by Chris Petit
He realised he had left the gun, which he had put aside to prevent it from digging into him when lying down.
They listened. No sounds of pursuit. They followed the next creek until it became little wider than a trench. The reeds grew higher, leaving only a slit of sky. Schlegel found the water easier on his foot. They moved silently, listening. The plane circled high above.
The water grew shallower until it barely covered their ankles and the channel disgorged into a delta of marshy grassland, a stretch of a hundred metres, beyond which more reeds. Sybil said it was too dangerous to walk but the ground was broken up enough to crawl across.
They crossed without incident. Schlegel thought by then there was nothing to distinguish them from the primeval landscape. The channel opposite was deeper and more choked, sometimes so dense they had to clear a path.
The increasingly foul water reached to Sybil’s shoulders and Schlegel’s chest. They passed a sodden dead wading bird floating stickily, one orange pencil-like leg snapped off. Schlegel feared that soon neither the water nor land would be negotiable. He was about to say they should turn back when Sybil held up her hand and lowered herself until only her head was visible, pressing back into the side of the bank.
Schlegel heard the scrape of reeds against the boat and casual swearing as he sank down in the water.
One voice cursing to himself, bored more than annoyed.
Schlegel saw the canoe’s emerging prow and submerged himself. The sludgy water left him unable to see anything of the surface. He counted until he could hold his breath no longer and rose to find the canoe still there, drifting and apparently empty until a man with a half-smoked cigarette sat up. Schlegel saw forage cap, spectacles and a kid in uniform.
The canoe tipped easily. Schlegel saw the big circle of surprise made by the boy’s mouth, heard the hiss of cigarette hitting the water, felt the squirm of flesh and held down hard, meeting little resistance, other than weak, involuntary thrashing. The bubbles of the boy’s last gasp broke the surface in a thin stream, followed by angrier gassy belches. Schlegel continued to hold down until he was sure the lungs were flooded.
He stopped, opened his eyes, shut tight from the exertion, only for the water to explode in front of him. Hands clamped his throat, cutting off his air supply, pressing until the inside of his eyes felt they were bleeding. He went under. Water poured in through his nose. As the grip intensified a tiny undimmed part of his brain wondered inconsequentially if he would die from strangulation before he drowned. He thought: A life struggle and still distracted by all the wrong details – how the boy still had his glasses on; the way his own fingertips had puckered from being too long in the water. His throat felt like it was swallowing coals, then something gave.
Schlegel broke the surface with a roar. The boy’s body floated on its back, blood in the water from where Sybil had whacked his head with the canoe paddle. He lay dazed and blinking and looked about to cry as Schlegel pushed him back under.
This time Schlegel waited until Sybil said, ‘That’s enough now. Stop.’
The cigarette floated on the surface, shedding tobacco.
They turned back, in case the canoeist was scouting for a patrol. From the angle of the sun Schlegel calculated it was late afternoon. Clouds were building, signalling a change after such unseasonable heat.
Hope was no longer part of the equation, but their luck had held.
With the lakes behind them, they decided better the partial shelter of woods than the open. But in the trees they wandered aimlessly, finding no way out. Tempers frayed. Sybil said one way. Schlegel didn’t have the strength to argue. Lack of concentration made him careless. He wondered if it was possible to eat raw acorns.
As it was, they dined sumptuously on blackberries until their mouths and hands were stained purple. Sybil had been right: the trees ended and there were the watchtowers, half a kilometre ahead, with the railway in the distance and surrounding them huge hedges of blackberries, past their best but enough to gorge on.
They counted the towers away from the railway line until they came to the fifth. A thorny hedge offered the best shelter until nightfall. Schlegel lay on his back and used his feet to clear the brambles. He emerged scratched and bleeding as the first splashes of rain hit the ground, kicking up puffs of dust, then falling hard and heavy, soaking them, and they lay on their backs, half out of the shelter, mouths open, drinking it in.
