Death’s Head

by Campbell Armstrong

  She looked at Willi, half-asleep over his crumpled newspaper. He was dying slowly, as if death could ever be a slow process: his head bent forward, the palms of his hands upturned, a trickle of white saliva at the corner of his lips. She felt frustrated, as if she had become a prisoner of her own sensations. Why wouldn’t Grunwald speak? Why wouldn’t he accept?

  He was standing at the window where he always seemed to be, like a man scouring the sky and hoping for some crack to appear in the fabric of the universe. Was that what he wanted? Did he want to destroy himself? These questions beat like waves against her brain and she knew she was tired, she knew she should never have become involved with him. She felt miserable and depressed: she felt like an obsolete object that has been used only once and then discarded.

  She said, ‘I’m going to my own room. Are you coming?’

  Grunwald turned round and looked at Willi, who was snoring now. Saying nothing, he followed her along the passage. He entered her room behind her, noticing that her face was flushed and that she had removed the scarlet ribbon from her hair. She had worn it like the flag of some triumph: now it lay across the dresser, abandoned. He wanted to run. He wanted to get out. But the world wasn’t large enough to offer him refuge. He listened to Elisabeth’s silence: it was hard and cold, containing as it did the seeds of her despair.

  He held out his hands: he imagined that bloodstains lay in the hollows of his palms. Schwarzenbach used to make him mop up the blood that had dripped from the table to the floor. He used to ask him to pass various instruments, the names of which he had learned willingly and quickly. Grunwald watched the experiments in pain like some macabre spectator. The hollow shells of people that were brought into the room by the guard were stretched across the stained table and Schwarzenbach, immaculate in his white coat, would come forward as if he were about to perform a life-saving operation. All the time, all the painful time, Grunwald wondered what was happening inside him: why did he feel nothing? What was it costing him? What was disintegrating within him?

  Elisabeth yawned. She sat on the bed and gazed at the floor.

  ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘What’s going to become of us?’

  ‘I wish I knew the answer,’ Grunwald said.

  ‘You could give me a clue. Some sign. Anything.’

  He detected the desperation in her voice: it shocked him that she should be asking so much from him.

  ‘What can I say?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you feel anything for me?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘If you don’t know, who else could?’

  ‘It isn’t easy, Elisabeth.’ He paused and sat beside her on the bed.

  ‘But don’t you realize that I could bring such a great deal to you? I could change your life, I really could.’ She looked at him in a determined fashion: she might have been talking about a slab of clay she was about to mould into a determinate shape.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I understand. I know the difficulties. You don’t want to become involved –’

  ‘Please, Elisabeth, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  She sighed and shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated way. She had imagined that everything would be so much simpler, now that she had managed to reach him: but everything was exactly as it had been. Rising from the bed, she walked across the room and stared at her face in the mirror above the sink.

  ‘Am I ugly? Is that it? Do you want someone more attractive than me?’

  ‘You’re attractive enough,’ he said.

  ‘Then for Christ’s sake what is it?’

  He felt that he was composed of dead tissue: that he had been standing for too long in a storm and emotion had congealed in his brain. He was numb. He could not rid himself of the sudden thought that but for a stroke of luck, an accident, she might have ended up in Chelmno herself. What then? Could he have watched Schwarzenbach assault her? He knew the answer to that question.

  She had covered her face with her hands, as if she did not want him to see her. ‘Do you intend to leave? What do you propose to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Why are you so indecisive?’

  ‘Decisions seem so irrelevant,’ he said.

  She turned back to face the mirror, looking at it as if she might smash it, shatter the image that came back to her like someone sick not only of her face but also of her life. Their whole relationship seemed a protracted interrogation, as if at its very foundation there was a terrible mystery to solve. She was weakened by it, it plagued her and harried her. She felt that she was running towards a distant object that never came any closer. What had begun as pity – as the kind of pity a nurse might feel for a dying patient – had deepened into something else: a need.

  ‘I’m not playing games. Not now,’ she said.

