Pale Horse Riding

by Chris Petit

  He didn’t expect the oily coagulation of exultation and disgust that followed, or how the giddiness of the moment contained within it the collapse into demoralisation. He wasn’t even drunk, yet his thinking afterwards had all the bursts of clarity and incoherence he associated with drinking. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him it was a projection of himself he had been kicking.

  The same logic seemed to apply to what he did next. The tannery was shut. There was no obvious vantage point other than a tree on a forlorn triangle of grass, low branched and easy to climb. A broad fork provided a passable seat. He sat in the last of the light, watching the green surroundings darken and the purple sky make an incomplete jigsaw of the leaves.

  He slept and woke stiff. A day of resolve, he told himself. No more backsliding.

  A figure approached in the distance. That figure became a woman. He saw only her silhouette, backlit, slender, emerging out of the sun rising over the rooftops. Her walk was familiar. She slowed outside the tannery and slipped inside.

  He scrambled down and hurried to the door but she had locked it and when he banged no one came.

  Haas was next to be drawn into Morgen’s net. They saw him in his office. Schlegel wondered how many he had dispatched already that day. The curtain to the annex was drawn.

  Haas remained endlessly pleased with himself, with the deliberate lack of imagination and humour that seemed to be the indicator of dangerous men.

  ‘Tell us about Bock the dentist,’ said Morgen.

  Haas folded his arms in a practised way that showed his muscles. He blamed Grabner. Morgen appeared delighted by the answer.

  Haas could name the orderly that had administered the injection.

  Morgen said, ‘It seems to be a very well-trodden corridor between the security police and the doctors.’

  He made a point of repeating whatever Haas said, giving it the formality of a statement, trying not to sound incredulous.

  ‘You say there was an attempt to poison Bock in the cells. He complained of being ill and was making such a fuss that Grabner was telephoned. You then overheard the call come through saying to put Bock out of his misery.’

  Schlegel thought: For Morgen all that matters is Haas saying it is true.

  Haas was equally willing to go on record as having seen Dr Wirths remove morphine from the pharmacy.

  ‘Wirths blames Grabner for that.’

  ‘I say Dr Wirths. He’s by no means the only one.’

  ‘What else about Wirths?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘Are we talking inhumane experiments?’

  ‘His cancer research?’ Morgen sounded surprised.

  ‘That’s what he calls it. His brother runs a clinic in Berlin, which is all about subsidies and patents and grants and nothing about results.’

  Tubo-ovarian abscesses, Schlegel remembered.

  Haas nodded. ‘The test is supposed to detect uterine cancer in its earliest stages. In questionable cases the cervix is removed and sent to the brother’s clinic where the tissue is studied.’

  ‘Surgically removed?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘The test is unreliable, but Wirths and his brother hold the patent for the instrument, and the operation is unnecessary. A biopsy would suffice and post-operative conditions are not conducive to recovery.’

  ‘And the women are left sterile?’ Morgen asked.

  ‘Most are Jews.’

  Haas sat back, even more pleased with himself.

  ‘Anything else you care to tell us about the good doctor?’ asked Morgen, still assessing what they had just been told.

  ‘He thinks nothing of killing prisoners if it is in his medical interests.’

  ‘Are we still talking about female experiments?’

  ‘That’s block ten. There’s a forbidden ward upstairs here where Wirths keeps patients who are injected with typhus, and various remedies tried.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Morgen. ‘I came across this in Buchenwald. In among all the orgies and drinking binges’ – he shot Schlegel a look – ‘there was a way of getting rid of tricky prisoners by referring them for a similar experiment. In earmarked cases a placebo was administered, giving the patient less chance of recovery. But we must distinguish between legitimate experiment, pseudo-science and downright cruelty. What is your personal assessment of Dr Wirths?’

  ‘A man of manners but a real sadist of the worst kind.’

  They moved on to Fegelein.

  ‘He has been coming here quite a lot,’ said Morgen. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Shopping trips, it was said.’

  ‘Canada?’

