by Ben Pastor
“That’s not an answer. I asked you what you were doing in the woods.”
“I was heeding a physiological call. What else?”
The officer had been holding the empty film box, and now crushed it in his freckled fist.
“I have no difficulty forcing you to drop your breeches and checking if what you say is true. I’d rather not have to do that.”
Bora stared down the armed men. “Then you’ll have to trust me on my word. Why shouldn’t I be here any more than you are?”
At a nod from the officer, those who had searched the car stepped into the brushwood and began rummaging around with their rifles. The third man took his place behind Bora.
“Where’s your camera?”
Bora decided not to answer. He was starting to feel an impotent anger at being caught. “Look here…” He took one step forwards.
The crash of the metal-clad rifle stock between his shoulders burst the air out of his lungs. Bora lost his balance and was knocked on his knees by a second swinging blow. His cap flew off and rolled two paces away, where the officer picked it up and read the name on the diamond-shaped tag inside.
“I thought I recognized you. You serve under Colonel Schenck in Cracow.”
Bora tried to stand, with an entirely foolish gesture making for the holster on his side. Rifle stock and hob-nailed boot struck together this time. He landed with his face in the cold dirt. Musty-tasting loam crackled under his teeth when the guard’s knee weighed him down to take his gun.
“Here’s the camera!” The men called from the woods’ edge and walked back.
Bora strained to raise his neck and met the cold pressure of the butt plate. He could do nothing but squirm while the officer exposed the film to light.
“Do you take pictures of yourself when you take a shit?”
Bora dug his elbows in the ground in a back-breaking effort to lift himself. He threw the guard off for a moment, and at once it was the muzzle of the rifle that knocked hard against the base of his skull. The soldier was standing on his back, rifle poking until it lodged cold in the shaven hollow of his neck. Bora cringed at the contact. Muscles and bones locked stiff, but he had suddenly no control over his breathing. The officer could see him lose that control.
“Shoot him,” he said.
Bora felt a blaze of fear race up his spine at the cocking of the bolt, instantaneous agony and shutting of eyes and absurd, scary hardening in arousal all at once. The bolt locked in place for firing. His teeth clenched to crush the dirt in his mouth.
The rifle clicked empty.
His heart pumped in a seemingly immense gulp of blood, dizzying him so that his eyes were once more open but he could see nothing other than a red pulsating mist.
A lesson, he thought disconnectedly. He was being taught a lesson. Like the weary lifting of a world, weight and pressure were gone from his back The muzzle was pulled back.
Bora drew himself up on his knees.
Amused, the soldiers were walking away from him, with rifles slung on their shoulders. The officer tossed the camera into the half-track.
“Remember that I know who you are, Freiherr Hauptmann von Bora.”
It was several minutes before Bora even noticed that his tires had been slashed.
He sat in the car, mortified by having to wait for the unwanted, painful reaction of his body to abate.
Now he thought that anger was as misplaced as the other response. Resignedly, he picked up the map from the floor of the car and put it in his coat pocket. He locked the car, as if it would make a difference, and started walking west.
As for Malecki, he expected to meet Bora at the convent in the afternoon.
He remained there until nearly five o’clock, when it became apparent that Bora would not show up. He’d grown as used to Bora’s punctuality as he had nearly started to believe that help might come from him. Bora was probably having dinner somewhere in Cracow this very moment, forgetful that only thirteen days were left to conclude the investigation.
Bora was, in fact, negotiating for a ride at a noticeable distance from Cracow.
The Polish farmer was not about to ask questions. He saddled his only riding horse and numbly took in hand the scribbled receipt the German gave him in exchange.
Bora mounted, winding the reins around his wrist. “Gdzie jest telefon?” He showed the farmer his map.
The farmer pointed at the closest village of some size, where shortly before nightfall the driver sent by Doctor Nowotny found Bora waiting on horseback at the crossroads like an lonesome monument to the Polish campaign.
