The Nero Decree

by Greg Williams

  Johann was concentrating so hard on the weapon that he failed to see Dieter raise his hand and deliver a punch to the side of his head. Caught unaware on the soft side of his skull, Johann collapsed to the ground.

  “Get up,” Dieter said, kicking him. “Get up now.”

  Johann looked in the dirt for a brick or a stone that he might use as a weapon—Dieter was planning on ending it at any moment—but there was nothing large or weighty enough.

  “Get the fuck up,” Dieter said. “You and your pathetic bourgeois superiority.”

  Johann clambered to his feet, heaving. The fall had knocked the wind from him and he was having trouble breathing. Yet the violence had given rise to a feeling of liberation: If Dieter was so intent on killing him, he would have his say. He was dead either way.

  “With all this”—he gasped, gesturing around them—“you can’t think further than what was in the security box? What do you think was in there? And where do you think it will get you?”

  “None of that is your concern,” Dieter snapped.

  Johann sucked oxygen into his lungs before standing upright. He noticed that Dieter had left the briefcase on its side in the dust. The tip of the Luger was trembling; Dieter was shaking, either through anger, or exhaustion, or both.

  “The box was emptied long ago,” Johann said. “You remember the day after you had Nicolas taken away, when you were searching for the key? I took it from under your nose. I went to the bank as soon as I was eighteen. I showed them my papers. As long as I signed my name and possessed the key and the code, there were no questions.”

  Dieter was suddenly still, listening hard.

  “And, Dieter, you will never guess what was in the box.…” Johann let his words hang in the air. “You see, for all your criticism of him, Nicolas was a prudent and thrifty man. He had planned for hard times. He had seen what happened to the economy after the Great War and wanted to make sure his family would always have something to fall back on.”

  Johann paused again.

  “Nicolas knew that the Reichsmark was vulnerable, could be rendered valueless, so he made sure that his wealth was in something more tangible. He left hard assets: gold and jewelry.”

  Johann looked at Dieter, whose face was framed by a smoky, thunderous sky.

  “And there was one thing, Dieter, that was quite incredible, a necklace made of sapphires.” Johann paused for effect. “It was the most wonderful thing that I’ve ever seen. Down there in the basement of the bank, that piece of jewelry illuminated the room. It was as if it was midday in midsummer, it was so bright in there.…”

  The end of the pistol had stopped trembling. Johann could tell that he had Dieter’s total concentration.

  “You have never seen anything quite like it in your life. The object, it was… mesmerizing,” Johann continued. “And there was a note from Nicolas. It said that it was our mother’s, and that it was only to be sold in times of crisis.”

  Johann paused.

  “I didn’t want to sell it, Dieter, I really didn’t, but you know how things have been, and I needed money to bribe officials when Nadine’s parents were taken away.…”

  Before Johann could step back to avoid the blow, Dieter had charged forward and smashed the pistol across his half brother’s face. Johann felt the crunch of cartilage in his nose, and his mouth filled with blood. He spat strings of it onto the ground, along with fragments of a shattered tooth as he fell to his knees.

  “You bastard!” Dieter screamed. “That was mine!”

  He pressed the pistol against the crown of Johann’s head and cocked the trigger. Beneath him he saw Johann shaking. Dieter paused. At first he had imagined that it was fear, but after a moment he realized that the rocking of Johann’s shoulders wasn’t dread. It was laughter.

  “What are you doing?” Dieter seethed. This isn’t how he had envisaged the execution. He had wanted Johann cowering, begging for his life, pleading, admitting his mistakes.

  Johann spat blood and mucus and wiped his mouth. The liquid pooled beneath him.

  “Your mind has done powerful things to you, Dieter,” Johann said, once he had finished laughing. “Just as you believed in a mythical Germany, you could almost touch that necklace, couldn’t you? You felt like it was within your grasp.… Well, here’s the news, Dieter: There was no necklace. Nicolas had no wealth. He didn’t aspire to money or to power. He believed in justice and decency and social responsibility. He left us fodder for bureaucrats: insurance contracts, deeds to the house, legal documents, valueless keepsakes.”

