If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead

by Andrew Nicoll

  The air came into my lungs again. Dear God, it was like breathing burning cinders. You can’t imagine the pain. The rope was too thick to hold. I looped an elbow over and hung there though it felt like my arm was on fire, and I pulled myself up. Can you imagine that? Could you do that? Is there another man alive who could have done that, anybody in the world apart from Otto Witte with the strength and the skill and the courage to face such pain? And then, when I had raised my chin to the rope, and the handcuffs between my teeth were in reach, I grabbed hold of one end. It was easy to grab the other end with my free hand and I knew then I was going to make it. I was hanging there, one hand on either side of the rope with a loop of chain linking them, gripping two steel bracelets. I could have hung there all night if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t want to. The wind was trying to blow the Zeppelin away again, but it couldn’t get away so instead of flying along, it flew up and the rope went as tight as cheesewire and I started to slide, faster and faster, coming down that rope like a screaming comet and a damned sight faster than that bloke in Vienna, but he had a couple of mates waiting to catch him in the wings, and I had nothing to stop me but a stone wall.

  And then, in the light of the oil lamp at the top of the tower, I saw two of Varga’s sailors standing guard. They were hunched over against the freezing wind, rifles on their shoulders, hands tucked into their armpits, hugging themselves for warmth, but they looked up when they heard the sound of the handcuff chain coming screaming down the rope. One of them tried to swing his rifle round but, before he could, my right boot landed hard on his chin and he went spinning backward, over the turret and down into the dark. I caught his mate smack in the middle of the chest with my left foot and he went down like a sack of coal off the back of a cart and I fell off the rope and landed right on top of him. But he wasn’t dead. And he wasn’t even unconscious. It’s not like the picture shows, you know. You can’t just knock somebody out by punching them on the nose. It takes quite a beating to make somebody go to sleep, and the sailor wasn’t looking too well but he wasn’t dead and he was going to get better so I murdered him. That’s all there is to say about it. There is no other word. He was lying there, helpless, wondering what the hell had happened to him, and I dragged him to his feet like a Saturday-night drunk and I propped him up against the wall, sat him down on it and I pushed him right over. Poor bastard never made a sound. I pray for him, you know. Sometimes. When I remember. And for myself. But he would have done it to me. He might have been all set to join the firing squad, for all I know.

  I have given him a lot more thought since then than I gave him the night that I killed him. Then there was no time to be disgusted with myself. I had to find a way down the tower and a way back up the other tower and a way out of the castle for myself and a party of five. I needed a diversion and I found one. By God I found one.

  The signal lamp was still burning at my feet. I picked it up and unscrewed the tin reservoir. I reached up the rope as far as I could stretch, I poured lamp oil down it and I lit it from the burning wick.

  Tar doesn’t light, you know. You could hold a match to a tar barrel all day and it wouldn’t catch, but put tar in a fire and you’ll never put it out again. The lamp oil lit. The lamp oil lit the tarry rope. Fire streaked up the airship tether, it gripped the rope, it wound itself round and flared out like feathers and the wind screamed and the flames soared and they raced up into the dark in a great curving wing of flame.

  Those poor bastards up there must have seen it coming. I imagined them watching. I’ve imagined it a lot since: somebody spotting the flames, somebody wondering what the hell it could possibly mean, trying to make sense of it in the darkness as the gondola bucked around like a three-master rounding the Horn, looking down and then realizing that the fire was heading straight toward them, the split second when he wondered what to do, the wasted moments while he alerted an officer and some little Flug Leutnant wasting more time looking out the window in disbelief and blowing down the communication tube, yelling at them to let go the tether, let go of everything Right NOW! But it was too late. The fire touched the nose of the airship.

  Just for a second it seemed as if there was nothing wrong and then that tiny point of flame thickened and bloomed. From a dot it became a circle, and then it opened like a great orange chrysanthemum. The whole ship glowed red in the sky and then, as the outer covers burned away, I could see her ribs standing out against the fire like the wreck of a great cathedral ablaze in the sky.

