Liberated

by Steve Anderson

  “Katarina told me you were a student at university.”

  “I was, but some students had to work. What do you think?”

  “It’s formidable. It could be worth a great deal.”

  The bike reminded me of home as much as any letter or package. It had a second saddle on the back fender. I grasped the left-side throttle, stroked the gas tank. Mounted on the right fork was a leather rifle holster, empty. “Wait. Who’s here?” I glared up at Katarina’s window.

  “No one. The holster was empty. Someone only left the bike.” Seeing my mood shift, Emil went and shut the courtyard door as a precaution. “I thought to trade it after I suck out the petrol of course, but then I discover it belongs to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Look in the saddlebag.”

  There I found goggles, gloves, a fur-lined cap and an envelope marked “ATTN: Cpt. H. Kaspar.” The note inside read:

  Don’t consider this gift a token of my appreciation. A motorbike affords you anonymity and mobility. I don’t want you stuck on a kraut train or in some motor pool jalopy when you should be working for me. Enjoy your leave.

  It came with a regulation permit and trip tickets too. I felt like whistling a tune. I couldn’t help feeling relief. It was Friday, June 29th. One week had passed. I had not contacted Colonel Spanner, which meant that the colonel and I had a deal. Strings will be pulled, Major Membre will discover his limits and not a day too soon. That morning I had been itching to get back to Heimgau, I had to admit. I wouldn’t mind seeing Major Membre squirm a little under Colonel Spanner’s big thumb. There was no escaping the colonel, his reach. Even I was feeling it. I hadn’t told the colonel where I was staying in Munich and yet the man knew where to leave this fine motorbike? It did give me a chill, but nothing a mug of my new hot fresh Joe and a ride on this bike wouldn’t fix.

  I smiled at Emil but he’d already gone inside. I shot up the stairs to Katarina.

  She sat on the bed sofa, sewing. I beamed at her, held out my hands like a dancer in a musical after the finale. She said nothing. Maybe my gesture wasn’t the best choice. Draped across her lay a fabric of fluffy orange and white folds, resembling a cancan skirt. She poked the needle and pulled it out. At her feet was a stack of records, theater playbills and movie posters. One poster read “The Mountain Cavalier,” costarring Katarina Buchholz.

  “What you doing there? That a cabaret getup?”

  Still she said nothing. I picked up a record: “Lili Marleen,” as sung by Katarina Buchholz. On the cover, a sketch of a woman singing under a lamppost: Lili Marleen is the most popular soldier’s song, sung by Bavaria’s popular actress and songbird! All over Europe and the East, our valiant German soldiers never tire of humming it and whistling it, and darling Katarina Buchholz has to sing it at least twice wherever she appears …

  And I was just stupid enough to think a joke was in order: “If you guys woulda just quit when you were ahead,” I quipped, “you mighta gone down as Germany’s Betty Grable.”

  Katarina sewed on, poking and pulling. I placed the record exactly where it was in the pile. Sat on the edge of the bed. Without looking at me, Katarina reached into the pile and produced a soldier’s magazine pinup—she in a bathing suit, her lips retouched bright red. She sneered at me, her eyes bloodshot, the rims pink. She sewed on. Forced the needle in, then out with a yank.

  I went over to the painted window and scraped off more of that paint, for a better look. “So, guess you saw the bike? Think of the picnics we can have. Hit Garmisch, the Chiemsee …”

  She glared at me, driving in the needle without looking. “I want to know,” she said.

  “Okay. Know what?”

  “Who you are. Who are you?”

  “What?”

  “A motorcycle? Such indulgence? You don’t trade for something like that. It’s a—how do you say?—A bonus. A special extra. You’re doing a job for someone, a special job.”

  “I see. I get you. You read the letter.”

  She sewed faster, harder, practically stabbing herself.

  “Keep that up you’re going to get hurt.” I came back and pushed the fabric off her lap, took the needle from her and stuck it in the sofa arm. “Look, I didn’t ask for the bike.”

  “No, but you want to keep it now that you have it, don’t you?”

  I pretended to think this over. Frowned for her. “I can’t just give it back.”

