The Edit

by J Sydney Jones

  “I have a couple of things to tell you. One, I believe you need to get regular exercise and breathe fresh air. I have, to this end, prepared a compound for you in back. You may walk, sit, write, sun yourself, whatever. I require two promises from you first: you do not try to escape and you do not try calling for help once outside. It would be pointless, anyway. There is no escape from here, and no one is near enough to hear your screams. I shall be watching you closely. Any attempts at either will mean the immediate and permanent revocation of your privileges. Is that understood?”

  “You mentioned a couple of things you had to tell me. I assume that is the good news.”

  “I need you to write something on this.”

  “A postcard … from Mexico City … Why?”

  “Just write what I dictate.”

  “Someone’s asking for me, is that it? I told you that you couldn’t keep me here indefinitely. Who is it? Jeanne, I’ll bet. She’s the only one with balls enough to cause a ruckus. It is Jeanne, isn’t it? Tell me.”

  “If that is the name of your literary agent, yes.”

  “I knew it! And she has the meanest friend in the State Department. A brother-in-law.”

  “But she is not going to bother him, is she? Because you’re going to tell her that everything is fine. You’re going to write to her and tell her that.”

  “Not in this bloody lifetime, brother. Why would I want to do something stupid like that?”

  “Because if you don’t, some very unpleasant things will happen to you. And I don’t want that. You don’t want that. Some men, very powerful men, you understand, believe you are here. No, don’t smile so happily about that. They are not the sort of men who would help a damsel in distress. In fact, they are more the sort to want to rid themselves of a distressing damsel. I speak truthfully now when I say that they are very unscrupulous sorts. Very expert at dealing with delicate situations. If it came to it, they would simply rape and then kill you and make it look as if leftist terrorists had done it. They are men in whom empathy is totally lacking. This you must believe. They suspect—by now they probably know—that you are here. They tolerate such a whim of mine without asking questions, so long as it is purely a matter between you and me. But should your friend in New York cause any sort of questions to be asked at diplomatic levels, well, they would be forced to intervene in our little arrangement.”

  “—”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Oh, yes. Quite. That’s the usual thing here, isn’t it? Women and children die first. The perfect victims for cowards.”

  “Miss O’Brien, I really haven’t the time or energy just now for polemics.”

  “But this isn’t polemics. It’s my life we’re talking about. If I write your card for you, it will take the trail away from this village, away from you. Why should I do that? Why should I believe you’re any different than your friends? Why should I give up my last hope for freedom on your say-so?”

  “Yes, I take your point. But you see, I am not like them. Otherwise you would already be dead. I want to keep you alive, to sort this out. I have taken your interests to heart. Witness this room. I know you find it tasteless, but that is a subjective matter. Suffice it to say I did not decorate it thusly to torture you, though you claim that is the net result. I wanted, in my own way, to please you. And your exercise yard. I began it before hearing of the trouble your agent is causing. I have no intention of trading favors. Even if you refuse to write the card, I shall not punish you by taking away that privilege. But I cannot promise you, in that case, how long you might be around to use the yard. I have total power over you, but I have in no way misused or abused that power. Isn’t that, in itself, proof of my good intentions?”

  “You’re amazing. You really don’t get it, do you?”

  “—”

  “The very fact that you have absolute power over me is already a transgression. You’re holding me against my will, displaying a gun every time you come within five feet of me, and for this you expect thanks. A pat on the shoulder. I should be panting on my hind legs like a faithful dog, your slipper in my mouth. Well, fuck you! Fuck you and your friends! Are you waiting for the Stockholm syndrome to kick in? For me to love my captor? Don’t hold your breath, asshole. Or do. Please do.”

  “There’s no reason for foul language.”

  “No reason? You and your phony propriety. You and your friends murder six million Jews and then upbraid me for saying ‘fuck.’ Your friends here want to take me out for a friendly rape-and-kill session and you blanch at the word ‘asshole.’ Yes, Herr ____, it is high time for foul language, if only to shake you out of your protective cocoon. The Jews should have cursed you all on their way to the showers; it might have finally grabbed you by your short hairs enough to make you wince. It might have at least reminded you of your own humanity, if that is at all possible. If there is an ounce of that left in you.”

  “The devil you know, Miss O’Brien. The devil you know.”

  “I think this time I’ll opt for the one I don’t know. It’s refreshing, however, to hear you refer to yourself so. An admission of sorts.”

  “I’m not asking for yes or no right now. Think about it. I’ll need to know by tonight. Think about it carefully. Weigh the pros and cons.”

  “—”

  “Until this evening.”

  I worked the rest of the morning and early afternoon on the compound, clearing brush. And it is fortunate I did, for one bit of brush was giving cover to a family of thin green snakes, the most feared and deadly of our local vipers. I am ashamed to admit it, but, as I have earlier mentioned, snakes are my one weak spot. I mean I literally go to pieces when confronted with one. I am paralyzed with fear; my bowels loosen. And this even with the most innocent garden variety of snake. They are the most noxious of God’s creatures, and my idea of hell would be to be trapped in a darkened room with a snake on the loose. I do not know if I should be able to function. Whenever I am in the bush, I make it a practice to wear high boots. There is a certain degree of security in tall boots. Today was proof of that.

