Pale Horse Riding

by Chris Petit

  Schlegel tried to make sense of what he was seeing. In some cases the baths were part of long communal corridors where the partitions had been ripped out. Extra baths had been brought in and were positioned willy-nilly.

  Morgen showed Bock’s picture and told them to start looking. When Juppe hesitated, Morgen snapped, ‘Do it, soldier!’

  Schlegel walked among the dead. He developed a sideways flick of the eyes, avoiding full inspection, enough to check that a body wasn’t Bock. The sense of dead flesh was overwhelming, making it hard to pick out the faces.

  Images of corpses in various states of death assaulted him: waxen, blue, livid, and in one case quite black, some bloated, some emaciated, little more than skeletons. He was overwhelmed by the many singular compositions within the shared state of death.

  One bath contained four children and there were two further communal sports-type pools with perhaps as many as thirty bodies, some floating, some submerged. Schlegel was wondering how on earth he would find the stomach to look at each one individually when Morgen called out.

  A couple of pistol cracks came from the yard upstairs as Morgen matched Bock’s picture to the corpse in the bath. Bock lay on his back, his head resting on the rim, in a pose of almost voluptuous surrender.

  ‘End of story,’ Morgen said.

  Two more shots came from upstairs as they were joined by Juppe and the woman.

  Bock’s torso was covered with an unseemly pelt of hair, from his neck down to his shrivelled penis. Schlegel felt embarrassed for the man and all the others, once as individual as the four of them standing there, now dead meat.

  He said they must be shooting people in the yard next door.

  ‘Small arms. Two shooters,’ Morgen confirmed, matter-of-fact.

  No one screamed or cried out apart from one who shouted a patriotic cry, followed by a shot.

  With the next shot came a scream. ‘First one botched,’ said Morgen, measuring the pause before the coup de grace.

  Morgen murmured, ‘To err is but human.’

  Schlegel counted the shots at intervals of twenty or thirty seconds, a dozen altogether, taking no more than three or four minutes.

  The silence from the yard felt more profound than simply the stopping of something, interrupted by a voice behind them demanding to know what the hell they were doing.

  The approaching man wore a white tunic with a high collar. Morgen angrily asked who he was. Staff medical orderly. The accent was Polish-German. The man was squat, with a broad neck and a bodybuilder’s torso. Muscles bulged under the sleeves of his tunic.

  He turned on the woman. ‘No prisoner doctors down here without staff in attendance.’

  Morgen said, ‘Here on my orders.’

  Morgen gave his rank and position. The orderly looked unimpressed and insisted the area was off-limits without authorisation.

  ‘I thought you had all gone home,’ Morgen said.

  ‘Not me,’ the man said unpleasantly.

  Morgen asked if he had seen the dead man before.

  The orderly shook his head.

  ‘Where’s his medical chart?’

  ‘Not my patient, wouldn’t know.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘He was admitted complaining of abdominal cramps.’

  He told them he had been in reception at the time but hadn’t seen who dealt with the case.

  ‘Can you tell me how he died?’ Morgen asked the woman. He sounded hopeless.

  ‘Not without an autopsy.’

  The orderly said loudly she wasn’t allowed to touch the body and the autopsy would reveal natural causes.

  It was a farce from what Schlegel could see. Dentist alive one minute, dead the next.

  The orderly said, ‘The seizure was witnessed. The man grabbed his heart and keeled over, after complaining of feeling dizzy.’

  Schlegel caught the prisoner doctor’s eye. The orderly started whistling.

  Morgen asked the name of the ranking doctor on duty that evening.

  The orderly said the man had already left to go on leave.

  The woman gestured for Schlegel to move so he blocked the orderly’s view. She quickly parted the corpse’s chest hair and Schlegel saw the small, bluish puncture mark above the heart.

  The moment was broken by a clatter of boots on the stairs. It was Broad and another man in boisterous spirits. Schlegel recognised Palitsch, the sharpshooter from the morning hunt. They had their arms draped around each other and were sharing a schnapps bottle. The sharp tang of cordite cut through the smell of disinfectant and rotting bodies. Broad sniggered.

