Once she was waved at and given a piece of chocolate. She took it joyfully but quickly withdrew when the old woman who had given it to her opened her mouth to say something, and thereby uncovered a terrible set of teeth that looked very menacing in the twilight of the platform at night. Later, Mariam felt sorry for her reaction. Maybe she’d find something she could give the old lady in return? Something from above, perhaps?
Mariam stuck with the craftsmen as best she could. They had tools and other useful material, but sometimes she also found one or the other useful part just like that, forgotten somewhere on the floor of the dirty platform. That night, her haul brought her close to the screaming boy and his father again and she secretly admitted that she had stayed here longer than it would have been necessary, since her small backpack and her additional bags were already quite well filled.
Today the boy did not cry or scream, but neither did he sleep. He lay, likely to make the best use of his body heat, cuddled to his father on the bed made of old blankets and looked her directly in the face, as Mariam registered a little shocked and despite the dim light.
She froze and she got hot at the same time.
For a few seconds they just looked at each other curiously. Finally, the snub-nosed boy made a gentle, waving movement. Mariam approached him quietly and carefully. His father snored, but only very slightly, and now and then he seemed to feel an itch on his arm while sleeping, because he sometimes rubbed it on the rough blanket that he had spread over himself and his son.
“Who are you?”
“Mariam. And who are you?”
“I’m Tommy. What are you doing here?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
They had whispered and looked at each other. Tommy’s head was spinning.
“Is that classified?”
“Yes, that’s right, a secret!”
Mariam thought for a moment, then she took heart.
“Why were you screaming like that yesterday?”
Tommy grinned, first embarrassed, then a little mischievous.
“That’s a secret, too.”
“But everyone here heard it. Can’t be a secret this way, right?”
“But it is. If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”
She was so terribly curious. But could she tell him? What if he passed it on? She couldn’t possibly decide that now. Maybe she should talk to Wanda about it.
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone you saw me, then I’ll come back tomorrow and maybe I’ll tell you the secret.”
Tommy thought for a moment, and then he agreed.
“See you tomorrow,” he whispered.
Mariam turned around and crept back up.
Wanda
She was worried about Shepard. Even though she was cut off from the rest of the camp, from the rest of the world even, she sometimes heard scraps of talks and sometimes even entire conversations of the redsleeves. They sometimes called him ‘the third’ in the camp, and Gustav had told her that this name was born of mockery, since he seemingly had things to do with Ivan and Rolf all the time and saw them much more often than an average redsleeve, but everyone knew that he was basically a prisoner.
He was hardly here anymore and when he did show up in the tent, he was taciturn and looked, to say the least, completely fucked up. They talked and he also told her about the current events, but she could see that he did not share all his thoughts with her. Well, she didn’t either, but she had almost unlimited time to think. You had to prioritize.
He was outside.
He was allowed to act.
In some hours she envied him so much for his freedom of movement that she wanted to grab and shake him until he had described every detail of the world he was allowed to see down to the last detail. Another thing was that he seemed to show more and more solidarity with the people here in the camp. She knew that he certainly did not mean Ivan when he used the word we when he reported the events outside, but it still frightened her. And that fear in turn made her angry. Angry to depend on his status among the people here, to be dependent on him to keep his word, that he did not change his goals, that he did not suddenly feel the desire to just stay here in the camp. Then again, in his speeches, in the way he told and spoke, she felt his hatred for the Degs and Da Silva. This hatred which they both shared, but which burned in her even more relentlessly than in him. Then she felt a little better.
Gustav had also brought her some material, two shin guards. And better tools. She was pretty sure the doctor would come with her when the time was right. If only the bloody winter were finally over.
The doctor’s story had made her think. And even if she could understand it on a logical level, she was not able to do so from an emotional point of view. Gustav clearly blamed Ivan for the death of his companion and a greed for revenge burned in him as well. No, it didn’t burn, she saw now, as she thought about it again. It ate him, ate him up from inside.