  Using a long-handled scythe, I was clearing all trace of tall grass and shrubbery from the compound, finishing up the job Cordoba had interrupted. I thought I saw movement in the grass just below the swinging blade. It gave me a start; I stopped the swing of the scythe in midarc. The tail end of a green snake writhed obscenely around the blade, flopping and twisting itself even after death. My heart raced and I broke out into an instant and drenching sweat. I could not move. I simply stood there with that writhing snake section on the blade, trying to catch my breath. From out of the grass, several more snakes darted for new cover. Thank God they were more frightened of me than I of them at this juncture, for I was completely unable to defend myself. I could only watch helplessly as they slithered under the fence and out of the compound.

  It took me several minutes more to control myself enough to throw the bloody end of the snake over the fence. I felt quite nauseated and light-headed by this time. Quite absurd, but there it is. My idea of heaven is a country like Miss O’Brien’s native one, Ireland, out of which the evil vermin have been driven for good and all.

  I went in and had a cup of tea to calm my nerves and then finally returned to finish my work. When I had cleared the area to my satisfaction, I went in and got Miss O’Brien. She looked surprised that I should appear in the middle of the afternoon; dinnertime was my next scheduled visit. Seeing me now, she feared the worst. I quickly eased her mind, however, by telling her that the exercise compound was ready. She had only to give her word not to try to escape while out there or to scream for help once outside.

  This done, I led her out into the daylight. She squinted painfully once outside—remember, she had been living under artificial light now for many weeks. She stepped rather hesitantly onto the grass; I assured her that the area had been cleared and was safe. But she s
aid no, it wasn’t that. She was afraid to feel the earth again under her feet lest it be snatched away from her again by some whim of mine. This wrenched my very soul, I must admit. That she could believe me to be such an ogre, such a hideous man. I left her alone there, a sign of my trust, and went up to my desk where I am writing these words. I can see her below, pacing, measuring out the perimeters of her new freedom. She is not used to being caged, one can see that immediately. But soon it will be easier for her. Soon the cyclone fence surrounding the yard will become invisible to her eyes. She will no longer approach it, gripping the diamonds of wire in a birdlike claw; no longer stare longingly at the matrix of metal that shuts her off from the rest of the world.

  I have watched the phenomenon thousands of times before: the newly initiated rail at their captivity. They pace, they burn inwardly, they put their eyes to the wire so as to have an undisturbed view of outside. But this does not last long. With the strongest of them, such behavior persists only a few weeks, two months at the most. Then a curious thing happens: When they finally realize that there is no release, no escape, they begin to reject the very notion of prison. It is as if the fence is there to keep the world out. It is no longer a limitation of their freedom, but a preserver of it. They become rulers of a postage stamp–size domain. Kings and queens of Lilliput. With no one else about by whom private realities will be tested, Miss O’Brien will, I prophesy, be converted to this belief sooner than others I have known.

  She has paced the perimeter twice now. She throws her hands up toward the sky, fingers reaching outstretched. For what? I think she is going to cry out, but no. She is only drinking in the air. She turns around and around; it is like a dance with her arms up, as if beckoning the sky to join her. A smile is on her lips; her eyes are closed in a kind of ecstasy. Then she opens them and is looking straight up at me as I watch her. Her arms drop listlessly to her sides and she heads for the back door. If she had a tail, it would be between her legs. I hear her knocking from downstairs. She wants in.

  When I led her back to her quarters, she accused me of spying on her. It was hardly spying, I argued.

  “It’s so ghoulish. As if you have no life of your own. You only live through me. What did you do before I came? How many other flies have you trapped here? Where are your peepholes down here? I suppose you even watch me on the toilet. …”

  I made no response. One cannot talk to Miss O’Brien when she is in such a state. I merely closed the door quietly behind me.

  She slanders me by such accusations. I believe I have remained a gentleman throughout this difficult situation. It is hardly my style to be a voyeur. The last thing I should want to glimpse is the micturating squat of a female. I know it has been said of us men of the Staffel that we were all sadists, impotent thugs who could find satisfaction only by torturing or watching the torture of others. That, for us, sex was always deviant, and destruction was our only love. This is simply not the case. In my experience, at any rate. The men I served under and worked with were, for the most part, good upstanding family men who loved their wives and children and who proceeded to carry out a difficult and sometimes painful duty without complaint or ire. We were not vindictive; we took no pleasure in carrying out stringent orders; there was no love for any pain that may have been inflicted upon others as a result of carrying out our orders. I feel Miss O’Brien does not understand me. She has made me into a cardboard villain, and that rankles.

  I shall set down the rest of those remarkable events of late August 1939 here, as a palliative against Miss O’Brien’s thoughtless accusations.

  So now we two and some eighty other graduates and cadets were transported to yet another training camp. Herded and trucked in the dead of the night, we were not allowed even to write family members and tell them we would be incommunicado for a time. We were sworn to secrecy in the dead of that starless night, secrecy unto death. This command I am now—or will be with the publication of these memoirs—directly and with conscious knowledge disobeying. Most of the story has already been pieced together by historians and journalists anyway. There is little left for me to protect.

