*
On Boxing Day, with another Christmas gone, Brandt’s mood is darker with fading memories of the festive Tannenbaum of childhood on his grandfather’s farm, the sentimental carols at church and making eyes at the pretty country girls in the choir. The Christmas holiday was always darkened by his father’s moods and the sure knowledge that, as soon as they returned home, his father would find some cause to lay into him with the riding crop. His boyhood is now so far removed from the present, that he can only recall it in black-and-white images like a newsreel, but if that boyhood had taught him the power of a father’s cruelty, it was Adolf Hitler who had provided its outlet.
By the time Brandt was eighteen he had already yielded his kinder sensibilities to the march of the death drum. It wasn’t a complete surrender; there was no peace in it, only the knowledge that he wasn’t alone. He goose-stepped with the elite while the girls lined the footpaths screaming and sobbing hysterically as the SS troops started singing ‘Sieg Heil Viktoria!’ And he’d raised his legs encased in gleaming boots level with his waist, and pulled his shoulders back so far they ached. They marched down the Unter den Linden; all the jackboots rising as one, followed by the crash of a thousand heels in perfect timing with the SS band. The eyes of each soldier were fixed on the helmet of the man in front, while the street mobs shouted themselves hoarse with “Sieg Heils”, and the children perched on their fathers’ shoulders, waving their little paper swastikas and cheering their hearts out. And, like all of them, he was being swept up in the echoing streets and the cobbled roads, the cheering faces staring down from the open windows, while as night descended, Albert Speer’s searchlight columns illuminated the choreographed mass gymnastics displays and dancing spectacles dutifully choreographed for the glory of the Reich. And what were they all caught up in? It was a Danse Macabre – a something that could not be understood and if it could, it would not be named – for it was the negation of life, in their hearts they knew it, even then, and few were left innocent.
In Australia, despite the joys and benefits offered by ‘the lucky country’, Brandt can only view the world through a death-tinted lens; perhaps that’s why he had seen the three figures at the Cone dragging a carcase. He is drawn to death and, whereas Milo loves all the wild creatures of the bush, Brandt cannot glimpse a wallaby without imagining its head in the sights of a rifle.
He cannot go on living like this. The balance of his existence hovers between perpetual work, either on the Scheme or the farm. Thoughts of ending his life are coming more frequently, death seems as logical as it is inevitable, but suicide is not enough; he craves a total annihilation, that nothing should be left of him to mark his ever having existed on the planet, except years afterwards, an inexplicable stain in the clay.
For the first time in months, he has been buying cigarettes by the carton. He takes out a new packet of Capstan Blue, bites the cellophane, rips it back, takes out a cigarette and lights up, not because he is returning to an addiction but to spite Hitler; yes, to spite the Führer. Last April he heard that four Germans from another camp drove all the way down to South Australia to meet up with a dozen others to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. God, what a mad thing to do in a British Dominion. But there is a side of him that understands it all right, understands it only too well.
To what end had he wasted the gift of his youth? Surely to an insanity worse than any that came before. Even the Communists have their grand capital works, their railways, dams, bridges and altruistic ideals – perverted, yes, in ideology, but still able to harness the yearnings of humanity, but what had the Nazis bequeathed to the world? In all truth, what had they accomplished? Where was their art – the true art that mirrors the truth of the times – where were their medical breakthroughs, their scientific discoveries, their welfare programmes, their model schools and universities, and their architecture? Perhaps the ‘industrial complex’ of Treblinka epitomised it all – it was nothing but a death camp to extract the chemical remains of nine hundred thousand bodies.
But isn’t this the Otto Brandt who, barely hours ago, was thinking about suicide and total annihilation? Yes, yes, and no doubt the thoughts will come back – perhaps many times – but, meanwhile, doesn’t he owe anything of his life to anybody? What of Australia itself? It’s been amazingly generous to him. He’s already forged some sort of empathy with this country. He’s an engineer on one of the greatest engineering projects on earth. Even if he is arrested and dies in infamy, his tunnels will remain as his legacy.
And then there’s Garigo. Dear God, what won’t he do to transform Garigo into one of the most productive and progressive farms in New South Wales? His work must be his religion, his country, his sacred mandate.
*
On a whim, he drives down to Cooma for the Boxing Day rodeo. He needs to get out. Christmas had worsened his mental state and he needs to dispel the gloom somehow. Apparently, Milo had been spending Christmas morning with the bushfire patrol and then gone off to visit the mysterious Peggy who was cooking them dinner. They had invited him to join them, but he’d given his apologies, and Milo had agreed with him when he said he shouldn’t just go off and abandon the other men at Island Bend. Good for Milo; yes, he deserves his Christmas with Peggy – of course he does. Yet why does he resent the thought of the two of them together… never mind.
Holidays; Australia always seems to be on vacation and Boxing Day is yet another holiday. Brandt is coming to hate national holidays in a youthful country besotted with its children, where every male of his age is supposed to be a ‘good family man’ and if he’s not, to have at least a ‘sheila’ of some sort to be seen with at the races, on the beach or in an open car with her blonde hair trailing back in the wind like you see in the posters for Toohey’s Beer. Outside the migrant camps, no other single men seem to exist in Australia except Roman Catholic priests, religious brothers, abandoned alcoholic husbands, or the feared and castigated homosexuals. How many of those did he execute in Poland? No, best not to think about homosexuals.
