The Constant Man

by Peter Steiner

  Reinhard mentioned Lola. He knew about her job at the Mahogany Room. ‘Pretty woman,’ he said. ‘Cute little apartment too.’ Threats did not need to be explicit. He kept the tone light, conversational. Reinhard always told his students that congeniality could break some men who were impervious to torture.

  Reinhard Pabst had succumbed to the myth of his office. He was convinced of his mastery of all people and all things. His destruction of his opponents over and over again had convinced him of that. He took the black uniform and his high rank to be irrefutable proof. That he had every advantage and his opponents had none did nothing to dissuade him. His advantages sprang, he believed, from his innate superiority.

  ‘You see, Geismeier,’ he said, ‘like you, I am a student of human nature. I have read Shakespeare too, although, I confess, not as thoroughly as you. As a matter of fact, I saw through his little act quite quickly. You apparently haven’t. I assure you: he is essentially boring. Good maybe at the poetry end of things, but wanting when it comes to understanding what really drives humankind, what truly motivates us. The comedies are silly, the tragedies contrived. Have you read any of the great modern thinkers?’

  Willi did not answer.

  Reinhard named a few of his favorites.

  Willi did not answer.

  ‘I thought not. It’s no wonder then that you are on the wrong side of things, the wrong side of history. It’s because you are an intellectual coward. You haven’t thought things through, because you are afraid of where that might take you. You are afraid of the truth.’

  Willi did not answer.

  ‘Understand this, Geismeier. I am not here merely to abuse and humiliate you. I am, like you, an investigator. I am always interested in getting at the truth.’

  Willi did not answer.

  ‘Of course, I have ways of getting at the truth that are not available to you.’ He plucked at a splintered fingernail, distracted for a moment. ‘I have ways that were never available to you really. Do you know why? Because you were, how shall I say?’ He steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘You were an insincere investigator. Do you understand what I mean by that?’

  Willi did not answer.

  ‘I will explain it to you. When you were in pursuit of something or someone, you chose not to avail yourself of all the available investigative tools.’ Reinhard raised his right hand to stroke his chin in what he took to be a thoughtful gesture. The cuff of his coat slid away and revealed the still raw scar on his hand and around his wrist. Reinhard was surprised and pleased when Willi spoke.

  ‘What truth?’ said Willi. His voice came out as a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Would you like some water?’ said Reinhard. ‘Help yourself, Geismeier. There, on the table.’ There was a crystal pitcher with two glasses. It was as though they were having a colloquy in the university faculty club. ‘Go ahead, Geismeier.’

  Willi did not move.

  ‘Suit yourself, then,’ said Reinhard. ‘It is there if you want it.’ Reinhard took a drink of water himself. ‘I’m interested in the truth that lies above the smaller truths,’ he said, ‘the truth that guides nature and all being.’

  ‘You mean the truth of chaos and power, force and violence,’ said Willi.

  ‘Bravo!’ said Reinhard, and clapped his hands in delight.

  Willi said nothing.

  ‘Sit down, Geismeier,’ said Reinhard, and pushed a wooden chair in Willi’s direction with his boot. Willi recognized in Reinhard something he had seen in other criminals: a pathological absence of character, a hollowness. And he could see that Reinhard was only marginally aware of this absence. He was pretending to be human, looking for the part of himself that he understood to be missing. There was narcissism and sadism, to be sure, but they appeared to Willi to be masking a deep fear that Reinhard was only, again marginally, aware of. A fear of what? Of some troublesome moment at the core of his experience? Of being found out, perhaps?

  Reinhard was a psychopath. And Willi was sure now that Reinhard was Friedrich Grosz, the particular psychopath he was looking for. Willi sat down and poured himself a glass of water. Reinhard watched him drink.

  ‘So, explain the virtues of violence and force,’ said Willi.

  Reinhard was pleased. ‘Violence and force are the true currency of power,’ he said. He was giving Willi his favorite lecture. ‘Everything else – Christian love, charity, generosity, justice, dignity, democracy, humanity, these things are all nonsense. They are counterfeit. They have no purchasing power; they buy you nothing.’

