Max

by Sarah Cohen-Scali

  The commentator also talks about the Goliaths. They’re brilliant! Tiny little armoured cars stuffed with dynamite, operated by remote control to infiltrate a bunker and explode inside.

  We bring the house down with our applause. And that’s the opportunity Lukas takes to kick my neighbour out of his seat and sit down next to me. He’s clapping, just like everyone else. He’s smiling, just like everyone else. But at the same time, imitating the commentator’s tone, he turns on a strong Polish accent and whispers crazy things in my ear: The Panzer V was only in response to the formidable Russian tank, the T-434, which is a total destroyer. He describes twin-engined Russian ground-attack aircraft that fly silently at low altitude in the Leningrad night skies and destroy German convoys. They’re nicknamed the ‘Flying Tanks’.

  ‘Shut up! You’re talking shit.’

  I shove him away with my elbow and try to concentrate on the screen where they’re showing scenes from the sieges of Moscow and Leningrad. Even though our soldiers are suffering from the cold, and they’re thin and exhausted, they are smiling at the camera, looking confident. The commentator moves on to the campaign in North Africa, where Rommel’s Afrika Korps is well entrenched. North Africa seems so far away, and yet this region now belongs to the Reich. Occupied Europe is ancient history now. As for the attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese, although the teacher in charge of the screening doesn’t have any images of it, he describes it in minute detail several times a week. You’ve got to hand it to them, those Japanese were amazingly courageous with their kamikaze planes. Everyone in the room is enthusiastic—the older Jungmannen leap up, as if they’re about to climb into one of the suicide planes. In the end the teacher stops his commentary and tries in vain to restore order.

  Once the room is silent again, Lukas goes back into attack, too.

  ‘It’s all just a montage,’ he whispers in my ear. ‘Nothing but dumb propaganda. These films have been tampered with, and they’re not at all up-to-date. I’ll tell you the truth: there’s a pincer attack on the Afrika Korps, by the British from the west, and the Franco-Americans from the east. Since the Americans have entered the war, there’s a whole lot of new military technology: decoding of enemy communication, radar, sonar, and the German submarines have all been destroyed. The Krauts surrendered at Stalingrad. There were 91,000 prisoners. You and your little buddies can start shitting yourselves because the Red Army is on its way fast. It entered Kiev, liberated Leningrad, and is on the outskirts of Warsaw now. Ivan’s* army is on its way, Skullface! They’ll march on Berlin any day. I’m telling you, there’ll be trouble!’

  It’s all lies, rubbish. Where could he find out all that? From the chooks he plucked at the farm? Did he listen to a radio in a cow’s udder?

  Nothing proves what Lukas said. Not a thing. Well, hardly anything. So, there is a lot more food rationing. So, quite a few teachers have left for the front and haven’t been replaced. So, the sixteen-year-old Jungmannen are undergoing intensive training in case they need to be mobilised under exceptional circumstances. But apart from those few hitches, it’s business as usual inside the Napola. So surely things must be the same outside…surely?

  The Reich is invincible. Invincible.

  I can’t bear listening to any more of Lukas’s bullshit, so I leap out of my seat like a spring and disturb everyone as I try to find another spot. The teacher is furious; he storms over, grabs me by the ear and frogmarches me out of the room, all the while yelling out my misdemeanours: inability to concentrate, insubordination (because I’m trying in vain to object), causing a disruption during an important training session.

  I’m grounded for ten days.

  No more chats at the farm or at the carpentry workshop. That’s the end of cigarettes, jam, chocolate and dick-rubbing. I’m banned from all official ceremonies. (I don’t give a damn! And anyway, there haven’t been any ceremonies for a while.) I eat by myself, I exercise by myself, my bed has been moved to the other end of the dorm.

