Death’s Head

by Campbell Armstrong

  Grunwald had visited him on several occasions and Martha, early in her pregnancy, had consulted him once. Martha had gone to another doctor shortly after, arguing that she didn’t like Schwarzenbach because he seemed uncaring. But Grunwald, who considered this a perfect example of irrational feminine intuition, continued to consult Schwarzenbach until the autumn of 1935. At that time he had been suffering from severe headaches.

  Early in October 1935 he paid his last call. Schwarzenbach kept him waiting in the reception room until all the other patients had gone – even though some of them had actually arrived after Grunwald – and when Grunwald entered the surgery Schwarzenbach announced that he could no longer regard Grunwald as a patient. It appeared, Schwarzenbach said, that in view of the Nuremberg Laws, Grunwald would be well advised to seek a doctor of his own race. Besides, as a member of the National Socialist Party – in which organization he was held in some esteem – it could hardly help his career if it were discovered that he had Jewish patients. There was the additional fact, of course, that the practice had become too large and unless the number of patients were kept to a reasonable limit, everyone would suffer. Schwarzenbach had spoken these words without once looking at Grunwald, his eyes fixed to the window and the dishevelled garden at the rear as if he were discussing the failure of his flower-beds. Grunwald looked round the office: it had not occurred to him before, in spite of his suspicions, that Schwarzenbach was a Nazi. The gleaming instruments, the white coat hanging starkly on the back of the door, the tidy desk, the neat bundles of papers – what had political affiliations to do with the practice of medicine?

  Grunwald asked, ‘If you saw a Jew dying, and no Jewish doctor happened to be available, would you treat the man?’

  Schwarzenbach said nothing for a long time but stared at Grunwald as though the question were too naive to deserve an answer. He then moved to the window and pressed his forehead against the glass. ‘Adolf Hitler has clearly stipulated the way in which the Jews of Germany are to be regarded.’

  ‘What about you?’ Grunwald asked.

  ‘Me? What do you expect me to say?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you want to say?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer your questions, Herr Grunwald.’

  ‘It’s up to you, naturally. But what are you? A doctor?’

  Schwarzenbach looked angry. ‘A good doctor, Herr Grunwald, as most of my patients would testify – including yourself, I imagine.’

  ‘Until now, yes,’ Grunwald said.

  ‘And because I refuse to treat you, I’m no longer a good doctor?’

  Grunwald said nothing. He watched Schwarzenbach walk up and down the room. He was a man in his middle-thirties, already almost bald; a few strands of soft dark hair covered his skull. He was a neat man and Grunwald could imagine him meticulously hanging his clothes each night before he slept in his well-made bed. He wasn’t married although some of the patients in the waiting-room sometimes whispered of a vague love-affair that had gone wrong; and that he carried the scars of the shattered romance like some veteran returning from the front with his medals of martyrdom. It was Schwarzenbach’s walk that fascinated Grunwald: it was like that of a sailor who has spent his life struggling against head-on gales in rolling ships.

  Schwarzenbach said, ‘I don’t want to see you here again. I don’t want to treat you again. The laws of the Reich – the laws of the Führer – are inviolable.’

  For one moment Grunwald thought that he was joking and that the solemnity was a charade, something that could not be taken seriously. It was like the feeling he had when he watched the Liebstandarte march past and heard the noise of drums.

  ‘Do I have to say anything more?’

  Grunwald got to his feet, still waiting for some explanation that would clarify everything. But there wasn’t an explanation; there was none to be given. Schwarzenbach remained grim and silent and did not even turn to look as Grunwald left the room.

  Several years passed before he saw Schwarzenbach again. During that time he heard two things, both – as he then thought, unlikely rumours. The first was that Schwarzenbach had been invited to advise on the so-called Reich euthanasia programme. The second that he had been seen in the Marienplatz, in the autumn of 1938, wearing a resplendent new black uniform.

