Death’s Head

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘Because I don’t want anything from you.’

  In despair, she turned away from him. He saw her expression in the mirror and wanted to go towards her and somehow explain why he behaved as he did. But he didn’t move.

  She said, ‘Will you leave me alone now?’

  She sat down on the bed and stared at her hands. How could he be so hurtful? How could he cause so much pain to her? And then she considered herself and thought it stupid that she had offered her body as if it were a meaningless thing.

  He put his hand out and touched her hair lightly. ‘You’re a good person.’

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re a better person than I could ever hope to be.’

  ‘Does that matter? Does goodness matter?’

  He lowered his hand from her head: ‘It matters to me.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said. What was he trying to tell her? What was he trying to say?

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘For God’s sake, of course I don’t understand you. You talk in riddles. Why am I any better than you? What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s a question of courage,’ he said. There was a silence: he wanted to say nothing more. He wanted the puzzle to remain. She got up from the bed and stood for a time, head bowed, in the middle of the floor. Then, as if she wanted to occupy herself, she started to rearrange the clothes that lay on top of the cabinet. She became tired of this and threw them aside.

  ‘A question of courage,’ she said. ‘What does that mean? I can’t think what it might mean. You must have more courage than me, Leonhard. You survived the camps. All I ever did was to hide away like a coward. How can you possibly have any less courage than me?’

  He shrugged. Everything seemed to melt backwards into the past, dissolving like hot wax only to assume more monstrous shapes later. He hated himself. He thought with disgust of his life and the contrast between himself and Fräulein Strauss. He imagined that to touch her would cause her skin to burn, as if he carried in the tips of his fingers some fatal germ.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer me?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s nothing left to say.’

  ‘I can’t say that I love you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what love is, and I don’t know how to recognize it.’

  ‘I don’t want you to say that,’ he answered, awkwardly aware of her nearness.

  She stepped back from him. It was true: love was unrecognizable. It was as if her emotions had lain dormant for so many years that she could no longer be sure of what she felt. She pushed her hair away from her face, conscious of the way he was staring at her. What was he thinking now?

  She dropped her hands to her side. ‘I don’t know what I feel.’ She smiled at him: ‘I think we’ve all been robbed of our emotional vocabulary.’

  She sat down on the bed and watched him. He was like a nervous adolescent, standing there in the centre of the room as if uncertain about what to say or do next. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and she noticed a gash in the material that ran for about six inches from the hem of the pocket down.

  ‘Your coat’s torn,’ she said.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Let me stitch it for you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My appearance doesn’t matter.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ He wouldn’t allow her to do anything: he wanted to remain private, locked up in himself.

  ‘It’s an old coat,’ he said: he had taken it from the corpse of a Polish peasant he had stumbled over in a muddy field.

  ‘Just the same, I could repair it for you.’

  Why was she fussing so much about the coat? He felt irritated.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d forgotten. Nothing matters to you, does it? It doesn’t matter if you live or die, does it?’

  A feeling of frustration rose inside her, as if she had just realized that he was hollow and empty and that the enigma she was trying to explore was merely a thing of her own making. Seated on the bed, he looked forlorn and abandoned, adrift from the objects around him. In spite of herself she wanted to reach for him and protect him against whatever it was that threatened him.

  ‘Leonhard,’ she said whispering.

  He raised his face to look at her. She approached the bed.

  She repeated his name a second time. Then, moving slowly, she sat on the bed beside him: she was conscious of the space that existed between them. She wondered about his life: what had his marriage been like? Willi had told her that there had been a child, Hugo, and that both mother and son had been taken away one day to an unknown destination. What had Grunwald’s wife been like? She fumbled for some understanding. Was it because of some desperate loyalty to his wife’s memory that he remained so detached? Was it because he did not want to betray her, even in death? These questions seemed to emphasize not only how little she knew about Grunwald, but how small her own understanding of herself was: and she had been blind enough to think that survival had brought a sharp, new self-awareness! There were elements of her own nature hidden away from her, parts of her that defied analysis. She was groping in a darkened room, stumbling against things, breaking things apart: a blind, blind person. She moved nearer to him, noticing that he was now motionless as if any sign of movement would consistute encouragement to her. She put out her hand to touch him and then she froze. She did not think she could stand to be rejected again. She tried to imagine that she was someone else, another person, the sort of person endowed with enough emotional equipment to absorb rejection. The kind of woman who was not afraid of making approaches to a man. She saw nothing in his eyes, a blankness, as if he had vacated himself and the man in front of her were an illusion. She did not know what she wanted from him, or what he was prepared to offer, but her mind wheeled again and again around the prospect of shattering his privacy, breaking the walls down, entering him and knowing him and understanding his existence.