  “Of course not. Patrons, fat cats, they don’t like their lackeys to hesitate. It insults them.”

  “Hey, who you calling a lackey?”

  Katarina’s voice rose: “I don’t forget what you told me: ‘I know people.’” She snapped fingers in my face. “See there, I knew it. I knew it.”

  I looked away, rolling my eyes. “Aren’t you just like a Jane?” I said, but she stood over me, hands on her hips. I sighed. “I can’t talk about it. But it’s for you, what I’m doing. It’s for Heimgau.”

  “I remember Heimgau. I remember we had a deal, from that first day. You were going to tell me about any good thing.”

  “Is that what this is about? You want in on a score? Don’t want to be left out? I see. And I thought you wanted to help. Thought you wanted me to solve a murder.”

  “I thought you wanted to solve it,” she said.

  “What? Of course I do. Just what are you getting at?” I shot up to my feet. “Wait one moment. You don’t think I had anything to do with that, what happened to Abraham Beckstein?”

  She studied me, eyes narrowing, her crow’s-feet clenching up. “Do you think that you did? Perhaps not even you know for sure.”

  “What does that mean? That’s just nonsense you’re talking.”

  “Listen to me. All right? There’s one thing you must not forget. It’s always about the trade. The black economy. That is where you will find the truth.”

  This was getting nowhere. Every time I pressed down the pedal, she let off the gas. She knew how to play drama all right.

  “Even when you don’t want to find the truth,” she went on, “even when it’s bad for you.”

  Bad for me? Who did she think she was? I had that GI bike now. I could just speed off out of here. I shot up and searched the room for my knapsack, but couldn’t remember where I’d left it. It wasn’t on her dressing table or wardrobe racks, wasn’t on the door or the sofa. Along one wall stood matching armoires. Opening them, I found exotic trusses, pads and wigs, small chests that held jars and tins, stage makeup. The Bakelite grip of a Sauer 38 pistol protruded from a powder mitt. “I’m going to ignore that right there,” I said, getting down on all fours to peek under the furniture.

  “Harry, I must tell you something,” she said, her voice slowing.

  I heard the pain in her voice and had to look. Her face had slackened, and the delicate meat of her chin trembled. I dropped back down on the sofa bed.

  She sat down, her hands limp in her lap. “I loved someone once. A Luftwaffe pilot from the Rhineland. A big producer’s son. His name was Christian. Christian was shot down in the Battle of Britain. This was 1941. After that I took various lovers, staff officers and ministry officials mostly. Most are dead or perhaps a couple are prisoners now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ach. Who isn’t. I just wanted you to know.”

  I didn’t feel much like that good coffee now. I rubbed at the back of my aching neck. We traded a couple sighs.

  “I can’t find my knapsack,” I said.

  “You would not find it. I hid it on top of the armoire.”

  “All right.” I took her hands, held them in my lap. “Listen to me. I’m trying to help.”

  “I know, you are. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Hurt? How could I? It’s almost over. This war I’m fighting, it’s almost done.”

  She only nodded, slowly. She might as well have been shaking her head.

  I stayed that night. She let me make love to her and we did, quietly, gently. My rough way with her had no
t come back and I wasn’t about to let it.

  Early the next morning, Katarina shook me awake. She had pulled on a silk robe. I crept out of bed and kissed her on the cheek as she pinned up her hair. “Get dressed, we’re heading out,” she said. “You have seen where Emil and Abraham have ended up. But you must see what I have seen. You must see where they were.”

  In another world, in another time, two motorbikes racing along on a summer morning had to be as good as it got. A happy tour. Yet here, in this aftermath of total war? Emil led the way on a Wehrmacht BMW that was burly and beat-up and repainted matte black like some wild boar. I trailed on my spotless US Army Harley with Katarina in the spring saddle hugging my ribs. A narrow two-laner had carried us north of Munich. Here the land was flat and dark and raw, like a land after the flood, revealing vast untended tracts of dusky soil and a drab grass far too brown for late June. A dirtscape. We passed a man digging with a stick, then a woman, then another, and more poor souls prodding and poking for any roots fit to boil, any seeds with promise. The faster we sped, the vaster this grim plain spread. High above stretched the sky that, though laden with charcoal thunder clouds, seemed to brighten at its highest center, demanding that I squint. It was, after all, summertime.