  ‘Maybe they seemed counterfeit when you tried them out,’ said Willi. ‘You did try them out, didn’t you? Others have had a different experience from yours. Others have found redemption in love.’

  Reinhard was a bit taken aback, but then he recovered and snorted. ‘Redemption! Hah!’

  ‘And the end of fear,’ said Willi.

  ‘That is utter nonsense, Geismeier, and you know it. Here you sit, pathetic, filthy, destroyed, virtually destroyed, buoyed perhaps by some vague irrational hope. But there is no hope for you, Geismeier. That is what you need to understand.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re going to explain it to me,’ said Willi.

  Reinhard’s face darkened. He stood up and walked around the table to where Willi sat. ‘Are you being insolent, Geismeier, you pathetic worm?’

  ‘I wonder, Herr Obersturmbannführer, how you can think of yourself as being all powerful, and yet be so threatened by a pathetic worm’s insolence.’

  Reinhard hit Willi hard enough to knock him off the chair and onto the floor. He took the pistol from his holster and pressed it into Willi’s face. ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, Geismeier. Get up.’

  Willi got up.

  ‘Pick up that chair.’ Willi did as he was told. ‘I could kill you now, Geismeier, and the kapos would come in and throw your miserable body in a ditch, and no one would ever know what had become of you.’

  Willi did not speak. The left side of his face throbbed. He could feel it swelling. He tasted blood. But he was convinced that Reinhard Pabst would not kill him, could not kill him, at least not until he felt he had won their argument, whatever that argument turned out to be. Willi also thought, as foolish, even mad, as it might seem, that he, Willi, was from this moment forward in control of their argument, and that only he knew where it was going.

  ‘Sit down, Geismeier. I’m not finished with you yet.’

  Willi sat down.

  ‘The last time you were interrogated, Geismeier’ – Reinhard’s voice was calm; it was as though the violent moment had not happened – ‘you spoke of someone named Friedrich Grosz as a murderer of women. Do you persist in that accusation?’

  ‘I know it to be true,’ said Willi.

  ‘And how do you know it to be true?’

  ‘Because,’ said Willi, ‘I interviewed his one surviving victim. I visited the scenes of his crimes, I interviewed the doctor and the nurse who stitched up his wound and the pharmacy where he got the drugs to dampen his fear and uncertainty.’

  Reinhard tried to smile again, but his mouth couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Why are you so interested in these whores who were killed, Geismeier? What are they to you?’

  ‘They were not …’

  Reinhard was becoming agitated. ‘Did you know them, any of them? Was one of them your sister or your lover or your mother?’ He laughed at his joke.

  ‘They interest me because they were human beings, and were the victims of a criminal assault by a psychopath, a human being devoid of humanity.’

  ‘A psychopath?’ said Reinhard. ‘And you know about his psychopathy how, Geismeier, pray tell?’

  ‘Because you can see his suffering in the crime itself, the slashing with the knife over and over and over, first one hand and then the other. He picks women because they are weak. And yet he is afraid of them. He is weaker than they are. He thinks they have some power over him. He is the one who is weak.’

  ‘Not so,’ said Reinhard. ‘He pic
ks the women … I believe he picks the women because they are whores. All women are whores, Geismeier. Don’t you know that yet? Your girlfriend Lola in her green dress’ – Reinhard made an hourglass movement with both hands down the length of his own body – ‘isn’t that what got you into the situation in which you find yourself? If you weren’t mixed up with her, you might have paid better attention and not gotten caught. The world was made by men for men, and it has been corrupted and eroded by women. If someone eliminates a few of these whore-demons, then what is that to you?’

  ‘I was once a detective,’ said Willi. ‘I investigated crimes. It is a hard habit to break.’

  Reinhard laughed. ‘It is a habit you have had no choice but to break, Geismeier. Look around you. Look at where you are.’

  ‘These women were human beings. To me their killer is evil. Even in my current circumstances it remains my business to pursue evil.’

