Sep spent days hanging around that house with mixed feelings of curiosity and regret, asking the old customers who happened by exactly how his former employer had been killed, and where, and if he had died immediately from the bullets, and if he had cried out, and what his son had done—silently comparing what he heard with the experiences he had accumulated himself. When there was nothing left to hear, Sep packed his suitcase and left for the Kroners’ in Novi Sad. He was prudent enough not to tell anyone in the village where he was going, but within the small circle of those who knew, it caused no little confusion: an SS soldier in a Jewish home!
The Kroner storeroom had already been requisitioned and its office occupied by a government official, Miklós Armanyi, of noble birth, to whom Kroner had been assigned as unpaid assistant. In the Kroner household, life was lived in uncertainty, as they received accounts of the killing of Jews and Serbs in the surrounding villages and watched the courtyard, now empty, deprived of its former bustle, as if stricken by plague. But now in that courtyard, early in the morning, oblivious of the frost, Sep Lehnart appeared, tall, slim, sinewy, his fair hair clipped close, his ears small and flat. Dressed in uniform trousers, shirt, and boots, he proceeded to go through his exercises.
First he would run around the yard three times. Then, standing at one end and with pauses for breath, he would begin the knee bending, arm and leg stretching, waist twisting, and head-turning workouts as if his neck were a piece of string. He would proudly tell his sister, after asking for breakfast in the kitchen, how much good all this exercise did him, explaining to her in detail which movement was beneficial for which part of the body, just as he had been taught in the army, and he would reproach her for not having encouraged her own children—his nephew and niece—to similar efforts, but letting them lie around in bed and begin the day as weaklings, which could only hurt them later in life. With all this, he seemed to have forgotten about the children’s origins, which by the laws of racial purity condemned them to a life of slavery, if not, indeed, a premature and violent death. It was as if they were not half-Jews, but little Aryans, who tomorrow, like him, would carry a gun and the day after tomorrow, when peace reigned, take part in building the new Europe.
And truly, with half of his divided being—the half that against all caution had driven him to come to his sister’s from the village—he believed this. Making his way into the elite German corps from his obscure village, he had enthusiastically embraced its teaching, which had raised him up—as once the tap of a sword on a knight’s shoulder had done—among the predestined masters of the world. But because he considered that teaching to be perfect, he could not even begin to entertain the idea that it might harm anyone near to him. His niece, Vera, and his nephew, Gerhard, were close blood relations, the more so since he, as yet unmarried, had no children of his own, but also because the poverty of his childhood had made him proud that his sister had married a rich merchant, despite the fact that the merchant was a Jew.
“Jew,” to Sep, meant a being rather like himself, an alien in Yugoslavia, but more mobile and more resourceful than his own kin, because independent of any nation. His service with Heim, the lessons and beatings Heim gave him, only served to confirm the idea of supremacy through fear; the SS instruction in the barracks had added darker, severer tones to this idea, but without changing its essence.
In Sep now there was a dualism of respect and fear, of envy and hatred. It was the gentle side that predominated when he looked at his own—so young—blood relations, his sister’s children, and in the mornings he could hardly wait to see them up and dressed, although he scolded them for rising late and neglecting their exercises in the open air, the only lessons he could recommend with self-assurance. He was particularly fond of Gerhard, who bore a striking likeness to him—thin, muscular, and fair-haired, with a narrow face, straight short nose, and hollow cheeks. By his nature, too, Gerhard seemed to be of the same mold as the soldier, for like Sep he had little talent for complicated, patient work. It was for that reason that the boy had never even stolen a glance into his father’s office. On the other hand, real exploits, actions demonstrating force and supremacy, inspired his utmost respect.
At that time Gerhard had finished his secondary schooling but was barred, because of his Jewishness, from continuing his studies, for which, in any case, he had no real interest. He had already come to an agreement with several other youngsters of similar outlook—to escape across the Danube before they were rounded up for forced labor, and join the Partisans. The arrival of Sep Lehnart provided an unexpected but perhaps welcome incentive to take that step as quickly as possible. When he told his friends, Franja Schlesinger and the Karaulić brothers, of his uncle’s presence, he proposed at the same time that they kill him and seize his weapons, thus beginning their flight from the German Occupation with a deed of daring. None of the group could resist this attractive idea, which Gerhard put forward with all the passion of his highly purposeful being. So for them, the early days of the SS man’s stay in Novi Sad passed in earnest discussions of how to get rid of him.
