Max

by Sarah Cohen-Scali

  But I can’t help myself. I get up, leave the dormitory and untie him. I help him out of the courtyard, up the stairs and into his bed. I bring him something to eat—my extra rations. I tuck him in like a baby and stay with him until, exhausted, he falls asleep.

  He never says a word.

  I can’t help myself because I know that, if I let him die, I’ll end up with that damn stomach-ache-psychological-disturbance thing. It’ll be a shocker of a stomach-ache and, this time, it will knock me out.

  A few days go by. Lukas regains his strength and does the same thing again. So I’m back on task. At dawn, I rush into the chapel, where the warden whipped him and left him for dead all night long. He is unconscious on the icy floor.

  He doesn’t look so great now. Feverish, shivering with cold, sobbing in pain, he is too weak to extricate himself from my arms. So I do my best: I feed him sips of hot broth, and push bits of bread I’ve chewed and softened into his mouth. The roles are reversed now: I’m the big brother and he’s the helpless, weeping little brother. Of course he’s blubbering, what do you expect? You can’t just keep on getting beaten and abused and not break down and cry your guts out. When he’s moaning and sobbing, choking on his snot, or when his fever makes him delirious and he mumbles a few incoherent, almost inaudible words at me, I encourage him. ‘Don’t worry. I’m here. It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right. Just do what they say and they’ll leave you in peace.’

  I tell him that in the beginning I missed my mother too (just kidding), but that I ended up accepting my fate. I wheel out my story of hiding in a cellar to escape the Warsaw bombings, of spending days in the arms of my mother’s corpse. He listens to me, and squeezes my hand, his big blue eyes fixed on mine and filled with a look of dismay. Right then, I’m convinced I’ve got it made: our friendship, as brothers, is guaranteed…But when he gets the better of the fever, he reverts to his snide, mocking smile. And I’m filled with rage. I feel like grabbing the warden’s whip off the ground and lashing him on the mouth to wipe away that wretched smile.

  ‘They’re going to kill you, don’t you realise?’ I yelled at him one day. ‘They will end up killing you! They’ve already killed kids for far more minor things.’

  And it’s true. He’s got it coming to him. And so have I.

  Obviously, when I untie him from the pole, rescue him from the chapel, bring him food when he’s supposed to starve, it’s not simply because I’m BBFH. It’s because Doctor Ebner has ordered everyone to let me do it. He wants to know just how far Lukas is capable of going. It’s a type of test, an experiment to measure the physical resistance of an adolescent. In case, later, our youngest soldiers have to go into battle.

  Once I’d left the infirmary, after the incident when Lukas and I were whipped on the evening of the selection process, Ebner called me into his office. He demanded that I explain my behaviour, the consequences of which could have been catastrophic. (He emphasised this word.) The Kalish model child rebels? That’s just too much.

  I poured my heart out to him, without batting an eyelid, without any shame. Kalish has made me stronger, more arrogant. Unless it’s simply because I’ve grown up.

  I told Ebner that I had no mother other than Germany, no father other than the Führer—the same old story—but I added a personal note: now I wanted a brother. It was my right to have a flesh and blood brother. Lukas.

  Ebner thought for a while, massaging the big vein throbbing at his temple. ‘All right, Konrad, all right,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to give you a brother. Especially as Lukas is a magnificent specimen. A seed of the highest quality, which has not been planted in the right spot and which we have to salvage. You’ll be finishing your time at Kalish in three weeks. Then you’ll be going somewhere I’ll tell you about when it’s necessary. Lukas can go with you. On condition that, between now and then, you turn him into a true German. You have three weeks, and not a day more!’

  I manage it in three weeks. I’m about to win my side of the bargain. After ten sessions on the pole and five nights in the chapel—a huge record—Lukas seems to have calmed down.

  He still doesn’t talk, to me or the others, but he doesn’t make any more scenes, or break any more rules. One morning, he even consents to goosestep. And because he cuts such a figure—despite being thin, he incarnates natural elegance and strength—he attracts the attention of Johanna Sander, the director. Although it’s highly unusual, she addresses a few words of praise to him.

  But it was all a trick. He was just pretending. For me, that night was the last straw in his betrayal: he ran away.

