Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  "Come with me, Gottfried, Louisa. I want you to meet some prisoners." He led them from the room and they followed him as he walked down the corridor. "You need some background to understand why you are here and what I want from you."

  "At last, the truth," Louisa said. "And why doesn’t it surprise me that you have people imprisoned here?"

  "Your concern is touching, if misplaced, my dear," Schlacht said calmly. "It is fortunate that you and I are related, else I might be tempted to take exception to your attitude."

  "Take all the exception you want, Helmuth," she said heatedly.

  Schlacht was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner, and he required great self-control not to strike his cousin in the face. Turning to Weyrauch, he said, "I’m sure you know that the war is not going as well as we could hope. We had expected to complete the pacification of Russia last year and...well, we have run up against unexpected resistance."

  "Yes," Weyrauch agreed, "unexpected resistance." Repeating what he was told seemed a safe way to participate in the conversation.

  "With the entry of the Americans into the conflict and the refusal of the British to listen to reason, we have had to explore other avenues of offensive warfare. We can no longer rely merely upon the prowess of German arms and the brilliance of the Führer’s strategies."

  "Of course, of course," Weyrauch nodded. Louisa fumed silently, following behind the two men as they walked down the subterranean corridor.

  "It has long been the Führer’s belief that it is only Churchill’s irrational hatred of Germany that prevents the British from reaching an accommodation with us. If Churchill were to be eliminated, we might not only be able to remove Britain from the list of our enemies, we would also be denying to the Americans an operational base in Europe." He stopped walking and turned to Weyrauch. "Are you familiar with the English word ‘lunatic’?"

  "I’ve heard it," Weyrauch replied. "A madman, is it not?"

  "The root of the word is ‘luna’, the moon. A lunatic is someone who goes mad when the moon is full. Some people speculate that it has something to do with the gravitational pull of the moon upon fluids in the brain."

  "Like the effect upon the tides." Weyrauch suggested.

  "Precisely." He resumed walking down the corridor. Weyrauch walked along beside him and Louisa continued to follow. There was sufficient room for her to walk on her cousin’s other side had she so chosen. She chose not to.

  "Last month, coincidentally on the last night of the full moon, a number of my troops were sent out to round up some of the Gypsy tribes which infest the forest areas. One squadron did not report back, and so we sent out a search party. We found what you saw in the freezers. All of them killed, ripped to shreds, some apparently partially devoured. Standing in the midst of the carnage were two Gypsies, the two men I am taking you to see. Another Gypsy, one who could speak a human language, was found prowling about the woods nearby, and the officer who made the investigation used him as the translator during the preliminary interrogation. Unfortunately, that Gypsy died soon thereafter, but not before some basic questions were asked and answered. I read the officer’s report... apparently the two Gypsies offered no resistance to the questioning...but their answers were what pricked my curiosity." Schlacht drew up to another large door and stopped. "The younger of the two, hoping perhaps to save his older friend from torture, claimed that it was he and he alone who had killed my men. The older one, probably hoping to save the younger from execution, claimed that his companion was not responsible for his actions because he is a werewolf."

  A few moments of silence followed Schlacht’s words, and then Weyrauch laughed despite his ever present undercurrent of nervousness. "Helmuth, that’s..."

  "Yes. I know, it’s absurd. But when our doctors examined him, the younger one, I mean, they found shreds of human flesh embedded in his teeth." He paused, allowing his words to register, and then went on. "I believe it to be quite possible that this man is a lunatic, that when the moon rises he succumbs to a murderous rage so overpowering that it enabled him to kill two dozen of my men without suffering any injury himself. I don’t know how and I don’t know why. That," he said meaningfully, "is what I want you to find out."

  Weyrauch nodded thoughtfully, not quite knowing how to respond. "Yes, yes, I see. But..."

  "You don’t really see anything, Gottfried," Schlacht interrupted him, "because you are, as usual, so nervous that you haven’t been listening to me or thinking about what I’ve been saying. Consider this: if we can discover the process, the psychological mechanism, if you will, of this gypsy’s madness, and if we can train him, condition him, manipulate his rage, we can smuggle him into Britain and use him as a weapon against Churchill."

