The Butchers of Berlin

by Chris Petit

  Gersten stuck his pistol in the man’s stomach and pulled the trigger. Grigor recoiled and Sepp kicked his feet from under him and clapped his hands in delight.

  ‘Flay him,’ said Gersten.

  Grigor lay groaning, not yet dead.

  Gersten watched Sepp, drunk and reeling, go about stripping Grigor of the rest of his clothes, wadding and chucking them aside, lugging the naked body with its floppy, useless cock – it couldn’t be said to be Grigor any more – onto the trolley, hoisting it with the rattling chain, levering it so it hung over the boiling vat. The skin came off easily after scalding. Then the dismemberment, with the knack of letting the meat resist the blade before yielding to the cut.

  Next door was sorting night. Reitner would be charging around like a man possessed, a very different sight from his blubbing over the boy.

  Gersten knew the edifice was about to come crashing down. He was losing control. Time was running out. Reitner and the rest were crass, no play to their work, no instinct for the right question, no appropriate awe of the terror induced, no tenderness to their cruelty, no elegance of cut, only merciless glee.

  Sepp had already come to him before the roundup, worried about Reitner’s rampaging. A thing with a boy had got out of hand. No change there, but Reitner had previously kept disciplinary sadism within bounds, and never managed yet to kill one of his love boys, however much it had been on the cards.

  Sepp turned to Gersten to get them out of trouble, as usual. Feed the body to the pigs, Gersten said. What’s the problem?

  Then he had an idea. Spread a little terror, stand back and admire. Borrow an old trick from psychological operations in the east. Disguise through obliteration and show, dress it up to look like something other than Reitner’s drunken, maudlin cruelty. Blame the Jews. Baumgarten had been grumbling on about having to work with Jewish butchers. Make a Jew murder shrine and ship off the butchers before they could protest their innocence.

  In the old days they had whipped women to death and flayed them after for public display: see how the Bolsheviks behave like beasts!

  It remained his fancy from time to time still to relish the resistance and collapse of a mind and body, the mewling, sobbing and begging, the messy evacuations, moments of respite and generosity, learning to know, understand and appreciate that other inside out, his own failures, strange humour and compassion, the cradling before the breaking of the soul, and always afterwards secret desolation when the body was tidied away, with nothing to show for his artistry.

  Reitner had loved the boy up whose arse he stuck the bayonet. Oh, for goodness sake! Reitner could live with that. They flayed the dead little fucker together, in the room Gersten was standing in, wearing butchers’ aprons, Reitner snivelling to Gersten’s caustic, weary commentary. He couldn’t stand it when killers grew mawkish.

  He relished how the simple fact of leaving the remains to be found grew into someone else’s problem, with all the speculation and curiosity and everyone barking up the wrong tree. It made him feel like a real murderer rather than just another killer. Reitner was his blunt instrument, allowing him to appropriate and embellish, like an artist, becoming death’s author, creating a story beyond anything Reitner’s savagery was capable of.

  Sepp lowered the flesh into the vat, with a slight hiss as it entered the water. The man was still alive and uttered a final blood-curdling, thrilling scream.

  Flay and display. Gersten enjoyed the cutting, the way the epidermis lifted from muscle. He wished to practise and improve. The idea of murder as art – the individual act as opposed to so much senseless killing – was beyond Reitner and the rest, with the exception of Sepp, who was all brains and mush for stomach.

  One bottle of schnapps, soon after the Reitner business, and the whole sorry story had splurged out in Sepp’s tedious, drink-sodden account, layer upon layer. How Metzler’s Jews had never left. How it was Reitner’s idea to kill them. How the first time he pretended afterwards it was an accident and needed to be hushed up. How that brought Metzler sniffing, smelling a rat, arranging a transfer to the slaughterhouse, with the help of the interfering Jewish butchers. How it was Sepp’s idea to stick Metzler in the steam room. How he wanted to get rid of him too, and the Jewish butchers. How Gersten warned him Metzler was off-limits (with the prospect of the perfect note in the pipeline). How the Jews that followed never left either, though Metzler watched them go and believed they had, not seeing the train stop down the line; change of plan, everyone out, lorries waiting.