  Dieter looked down at Johann and stepped back slightly, as if trying to process the information. He had imagined that the box contained his fortune, that he could wrestle the riches from his weakling half brother.…

  The reality of his situation became apparent: He had nothing left. There was only the here and now. It dawned on him that he had failed. He may have recaptured the briefcase, but he had no future in the Party. The fracture was irreparable.

  “You have always thought yourself superior,” Dieter spewed angrily. “You think that you’re clever with the files, certificates, and the letter that you left for me. To what end? What do you prove? You think that it is news to me that your father ended up in Sachsenhausen?”

  Johann raised his head—he would stare Dieter in the eye, not bow before him. The end of the pistol dragged over his hairline and ended up pressed against his forehead, the metal potent and menacing.

  “You think that the documents I left you have no significance?” Johann said. “They are records, Dieter, proof of the most awful cruelty and inhumanity. You think that by ignoring them or burning them—like the contents of the briefcase—their significance diminishes? That the acts that generated them are undone or forgotten? You will kill me, and I will be one less witness to what your Party did to millions. With me gone, you will be able to deny what you did to my father, but that doesn’t diminish your actions.”

  “You appear to have no sense of your own criminality,” Dieter said. “You tried to kill me in the hospital. You were responsible for the deaths of Ostermann and Lehman. Do you think that you are immune from judgment simply because you believe you have a higher calling?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that,” Johann said.

  “Ha!” exclaimed Dieter, gesturing around them at the ruins of the city. “I think that you’re a little too late for superiority. You too are a killer. Maybe you have found your element. We are standing in the middle of the world’s biggest mass grave—and the bodies will be piled ever higher in the next few days.”

  “You got what you wanted,” Johann said. “All of you.”

  “Our vision would have been possible if we hadn’t been undermined by weaklings, cowards, and traitors,” Dieter said.

  Johann was tired of hearing such nonsense. He just shook his head, worn out by Dieter’s maintenance of National Socialist pretense.

  “There was something else in the box you must see,” Johann said. “I am going to reach into my jacket and pull it out.”

  He looked up for approval. Dieter nodded, pushing the gun against his half brother’s forehead even harder. Johann opened his jacket wide to show Dieter exactly what it was that he was doing. He slid his hands inside a damp pocket and pulled out a small rectangle bundled in leather and placed it on the ground in front of him. Johann carefully unwrapped the bindings. He unpeeled the soaking layers to reveal a small package of letters and a book.

  “These too were in the security box,” Johann said. He rummaged through the letters and pulled out a document. Dieter took the paperwork and stepped back to give himself space in case Johann tried to jump him. The object was damp, but still readable.

  He scanned the page. It was his birth certificate.

  “It’s the original,” Johann said.

  Dieter looked down the page and all appeared to be in order. Then he noticed something different from the version he had seen at the bank—an asterisk against the name of his fath
er, Wilhelm. He cast his eyes to the bottom of the document and, next to the asterisk at the bottom, there was a single word: “Deceased.”

  “What does this prove?” Dieter asked.

  “More than you are able to imagine,” Johann replied. “Look at the dates.”

  Dieter stared at the paper again.

  “Can you not count?” Johann declared impatiently. “Wilhelm Schnell died in January 1915, but he had been in a mental institution since September 1914.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You were born in July 1915.”

  Johann saw the shock cross Dieter’s face. The Sturmbannführer sucked in some of the filthy air that whipped around them.

  “Mother cannot have gotten pregnant by Wilhelm,” Johann said. “Your war hero father wasn’t even your father.”

  Dieter pushed the barrel of the gun across Johann’s scalp.

  “You lie!” he screamed.

  “There is something else,” Johann said, handing Dieter another document. “It was also in the security box.”

