EXPERT 1: Name the three longest rivers in Europe.
ADRIAN Z: […]
EXPERT 2: The date our Führer was born?
ADRIAN Z: […]
EXPERT 2: He has no idea. Obviously an idiot.
DOCTOR KRENEK: What was all that about your brother?
ADRIAN Z: I couldn’t go to any Heimabenden because I had to look after my brother. Besides, no one wanted me to be there.
EXPERT 2: For good reason.
ADRIAN Z: Mrs Haidinger always liked Helmut better and if she bought things or had clothes made up, it was always for him. So he could go to those evenings because he was blond, but Mrs Haidinger didn’t think I should be there because I wasn’t and it didn’t look right.
EXPERT 1: Being present at the at-home evenings is a duty for everyone.
DOCTOR KRENEK: And now, can we return to the agenda? [Looks sternly at some of the experts who are chatting, some even trying to hide smiles behind their hands.]
ADRIAN Z: There’s nothing wrong with Helmut, there’s no need to kill him. Dad always used to say that Mum must’ve got him with someone else because he … [Bursts into tears.]
EXPERT 2: [gets up, approaches Adrian Z, close enough to slap him hard across the face] You speak when spoken to. Is that understood? And you can cut out that pretend-weepiness at once.
DOCTOR KRENEK: [speaks with surprising gentleness] Where did you think you were going to run to when you got out of Spiegelgrund, Adrian?
ADRIAN Z: [mumbles something]
EXPERT 2: Speak up when you’re spoken to!
DOCTOR KRENEK: Home, did you say? But you have no home. You had a foster-home but you didn’t want to stay there either. Where did you think you’d stay?
ADRIAN Z: [mumbles]
EXPERT 1: But the person you call ‘mother’ is a racially inferior woman, a depraved and work-shy parasite who hasn’t the slightest notion of the responsibility and strength of mind required to bring up children nowadays.
DOCTOR KRENEK: [bends forward, raises both hands with the palms inclined upwards] You take a look at these hands of mine, Ziegler! They are large and strong and white and always clean. When they strike a blow, they remain clean and pure because, when they hit out, the blows are for justice. I wish that your hands were the same as mine. But instead of showing your hands, you hold them hidden behind your back. You use your hands for deceitful things, to steal and to conceal. Now, there are many places where we can send boys like you to teach them what working with their hands is like, like a Jugendschutzlager where you might have to work twelve hours a day.
ADRIAN Z: [still speaking almost inaudibly] I don’t want to … to go to a camp.
DOCTOR KRENEK: Then you must take the opportunity to stretch out your hands, straightaway, and say: ‘I have done what is wrong but I will improve from now on.’ He who has nothing to hide, has nothing to fear, Adrian. So, begin with naming the boys who helped you escape.
ADRIAN Z: Nobody helped me.
DOCTOR KRENEK: You’re a hardened miscreant. You disobey me out of sheer defiance. Camp is the only place for you.
ADRIAN Z: I did it on my own.
DOCTOR KRENEK: Had you only had the wit to spend more time pulling your weight, actively work as best you could for a healthy, forward-looking community, then you wouldn’t have been standing here in front of us. Indeed not. Now, had you thought about that? As things stand, you have obviously chosen to make a virtue of your sins.
ADRIAN Z: I don’t want to go to a camp; all I want is –
DOCTOR KRENEK: All we want is to cure you.
ADRIAN Z: [weeps] Cure me of what … what will you cure me of?