  Then she was falling, a burning snowflake, gently wafting to the ground, down at the nose then down at the tail, rocking as she fell, faster and faster, coming down like Satan out of heaven, the clouds above her blazing and boiling as she fell.

  Beside me the burning rope finally parted and whipped away into the night with a tormented scream and, someplace over there behind the trees, all that was left of the Zeppelin, all that was left of her crew, crumpled to the ground.

  There was panic in the castle. Bells were ringing. Lights were coming on. Men were shouting. Boots were tramping down the stairs. Orders. Swearing. I peered over the edge of the tower and watched them forming up at the gate armed with shovels and blankets and little Varga yelling and screaming, staggering about with a bottle of my champagne in each fist. He took a swig—“Come on then. Let’s get on with it”—and he flung the bottle in the ditch.

  How I wish I could see your face now, friend. What are you thinking? Are you thinking, The old fart’s making this stuff up as he goes along?

  I’m not. Remember what I told you about Uncle Fritzie? Sliding down the hawser of a Zeppelin is no more remarkable than not being killed by an exploding boiler, I can tell you.

  Or are you thinking, My God, what a man! I wish I had known him. What a hero!

  I’m not a hero. I dropped two boys off a tower. I burned a dozen more to death. I broke their mothers’ hearts. I left their children to starve. Do you think that makes me a hero? I think that makes me a killer.

  Of course, if they had been American boys or English boys I’d probably get a medal for something like that, and I wouldn’t settle for anything less than a Knight’s Cross with Diamonds. But they weren’t English boys and I didn’t kill them because I was a hero, I killed them because I was terrified and I didn’t want to die. It’s my only excuse, but you know what? Those poor bastards in the bomb shelter would have done exactly the same. When the place was on fire and full of smoke and they were clawing their way to the door, if somebody had said, “Come along. This way. No need to rush. Take your time. The only thing standing between you and the exit is these sailors. All you have to do is slaughter a dozen nice German boys and then you can leave and take your wife and kids with you.” If somebody had said that, how long do you think the queue would have been?

  Do you really think I could make something like that up? Something so shaming and cruel and cowardly? Why would I tell you such a thing unless it was the truth? Tifty dancing naked in a sawdust ring, the landlord’s girl in the tavern cellar, Sarah in a railway carriage, wonderful beautiful things—those would be worth making up, but not this. I only tell you this because it is true, and the proof, friend, is that I am here in my little tin caravan tonight, waiting to die and, maybe, if I write a bit faster, I can get this story told before that happens.

  So there I was, looking down from the tower of the castle with the wreck of a giant airship blazing away amongst the woods, watching as Varga and his men went tramping off down the hill.

  I must have stayed there for a good ten minutes, watching and listening. Damn it, I think I even held my breath in case they spotted me peering out from between the battlements until I was sure they had gone.

  There was a door and I opened it and went down the stairs, stopping at every turn, doing that stupid breath-holding thing, listening, waiting. I never heard a thing. The place was abandoned and, after four turns of the stair, I found myself in the courtyard.

  I looked around. The cobbles were splashed with moonlight
. On the other side of the courtyard a door stood open, swinging and banging in the howl of the Bura. Little burned scraps of twisted ash were swirling in the sky and falling down slowly and piling themselves in the corners and the air was filled with a smell of burned hair and the guards were gone. But I still didn’t believe it. I ran to the opposite tower as fast as I could, not door to door but sticking to the shadows at the bottom of the walls like a mouse running round the skirting boards, trying not to be seen.