  "You mean...you mean use him to assassinate...?"

  "Precisely. We have made attempts on Churchill’s life, but they have all failed. It is difficult to infiltrate England, and their security is unfortunately quite effective. But this man seems to be unstoppable when the madness is upon him. With Churchill dead, we might find ourselves very quickly fighting a one front war."

  Louisa stepped up to her cousin. "Has it never occurred to you that Churchill is not the cause of Britain’s unwillingness to surrender? Haven’t you considered the possibility that the British may simply view your Hitler as evil, as a barbarian, as a threat to human civilization?"

  Schlacht dismissed her absurd comments with a wave of his hand. "The British are Aryans, as we are. The Jews are controlling Churchill. With him out of the way, the Jewish power in Britain will be broken and we can make peace." Louisa sighed and shook her head. This was becoming depressingly similar to the conversations she and her cousin had had so often when they were children.

  "Well, in any event," Weyrauch said, "why do you need me? I have some training in psychology, true, but I’m not a practicing psychologist, Helmuth, not even a practicing physician."

  "Yes, but you have knowledge of these things, certainly more knowledge than I have. And...well, you must realize that I am in competition with many other officers of the same rank. We all desire official favor, especially since the new European order after we win the war will rest upon a foundation of rule by the S.S."

  "In other words," Louisa said, "you want to arrange for Churchill’s assassination all by yourself so that you can get all the credit."

  He disliked the contempt in her tone. "Like it or not, my dear cousin, the future of Europe rests in the hands of the National Socialist Party, and the power behind the Party is the S.S. When this war ends and we are able to structure a new civilization that will last for the next thousand years, you might find yourself quite happy to be related to a confidante of S.S. Reichsführer Himmler. Happy, and secure."

  Schlacht turned from his cousin and rapped loudly on the large oaken door. A voice from within demanded, "Identity?"

  "Colonel Schlacht," he replied. A key could be heard turning in an inner lock, and then the door swung open. Schlacht motioned for Weyrauch and Louisa to precede him into the room. Weyrauch came to the portal and then stopped, as if the action of crossing over it would commit him to something which portended danger, as if he were somehow about to make an irreversible decision. He shook his head to dispel the foolish notion and took his wife’s arm to lead her with him through the doorway, but she pushed his hand away and entered before him. They walked past Schlacht and then, after following them in, he shut the door behind him and locked it. He turned to his guests and smiled. "Now, Gottfried, Louisa, allow me to introduce my lunatic."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The RagoczyPalace in Budapest had been built centuries before as one of the many grand residences of the Magyar aristocracy which had dominated the region until the overthrow of the regime of Admiral Horthy just the previous year. The capital city, indeed the entire nation, was now effectively in German hands. A puppet Magyar regime still exercised nominal authority, but the realities of power were otherwise. The German army was in occupation of the country; t
he S.S. was supervising the coordination of Hungary into Hitler’s new order; and the Gestapo prowled the streets and cafes, the churches and the museums, the offices and the villages and the parks.

  When S.S. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had put Helmuth Schlacht in charge of the liquidation of Hungary’s Gypsy population, it had been necessary for him to establish an operational headquarters, and the RagoczyPalace was a logical choice. In addition to its size and splendor, it also had what most late medieval noble residences had: a complex of large, subterranean chambers that had in the past served as dungeons. Under Schlacht’s devoted ministrations, they served this purpose once again. Day in and day out the dungeons were filled with the hundreds of Gypsies who had been arrested the night before, and periodically the dungeons were emptied as these same unfortunates were shipped off to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sorbibor and Treblinka and other cities of death.

  As the door of the dungeon was locked behind him, Gottfried von Weyrauch surveyed the room he had just entered with undisguised trepidation. The walls were built of large blocks of grey stone tinged slightly green by moisture and moss, and though the Germans had installed an ad hoc electrical system into the old palace, the sconce holes that had been sunk deep into the walls centuries before had not been filled in. The ceiling was high, nearly twenty-five feet from the floor, and small windows near the top of the wall, just above ground level, allowed a few rays of the setting sun to enter the room.