  Dieter stepped back again in order to read it. He kept glancing at Johann, but his half brother wasn’t moving—he was rapt, wanting only to see Dieter’s reaction. Dieter adjusted his position slightly; he found it hard to stand for long periods. The paper had yellowed over the years, its edges close to a golden color. There in black ink, in a tight, old-fashioned German hand, was the date: September 3, 1915. The ink had run slightly from the effects of the water, but the writing was still legible.

  Johann watched Dieter as he read. His face remained neutral for a moment, before creasing deeply in disbelief. It was a legal document, a sworn affidavit. He scanned through the legal jargon until he reached a passage that felt like it might make the world stop.

  … I, Hannah Schnell, being of firm mind and good reputation, declare the biological father of my child Dieter Schnell to be Nicolas Meier, not Wilhelm Schnell, as per the public record. In all civil matters, however, Dieter should continue to be regarded as my deceased husband’s child, as knowing that the child was conceived out of wedlock may prejudice society against him. I make this statement under oath with the intention only of protecting Dieter’s interests should legal matters arise in which his provenance has bearing upon the outcome…

  It was signed in what Dieter knew was his mother’s hand.

  “Nicolas left no riches, Dieter,” Johann said. “Just the truth.”

  Dieter said nothing, although Johann noticed him stagger slightly.

  “You had your own father killed,” Johann said. “Our father.”

  Dieter pressed the pistol harder, his index finger red from the pressure it exerted on the trigger.

  “There is one other item,” Johann said. “I was going to keep it for myself, but you should see it.”

  Johann leaned down and pulled a black book from the leather bindings. Dieter took it and examined the front and back covers. It had absorbed water, but was largely undamaged.

  “What’s this?” Dieter said.

  Johann said nothing, his silence serving to increase Dieter’s curiosity. He opened the book and flicked through it, his eyes jumping from the pages back to Johann.

  “The other way round,” Johann said eventually.

  Dieter glanced at him as if he were being tricked. He continued to flick through it. The pages were damp beneath his fingers but flowed relatively freely.

  “You open it from the back,” Johann said.

  Dieter looked at his brother. Why was he handing him this thing—a book in Hebrew?

  “There was no necklace, Dieter,” Johann said. “Nicolas left us only this.”

  “I can’t read this shit,” Dieter said. He moved as if to fling it.

  “No!” shouted Johann. His voice echoed across the wasted ground. Dieter paused. “Look inside the cover,” Johann continued. “The back cover.”

  Dieter stepped back farther to protect himself; he would need to use both hands to open the book, meaning that he had to lower his weapon.

  “Read it,” Johann persisted. Dieter folded back the cover. Inside he saw neat, old-fashioned handwriting.

  Dieter read: “To Hannah, with much love, from Mother.”

  Johann watched Dieter as he fathomed what was before him. His face remained neutral for a moment, before twisting incredulously. He was looking at his grandmother’s handwriting. Neither he nor Johann had ever met her, but her words—written to her daughter nearly a half century beforehand—traveled through the decades and landed on him with the power of a collapsing building.

  Johann waited until he could bear it no longer.

  “How’s that feel, Sturmbannführer?” he said sourly. “How does that feel? Or should I call you brother?”

  Dieter’s arm fell to his side, the book barely in his grasp. It hung loosely, between his fingertips.

  “Too full of hate to feel remorse?” Johann asked. “It was all lies, Dieter, you see. Everything you believed was a lie.”

  Dieter stared back at Johann darkly, his brows thick with rage. There was no contrition, no remorse, and—Johann realized disconcertingly—there was no doubt. Dieter was angered, not altered, by what he saw.

  “Our father died protecting us,” Johann said. His tone contained no trace of bitterness; he was trying to communicate with Dieter as a sibling. “When he was packed onto that SA truck he had done everything he could to hide our heritage, to keep us safe from the state, who were hunting for people like us. He was an easy target—a liberal intellectual. But he was also something else—a guardian who kept our secrets at the cost of his own life. Who do you think went and altered the documents in the archive and placed the originals in the bank to protect us? Who held back from telling you that he was your father out of respect for our dead mother’s wishes? He hid what might prove fatal to us.”

