Death’s Head

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘It’s late now. And I’m tired.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Grunwald still hesitated: why didn’t she ask him to stay? He didn’t want to face the darkness of the stairs again. He didn’t want to step outside the door and put his foot on the landing and experience the fear he had felt before.

  ‘I’m sorry about the bath. About the plumbing being fucked up, I mean.’ She laughed lightly. Several more cracks appeared in her make-up, running from beneath her eyes to the sides of her cheeks. He had the curious sensation that she was coming apart.

  ‘I wish you didn’t feel the need to apologize,’ he said.

  She looked down at the table and shook her head.

  Cold, bitingly cold. He had been standing in the dark for what seemed like hours. What was he waiting for? For the Jew, yes, but why? What did he mean to do? He huddled against the wall in the passageway for wamrth. Ice came through the broken front door and sliced his overcoat and he shivered. What was the Jew doing up there? What was he playing at? Schwarzenbach looked towards the door. Faintly he could see a pattern of light falling from somewhere outside against the broken panes of glass. There was a disgusting smell: tramps and dead-beats came here to shit. He pressed himself to the wall and listened. Nothing. No sounds. Why was he waiting for the Jew?

  If he closed his eyes it seemed that a black ocean came to beat against the inside of his head and he was trembling, still trembling, ever since he had seen the Jew in the bar off the Lutherstrasse he had been unable to control himself. It disgusted him to think of his own body being out of control. Why didn’t it stop? Nerves, as if abandoned, moved inside him, pulsing like the mechanism of some run-down clock. Another shift of stabbing wind blew through the panes of glass and he moved back a few yards down the passageway. The building was so quiet. It was a soundproof shell, a vacuum.

  He thought of Chelmno and the time when the Jew had come through the door of the hut. At first he failed to recognize the Jew because he was so emaciated: his flesh seemed to hang on him like flimsy wrappings of loose paper. The SS-Scharführer – a thug, a philistine who enjoyed the infliction of pain – pushed the Jew forward as if he were presenting a human trophy.

  ‘This one has a sense of humour, Hauptsturmführer,’ the man said. ‘I want to demonstrate to him that to have a sense of humour in a place like Chelmno is something of a disgrace.’

  Schwarzenbach recognized the Jew then: at that point he remembered the man’s name and face and the ailments that had dogged him during the years of their association. But that wasn’t all: the Jew was afraid, it was written all over his face, he was scared to death – and yet beneath the fear, under the surface of the expression, there was something else. A look of intense pity, a look that had said: So you have come to this.

  So you have come to this. Schwarzenbach’s first impulse was to destroy the man. When the Scharführer had gone and he was alone with the Jew, he had said: ‘I am in a position to kill you.’

  The Jew said nothing. He had become accustomed to silence: prisoners did not exchange conversation with SS unless they were spoken to first.

  ‘I can kill you,’ he said again.

  The Jew looked around the hut: he must have absorbed the instruments of surgery because an expression of incomprehension crossed his face. Schwarzenbach had picked up a surgical knife and held it tightly in his hand. He thought of inserting it into the man’s flesh, pushing it between the ribs and deep into the heart. But he didn’t. He dropped the knife and it clattered across the table that lay between him and the Jew.

  ‘However,’ he said. ‘I am also in a position to give you your life.’

  The Jew’s expression changed to one of relief, of hope, and Schwarzenbach thought it strange that they – all the prisoners – should want to retain their grip on their miserable little lives even if they knew that no world would ever exist for them again beyond the barbed wire and the watchtowers. But they were afraid of death, each and every one of them lived in terror of the final moment as if existence were something infinitely precious.

  ‘I can give you your life,’ Schwarzenbach said.

  ‘How?’ the Jew asked.

  ‘Do you want to die?’

  ‘No. I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Then you will do as I say.’