His mind and conscience prevented him from following his feelings. He lived in a permanent inner contradiction, it seemed. His sense of duty as a doctor and the knowledge that the camp had to be strong, that it had to be held together so that he could continue to help the people here on the one hand, and on the other hand the burning desire to see Ivan dead. And, so Wanda thought, there was a yawning void of helplessness between these two sides. The doctor had been somewhat paralyzed. At least he hadn’t had a goal yet, he was frozen in camp life, if you like.
Was that the reason why he got so close to the new ones, to to her Mariam, helping them so much?
Yeah, it had to be this way.
They were his path away from the self-destructive dichotomy in which he found himself and towards a new meaning. She could not blame him for unconsciously instrumentalizing her in this way. Didn’t she do the same thing to him?
Shepard
Ivan’s massive figure was soon covered in his own sweat and one-hand’s blood. Rolf stood tall, with his arms crossed behind his back, next to two of Ivan’s boys on the wall and watched the play, and it seemed to me as if he was keeping an eye on Ivan rather than being interested in the results of the interrogation. Stumptooth, on the other hand, sprayed with feverish energy and handed the tools to Ivan. In the last five minutes, Ivan had not asked any questions at all, but concentrated entirely on his work, and Stumptooth had absorbed with greedy senses every cry of Onehand, every whimper and every drop of blood that had flowed from one of the countless, albeit mostly superficial wounds.
I was sure if fate had dealt the guy a different hand - he would have find his place among the degenerates pretty quickly. It was also in Ivan’s eyes, this fever, a black desire for the suffering of his enemy, which he lived out unrestrainedly. The rules of the camp did not apply to enemies. For enemies there was only pain and death here.
I myself was kind of ... blocked. What I saw; the cutting, the pulling out of teeth from Onehand’s mouth, the bursting of his skin, his blood that sprang out of some of the numerous wounds like a viscous, slowly flowing lava stream and from others and enveloped Ivan in a fine, reddish haze, the smell of burnt skin - all these impressions struggled in my head for supremacy and mixed with my hatred for Onehand.
Onehand that had been part of the hell that Wanda had gone through before the fight in the house. When I thought that this bloody body that now hung before me from the ceiling helplessly and bluntly had participated in the punishments, the murders, the rapes, and had probably initiated plenty of them for his own pleasure, I discovered a part of me that could enjoy the bloody spectacle that was offered to me here, and which awaited every new wound that was to be inflicted on the hated creature eagerly with sweaty hands.
When my eyes wandered to Stumptooth’s decayed face and I saw his yellowish tongue pushing forward past his remaining black tooth ruins to moisten his cracked, dry lips, I was clearly reminded how wrong and disgusting it all was.
Because that’s what it was. Wasn’t it?
If Wanda were here, would s
he observe what happened with satisfaction? Would it give her peace to see Onehand suffer?
Onehand had decided to live like an animal, had seized the justification that Da Silva’s damned, disgusting Bible offered him. Or was he also just a victim of systematic psycho terror, torture and perverse brainwashing and too traumatized by the events of war to resist the supposed liberation from the constraints and rules of civilization?
Ivan panting from his victim, reached back for his bottle and instructed Gustav, who had turned away and pretended not to notice any of this, to take care of Onehand.
The doctor, whose eyes glowed with something I could not identify, was pale and his jaws did grind as he slowly walked over to the bloody piece of meat hanging from the ceiling. While he examined a particularly deep incision in Onehand’s upper torso and started to stop the bleeding, Ivan heavily dropped back onto his chair and watched. His thirst for blood seemed to have faded somewhat and I could see how it worked in his head.
He had achieved nothing except to give his inner animal a little freedom.
Onehand had screamed, suffered and whimpered and uncontrollably pissed on the floor in fear and pain and was still whimpering, but he had said nothing.
Not a word.
Not a word about who worked with him in the camp.
Not a word about his plan.
Nothing at all.
Ivan turned to Rolf, who looked up. They spoke quietly, but I could not understand every word. Their eyes wandered over to Onehand every now and then, then to me.