*
Mr Guido And so he was dispatched to Mödling again, just as he was when his foster parents had thrown him out. Only, this time, there was no father who stepped out of the director’s cupboard to save him. Only Mr Guido mattered. Guido’s view of Mödling, as he put it to Adrian, was that you were there because you deserved to be, that Mödling was something that had grown out of your own head and, if you wanted to be released from there, you first of all had to rid yourself of whatever was in your head. There was nothing else for it. Guido’s surname was Peters. In this institution, almost all the staff were men and everything had a military flavour. Clothes must almost be immaculately looked after and time was even set aside for kit maintenance. To get from somewhere to somewhere else, like the dining hall or the gym hall, the boys had to line up and march. When floors were to be scrubbed or toilets cleaned, jobs carried out by teams according to a rota, a foreman-type always came along to force the pace and shout, beat and kick those who were too slow. Guido Peters was one of the worst slave-drivers. When they marched, he walked alongside to keep an eye on everyone, yelling things like get a move on and back straight and doling out slaps. But later in the day, when it was time for kit cleaning or at bedtime in the dormitory, he might jokingly grab somebody by the shoulder or say something jolly to show that all that yelling meant no harm after all. His gait was curiously soft and elastic, so you easily missed that he had come to watch you. He told Adrian that he, Guido, had worked with young people for twenty years and knew how they thought and felt. Take yourself, now. I know what you’re thinking, Guido said. His round face was somehow rubbery, without a single wrinkle and looked younger than he actually was – which was late forties, maybe, or early fifties. You’re thinking that you want to escape from this place, he said. Adrian kept looking at Guido because he didn’t dare not to. Relax, Guido said, I’ll look after you. People who work here believe that only fear can make boys like you learn to obey but I know what boys need and that’s simply someone to trust. I might pick you to be a leader, a Gruppenführer, he added. All you’ve got to do is behave yourself. It was the first time that an adult had ever spoken to him in this way, as if Adrian was not only grown up enough to understand but also as if there was a bond between them. Day in and day out the eyes in that large, rubbery face kept watching him, during the gymnastics lessons, in the dining hall, on their marches across the yard from the auditorium to the dormitory, but Guido showed nothing; on the contrary, he often came along to shout move on, you lazy arsehole and slam his whole hand into the back of Adrian’s head. But from the day of their talk, he knew that, even if Guido hit him, he wasn’t to take it seriously. In fact, slapping was Guido’s way of reassuring the others that Adrian wasn’t given any special treatment. The trust between them was not affected. Sometimes, when Guido was on night duty, he would patrol the dormitory after lights-out and, although his movements were soundless, Adrian would hear his voice as he stopped occasionally on his strolls between the beds to say something in confidence to one of the boys. And Adrian would think, please come to me, too, Mr Guido, come to me. Then, one day, it happened. Mr Guido stopped to talk to him. He had brought a whole ration of bread as well. He said that he knew what was on Adrian’s mind just then. Girls, right? Guido said. That’s what boys think about. Young things with soft breasts and wet little cunts. Right? he said, as he probed underneath the blanket for Adrian’s sex and touched it. Adrian, who was lying flat on his back, didn’t dare to move a millimetre. I know what boys think about, Guido mumbled while his treacherous hand stroked Adrian’s penis from root to glans, until the terrified limb reluctantly stiffened. Tell me, am I right or am I right? he mumbled and bent forward, still holding Adrian’s penis, to whisper into his ear with warm, moist lips, don’t be afraid, despite your shameless behaviour I’ll help you to get out of here. Guido always keeps his promises. Adrian wriggled uneasily because by now his sex had gone painfully hard and pulsating in response to Guido’s insistent rubbing. Guido laughed. I’ll make you group leader one day, he said and then let go. It soon became obvious that Guido had several favourites among the boys and one of them, who was called Roman, was especially select. He was blond, blue-eyed and heavily built, with a broad neck and shoulders. Roman’s back was always the straightest of all when they lined up and his deep, powerful voice the loudest a
nd most resounding when they sang. Roman was also the first to call out the correct answers to the questions their teacher asked the class. The trouble was that he had instantly identified Adrian as the tinker’s lad he was, an alien exiled to the great Mödling community without having done anything to earn his place and, consequently, someone who should be excluded, one way or another. It began imperceptibly with the odd push from behind when they were lining up for a march, or roughing up Adrian’s bed when he had finished making it, or hiding one of his shoes just when they were ordered outside into the exercise yard. The mornings in the washroom were worst, when dozens of legs twisted themselves between his to make him fall to the tiled floor that was slippery with soapy water. Once, they succeeded and when he leapt furiously at the boy closest at hand, Roman immediately put his arm around Adrian’s neck and wrestled him back down onto the floor. In that instant, the usually unruly crowd of boys split itself into two groups, one on each side of the two entangled fighters, and rhythmically called out their names, on one side Roman! and on the other (laughing madly) the name that had become Adrian’s:
tinker! tinker! tinker! tinker!
None of the carers intervened, not even Guido, whose rubber features Adrian had glimpsed clearly, sometimes behind but sometimes in among the wildly yelling but, by now, scared boys who surrounded him. Guido, who was holding a towel and a piece of soap, stepped forward first when two other carers had detached Roman’s sweating, terrified body from Adrian’s grip. All around them, the echo of the whiplash sound of water from the showers hitting the tiles was overlaid by the shrill screams of fifty-odd boys, a layer of sound that floated on top of the hollow, slapping noise of the water. Guido stared at Adrian as if he realised exactly who he was looking at for the first time. And he shook his head. Do you think you’ll get away with it? he said. Do you think tinkers and half-Jews like you end up here by chance? Any idea what they do to Jews nowadays? (He didn’t seem to expect answers to his questions.) I’ll tell you about Jews, they’re turned into soap. He held out the bar of green institutional soap to Adrian. Two hundred and fifty of them, at least, go into a bar this size. Adrian washed himself with it. I’m not a Jew, he said. Guido scrutinised him from top to toe, then knocked several times on his round, hairless skull with his knuckles. I’ll help you get out, he said. His rubber face stretched itself into a large smile. You’ll see, you’ll get out of here in one piece.