  For two weeks, we remained at this new camp. None of us knew where it was; we could only surmise distance by how many hours we had driven from Bernau. Neither were there any leaves to visit the local village, whatever that might be. Entertainment of sorts was brought in for us: Beer was rationed to two half liters daily, and women were trucked in twice a week. I did not bother with them. I understood their necessity but could not condone their services. Cow was happy to use my chits for this pastime as well as his own, and I found myself becoming almost jealous of his spending his free time with prostitutes rather than with me.

  Our days were taken up in a new sort of training: We volunteers were broken into three separate groups, the smallest of which was hand-picked by a certain Staffel officer—Sturmbannführer Helmut Naujocks. This officer hardly appeared to be the dashingly romantic type of a Skorzeny: He was slight and wiry looking and sported a pencil-thin mustache such as an Italian waiter might affect. Yet there was an air of absolute confidence that wafted from him like aftershave. This attracted one to him. Word had it he was to be in charge of the most delicate phase of the operation. Remember, at this point none of us had a remote clue of what the overall operation would be, let alone what the most delicate or vital part of it was. Europe, though arming itself in preparation for the war everyone believed inevitable, was still at peace that summer.

  Naujocks made an appearance the day after we were transferred to the new camp and chose six of the older hands—not one cadet among them—and trucked off with them to God knows where. I never saw a one of those men again, though we coordinated our subsequent operation with them.

  Thus we were two large groups of men remaining, groups Viktor and Redux. My first inkling of what was in store for us came when we in group Viktor were issued uniforms in drab olive, very unlike anything a German soldier wore at the time. These uniforms were ill-fitting and evil-smelling.

  “Polish uniforms,” Cow announced.

  I told him I thought this was a damn silly charade. It was obvious that the Poles, belligerent and arrogant over the Danzig corridor, would be our natural enemies in the coming conflagration. But this playing war games unto even wearing the uniform of the enemy—this was going a bit far.

  “I don’t think it’s a game, Scholar. I think it’s dead serious. Working behind the lines. That sort of thing.”

  I realized in that instant that Cow was right and wondered at my own naïveté. Admittedly, such a thought filled me with fear. Insurgency work was the most dangerous of all: If captured wearing the uniform of the enemy, it meant the firing squad. And there was always the risk of being killed by friendly fire. I began to regret allowing Cow to volunteer me. Especially so since Cow, a member of group Redux, had not been issued such a uniform!

  The third day at the new camp some chaps arrived in a six-wheeled Mercedes. They looked very crisp and in control in their high boots and shiny-billed black caps. Two of these higher officers began drilling group Viktor using Polish language commands. We learned only the most basic ones. To this day, I can still recall the rough-throated accents of the younger of our interpreters. He drilled us for six straight hours under a blistering sun until we reacted automatically to Polish and German commands interchangeably, until the Polish no longer sounded foreign to us. But not before three in our platoon had passed out from heat prostration.

  The next long days of training blended one into the other. We were unaware of happenings in the outside world: from the increasing international crisis over the Polish Corridor to the Moscow-Berlin nonaggression pact. Nonetheless, there was speculation among many of us that there would be war before autumn. We needed to move on Poland before the September rains set in and slowed down the advance of our highly mechanized Wehrmacht. No muddy roads could be allowed to retard the advance of the Blitzkrieg, for Poland would
have to fall quickly so that we could about-face and deal with England and France to the west.

  We waited every day for traveling orders, but as August neared its end, we continued undisturbed with our incessant marching and drilling, orders barked out at us in both Polish and German.

  I saw little of Cow, for group Redux, dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms, drilled separately from us. We could sometimes watch them during our own breaks, and their drill seemed not much different from ours, save that they were commanded only in German.

  Then one day our tedium was broken by the arrival of two transports. I thought our time had come; now we would be sent into action. But to what action and where? This was the most infuriating part of all, for all we had learned thus far was how to march to orders in Polish. We had received no special training in detonations, hand-to-hand combat, or reconnaissance—all skills needed for insurgency work.

  The two new trucks were not for us, as it turned out. They remained in the center of the compound until the midday meal was ready, then closed metal platters and buckets of food were brought out. I happened to be standing guard duty near one of the trucks when the flaps were thrown up in back. The food was quickly and roughly thrust in. I caught a glimpse of the interiors: there, in each of the transports, were a dozen or so men in ragged clothing, their heads shaved and ankles manacled together. It was their eyes that I remember. They were enormous, staring mournfully out of skeleton faces, and the men fell on the food ravenously. Enough for only three men had been supplied for each transport.

  Early in the morning of the twenty-fifth of August, we were transported far to the east; we knew the direction only by the sun’s position. We still had not been advised of our destination nor, more importantly, of our purpose. All I knew was that I was weary of the Polish uniforms. Groups Redux and Viktor traveled together; I could see that Cow wore his Wehrmacht uniform with not much more pleasure than I wore my Polish one, but I would have felt better about the whole affair had we been wearing the same, regardless of whose.