  No one knew how he managed to escape the soldiers and dogs on guard duty, how he managed to climb the high monastery wall without getting impaled on the barbed wire. Anyway, I’m the only one to wonder about it, because everyone else is urgently trying to capture him. They’ve instigated a real manhunt, a search of all the surrounding area that lasts three days and three nights. In vain. The soldiers and dogs come back empty-handed.

  Three sleepless nights for me. Nightmares of Lukas being tracked down by the dogs and torn to shreds, devoured like some old scrap of meat. I see myself reduced to a zombie. Once Lukas is dead, I no longer exist, I’m an amputee without legs or arms, nothing more than a tortured belly: a giant gut in appalling pain.

  The fourth day comes round. While we’re all lined up in the courtyard for morning roll call, a dark lump crashes down out of a tree and smashes on the cobblestones. What on earth is it? A crow? A dead cat? A bomb about to explode and tear us all to pieces? Neither crow nor dead cat, but a version of a bomb, yes. It’s him, Lukas. After racing round and round the periphery of Kalish without finding an exit that would allow him to run away, he hid in a tree and fell asleep, exhausted and drained from lack of food and drink.

  Johanna Sander is at roll call, and fate would have it that Lukas falls right at her feet. (I even wonder if he didn’t do it on purpose: plan to jump on her at some point and try to knock her out.) Shocked, she steps back quickly to gather her wits. She casts a disgusted glance at the object on the ground, the way she’d look at a large rotten tomato that could splash her beautiful uniform as it’s being crushed. The piece of filth no longer bears any resemblance to the adolescent whose elegant good looks she had admired when he goosestepped in front of her a few days ago. He’s just rubbish she has to get rid of. She’s not listening to Ebner’s orders anymore; she’s the director of Kalish and she’s going to prove it. She’s had enough of this filthy Polish dog who causes nothing but trouble in her institution.

  She puts her hand on her belt to draw her Luger.

  ‘No!’

  The cry that comes out of my mouth is so loud it echoes in the silence. Nothing like the reedy little voice I’d greeted Frau Sander with when I first arrived. I’m surprised myself. Frau Sander is totally shocked. Her arm is frozen in midair, as I march towards her, my steps strong and rhythmic, the way she likes them. I stand to attention. ‘I want to kill him!’

  Unaware of who had uttered the scream that dared to contradict her, Frau Sander was full of fury seconds ago. Now her expression softens. Not only does she recognise BBFH, but she realises that BBFH’s request means he has decided to drop his mask in front of all his pseudo-buddies, and to show his true colours, to show that he is the toughest of all.

  Whatever their age, the Führer’s children are not frightened of killing.

  She’s not wrong. I’m prepared to go the whole way: I’m ready to kill Lukas. I must do it. If he’s going to die, since that’s what he wants, I might as well be the one to do it. If I’m the one who kills Lukas, I won’t suffer, I won’t be anxious, and I won’t end up with a stomachache. I’ll never have another stomach-ache again. I will have made myself, once and for all, a proper set of armour forged from Krupp steel.

  The time has come for BBFH to be consecrated by another baptism—blood.

  Beaming from ear to ear, Frau Sander hands me the Luger. I turn to Lukas and take aim. Head. Forehead. Like Wolf
gang. Right where, in a lot of his filthy fellow countrymen, the eyebrows join together—not in his case, because, go figure, he exhibits all the characteristics of the pure Nordic race. Just a tiny hole and it will all be over, for him, and for me. I’ve never used a real pistol before, I’ve only ever played sniper games, but I know I won’t miss the mark—the target is so close. It’s child’s play.

  Regaining consciousness after his fall, Lukas stares at me with those extraordinarily bright, blue eyes, which still have a glint of provocation in them.

  ‘You’re not up to it!’ is what those eyes are saying.

  Of course I am. Just like him, I can’t go on like this. I can’t put up with the baiting and insults that Lukas has made me endure since he arrived. It’s time to put a stop to it.