  On the horizon a long wall of gray revealed itself, and a line of what appeared to be trees planted at perfect distances from each other. As we barreled onward I could see they were not trees. These were watchtowers. We turned right and the wall included lines of electric barbwire fences, ditches, a canal. More watch towers. We parked before a monstrous brick gatehouse. The iron gate was left open, pushed far back. In its place stood a chair and a table for the one guard, a GI corporal. I strode up, gave my name and detachment, and the corporal said, lifting a clipboard, “Don’t see you on the list, sir, but, can you excuse me a moment, sir?”

  “Sure. Yes. Carry on.”

  Emil and Katarina joined me at the table. As we waited I had to breathe deep, my lungs were so tight from those thunderclouds and their smothering humidity. The open gate read, wrought in iron: “Arbeit Macht Frei”—Work Will Set You Free. I could see that inside the compound the earth was harder, paler, mixed with gravel and pounded flat. I heard little in there. A shuffle of footsteps. The steady cracks of wood being chopped. I craned my neck for a better look. To the right was a large main building shaped like a right-angled C. To the left, rows and rows of wooden barracks. An odor of charred wood lingered, but then the wind shifted and I caught a bitter-sour stench that I hadn’t smelled in months.

  Katarina tore a Lucky in two and placed a half in each nostril. Emil had wandered off. Down along the fence, he was talking to a gaunt man in US Army work fatigue shirt and trousers. They gestured at me.

  “It’s all right, you can come in, seeing how you came all this way for a look-see. Sir?”

  “Huh?”

  It was the corporal, back at his table. “The look-see. Dachau camp.”

  “Right. What we’re here for,” I said.

  “The Fräulein can’t come in, sir. Off Limits for her. There’s another locals’ tour later today, she wants in.”

  Katarina whispered to me, “It’s no problem. Emil can still go in with you.”

  “No problem? Of course it’s a problem.” I pulled at her elbow and placed her in front of me. “Corporal, do you know who this lady is?”

  The GI stared. “She’s a German.”

  “It’s okay, Harry,” Katarina said, yanking out her Lucky nostril plugs. “I’ve been inside.”

  The corporal had lost interest. He sat and wrote on one of his five clipboards. Emil strolled back to us, buttoning up his natty whipcord jacket.

  “You don’t have to go back in there,” I told him. “Not for me.”

  Emil smiled. “This is not the first time, Mister. Some days I return to answer questions for your doctors and psychiatrists, and for your Legal Branch—there are so many of those. Although I would not call this much of a reunion.”

  “No. Good.” I had out my handkerchief and my Luckies to smoke or split in half or both. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like it’s a surprise. I’ve seen the pictures in the papers.”

  “Yes.”

  “Those pictures might look a little different next time,” said the corporal without glancing up.

  I followed Emil in through the gate. We roamed the roll call grounds, and we inspected the barracks that Emil called cell blocks. Their wood was gray and soft. Inside, crammed-in tiers of bunks showed rusty nails, splinters, unknowable stains. A wall stencil read: “Your Lice, Your Death” in old German script.

  The next few cellblocks had been burned down, leaving huge rectangles of black ground.

  “I know what you are thinking,” Emil said. “People want to think it. But there was no battle, no revolt. Your medics had these burned down to kill the typhus.”

  We walked on. A group of doctors passed. One waved at Emil, and he waved back. Emil told me, “When your soldiers came, there were sixty-thousand still here. Most of the last SS had fled the day before.”

  “Still here? Where the heck were the rest—where were you?”

  “This is another story. I was with a group the SS marched south days before, there were seven thousand or so of us—the so-called ‘healthy ones.’ It was a death march, like Abraham’s. Eventually, some guards fled, but others shot at us and each other for whatever reason. We ran as best we could, into the woods and hills, barns. I did this. But first, I found Henk.”

  “The SS Kapo. The one in your nightmare.”