  ‘Paperwork all in order?’

  Morgen gestured up towards the yard. ‘The court hearing isn’t until tomorrow.’

  Broad snapped his fingers and laughed. ‘Always a backlog.’

  ‘Riffraff clear out,’ said Palitsch.

  Broad toasted them and said, ‘Today the blood spurted out as if from a beast.’ He indicated his bespattered jacket. ‘And they make us pay for our own dry-cleaning!’

  The doctor stared at the floor.

  Schlegel asked Broad if he had known the dentist was dead when he sent them over. Broad did an exaggerated double take.

  Palitsch’s eyes were bright from killing. He said, ‘I need to get laid.’

  Broad said, ‘My gun is still warm.’

  Morgen looked exhausted and disgusted. ‘Get your cocks seen to, boys.’

  Schlegel followed Morgen’s heavy tread as they all trooped upstairs. The orderly made himself scarce. Morgen dismissed the woman. Broad and Palitsch left singing loudly, leaving them with Juppe.

  The gates to the execution yard were open and the crop of bodies was being taken away on a cart, watched by a thin bald man wearing running shorts and a tracksuit top.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked when he saw them.

  His legs were unnaturally white.

  He seemed to know who they were. ‘Grabner. Head of security. Call me Chief. Come. I want a word.’

  Juppe made to follow. Grabner said, ‘Not you. Just them.’

  Juppe hesitated.

  Morgen said, ‘You heard. Dismissed.’

  They watched Juppe’s departing back with relief. Morgen flashed an obscene gesture and Grabner guffawed.

  He took them into the prisoner block and showed them into what he called the courtroom, a fanciful description for such a small, unadorned space, dominated by a portrait of the leader.

  Grabner’s utter strangeness only became apparent when he spoke at length. A terrible collision of words emerged, often incomprehensible, a wreckage of language whose disconcerting effect was enhanced by a fussy Austrian accent, as comic and sinister as the commandant’s yap. When he lost his way in the middle of a sentence he seized on a word or phrase and repeated it, stabbing his finger for emphasis.

  Schlegel’s summary of the man’s linguistic dog’s dinner was that Grabner’s agents had informed him that he and Morgen weren’t safe. In fact, he didn’t need informers to tell him because it was obvious to anyone with half an eye.

  Something worth saying once bore saying again, and again.

  ‘Anyone with half an eye . . .’ ‘Even if I had half an eye I could tell you . . .’

  They listened to him go round in circles until Morgen asked, ‘Who killed our dentist?’

  ‘Your dentist?’ Grabner pouted. ‘Your fault he’s dead.’

  ‘Ours!’

  ‘We watch the man. Matter of fact, we talk to him and he is prepared whatever to cooperate.’

  ‘He was working for you!’

  ‘Until you tread on my toes.’

  ‘Then who killed him?’

  Grabner made an injecting motion.

  ‘So I believe,’ said Schlegel.

  According to Grabner’s towering, shapeless sentences, Bock was one among many medical staff involved in pharmacy and dental gold theft, including a large illegal trade in morphine. After getting caught, he was working as their informer in excha
nge for immunity, a word Grabner needed help with.

  ‘Set a thief,’ Grabner said. ‘Now we lose him, thanks to you. Big waste of time. Important operation comes to nothing because of you.’

  It was a disconcerting combination, the mixture of fitness fanatic and mangled language, both at odds with the man’s rather shy and soulful look of an ascetic monk, in contrast to his reputation as the terror of the garrison.

  ‘My advice is go now before the doctors give you one of their clever shots.’

  Morgen said he wanted any autopsy report forwarded.

  ‘You’ll be lucky. Did you meet garrison doctor Wirths?’

  Morgen said they hadn’t had the pleasure.

  ‘Big hero. Cured the epidemic. Maybe he knew about Bock, maybe not. Maybe one of his underlings makes the decision. But Dr Wirths is in the business of morphine trade, guilty as anyone. We watch his house. He has a new stove. Not connected. Why not? For what he can hide up the chimney. Being the good doctor, he uses profits to finance his research, upstairs in the block you came from.’