  ‘What colossal grandiosity! Look at yourself! What makes a worm like you the arbiter of good and evil? How do you know this murderer, as you call him, isn’t someone simply doing the world a service?’

  Willi looked at Reinhard, at the water pitcher, at the room, before he spoke again. He reached for the water pitcher and poured himself another glass of water.

  ‘Have you ever dared to kill a man, Herr Grosz? Or do you only kill women? You are a coward, a psychopath, Friedrich Grosz. Peel off that uniform and you are a scared little boy. You are pathetic and ridiculous and inadequate. I think at some level you know that to be true.’ Willi had spoken in a calm, almost indifferent tone, like he was saying, ‘The sun is setting,’ or ‘Look at that dog.’

  Reinhard sat motionless, his mouth half open in astonishment. He began breathing heavily through his mouth, sending rapid puffs of steam into the frigid air. He pressed his hand to his chest, revealing the scar again.

  ‘You are unmasked, Herr Grosz,’ said Willi. ‘A killer and a fraud. You have no power. None. I’m not the only one who knows of your crime, either. There are police officers who know. The Gestapo knows. And I think you understand that even this evil regime won’t tolerate someone like you. Why, look how your Führer reveres women, wants them to have lots of babies for the Reich. Can you imagine—?’

  Willi was astonished that Reinhard had allowed him to go on this long. But now, finally, Reinhard leapt from his chair and came for Willi. Before he could even reach his pistol, Willi had smashed the crystal pitcher against his head and pulled the pistol from its holster. Reinhard fell across the table. His jaw was broken; he was bleeding from cuts up and down his face.

  Willi cocked the pistol and held it against Reinhard’s temple. ‘Take off your clothes,’ said Willi. Willi had expected he might die in Dachau, might even die today in this room. But now he was imagining another possibility. He was alone with an SS colonel. The colonel’s car was right outside the door, seconds from Dachau’s entry gate.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ Willi said again.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Suddenly Reinhard couldn’t remember Willi’s name. ‘What are you doing? What are you going to do? You can’t … Geismeier.’ There was the name; finding it seemed very important. Reinhard had not known helplessness for a very long time. He was out of practice, but it all came rushing back and now he saw helplessness all around him. He was drowning in it.

  ‘If you don’t take off your clothes by the time I count three,’ said Willi, ‘I will shoot you. And don’t imagine anyone will hear. Look at those walls; no one will hear a thing.’ Willi hoped this was true – the stone walls were half a meter thick.

  Reinhard seemed paralyzed.

  ‘One … two … three,’ Willi counted. Reinhard still did not move. The explosion of the Luger being fired made both their ears ring. Reinhard screamed and stared at his shattered hand. Tears welled in his eyes and he started sobbing.

  ‘I said take off your clothes,’ said Willi. Reinhard hurried to do as he was told, but having one hand out of commission slowed him down.

  Escape

  Most successful escapes from Dachau, and they were few and far between, were opportunistic, where a prisoner or prisoners suddenly saw an opening and took it. That was the situation Willi found himself in now as he stepped from the building. He had committed. His decision to escape was irreversible – either he would succeed, or he would be killed.

  Willi was taller than Reinhard, and thinner, and the uniform was a bad fit. But he was only six steps from the car, so it didn’t matter. Reinhard Pabst had sobbed and lain still as a baby while Willi tied his hands behind his back and to his feet using Willi’s prison clothes twisted into makeshift ropes. Reinhard’s disgrace was sudden and total.

  It was raining lightly, a cold rain. Willi pulled the hat brim low over his eyes. A work party of twelve or so was marching past with two kapos – one of them Neudeck – in charge. They were singing as they marched.

  Neudeck’s eyes widened slightly as he recognized Willi. ‘Good luck,’ he whispered as he passed. He saluted and Willi returned his salute. The guards in the tower above were watching. Willi gave them a long stare and they looked away.

  Willi started the car easily, put it in gear, and drove to the gate. At that moment another work party was about to march through. The guards had already swung the gate open. But now they held up the work party, and waved Willi through. They snapped to attention and saluted. He turned left through some SS barracks, then right on Friedenstraße. Peace Street. And just like that, he was out.