  The door to the tower stair was open in front of me, and that dark passageway gaping like the grave beyond it. There was no light and, strangely, that reassured me. If Varga’s guards were still waiting outside the door, they wouldn’t be sitting in the dark. Still, I took my time, finding each uneven tread with my toes, putting my feet down carefully so there would be no scrape of dirt and leather. That boy I killed, the one I knocked witless before I flung him off the tower—he had dropped his rifle. I was kicking myself for leaving it behind. I had a vision of turning the stair and finding them sprawled outside the cell door smoking and chatting, catching them by surprise, shooting them. BANG! BANG! BANG! But I came round the last corner and found nobody there. I was lucky. I was spared more murders on my conscience and, to tell the truth, I had no idea how to fire the bloody thing anyway. I bet I couldn’t have found the safety catch, and that business with the bolt never made any sense to me.

  I went up to the door and knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again and Max said, “Piss off. Some of us are trying to sleep.” My mate Max.

  I searched round the door frame with my fingers, found a bolt and pulled it, found another one and pulled that too. And the last one. But I was careful to stand out of the way when I opened the door, just in case Max was waiting there with a ready fist.

  “Told you I was coming back,” I said. “Give us some light, Arbuthnot.”

  A match flared. Sarah rushed to me and covered me with kisses and that, friend, was worth more than any damned Knight’s Cross with Diamonds.

  “We’re going. Quiet and quick. Don’t talk. Hurry. Let’s go.”

  Down the stairs we went, stumbling along together, match light flaring off the walls as we passed, shadows soaring up to the roof, the Professor’s cane rattling, Kemali wheezing, the click of Sarah’s heels.

  I pulled them up short at the door. “We’re leaving here. We turn right, out through the gates and into the town. There are no soldiers left. Varga’s gone with all his men. We’re heading for the harbor. Back on the boat. Out the way we came in. We’ll be gone before they even notice.”

  We hurried across the courtyard, ash crunching softly under our feet as we ran, across the courtyard and sharp right into the castle gate. We were standing there, right in the middle of the road, when we heard the engine’s roar and saw the blazing electric lights sweeping across the buildings at the end of the street, a scream of gears, the lights straight in our eyes and then Tifty leaning out from the Rolls.

  “We saw your signal,” she said. “Can we offer you a lift?”

  Now, you know I loved Sarah, but my God, I never in my life saw anything half so pretty as Tifty hanging out of that Rolls. I remember it all: the car trembling like a kitten, the petrol smells whipped about on the wind, the yellow light of the headlamps bouncing around from the whitewashed walls of the narrow passage into the courtyard and shining off Tifty’s copper-colored hair.

  “Get into the castle,” I told her. “Turn this thing around and let’s get out of here.”

  The car surged off the way a racehorse does, down at the back to gather its power then racing forward, the beams of those giant headlamps sweeping around the castle courtyard almost like the living opposites of the Professor’s terrible glasses, shining light where he shone shadows, but everywhere they turned, they showed the same swirling, fluttering black ash dancing in the air.

  The car stopped and we jumped aboard like she was the last lifeboat leaving the wreck of the Deutschland, Sarah and her father inside with Kemali and Mrs. MacLeod, Max and Arbuthnot on the running boards at one side and me on the other, alongside Tifty.

  “Hello, darling,” she said. “Hello, Max, love.”

  But it was only then, when she spoke from inside the car, that I noticed Tifty wasn’t driving, and there beside her, sitting in the shadows of the cab, was Zogolli, gripping hard on the wheel and staring straight ahead so he wouldn’t have to meet anybody’s eye.

  I yelled a warning and I drew back my fist, but Tifty put up a hand to protect him. “No, Otto! It’s all right. He’s come back to us again—haven’t you, Ziggo, darling?” and she put her hand on his neck and drew his head down so that stupid carroty nose nestled between her magnificent pillowy breasts while she petted his ears. “Ziggo was just a little overtired, that’s all. But he’s had a good cry and he feels much better now and he’s most anxious to show how sorry he is and to put things right. Isn’t that so, Ziggo, darling?”

