Our yelling and surging at the end of the village has sent the “wolf ” into swift flight. Then—presumably frightened by the shots all around him and perhaps even grazed or struck by one—he doubles back, and to his misfortune we have him as he flees broadside past us instead of sharply away from us. He is hit by a few bullets or bullet fragments. He bends to a bow, snapping at the bullet wounds, but an enormously powerful will to live pulls him forward. Only now he flees more slowly, more heavily, sits down crookedly on his hind legs when he is hit again. We naturally redouble our banging, and every time the wolf marks a new hit, the united peasantry around us howl triumphantly until their yowling is exceeded by a louder, more energetic one: the roaring of our officers, who command us to stop our senseless shooting on the spot.
It is as if we had suddenly awoken from a fit of possession. It’s still on our faces; I see it in my comrades’ wild eyes and uncontrolled mouths. It must be in mine too. The possession yields to the foolish insight that something inexplicable has happened to us, simple as it may be to explain. Our nerves got the better of us. The live ammunition in our pouches had to explode sooner or later.
We’re in for it now. But who could have thought of that when the entire village was shouting and pointing to its archenemy . . .
The wolf—or stray dog—keeps twitching and then collapses. The bullets are in his flesh, he has fire in his bowels, he turns around in circles, biting his flanks, we can see him spraying blood. A few courageous peasants set out to club him to death with cudgels. But, incredibly tenacious, he gets to his feet and drags himself off. It is a triumph of the will to live, the will to survive at any price. It paralyzes our hands. My head is spinning, I’ve probably drunk too much tzuika too fast. I feel sick.
Berlin, 1941. Nighttime, total darkness.
I come out of the Jockey. I’ve been feasting. I’ve devoured Baltic lobster, Hamburg Stubenküken, omelet surprise; I’ve boozed on gallons of Chablis, Mouton Rothschild 1935, port and Courvoisier and Heidsieck, danced the rumba and the samba, and whetted my member in my trousers on the pokey pubic bone of an East Prussian girl while dancing to “She wants no flowers, she wants no chocolate, she wants just me and only little me.” And now it’s time, now the thing’s working on its own, “check, please,” and out—and in . . .
We’re on the street now. It’s pitch-dark. Berlin is blacked out because of air raids, so you can’t see your hand before your face (but that’s not at all where my hand is). A cab with narrow slits of light on its blackened headlights drives up (they know where to find the fares vital to the war effort), and I step into the meager glow, raise my hand—I have no right to use a taxi, I’m neither an armaments specialist nor in the Reich Food Estate nor in the Reich Security Service nor a doctor nor a diplomat nor an expectant mother, but my pockets are full of cash and cigarettes (there’s a war on, you understand, we’ll be honest again after the Final Victory). So I open the cab door and start pushing the girl in—when a figure leaps out of the dense blackness, shoves the girl and me away, and squeezes into the car. I reach in to haul the fellow out—after all, I stopped the taxi, it’s mine, first come, first served—but then I feel the leather of a uniform coat under my fingers. I get scared. I’m a foreigner, all I’ve got is a highly suspicious document that describes me as being “On a Special Mission”—obviously a draft-dodger, probably even a deserter. It’s not advisable. I’m about to let go, to murmur an apology. But the man shrieks, “What! Grabbing an officer of the German Luftwaffe!” A fist smashes into my face. I’m scared. I’ve got to do something. I punch back blindly, strike too low, and bruise my knuckles on his collar. Something is dangling there, something with hard sharp edges: a Knight’s Cross.
I am terrified. I am scuffling in the darkness with an officer wearing a Knight’s Cross. This is lèse-majesté, a desecration of the Third Reich, no mercy can be shown for this . . . Another car comes along, the narrow glow from the headlight combs the street. The Knight’s Cross is lying on the asphalt—and the fellow is punching out wildly. But I’ve got him by the collar, I press him down, shove my knee between his legs, smash my fist into his kisser. The other car has driven past without stopping. I get a punch in the stomach—not very hard, he’s no athlete. But I have to finish him off before he draws his pistol or his aviator’s dagger and simply rubs me out. He can do it, he has to, he’s a uniformed member of the armed forces, he’s duty-bound . . . I smash my fist once more into his Adam’s apple, he chokes noisily. He’s young and rather thin, a kid, barely twenty-one, no doubt—like me. Only I’m bigger and stronger. But if a patrol car comes, I’m done for. He’s an officer of the most daring German service branch, highly decorated; he risks his life, whereas I . . .