At the hospital Nowotny had no trace of amusement on his hardy face.
“You must have been out of your mind. What you did today - out of your mind. You threw away your career, and you’re lucky you were left your life for the time being!”
Bora gulped the drink he was handed, and said nothing.
“Look at your uniform! It’s scandalous, it all sounds and looks disastrous, how will you face questions if they come, when you shouldn’t even have seen what you saw in the first place?” Nowotny seemed angry at Bora’s silence. He returned to his chair, sticking a Muratti in his mouth as if to keep more criticism from coming out of it.
Bora sat with shoulders slumped, shaking his head.
Nowotny watched him reach for the mud-encrusted heel chain of his right spur. “What do you mean, ‘no’? ‘No’ to what? If you mean the casings you picked up, they’re like casings anywhere.”
“I may have no photographic records, but this isn’t anything I dreamed.”
Disgustedly, Nowotny looked at the thin strands of human hair on his desk. He took them with two fingers and tossed them into his wastebasket. “Spare me, you fool. So much for common sense. What will you tell Schenck and Salle-Weber?”
“If they know, there’s nothing I can tell them that will change their opinion.”
Nowotny placed a pad on his desk. “I’m going to write a certificate expressing my professional opinion that the recent trauma to your head - you did get a broken skull - might have affected the soundness of your judgement.”
“For God’s sake, Colonel. I don’t need anyone to lie for me.”
“Well, you had better learn how to lie yourself, then.”
They said nothing to one another for some time, Nowotny furiously smoking and Bora clasping his hands loosely between his knees, head low.
“So, what happened to all your plans? Your wife will be here the day after tomorrow. Don’t you want to live to make her pregnant?”
“I don’t know. I thought of it when they put the gun to my head. That’s exactly what I was thinking of, that I hadn’t even made Dikta pregnant yet. And suddenly it seemed so unimportant that I hadn’t. As if the dead came first. As if the debt to the dead had precedence over the desires of the living.”
“Balderdash.”
“On the contrary. I had my face on the ground and the SD said, ‘Shoot him,’ and I was bodily petrified but not soul-scared, not really afraid inside. The fear was all physical, but the debt to the dead was being paid.”
“Enough, enough! You don’t even make sense any more. Go home, sleep it off, and see that you forget Święty Bór and what’s beyond it!”
“I plan to go back tomorrow.”
Only when he reached the lobby of the army hospital did Bora find out that he was interdicted from leaving.
An oversized medic filled the doorway.
“I’m sorry, Captain. Surgeon’s orders. You’re to spend the night under close medical supervision. Please do not object. Strict orders from the surgeon.”
11
1 January 1940
The note was handwritten on a card with her name embossed in blue on it.
Love, you know how hard I have been trying to qualify for the dressage competition, because you helped me train for it. I don’t need to tell you how important it is for me, especially now that you’re away and there’s so little for me to do in Leipzig. Your fath
er tried his best to convince me to come to Poland, but I told him I was sure you wouldn’t want me to miss an opportunity to do well at such an important event. All my horse-loving friends and your family friends will attend. I’ve become especially adept at the piaffe, even though Quartermain still moves a little forwards, but his hind stays low and his neck is well-erected (I remember how you insisted on those)! I’m having Mother run a film of it, which I will send to you later.
Family and friends have heard how well you performed in battle and we’re all proud of you. Mother said the last photo you sent makes you look very much like the von Stauffenberg boys, whom she knows well. Surely that is a compliment, because they’re considered a very handsome set.
It’s a shame that you can’t get away and come see me perform. The cheers of old ladies in furs will have to do, and the occasional colonel with an arm in a sling and a monocle. Except for the daughter of Luisa von Bohlen (those on Trachterstrasse), I am the favourite for the dressage prize. I think my pirouette is better than hers, as is my canter in general. Stay well, dear Martin, and take care that your father doesn’t express his old-fashioned Germanentum as heartily as he used to do with us.