The Karaulić brothers and Schlesinger paid a special visit to Gerhard when they knew his uncle would be at home, so Gerhard could introduce them and they could look him over—take his measure, so to speak—which they did whenever he turned his back to go from one room to another. His revolver hung in its holster on a coat hanger in the entrance hall, underneath his cap and next to Robert Kroner’s dark-gray overcoat and hat. Their eyes often moved in that direction and exchanged significant glances. Should they kill him with a bullet from his own gun? Or with rat poison secretly put into his food? Or stab him with a knife, in the back, as he walked in their presence? Deciding on this last solution, which would attract the least attention and make the least noise, they came up against the problem of how to dispose of the body.
There were a number of suggestions, but it was finally Gerhard’s—to cut his body into pieces and bury that in the cellar—that prevailed. But how long would the body remain undiscovered? When a soldier didn’t return to his unit from leave, how much time would the authorities need to establish where he had been staying, and hold the hosts responsible? The youths concluded that even if the four of them managed to make good their escape and link up quickly with the Partisans, the Kroner household—and most probably the families of the others as well—would bear the brunt of the reprisals. For this reason, the whole project was shelved. Thus it was that the uncle continued to strut around the Jewish merchant’s house, totally unaware of the danger he had been in.
Because he did know, Gerhard, his cheek resting on his arms folded lazily on the table, observed his uncle with even greater attention, sitting with him gladly during the idle morning hours when his mother and the maidservant were cooking, his father was in the office, and Vera was putting creams on her face. He, too, noticed his resemblance to the man, a resemblance that was more than a resemblance: it was a prediction of his own adulthood. And probably of his occupation, for Sep Lehnart was exactly what Gerhard Kroner wanted to be: an armed killer.
He questioned his uncle ardently about the life of a soldier—the marches, the battles, what it felt like to wound or kill a man. Sep answered, but less willingly than he would have to a stranger or to someone he hated, for he knew that his words were filled with images too strong, too full of terror and temptation for a person as young as his nephew. He did his best to avoid telling him of the more gruesome scenes of war, emphasizing the humorous episodes, such as misunderstandings with the locals in Ukrainian villages through lack of knowledge of the language, or the adventures with girls who came secretly to a hut specially kept for that purpose to sell themselves for a can of food or piece of chocolate.
Gerhard found these boastful tales loathsome but did not reproach his uncle for them, because he was determined to draw out of him more and more information about Russia, the country on which the outcome of the war depended, and about the German army, which had to be outwitted and defeated. And,
in any case, his attitude toward his uncle was a divided one, for along with the disgust he felt for his arrogance, he also had a certain sympathy for the man and for his principles. For Gerhard, too, the Occupation, despite its deprivations and humiliations, had been responsible for his first amorous encounter—with the wife of the Hungarian next door who had been called up into the reserves.
She came to take shelter, during the air raids, in the Kroners’ cellar, which was more solidly built than her own. A gentle, easily frightened woman with round black eyes and a mouth that turned down at the ends, she trembled and clung to the person nearest her—and that happened to be Gerhard—at the first rumblings of distant bombs, and in the darkness of the cellar let him push his hand down between her breasts. From then on, he had only to bang on the fence that separated the courtyards of the two houses at any time of the day, and she would appear immediately at the gate, ready to go down to the cellar with him. Gerhard told his uncle of this affair, which he had kept secret from the other members of the household, during one of those long, unhurried conversations in the quiet apartment, unable to resist the need to counter one baseness with another. So nothing now was left unsaid between them, apart from Sep’s experience as a killer and Gerhard’s intention to kill him. But while Gerhard’s secret in no way tormented him, since he shared it with Schlesinger and the Karaulić brothers, Sep wished desperately for someone to confide in, since he was unable to do so with his nephew.
