The Secret of Lions

by Scott Blade

  I made my way to Anna’s door. A single guard remained at his post, standing outside her room. He saluted me and allowed me access to her room. The guard was rather young. He was slightly older than me but not much.

  I knocked. “Anna, are you awake?”

  “Come in,” her voice sounded muffled through the door.

  I entered. Anna was already dressed in a boy’s street garments. Her hair was tucked under a tattered cap.

  “What are you wearing?” I asked.

  “This is so I blend in with the common people. You know there are still Jews and murderers out there who might like to take a stick to a girl’s head? Don’t you think that this way is safer?” Anna asked.

  “No, you are right. I don’t know what to expect. I hope we don’t encounter any insurgents. My father said not to wander too far from the compound. And that was during the day. He said the rebels are violent and will kill us on sight.”

  “I think we’ll be fine, Peter,” Anna said.

  “Right,” I replied.

  “Okay, let me get my coat,” Anna said. She grabbed a worn coat from the back of a chair and slipped it on. The two of us made our way out the door and down the stairs.

  Near the front door to the capital building a guard was posted at a desk. This seemed unusual to me. I was used to seeing more than one guard at this post.

  “Where are you two going, sir?” the guard asked. He stood and saluted me at the same time.

  “We are going for a walk. We won’t go far. Just want to get a good, fresh breath of air,” I said. I placed my hands in the pockets of my trousers for a moment as I waited for a response from the guard.

  The guard returned to his seat and scratched his head. Then he replied, “That should be fine, sir. I do ask that you be careful out there and try to stay near the compound. Also, it’s a good idea if you two stay clear of the north part of Warsaw.”

  “Why that part?” Anna asked.

  “There are insurgents there. They’ll kill you. Our soldiers will be fighting with them throughout the night. They have become restless and emboldened ever since news of the Führer’s departure spread outside these walls.

  “Father is gone?” I asked.

  “Yes, he had to leave for the night, but he will return for you in two days’ time. They left by train earlier tonight. I’m sure it was urgent or he would have told you.”

  My eyes focused on the guard’s desk for a moment. It was the first time, excluding when I was in school, my father had left me alone.

  “Well, thanks,” Anna said. She turned and began to pull me out the front door. She was ready to take the wine bottle out from under her coat. It was bulky and uncomfortable to continue holding it there.

  “Wait,” the guard called out behind us.

  I turned slightly and made eye contact with him.

  “Take this with you, just to be safe,” he said and pulled a Colt 1911 pistol from the desk drawer.

  I looked at Anna for a moment and then picked up the gun. I looked at the guard and said, “This is an American pistol.”

  “Yes, I found it on one of the police officers we shot on the way in. It’s American, but they make good weapons. You should take it with you for protection. There are only seven rounds in the clip, so if you need to use it, do so sparingly.”

  I pocketed the gun inside my coat and followed Anna out of the building. We walked along the streets. The city was structured like a giant skeleton. It had living systems that acted like organs.

  The bombed and destroyed structures were the bones. They jutted out of what was once a great living city. And now it was just an open wound. The Nazis had invaded Warsaw. Like a parasite, the Nazi army became the mechanism which controlled the living functions of the city.

  The residents of the city who remained did not want us there, and I knew it. Yet my father would say differently. He would argue with me privately that the Aryan Polish were secretly grateful.

  “Finally, the Germans have come to clean us of our Jewish problem,” he had said. “Finally, our prayers are answered. We can return to the fatherland.”

  “Where do you want to go, Anna?” I asked.

  “Let’s go to the north side of town,” she replied.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That side of town is forbidden. You heard what the guard told us.”

  She took me by the arm. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  I deliberated for a moment.

  “Please, Peter? It’ll be more interesting than staying on the safe side. Besides how am I ever going to understand politics if I never get to see a menacing Jew for myself?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ve never actually seen a Jew. I mean I may have seen them on the street, but I didn’t know it for sure. My father keeps me sheltered. This is the first time that he’s ever let me travel with any other family. He trusts that I’m safe with your father. Besides, I heard that the Polish Jew is one of the most despicable. Have you ever seen one?” she asked.

  “Well, to be honest, I’m not sure that I have ever seen a Jew. My father has never allowed any near us,” I said.

  “Don’t you want to see one? We can see how bad they are. My father says they smell,” Anna said.

  “I guess,” I responded.

  I followed Anna down the street and into the depths of Warsaw. We walked for thirty minutes before we reached the restricted part of town. We had to hide in a doorway at one point because a couple of Nazi soldiers walked down a neighboring street. I thought that it would be best if we were not discovered by anyone.

  “Peter, look,” Anna said. She pointed at a brick wall that blocked the passage to the rest of the street. The main street we traveled on was sharply curtailed because of this wall.

  The wall was new. I recognized the bricks were newly laid out, unscarred by wind or erosion. I walked up to the newly built wall and pressed against it for a moment. I knew Anna did not understand what I was doing, but I felt drawn to the wall.

