“Over there,” he says, pointing at the door. He pulls away and prepares to close the door when a big hand slams open the door. The force puts him on his arse in his hallway and his facial expression has now turned to shock as he sees Gunari looming over him and pointing a pistol at him.
“What is going on?” he says looking at me. I turn to Gunari who is moving towards the man I assume is Schwarzer, the gun now centimetres from his face. His handsome face is now a picture of shock, eyes darting around.
“Do not say anything,” Gunari whispers in a growl.
“Who do you think you are…” Gunari whips the pistol across Schwarzer’s face with shocking swift brutality. A spray of blood flies off and speckles the wall next to the door. Schwarzer is now lying on the floor holding his face and moaning.
Janko walks in now and closes the door. He takes the gun off Gunari who lifts up Schwarzer and drags his body from the hallway into the living room. Connected through a small archway is a dirty kitchen and dining area. Gunari tells me to grab a chair from the kitchen which I do and place it in the living room. Gunari sets down Schwarzer and takes out some rope from his rucksack. Gunari ties the rope tightly around Schwarzer’s chest and subsequently ties his wrists to the chair arms.
I search the house along with Janko looking for evidence. There is a bedroom which is virtually empty except for a mattress with blood stains all over it. In blood on the walls is smeared a slogan: Blut und Boden.
“What does that say?” I ask Janko.
“Blood and soil,” Janko is intrigued by it, “You don’t see that too often these days. Before the war…” Janko simply shakes his head and doesn’t continue talking.
There is nothing of note in here so I head back to the living room. I notice a telephone on a table by the window. Is that the one they use? I sincerely hope he doesn’t make or receive the calls from his own house. But why else would he come here?
The house itself is unlikely to be a permanent residence. Barely any clothing hangs in the wardrobes, nor is food stocked in the cupboards. It is dirty due to inaction rather than the behaviour of a messy person. A coating of dust covers most surfaces.
“Who are you?” Schwarzer’s shock still registers on his face. His eyes constantly dance between the three intruders in his house. A light scar runs across his left cheek which actually makes him look more good-looking.
“I can’t believe you are asking that,” Gunari says.
“Who sent you?”
“We sent ourselves, as is our right as the appointed representatives of one of your shareholders,” Janko says and a look of incomprehension passes over Schwarzer’s face.
“None of this makes any sense,”
“Maybe that’s because the big guys keep you out of the loop,”
Schwarzer looks very confused. Perhaps he's wondering why Mrs Zaimoğlu sent her family to rough him up.
“We represent the heir of Dr Mengele,” Janko opens his arms and points towards me, “Her grandfather didn’t lose his share of IMFG because he died,”
This is the big moment, our big risk. Will he swallow our lie?
“We...we didn’t forget you. Your family receive their fair share,”
“Not all of his family, clearly,” Gunari says, “We are here to discuss the details of moneys owed to us.”
“She doesn’t look like the daughter of anyone but a filthy Turk.” With a speed that if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it, Gunari flashes the gun across Schwarzer’s face. He had barely finished speaking when his head was snapped laterally and more blood spurted out.
I feel my stomach lurch with disgust at the sheer explosive violence. Schwarzer starts laughing which makes me feel even worse. I can’t look at him and I have to turn away. I sense Janko looking at me but I am unable to acknowledge him.
“If you pardon my coarseness, Mr Schwarzer but Dr Mengele was a busy man in Brazil. He was very close to the lady who cleaned his house and eventually in nineteen-seventy she gave birth to the young lady stood next to me, Hannah,”
“I would have heard about it,” Schwarzer juts his jaw out in a gesture of idiotic defiance.
“Unfortunately, you didn’t hear about it which has placed us all in the difficult situation we are currently in. When Dr Mengele fell ill a couple of years after Hannah was born her mother looked after him until he passed on. He made certain promises about his new family being looked after but these turned out to be lies.”