  ‘Ostensibly to assess and report on the situation. A lot of that went on, as an excuse to come down from Berlin and stuff their pockets. Plus he had the pick of the girls, being something of a star.’

  Haas had a shameless instinct for giving Morgen what he wanted.

  Fegelein had threatened and abused Tanner. Fegelein liked hurting and Tanner had told Haas it was why she stopped seeing him.

  ‘Did Tanner tell you about Fegelein running down a woman in a car?’

  From the calculation in Haas’s eyes, Schlegel suspected he hadn’t, but it took him no time to say, ‘She was too scared to talk about it, except to say it happened and Fegelein hushed it up.’

  Schlegel had to admit the man was very good. When they had last talked Haas hadn’t even known Fegelein’s name.

  Morgen said, ‘We may need a sworn statement.’

  ‘Happy to oblige.’

  Once they had left the building, Schlegel said, ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘The law won’t uphold us, so we apply our own law.’

  You look almost as full of yourself as Haas, Schlegel thought, but decided not to say it.

  It was a half-day in the garrison. Schlegel spent the afternoon drinking with the lorry drivers at the beer stall. Joshing, pointless conversations, spent either at cross-purposes or on parallel tracks, always amiable, with bottles raised in toast. Four, five and six litres later drivers on overtime disappeared into their cabs and roared off, to be replaced by others. Schlegel sat saying little. He was rarely bothered and stayed, aware of his weight settled on the stool. The drivers sprawled on benches at tables with little straw roofs.

  As it got dark Schlegel went and sat back in the tree. His wait was soon rewarded by a woman approaching from the same way as before. She paused before the door to the leather factory, seemed about to go in then changed her mind and walked on.

  By the time he scrambled down he had lost her between streetlights. His last sighting was by the high wall of the slaughterhouse. When he got there she was gone.

  He was ashamed of himself. He had failed, and what would she think anyway, being accosted by a drunk.

  He returned on instinct to the party house where he had seen Sepp and Böhner and became deliberately horribly drunk. He was getting a persecution complex, thinking he was being followed everywhere. He behaved obnoxiously. He tried to pick a fight and was laughed at. He was told by a couple of thugs in charge to go home and sleep it off.

  His first thought was where could he find another party. He took a path across a field. The area was full of such short cuts. He didn’t even have time to see it coming when they jumped him. A whirl of shadows he thought were trees. The pain shooting up his shin he thought was him tripping over. Not until he saw red after being punched in the jaw did he work it out. More than two men, maybe three, perhaps even four. He knew he must look pathetic, cowered, arms raised, not because he was afraid, which he was, but because he didn’t know how to respond to the battering. He thought it might be better that he was half-cut. He was in no condition to defend himself, not that he was any good at that sort of thing, and he went down easily, in a slurry of panic and resignation. The moment had been a long time coming. The men didn’t talk, just grunted. Schlegel was dragged away from the path, into bushes. Brambles scratched his face. He wanted to say he had nothing worth stealing but already his mouth was too swollen and he lay
listening to his screams as he had the shit kicked out of him. He fancied one of the men was the big lad Böhner, and, why he didn’t know, that another was Broad. The pain was excruciating and so systematic it had to be more than random drunken violence. He was being taught a lesson. He was being made an example of. His head was swelling to the size of a melon. He grew more afraid before passing out, thinking they might not stop before they killed him, so his beaten and deformed corpse could be served as an example to Morgen, and Morgen would give his body that look of mild disappointment which he seemed to reserve only for him. He heard bone snap, followed by a last almighty kick to the head, taking him down into the black of the commandant’s tunnel.

  Schlegel came to in the garrison hospital in a room to which no one came. Outside was night.

  His chest was strapped. The little finger of his left hand was in a splint. It was swollen and throbbed badly. One eye he could barely see out of. He lay in a haze of painkillers.

  At last a nurse came and told him he had concussion and had been given a tetanus shot.