  Gersten hadn’t known they were killing Jews on top of everything. It wasn’t necessary. There was no shortage of bodies. It was the one thing there was a surfeit of. They were even shipped in by train.

  Sepp explained it was a fallow period, with a break in supply from the east, a reversal of war, transportation difficulties.

  The live cargo had dried up. Gersten hadn’t been told about that either, how Reitner had a brother who worked in the big camp north of the city. Condemned men were being sent down so the boys could be inducted into the execution game. Reitner had in mind a killer elite.

  But the camp was in lockdown after a prisoner escape, and in quarantine after a typhus outbreak. Nothing coming for three weeks. The boys were getting restless. Reitner told them the test of real mettle was killing Jews.

  Reitner, the enterprising, no-nonsense NCO, exercised initiative in the face of a crisis; the constant how-to of solving problems; satisfying the economics of supply and demand. Two birds with one stone.

  Of course they were all at it – as before – taking turns, Sepp got around to telling. Haager braining people with his stun gun. Baumgarten punching a man’s lights out, taking pride in killing with a single blow. The sport of beheading chickens while doing the same to men, taking bets to see who would run around headless the longest. Even the gutless Sepp sneaked up behind people, shooting them in the neck. Chain whippings, hangings, everything short of crucifixion, though there had been a few of those in the east, thanks to Lazarenko.

  Gersten had watched from the shadows on sorting nights. Boys and the men together, killing, killing, killing; the boys queasy at first, then looking forward to it, soon unable to get enough, with silly grins plastered over their faces.

  ‘We all did it,’ said Sepp. ‘All the time.’

  They sated their appetite and fed the results to the pigs. The perfect equation. Sometimes they worried about getting caught.

  Gersten rationalised it for Sepp. ‘They created a fierce legend for you. This is what happens when the legend comes home.’

  Reitner was an increasingly loose cannon. He had taken it upon himself to get rid of Schlegel, a snooper he took exception to because of his nancy-boy white hair. He killed the wrong man instead, went around loosing off shots and failed to finish the job, so drunk that he temporarily passed out among the pigs too, a cause of subsequent hilarity.

  Gersten watched Sepp go about his drunken business. He supposed he could shoot him or leave him for others to find in flagrante, a prospect that amused him more than shooting the man.

  The first wave of planes passed over without incident, their target elsewhere. A single bomb fell on the outskirts of the yard. Schlegel heard its whistle then the dry explosion, followed by ringing hooves on cobblestone and the stampeding of a dozen horses that forced Schlegel and Morgen to seek shelter in the run Baumgarten had taken them up. They waited for the onslaught.

  The promised lorry hadn’t shown, forcing them to carry on alone or abandon the order. Morgen thought everyone would be hiding from the bombs anyway.

  Plaster fell from the ceiling of the tunnel with the next explosion. The lights flickered, went out then struggled back on. Dismal before, the place was even more grim in a bombing raid. Morgen said he had no intention of dying there and preferred to take his chances outside.

  He returned soon after, shaken after a close call, and proceeded up the tunnel, leaving Schlegel little choice but to follow. So much debris was coming off the ceiling it
was like being trapped in a mine about to collapse.

  Schlegel saw figures up ahead. Someone shouted, warning them to come no further. The tunnel plunged into darkness again, with the largest explosion yet, followed by what sounded like a rifle report and a bullet smacking the wall by Schlegel’s head. He saw the muzzle flash as the firing continued, pushed Morgen to the ground and threw himself down. Morgen said he thought it was a Hitler Youth. When the lights came back on they would be sitting ducks. On the other hand, the kid was inexperienced, firing in the dark. Morgen was ready when the lights went on, lying as on a firing range, legs spread and using his elbows to steady his aim. The boy was flailing, trying to get his rifle up. Schlegel kept thinking Morgen was being too slow.

  The lights flickered. Morgen fired twice. The boy went down, howling.

  They hurried on. The boy thrashed on the ground. The other men wore prisoner stripes and were chained together. Schlegel pushed his way past following Morgen as darkness returned and he feared the men would turn on them as one. Boom! Boom! Boom! in the distance. Schlegel held his pistol, thinking how pathetic, compared to outside. The stink there was terrible, like the men were diseased and rotting. With the lights back, Schlegel turned and saw them stamping on the boy, who had stopped screaming and was pleading in vain for mercy.