They moved forward through the dark curtain of rain. Fifteen or twenty minutes of muddy progress to reach the strip. The wet smear of the arc lights barely penetrated the night. The only sound was the relentless downpour. Sybil’s heart was in her mouth and she feared she would vomit it up, along with a purple stream of blackberries.
At the edge of the strip Schlegel was about to set off when he saw the tripwire, a metre off the ground, visible only because of its silvery glisten. He pointed it out then gestured to say he was making his move, and reached out to touch her hand for luck.
The rain blunted the range of the lights. He could not see the watchtowers at all as he crawled forward.
Sybil followed, timing her arms to follow his movement, as though bound by a cord.
As Schlegel reached the fence the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started. The sound turned to dripping leaves. The dark corridor was reduced to a meagre strip as the lights achieved full penetration. He could see the towers and reasoned if he could see them . . . A man coughed.
Schlegel inched under the fence. He paused and waited. Sybil seemed to have fallen behind. He couldn’t see her. He pressed on, trusting her to catch up. The edge of the outer strip grew visible. A guard in the tower hawked phlegm.
He was about to move forward when he saw three metal rods sticking out of the ground next to where his hand had come to rest. A mine. The slightest contact would detonate it. Schlegel stared in disbelief. Broad had promised the ground was clear. When it came to her turn Sybil wouldn’t know it was there. Schlegel had no choice but to turn back and warn her. The situation suddenly appeared beyond hopeless. He was starting to make his way back when the area burst into light, exposing the towers, the fence, the strip, down to the rods of the mine. The light came from ahead, some sort of mounted searchlight, Schlegel supposed, waiting for them, smaller than the big arc lights, but blinding.
He was on his feet and running, throwing himself down, rolling under the wire, dragging Sybil with him. No one fired. He saw the mounted riders silhouetted ahead.
Two men on foot ran to intercept them. Schlegel tugged Sybil on, refusing to let go. He used her weight to swing himself into the man running at him, sending him spinning away into the strip where he flew apart, the blast of a mine freezing his shape for a moment before it disintegrated, which was the last thing Schlegel remembered.
He came to upside down, slung across a horse, tied and with a bag over his head. He heard the heavy Berlin growl of Baumgarten, addressing Sybil as princess.
Sepp lisped, ‘Come and live with us. We’ll teach you to skin a pig.’
Baumgarten said, ‘Say goodbye to Romeo. He will look very different when you see him next.’
Schlegel passed out and came to in what sounded like a cobbled courtyard. He was hauled down, untied and pushed around until he was reeling. The hood was torn off and he stood dizzy as Baumgarten slapped him hard, then patted him like a trainer geeing his boxer for the next round’s battering. Schlegel was unashamed to ask not to be hit again.
Baumgarten had something else in mind: a bottle whose contents Schlegel was forced to swallow; sharp, bitter-tasting and toxic. His brain immediately fogged. They laughed at his drunken staggering as he saw them all double, thinking they would lead him like an animal to slaughter. He shoved his hand down his throat, disgorging foul bile, stained with blackberry.
He came to upside down again, with the hood back on, otherwise naked. From the pressure on the back of his knees and wrists he could tell he was suspended from the pole which had been Haas’s final destination
. He tried to concentrate on points of pain to prevent his imagination running out of control. The hinges of his knees felt like they had been soldered to the metal. His arms were being pulled from their sockets. His breathing was constricted by the hood. The bag smelled of vomit.
He regained consciousness to find himself being stared at by Sepp from upside down. Baumgarten untied him from the pole and let him fall to the floor, where he lay cramping and wailing, his knees locked. They kicked him until he adopted an ungainly crawl. Like a monkey with its arse stuck in the air, said Sepp.
They made him make chimpanzee noises, bark and oink. Sepp insisted on sitting on him. Schlegel smelled the liquor coming off him in waves. Sepp was back in killing mode.
Sepp recited, ‘And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written.’