  He realized almost immediately that the room itself was merely the entranceway, the anteroom as it were, of a series of ancient cells. At the far end of the room a small wooden door with a small barred window was set into the cold stone wall, and as it was opened by the armed S.S. guard who stood before it, Weyrauch could see even before Schlacht ushered him through that it led to a narrow corridor on both sides of which were dozens of barred doorways. Weyrauch glanced into one such cell as he, Schlacht and Louisa proceeded down the corridor, and he shuddered at the thought of what it must have been like for the poor devils who had been imprisoned here. The doors themselves consisted of iron frames and long iron bars, which afforded an observer a clear view of the entire interior.

  Weyrauch’s nose wrinkled at the unpleasant smells, the stench of dried urine and feces, of unwashed people and filthy cloth, all intermingled with the smell of wet, rotting straw and the sickeningly sweet odor of the ubiquitous population of rats. He did not know if the smells were of recent origin or if they had been absorbed by the stones over the centuries, but the smells seemed to be a permanent characteristic of the dungeon.

  Lord, let me go back to Kappelburg! he prayed miserably.

  Schlacht came to a halt in front of one of the cells and nodded his head in its direction. "These are our guests. The younger one is called Janos Kaldy. The older one is called Blasko. No given name, apparently, which is not uncommon among inferior breeds." As Schlacht spoke Blasko came forward and began to speak rapidly and with obvious agitation in a language which was comprehensible to none of the three onlookers. Schlacht frowned. "Unfortunately, we have already shipped the Gypsies off to, ah, relocation centers, and we have been unable to find anyone who can understand his barbarian tirades." He chose to make only oblique reference to the extermination camps to which the Gypsies had been sent. Now that it was drawing close to sunset and what he hoped would be an observable seizure on Kaldy’s part, he had no wish to waste further time arguing with his cousin.

  "Surely some linguists from the university…?" Weyrauch began hesitantly.

  "No, we’ve tried that already," Schlacht said, shaking his head. "The ones who are still here have no knowledge of this language, and we understand that the ones who would have been of use are Jews, and so are, shall we say, unavailable." He ignored Louisa’s glaring eyes.

  Blasko continued to speak in a desperate, frightened, imploring tone, and he seemed to be shifting back and forth among a variety of languages. Weyrauch shrugged. "I can’t be of any help to you with this, Helmuth. Greek and Latin and Hebrew I know. French and English I know, but this..." and he shook his head.

  "Don’t be obtuse, Gottfried, " Schlacht said curtly. "I have already told you why you are here. I need a psychological observer, not a translator. It is Kaldy in whom we are interested, not Blasko. We are keeping him with Kaldy simply because they were found together, and we don’t wish to separate them until we know for certain what occurred, and why."

  Louisa was trying not to be interested in what she was seeing and hearing, and she had thus far been quite successful. The brief glimpse she had of the contents of the freezer had disturbed her greatly, but it was this confrontation of the naked reality of the S.S. which truly filled her with anger and sorrow and revulsion. She looked at the two men before them in the cell, and she felt pity and shame rising in her simultaneously. The poor men, she thought, and at the same moment, We have done this, to them and to God knows how many others, we have done this, my nation, my people, my own family.

  She looked in at the two prisoners, noting the effect imprisonment had apparently had upon them. The older one, Blasko, was a sturdy, if haggard man in his sixties. His hair was white and his handle-bar moustache was a soft gray. He wore the tattered garb so common among the oppressed and uprooted, clothing once colorful and now faded, though some small hint of past beauty still clung in spots to the faded wool and cotton.

  Janos Kaldy, the younger gypsy, looked ill, and Louisa attributed his appearance to his circumstances. He seemed to be a man in his twenties, but his eyes, which gazed vacantly ahead of him at a blank spot on the dark walls, were old and weary. His skin was a chalky white and his luxuriant black hair was matted and filthy, but he was oddly free of facial hair. His thin mouth and slightly hooked nose gave him an ascetic cast, and his stooped shoulders and thin, boney chest reinforced the impression of disease.