  Down in the Valley of the Shadow of Fun, Zoggoli nodded faintly. He didn’t seem too anxious to get out of there and start driving.

  “Tifty, he’s already switched sides once, he can do it again. You can’t trust him.”

  “Of course I can, darling,” and she reached down into her handbag, there in the dark shadows on the seat beside her, and when her little hand came up again it was holding Varga’s revolver. She let me see it, she laid it back where it was and, without taking her hand off it for a second, she told Zogolli, “Come along now, darling. Time to go.”

  Zogolli sat up with the look of a man waking from a wonderful talcum-scented dream and went to drop the handbrake but, just before he could, Mrs. MacLeod slid back the partition behind his head and pressed the tip of her hatpin—none too gently—against the back of his neck.

  “Drive as far as the top of the hill,” she said, “and take the car out of gear. You can roll from there to the harbor. It’s downhill all the way.”

  In the seat beside her Kemali lit the stub of cigar he had been saving for his execution and he said, “Thank whatever God you still believe in that it is not I holding the hatpin.”

  Zogolli did as he was told, which was one of the things I liked best about him, and we rolled silently over the cobbles, down through the narrow, twisting streets with the rubber of the tires kissing the cobbles, just the way the camel’s feet had brushed over the night streets of Buda half a lifetime before and, as we rolled, Tifty told me about the adventures she had been having since I saw her last.

  “Darling, I hope they were kind to you in prison. Mrs. MacLeod and I had a lovely time in the palazzo. We waited there for a little, absolutely alone—except for the staff of course, and they don’t really count as company—while Varga took you off to jail. Then after a bit he sent some rough sailors down to us with champagne—simply crates of the stuff.”

  “I like champagne,” said Sarah.

  “Of course you do, darling. Who doesn’t like champagne? I saved some for you. It’s in the boot. We should drink it on the way home. Champagne is the perfect antidote to mal de mer. Anyway, Varga’s sailors told us that the champagne was intended for a party where Mrs. MacLeod and I were to charm a considerable number of officers and toast your execution in the finest Krug.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Darling, I would have done it with a tear in my eye. Then we saw the Zeppelin burning and we knew that the lovely officers would not be joining us, but we took it as a sign that you were in good health.”

  Zogolli’s head jerked forward uncomfortably as Mrs. MacLeod gave him another little stab.

  “Put your lights out. We’re almost here.”

  We had reached the bottom of the hill, where the road came twisting from between the houses and flattened out. Zogolli put the car in gear, but it was a Rolls so it made no more noise than Sarah snoring.

  “Drive to the end of the quay,” Mrs. MacLeod said, and there was Varga’s yacht, neatly rigged and ready to put to sea, with a mustachioed brigand waiting at the ga
ngplank. “As you see, my Companions have prepared for our arrival.”

  Zogolli stopped the car.

  “Out!” and Mrs. MacLeod gave another little prod with her hatpin. Zogolli didn’t complain. He got out of the car and stood by the end of the gangplank, offering an arm to Tifty and Sarah in turn, then to Mrs. MacLeod and the Professor and then even to Kemali, who ignored him with a bitter stare. Zogolli made no complaint about that either and stood looking his old master in the eye as he passed, which must have taken more courage than I gave him credit for.

  But I was not prepared to turn my back on him. “After you,” I said. “I insist.”

  “I remain here,” he said.

  Halfway down the gangplank, Kemali turned round. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I will stay here. In Albania.”

  Kemali turned back up the gangplank—“Let me through, let me through. Forgive me. You must allow me to pass”—squeezing his way past the Professor and rushing back on to the quayside to grip Zogolli by the shoulders. “You can’t stay here! Is this some trick? Do you think that you can persuade me to give you the other half of the combination? I will not do it! I won’t! You know that, don’t you? I was ready to go to the wall rather than help them. I will not help them and I will not help you to help them. My boy, they will kill you when they know how you have deceived them.”