  The purpose of the wall was to separate the rest of the town from the Jews who lived on the other side. I stepped back and stared at the buildings on the opposite side; they towered over the eight-foot wall. The buildings appeared to have been in good working order a few days ago, but now they were shells of their former selves.

  Large holes riddled the sides of the buildings. The once wealthy side of Warsaw was now the ghetto. The Jewish side of town had been nicer than the rest of the town. My father once told me that Jews leeched off the good Christians of Europe and controlled everything. They enjoyed their wealth while the rest of the people strived to get by. The Jew was the weak race, and it had control over the stronger Aryan race.

  “How are we going to get over this wall?” Anna asked.

  I looked around and noticed a fire escape that protruded out over the wall from the second floor off of a building on our side. I pointed up at it and said, “That’s how we’ll get over it.”

  I took Anna by the hand and led her toward the doorway of the building. As we neared the front door, we realized the door was already open. The lock was already shattered from gunfire. Wood and metal splintered out across the entrance. I was careful not to make any sounds as we walked into the dimly lit foyer.

  Light fixtures were spread out across the inside of the lobby. Many of them were broken. Pieces of glass from shattered bulbs littered the hardwood floor. My eyes focused on the shadows. I did not want to run into the insurgents. The building appeared to be completely abandoned. It was silent except for the creaking floorboards. Old, dried blood splatter stained the walls of the main corridor.

  An old man lay dead in the doorway of his apartment. I focused on the splinters of a broken broom handle that lay near the corpse’s head.

  “He was bludgeoned to death,” I said, pointing at the corpse. Anna looked at me intensely. She had never seen a dead body before. After what I’d witnessed in that basement all those years before, I was no longer afraid of viol
ence or death. I had seen it.

  “Let’s keep going,” I said, ushering her along.

  We walked up the stairs. Blood-stained carpet lined the halls and the rooms of the second floor. And there was an odor. It was awful. Anna, especially, felt unsettled.

  “There is so much blood, but where are the other bodies?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Are you sure you want to keep going?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t care about the Jews any more than you do.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  I led the way to an open apartment. The inside was cluttered. Fragmented furniture pieces leaned against the walls. A dark-colored couch was dissected into two pieces. One half was in the center of the living room. The other half dangled out the window. It was tangled in the frame of a shattered window. Broken glass covered the top of it.

  “What could have broken that couch in half?” Anna asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied, lying. I knew exactly what could have done such a thing. I had heard rumors during my travels with Hitler. The rumors were about a division of the SS police that specialized in clean up and death.

  They were called the “Todesgruppen” or “death squads.” They were deployed only after the planes had finished bombing their targets and the soldiers had finished sweeping through the urban areas. The Todesgruppen were an elite group of killers that cleaned up after the initial infantry raids were complete.

  The Todesgruppen possessed specialized weapons, such as shotguns, flamethrowers, and even chainsaws. They were twisted Nazis who slaughtered any Jews left alive in the target zone.

  I hoped we did not see them. Although I was not unsettled by violence, I was unsettled at the type of men they were.

  I smiled at Anna and urged her to the edge of the couch—at least that half. I looked out beyond it. Hardly any glass remained attached to the window. Most of it was on the top half of the couch or out on the street below. I grabbed the arm of the couch and pushed.

  It would not budge, at first. I tried kicking it, but it was wedged tightly in the window’s frame. I stepped back a few meters and cleared Anna from my path. With all of my force, I charged into the couch and shoved it out the window. It bounced out onto the balcony and fell over the side rail.

  Anna walked out through the broken window first. She waited for me. Together we stopped and peered up at the balcony over our heads. Hanging from the third floor balcony was a small boy’s shoe. A blood-stained shoelace dangled from the edge of a broken railing. The railing was bent completely outward.

  “It must have taken a lot of force to break the railing like that,” Anna said, ignoring the child’s shoe.

  “Maybe there’s another couch on the street below. We’re not the only lusty teenagers out scouting around,” I said.

  She laughed.

  Despite the remains of the city and the symbols of death that surrounded us, we both wanted to have fun. Deep in my gut, I felt something was wrong. There was some kind of painful memory that fought to be remembered, but I couldn’t see it.

  “Peter, are you all right?”

  “Yes, I am fine. Let’s continue,” I answered.

  “We can get over the wall now. The only problem is how are we going to get down to the street?” Anna asked.

  “We have to drop down,” I said, scratching the adolescent stubble on my cheek.

  “I was afraid you might say that. How do we get back over the wall again once we return?”

  “We will find a way. Unless you want to go back?” I asked.

  “No, I want to see at least one living Jew tonight. I want to see the scum of the earth. How can we understand what our fathers stand for when you and I have never even seen a real Jew?” Anna asked.

  It seemed like a valid point. I had never thought of it before. It was unusual for me to question any of my father’s politics.

  Anna brought out a side of me I hadn’t known. She made me more defiant, rebellious. So I agreed, and we climbed over the railing. One at a time, we fell onto the broken couch. I landed on it first. The cushions softened our landings.

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Anna said.

  “No, it was easier than I thought it would be.”