  And now Schwarzenbach was in Berlin, calling himself Lutzke. Grunwald closed his eyes: all at once he was tired, he experienced a fatigue that seemed to sink through his bones as if they were blotting-paper and the noises around him – piano, the song, the empty rattle of human voices – came from a long way off. He looked up at the ceiling where a single lamp, shrouded in smoke, burned bleakly. He got up from the table and went outside and wondered if he should go back to the house in the Augsburgerstrasse. The dead girl – there would perhaps be questions to answer. But the idea was pointless. It wasn’t death he wanted to see: he wanted clean air, fresh air, an atmosphere that hadn’t been polluted by the scents and stenches of destruction.

  He crossed the street. A wintry wind flapped through his thin overcoat. He saw in a sudden flash of cold insight the dilemma of his life. He had a duty to speak out, and to tell what he knew.

  Schwarzenbach. No mistake. The face, the voice, the hands, the manner of walking.

  Suddenly he was afraid again. The wind seemed to crucify him with driven shafts of ice. Dr Schwarzenbach – will you save my life? I am afraid of dying. I want to live.

  Was that the way it had been? Had it happened like that? In Chelmo concentration camp, in the bleak backwaters of occupied Poland, had he really genuflected in front of the good doctor like some half-mad slave pleading to be spared? Spared from what? From precisely what? He thought of the barbed-wire strung across the dead landscape like an artificial horizon imposed upon nature by a crowd of lunatics and the memory seemed to drag out of him some deep longing to be free, to forget.

  Schwarzenbach. He had a duty to reveal what he knew. He is in Berlin and the war is over and he is one of the men you are looking for on the count of crimes against humanity in occupied Poland. What are you going to do?

  An American sergeant went past him, bent forward against the lash of the wind. Grunwald, hurrying, caught up with the soldier and fell into step only a few paces behind him. It would take only a few seconds, it would take no more than that to expose Dr Lutzke. He held his breath.

  The soldier swung round and stared hard at him.

  ‘Beat it, Fritz.’

  Grunwald brought his hands out of his overcoat.

  ‘Look, fuck off. No cigarettes. No chocolate. Unnerstand? Now fuck off.’

  The soldier walked briskly away and Grunwald, motionless, watched him go. A sense of imposed silence fell across him. He felt despair, loneliness.

  It was impossible to speak out against Schwarzenbach. He saw that now. He saw the frailty of the past and realized that, if he were to tell the truth, the whole skeletal edifice would come toppling down. And it would fall not only on Schwarzenbach but on himself because the guilt was something they shared between them.

  PART TWO

  Berlin, September/October 1945

  6

  Waking suddenly in the dark as if an external noise had disturbed him, he reached out for his wristwatch on the bedside table. He went to the window and held the watch at such an angle that it caught the thin light from a lamp outside. Three-twenty. What had awakened him? What had happened to disturb him? He found his carpet slippers and went through to the room that served as a kitchen – although of course it was only a kitchen in the loosest possible meaning of the word. The plumbing was crude and makeshift and the wall-basin was badly cracked. When he filled it to the top water seeped through. Christ, why did nothing function properly any more? Wherever he looked he saw the patches people had used to cover things that had been casualties of the war. It was a pretence. You had only to remove the patches to see. He went through the kitchen on to the small room beyond that he used as a surgery. He turned on the light and looked around; and th
en he realized something else as well. He was afraid. Fear, like something hanging lightly from the ceiling of a darkened room, like a dry cobweb, had touched him. Returning to the kitchen he poured himself a small glass of cognac and sat for a time at the table, listening to the continual drip from the faucet. When he looked from the window he saw how black the sky had become. The absence of light was suddenly appalling. His hands were shaking. It embarrassed him to see just how badly they trembled; and yet it would have been worse if there had been anyone else present to notice it as well. He sipped the cognac very slowly and enjoyed the taste. It pleased him to think that in an age of tastelessness there was still something he could enjoy.