I keep on pounding. They’ll make short shrift of me, shoot me down on the spot like a mad dog. I bang his head against my raised knee; I hold the collar of his leather coat in my left hand and hit him with my right, knocking the edge of the collar out of my fingers. Somewhere, a flashlight beam starts to flit through the blackness. The air-raid warden from the next building, probably. I kick the leather sack, punch a mash of hair, blood, and flesh, he sinks to his knees, his head knocks against the fender of the taxi, I push the girl in, jump in after her. “Get going!” And the cabby hasn’t stirred all this time, he probably hasn’t even looked around. But then there’s nothing to see, I can barely make out his silhouette before me in the darkness, in any case it’s solid, no neck, he’s probably well on in years. Thank God, all this was none of his business, the results were too uncertain, he doesn’t get mixed up in things like this . . . And the flashlight beam dances closer. The cabby shifts the car into gear, the taxi starts off—slowly—much too slowly—the flashlight beam moves through the car window—I duck, pull the girl down next to me—now the cabby shifts into second and then to third—and I suck the blood from my smashed knuckles (“Watch it, kid, my dress!”) and peer through the back window: I see the parabolic section of the flashlight beam whooshing across the asphalt and fishing, out of the blackness, the crumpled figure in the blue-gray leather coat, casting a flat atomizing shadow. Then, the beam swings up and after us—but its light atomizes too, before reaching us. I see only the round, white-yellow core of the flashlight . . . We arrive at my place, a highly respectable family boardinghouse in the Wielandstrasse. In front of the house a black Mercedes is parked, and behind it a military jeep. I am sick with fear: they’ve already come for me. My first impulse is to shout at the cabby to keep driving. But then I tell myself it won’t do any good now. I calm the girl. I’ll need her to testify that I was attacked and responded in self-defense.
The SS officer waiting for me in the parlor is extremely correct. After checking my papers, he returns them to me with a click of his heels, apologizes, saying he has to see the girl’s papers too, reads a well-known name, bows with military terseness. “Excuse me for disturbing you.”
He turns to me. “I was ordered to search your room. Could you please make sure that nothing is missing?” In my room, three men are rummaging through my closets and valises. One of them reports, “Nothing, Sturmführer!”
The SS officer waves them off. “Good, that’s all.” He says to me, “Would you please come to this office tomorrow morning at eleven.” He hands me an address: Elsternplatz, in Grunewald. He gives me the Nazi salute and exits with his men.
For a while, I am breathless with terror, unable to grasp what all this means. Then it hits me, to my horror: Stella. She’s tried to get to me again and they’ve caught her.
Near Stargard, Pomerania, 1942. In a manor house, evening, after a hunt.
The hostess: “. . . Well, the groom slipped right through her fingers just three weeks after the wedding . . . and then the business with the boy—why, it’s horrible: during the Polish campaign, right in the first few days . . . it’s hard to keep all your marbles after that . . . and then this all the time [drink gesture with her thumb sticking out of her fist], but otherwise a marvelous woman, manages o
n her own terrifically . . .”
the hostess lived in Argentina before the war—
“. . . Argentina? What do they eat there?” “Well, in the Pampas, they mainly eat asado.” “What’s that supposed to be?” “. . . Asado. You simply have to try it sometime, Schnipps. It’s fantastic.” “I just can’t imagine it.” “. . . fantastic, I tell you. A whole sheep roasted on an open fire . . .” “No! Outdoors, of course?” “Like the virgin of Orléans.” “I thought she was the last in her line.” “No, well, joking aside, it’s really fantastic. And then when the gauchos take their knives—” “But why knives? Vaseline does the job just fine!” “. . . our Henning’s still the same old swine!” “But what do we need gauchos for, gang? We can make our own asado . . .” “You’re not going to wake up everyone on the estate just for that!” “Why, it’s almost midnight.” “Is anyone still hungry?” “When I tell Stolze—Stolze, I say—third year of the war or not, it’s all the same to me—Stolze, I tell you, will do it straightaway.” “And outdoors, you say?” “Naturally. It’s in the Pampas. Where else are you going to—?”