Usually he spent the morning at home, hanging around the house and its courtyard, looking out through the windows, or trying to draw someone into conversation. But after lunch—which his sister served him separately, in the kitchen, as if to a servant—he got dressed, shaved (although his face was far from needing the attention of a razor every day), put on his cap in front of the mirror to make sure its peak came down over his low forehead exactly level with his brows, buckled on his revolver, and went out for a walk. He would walk for hours, paying no attention to the fact that the farther he went, the more painful it became to bend his left leg, where he had been hit by a bullet in battle. Often, he would buy a ticket for the first or second matinée and watch a film. Then he would sit down in a restaurant and order five ćevapčići or some other light snack, for although he was hungry, his innate stinginess begrudged spending his soldier’s pay on what he could get free a few hours later at his sister’s. But he did not keep so strict a curb on his drinking.
He watched as young people came into the restaurant in twos, in threes—sometimes even soldiers—but all complete strangers to him. They were relaxed, noisy; though his own age, they seemed more assured, more nonchalant than he, perhaps because they were from town—this town or some other. They would casually remove their outer garments and hang them on a coat-rack near the wall, take cigarettes out of their cases, and quietly negotiate with the waitresses, who bent low over the table to give them the menu. He would have liked to get to know them—at least the waitresses—but whenever he spoke to one, he always seemed to say something trivial, and it was received with a distracted half-smile. But he went on hoping that someone would approach him, and so stayed there slowly drinking his beer, which from time to time he had to reorder. Gradually the beer made him intoxicated; visions of war in which he was all-powerful began to rise before him. Looking around with new eyes, he thought bitterly that all these clever townspeople who paid him no attention had never been through such exciting experiences, nor were they capable of it. He got quite drunk.
They had all left the restaurant with their girls to go to other, previously arranged, appointments. Only he was left, sitting with his elbows on the table, straight-backed, meticulously shaven, motionless, numb. The waitress brought him the check, and he, angry that it amounted to so much, totaled it again to himself, screwing up his face. Spluttering, he paid, leaving no tip, for he was certain that he had been cheated. Then he put on his belt, made sure that his cap was at just the right angle on his head, measuring its position with reference to his part, and with ringing steps, careful that no one would notice him swaying, went out.
He headed for home, walking along frozen, empty streets, here and there running into someone hurrying home to bed, or lovers, or a married couple. The town was retiring, settling down in its houses. Behind the walls, behind the darkened windows it slept peacefully. Sep Lehnart was sure that nothing could disturb that peace, that calm, that indifference toward him as he made his way—with difficulty now, dragging his leg like a heavy walking stick—outside those walls. Nothing, no wish for change, no war, no amount of killing. He had the unpleasant presentiment that all the towns would survive all the killing, that no matter how many of their inhabitants were stood up in front of a machine gun or finished off with a bullet in the back of the head, tomorrow, when the army had finished its bloody, exhausting work, there would still be enough people left to lie around in those houses, to light fires, cook, wash, and clean, and do all those unwarlike things that diminish the vital forces and distract them from the march to victory.
He felt an impatient urge to kill. The hands that moved back and forth beside him as he walked shook with the desire to clench someone’s throat; his index finger quivered to pull a trigger. But he could not shoot here. One could shoot only rarely, for even at the front, battles were infrequent. More often than not one marched, was transported, pitched camp, and when one did fire a gun, it was mainly into empty space, without a seen target, after the artillery and machine guns had obliterated ramparts of human bodies. Very rarely, into live human flesh, as at Dubno and Voryansk. Now once again those images of violence swam before his eyes, but ill-defined and reluctant, as if shaken up by his doubts along the way, and Sep arrived home ready to go to sleep but hesitant about himself as a killer. He unfastened the gate and the front door of the apartment and, trembling with hope that he would find someone to talk to, moved through the rooms. Everybody was asleep, his sister and the children; only Robert Kroner was still awake in his room.