What I could hear while looking back and forth between Gustav, Onehand, the guards and the two unequal camp leaders were scraps of words like: ... Knowledge ... Traitor ... How many ... Guns... Mall... you... No... Maybe ... What’s the point ... We have to ... bring nothing... Information ...
While the two of them whispered, Onehand was hissing and bubbling and producing bloody foam, tried to keep breathing, and Stumptooth kept the fire going, with whose help he made the instruments of torture glow, I stood there, inside still desperately paralyzed. I wouldn’t be able to watch this much longer.
If Ivan’s methods had at least been effective ... I came closer to Onehand and studied his shredded face. The pain had pushed his mind far behind his glassy-looking eyes, but it was still intact.
Not broken. Not defeated.
What gave this man his power?
Was it really the pseudo-religious fanaticism he had adopted? Or was it something else?
He had now noticed me, and slowly life returned from the depths of his brain into his eyes. His flaccid body tightened a little and he turned his face towards me. Through the hole in his cheek I could see his teeth moving as he spoke to me quietly, with a terribly weak gurgling voice.
“I didn’t think you’d make it this far... You and the little bitch... She’s only a pussy, who needs to get... understand what... dufindestander... pussyeee.”
An ugly laugh escaped his devastated face. Between the individual words he had to take pauses again and again to spit the blood that Ivan made flow in his mouth in my direction - although most of it spilled out of the crack in his cheek and ran down the side of his neck.
“We’re much... we’re... we’re... we’re... we’re... we’re... we’re... not.. no chance... you... or so, I’ll... I’ll survive you... Not long until...”
He rucked.
“.... dead... andthen... belongsto this bitchwidamiaaa... andas... girl cowthe little... dasideuchaje... libation... from sin... brings unity.... and.... he... salvation... “
Gustav, who had been busy caring for Onehand wounds when the prisoner had begun to speak, now stood next to me and listened with an equally enchanted and disgusted face. We exchanged a quick look and I noticed that Ivan and Rolf had also interrupted their mumbling conversation and listened.
“k... can’t get drunk... not pile up...”
He laughed now and it sounded terrible.
“we’re so... are... a.... everywhere... masters also... torn... has... eaten... burning and... »
He swallowed his own blood and, adding “I am chosen”, then he said nothing more, but stared into my face with his hateful, ugly smile.
When he hadn’t said anything for a few seconds, it was clear that his communicative seizure was over. A few more seconds later his body flaccid and then dangled seemingly lifelessly from the hooks on the ceiling. He had retreated deep into his tortured hull again. Somewhere inside he had to have a place where his consciousness could exist decoupled from the pain of his body.
I knew that no further information would come out of the man and Gustav also seemed to agree with me, because when our eyes crossed, he shook his head gently.
There’s just nothing you can do. That guy is insane.
For a moment we all remained silent and looked at each other. Rolf, who stood next to Ivan’s chair, Ivan, who sat meditatively circling the vodka bottle in the bloody hand, I, observing the faces of the two men in turn, waiting for what might come next, and Gustav, who took slow steps back to his table with the surgical instruments and the other utensils.
The guards, who had noticed that we had lost the initiative, also exchanged helpless looks. And then, after a short, eternal while, Ivan got up from his chair and slowly turned the cap back on the neck of his bottle. The man’s nostrils were swollen, his red forehead divided by a deep, angry wrinkle. His face said it all. I realized that I stood between him and Onehand. Even before I could react, the massive figure of Ivan was right in front of me and he casually wiped me aside with one of his huge paws. The power with which he did that made me bounce against the wall and fall.
“I...”
A punch in Onehands stomach.
“... Can’t...”
A punch in Onehands, already hardly recognizable, face.
“... tolerate...”
A chin hook that caused Onehand to bite his tongue halfway off with his remaining fragmented teeth.
“... This...”
Another punch in the stomach that made Onehand rock back and forth on the chains like a lifeless doll.