*
A Degenerate Character From that day on, Guido came to him at night. Adrian lay awake, waiting. Mostly, Guido touched him but he would sometimes insist that Adrian would do the same for him and Adrian obeyed as he knew he must to be left alone and finally be allowed to sleep. The beds looked like ships in the bluish, shimmering night-light, all of then sailing off towards the same distant, grey horizon. He imagined himself standing at the bow of one of the large Donau ships that his Uncle Ferenc used to fantasise about captaining. The journey went upstream but, because it was dark, one couldn’t see the land towering up on either side of the river, and the further he travelled the more powerfully the currents tugged at the boat’s hull until the water grew so violent it felt as if the ship moved backwards and down rather than forwards. He was woken by someone holding his head in a vice-like grip but it was only Guido, whose hot breath swept over the side of Adrian’s face while his small hands fumbled underneath the blanket. Adrian was told to stay completely still and hold the round, hairless skull with both hands while its lips and teeth were busy nibbling and biting his nipples and then moved on to lick and suck at his penis as if it were an udder. He wanted to push the large head away or, at least, to the side, but Guido shoved a hard, determined finger up Adrian’s anus and when he was about to scream, Guido covered his mouth with his other hand and swore at him to shut up. The next morning, it was as if nothing had happened. Guido stood in the changing room, as upright and strict as always, handing out towels and soaps to the boys, and when they lined up, he didn’t even glance Adrian’s way. Adrian realised of course that this was how Guido wanted it. Clearly, if you wanted to stay in favour, you had to be prepared to show willing at any time. Adrian tried to look elsewhere, to make his face neutral as if he didn’t even know who Guido was. The game of pretence between them went on like this for a few days. Guido apparently loved this game, because when he came back for his night-time visits, he brought substantial gifts, like extra slices of bread and a little package of margarine that Adrian was allowed to spread on the bread, and sometimes also apples and sweets. There was of course a price to be paid for all these delicacies and while Adrian carried on chewing and sucking on all that Guido stuck into his mouth, his body was subjected to every kind of obscure exploration. Some nights, Guido was at it for so long that the hours of the day and night seemed to shift. Even when Guido did not come to his bed, Adrian stayed wide awake and waited all night. During the day, his seat in the schoolroom transformed into a freight barge cleaving the long swells in the shipping channel of the river while, on the upper deck, he was slowly rocked to sleep as he rested on the loose metal hold-covers that had grown warm from the heat of the engine. Because he had at this stage become used to people constantly doing things to his body, he didn’t even realise that his teacher had bent over him and was trying to shake him awake. Behind the teacher, there were others, all serious men and women wearing white coats. Doctors and psychologists. They accompanied him back to the dormitory and watched as his bed was given a thorough once-over and his treasure trove discovered: a pillow case full of bits of bread and wrappers of margarine rations. Adrian confessed immediately the source of these offerings. Strangely enough, he was never punished for his confession. The white-clad delegation withdrew after exchanging quick, meaningful glances. That night, and for a few more to follow, Adrian slept almost normally. No Guido loomed into sight. Two days later, there was more upheaval. In the middle of a lesson, a secretary came into the classroom to call Adrian to the director’s office immediately. At this time, Mr Heckermann no longer ran the institution and the new director didn’t have a bird-like beak and high, pointy shoulders like a bird’s, but the swastika banner was the same and so was the portrait of the Führer that had hung on the wall when the director had walked from his desk to open the door to the magic cupboard at the back of the room. No such miraculous intervention would take place today. Adrian realised this immediately when he entered and saw Guido Peters standing in front of the director’s desk. This was another Guido Peters than the man Adrian had come to know. The sunny smile had been wiped off his lower face and his back was as straight as if his lumbar curvature had been hammered flat. His eyes were narrow slits and his lips so firmly pressed together that the saliva sprayed from his mouth when he, gesturing with an index finger that trembled with indignation, gave an account of the perversities that Adrian had tried to tempt him into carrying out. Not only had Guido himself been a victim of the youth’s lewd acts but Adrian had tried to inveigle other children into sodomy in the shower room. The bits of bread found in Adrian’s bed were clearly blackmail payments that this depraved delinquent had received from other boys in return for not telling on them. When Guido had finished, the director turned to Adrian and asked him in a stern voice if there was any truth in what Guido had said. Adrian did not dare to meet Guido’s eyes. He looked down at the carpet and shook his head. In that moment, he knew that no one would believe him. The director told Guido to leave and, once the door closed behind him, ordered Adrian to go into the room where the secretary was sitting. Adrian watched as one specialist after another came and went. At one point, there seemed to be as many as four or five of them in the director’s office and their voices sounded upset. Either, he’s seriously disturbed or else he’s like that himself, he heard one voice say. How else could he have put up with it for so long?