Love, Dikta.
General Sickingen stood with his massive head against the early morning sun, a square-shouldered, hefty rock of a man in field-grey civilian clothes that - but for the lack of insignia - might as well have been a uniform. He watched his stepson fold the note he had hand-carried from Dikta, attentive to any emotion betrayed by his face.
Bora put the note in his breast pocket. “I’m so glad to see you, Father. I made reservations for you at the Francuski. It’s the same room you occupied in the last war, but you’ll find the comforts much improved.”
Sickingen moved in response as much as a rock does: not at all. Faceless against the pale, suffused glare of the sun, he said, “Is that all you have to say about your wife not coming?”
“Dikta had mentioned to me how important the competition was to her.”
“More important than seeing her new husband? By God, had I my way, I’d have forced her to telephone you and tell you in person. You’d have convinced her to come. But your mother told me to stay out of your marriage, and so I did.”
Bora was disheartened enough not to need reminders. “I hope you had a pleasant trip.”
“You’re too lenient with her.” Grumpily, Sickingen bent his monumental figure to enter the staff car. “Horsemanship should have given you some hints.” Only after settling himself in the back seat did he notice how self-control was all there really was between Bora and some unmilitary show of grief, so he bottled back whatever else he meant to add. “Tonight we dine together.”
They drove the brief distance from the Cracow Glowny station to the northern edge of the park, and left to Pijarska Street. The Francuski was a venerable establishment at the elbow of Pijarska, facing the curving façade of the Piarist Fathers’ house. In the street, a car with driver was already parked for the general’s use.
Bora was so white in the face, Sickingen took one look at him and said, “You can go. I’ll see you tonight at seven.”
Kasia wiggled away from the embrace. “Sure, sure. Happy New Year to you, too, Ewa. I’m not falling for it.”
“But you have to do it for me, darling.”
“I don’t have to do anything for you.”
Ewa looked out from the recess of the theatre’s main entrance, at the gaunt male figure that seemed glued to the house wall across the square. He waited away from the wind, face turned in this direction.
“Yes, you do.” She gently took Kasia’s chapped hand between hers. “You will, Kasia.”
“He’s nothing to me. You wouldn’t do it for me.”
The hold of Ewa’s hands grew tight. Not unfriendly, just too tight for Kasia’s fingers to slip out. “Didn’t I get you the position in this company, darling? You’d still be doing vaudeville if I hadn’t said I knew you had all kinds of acting experience, when you had none. You just have to do it. You have to.”
Kasia glanced out. “How do I know he won’t get me into trouble?”
“He won’t. It’s only going to be three or four days, he’s trying to slip out into Czechoslovakia.”
“Some good it’ll do him, the Germans are there just the same.” Kasia turned back to Ewa, and Ewa could see she was trying not to weaken. “No, no Forget it. He’s your son. Is he in trouble? I bet he’s in trouble. Well, you take care of it. I don’t want him around. People are going to talk.”
Ewa swallowed her pride, enough to use Helenka’s own argument. “Darling,” the words came out of her mouth, “it isn’t as if you haven’t had young men stay with you before.”
“Boyfriends, not people I don’t know!”
“I’ll pay you. I’ll introduce you to Richard’s room-mate and pay you.”
“No.”
Kasia began to leave. The gaunt figure across the square left the wall for a moment, hopeful, then crept back. Ewa grabbed her friend by the elbows. “Please, Kasia! I beg you, take him home.”
“Let go of me!”
“How often have you seen me beg, Kasia?”
Kasia groaned. “Shit,” she said, “I’m going to regret this,” but she stopped fighting. “Only two days, Ewa. You go right over and tell him. T-w-o days, and nothing else. I’m not feeding him, either.”
Ewa kissed her on both cheeks, pressing her to her fur-jacketed breast.
Father Malecki said mass in the convent church, and when he turned to read the lesson from Paul’s epistle to Titus, he noticed Logan’s trench coat among the people.