“So what, she’s a bastard. Look at her, a hybrid mongrel. She isn’t German and she never will be. I don’t care if her father was the Führer himself,”
“I feel like you are misunderstanding us. We are the ones in the position of power here. It took many years of searching to obtain your address Mr Schwarzer. You are not an easy man to locate.”
“You’ll receive nothing from us,” Schwarzer’s resistance continues, I glance at Gunari who is checking his watch.
“Us?” Janko says. Schwarzer doesn’t say anything but his arrogant facade begins to crack, “If you mean Mr Paul Beckermann, our friends will be paying him a visit later today in Munich. And, after seeing the size of him now, I doubt he will be running away so fast,”
Silence descends on the room, Gunari is not allowing Schwarzer out of his sight. I notice I have picked up a bread knife, I can’t remember picking it up. I scan the kitchen and I can see the void in the rack from where I lifted it from.
“You are making a big mistake,” Schwarzer says softly, a line from a bad thriller movie.
“Will Mr Beckermann be happy to discover that you supplied us with his address?”
“I didn’t. I…” Schwarzer realises the trap he has walked in to.
“What will he do, do you think?” Gunari this time has stepped in to the conversation, “If it’s anything like his reputation, the future isn’t looking so rosy for you eh?”
“His reputation,” Schwarzer snorts, his bloodied nose makes it sounds strangely bunged up, “He’s never hurt anyone before. He is a businessman, like myself,”
“We shall see. Now, what time will he call today? This is very important,” Gunari says. Schwarzer simply chuckles in response so Gunari punches him low in his gut. Schwarzer begins retching horribly, blood and mucus spewing out of his face.
“We can wait all day, but it would make more sense for you simply to tell us. Beckermann calls you at what time?”
“I will not tell you anything, filth,”
“Pass me the hammer from my bag Janko,” Gunari is truly fearsome, a dark and brooding malevolent presence. Schwarzer is trying to keep his emotions under control and exude arrogance but he isn’t fooling me. He won’t be fooling Gunari either. He should tell us what we need to know, save himself the pain that is inevitably heading his way.
Janko pulls out a rustic builder’s hammer out of the rucksack and hands it to Gunari. Janko steps away and pulls me back a little bit further even though I am a good few metres away anyway. Gunari stands in front of Schwarzer and says:
“I will ask you questions. If I need to ask each question more than once it will result in me; causing you; immense pain. Let us begin: What time will Mr Beckermann telephone you today?”
Schwarzer doesn’t speak, I don’t think he can summon the voice to say anything. His intransigence is yet to be overwhelmed by self-preservation. Schwarzer looks pleadingly at Gunari and simply shakes his head.
“My hand takes hold on justice, I will render vengeance on my adversaries,” Gunari whispers this in Schwarzer’s ear, raises his hand up and brings it down with tremendous force upon Schwarzer’s right hand. A crunchy squelch as it lands and shatters bone and ligament. Schwarzer is so shocked he can only scream without any sound coming out.
“Midday, midday,” Schwarzer barks out the words, the pain possibly not as awful as it will be once the adrenalin dissipates. The colour has drained from his face and his eyes are wide open.
“Mr Beckerman calls you up and says the dail
y code. What do you reply with?”
“I...I...I say the next day’s code and that’s it,” Schwarzer has begun to cry, his body retching in rhythm with the sobs.
“What time will Dr Tremmick telephone you?”
“Twelve-thirty, every...every day,”
“Good man,” Janko says, “if you carry on in this manner, you should be able to see your family today. Perhaps after a trip to the hospital to fix your broken hand of course. Where is the letter from Dr Tremmick?”
Schwarzer nods towards the kitchen, so I walk over to have a look around. I can’t see a letter only a small waste bin with a crumpled envelope.
I pick the envelope out of the bin and take the letter out. It is pretty much the same as Beckermann’s letter with the same combination of numbers. One thing I notice is the postmark in the corner stamped with Principauté de Monaco. I hand the letter to Janko back in the front room.
“What is Dr Tremmick’s address?” Janko asks.