  You will do as I say. Schwarzenbach moved towards the stairs, away from the cold. He should have followed his first impulse then and murdered the man: another corpse would have been insignificant anyhow. He should have taken the surgical knife and made the incision there and then and finished the Jew’s life cleanly. But he hadn’t. He had failed to make the attempt. He had been too clever, acting on the belief that he knew of an even better way of prolonging the Jew’s agony.

  ‘I will do as you say,’ the Jew answered.

  ‘Entirely,’ Schwarzenbach said.

  And now it was incredibly cold as if the whole city around him had frozen into a block of solid ice. He moved a little way up the stairs and sat down, his back to the wall.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ the Jew asked.

  ‘First you must know something of the work I do here,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘You must not be prejudiced. The work is of a scientific nature.’

  ‘Scientific?’ the Jew asked stupidly, as if he were recalling unbelievable rumours he had heard whispered about the scientific aspects of the concentration camps.

  ‘Don’t ask questions,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘Your life depends upon your ability to accept!’

  ‘Yes,’ the Jew said. ‘I understand.’

  There was a fresh eagerness in the Jew’s eyes now, that of the pupil concentrating upon every word of the master, anxious to hear everything and let nothing slip away. He watched Schwarzenbach move around the room, tracking him with his eyes – those bloody eyes filled with hope. Schwarzenbach remembered a sense of growing excitement: the Jew’s life depended upon his own whim. It hung on a thread as slender as that.

  ‘The work I do here is connected with the nature of pain and human endurance. It is connected with an understanding of physical, pain. Naturally it would be impossible to study pain in the abstract, as it were. It becomes necessary to inflict it. Do you follow me?’

  Schwarzenbach picked up the surgical knife from the table and looked at Grunwald. ‘Hold out your wrist.’

  Without hesitation, the Jew thrust his arm forward. Schwarzenbach brought the knife down across the Jew’s wrist, causing him to flinch, bringing a swell of blood from the broken skin.

  ‘Pain,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘Exactly what you felt just then.’

  The Jew watched the blood drip from the wound and then raised his eyes to Schwarzenbach. The eyes were expressionless, as if the man had become momentarily detached from his body.

  ‘You want to remain alive, do you?’ Schwarzenbach asked.

  The Jew moved his head a few times.

  ‘Very well,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘I find the pressure of work intolerable sometimes. And I have often thought lately that I need some kind of assistant.’

  The Jew blinked. Surprise? Astonishment? It was impossible to tell.

  ‘You will assist me,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘Do you accept that as a condition of your survival?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Yes. The Jew had accepted. To save his own pathetic life, he had allowed himself to follow wherever Schwarzenbach wanted to lead. He had allowed himself to be taken on one of the roads to hell.

  At the door he hesitated, feeling suddenly drained: he did not seem to have the strength to open the door and step out on to the stairs.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said.

  There was no reply. He pulled the door open and closed it quietly behind him. The decreasing angle of electric light dwindled finally into darkness, pinpointing fading shapes of things on the stairs below: a couple of old chairs, a table turned upside down, pieces of bedding. And then he could see nothing. He put out his hand until he found the rail and then he started to descend.

  Fuck her, h
e thought: why had she turned him out when it must have been obvious to her that he wanted badly to stay? A few hours more, that was all, at least until daylight. He plunged forward again into the dark. A candle might have helped and yet the thought of light was appalling somehow because of what it might reveal: worse still, a candle would have created moving shadows. If she had really wanted to help him she would have asked him to stay –

  A swirling shaft of cold air came up from somewhere below and it penetrated his overcoat like a fragment of ice. Ahead of him the unyielding darkness was a fine skin that had been stretched unbrokenly across space. He moved on until he reached the next landing. Noises. A rat scampering somewhere. Paper rustling. Ordinary sounds – but why did they manage to sound like someone breathing heavily in an enclosed space? If only he had a light. Fuck her again, he thought.