  By day the view outside was a sullen grey. He itemised his ailments, as opposed to his injuries: pain in the joints, aching muscles, backache, headache, a dry cough. The cough became a marker of time and its persistence started to drive him crazy. Had Dr Wirths come calling? Had he been injected? Had the purpose of the beating been to put him in hospital so he could be taken care of? Why not just kick him to death?

  Pohl might not risk removing Morgen but make sure he got the message by beating an associate.

  Stretches of sedated exhaustion left him sad for Ingeborg Tanner, pondering the grotesqueness of that kingdom of death and their absurd investigation. He doubted they would ever find out who killed her. Morgen, taxed by his own sense of dishonour, was now left in the impossible position of trying to interpret the law. It was like watching a child with a bucket against a tidal wave.

  Schlegel supposed they had fallen into a pit of suffering where the mythical and primitive ruled, with old fault lines exposed, Pandora’s boxes opened, in which lay the shock of institutional familiarity, an unsettling combination of the uncanny and the homely – street signs, block numbers, noticeboards, recreation, work schedules, food, drink, music, fucking, stimulants, wrought-iron mottos, scratchings on walls, flowerbeds, lawn sprinklers, the camp orchestra sending gangs off to work, the willed pretence of ordinariness, sentimentality even, in the artless numerals painted on the lanterns that hung outside each barracks’ door, as though vernacular detail might persuade everyone what they were doing was either useful or normal. The familiar was what they should fear most, that was the only lesson to be drawn. The gap between the ordinary and unfathomable would always be accommodated, as history showed.

  He was surprised by Schulze, hovering in his open doorway, hand raised in an imitation of knocking. She looked smart in the suit she had been wearing on the train.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  She didn’t answer and said, ‘You haven’t been allowed visitors until now.’

  She appeared preoccupied.

  Schlegel had no interest in talking about himself and wanted to ask about her. He had read occasionally in old books about people revealing their true feelings. He didn’t know what his were, beyond that lather of anxiety which marked the months and days. Perhaps life was not a progression, as they had been promised, but more chaotic and random.

  Schlegel suspected Schulze, like him, didn’t know where to start. They exchanged banalities. Yes, he was all right. It was his fault; he should have been more careful. Had Morgen said anything?

  Schulze said, ‘He pretends not to be but he is quite fond of you.’

  He deflected the remark rather than accept it, losing the moment, thinking of the garrison wife he had met through Krick, and how she skated so effortlessly over things. Perhaps the great achievement of the huge social experiment they were embarked on would be the elimination of all inner life and uncertainty through a process of externalisation.

  He said without thinking, ‘I was in the east with Krick.’

  ‘He said you weren’t sure if he had recognised you.’

  ‘Anti-partisan duties. Do you know what they are?’

  ‘I can guess.’

  Following that glancing encounter with Krick two years ago, he was now talking to the woman he slept with. He embarrassed himself by blushing, even more when he saw her notice. He sniffed and coughed until he wept. Acute self-consciousness swamped him as Schulze consoled him. All he could think of was the awkwardness of afterwards. Hearing footsteps in the corridor he hurriedly extricated himself. A nurse entered and told Schulze she had to leave because the patient needed to rest.

  Morgen was the worst kind of hospital visitor, desperate to get out as soon as he sat down. Schlegel had apparently crawled to a road and been found there after collapsing. The doctors had reported the case to the security police.

  ‘And sure enough, Broad is telling everyone.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘They say you were getting out of order and asking for trouble. You beat up a man the other day, who reported it.’

  There was nothing Schlegel could say to that.

  Morgen lit up in defiance of the no-smoking sign and blew out of the window. He said dealing with the miasma of corruption was like trying to shovel liquid shit. Schlegel suspected Morgen felt let down by him becoming unrighteously corrupt, compared to Morgen’s righteous corruption.

  ‘We could stay months and get no further. How long are you in here for?’

  ‘They haven’t said.’

  ‘Well, hurry up, I need you back. I fear we are running out of time. The witness to the hit-and-run case has identified Fegelein.’

  ‘Reliable?’