  When he went back into the bedroom he knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not now. Sleep had been driven from him. He turned on the reading lamp and looked distastefully at the way in which the bedsheets had become so crumpled. Was he really such a restless sleeper? Then he went to the mirror and began to sweep what remained of his hair across the baldness of his forehead. A vain thing, really, but he felt the need to keep up appearances. He put on his trousers, shoes and a shirt; and then he pulled on his overcoat and went outside to the landing. The stairs were dark and utterly silent. And yet – strange what darkness did – he imagined that someone was waiting below. Looking down, he almost expected to see the flare of a match or the arc of a torch. But there was nothing. Nerves; he was simply nervous. As he started to descend he listened to the slight echoes of his own footsteps. When he stopped just once the echo continued briefly, but in a hollow way, like someone catching his breath.

  Outside, the night air was freezing cold. His breath hung in the darkness. The streets were silent. The houses that remained standing were like mausoleums; and between them those that had been gutted reminded him, absurdly he thought, of rotting limbs. Their shells were of various shapes and sizes and they seemed to threaten him. It was hard to imagine this place as it once might have been. Instead, he could see only the blind windows and the broken arches, the courtyards filled with rubble and dust and splinters of masonry and charred beams. Berlin: a tinderbox. The Reichskänzlei, the Reichs-Arbeits-Ministerium, the Reichs Justiz Ministerium. These seemed to him, as he thought of them now, like flowers that had been severed and had died. The Unter den Linden, the Friedrichstrasse, the Brandenburger Tor, the Pariser-Platz, the Tiergarten beyond: now all monstrously and hideously devoured.

  He continued to walk. An anaemic moon broke through the clouds. It looked like a curved chip of ice, pale and insubstantial. As it broke it made even more hideous the ragged buildings around him, covering them with a white light that looked like frost. And then when the moon sank the darkness dropped again. By the time he had reached the woman’s house he was shivering. He let himself in with the key she had given him and stood for a time in the unlit entrance hall and wondered if he should wake her. What difference would it make if he did? He could turn now and leave but the thought of the long walk back didn’t appeal to him. Moving forward, feeling his way against the wall, he stumbled over something metallic. There was a loud echoing noise and although he waited for some response – a door to be opened, an angry voice – he heard nothing. When he reached the door of the woman’s room he pushed it open. There was a smell of candlegrease and tobacco smoke and something else altogether – the scent of the woman.

  He found her lying across an old sofa. Her breath was stale from cheap alcohol. With some disgust he shook her and she woke; he whispered his name and felt her body go limp under his hands.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, what time is it?’

  He found a candle and lit it. Even in the pale, flattering light she looked ugly.

  ‘What time is it?’ she again asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She sat up, rubbing her hands through her hair. ‘You choose the strangest times, don’t you?’

  He stared at the candle flame. Why had he bothered to come? To rid himself of the fear? No: he would not admit that he was afraid. When he turned to look at the woman she was lighting a cigarette. She was fat and hideous. He had decided this before. When he lay with her flesh pressed flat against his he was reminded of old butcher-meat; he was reminded of the fact that decay touched not only buildings and cities but flesh as well. When he lay sweating against her and listened to the moist sound that their bodies made together, it disgusted him. He had decided all this before – so why had he come? What hatred had brought him all this way across the darkened city? And yet it wasn’t hatred: when he thought about it, he realized that he felt nothing. Hatred was something strong. It was an emotion you reserved for your enemies. The woman meant nothing to him.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed back the thin blouse that she wore. Her skin felt rough. She suffered from some minor ailment that sometimes affected her skin, causing rough, red patches. A lack of vitamins; a lack of hot water and soap. Too much alcohol.

  ‘You don’t give a damn how I feel,’ she said. ‘I’m bloody tired. I’m really bloody tired.’

  ‘Shut up.’ He took the blouse from her body and stared at her naked breasts. Their hugeness appalled him. The nipples were cracked and dry. She lay back on the sofa and dropped her cigarette to the bare floorboards where it smouldered and died.

  ‘Undress me,’ he said. ‘Hurry. Undress me.’