  He reached the next landing, the second from the bottom. He paused there a moment, hesitating like a blind man who suspects an obstacle just in front of him. He put out his hand. Again there came a sudden blast of cold air, a shaft sucked somehow into the building from the street outside. He moved on to the steps again, listening all the time for other noises. The rat again. Paper rustling in the draught. Why was he afraid of these meaningless sounds?

  He stopped at the last flight of stairs before the passageway. Through the broken glass panes of the front door he could see a faint impression of light that fell upon the glass like indistinct thumbprints. Moving forward, he put his foot on the first step.

  Something rose up just in front of him. A figure he could barely make out. A man. A shape that rose up from the darkness of the wall to meet him.

  ‘Herr Grunwald?’

  Grunwald stood perfectly still. He opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘It is Herr Grunwald, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes –’ The clipped voice was unmistakable.

  ‘Strange to meet you once again,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘You’ll forgive my rudeness the other day when I failed to recognize you. Sometimes one’s memory plays odd tricks. Don’t you find that?’

  Grunwald said nothing. He moved backwards to the landing behind him. Schwarzenbach struck a match and the flame killed a tiny area of the darkness.

  Schwarzenbach dropped the match. ‘I was surprised to see you again, Herr Grunwald. I imagined that you were dead. I’ve been thinking about you quite a bit since then –’

  Grunwald moved back against the wall: he touched something soft.

  ‘How did you find me here?’ he asked.

  ‘By accident,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘You must have imagined you had seen the last of me. Is that what you thought? Did you imagine you wouldn’t see me again?’

  Grunwald was silent. Schwarzenbach asked: ‘Well? Lost your tongue? You weren’t so taciturn, Herr Grunwald, when you were begging for your life.’

  Grunwald felt the pains in his chest increase. Pain seemed to dominate everything for him, as if the very centre of his life were located in the region of his heart. Why was all this happening to him? What had he done to deserve his life?

  ‘Well, Herr Grunwald? Why don’t you talk?’

  ‘There’s nothing to say,’ Grunwald answered. ‘What do you want? Haven’t you caused me enough –’

  ‘I haven’t caused you anything,’ Schwarzenbach said. ‘You made your own choice. Don’t come running to me, moaning about the past. You did whatever you could to save your precious flesh. And where has it got you? Where are you now?’

  Grunwald felt for the handrail and almost lost his balance.

  ‘I should have killed you when I had the chance,’ Schwarzenbach said and moved forward on the steps. The Jew wasn’t far away: he could hear the quick, urgent sound of his breathing. He reached the landing and struck another match. Frozen in the light, Grunwald was standing with his back to the wall, pressed there as if held in place by some heavy weight.

  ‘I can see you. I know where you are,’ Schwarzenbach dropped the match and moved a few paces forward.

  ‘What do you want?’ Grunwald asked.

  ‘Do you know what I really want?’ Schwarzenbach was silent a moment, waiting for Grunwald’s answer. But none came.

  Schwarzenbach said, ‘All I really want now is some peace. I want to live my life without the bloody past interfering all the time. You must understand that, Herr Grunwald. You must feel the same way yourself sometimes.’

  Schwarzenbach again lit a match. Through the curtain of light he could see Grunwald’s impassive face. It seemed curiously featureless, as if it had been robbed of its shape. He felt an intense loathing, an excitement that propelled him forward just as simultaneously it held him back: the moment could not be squandered. He would kill the Jew this time. He would kill him with his own hands, without instruments. He would cancel out what remained of the past and he would be safe.

  The match burned his fingers and he dropped it to the ground where it flared briefly and then went out. The darkness seemed more complete, more ruthless than ever before.

