The door latch: he has seen how it works, how they closed it before. He is still Tokala, the fox. He is sly, he is deft, and he is quick.
It is only two or three steps, then he is by the door, slides the bolt back with both hands; the door flies open almost of its own accord.
Suddenly there is a loud roar, more violent than the dull rumble to which they have so far been exposed; the wind reaches inside their metal shell and pulls on his clothes.
Waziyata.
The north wind itself has come to claim its son.
A cry issues from behind and Tokala turns around. The wind has blown the playing cards from the table, and they whirl through the cabin, as the men jump to their feet. Tokala sees the fear in the soldiers’ eyes. Four machine guns are pointed at him. Four men cry out. Step back from the door and get down – but he refuses to obey. One of them draws a bead and repeats his threat to shoot. Panic speaks from his voice.
Tokala knows the man won’t fire, knows they cannot prevent his escape. He doesn’t have to do anything, simply tips forward, and feels Waziyata seize him and press against his chest.
For a moment it takes his breath away. The raging, blustering wind is so loud that no other sound reaches his ears, not even the rumble of the plane.
Abandoning himself to the wind he had closed his eyes, but now he opens them, and sees the lakes and forests that were his life draw ever nearer.
He understands how he is one of the chosen few, those who shortly before death are granted witness to the beauty and immensity of creation, not simply to see it, but feel it in their body and soul, and, amidst such beauty and immensity, acknowledge how small and insignificant human life is. This comforts him, as nothing ever has before, not even his mother’s breathing when he was still an infant. The acknowledgement of how miniscule, how ugly, he really is, and that it doesn’t matter because, in spite of everything, he is a part of this all-encompassing beauty and immensity.
This is what he thinks; feels; knows, and with a smile on his face and the wind in his hair, he crashes onto the hard surface of a secluded forest lake.
And that is the moment he receives his new name.
Mitakuye Oyasin.
We are all one.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction, which means the vast majority of it is simply invented. There was not, for instance, a Luisenhöhe estate near Marggrabowa/Treuburg, just as there was no Mathée schnapps distillery or products. Nor did any of the events related in this novel occur on the Elisenhöhe estate (which served as the model for its fictional counterpart) or, indeed, in the city of Treuburg. Any similarities with living or dead people are, therefore, entirely coincidental. Of all the Treuburg citizens appearing in the story, only the district administrator and mayor do so under their historically documented names.
There was never a Masurian Indian called Artur Radlewski, and, though Masuria is rich in lakes and moorland, the little lake, and the Kaubuk’s impregnable patch of moor in the forest near Markowsken (which is today called Markowskie) exist in my imagination alone. The same is not true of the military cemetery, however, which is still to be found today, next to the road leading into Markowskie.
Likewise, it’s a fact that as early as 1928, that is to say before the onset of the Nazis’ wave of Germanisation, Marggrabowa changed its name to Treuburg. Anti-Polish and anti-German resentments on both sides of the East Prussian border were all too real. Sadly, it is also true that the Masurians, who ever since 1920 had been connected with the German Reich by a transit route that passed through Poland, the so-called Polish Corridor, felt abandoned by the Reich and its governments and, in the spring of 1932, acclaimed Adolf Hitler as though he were the saviour. The man, who in time, would become the death of their culture.
Also historically documented are the events which took place at Berlin Police Headquarters on 20th July 1932, the arrest of the Social Democrat Police Commissioner Grzesinski and the entire police executive. If not for the reactionary Reich government’s suppression of Prussian democracy and the Berlin police force, it is doubtful whether the Nazis would have seized power with quite such ease six months later.
Large parts of this novel are set in a world which has ceased to exist. The old Masuria, in which Polish and German cultures coincided with others, and achieved a happy symbiosis, was crushed between the millstones of Nationalism; between Germanisation and Polonisation. Masuria’s multi-ethnic culture, which could have served as a bridge between the cultures of Germany and of Poland, sadly had no place in a world enslaved by nationalist mania.
V.K., April 2012
Have you read the rest of the Gereon Rath series?
1929: There is seething unrest in Berlin. When a car is hauled out of the Landwehr Canal with a mutilated corpse inside Detective Inspector Gereon Rath claims the case. Soon his inquiries drag him ever deeper into the morass of Weimar Berlin’s ‘Roaring Twenties’ underworld of cocaine, prostitution, gunrunning and shady politics.
‘Gripping evocative thriller set in Berlin's seedy underworld during the roaring Twenties. A massive hit in its native Germany.’
Mail on Sunday
1930: Silent movie actress Betty Winter is killed on set after a lighting system falls on her. Inspector Gereon Rath suspects sabotage, possibly worse. Meanwhile, the murder of a Nazi named Horst Wessel leads to street riots and Rath’s relationship with Charlotte Ritter is on the rocks. Then another actress is found dead, this time with her vocal cords removed…
‘Conjures up the dangerous decadence of the Weimar years, with blood on the Berlin streets and the Nazis lurking menacingly in the wings.’
The Sunday Times
1931. Abraham Goldstein, a professional hit man, arrives in Berlin. Inspector Gereon Rath is assigned to keep him out of action – a boring job when the city’s department stores are being robbed, an underworld power struggle is playing out, and Nazi brownshirts are patrolling the streets.
‘Tough, gritty and altogether superb, Goldstein is a worthy addition to the addictive Gereon Rath series.’
William Ryan, author of The Constant Soldier
Available now
The Fatherland Files Page 48