*
The Bleeding Führer In the end, he was told to go back into the office. The Führer looked him in the eye but the director did not, so Adrian decided that it was better to stare at his
Führer. While the director held forth, Adrian kept his eyes fixed on the Führer and observed how one wound after another opened up on the great commander’s face. First, a small wound in his cheek, just below his left eye, and then another one a bit further down, by the cheekbone. And a third one, by the chin. At once, blood started to flow from all of them. His first thought was that Hannes Neubauer had been right all along and that the Führer was actually an air force pilot in disguise. But he changed his mind when it came to him that the Führer was bleeding for him – for Adrian. He carried on watching the face in front of him to see if its expression would change now that the wounds were opening up everywhere. It did not. How could it? Bleeding or not, it was the Führer’s unyielding face. The only thing that happened was that the blood ran down over the white institutional wall below the portrait. Outside these walls, the car that was to take him back to Spiegelgrund stood ready and waiting. It delivered him to pavilion 17, section Bu – for Bildungsunfähige, for the severely retarded, the unteachables.
VIII
Reflections on Monstrosities
The Female Escapees Afterwards, the talk was that Doctor Jekelius’s downfall had been brought about by two madwomen on the run. Anna Katschenka knew that this was untrue. Jekelius had come close to the abyss long before the affair of the two girls who escaped from pavilion 17 had emerged as final confirmation of the gossip that was already circulating: he had lost his grip, Councillor Gundel had lost confidence in him and no longer thought him competent enough to lead the work of the institution. Anna Katschenka assumed all that wasn’t entirely true either, but what would the assumptions of a lowly ward sister matter? In the trial that followed much later, she was to state that, in her opinion, Jekelius had been the victim of a conspiracy. That was all. The two girls who escaped were a Gertrude Klein and a Marie Tomek. In December 1941, Gertrude was eighteen and Marie fifteen years old but both had already acquired reputations as unrepentant rebels. A couple of months before their first escape attempt, they had broken into a cleaning cupboard and stolen a large can of undiluted Lysol. They had made a suicide pact to kill themselves by drinking disinfectant. Actually, only Marie drank it. Gertrude sat next to her and urged her on: Drink more, Marie, drink the lot …! Their relationship had been like that from the start: Gertrude was the one who had the insane ideas and drove them to completion, while Marie was the meek one who agreed and followed. If Nurse Storch hadn’t caught sight of Marie Tomek’s unconscious body in the corridor and managed to call a doctor in time, the girl’s life would soon have been past saving. Miss Tomek was taken to pavilion 3 and had her stomach pumped. Afterwards, the two rebels were put in the same isolation cell. That turned out to be an awful mistake. The ward sister had hardly locked the door behind her before she heard heart-rending cries from inside and, when the cell door was opened, they found Marie on all fours on the cell floor with Gertrude sitting on top of her and whipping her like a horse with wet towel-rags. It’s your fault, you fat whore! Soon afterwards, the girls carried out the first of their two escape attempts. Gertrude managed to steal the keys to the front door of the pavilion from the nurses’ office and, the same night, the two girls slipped unseen past the guard’s hut at the main gate. It took several days and nights before they were found, frozen to the marrow and desperately hungry, waiting for a tram at the Brunnenmarkt stop. By then, everyone was clear about Klein’s role as the instigator. After two weeks in an isolation cell, she appears in front of Doctor Jekelius. This time, she is on her own. Marie isn’t at her side now as she and Jekelius confront each other. As always, when facing censure, Gertrude pretends to be dejected and submissive but her gaze hovers at floor level full of barely suppressed hatred. Doctor Jekelius is restrained. He doesn’t raise his voice and shows no other signs of being upset. He asks Gertrude Klein if she feels any remorse about her pathetic, meaningless attempt to escape, especially in view of its consequences. Miss Klein repeats a previous accusation: Jekelius is a killer-doctor who intends to poison not only her but all the girls in the section. Also, that he has deliberately prevented her parents from visiting so that nobody will find out what is really going on here. And it’s the same for all the girls in the section, she adds. The idea is to keep them all locked up in this hellhole until they go insane and die, or else the killer-doctor and his gang will put poison in their food. Whatever happens, they’re all doomed to die. To this tirade, Doctor Jekelius replies