  ‘A town councillor; don’t know if that makes him reliable. Fussy, pince-nez and wearing a Homburg in this weather. A complainer too. Bangs on about how difficult the garrison makes life for everyone in town. He heard rather than saw the accident, walking his dog before work. The car raced round the bend. The man memorised the number plate but forgot half of it in the shock of finding the woman when he had been expecting another car.’

  He had only glimpsed the driver because the man was accelerating and a woman was in the passenger seat, but his description of her placed Tanner firmly in the car, which by default put Fegelein at the wheel.

  ‘Fegelein is apparently on his way here now.’

  Schlegel knew Morgen hated being fed lines, so waited to be told.

  ‘He’s mad at me because the old traffic cop has been on his case, and he told him he was going to come down and sort us all out. So I will surprise him with the councillor, who has agreed to confirm if Fegelein was the driver.’

  Schlegel thought: Bribed probably. They weren’t living in times when anyone stood up for anything.

  Morgen stubbed out his cigarette in a pot plant. Although the man was obviously itching to be gone, Schlegel suspected more was to come.

  ‘I spoke to the commandant. He said after what had happened to you he can no longer vouch for us.’

  ‘Had he in the first place?’

  Morgen shrugged. ‘As I said, time is running out. I told the commandant I have enough verbal evidence of Grabner’s illegal acquisitions and unauthorised killings. The commandant got nervous at that and pointed out Grabner took his orders from security headquarters in Berlin. I told him I had investigated and could find nobody who would admit that these initiative killings had been condoned.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course not, but they’re not going to say anything else.’

  The commandant, nervous of being implicated in Grabner’s killing machine, told Morgen he would rather that was not exposed and to press the corruption charge.

  ‘I said we couldn’t trust the security police to conduct a proper search and needed outside help.’

  ‘From?’ asked Schlegel.

  ‘Kattowice Gestapo. Not ideal, but . . .’

>   Schlegel had feared the answer. It would be a hornets’ nest.

  Morgen went on. ‘The commandant is pushing for us to make a move. He told us to search Palitsch’s house while we are at it, and he would rather it were our charge rather than Grabner’s against Dr Wirths.’

  Morgen’s words hung heavy and meaningless. The room felt like the air was being sucked out of it. Irritated by his dry cough, Schlegel took in what Morgen was saying in a daze. Outside the window, aspens, leaves crisped by the sun, that infernal chemical light.

  After Morgen was gone, Schlegel got up shakily and sat in a chair, too weak to do anything other than stare out of the window. Occasionally he dozed, his head snapping back in prelude to another bout of that wretched cough, and panic flooded back.

  Fegelein passed down in the street, carrying a grip, like he had just arrived. He happened to look up, grinned at Schlegel and drew a bead with his pistol finger, dropping his thumb in imitation of the hammer, and blew on his finger like a crack shot.

  Morgen was eating alone when Fegelein marched in to ask if he was responsible for a drunk policeman telephoning him about some traffic offence. His manner suggested the matter was no more annoying than a fly waiting to be swatted.

  Fegelein was wearing a fancy concocted uniform. Morgen asked if he had designed it himself. Fegelein said it was a modification of his cavalry one.

  ‘A staff version, approved by Heini. As a matter of fact, I have just had it made. Tailors here are much better than anything you find in Berlin now, apart from the ones Goebbels uses, but he monopolises them.’

  One of Fegelein’s assumptions was a sense of false equality, as if they could both afford the same. Morgen wondered if Fegelein’s new uniform was the work of Frau Hoess’s sweatshop.

  ‘Perhaps you could introduce me. I am a suit short. Moths got the last one.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ asked Fegelein.

  ‘About the suit or the traffic accident?’

  ‘Ha-ha. Tailoring every time.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Tell you what, come now. They’re doing adjustments on another. They do evening fittings for the busy soldier and you need smartening up. Very reasonable rates. In fact, you decide what to pay, depending on what you think it’s worth. I tip lavishly compared to some.’