  But one evening I find something under my pillow. The statuette. The toy Lukas was making for me. He finished it and somehow found a way to get it to me. That cheers me up a bit, especially as it’s really well made—it’s a miniature Führer. The wood is incredibly well carved. It has the moustache, the hair combed to the side, the inscribed belt buckle. There’s a piece of string, with a metal bead on the end, hanging from the right hand. The statuette works like a puppet when I pull on the string: the right arm rises, the Führer leans forward, which makes his buttocks stick out and…

  The noise echoes in the silent dorm and everyone bursts out laughing. I pull the sheet over my head in shame.

  The noise was a fart.

  I quickly hide the statuette under my mattress before the section leader turns up.

  Lukas is a bastard.

  Once I’m no longer grounded, I run into the secondary-school building to return his so-called present. But they turn me back at the entrance. Official ban on entering the premises.

  There’s been a shocking incident, they tell me.

  Herman is dead.

  Number two.

  The third victim—who will it be?—should start worrying.

  Herman died during ‘hand-grenade training’.

  The routine exercise goes like this: each Jungmann has to place a hand grenade on his helmet, and time it for detonation in three seconds. The exercise is successful if the Jungmann manages to stay completely still, without shaking, perhaps even without thinking—an idea could make him flinch. The grenade stays balanced on his helmet and explodes there. No damage to anything. The apprentice soldier comes out of it unharmed. Sure, he’s a bit shaken, stunned by the noise of the explosion and by the terror he experienced during those three seconds that felt like an eternity. But he’s in one piece.

  The exercise is a failure when the grenade falls—either it wasn’t placed in the right spot on the helmet or the Jungmann moved slightly, a sudden urge to sneeze, or cough, or there was a gust of wind—and it explodes at his feet. Half the student’s leg is torn off, or the whole leg, or both, but he’s alive and quickly rushed to hospital. The Napola pays for his treatment and provides him with a compensatory pension for the rest of his life.

  In Herman’s case it wasn’t just a failure, it was a bloodbath. Butchery. The grenade fell on his shoulder, so the explosion reduced his head to a pulp.

  Just like Gunter.

  The mastermind behind this second murder is obvious. At least it is for me, as I know there was a first murder. By Lukas. This time I don’t need him to explain what happened. Herman didn’t flinch, Herman didn’t sneeze, or he would have only had his legs blown off. Lukas wanted him gone. Lukas wanted to decapitate him. So he made sure the grenade fell in just the right spot: on his shoulder. It was just a matter of a small dent in the helmet. Lukas must have tampered with it while Herman was asleep. Or else, on some pretext or another, he exchanged helmets at the last minute.

  I’m sure my hypothesis is correct, but I’ll never know.

  Lukas was absent from the dining hall that day. He wasn’t at the farm or at the carpentry workshop in the afternoon. Had he already been unmasked before the news of his arrest had been announced? I could already see him being interrogated by the Heimführer, declared guilty, hanged on a butcher’s hook and, by way of example, put on display, bleeding, in front of everyone gathered in the courtyard. He didn’t turn up at dinner either. I couldn’t stand it any longer so I asked one of his classmates and was told that Lukas, along with a few other students, had left on a training exercise.

  Phew!

  During their training at the Napola, the Jungmannen often undertook training outside the school: study exchanges overseas, at a Napola in an occupied country, for example. Or time spent in German families, in cities or in the countryside, to lend a hand while the men were away, and to prevent any defeatist attitudes developing. Or work with the potato harvest. Lukas’s training was in ‘Special Missions’. He had to supervise prisoners of
war in factories (it used to be in Volkswagen assembly factories; now it was armaments and munitions factories). The workers were from France, Belgium, Holland, and there were Russians, who had the worst reputation. He had to check their production times and make sure they didn’t steal.

  I’m doubly relieved. Lukas wasn’t unmasked and, over the coming months, no more students will lose their heads—literally.

  But in the meantime, I’m losing the plot. There’s something wrong. The mood at the Napola has changed. There are fewer and fewer of us every day, both students and teachers. The final-year students go straight into the army, without even sitting an exam. So many others graduate, in waves, to the next level, as if, all of a sudden, they were all deemed gifted. The morning classes are down to a strict minimum: no more German, History or Maths classes, only Biology now and again. But the physical training is more intense: we do it mid-morning, all afternoon, and in the evening instead of supervised homework. It’s exhausting; we’re allowed no mistakes and any sign of weakness is severely reprimanded by instructors who are on the edge of hysteria.

