gently he would have calmed a baby. Two men led the group up the narrow staircase. Michael tightened the gloves on his hands. This was it. Jozef. The door was unlocked. The three men looked back in unison at Michael. He nodded again, more aggressively. ‘Now, now. Now!’ he screamed.

  Inside, Catharina thought some maniac was shooting at them when the door to Janus’ flat banged violently open. Terror. Hot panic. Voices. Angry, urgent voices. Then foreign footsteps, heavy and aggressive.

  ‘Janus!’ she cried.

  The first two strangers through the door bolted for him.

  Catharina watched, groggy and disbelieving.

  The nightmare was very real. The intruders’ bulk flashed in and out of the moonlight peering in from the street outside.

  Catharina sat up. She was in bed, naked and exposed bar her best silk undergarment, protecting her below her delicate waist. Her stomach quickly started to curdle like milk in summer heat.

  Two men hauled Janus out of bed. The strongest had him in a chokehold. He struggled to breathe. That beautiful mouth.

  ‘Get off him. Get off him! What do you want?’ Catharina said, tears flooding her plea.

  Before she knew it a third man enveloped her, ripping her violently from her paralysis. He hauled her roughly like coal down the side of the bed. She was a doll, helpless. She stole a look across to Janus. Her absent focus meant she failed to cushion her fall from the bed. She banged her shoulder and deep, throbbing pain dulled her senses momentarily. She could not let it distract her. It was unimportant. Janus.

  He sat lifeless on the floor. The man in front had a blade to his throat. He was utterly outflanked. The third man dragged Catharina across the floor, so she was forced to break her gaze from Janus. She did not want to. If something happened to him while her eyes were selfishly elsewhere she would never forgive herself.

  The stranger towered over her, suddenly lascivious. Catharina realised she was topless. Her pretty breasts had tumbled out of bed with her. He was admiring them. She frantically tried to cover them with her hands and arms. She could not be sure she was doing a good job. He continued admiring. Rape would have been easier to stomach. She could not see Janus. Where was he? Then she saw him. Michael. Smiling, staring. She was exactly where he had always wanted her.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said.

  ‘Guten Abend Catharina,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t go back,’ she said instinctively. ‘I won’t go back. I know he sent you.’

  Janus gurgled, struggling for breath on the other side of the bed, which separated the lovers like an ocean.

  ‘Leave him alone. Leave him alone!’ she protested.

  Catharina tried to climb to her feet. Two huge hands forced her down easily. It was useless. Her breasts were visible again. She could see Michael enjoying them. She felt sick. He relished her reaching for something, anything to cover herself with one hand while the other tried desperately to block her chest from sight. Michael had seen enough. He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. She momentarily considered ripping his face from his skull with her teeth when he was close.

  ‘What do you want? I won’t go back. I know he sent you.’

  Michael began to nod and half shake his head at the same time. He almost found her sexier now that she wore his coat. He felt erect. ‘I have seen Gerhard,’ said Michael. ‘He is not gut. He needs you Catharina. He is a weak man. This you know.’

  ‘I know my husband,’ she said fiercely. ‘Do you think I have been stupid all these years? I know exactly who you are.’

  ‘Evidently not,’ said Michael, taking a seat behind her.

  The room was in good order. Control. Power. Those Jews, his imagination interrupted and Michael half smiled.

  Catharina was profoundly afraid. Fear began to overtake her anger and she thought about trying to climb to her feet again, but the man in front of her motioned forward half a step.

  Michael raised his hand to ward him off. ‘I am not here for your husband,’ said Michael. ‘Do you think I care?’

  Catharina had always secretly believed he had not, but she could see it clearly now. If only Gerhard was here, she thought. ‘I’m going to tell the authorities,’ said Catharina. ‘They’ll hang you for what you did.’

  ‘Yes, they would,’ said Michael, relaxing into the situation and about to remove his gloves before realising that would be an error.

  ‘You would only be wasting their time. I am ready to leave Germany. No one would see me again. I am quite certain. This is not my Germany anymore,’ he added with bile and realised he had dropped his guard. He rose to his feet, annoyed.

  Catharina could see it.

  ‘Catharina, my darling, I am not here for your pathetic husband. I am here for your son – my son. Jozef.’

  He smiled again.

  She realised now. She shook her head. How had she not seen? ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, desperately trying to tidy away the revelation like plates
after dinner. ‘You picked up Jozef off the street. He is probably a Jew, some orphan of all those poor people you killed, you murdered.’