Baumgarten watched, all the while doing a shuffling dance and beating out an invisible rhythm with his hands.
Sepp, bored of riding, looked at Baumgarten and announced with simple glee, ‘Jesus was a carpenter.’
Baumgarten guffawed. ‘No mention in the Bible whether he could hammer a straight nail.’
They lugged him carelessly, still naked, knees locked, down to the slaughterhouse, past bellowing cattle panicked by the thick smell of blood. A party was going on in the far corner of the hall, the space dressed like a drawing-room theatre set, with hanging drapes, cushions, sofas and chaises longues lit by a dozen standing candelabra. Women lounged in states of undress. Schlegel was paraded like a guest of honour. A plump nude reclining on a sofa inspected him and asked if he was Jewish. Someone strummed drunkenly on an out-of-tune guitar.
Schlegel was crushed by the terrible obviousness of his debasement, the debauched killers, the women so lazily comfortable. The nude said, ‘Birthday suit.’ Another laughed and asked, ‘What’s wrong with your legs, dearie?’
‘A bit of cramp,’ Sepp answered.
The most unsettling item was a set of splintered doors, angled up against the wall, used for target practice.
Sepp said to Baumgarten, ‘Let’s get some drink down ourselves. It’s wasted on him.’
They gave Schlegel a milkmaid’s stool to sit on. He asked for something to cover himself. Sepp went off and returned with a sack and bayonet he used to cut a hole for Schlegel’s head and two for his arms. When Schlegel had it on Sepp struck a pose.
Some soldiers wandered in and a table of cards was set up. The women attached themselves to the men and were idly pawed.
Schlegel saw the scene as a pathetic example of the kind of corruption they had been sent to expose. Worse, he was watching a version of himself, smashed, chasing easy women.
Sepp produced another lethal giggle, looked at Schlegel’s crooked knees and said, ‘It looks like he needs to stretch his legs.’
The only comfort Schlegel could take was if they were going to kill him they would have done so already.
Even when he saw the hammer and nails, and Sepp and Baumgarten manipulating the doors onto the floor, he did not believe what they were going to do.
Sepp drove the nails through Schlegel’s wrists. Big, black masonry ones, banged through the gap between artery and bone. Sepp grunted with satisfaction. When Schlegel screamed the room barely bothered to look up.
The agony of the second nail was even more excruciating. Sepp boasted he’d got the medial nerve as Schlegel’s hand contracted and locked.
They levered the doors back against the wall and gave Schlegel the stool for his bent legs.
Squabbles broke out and a fight over a woman ensued when one man insisted on taking over from another, saying it was his turn. Bolts of agony travelled down Schlegel’s arm from the nerve Sepp had trapped. At least he found he could gradually stretch his legs, which relieved the pressure on his arms.
Sepp used paraffin to light a large portable stove for a haunch of beef which he skewered for roasting.
Pain consumed Schlegel, leaving only the sensation of his body reduced to meat as surely as the turning haunch.
The set was completed with the introduction of Sybil in a ghastly parody of triumphal procession, carried on a chair by Baumgarten and Sepp, blindfolded, hands tied to the arms. She looked around sightless, her head twisting this way and that. Schlegel called her name. It made no difference. She sat like a marionette with its strings cut, only her head continuing its jerky movement, this way and that.
Someone put on a scratchy windup gramophone. An aria. ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’.
Berlin lay under a dirty blanket of cloud, occasionally relieved by a liverish sun. The city looked older, ageing badly, buildings reduced, endless grey, more shut than open. People wandered listlessly; there was talk of coming raids. Young men were conspicuous by their absence, apart from foreign workers – that cosmopolitan stew they were so afraid of – plus the bureaucrats, women and children.
Morgen had spent several days telephoning Bormann’s office for an appointment, pulling every string he could think of, always being told the man was interested and to call back the next day. Morgen suspected he was being given the brush-off but after persisting he was given a time to present himself the following morning.