  The boys on the floor were being encouraged to drink, Gersten saw, as he watched the appalling theatre from a safe distance, in horror and admiration as Reitner, despite the crashing bombs, kept everyone at it, death’s foreman screaming for overtime. Boys stood in line waiting their turn, stepping up to the platform, while others fetched from among the striped men by the door and, showering them with blows, forced them to strip. The boys dishing it out were as convulsed with terror as the men they beat. Fear ruled them all as the next shuffling man was driven forward, most assuming the pathetic gesture of covering their genitals. Another wave of planes passed over and Gersten thought best would be a fat five-hundred pounder in the middle of it all and not a shred of evidence, and Morgen and Schlegel’s nasty little investigation blown to smithereens.

  Some boys were crapping themselves at the imminence of death’s door. Gersten had a flash of Haager admitting, to general hilarity, on a road in the middle of nowhere, that there was nothing like a warm turd in the pants to snap the mind into shape. There was only Reitner now. Haager and Baumgarten were conspicuous by their absence, Baumgarten, always expert at bunking off, looking innocent afterwards as he said he hadn’t realised he was needed. Another thump as a bomb fell. Reitner was screaming for the boys to get on with it. Gersten had to laugh at such a magnificent and meaningless assembly line to death while the apocalypse banged around them. The boys took their turn. Faster! Faster! shouted Reitner. It was like the old days. An escort to bring forward. The dispatcher. No pit now, just two boys, anxiously looking up, waiting for the ceiling to fall in, as they dragged the body away. Kapow! The next one. One dispatching kid, more of a showman, did a Wild West imitation, blowing on the stun gun afterwards while a group stared at the spastic death throes. The next they forced on all fours and put him on the animal conveyor, and the dispatcher asked for a rifle.

  Reitner, in his more lucid moments, was prone to banging on about how he wanted to pass on the crucible of his knowledge to the boys. The difference between when they started out was they were green, had to make it up as they went along, whereas now he was in a position to educate them in the legacy of the killing fields. Nerveless courage. Inhuman courage. Cruel hunters. The butchers. Gersten could see most of the boys were too stupid to learn, backward city kids barely in command of the rudiments of education. Where Reitner might once have been the cruellest of the brave, there was now only psychotic rage accelerated by drink. They were all the same. Sepp, lashings of the stuff, so far gone he had probably fallen into the vat. Haager spent his time trying to replicate that heady, summer moment when with bodies all around, the result of the hot pistol in his hand, he had stood with his fly undone, copiously pissing, while simultaneously drinking a whole flagon of beer, and the rest of them wept as they watched, helpless with laughter.

  Across the floor, Gersten watched Morgen and Schlegel charge into the room and pause at the carnage, as well they might. Another prisoner fell, poleaxed. Reitner, worked to a frenzy, was rampant. Drunk and bellowing, he pulled down his tracksuit pants to reveal his erect tool, yelling, ‘The state of hardness!’ No one was paying him attention, apart from Schlegel and Morgen, who stared in disbelief.

  Gersten suspected Reitner’s work was done. He had passed on the killing virus, but badly, because the boys had no respect for their work, or for him. It was like watching the play of cruel frightened children. They would knuckle under because they were conditioned, but it was the obedience of imminent anarchy.

  Exquisite confusion followed as the lights went out, leaving everyone shouting and screaming. One or two came back on, making a shadow play of the scene. Gersten pictured red sky above, huge flashes. Another round of bombs shook the walls, the perfect chaos outside matched by the internal carnage. They used to laugh at him because he didn’t drink; who was laughing now? He moved forward, fast and controlled, pistol at his side. He took out one of the more hopeless lads, who looked in danger of scuttling off, shot him because the boy’s head presented itself at an inviting angle. After that they all started firing. He would be lucky to get out alive; so be it.