  ‘Do you think I would have one of those dogs in my house, at my table?’

  ‘Why do you hate so much?’

  Michael did not answer.

  The man guarding Catharina was also intrigued. He followed orders, people like Michael’s orders. He had not questioned. He questioned now whether Michael did.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I am here for my son,’ he said, turning away and placing the chair he had found exactly where he had discovered it. ‘Jozef is so much bigger than you and Gerhard, you cannot understand,’ he said. ‘You will never understand. There is so much emotion in this world. You seem to play with it like a kitten. It is not a toy. It has power. National Socialism learned how to harness that power, that was all.’

  The stranger who had been guarding Catharina retreated from his post and flanked Michael, who nodded. The man crouched in front of Janus forcefully plunged his blade into his tight stomach and ripped a terrible tear along its front. The man behind Janus then released his vice-like hold of his neck. The four were gone. Catharina screamed. Blood. Pouring, dripping, wasting, leaving. Blood. More blood.

  Catharina scrambled across to Janus and desperately tried to hold his stomach in. Her hands felt like they were trying to halt the tide. It was hopeless. She began to cry uncontrollably like a child. Janus smiled sadly. He motioned her forward and whispered in her ear. ‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry.’

  A chill cloaked Janus’ naked frame, like Death was behind him, waiting patiently. ‘Vodka,’ Janus gurgled.

  Catharina stumbled to her feet. She was dressed in blood and more red than pale, white skin. She clumsily clutched the bottle of spirits and crouched back next to Janus, sat lifeless, leaking violently onto the floor of the flat. She began to pour. She was shaking.

  Janus opened his mouth. Little went in. He was moaning and slipping into eternity, black beneath him like an abyss. He wanted to fall. Adrenalin would not let him. He gurgled again, moaning.

  Stop it, Catharina’s head screamed and she began crying again. ‘Janus,’ she said. ‘Stay with me! Stay with me sweetheart. You’re not going to die. You’re not.’

  Deep moaning again. It was not him.

  The grotesquely guttural sound vibrated through Catharina’s fragile frame, choking her heart. It drilled into her. She could not reach back down and pull its horrors out. She cried again. She cried. Catharina poured more vodka.

  Janus opened his mouth to receive it. He passed back into unconsciousness. Warmth enveloped him. Janus liked that. He died.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jozef was happily busying himself tidying his room. He had done well enough throughout the year in his essays to be exempt from end of year exams. He had done it. He had made it through year one. The summer beckoned and then a shared house in his second year in Berlin with Mathias, Martyn and Pierre, out of university halls and out of this place, this room. Jozef was almost going to miss its drab, scratched features. It looked different now he was emptying it of his things. It began to resemble how it had looked when he had first entered it at the start of the academic year, a lifetime ago now. But there were too many memories between the four walls for it to ever be quite the same again.

  Pierre had urinated drunkenly into Jozef’s sink one night when he was too intoxicated – or too lazy – to stagger the few yards to the end of the corridor and the bathroom. Jozef did not mind in the moment, although once he had got Pierre safely out of his room, he had scrubbed his little sink for Germany the next day through the hot haze of a hangover.

  A knock at the door.

  Strange. His parents were not due for another two days to take him home to Munich. Everyone else he knew was consumed, cramming for exams which had to be passed to safely secure passage to the next academic year.

  Jozef walked over to the door, wiping hands dusty from cleaning as he did so on a cloth, which had become rather too grubby to think about. Jozef put the thought out of his mind. He opened the door. Michael.

  ‘Jozef,’ he said, doffing a dashing hat. ‘How are you my boy?’

  ‘Michael,’ said Jozef somewhat downbeat. He was surprised and exposed. There was no third person to dilute any discomfort between them – and what was he doing here?

  ‘Good to see you,’ said Jozef, trying to raise his spirits.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course. Come in.’

  Michael entered the small room and was instantly underwhelmed. He tried badly to hide the emotion. ‘So this is it,’ he said. ‘Where the future brains of Germany are forming new ideas and policy.’

  ‘This is it,’ said Jozef.

  Michael’s grandness seemed out of place here. Discomfort. The two of them shared the space uneasily. Jozef had no real idea what to say. Michael immediately sensed it. ‘Have you eaten?’ he said. It was 1pm.

  ‘No, I haven’t eaten,’ said Jozef.

  ‘Shall we go out for lunch? I’m famished.’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Jozef, feeling at least that broken company with strangers in a restaurant would help bridge the barrier between them.