that what the institution offers her is not imprisonment but actually an opportunity to reflect in peace and, without disturbing influences from the outside world, make her own decisions about what she wants the rest of her life to be. Either she learns to do as she is told by the staff and leave the other girls alone; or she continues to instigate rebellions, to misbehave and harass others. The decision is up to her, no one else. To prove his goodwill and emphasise that he has no goal other than her welfare and good health, he intends to give her one last chance. Christmas is four weeks away. If she shows that she can behave properly until then, he will arrange for her to be allowed to begin her ‘duty year’ sometime after the New Year. If she misbehaves, he will have her moved to a youth labour camp, a placement which, as Miss Klein is surely well aware, is much less desirable for a young woman. The choice is, and will be, entirely her own. Young Miss Klein nods in her browbeaten, seemingly servile way but, of course, has no intention of turning over a new leaf. Only two weeks after her talk with Doctor Jekelius, she engineers her next escape attempt and this time, as one of the nurses puts it, it is total war. Not only Marie Tomek follows her, but another four girls who join in the breakout: Edith Holtemeyer (15), Friedrike Roth (16), Margarete Schaffer (14) and Stefanie Wolfing (16). While Schaffer and Wolfing set about breaking the windows in their dormitory, the other four ambush the nurses who come rushing in to investigate the noise. Erna Storch is on night duty again but so is Nurse Erhart, who runs downstairs as soon as she hears the sound of glass shattering against the flagged area outside the pavilion. Presumably, it is because two members of staff are on the scene that they get away without serious injuries. Nurse Storch already has Margarete Schaffer’s arm across her throat when Nurse Erhart enters and is met by the sight of Gertrude Klein’s face, its features stretched and bloated by madness, as she leaps up from behind a bed wielding a shard of broken glass. The hand holding the piece of glass is already smeared with blood. At the last moment, Nurse Erhart knocks the weapon out of Miss Klein’s hand. Together, the two nurses control Miss Schaffer. Nurse Storch locks both her arms across her back in the so-called Steinhof-tackle while Nurse Erhart manages to grab hold of the hem of Miss Wolfing’s nightdress and pull her to the floor in a corner of the room. However, the other four get away, including the clearly deranged Gertrude Klein. Later, Erna Storch declares in a witness statement that several things had been stolen from her earlier in the evening, namely a watch, a small metal box of sewing materials, and forty marks in cash, all of which had been kept in the handbag she always carried with her. At some point that day, one or more of the girls must have gained access to the wardrobe where the staff locks up their clothes and other belongings. The girls must also have been able to steal the keys with which they opened the pavilion front door, although how and from where was not easy to work out. Now, wild, furious screams come from the paths outside and then, again, the sound of breaking glass. Inside one pavilion after another, outraged nurses and caretakers stand holding telephone receivers into which they speak of being under attack. Hordes of youths, they say, are roaming in the dark outside and throwing stones at the windows. These ‘hordes’ are the four, not yet captured escapees from pavilion 17 who, led by the blood-spattered Gertrude Klein, next turn up at the main gate. The guard, who has run out of his hut, is struck to the ground by young Miss Roth, who uses for that purpose a spade left by the door to a tool shed. However, the girls’ attempt to instigate rebellion in other pavilions has delayed them. In pavilion 17, the nearest police station has been alerted by telephone and their escape route has
been cut off by the police before the girls have had time to cross Hütteldorfer Strasse. They are brought to the police station for identification and interrogation, and then delivered to Spiegelgrund. Doctor Jekelius meets them. It is early dawn. He has been waiting since receiving the phone call from the duty doctor in pavilion 17, who told him about the upheaval. Doctor Helene Jokl is at his side, as are two male asylum nurses, ready to intervene should any of the girls try something again. Facing them in a line are the dishevelled, dirty runaways. Once again, Gertrude Klein is keeping up the pretence of submissiveness, her gaze drifting along door frames and table legs. Her right hand is bandaged, and the swellings around the cuts on her face make her look grotesque, more like a wounded animal than a human being. Jekelius speaks first. I entrusted you with a decision, he says. But you betrayed me. Gertrude Klein, who hasn’t even listened, takes one step forward, pushes her chin out as she always does and screams:
The Chosen Ones Page 24