  He came to Reitner railing at the heavens. If he could see how stupid he looked, thought Gersten, passing behind, pausing to half-genuflect and pull the trigger for the bullet to pass through the soft hinge of the back of the knee to blow out the bone in front. Reitner gave an almighty shriek and went down, the agony spinning him in circles. Gersten would have finished him except he was distracted by Morgen and the tall, white-haired one charging around. The latter’s silhouette gave him away. He fired off a shot and saw him hit, would have fired again except the rest of the lights came on. Another crash.

  Schlegel was hit in the left shoulder. There was no blood. It had felt like someone had slammed his feet, leaving him with a puzzled image of fairground tests of strength, smashing a hammer down on a platform to try to make a bell ring. Someone had started firing, then they were all at it. Had he imagined Gersten slipping away down the tunnel?

  Clutching his shoulder, Schlegel watched Morgen drag Reitner to his feet, which left him hopping on one leg, trying to protect his shattered knee. Another bomb, closer, and everyone froze. Reitner didn’t look so tough now. The boys stood around, gormless.

  Morgen barked at Reitner, ‘Pull yourself together, soldier, and have them fall in.’ Reitner made a feeble attempt to stand to attention. Schlegel heard the whine of stalling engines and the dive of a plane out of control. The boys lined up. One short of three ranks of six. A few tough ones, including the boxer and the boy he had beaten, trying to hold it together; a couple of spindly youths, including the ubiquitous shifty one, a fat boy with glasses, the ambiguous one that reminded Schlegel of himself; the rest making up the numbers. An antiaircraft battery went da-da-da! The explosion that followed was in the air. It must have got the diving plane. Hooray! went one or two of the boys, and the boxer shouted, ‘Death to the enemy!’

  Morgen inspected the first rank. The boys instinctively stiffened. Reitner, propping himself on his hands, resting on his good leg, looked like a runner at the start of a desperate race. Morgen addressed the boxing boy and pointed to Reitner.

  ‘That soldier can’t carry on. What do you do with a soldier that can’t carry on?’

  The boy’s eyes flicked sideways to the one standing next to him, who shook his head.

  Reitner shouted, ‘You shoot a soldier that can’t carry on. You do not leave him for the enemy!’

  Morgen talked to the boy again. ‘But in this instance, in this place, what do you do?’

  Reitner shouted he was forbidden to say. Their work was sanctioned. He was sweating like he was covered in glycerine.

  Morgen snapped, ‘Quiet
, soldier.’

  He changed his register to one of normal conversation, speaking to Reitner. ‘Tell me, one thing I don’t understand. Why did you have to keep the freezer and the morgue in town, not here?’

  Reitner made a noise that Schlegel decided could only be the man attempting to laugh.

  Morgen laughed too at the explanation. The premises were subject to regular inspection by the Department of Health and Safety, which had objected to a temporary morgue on an animal site. Morgen looked at the boys, who giggled too.

  He stepped up to the boxing boy and snapped, ‘Is something funny?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘No, sir!’ shouted Morgen. ‘No, sir!’ repeated the boy.

  Outside all the noise now came from the north.

  Morgen told the boys he was in charge. Reitner was incapable of command. He asked again what happened to soldiers that couldn’t carry on. Reitner repeated they must not tell. Morgen told the boxing boy he wasn’t asking them to say, he was ordering them to show him. The boy bleated about the bombs outside.

  ‘Do it,’ snapped Morgen.

  The pigs were hysterical with fear. In the background the city burned. In spite of all the destruction, Schlegel could see little evidence of immediate damage. They made the strangest procession. Two lads pulled the trolley on which Reitner lay screaming. The rest straggled behind like boys on a nightmare school outing. Morgen made them pause to ask Reitner who had killed Keleman. Reitner refused to say, even when Morgen probed his shattered knee with the point of his pistol. Schlegel asked him to stop, saying it didn’t matter now. Morgen addressed the boxing boy, who told them how Reitner had made them take the body to the pigs.

  ‘And this one too,’ he said, indicating Schlegel. But they had all been too drunk to finish the job.

  ‘Not this time,’ said Morgen.

  Gersten watched from the room above the pigs, after being warned by his consumptive colleague, who wet-coughed into a handkerchief, complaining of the smoke and dust. People were below, he said.