“I don’t know,” Schwarzer mumbles. Gunari raises the hammer up again and Schwarzer wails, “Nooo, I don’t know,”
“Wait a second Gunari,” Janko says while walking to Schwarzer. He shows the bloodied man a photo, “Mr Schwarzer, these are your children I believe?”
Schwarzer nods meekly.
“They are currently safe and well in America. If you do not listen to our instructions their safety will be compromised. Am I making myself completely understood?”
“Yes,” Schwarzer strains out the word like pouring treacle through a plug hole. His head is bowed. Janko turns to Gunari and says:
“We need to clean him up and sort his head out so he can answer the calls,”
“OK, I’ll untie him and we can take him to the bathroom,” Gunari says in response. He walks over to the stricken Schwarzer, head flopping in semi-consciousness. I walk over to join Gunari and check the man’s condition.
Gunari unties the rope around Schwarzer’s chest and lets it drop to the floor, he moves on to untie the left hand keeping his eyes firmly on the barely-responsive German. Gunari unties the right hand and then moves around the back to lift him up.
As he edges around the chair, Schwarzer suddenly lunges head-first into Gunari and knocks him off balance. Schwarzer pulls the gun away from Gunari and tries aiming with his broken hand. I am frozen watching him line Gunari up in his sights. I hear Janko shouting, I can’t tell what he is saying.
My training kicks in and an injection of adrenalin stings my heart, the breadknife is in my hand still so I pounce like a lioness protecting her cubs and plunge the knife straight through the back of the neck of Schwarzer. The skin immediately yields and then I can feel jagged resistance as it grates across his spine.
Schwarzer utters a gargle and collapses immediately, dropping the gun on the floor. His crumpled body lands and knocks over the chair he was previously sat on. I look in his eyes but there is nothing there. He focuses on me for a split second then the life drains out of him.
I drop to my knees and every emotion one could feel hits me at once. Or to be more accurate, hits the character that I am watching from afar. Nothing is me anymore.
Silence envelopes me, the room is not real. The bloody knife is in my hand, I look down at it and drop the repulsive object. There is no blood on my hands but it feels like my hand is covered in it and I swear the sensation is real.
“I can’t stay here,” I say, “I have to leave,”
“Ana, you need to stay, we will sort everything out,” Janko says, Gunari is sat on the floor, still shell-shocked. His eyes are empty of emotion. Janko is holding his hands up imploring me to stay.
“This isn’t me, this isn’t me,” I run out of the house, down the stairs and then walk off out of the apartment and into the grey heart of Berlin.
Defeat is Optional
Sunday, 4 May 1986
The anonymity of the city is my shroud, the endless apartment blocks and arboreal avenues. The hum of traffic and the chatter of children fills the air. The incongruousness of daylight after the events of today further unnerves me.
I need to keep walking. If I don’t, I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. After a few hours of aimless wandering I reach the river and there’s nowhere else to go so I do decide to stop and sit on a concrete bench. The tears flow, sobbing the shame out of my system.
I’ve deprived a wife of her husband and three children of their father. It was so easy to perform the action, one fluid movement and he was soon keeled over like a burst balloon. In a few minutes, a normal day transformed into a ferocious snuffing out of his life.
Over the course of the last few months I have spent time thinking about what it would mean to take a life. I have talked myself into thinking I possessed the mental fortitude to kill a person, especially one who deserved it.
Now all I can reflect upon is that I murdered a man in cold blood, not a war criminal but a businessman. A man with faults, obviously, but not a man who has hurt me or my family. His pitiful look as his life ebbed away didn’t make me feel guilty. What made me feel guilty was the flash of superiority I felt after committing the deed.
A second was all it took for me to permanently incapacitate a grown adult. Is this how the monsters feel when they kill? Does the feeling grow with every death ultimately leading to the types of crimes that the Nazis committed? Surely everyone holds themselves accountable for their actions?
The sun is hanging low in the sky giving the Berlin sky a reddish-grey hue. It is quiet on the banks of the river, the water barely making a noise as it laps gently against the stone banks. No one is around and I can feel at ease. How easy will I feel if a policeman speaks to me?