  Same deal with the Heimführer, who bombards us, at every meal, with a double ration of speeches instead of his normal readings. His voice, usually so modulated, often rises to a screech. His face is swollen, sweating; he makes big theatrical gestures, scanning the rows anxiously to find any looks of incredulity among us. The Volkssturm!* That’s all we hear about. The Volkssturm is rising. A new army is on the march. Nothing will stop it, it will guarantee the Reich’s victory, just like the finale of a fireworks display. We, the Jungvolk, will be the main members. We are going to take up arms. We have to be ready to undergo the final sacrifice for the Führer.

  Double ration of speeches. Half rations on our plates. Even though the physical training leaves us ravenous.

  I’m really missing the extras that Lukas used to sneak me.

  He’s still not here.

  But it’s as if I can hear his voice contradicting that of the Heimführer’s. The ‘magic potion’ flushes out of my system a lot more slowly than food does. A voice inside me—Lukas’s? Mine? I don’t know anymore—is telling me that our missing teachers are at the front. If we’re mobilising younger and younger soldiers, it’s because the adults have called it quits. They’re prisoners, or they’re dead.

  There are rumours that, every now and again, instructors form commando units with students who haven’t been called up. One of the units that recently left on a mission was made up of five young boys, the youngest of whom was thirteen. Only two out of the five made it back. Severely wounded. The boy of thirteen had half his face blown off. There are rumours about schools all through the country having to retreat to other schools as the enemy advances—the Russians, for the most part. But we don’t have anywhere to retreat to: Potsdam is too close to Berlin.

  It’s hard to untangle the truth from the lies. It’s hard to know if we should be frightened of dying or thrilled to fight. Or be frightened to fight while being thrilled to die.

  The good thing about the changes is that security is less strict, especially at night in the dormitories. The section leader isn’t always on our back. And, even if he were still here, there’s not much to supervise. Most of my buddies are so exhausted they fall asleep even before their heads hit the pillow. They go to bed early and are scarcely awake during the free time before lights-out. I wonder sometimes, in the mornings, if the wake-up bell will ring in a completely silent room, unable to wake corpses.

  Fatigue makes me nervy and I can’t sleep. Without having to worry about my fellow dormmates, I can ‘play’ as much as I like. I’ve still got Lukas’s present under my pillow. The farting Führer. (I didn’t throw him away, and I won’t until I’ve extracted from Lukas exactly how he made the farting mechanism.) In the end, I like the toy. I play with him every night. I talk to him.

  ‘Do you think somehow you might have tricked us?’ I ask him. ‘Lied to us? Were all your fancy speeches just hot air? Like your farts? Go on, answer me! Answer me, you idiot!’

  He says nothing and that really annoys me, so I slap him. I yank on his arm to pay him back for his silence. And he farts, and farts. And that makes me laugh. I laugh so much I end up crying. Afterwards, I’m ashamed, full of remorse. I insulted our Führer. What sacrilege. I doubted his word. Verboten! In order to redeem myself, I undertake a self-criticism: I was under a negative influence, but I have removed myself from it and I still believe in victory and in the invincibility of the Reich. I deserve a punishment. As there is no one here to punish me, I’ll do it myself. I take my dagger of honour and, with the tip, I make cuts on my hands and on my arms. It hurts. It feels good. And I end up falling asleep with my face on the Führer’s bum.

  Every night I do the same thing. I put up with it better than the toy does. Even if I have more and more cuts, they’re not deep and scar over well. But the Führer can’t cope with being handled so much; not only does he not fart anymore, he falls to pieces. I chuck him in the bin.