  ‘What research?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘Cancer shit.’ Grabner leaned forward. ‘I spell it out. Gang of doctors. They help themselves. Anyone who gets in their way they give a little injection. If Bock is informing, they remove him from the face of the picture. I am not happy you are here because it sets me back weeks. Leave us to do our work. You can go now. Go soon. I don’t want to investigate your deaths.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Morgen, with a levity that fell flat.

  ‘I do you a favour. I do me a favour. Wild elements here, close to out of control, we do our best to contain. You should not be here because you are Berlin boys.’

  They departed, alone for the first time since joining the commandant for his ride at six that morning.

  Morgen said, ‘Are you sure it was Sybil?’

  Schlegel described what he had seen. He couldn’t tell if Morgen believed him.

  Morgen said, ‘The shootings just now, I am sure they were not authorised.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The judge doesn’t come until tomorrow. Who authorised those shootings?’

  Schlegel supposed Grabner. He was more shocked by the transformation of Broad from sociable, would-be man of the world to blood-spattered executioner.

  Morgen flicked the butt of his cigarette away. ‘Do we have a friend in this place?’ he asked rhetorically.

  Waiting at the camp exit was the inevitable Juppe, who could barely contain his delight as he told them to accompany him.

  He escorted them the short distance to the commandant’s house where Hoess was waiting. Juppe was dismissed. Juppe gave a smart salute. The commandant, with the air of a man sharing a joke, said Juppe had done good work that day. Juppe looked grateful out of all proportion to the casual compliment.

  The commandant took them through to his study where papers lay strewn, with a full ashtray and a bottle next to it.

  He was appraised of the facts, he said. They had wasted their time.

  ‘You can’t prosecute a dead man.’

  There were further questions, Morgen said, if the man was murdered.

  The commandant rolled his eyes. ‘Spare me. I have people here to deal with that. We don’t need your interference. We can manage. We get enough people sticking their noses in as it is.’

  ‘The doctors in particular—’

  ‘Enough!’ shouted the commandant. ‘No more. My job is to make sure this place functions when it is barely capable of doing so. It is a nightmare of improvisation. It doesn’t bear inspection, which is why I am ordering you out. Besides, you are here under false pretences. I could have you locked up for impersonating post office officials.’

  He gave a whinny of amusement.

  Schlegel said, ‘I have some questions about a seamstress working for your wife, whom we also wish to question.’

  ‘Too late!’ The commandant affected vagueness. ‘Which one is that?’

  ‘The one you are taking an interest in.’

  ‘Only on behalf of my wife.’

  An awkward silence fell.

  ‘Let’s not be naïve,’ the commandant went on. ‘Spies everywhere, for a start. Prisoner informers, staff informers. This seamstress turns up, an attractive young woman, to be sure, but the first question you ask is why, and who is she working for, exactly? Has she been sent to spy?’

  ‘You furnished her with a room.’

  ‘Only to isolate her and find out what she is really up to.’

  The commandant gave a crafty stare.

  Schlegel found it no longer possible to tell what was true. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Truth didn’t exist. There were only degrees of ambiguity.

  The commandant said, ‘Your business is done. See yourselves out. As of zero-eight-hundred hours tomorrow your passes are no longer valid for the garrison.’

  Outside, the heat had barely dropped.

  Morgen said, ‘We have failed and leave empty-handed.’

  Schlegel found himself devoid of will, which he recognised as a side effect of the general moral infection.

  ‘A power struggle, is my guess,’ Morgen went on. ‘How would you describe the difference between comradeship and camaraderie?’

  Schlegel was tired and didn’t care. Comradeship was more natural, he supposed. ‘Camaraderie is tighter, more to do with the group.’

  ‘It elevates itself over outsiders. It excludes external control.’

  ‘Meaning you don’t talk to outsiders.’

  ‘You especially don’t talk to us.’

  ‘Yet Grabner is willing to implicate the garrison doctor.’

  ‘Clearly he wished to draw Wirths to our attention.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘There is a crisis of authority, which Kammler recognises. We are not dealing with a rational bureaucracy.’

  The fact of it was they were being chucked out.