When he reaches Cooma, he parks the ute up by the Catholic church and sets off on foot, joining the dozens of families milling down to Western Park for the rodeo.
The afternoon turns out to be more entertaining than he had imagined, and he feels his mood lifting. He envies the rodeo riders; he recalls that the best part of the SS academy, as far as he was concerned, was the equestrian training. At least Garigo has given him an excuse to be in the saddle again.
When the last event is over, he buys a hot meat pie at the stall before it closes down for the day. If there’s one thing the Australians know more about than the Europeans, it’s how to make meat pies; he could never be a vegetarian like Milo. Brandt eats his pie in the shade and lights another cigarette. He’ll wait until most of the spectators have gone, and then go off and find the ute.
It’s nearly dusk. Somewhere he hears a band playing the ‘Tennessee Waltz’, and remembers that most of the Snowy migrants will be in town tonight and he’ll have to leave in a hurry if he is not to be drawn into a big drinking session at the Alpine Hotel.
He’s forgotten where he parked the damned Land Rover. He knows it’s up by the Catholic church, nearly a mile away; that’s if he doesn’t get lost. Milo told him that in any Australian country town you’ll always find the Catholic church on the highest point. He peers around him and, despite the darkening sky, he can just make it out: a greenish light on a hill. He stubs out his cigarette and sets off.
Twenty minutes later, he spots the Land Rover, but stops short when he hears a woman screaming. For a second it sounds muffled, but then it rises into piercing shrieks. Brandt starts running then breaks into a sprint towards a battered Studebaker. Its interior lights are on and he sees the figures of two burly men who have a woman down on the ground. One is at her face with a cut-throat razor.
“Stop!” yells Brandt. One of the men releases his grasp on the woman’s throat, but, as he stru
ggles to get up, Brandt sees her face in a mask of blood and folded flesh – and in a flash he recalls the killing of the fox woman.
“Get back,” shouts the first man, now coming at him with the razor, but his hands are so slimy with fresh blood that he drops the weapon. As he reaches down for it, Brandt lands a karate-chop on his neck and the man drops like a brick. The second man is already on his feet stabbing out at Brandt with another razor, but Brandt’s heavy boot strikes him with such force that it breaks one of his legs. His fist splatters the man’s nose flat, and a further chop splits the man’s collar bone and he falls unconscious across the first assailant, who is lying prone on the ground.
The woman lies still. In the glow of his cigarette lighter Brandt sees a rough swastika cut into her forehead. He rips off his shirt, wraps it firmly around her head, lifts her up in his arms, carries her to the Land Rover and speeds to the Cooma hospital.
12
When Brandt returns to the hospital the next day, he finds the woman in a small ward by herself with two federal policemen from Canberra standing guard outside.
A senior nurse hurries up to him. “No visitors allowed, I’m afraid. Sorry, sir – and we’ve had put her to sleep for a while.”
“Who are you, sir?” one of the policemen asks him.
Brandt is careful in his reply, the two assailants couldn’t have seen his face properly in the semi-darkness, but there was always a chance. He had only shouted the one word, “Stop,” yet they still might recognise a German accent, so it’s best not to reveal too much. Despite Brandt’s Australian citizenship, he knows he is not exempt from deportation, especially if he is convicted on an assault charge.
“I discovered her by the wall of the church and brought her in,” he says. “I’ve just dropped by to see how she is.”
“Well, you’ve probably saved her life, but she won’t thank you for it. As soon as she’s patched up, we’ll be deporting her to Norway. We’ve found out she’s not only an illegal migrant but also some bloody Nazi’s whore. One thing’s for certain, when she sees herself in the mirror, she’ll wish she were dead, no man will look twice at her again.”
Brandt recalls the bloodied face in the Polish sawpit, an image like raw meat. His fractured soul interrogates itself.
So why didn’t you just let her go?
Because Hitler ordered me to execute her.
But Hitler wasn’t there.
Hitler would have found out.
But nobody was there. You were alone with her in the forest.
Hitler would have known, they say his eyes can pierce right through you. Hitler always knows.
I think you were just scared.
We were all scared.
The nurse walks with him to the exit. “I take it you’re on the Snowy Scheme,” she says, then she screws up her face “She’s on it too – or was; apparently, she is one of their top chemical engineers. She only arrived in Australia the week before Christmas. Do you know her?”
Brandt’s throat still feels dry. “No, I don’t know her at all… Did they arrest the attacker?”
“There were two of them – big Scandinavians, Snowy blokes; they’re both in one of the men’s wards. Cripes, you should see the mess someone made of them. One’s still in a coma and the other looks like he’s been hit by the Melbourne express train. The Federal Police are involved so goodness knows what’s going on.”
*
When Brandt returns to Garigo, he parks the ute in the barn and goes straight to a tool box tucked in a sack behind a forty-four-gallon drum. He feels a tightness in his sternum, when he sees his old Lüger pistol still packed in grease and, in a separate package, a full magazine.