“You hear me, you little shithead?”
Ivan’s accent gave the words an even more threatening tonality than they´d have if spoken by another man. Now Ivan pressed his index finger into the wound that Gustav had just sewed up, which immediately began to bleed again. Onehand began to scream, and I knew that it was only his body screaming. The spirit, the malicious soul of the degenerate, was somewhere far away, deep inside him. Gustav knew that, too. Rolf’s face also clearly showed that he knew about the futility of Ivan’s efforts. Only Ivan and Stumptooth were unaware that the barbarism that was to follow would bring to light much more truths about them than information out of Onehand. Ivan was furious and Stumptooth was only too happy to be carried away by his leaders red-flaming energy.
When the first finger was cut off, Gustav left the room.
At the second, one of the guards followed him, his hand pressed in front of his mouth and, as a Stumptooth with his whole weight, pulled down Onehands right leg so that Ivan could stick a red-hot piece of metal deep into his thigh, I collapsed completely in my crouching position, closed my eyes and pressed my hands to my ears.
I don’t remember how long Onehand screamed. I don’t remember how long Ivan beat, cut, whipped, tore flesh and burned. At some point the miserable piece of human flesh stopped screaming, and I heard something metallic clattering falling onto the bloody concrete floor. As I slowly opened my eyes again, I recognized a saw. Next to it was, like a spider, a hand. A hand with a bolt wound in the middle. I saw Ivan stomping back to his chair, which Rolf was still standing next to.
Still with his hands behind his back. Still with an unmoved face.
Ivan’s face in contrast was distorted with rage as he unscrewed the vodka bottle and sipped the contents into himself. He shook briefly, looked at the empty bottle, and threw it across the room with a cry of helpless anger. It would have hit Stumptooth on the head by a hair’s
breadth and then exploded on the opposite wall into millions of razor-sharp, in the flickering light malevolently glittering splinters. Stumptooth retreated into a corner and looked like a little kid who had his favorite toy taken from him. Onehands body was still dangling from the ceiling. Now, however, he was only hanging on one arm. The other one had slipped out of it’s restraint because there was no hand left on it that could have prevented this.
With horror and nausea, I found that there was still life in his naked, maltreated body. Quiet, weak and moist, his breath hissed from the ruins of his mouth and in its rhythm a blood blister swelled up and down in his right nostril. The stump of the arm went down limply at the side and a steady stream of dark liquid splashed out of it and mixed with the large pool that had formed under Onehand. I wasn’t sure what was making me so dizzy. The collision with the wall or the repulsive synthesis of stench, blood, pain and cruelty into which Ivan had transformed this place.
Something wanted to awaken in me. The urge to end everything. A cry that couldn’t find a voice. I wanted to smash Ivan and Stumptooth’s skulls in, for what they had let me experience here. I wanted to beat the seemingly cold indifference out of Rolf’s face and give the coup de grace to Onehand. Then chase the four remaining guards away, yell at them, yell at them all, roar without knowing the words. I wanted to tear myself to pieces for allowing what had happened here in the last few hours.
Truly rats.
Nothing but rats.
But I was still powerless.
Frozen.
I was cowering on the floor, now with clenched, trembling fists, and was paralyzed. Later Wanda would tell me that during all the bloody events that were to follow in the next days, from time to time tears gleamed in my eyes. I didn’t notice it myself.
Just as I could slowly move again, and had finally made the decision to get up, a sound from Onehand, his dying body was struggling. Quiet, hardly perceivable at first. When the sound finally became more and more audible, I realized that it was a laugh. Hanging on one arm from the ceiling, with his feet feeling for support in the big, slippery pool of his own blood, the degenerate somehow turned to me and made a ghastly waving movement with his free arm stump. Like hypnotized by the absurdity and horror, I slowly pawed myself up and approached with small, shaky steps. His mouth was open and his eyes seemed empty when I reached him. What had once been his tongue moved hardly noticeably.
Under Ivans Knout: The Gospel of Madness (Book 2 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 9