  Love – could love flourish in the space of forty-eight hours? She was ignorant of passion and what she knew she had simply reconstructed from love stories of her teenage years when men and women whispered undying devotion and unending faithfulness, and held hands and clasped bodies in firelit rooms, or expressed their feelings with glances and secret signs in fashionable restaurants. It had all been so correct, stiff and clinical. There was nothing of sweat or fear. Heroines trembled, but only in anticipation of the perfect orgasm induced by the perfect lover. There was nothing of undressing, of undoing laces or clips or buttons, because clothes disappeared miraculously as if they had never existed. She remembered all this and wondered if it could be like that, and then realized that such a thing was impossible. She was dealing with a substance that had never materialized in books – reality. The man beside her on the bed was real, she could smell him, touch him, fall against him, and because he was real she was trembling. She moved her hand against him and waited, conscious, incongruously conscious, of the rent in his coat. Her mind was racing ahead of itself, shifting this way and that: what did she want from him? what did she really feel? how could she isolate and categorize her feelings? Six and a half years in one room had ossified her and when she recalled the time and the days crawling one after the other like snails in some grotesque race she was amazed, staggered that she could have survived so long. I want him, she thought. I want to know him. I want him to know me. The only important thing is to seize the chance. To create the opportunity. I want him to feel me. I want to feel him touching me.

  He turned to look at her, shifting his head only slightly. Her eyes magnetized him. He found himself thinking of Martha. He had made love to Martha for the first time some months before their marriage. In a holiday chalet at Tutzing. He could no longer recall the details, except for the heat which sizzled inside the tiny, shuttered room and the noise of a solitary fly buzzing against the wall. Later, they had gone to the Café Dreh
er and drank beer in the garden and he remembered being acutely conscious of the fact that it was summer, as if for the first time, as if for all of his life until that moment he had been unaware of the sun or the heat or the fact that seasons changed. But that had been years ago and Martha was dead: remembering Tutzing now was like perversely savouring the image of making love to a corpse.

  He felt Elisabeth’s hand cover his own and his resistance seemed suddenly to weaken, as if it had been undermined by the memory of Martha. Confused a moment, he imagined that the hand that lay across his fingers was Martha’s and that somehow Martha had been resurrected, returned to him intact. He experienced a strange sensation of joy and relief that lingered just as long as he kept the image of Martha in his mind. Turning around, he pulled the woman towards him and for a long time they lay together without moving, like people afraid that any sudden movement would change everything inexorably. He thought of the long grass on the Rosen-Insel and of how he had held Martha against him for what appeared to be hours, while they listened to the sounds of insects and the motion of water against the shore. They had constructed a web around themselves: even the noise of the steamer that ploughed down the lake towards Tutzing did not penetrate it.

  Her hand rose to his face and then dropped against his shoulder, but her eyes remained constant and fixed. It was the expression he observed in the eyes that unnerved him: her stare was a tangible thing, a fine thread that linked him to her. He tried to remember the long grass on the Rosen-Insel; he tried to conjure out of the backwaters of his memory the sight of the mountains that could be seen from the edge of the Starnberger See – the Wendelstein, the Benediktenwand, the Brecherspitze, and all the others – but although he could recall the names as clearly as if he had seen them on a map, he could not recreate the image.

  She said something to him, but he did not catch the words. She pressed her face against his neck and her fingers moved between the buttons of this coat. He felt that he was supping down the greasy side of a slope, frantically trying to get a foothold. Lying in the long grass, Martha had spoken only once and her words had been whipped away by a sudden breeze. What had she said then? He would never know.

  Elisabeth sat upright and began to undo the buttons of her blouse. She did this slowly, as if ashamed. Turning his eyes away, he gazed at the ceiling for a time. He heard her remove her clothes: faint sounds, like people whispering in silent rooms. He felt no urge to move: there was neither the impulse to escape from her, nor the compulsion to remain. He was outside himself, floating, unable to control or to predict the course of events. He was waiting. It was as though he were suspended. Acts, decisions, urges, feelings – these had fallen into a state of abeyance.

  She leaned over him and took his face between her hands. He was extremely thin and for a moment she imagined that without his clothes he would cease to exist. She felt nervous again, yet she knew that she would not suddenly stop and take a backward step. Closing her eyes, she lowered herself against him. She heard him undo the buttons of his coat and draw his arms from the sleeves. Underneath he was wearing a clean grey shirt that she recognized as one of Willi’s. She had washed and pressed it herself.

  She shivered because now the room was cold. Her perspiration froze upon her body. She drew the sheets back from the bed and lay beneath them, her limbs stiff. She watched him undress, half-turned away from her. It occurred to her that he was as nervous as she and that all his reluctance boiled down to the fact that he was frightened. He was frightened of climbing into the bed beside her. She stared at the objects in the room and wondered if she would bleed when he entered her. She despised her own ignorance: how could she have remained a virgin so long?

  She stared at the print of the Café Helbig and noticed that Grunwald’s shadow, thrown by the electric light, fell across it. He was stripped to his trousers. His ribs were visible and his skin was blotchy in places. She felt suddenly very sorry for him and for whatever it was that he had experienced in the past and she wondered if, after all, she could offer him hope.

  She held out her hand towards him and he hesitated a moment before moving slowly forward.