  Later that evening the Bergemanns’ phone rang. ‘It’s for you,’ said Sofia.

  ‘Who is it?’ said Bergemann.

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  Bergemann picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Come downstairs and walk south,’ said a voice.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Come downstairs, Hans, and walk south.’ The line went dead.

  ‘Who was it?’ asked Sofia.

  The voice was familiar, yet unfamiliar. Then he realized why and jumped up. ‘I’m going out,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’ she said.

  ‘Willi,’ he said. Before she could ask, he was out the door. She understood it might be a while before he came back.

  Bergemann’s heart was pounding as he hurried along the street. He had heard rumors more than once that Willi Geismeier was dead. Gruber had said so a while back. They were at lunch, and Gruber had raised a glass to celebrate. He had probably just been trying to goad Hans; Gruber always seemed suspicious of him, although he never came right out and said it. Even though Bergemann didn’t believe the rumors, he had feared that Willi might die in Dachau.

  ‘Keep walking,’ said a voice, and there was Willi beside him, wraith thin and haggard, but it was Willi for sure. Bergemann couldn’t help putting his arm around Willi’s shoulder and hugging him to him. He could feel his ribs and thin arms through his coat.

  ‘Me too,’ said Willi, and he smiled. ‘Can we sit somewhere?’ he said.

  ‘My sister lives nearby,’ said Bergemann.

  ‘Monika?’ said Willi.

  ‘That one,’ said Bergemann.

  It was another ten minutes to Monika Bergemann’s, and they walked in silence.

  There were five Bergemann siblings, two brothers, two sisters and Hans. Monika was the eldest, Hans the youngest. She had never married or had any desire to do so. She had once been in love with a pretty young woman, who had decided after some months that loving a woman was too difficult, and had left to marry a man.

  Poetry was Monika’s only love now. She wrote constantly, filling notebooks, and publishing occasionally in small journals or in editions of a hundred books. Half of those might sell, if she was lucky. She didn’t care about that. Critics said she was a poet’s poet, which meant that her poetry was difficult and obscure. It was a good thing too, because if she had been more readily understood by the powers that be, if they had understood her obscure allusions, she would almost certainly have been arrested.

&nbs
p; Monika and Willi were both prickly characters. They liked each other well enough, in part because they had a love of books in common and in part because they saw one another so infrequently. She knew from Hans that Willi had been imprisoned in Dachau, and so she embraced him happily when they arrived.

  She offered them beer and then announced she was going to bed. Bergemann wanted to hear everything, but Willi was exhausted, so he stuck to the necessities, which were marvelous enough. Willi explained that he had learned for certain that morning that Friedrich Grosz was SS colonel Reinhard Pabst. ‘I laid a trap for him,’ said Willi. Bergemann had to laugh at the sheer preposterousness of that proposition, and because it was true.

  ‘I hit him with a crystal water pitcher, got his Luger’ – Willi patted his side pocket – ‘and left him tied up in the interrogation room.’

  ‘You didn’t kill him?’

  ‘Not my job,’ said Willi.

  Lying on the stone floor trussed up like a pig about to be slaughtered, Reinhard sobbed, then raged, then cursed, vowing revenge one moment and despairing the next. His curses echoed off the stone walls and died a silent death in that room. This was a humiliation and a defeat he would not live down.

  Still, eventually he wriggled and writhed and worked himself free. He began pounding on the heavy door and shouting. A passing pair of SS guards finally heard his pounding and unbolted the door, and the lieutenant colonel, wearing only his underwear, came lurching out into the rain. His head was bloody, his hand too. ‘I am Obersturmbannführer Reinhard Pabst!’ he wailed. But, battered and dirty and in his underwear, he looked to the two SS guards like a berserk prisoner. They seized him by the arms.

  ‘You fools – the prisoner has escaped! He shot me!’ Reinhard screamed. Reinhard tried to show them his bloody hand, but they held him fast. They started walking him to the Juhrhaus where the duty officer would sort things out.