  Dieter dropped the book on the ground. As it fell, it opened, so that its pages lay facedown in the dirt. Johann looked at it for a moment. He realized that, for Dieter, nothing had changed. Johann knew that he was the lone custodian of the book. He couldn’t bear the thought of it being damaged. He began crawling forward. As he inched toward the object it began to rain. Dieter raised his weapon.

  “Stay where you are!” he screamed at Johann, his face purple with exertion.

  Johann ignored him. He dragged himself through the brick dust, the powdered mortar, and the grime toward the book. Raindrops collected on the back of his hand as he reached for it.

  “Our father saved us both—and you had him killed,” Johann said, knowing now that there was no hope for Dieter. There was nothing that Johann could say or do that would change his brother. He was beyond all reason. All hope. All humanity.

  “You would tell me lies like this?” Dieter said to Johann. He re-placed the weapon against his brother’s head, the barrel trembling again.

  “No lies, Dieter, no lies…,” Johann said, looking at his brother defiantly.

  This was it, he thought. This was it.

  He closed his eyes and waited. Other than a few distant shouts the city was quiet.

  Johann waited. Still nothing. He opened his eyes. He tried to speak, but words wouldn’t form on his lips. Terror had rendered him mute.

  His eyes met Dieter’s.

  “Death is a lonely business,” Dieter said quietly.

  “Please…,” Johann pleaded, trembling. “Please, just…”

  “I have a better idea, brother,” Dieter continued. Something had changed in Dieter’s demeanor.

  “Stand up,” he ordered Johann, who followed the instruction. He stood shivering with fear and cold and wiped the grit from his hands on his uniform. A hundred yards away a man was trying to light a fire with pieces of timber he had foraged; the sight of an SS officer holding another at gunpoint held no interest for him.

  “Move,” Dieter said, waving the gun toward the Kübelwagen. “Over there.”

  Johann stumbled toward the vehicle, his legs weak. His body was failing him now that he had got
ten Anja and Nadine out of the city. He had no reserves to tap. He shook his head to clear it and tried to focus on the task in hand. Surely Dieter would drop his guard at some point. Johann leaned, drained, against the car.

  “Over there,” Dieter said, gesturing to the driver’s side while keeping the weapon trained on his brother. Johann got in and looked at the blood smeared on the windshield and elsewhere. He wondered when he had last sat down. Dieter landed beside Johann in the passenger seat, placed the briefcase on the wooden runners beneath his feet, and jammed the pistol into his brother’s ribs.

  “Drive!” he ordered, and handed Johann the keys.

  “Where are we going?” Johann asked.

  “What does that matter?” Dieter replied.

  Johann turned the engine on and began to maneuver the car away from the station. As they exited Washingtonplatz, he paused to let a young woman with two toddlers, their possessions stacked inside a carriage, pass in front of him.

  They moved south toward Potsdamer Platz. Johann gasped at what he saw—it was utterly unrecognizable. He remembered being told as a child that this was where the world’s first traffic light had been situated to coordinate the high volume of activity. He had caught streetcars here hundreds of times, yet it was now as unfamiliar to him as a city that he had never visited.

  “Where are we going?” Johann asked eventually.

  “Turn east,” Dieter said. As he spoke a Yakovlev roared over the city, its wings barely clearing the chimney stacks.

  “To die in Berlin will be glorious,” Dieter said, looking up briefly.

  “You call this glory?” Johann asked, navigating through the brick-and-mortar carcasses of a once imposing city.

  Three other Soviet fighters swept over the east of the city ahead of them. Edgy civilians carrying pathetic bundles crept along the perimeter of buildings ready to scurry to safety at a moment’s notice, their progress slow as they navigated the rubble of their homes, schools, and workplaces.