Usually, when the others had gone to bed, Kroner listened to Radio London, but the news was bad: the German army was advancing in Russia, in Africa; England was being bombed; America had not entered the war. Switching off the radio, he hadn’t the strength to undress and lie down beneath the quilt, for he knew his thoughts would torment him and not let him sleep and that lying down would simply remind him of the common grave that lay in wait for him and his family. In such a mood, the appearance of Sep Lehnart had the effect of an apparition. It was as if the perpetrator of his worst fears was standing at the door, the embodiment of horror, brutality, bloodthirstiness. The shaven face shone in the electric light; each hair of the carefully cropped head stuck out evenly around the narrow skull with its flat ears; the shoulder tabs gleaming with silver; the boots black; the jacket fitted close to the body. And at the same time, behind this uniform, he could make out the well-known shape of his brother-in-law, so like that of his wife, almost identical with the features of his son, and that made the whole vision somehow monstrous.
And the effect that Kroner produced on Sep was also that of a flesh-and-blood ghost. Kroner sat there beneath the lamp, his Jewish features—long hooked nose; dark, dry skin—immobile, with sadness in his eyes, ready to give himself up to the knife or the bullet. As if he were already dead. The room around him was still; it, too, was dead, in harmony with the man to whom it belonged—like him, dark brown and faded from long usage. In one corner was the couch, prepared for the night, the upper corner of the quilt turned down, showing a white pillow and sheet like bared teeth. Beside it, the radio, a dark round ring on the mesh of its speaker, where over many years the currents of sound had left their mark. Behind, a wall filled with bookshelves, from which gilt titles in Latin and Gothic letters gazed down gravely, names of great writers Sep dimly remembered from his schooldays, an alien, inaccessible world one had to immerse oneself in for years to understand. Each object had its place, nothing could be moved without being noticed, everything was fixed forever, and not ev
en death would be able to dislodge it.
Hesitantly, in a half-whisper, Sep asked his brother-in-law if he could sit down. He began by complaining that he had not had a good time in town today, that his leave had afforded him no fun or enjoyment. For this he blamed the townspeople. “They didn’t want to have anything to do with me,” he said slowly, expressing the thought with difficulty. “They avoid me; they don’t want to sit at the same table with bloodthirsty Sep.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his thin neck. “Bloodstained hands aren’t wanted here. Here you have to have white hands, fine, noble hands, good manners, elegant ways. But no one asks if life has given Sep the chance to learn any manners.” He spoke directly to Kroner, with whom he had never been on intimate terms. “But you know, and you can tell them”—he bowed his head imploringly—“who Sep is and what he’s been through. The Jewish hydra”—he hissed, aware that he should not speak too loudly because of those sleeping nearby, and troubled by the knowledge, dulled by alcohol, that he was talking to a Jew—”the Jewish hydra in the shape of the merchant Solomon Heim ensnared young Sep in its web, to squeeze him dry and drag him down into the vile slavery of the god Mammon, the filthy god of money, of Wall Street, of Jerusalem, the god of the rabbis. But the German genius came down from heaven, the blond angel of Christian purity, to save young Sep. He put a rifle in his hand and said: Kill! As the Holy Scripture says, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. For every hungry German, for every German girl defiled by a hairy Jew, hundreds of Jewish and Bolshevik heads, hundreds of their maidens in our soldiers’ beds!
“Come on, Sep, wake up, the alarm’s been sounded. Put on your uniform, grab your rifle, fall in, climb into the truck, go outside town where the grave’s been dug—a grave as big as this house—one hundred and thirty young Jews dug it for a whole day, till midnight, and now they’re kneeling at the edge of the hole. Floodlights are shining on them from all sides into the depths of the black pit. We get out of the truck and move toward the pit, in formation, behind the backs of the men kneeling; the command is given and we load our rifles, and then another command and we press the muzzles to the back of the young heads and we fire. Without a sound the bodies roll into the pit. We reload our rifles while hundreds more appear in the beams of the floodlights, Jews, Jewesses, and little Jewish children. They come slowly toward us, like a chain that you let slip link by link through your fingers. They come and we load, waiting to see who we’ll get, like a lottery. It might be an old man mumbling his prayers, or a young man as full of strength as a lynx; it might be a beautiful woman, a lovely girl with soft, golden-brown flesh, or a child who knows nothing and cries out to you: `Uncle, uncle! Dear uncle, don’t!’
The Use of Man Page 8