  Emil nodded. The stench had thickened and I held my handkerchief to my nose. We rounded the last cellblocks to find a trench as long as a football field and wide as a tall man’s height. At the far end, men wearing Army olive drab and red-cross armbands milled around. A camera stood on its tripod. Beyond, along the barbwire fence, stood freight cars with their sliding doors wide open. All empty inside.

  “Many survived,” Emil said to me. “This is true. Others lived for a time, for weeks, some of them, but they were too weak and sick to be let go on their own. So they wandered here, as I did outside in the woods, all of us like so many zombies. Sometime after Henk I found myself on the big shoulders of a big GI and he took me to a Red Cross truck.” Emil’s voice cracked. He fell silent. He added, “And so, some of us return to provide informations. As you see over there, the worst only appears just now. Go on, see for yourself.”

  I approached the edge of the trench. Looked down. They looked something like corpses but didn’t look real, what was left of them. They were coated white with lime and stacked many high. I pressed the handkerchief to my nose and mouth, holding my breath as long as I could. Looked as long as I could. I made out the thin, hard white bodies, the legs and arms bowed. Mouths gaped. Some eyes open, all dark. These were women and men, but no children? I peered hoping to find no children.

  I turned away, stumbled off. Between the cell blocks I saw long carts stacked high with striped fatigues and smocks, all mangy and stiff and faded. Yellow, red, green, and pink triangles I saw. I must have counted ten, fifteen carts of the clothing.

  Emil was yards down the trench, hugging a medic. They were smiling, the medic hugging him back. I’ll just wait here, I told myself, but the truth was I didn’t have a choice. My lungs had squeezed up and my eyes burned even though I held the handkerchief tighter. I crouched, closed my eyes. My legs went weak anyway and began to wobble. My head spun.

  Emil was jogging back over to me. I screamed at him: “They’re still here? What for? Just laying there? It’s almost July, could’ve leveled this hell hole in a day.”

  Emil held me steady, speaking low. “It’s exactly because there were so many. Many had to be dug up. All must be recorded. It takes time, something like archeology. Now come on.”

  Emil walked me along. In the farthest corner of the compound, across a canal and inside a small wood, he showed me a squat red brick building. Inside stood rows of brick and iron ovens, the bricks blackened all aroun
d the doors. This was the Dachau oven house. On the way back we passed another trench, “just discovered,” Emil told me. GIs were marching German civilians along the trench and forcing them to look down. “This is the locals’ tour. Probably citizens of Dachau Town, from just down the road.” They wore gloves and cashmere overcoats, their hats, nice and boxed, looking much like the fine folks back home, I thought, though their faces had gone ashen and their lips clenched so tight they had no lips. A pretty woman sprinted on by as if in a race. A grandfather had dropped on all fours, vomiting.

  “At least that old donkey sees it now,” said Emil. “This camp has been here since thirty-four.”

  We walked along train tracks to the main building. A sign read: “Working Quarters,” and a GI stood guard. Emil placed a hand on my arm. “I must talk to some of your doctors, so I leave you here, Mister. I’ll meet you out at the motorcycles.”

  “What do you mean here? Inside there?”

  “Yes. You’ll find it. Just keep going.” Emil walked off.

  The GI guard saluted. I saluted, stepped inside. The walls were white, the floors polished concrete and it was cool in here, giving no smell. I followed a long corridor, passing offices and rooms with high tables, what looked like operating rooms. The corridor widened as the floor slanted downward. I pushed through a door and found myself in a type of long warehouse. The roof was much higher here. Tall sliding doors at the opposite end stood half open, revealing more waiting, emptied freight cars. It was darker where I stood in here and I looked around, squinting. Giant rambling heaps lined the walls on either side of me, blocking windows and almost reaching the rafters. The colors and textures varied. I walked along the heaps. The first pile appeared to be clumps of straw, or animal pelts. I stepped closer.

  It was hair—shorn human hair. Black, blonde, red. Curly, straight, long and short.

  I wanted to crouch again but kept moving, kept looking.

  The next pile was prosthetic arms and hands, legs and feet. Large, medium, small.