  ‘The light,’ she said. ‘Put the light out.’

  He touched the switch and stood for a time in the darkness. From the other side of the room he could hear the sound of her breathing. She called out to him softly but he did not move until his eyes had become accustomed to the dark. She lay like a shadow on the bed, both arms visible over the top of the sheets. Looking at her, he felt strangely calm and collected. His mind was devoid of thought, empty for once of the sounds of accusation. It was as if he had been listening to a clamorous noise for many long months that had suddenly been shut off, leaving behind it the kind of silence that could only exist on an empty planet.

  She said, ‘It’s cold.’

  He drew the sheets back. In the blackened room her body was pale and immobile and her hair lay across the pillow like an intricate pattern of dust. When he touched her she trembled. She threw her arms around his neck and he felt her eyelashes close against the side of his face.

  19

  Half of the buildings in the street had been blown away. Those that remained were scarred and tattered like old men malingering in a place where they had no right to be. At open windows curtains flapped in the rain and sometimes a face could be seen beyond the panes of broken glass. Here and there official notices and proclamations were pinned to walls and lamp-posts – strictures against black market activities, curfew warnings, items of information. Everything had been touched by a dead hand.

  He walked through the wreckage, looking around without really seeing: the things that passed in front of his eyes seemed somehow distant from him. He crossed the Königs-Platz, pock-marked now with the signs of the conquerors. In the Briennerstrasse an American land-rover swept past. He felt that he could transcend these things and yet he was weary of them. This was no longer Munich: it might have been any city in any defeated country.

  He went down a network of narrow streets that were vaguely familiar to him: but landmarks had been destroyed and street-names had disappeared. He stared at the broken faces of houses and realized that he might have attended the sick in such places. It all seemed so long ago and the memories – rising in the dead of night to deliver a baby, hurrying up stairways to scenes of death – were thin and bare. The weariness of the past struck him. He wanted to forget.

  He found the shop in an alley near the Isar. It was the only building intact in the street. A ragged sunblind hung across the window which had been taped to prevent breakage. In the apartment over the shop a window was open and he could faintly hear the sound of a radio announcer. He stepped into the doorway and paused a moment in the shadows. Then – surprised a little by the noise of a bell – he pushed the door open and went inside.

  There was a smell of damp. On rows of shelves there was a large variety of objects – old cameras, toys, garments, mirrors. Beyond the counter a curtained door led into another room. He listened to the radio announcer: ‘Volunteers are required to assist in clearing rubble from the centre of the city. Assembly will be held at the Frauenkirche at ten hundred hours tomorrow morning.’

  Impatiently he moved towards the door behind the counter. He drew the curtain back and stepped into the tiny room beyond. A man was seated behind a table in the corner, examining some papers beneath the pale glow of a lamp. Seeing Schwarzenbach, he looked up in surprise.

  ‘I heard the bell,’ he said impatiently. ‘I was coming, I was coming.’

  Schwarzenbach looked round the room. ‘I can’t wait forever,’ he said.

  The man rose from the table, adjusting his spectacles. ‘Everybody is in such a hurry these days. For God’s sake, what is there to hurry for?’

  The man paused in the middle of the floor and stared at Schwarzenbach a moment. He was a Jew: the features were unmistakable. The irony of this amused Schwarzenbach.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ the man asked.

  ‘I
want a certain object.’

  ‘Otherwise you would not be here.’ The man sighed impatiently and half-turned away. ‘What sort of object?’

  Schwarzenbach wondered how he had managed to escape death. He thought of the two Jewesses in the office behind the Von-der-Tann-Strasse and wondered: how many others?

  ‘What sort of object?’ the man asked again, returning to the table and his papers.

  ‘A revolver.’

  The man took off his spectacles and looked at Schwarzenbach incredulously. Then he laughed: ‘What sort of joke is this?’

  ‘It’s no joke.’

  ‘A revolver! You’re mad.’

  Schwarzenbach followed him to the table. ‘Are you telling me that you don’t have such a thing?’

  The man shuffled through his papers. ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’

  ‘You have a certain reputation. They say that you can supply anything.’

  ‘You might as well ask for a Messerschmitt.’

  Schwarzenbach laid his hands on the surface of the table.

  ‘I don’t have much time to waste. It would be better if you told the truth from the start.’

  The man looked at Schwarzenbach and, as if sensing menace for the first time, spoke seriously: ‘Where would I get a revolver from? Answer me that.’

  ‘The source is your problem. It hardly concerns me.’

  Rising from the table, the man fidgeted nervously with his papers. ‘Take my word for it, I do not have the merchandise you require. Now –’

  Schwarzenbach laid his hand on the man’s shoulder: ‘Think again.’

  The man shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t be impossible, of course, to obtain such a thing. But it would take time. And money.’

  ‘I don’t have time,’ Schwarzenbach said, ‘I want it now.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. Please –’

  Schwarzenbach tightened his hold on the man’s shoulder and forced him to sit down. ‘I’m never ridiculous. Let’s begin our conversation again, shall we?’