  ‘Lead the way,’ said Michael cheerily. ‘I know just the place.’

  ‘Shall we order?’ said Michael after they had reached the café. It was a bright, bustling day in the capital. People were happy.

  ‘What would you like sir?’ asked a waitress.

  ‘I will try your steak sandwich and some coffee, please,’ said Michael, fanning himself. The heat was rising. It was hitting the middle of the afternoon.

  ‘Jozef?’ asked Michael, inviting him to order, which only riled him. He hated being mothered, while larger thoughts of what he and the professor now knew of Michael made him retch. How could he eat?

  ‘I’ll have trout and salzkartoffeln please,’ said Jozef. ‘And a glass of cola.’

  Michael smiled, recalling the nights when Jozef sat and dozed while he and Gerhard had talked and drank and listened to the wireless. The past was never coming back, Michael thought surrounded by all this – this joy. He detested it.

  His associate was poised 100 yards away, keeping a discreet eye on his paymaster.

  Drinks arrived and Michael and Jozef enjoyed their first mouthfuls. Any wind had died away and people populating central Berlin’s main square were trapped in the sun’s full glare.

  Michael placed his hat back on for protection.

  Jozef shifted his position slightly so the tip of a nearby building cast the top of his face in shadow.

  ‘How is university?’ said Michael. ‘Everything going well I trust.’

  ‘Good, good, thank you Michael,’ said Jozef, politely on guard. ‘I have managed to be exempt from my end of year exams, so I am already through to my second year.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent,’ said Michael and Jozef instinctively felt hurt Michael had not congratulated him instead.

  ‘Are you in Berlin for business?’

  Michael paused. He had to find the right words.‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am here on business.’

  Jozef was reaching the end of his plate of food. He had largely finished his salzkartoffeln, but he still had a piece of trout remaining. His stomach was starting to tighten. He would have a break, he thought and he placed his knife and fork neatly by the side of his plate.

  A waitress nearby thought he had finished. ‘Have you finished?’ she enquired, hardly awaiting an answer before beginning to clear away his food.

  ‘No, I haven’t finished,’ interrupted Jozef.

  Michael smiled. He liked to see Jozef assert himself, a young man in Berlin. It reminded him of someone.

  ‘Jozef,’ said Michael, finishing his food and dabbing the sides of his mouth with a thick, white napkin provided by the cafe. ‘There is something I want to tell you, something I have wanted to tell you for a very great time.’

  Jozef tensed hop
elessly. The calories were starting to swell uncomfortably in his belly, exacerbating his acute discomfort. Michael was going to tell him. This is what Jozef had wanted to know. Now he was here, Jozef did not want to hear it... Maybe Gerhard had had the right idea all along, hiding him from the truth.

  ‘Jozef,’ said Michael again.

  No, protested Jozef’s mind. But there was no stopping now.

  ‘I am your real father,’ he said, half reaching out a hand.

  Jozef quickly retreated his.

  Michael saw.

  ‘I know this is a terrible shock,’ he continued, removing his hands from the centre of the space separating them. ‘I know your parents told you that you were adopted. And I congratulate you on handling such a shock so maturely in your first year away from home. I am proud of you Jozef,’ said Michael, removing his hat.

  He needed some air and he wanted to remove every possible barrier between them. Jozef experienced a retching sensation again. He wanted the waitress to scoop up his trout from in front of him. Jozef smelt it rotting. He had finished his cola and had nothing else to dampen his throat. He needed water. Where was the waitress?

  ‘Thank you Michael,’ said Jozef, who felt gruesomely ashamed to have won the pride of a war criminal, free from justice and free from the baying army of all the ghosts he had conspired to extinguish.

  Michael hated Jozef using his name. No, he had to be patient. Give him time, he thought.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Michael asked.

  I don’t know, thought Jozef. I don’t know! What was he supposed to think? Jozef began to curse himself mentally for not being better prepared. He wished the professor was here. He would know what to say. ‘I don’t know,’ said Jozef. ‘I don’t know Michael. It is a lot.’

  That word again – ‘Michael’.

  Michael fought back bile rising up his spine from the darkness, circling like sharks below.

  ‘I understand, I understand,’ Michael muttered, betraying his impatience.

  Jozef sensed it and only felt more uneasy. He was trapped. Suffocating. Where was that waitress? The sun was so hot and the smell of rotting fish from below was filling him with nausea. He felt the past rushing to the surface. ‘Michael,’ he said. ‘Can I ask you some questions about the war to help me at university?’