  We heard a sound approaching, coming from the street ahead. An tin can rolled down the sidewalk toward us. I listened as the wind blew and echoed between the alleyways. I grabbed Anna’s hand. “That is where we should go,” I said, pointing upwind. I led her down the sidewalk.

  Warsaw’s north side was in worse shape than the rest of the city by far. The north side used to be a luxurious district.

  But now buildings were torn in half; the bones of the former apartments protruded out over the rumbled remains. The concrete on the road was broken up and uneven due to the German bombardment.

  A strange gaseous scent filled the air. I recognized it immediately. The Nazis only bombed some of the Jewish communities. The real purpose of this was to test out the artillery. It was not meant to cripple the armed forces of Poland. The Polish army was a joke compared to their German neighbors. So of course the Germans defeated them very quickly.

  “What is that smell?” Anna asked. We turned the corner, and she knew without my response. It was the smell of fire and ash.

  Fire burned over several buildings ahead of us. Some small, nearly dead fires still exhaled lumps of gray smoke. The largest of the fires roared in the center of the road about three blocks away. It was in the shape of a hill. The fire moved in only one direction: up. It climbed higher and higher into the sky. The peak of the fire was lost in a large black cloud of soot and ash.

  Anna was curious. She had never seen anything like it before. And in a strange way, it was beautiful. Her father had kept her far from any of the images of war. Living her whole life in luxury, violence was a stranger to her. She had always stayed far away from fire. Now she stood meters from it. She was awed in the presence of it.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said jubilantly.

  “Okay,” I said. I felt the Colt 1911 pressed against my side. “Do you still have your father’s wine?”

  “Yes, I put it back inside my coat pocket when we dropped to the couch.”

  “It didn’t break?” I asked.

  “No, it stayed intact,” she answered.

  “Good. Are you ready to drink it?”

  “Yes,” she responded.

  “Let’s find a good place first and then we’ll open it,” I said.

  “Okay,” Anna responded. She held out her hand and I took it.

  71

  Hitler’s breath fogged up the car’s passenger window. He stared out impatiently. An entourage of SS guards surrounded his limo. They drove in black cars with two motorcyclists trailing alongside. MP38 machine guns attached to leather straps hung from the shoulders of the motorcyclists.

  His entourage generally was much larger, but tonight he did not want to attract attention to himself. He did not want anyone to know where he was going. It was not a public matter, but a personal one.

  The memories that took place inside the little lake house did not belong to the state; they belonged to Hitler, Gracy, and me. The crimes that happened under the large oaks, beyond the bleached-white porch swing, and inside the structure of a once beautiful lake house belonged in the reflections of young Willem Kessler, the son he stole.

  They drove most of the night until they finally arrived. Down a long dirt road and under the old trees—Hitler would never forget—they drove toward the house in front of the barren, serene lake. The driver peered back at him through the rearview mirror as the Führer’s breathing became irregular. The driver did not dare to speak. He feared Hitler as much as he respected him. Hitler hardly ever sat in the back of the car alone. This was the first time that the driver had ever noticed it.

  The lake house was untouched and barren, as Hitler had demanded.

  The cars stopped in the driveway. Pebbles flew out from under the tires. Some landed on the porch; the
rest disappeared into the grass around the faded green staircase. A few pebbles landed near the bottom of a rain gutter that came down from the roof.

  Water dripped out the bottom of the drain and merged into a small puddle on the ground. The grass around the lake house was still damp from the previous night’s rain. The house had been deserted for the last ten years. Once, Heinrik and Gracy dreamed of owning it and raising their son in it. Instead, I was raised there by an imposter.

  The Kessler’s dream house was haunted by their undead memories. And even though Heinrik Kessler had never set foot in the house, never slept next to his own wife in it, his memories haunted it.

  Heinrik Kessler’s ghost haunted Hitler as well. For years, Hitler had submerged any guilt he felt about Heinrik and Gracy. He felt stronger and stronger about me, but as I grew older, I grew to look more and more like my real father, reminding Hitler of his malevolent deeds.

  Hitler continued to stare out the car window. He leaned his forehead against it, his eyes slowly dropping to look at the ground next to the car. He watched as a brisk breeze blew through the long blades of grass all across the front yard.

  “Wait here,” Hitler said to the driver. He opened the door and stepped out.

  The SS guards stood behind his car near the trees. One guard parked his motorcycle and followed Hitler up to the house. The tips of his trench coat drug across the ground as he walked to the porch. He went in before Hitler with his machine gun at the ready. He entered the house and checked the downstairs rooms to be sure they were safe for the Führer to enter.

  Hitler remained in the open doorway. The other SS guards left the cars and walked around the perimeter of the house. They set up positions on every corner of the house, shielding the Führer from any potential ambushes. After securing the upper floors, the motorcycle guard returned to the porch.

  “No one enters,” Hitler said to him.

  The Führer walked into the darkness of the inner hallway. For nearly ten years, he had not set foot into that house. It was only in his dreams that he’d reentered the memories of that house.