As he washes out the grease in a bowl of turps, he thinks once more of the fox woman in the sawpit. Was her hair really so red? It was twilight after all. The blood was red enough, he’ll never forget the blood, but the hair? Yes, it was definitely red, like flames. In his mind, its redness looms up, still so vivid and much too real, as real as the nightmare that terrified him on the Syrenia.
His heart jumps when he hears something crawling about above the ceiling. It’s only a possum. Milo says that every house in the country has a possum in the rafters. How Australians love hyperbole; yes, this is certainly a possum, it must be.
After cleaning the Lüger, he rubs it with a slightly oily cloth, slips in the magazine and examines the weapon under the light. Everything about the pistol is superbly engineered, a masterpiece of design. It’s as elegant as a cobra, though admittedly it has its foibles. Lügers can be capricious. At the academy, the instructor told them that an officer should treat his Lüger like a mistress.
“You should only feed her with good Parabellum cartridges, no substitutes, and remember that she will not tolerate any mud, dust or heavy smoke. Make sure she is properly housed in a full holster or she will rust. You must treat her firmly; she is a true lady who abhors a weak wrist and a wavering aim. She needs to be mastered.”
How naturally the Lüger fits his hand and rests so comfortably against his palm. He raises it and snuggles the end of the barrel to his ear. It would be so easy… No, this is play acting, stupid, bordering on self-pity, and, worse still, a mockery of the suicide of Brigitte and the death of Cordula. And, besides, hasn’t he made nobler plans? He lays the sidearm on the table.
It occurs to him that he hasn’t made a will. He definitely should, after all he’s a landowner now, ‘a man of substance’ as the Australians say; yes, he’ll have to leave a will. He has heard that there is a charity in Sydney for displaced people, so he’ll bequeath Garigo to them. How appropriate; chances are they will teach some refugee children to ski here and to ride horses. Even if they just give the children a few bush holidays, it will be something.
Children is a subject he should have avoided – Cordula would be coming up to be what they call a ‘teenager’ now. He thinks of the teenagers in the milk bars of Cooma – playing the jukeboxes, and listening to Doris Day and Eddie Fisher – though he cannot imagine Cordula among them, as she was such a serious little girl. And what of his likely offspring from the Lebensborn Project, the children of Himmler’s blond super-race? Where are they now? And Alan, especially, comes to mind – he’ll be about eleven now. What happened to that promise he made on the docks to see him again?
Why was he fooling around with this pistol? Isn’t he tempting fate? What happens when the black mood comes back, and that day is bound to come, and there he’ll be with a loaded pistol and the temptation masters him. Someone will find his body, probably Milo.
No, not Milo; he won’t do this to Milo. Brandt pulls himself together and remembers his maxim, he says it out loud. “I must finish the race.”
He repeats it. “I must finish the race.” He swaddles the Lüger in the folds of a chamois leather to make a neat package, then goes outside and stuffs it under the driver’s seat of the Land Rover.
He ought to do something about the blisters on his hands; if he were farming full time, they would be calloused, but, as it is, they are too soft for digging fence holes for eight-hour stretches at a time. Gloves are fine when it’s cold, but not during a heatwave. Milo told him that methylated spirit hardens the skin, so he’ll have to get some.
Close to the homestead, the hydrangeas are like cumulous clouds. He can barely make out the veranda rails for the explosion of pale blue, dark blue, pink, white and purple – his mother would have loved their flamboyant extravagance. Now there’s an idea. When he gets time, he will make a flower garden in her memory. He’ll put in beautiful flowering shrubs, camellias and roses – oh, and some very aromatic varieties. He’ll plant them all along the path to the front steps – daphne, mock orange and lavender – and he’ll have jasmine and wisteria scrambling over the barns, and bottlebrushes and wattles by the billabong.
When he was seven, flowers were his undoing. Their house shared a common wall w
ith the cemetery where Alois, his older brother who had died of consumption, had been buried five years before. His father saw no value in leaving bought flowers by graves, he called it a waste of money, so his mother, who visited Alois’ grave once a week, made do with the few annuals she grew from tending her one small garden at the back of the house.
The young Ernst would sometimes sit on the cemetery wall, and watch mourners bring expensive bunches of white roses and delphiniums to replace the old, dead blooms from the week before. One graveside stood out because it was guarded by a winged marble angel on a pedestal that was twice as high as the boy himself. One morning, he noticed that in the shade of its wings, someone had placed a vase of fresh blue hyacinths. As this was the day that his mother visited Alois, Ernst let himself down on the other side of the wall, snatched up the flowers from their vase and laid them on his brother’s grave.
The thrashing he received from his father only ceased when his hysterical mother stepped between them and protected Ernst with her own body, and they clung together, he in agony, while his father stalked off to his study, returning minutes later with a cardboard placard, some string and a length of rope.
“You, boy, you come with me,” said his father, who wrenched him off his mother, dragged him to the front of the house and tied him to a silver birch tree in full view of the street.
Orphaned Leaves Page 12