Otherwise he did nothing but lie low at a cheap hotel, in a faded chintzy room, very uncertain of his position regarding the various authorities.
The visitors’ entrance to the Chancellery involved the rigmarole of signing in and being issued a pass, after which he passed down great, empty, endless hallways and upon reporting to the secretarial room was made to wait.
After an insolently long delay he was called into a grand office with a big desk. Bormann was overweight and jowly. His neck bulged over his collar. One of the desk thugs, Morgen thought, as he watched the man fiddle with his wedding ring. Bormann stood to go through the saluting business, then roared to ask what sort of mischief Morgen was up to.
Morgen stood his ground, pointing out he was a judge sworn to law.
‘Ultimately, we live in a nation of laws, and there are limits that even the Party must respect.’
That was too much for Bormann, who shouted, ‘How can you permit yourself to speak to me that way? You have no understanding of state matters. You’re nothing. Get out!’
Morgen lasted less than a minute. Yet, even as it happened, such an obvious show of bad temper seemed staged, down to Bormann physically hustling him from the room. Morgen stood blinking at the secretaries, who looked as if it wasn’t the first time this had happened. Morgen bowed at them and left.
Only outside did he realise Bormann probably never intended an audience. He was a captive of the building: to get out he had to surrender his pass. He was sure the guard had already been told to stop him leaving.
Desperate to think, Morgen went to the canteen where the coffee was as bad as everywhere else.
If people were animals then Bormann would be a pig, except pigs were more prepossessing and social. However difficult, Morgen knew he had to go back and at all costs change Bormann’s mind. Better that and get thrown out trying rather than meek surrender.
He returned to the secretaries’ room and said he had one more important message to give.
To Morgen’s surprise, the door was opened and Bormann stood there calmer, with an almost cheeky grin as if to say Morgen had passed a test to weed out time-wasters.
Morgen said, ‘In fact, I have come to ask your advice and instructions for continuing investigations.’
Bormann became transformed. ‘Please, I am at your service. Have a seat.’
Bormann gestured with a cigarette to ask if it was all right to smoke, saying the Führer disapproved. Both men lit up.
Morgen thought: It comes down to a man in a room behind a desk. Bormann was the spider of power. No splendid uniform. No medals. One who stayed back, watching, calculating. Morgen felt no more confident of his chances of getting out.
He took a deep breath and said, ‘Party Secretary, is it not true that in the personnel file of every camp commandant, chi
ef of security and so on there is a copy of a declaration, signed by him, saying that the Führer decides about the life of an enemy of the state?’
Bormann fiddled with his wedding band. ‘Yes, that is correct.’
‘Is it also correct that this power had been delegated to you and no one else?’
‘Also correct.’
‘What would you think then, if someone far beneath you killed prisoners on his own initiative, at his own discretion?’
‘That’s impossible, it doesn’t happen.’
‘You see, that’s how people disregard your authority in this particular camp. That’s why I have arrested them.’
Bormann said, ‘But that’s a different matter. I hadn’t seen it that way.’
‘A challenge to your authority.’
Morgen watched the numbers turning in Bormann’s head until he said, ‘What exactly is it that you want to put on the table?’
‘Commandant Hoess. Fegelein.’
Bormann gave a thin smile. ‘Let’s not start at the bottom!’
Morgen said Fegelein faced a charge of homicidal driving. There was a witness.
Bormann consulted a paper on his desk. ‘Sadly died.’
Morgen looked at Bormann, shocked.
Bormann returned his gaze, with a hint of a smile. ‘After a short illness.’
Morgen felt himself slipping. ‘Nevertheless, I wish to interview Fegelein.’
‘He is away. File me a request and I will deal with it in due course. The commandant?’
‘He is among those who operated outside the law.’
‘That is Pohl’s business to settle. The matter is in hand.’
‘Hoess also had an affair with a woman.’
‘What of it?’
‘She is Jewish.’