  Schlegel asked in exasperation, ‘What were we supposed to do?’

  ‘That’s not going to happen now.’

  Schlegel thought of Sybil, surrounded by that ghastly other normality, which they had seen only from the reflecting side of the looking glass.

  Morgen paused to light up and waved his cigarette. ‘All this pedantic bookkeeping, the resistance to external control, the general sickness – let’s not forget that – and you have morale in constant decline. It must be hard when they all loathe each other. Arbitrariness becomes proof of obedience, do you see?’

  Schlegel wasn’t sure he did.

  ‘Obedience allows for plenty of deviance and lenience, providing the transgression is carried out in the spirit of camaraderie.’

  ‘Meaning it stinks from top to bottom.’

  ‘To be literal. Blind obedience is the instrument of terror. But while the commandant is in overall charge, the security police operates its own fiefdom, and the medical, labour and construction offices are both answerable and unanswerable to the commandant’s office. Huge zones of uncertainty exist and this, I suspect, is what concerns Kammler and why he wished us here. Not that it is any clearer which uncertainty in particular interests him.’

  ‘And what if someone were to grow truly arbitrary in such a situation?’

  ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  That night, in the uneasy stage of drifting off, Schlegel reflected on the sullen atmosphere, its deadening ordinariness, and the usual quirks and rivalries of institutional life, its gangs and cliques; the unseasonably hot weather where, in contrast to the mood, the sun blazed tropically hot through the smoky haze, beyond which lay clear blue skies, all the way to outer space, he thought, as sleep eluded him. He hadn’t imagined anything about the place, certainly not a garrison magazine with details of a football league, and prisoner XIs and spotty photographs of touchline crowds shouting their sides on, and advertisements for concerts. He thought about Schulze and prayed Sybil was safe in the passage of the night.

  The commanda
nt rode out the following dawn, through the enchanted mist and deathly quiet, riding bareback, after finding himself incapable of saddling the mare.

  That morning she seemed to gallop ahead of herself. His hangover came in pounding waves. Oh, for the arbitrary bullet, spinning its way, to drill his brainpan and end it all. For months now, however much he forced himself to knuckle down, he could see life only in terms of ending.

  The mist burned off in patches. He saw the lakes ahead, like glass. He rode to the shoreline and paused in awe. The low cloud left the thinnest visible strip above the mirrored surface, reflected white.

  He dismounted and undressed, folding his clothes, and leapt up naked onto his mare, using her withers. He nudged her gently, wishing not to disturb the surface. The water rose, deliciously cool, felt rather than seen because of his head wrapped in the soft bandage of mist. They moved deeper, until they were almost submerged, and in that narrow space above the water he saw the lake stretch ahead like infinity.

  Krick was out too, racing his bike. It was now his habit to play the game of watching the commandant. He recognised the area where they were, further out than the commandant usually came.

  Krick had lost sight of the commandant, who had ridden like a man more than usually possessed. He paused, taken by what he surveyed, so still it looked like the world had never been disturbed. He was not a romantic man but felt obliged to dismount to admire such dazzling tranquility. He walked towards the water’s edge with a sense of the moment being almost over, the strength of the sun about to punch its way through the enveloping shroud.

  His attention was drawn to something lying on the shore – the commandant’s boots and folded clothes. He supposed he had gone for a swim and was envious he had not thought of it first. He decided to leave him to it as a ripple broke the surface, with no immediate explanation for its cause, then out of the water rose the nag’s head and the commandant’s, beads spilling off them like silver mercury. Krick had a brief vision of the man utterly drained and contented, eyes shut, with a beatific smile, before disappearing into the mist, leaving only the horse’s neck and rising flanks and the man’s truncated white flesh.

  After his watery submergence, the commandant’s vision of himself was of a marbled emperor, riding with his arm aloft, sceptre in hand. His scalp prickled and, dressed again, he felt pleasantly cool and damp, not having bothered to dry himself. It would be a good day; one of the few. He would drink in moderation, the better to manoeuvre his wife – submissive for once in a blue moon – into not being the usual withholding bitch, and offer up her comfortable, bovine rump to him that night.