He began reading, “The grace of God our Saviour has appeared to all men,” thinking of a way he could sneak out through the sacristy without having to face the foreign-service officer. Logan might be here only to start the year on the right religious foot, but Malecki didn’t want to risk interferences in these last days of the investigation.
His eyes searched the congregation to see if by any chance Bora was here as well. Unlikely that he’d be here at high mass, and anyway, he hadn’t shown up in days.
“… in order that, rejecting ungodliness and worldly lusts, we may live temperately and justly and piously in the world.”
The private dining room on the second floor of the Hotel Francuski had a carpet pattern of large, dimly green roses on magenta background. Bora thought they looked like pale cauliflowers.
In a low voice, his stepfather spoke ruthlessly to him, aware of his harshness and confident in the benefits of it.
“I told you not to marry her, but you were bitched. That’s the word, that’s the word. Bitched about her as you were about politics, feeling your oats for marriage when you could have found other solutions if you had to - what are you in the army for - and politically should have kept from selling your soul to the Devil. Of course, you were sleeping with her. Those Coennewitz girls, all sluts. Just like their grandmother. Even in 1899, the cadets knew that when everything else failed, they could get one of the Coennewitz sisters. A good Catholic doesn’t indulge in premarital sex, and even so, when you did and found out that she wasn’t a virgin - don’t interrupt, I haven’t lived in Leipzig fifty years without knowing what goes on - you should have got a hint. Now your brother wants to marry, just because you did! I was forty years old when I married the first time, and there are days when I think I was too young even then.”
Sickingen paused for the time necessary for the waiter to deposit the menu and leave with a bow. “At least I had the good sense of marrying a woman no one had gone into before me. As for your mother, she was widowed, but only one other man had gone into her before I did. Neither one of you was mature enough to marry, especially you. Now you’re caught. You’re caught because you love her, you dolt. Dikta is flighty and politically fanatic, and that’s the best I can say for her. She has money, but you have money. Your family name is older than hers, better connected-a Bora marrying into a Nazi family! Her father may have got himself an am
bassadorship, but he’s a lackey for whatever drivel comes out of Berlin.”
Bora felt himself flush from the neck up, as if he’d neared a source of great heat. He said, awkward with the obviousness of his reaction, “I think it offends you that she refused to come. It hurts me, but it offends you.”
“No red-blooded man ought to let a woman hurt him, no matter what she does. You musn’t be hurt. Outraged, angry, yes. It musn’t hurt you.”
“We’re exaggerating the plain fact that Dikta was unable to come.”
Sickingen snatched the napkin from the table and flagged it open. “Unable?” He swept the cloth onto his lap. “Unwilling!”
Bora’s whole body ached with pains he didn’t know he had. He said, unconvincingly, “Well, I have other things to do. Other things to worry about. It’d have been good seeing Dikta, but there’s plenty for me to do as is.”
“You almost wept, in the car. Whom are you fooling? Is this why I brought you up as if you were my own, favouring you over my own son, even? To see you hurt by one of the Coennewitz girls? You should separate, right now.”
“Separate? We’re a little ahead of ourselves! Dikta has done nothing but tell me she couldn’t see me now.”
Sickingen made a sound with his throat, like a growl. “There’s nothing more un-German than lack of loyalty, except for misdirected loyalty.”
“Benedikta loves me. I should know better than anyone else. You’ll love her when you have grandchildren.”
“If she finds the time to make me some, between steeple-chases. I can see it’s useless to try to talk you out of her. It’s like trying to stop from firing when your artillery piece is jammed: it keeps going until it’s used up all of its damned ammunition. Do what you want. Stay married. One of these days, you’ll find out I was correct.”
“May we speak of something else?”
Sickingen made a face. He despised smoking, and someone in the next room had just lit a cigar. A ghost of its pungent odour wafted in, still he turned with a condemning glare to the door, so that Bora walked over to close it.