  He can sense my determination, sees that my fingers are in position, that I’m about to pull the trigger. In an instant, he crouches, twists around, and grabs my feet to unbalance me. Just before I fall to the ground, the shot fires. Into thin air? At a child? A soldier? Frau Sander herself? No time to check. We’re rolling on the ground together, fighting like dogs. Kicks, knee jabs, punches, biting, anything goes. Normally, Lukas would have had the better of me, but he’s been weakened by starvation, by all the tortures inflicted on him, and by his three days away. And, from the screams of pain he utters every time his right arm touches the ground, I suspect he broke it when he fell out of the tree. So I go for it: at every opportunity, I hammer away at his broken arm. If the bones are broken, I’ll smash them to smithereens. What’s more, I turn my disadvantage—being much shorter than him—to an advantage. I manage to roll into a ball to protect myself from his blows, and to headbutt him in the belly. I jump up faster than him and leap on top of him. He’s been so underfed lately that our body weights must be almost the same. When I’m straddling him, I lean on his chest and stop him from breathing; I grip my legs around his abdomen to trap him in a vice. I lacerate his face with my nails and try to poke out his eyes. I pull on his blond mop of hair; I feel like I could rip it off like a scalp. I get one hell of a thrill smashing up his face. The mirror effect I experienced the first evening I saw him is now multiplied: by destroying his beautiful angel face, I’m destroying my beautiful angel face—the very one the Lebensborn program put so much effort into producing, with its selection processes, its measuring sessions, its calculations, photos…As for Lukas, he tries to get his hands around my neck to strangle me. Every now and then he manages to get his fingers in the right spot, but his broken arm prevents him from exerting enough pressure to asphyxiate me. Guess what? I finally manage to loosen his tongue! He speaks to me. And it’s in German.

  ‘Dirty little Kraut shit!’ he whispers in my ear. (My face is stuck against his, my cheek crushed under his, and I’m trying to bite him.) ‘You’re not Polish! You’re being protected by these Nazi bastards! They killed my family! You and your people, you killed my family!’

  ‘Yeah, of course I’m German!’ I answer. (And I spit on him, right into his eyes to blind him, to dirty those eyes that are not worthy of being blue.) ‘I’m the Führer’s favourite child! Too bad if your family is dead! You should thank me, because I’m going to help you join them!’

  After that, I can’t hear what he’s saying. There’s too much of an uproar. The courtyard is echoing with screams and shouts. Everyone is there, surrounding us, staring at us. Our fury spreads to them. All the rules are forgotten. The children break rank to form a circle around us, some taking Lukas’s side, some mine. Some of the younger ones are crying, begging us to stop. The dogs are kept firmly on their leashes. The soldiers don’t intervene to separate us. Quite the opposite: they choose sides, too, and barrack in the fight to the death. If I can’t succeed in killing Lukas, they’ll do the job for me.

  Only one person remains motionless. Silent. This person is, however, in the front row. The blood dripping from my skull is clouding my vision in red, so I only catch a glimpse when I collapse, exhausted, on Lukas’s body, which is no longer moving. It’s Herr Doktor Ebner. He’s been there, right from the start.

  He was there at my birth. He brought me into the world. He was the first person I ever laid eyes on. He’ll be the last person I’ll ever see. We’ve come full circle.

  I’ve killed Lukas and I’m going to die.

  I’m not dead.

  I’m in the infirmary.

  Doctor Ebner is at my bedside. Again! What time is it? An hour after the fight? A day? A month? A year? I haven’t the faintest idea.

  My whole body hurts; it’s in shreds. I want to cry, howl, so I can breathe, so I can get some air inside me. Like a newborn baby. Like when Ebner pulled me out of the belly of the mother-whore who gave birth to me.

  I try to get up. It’s not easy standing to attention when you’re lying down, when you feel like you’ve lost your limbs. I’m going to cop another lecture…This time I really overstepped the mark. I’ll be sent away from Kalish and I’ll never be assigned another mission. And so on and so forth…But I don’t give a damn about what Ebner’s going to say to me. I don’t give a damn about anything, including him. And anyway, I’ve had enough of being shacked up with him, ever since the beginning of my wretched life.