  I thought he’d come back fighting fit. That, as soon as he arrived, he’d rush to confirm the bad news from outside—bad for me, good for him—the Allies’ advance, the looming defeat of the Reich. I’d already prepared my response, in which I’d argue for the strength of the new Volkssturm army.

  I was certain he’d immediately start exploding the heads of all the students in his class. That he wouldn’t even bother about premeditating the perfect crimes, like the other two, but would take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere of the Napola to hit out randomly.

  Not at all.

  He’s come back completely changed. I hardly recognise this new Lukas. Skinny, pale, hunched shoulders, a haggard, lost look about him, he resembles the Lucjan of Kalish. No, not at all. The Lucjan of Kalish was arrogant. The Lucjan of Kalish had the look of a warrior.

  I go up to him as often as possible, but without managing to connect at all. ‘Hi, Lukas, how’s it going?’

  Silence.

  ‘How were the Russian workers? What did you do at the factory?’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you bring back some chocolate? Jam? Sausage? I’d kill for some sausage!’

  Silence.

  ‘Hey, is it true that the shit’s hitting the fan out there? It’s pretty shit here.’

  Silence.

  ‘For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you?’

  Fed up, I plant myself in front of him. Right up against him, nose to nose. His gaze goes over my head, like a blind man. I pull on his sleeve, I shake him, slap him, but he’s like a puppet. I swear at him, call him every name under the sun, but he doesn’t even bat an eyelid. He just stands motionless, lifeless, fixed on a point in the distance, some ghost only he can see and which he might be trying to contact.

  In the dining hall, during the Heimführer’s speech about the Volkssturm, I notice he has trouble standing up and that a classmate has to support him, help him stand to attention, otherwise he’d collapse on his chair. Then he doesn’t eat a thing and someone else gobbles his food without him protesting at all.

  As we leave the hall, I rush out to join him while he has a cigarette. At least that hasn’t changed. Well, actually he smokes a whole lot more than before. He lights one cigarette after the other, with a weird ritual: he takes a big drag to extract as much smoke as possible, and watches the swirls of smoke as they disperse in the air. Then he takes a few awkward steps, as if following the path of smoke. He makes crazy gestures, stretching out his hand, closing his fist to trap the smoke, opening it and looking at his empty palm. And that’s not all. Instead of tipping his ash on the ground, he scrupulously collects it in a little wooden box. (He must have made it himself. Oblong-shaped, with a sliding, airtight lid, it’s like a miniature coffin.) Once he’s smoked a good dozen or so cigarettes and the box is full of ash, Lukas shuts it, kneels down and scratches a hole in the ground. Then he buries the box. After that, he puts a handkerchief on his head and recites a strange litany in an incomprehensible, bar
baric language. I suspect it’s Hebrew, and I suspect it’s a prayer.

  Something must have happened during his stupid training. Perhaps it wasn’t really training, but a commando mission instead? Perhaps Lukas ended up in the middle of some violent exchange, and a grenade, or a bomb, exploded next to him? Even if he was lucky enough to avoid being blown up, the shock would have traumatised him, made him deranged.

  He’s a nut case, an imbecile.

  When I check it out with his mates, who do not exhibit the slightest sign of trauma, they disprove my hypothesis; they actually did undergo training in a factory. Sure, it was cut short because of the bombings, but the factory wasn’t touched. In fact, in the beginning, everything seems to have gone very well for Lukas, who made friends with the SS guy supervising the prisoners. They were often together, laughing, joking, then suddenly, yes, Lukas did change. His mates thought it must have been because of Herman’s death. Often you don’t fully comprehend the death of a friend until a while later. Herman died just before they left for their training, so Lukas must have been in a daze. It was only later that it hit him, poor thing. His two best friends dying within a few months, it must have been really tough.

  I don’t believe their explanations for one moment. Who do they think they’re kidding?

  Something happened.

  Finally, one night, I find out what it was.

  The smell of smoke wakes me up. I’m tired, exhausted, my eyes are shut tight. Once I manage to open them, I see a thick cloud of smoke around me. What’s going on? A fire? And I didn’t hear the siren?