“Now listen, Stolze: we’ve got some foreign guests, and we want to show them that even in the third year of the war—by the way, would you like a schnapps? Well, let me introduce you. Overseer Stolze.” “Why, you direct this estate, Stolze, eh? Don’t be so modest!” “Stolze’s fantastic. Nothing’s impossible for him.” “. . . Well, we shall try to catch one that’s not too old. We’ll do it in no time.” “We can all pitch in to help with the fire. It’s better if there aren’t too many witnesses.” “A little nocturnal exercise is good for you—right, Jutta?” “Why don’t you ask your old lady?” “But put your rubber boots on, children.” “Christ, is it ever cold!” “Someone bring the bottle—I mean, one for each of us, of course.” “Of course, if the wood isn’t dry . . .” “But you know, that she can pull that off—after all it’s the third year of the war.” “Why, Schnipps is out of his mind! Listen, cow pats are not peat.” “What do you need a glass for?” “You’re pouring the booze all over my dress, damn it.” “Just pull your fur a little tighter around your modest charms.” “Stolze is just fantastic.” “He’s absolutely reliable. He’ll just report that the sheep died.” “Hey, get your paws off me!” “Listen, that smoke is abominable! No, no, no! No Pampas for me . . .” “Stick in a good-sized piece.” “I see what you mean by that—” “Henning, you old swine!” “My feet are soaked already.” “Now, listen, a party pooper—” “Hey, look: the head’s starting to brown!” “It’s more natural in the rear.” “If I catch cold and pass it on to the kids . . .” “You’ll pour your workers a round, won’t you, Stolze?” “Hey, that’s enough wood now. The whole house’ll go up in flames soon.” “Actually, the dripping fat ought to be—” “Christ, I can’t see a thing because of this lousy smoke!” “Don’t stand in the wind!” “You mean before you and not behind you?” “Well, even with that fire it’s getting a bit nippy out here.” “Stolze can tell us when it’s ready.” “Let the men—” “You can get drunk indoors too . . .”
“You look like a chimney sweep.” “Stolze said at least another half hour . . .” “You know, life in the Pampas isn’t my cup of tea . . .” “My stockings are all screwed up in these rubber boots . . .” “Someone put another record on.” “You smell so nice—where do you live?” “Come on, I just scorched my hand. I’ve got to cool it off somewhere . . .” “In his old age, Schnipps is having the best time of his life.” “Of course, if the younger men are at the front—” “Who needs all that light for dancing?” “I hope you don’t find this frivolous . . .” “And the fire out there—it’s just terrifyingly beautiful!” “Can you get any more liquid into you?” “Let me just go see if it’s ready, this stuff—the lasso or chimborasso or whatever it’s called . . .” “Goodness, is that edible?”
“I feel like a cannibal.” “Didn’t I tell you? Charred on the outside and raw on the inside.” “But we can’t just throw it away—what a waste!” “Just imagine, a whole sheep. I could trade one for a crate of French—” “The wood is probably drier in the Pampas.” “That filet steak with goose liver at Horcher’s—well, you can just keep all your Pampas and your old gauchos . . .” “Yes, but what are we going to do with the stuff now?” “Why don’t you give it to the Russians?”
“Have you lost a lot of them too?” “If you want to split hairs, it’s really not quite proper—after all, they’re POWs.” “Just another dumb idea. They’re much too weak for farm labor.” “Two-thirds of ours kicked the bucket the very first day.” “The poor guys are so starved they eat grass like cattle!” “And you want to give them a whole sheep?” “They’ll all croak on you.” “That’s what Udo said. If someone’s starving, you don’t just . . .” “Well, none of our people are going to touch this. I know my Pomeranians all too well.” “What the peasant don’t know, he don’t eat.” “Stolze’ll do something with it. He’s fantastic.” “Just dump it in the carp pond.” “That’s why the eels get so fat in the Baltic.”
“When I picture the thing oven-roasted, golden-brown, and with nice green beans . . .” “Anyway, put the fire out, Stolze. No enemy pilot has ever wandered this way—but you never can tell.” “Goddamn it, Henning, if you don’t keep your hands to yourself . . .”
1943, summer evening in the valley of the Unstrut, Thuringia.