  His speech is not at all what I expected. ‘Jungmann! Hand-to-hand contact is one of the most important disciplines taught in the Führer’s elite schools. Hand-to-hand confrontation allows future young leaders to get rid of the fear of killing. Your fight today has shown that you are eligible to enter a Napola. This is a huge honour for you. The Potsdam Napola, near Berlin, will welcome you as soon as you have recovered from your wounds. That is, in four days’ time.’

  He raised his arm in a salute, clicked his heels, and left.

  My brain is set on slow motion. I can’t quite grasp the meaning of what I’ve just heard. When I put my hand to my head, I feel bandages. They must be blocking the circulation of messages to my brain. Or all those blows to the head mean that I’m no longer dolichocephalic: I’ve turned into an idiot.

  I try to recall exactly what Ebner said, as well as the tone he used. He didn’t give me hell after all; he praised me. He told me I was going to where I’ve always dreamed of going: a Napola. And not just any old Napola, one of the best, near Berlin, when I could have ended up in one that was in the occupied territories in the east. So, that’s good. Very good. But why did he address me so formally? Is he already treating me like a fully fledged Jungmann?

  My heart is pounding. Even though it hurts to move, I roll over onto my side.

  There’s Lukas, lying in the next bed.

  His head is bandaged too, his face is swollen, and his right arm is in plaster. He looks like a mummy. Sitting up in bed, his back wedged comfortably against a pillow, he looks over at me, lifts up his left arm and waves.

  ‘They thought they’d got the better of me,’ he says, pointing at the door Ebner has just shut behind him. ‘All because I garbled a bit of German in front of them. I didn’t need them to teach me German; my mother spoke it fluently.’

  He stops, grabs a plate from his bedside table and stuffs a big piece of bread and bacon into his mouth. Completely uninhibited, he chews and smacks his lips.

  ‘Didn’t you ever wonder why I came back and hid in the tree, when I could have got clear of that piece-of-shit monastery?’ he continues.

  I shake my head. Just hearing his voice, I am lost for words.

  He finishes munching, swallows, gulps, then burps loudly. ‘I came back to get you, you little jerk!’

  Little jerk, yourself.

  But I don’t care about him calling me names. I’m used to insults; I hear them all day long, even if they’re not aimed at me. Anyway, Lukas’s insults are better than the silence he’s inflicted on me for so many months. What he said before the ‘little jerk’ bit is what’s important.

  To get me. Came back. Me. He came back to get me.

  I can’t believe my ears, and my voice has still not come good.

  ‘I owe you,�
� continues Lukas. ‘That’s all. But don’t get any ideas. Once we’re even, that’s it—we’ll never see each other again.’

  After the bacon, he gobbles a big bowl of soup, then hoes into an apple. I can tell from the empty plate and bowl on my bedside table that he’s already downed my rations while I was asleep. I get the impression he could devour the furniture; although, you have to admit, he’s got some catching up to do. I’ve got a terrible migraine and the noise of his chewing is like a drill inside my eardrums.

  ‘What’s up? Swallowed your tongue? You used to be a chatterbox.’ He finishes the apple, gulping down the core and pips, and spits the stalk onto the floor. ‘That tall bald guy who was here before, he said we were going to a Napola. What is that exactly?’

  ‘It’s…a school. A really good school.’ (Phew! My voice came back.) ‘That’s where the best members of the German youth are trained to become soldiers and then future leaders of the Third Reich.’ I’m proud of my description.

  ‘The best members of the German youth?’ he repeats, picking his teeth with his fingernails.

  ‘Yes. The sons of senior officers. It’s really a great opportunity for us. Well…for you,’ I add condescendingly. ‘For me, it’s normal.’

  ‘The sons of SS officers, you mean?’

  ‘Yes!’

  He doesn’t say anything for a while, just stares at the ceiling. ‘Well, then, we’re off to a bad start,’ he says finally. ‘A very bad start.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m a Jew.’

  I’ve lost my voice again.

  Worse. Total paralysis.

  I can’t think at all.

  I don’t know what to say. What to think. My head is spinning, I feel sick. It feels like the ground is shaking, the whole world crashing down around me.

  A Jew. He’s a Jew. Lukas.

  The one I thought of as a brother. The one I bent over backwards to protect. The one for whom I flouted all the most basic rules dictated by our Führer. The one I risked my life for. In the end, I would have done better to let him die.