  She removed his overcoat and unbuttoned his shirt. He felt her fingers upon the buttons of his trousers. Her face was utterly blank. The candle burned in her fair hair. She brought her face forward and placed her lips against his belly. He felt her moist tongue against his flesh and her fingers undoing his trousers. What had brought him here? Fear? But he had never been afraid before. It was a feeling he had never experienced. In that sense he could safely say of himself that he was not and never had been a coward. He had never failed to face up to the facts of life, to the facts of his own existence.

  He watched the candlelight in the woman’s hair and he placed his hands upon her neck. Involuntarily she stiffened; her body became tense. She moved her head back and forward in slight, imperceptible movements and he thought of the girl, the dead girl, the dead girl in the Augsburgerstrasse he had seen the day before. She had been slashed across the neck, an expert cut, a clean slash through the jugular vein. She had looked like a broken toy, a figurine in whose existence he found it impossible to believe; and he was indifferent to her death. He had been quite indifferent. He imagined that there were those who would have said that he was callous – and yet if he were callous then he was proud of the fact. Callousness didn’t have to be a pejorative description: to be callous you had to be hard. And where was the virtue in being soft? He thought of the girl as he tightened his hold on the woman’s neck, as he held hard to the back of her head and tensed his body in preparation. A dead girl.

  But it wasn’t only the dead girl. There was that fucking little Jew. That fucking little Jew who had stepped forward and called out a name. Schwarzenbach? Who was Schwarzenbach? The man was dead – if he had ever lived at all. There was only Lutzke. Dr Gerhardt Lutzke. The Jew was mistaken, his memories were false, completely false, and because of that he had made a mistake. Was that why he was afraid? Because the Jew had mentioned the name? No: he had to remind himself that he wasn’t afraid at all. Nobody could ever say with any certainty that he was Schwarzenbach, and nobody could ever prove it. He had papers to prove that he was Gerhardt Lutzke. And that was what he would have to remember now.

  The woman was lighting another cigarette. But first she wiped her mouth against her sleeve. He adjusted his clothes and waited for her to say something, hoping that she had nothing to say and that she would remain silent. She was an object. He had used her as anybody would use an object.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  He didn’t answer. He was fascinated by the flame from the candle and how it moved back and forth even though there was hardly any draught.

  ‘Well – you bloody well ought to be,’ she said. ‘Waking me up at this time of day.’ She
touched the back of his head and with mock tenderness said, ‘Poor thing. You must have been desperate. Were you desperate?’

  He pushed her hand away. ‘I gave you something. I want it back.’

  ‘What did you give me?’

  ‘You know. I want it back.’

  She began to cough. The cough disgusted him more than anything else; more than her breasts, more than her body. It was the kind of cough that came deep from her lungs. ‘Are you talking about that photograph?’

  ‘That’s right. I want it back.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to have it as a keepsake.’

  He clenched his hands in anger. ‘Look. Just give it back. Forget you ever saw it.’

  The woman shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’ She dragged a wooden box from behind a curtain, opened it, and began to rummage through it. She took out a photograph and looked at it.

  ‘Why do you want it back? Are you afraid of something?’

  He took the photograph from her. He put it into the pocket of his overcoat. As he did so he knew that sooner or later he would have to destroy it.

  ‘Are you afraid it might fall into the wrong hands?’ she asked.

  ‘Forget you ever saw it, will you?’ He felt the photograph inside his pocket and wondered why he really wanted it back. The notion that he was afraid returned to him again and he tried to push it from his mind. He wanted the photograph back simply because it was his personal property. There was no other reason. How could there be? In a moment of stupid weakness, when he had been boasting to the woman, he had given her the picture. It was of himself in SS uniform taken in 1939 against the background of the Schöner Brunnen in the Adolf-Hitler-Platz in Nuremberg. He hadn’t worn the uniform often and this, so far as he could recall, was the only photograph that showed him wearing it. He hadn’t needed to wear it except during great occasions and even now he couldn’t recollect why he had put it on in Nuremberg in 1939. But why did he feel that he would have to destroy it? It was a harmless snapshot. It didn’t incriminate him. So why had he asked for it back?