We are drinking punch under a gigantic, night-black copper beech. Tiny fireflies are dancing over the cobalt-blue lawn around the black shadow of the bushes. The host: in his late forties, corpulent, rosy, his sparse hair almost totally white (you can’t see much of him except, when he crosses his legs, you sometimes catch a dim reflection of his old patent-leather pumps, one of which is strangely inanimate, like the shoe on a wax figure). The hostess (on the narrow side of a white iron table, more speculative than visible): delicate, nimble, with huge, dreamy, hazel-brown eyes shimmering wet in the matte oval of her face. The son (first lieutenant in the Panzerjäger): his uniform occasionally glitters with its German Cross in Gold, Iron Cross I and II, Close Combat Clasp (he calls them his “Christmas-tree decorations”); now on furlough from Münsterlager, where he is a drill instructor. “You can imagine what a load off our minds that was; pourvu que cela dure, of course.” “. . . Possibly they’ll grant me one more little outing to the front lines . . .” “You see, he wants the Knight’s Cross à tout prix—for the property’s sake.” “In the end it didn’t help Horst any that he volunteered right off and went through the entire Polish campaign and lost a leg. Afterward, they fired him anyway . . .” “And when Ottfried died in action . . .” “And if you get killed, my boy, then the property won’t be of much use to you . . .” “Is that sheet lightning or a real thunderstorm—or what?” “Nope, the Leuna works.” “It’s a miracle anything’s left of it. They’re attacking twice a day now—” “That jasmine’s delightful.” “We’ve got all the time in the world to take care of the garden. We can’t go out anyway.” “Otherwise he’s a very decent sort. He’s the brother of the brother-in-law of our manager. He says, ‘All I can do for you is simply have you stay inside your own four walls. If you leave the area of the house—that is to say, the grounds, you know—you have to wear the star. I would avoid doing that if I were you.’ ” “No, the kids are not really quarter Jews. Herbert and I are each half. According to the prevailing algebra, that equals more than half—morally, I mean.” “It makes things a bit difficult with the help, of course. They hanged our old chambermaid because she had something going with a Pole here from the camp—” “We almost got mixed up in it ourselves—” “But ever since Jürgen got the German Cross in Gold—” “It does help, after all . . .”
The new chambermaid emerges from the thick darkness around the jasmine bushes. “Dinner is served, if you please.” The son gets to his feet. “Well, let’s do something about our slender figures.” “Please go ahead. We’re not allowed to sit at the same table with you all—we’re not Aryan enough . . .”
Air-raid shelter. People thrown together. Ashen faces. The women dressed as if they were about to go sledding in the park: fur coats over coffee-brown track-suit pants; small plaid scarves wound around their curlers like a cross between a turban and a Phrygian cap. Whining kids groggy with sleep. The few men—aged, their faces notched and creased with hunger. The long-drawn-out howling of the all-clear signal releases some of the tension like a valve in a high-pressure boiler. Sighs of relief. People gather up the belongings they have dragged down here. Crawl out between damp walls and support beams. They’re familiar with the whole business. These nighttime interruptions are part of daily life with its obnoxious routines. But still, it gets to you every time. Shouts from outside. A couple of people running along the street. When the basement door is opened, a smell of burning wafts in.
I find myself in a motley group who are viewed here with wry displeasure. It is a small party, given by a young councilor in the government dealing with the war economy. The scent of our cigarettes has drawn notice, but the real provocation is the cloud of good French perfume around the girls, plus the very hard accent of the little Brazilian attaché . . . Luckily, a few aerial mines exploding nearby diverted attention from us. There was pandemonium here for a good half hour. Only now do we feel our nerves quivering.
And the present mood is all the more euphoric. Not cheery, however, but coldly passionate, almost malevolent. We don’t give a good goddamn now about the angry glares of the mothers, herding along their exhausted flocks of kids. We dash up the stairs, three or four steps at a time, to our host’s apartment. Soon champagne corks are popping. And there are rolls with the finest Pomeranian sausage, and fantastic rumba records brought by the Brazilian. One of the girls is already dancing on the table, her skirt pulled up to her crotch. But she doesn’t dance for long. Suddenly, she stops dead, gapes straight ahead, and cries, “My baby!”
Abel and Cain Page 12