Will it show on my face that I have recently committed a violent murder? I’m in a foreign country with no idea what to do if I am arrested. If I manage to return to Yugoslavia, the same applies - prison for arson and attempted murder.
I begin to cry again, if ever there was a time I wanted a hug from my mum, this is it. A teenage girl in a divided city, soldiers patrolling watchtowers with machine guns. Unreal moments have been a hallmark of my time away from home but tonight will never be surpassed.
Behind me the sound of music is gradually rising. An insistent bassline thumps in time with my heartbeat. Where are those sounds coming from? I rise and try to follow the sound of the earthy beat through the dark streets of Kreuzberg.
Somehow, I take a couple of wrong turns and the sound drops away. I can feel my heart pumping hard still so I retrace my steps and the sound comes back. I end up back on one of the main streets with the U-Bahn train line passing over head again.
I track the sound over the road and I can now hear a voice singing robotically over the music. A train passes overhead, it’s lights illuminating my face in the evening gloom. I see in front of me a small lit sign stating “BAR”.
There are people outside the bar sat on upturned boxes and beer crates. I walk towards the door, a girl with dyed short white hair dressed in leather trousers and leather jacket mutters something to me under her breath. I give her a stare which she holds.
I try and find the door handle whilst maintaining the staring contest with this bitch when a couple of young lads bound through the door nearly knocking me over. The first one ignores me but the second boy apologises. They both look at what I’m wearing, then at each other and begin to laugh.
I enter the bar and immediately feel eyes upon me, judging me. It must be because of what I’m wearing. A pair of white shorts and a plain blue t-shirt, everyone here seems to have spent the day trying to look a certain way. The girls all have cropped hair and the boys have long hair.
A thought occurs to me, am I covered in blood?
Fear pulses through my body, and I look for a sign indicating where the toilets could be. There’s too many people around so I head to the bar and see a man with long brown hair and round glasses behind the counter.
“Where is the toilet?” I ask, sounding more aggressive than I mean to.
“Round the corner,” he says pointing behind the bar.
I don’t thank the barman but almost run to the toilet. A girl who looks like she is in more of a state than I am is leaving, her eyes are glassy and huge staring out of her haunting pallor.
I enter the toilet and throw up in the sink, the toilet bowl is covered in blood and someone else’s vomit. Tears are coming out again but this is in response to my violent heaving.
I close my eyes and try and calm myself down as Gunari taught me. I start by controlling my breathing. Ten long inhalations and exhalations. It actually works so I repeat the method. There is half a cracked mirror above the sink and finally I can take a look at my face.
My eyes are puffy but not too bad, a few blood vessels look to have burst below the eyes near the top of my nose. There isn’t any blood but I look dirty so I wash my face using ice cold water.
I tie my hair up on top of my head and tuck in my t-shirt too as the bottom of it is looking grubby and the hem is stained, possibly with blood. I leave the bathroom feeling slightly more human.
“Hurry up,” a tall girl, with heavy eye make-up wearing a tiny crop top says to me. I don’t engage in a conversation with her but head back to the bar. The barman recognises me and asks if I want a drink.
“A beer please,” I hand over a couple of marks in exchange for a bottle of Berliner. I down the beer in one long gulp, something I’ve never done before. I nod to the barman who hands me another beer.
I spot a seat by the window so I push through the throng of conversation and the fug of cigarette smoke to sit down. I scan the bar, there must be forty people here and virtually everyone is smoking. The chat is loud, a quick look at my watch states it is now nearly nine in the evening.
A man with close cropped blonde hair and moustache wearing a Nick Cave t-shirt comes over and sits in the window sill next to me.
“I’ve never seen you in here before,” he says.
“I’ve never seen you either,” I reply, my tolerance for small talk as low as my tolerance for silly moustaches. The man doesn’t immediately reply. Instead he rolls a cigarette, lighting it with a match. He offers it to me and I shake my head.
The Wind and the Rain Page 15