  He reached across the darkness for Grunwald and his hands came in contact with the Jew’s overcoat and he caught hold of it, clawing it, dragging Grunwald towards him, pulling the Jew back across the landing, over the debris heaped there, over the upturned chairs and chunks of plaster: it seemed to him that a fire was burning in his mind and that what he would have to do, what it was most important to do, was to destroy Grunwald. His fingers sinking into the moist flesh of the Jew’s neck, he swung Grunwald round and thrust him against the wall as though he were no more substantial than a dry stick that he expected would snap at any moment, break in several pieces. The Jew grunted for breath and for life and raised his hands feebly to push Schwarzenbach away. But he held on, clinging, clinging, in spite of Grunwald’s scratching fingers that were upraised now towards his face and eyes. He pushed the Jew’s head back against the wall and the neck snapped against the flaking concrete, snapping back like a tightly coiled spring. In the years before the war he remembered seeing them standing in sombre queues outside travel agencies waiting and hoping for ships that would carry them to the outside world, waiting in their disgusting queues like servants hanging around tables for crumbs, suitcases under their arms and lines of them marching towards the frontiers and having to run the gauntlet of stormtroopers who mocked them, who rightly mocked them, and he remembered being in Frankfurt on the Kristallnacht and seeing the crowds of men clattering along the Friedberger Anlage to the synagogue there with their torches blazing and their feet hammering, hammering, remembered the frozen hollow eyes of the dead and the dying whom he saw sacrifice themselves like cowards on the barbed wire electric fences or be gunned down like rats from the watchtowers. Now the Jew was gasping for his life: he grunted, kicked, scratched, cried out, tried to catch at the remnants of life that were leaving his body. He hadn’t a chance: he hadn’t a hope in hell.

  Grunwald felt his lungs expand and then burst and his ribs catch fire as surely as if lighted instruments were being played along his bones. His fingers, curling as though to clutch at nothing, caught the flesh of Schwarzenbach’s face. In a moment he would die. There was nothing to struggle for and no strength remained to fight. His life was rising out of him like a single, dissolving column of smoke. There was nothing left to struggle for.

  Schwarzenbach imagined his hands had become weapons made of iron. The thumbs that encircled the Jew’s neck were like two bands of metal, digging deeper into the blood of Grunwald’s life. In a moment now, in a moment the Jew would stop struggling and then there would be nothing left of him.

  Grunwald tried to force his head upwards. He was splitting. At the back of his throat was a constantly growing sensation of tightness and his chest felt empty. He was going to die – He threw his hands in the air, forcing them beyond Schwarzenbach’s arms, and thrust the index finger of his right hand deep into Schwarzenbach’s left eye. He heard a confused cry and suddenly the pressure on his throat had gone. Stumbling away towards the stairs, he fell down, overcome by we
akness. In the dark he heard Schwarzenbach curse blindly and the sound of him fumbling in his coat for matches. A flare of light: it blinded him and he tried to crawl up the stairs out of Schwarzenbach’s range of vision.

  Schwarzenbach came after him, grabbing him by the collar of his coat and dragging him back down the stairs. Grunwald rolled over on his side, out of Schwarzenbach’s reach, and fell halfway down the next flight of stairs. Dazed, coughing, he sat up. More matches were being hastily lit on the landing, flickering in Schwarzenbach’s hands like fireflies.

  Grunwald crawled into the passageway, listening to the noise of Schwarzenbach on the stairs. If he could make it to the door, and from there to the street, if he could do that then he had a chance of safety. He started to crawl along the passageway, his eyes fixed to the broken panes of glass in the door.

  Schwarzenbach called out: ‘I’ll find you, Grunwald.’

  Grunwald reached the door and pushed it open. Barely conscious he stumbled out on to the street. Did he have the strength to run? Outside, he pulled himself to his feet. His neck and throat were numb, no longer a part of him, and his legs would hardly respond. He limped towards the corner and made his way slowly amongst the black buildings. In an alleyway he lay down flat on his face and coughed for a long time. His neck was bleeding and his eyes felt as if they had been injured from within. He turned over on his back, gasping for air, drawing as much into his lungs as he possibly could without pain.