  She had begun to formulate a protest, a diatribe, a potentially fatal objection to the treatment of the two men; but suddenly Blasko’s pleas began to sound familiar, somehow slightly comprehensible to her. Is that Italian? she wondered. Louisa had studied Italian in the university, and what she was hearing now sounded vaguely similar to that Mediterranean tongue. But it was not identical to the precise and melodic Florentine dialect which formed the basis of formal Italian, and she was uncertain of her knowledge as she asked, "Mi scusi, signare, ma sta parlando italiano?"

  Blasko’s eyes widened joyfully. "Mi fuo capirend? Oh signora, mi fuo capirend?"

  "Mi sembra," she replied, "Mi sembra di capire, ma questo non e italiano vero?"

  "Parlo romanschi, signora, romanschi, una linguar dal Alpi," the Gypsy answered excitedly.

  "What language is that?" Schlacht demanded. "How is it that you can speak it?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously at his cousin.

  "He says that he is speaking Romansch," Louisa replied. "I’ve heard of that language. It’s spoken in only one place, one Swiss canton. It’s close enough to Italian for me to understand him and for him to understand me."

  Schlacht smiled broadly. "How fortunate that I was so eager to see you again, my dear Louisa! Well, then, tell us what this fellow is so upset about!"

  Louisa turned to Schlacht and said viciously, "I’m not going to assist you, Helmuth! I’m not going to play a part in this...in this barbaric...in this..." Her anger was so intense that she was unable to find words sufficiently strong to express it.

  "But our friend here seems to want very much to communicate with me," Schlacht replied, still smiling. "You really must serve as translator, if not for my sake, then for his." He leaned forward, secure in his logic and certain of her response to it. "Surely you don’t bear this poor creature any ill will, do you, my dear?"

  Louisa’s eyes burned into Schlacht’s, and the S.S. colonel watched with detached amusement as his cousin bowed to the reasoning she would have greatly wished to be able to refute. At last she turned back to Blasko and asked, "Che ci dire, signare?"

  "Liberatea mich di questa cells!" Blasko screamed. "Incate
nate Kaldy, incatenatelo en mettetici il fiore delluper dormente sulle catene e liberatea mich di questa cella!"

  "He wants to be removed from the cell," Louisa said.

  "Oh, I’m sure he does," Schlacht laughed.

  She ignored his amusement. "He also says that his friend must be securely chained and some sort of plant must be tied to him. I don’t recognize the name of the plant."

  "A function of their primitive superstitions, no doubt," Schlacht said. He placed his hand upon the heavy iron bars. "Well, he is staying right where he is. And these bars are more than sufficient to keep our friend Herr Kaldy safely confined. "

  "They will not suffice," Kaldy said softly in clear but accented German.

  The sudden and unexpected comment by the hitherto silent prisoner was followed first by a moment of startled silence and then by a very angry response from Schlacht. "You were spoken to in German when you were arrested and again when you were brought here. Was your refusal to reply some weak attempt at humor?"

  "The bars of this cell will not confine me when the change comes," Kaldy said, ignoring Schlacht’s question. His voice was even and emotionless, and a subtle undercurrent of sadness permeated every word. "If my friend Blasko is left here with me, he will be killed. If you do not follow his instructions about restraining me, you will also be killed."

  Schlacht’s face grew red and he folded his arms across his chest. "It has been my experience to observe that prisoners are well advised not to threaten their captors, you Gypsy pig!"

  Kaldy sighed. "The distinction between a threat and a warning should not be lost on someone like you, someone obviously so well-experienced in both forms of intimidation."

  The Gypsy’s words were well-spoken and indicated a level of intelligence which surprised Schlacht, and before he could respond to him Weyrauch broke in tentatively, "Helmuth, whatever else you decide to do, it might be a good idea to separate them. I mean, if this man is a violent madman, you might very well find that he will kill the other Gypsy, and you yourself said that...well, that you wanted to keep him here until you understood everything about this...this situation."