  He spread his hands hopelessly and was silent.

  ‘Last night, when we slept together – how do I begin to explain to you the significance of that. Did it mean anything to you? Was it just nothing to you?’

  She was aware of her own voice in the quiet room, rising into a whine: why did he make her so weary of herself? Four days before she had been totally unaware of his existence. Why couldn’t she simply go back to that state of affairs and forget the interlude entirely? She had had a life of her own, something she had created herself: it was a tunnel into which she had retreated, burying her face in her hands so that she might see and hear nothing of the external world. She wasn’t interested in the struggle for Europe, the squabblings of politicians over tracts of territory, the petty differences between the Allies. She had her own small world, bounded by the room, the need to eat, and caring for Herr Gerber.

  But how could she simply allow him to disappear from her life? She could be patient, strong, she could encourage him to exist again no matter what she had to do or how long the process would take. She could protect him and help him – if only he would extend his hand and accept her.

  ‘Anything you want from me,’ she said. ‘You only have to ask. You only have to ask. What could be more simple?’

  Schwarzenbach rose from the bed and seized his coat from the back of the door. He struggled into it and then left his room. In the foyer he met Peters, who was drunk and aggressive.

  ‘Sneaking out to visit some little fräulein, Lutzke?’ the American asked. ‘Plenty of them about, plenty of them.’

  ‘Taking a stroll before bed,’ Schwarzenbach said.

  Peters stroked his moustache: ‘Got a bottle of something nice in your pocket anyway – cognac? scotch?’

  ‘Cognac,’ Schwarzenbach said, dropping his hand over the bulge made by the revolver.

  ‘Aren’t you going to offer me one little shot from it?’ Peters moved closer.

  ‘I don’t want to open it just yet,’ Schwarzenbach answered.

  ‘Well, that’s just fine,’ Peters said and slapped him across the shoulder. ‘You want to save it for your little fräulein, eh? I’ve got you taped, Lutzke. I know what your game is.’

  Peters laughed suddenly and Schwarzenbach felt obliged to smile.

  Peters said, ‘You prowl around the damn streets at night, screwing all the women you can lay your fat kraut hands on – that’s your game. You’re a sex maniac.’

  Schwarzenbach tried to pass the American, but Peters had a hold of his arm.

  ‘You look like a sex maniac, come to think of it,’ Peters said. ‘My God, you must send the shivers up their spines when you give them a dose of that old cold eye of yours.’

  ‘I have an important appointment. Will you let me pass?’

  Bowing in a mocking way, Peters said, ‘Of course, sir. Pass on into the night. Happy hunting.’

  Schwarzenbach went through the front door and stood for a time on the hotel steps. When he turned round he observed, through the glass panel, that Peters was making a telephone call from the reception desk. The man was a bore, a nuisance. He put his hand into the pocket that contained the revolver and he walked away.

 
; Silence was a sort of cone: Grunwald sat within it, waiting for Elisabeth to speak.

  ‘I think I’ll take a walk. Some fresh air,’ he said.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ she asked.

  ‘If you feel like walking.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. All right. I’d like you to come.’

  ‘Can’t you put some more enthusiasm into it?’

  ‘I’d like you to come,’ he said again, in the same flat way.

  She found her raincoat and draped it across her shoulders. She followed him down the stairs, noticing how the lamps on the landings flattened his shadow against the walls. She was being stupid: why didn’t she recognize the fact and come to her senses? He wanted nothing from her no matter how hard she tried. Perhaps it would be easy just to shed him, forget the encounter had ever taken place, and slip back into her own life and her own preoccupations. In the Schumannstrasse he was walking a yard or so ahead of her. Quickening her pace, she caught up with him.

  ‘Are you trying to win a race?’

  ‘Was I hurrying?’

  ‘Perhaps you were trying to get away from me,’ she said.

  She was like a child, with her eagerness to please and her fear of rejection: he wondered if six and a half years had somehow retarded her mental development. She took his arm and laid her face against his shoulder.

  They walked towards the Zeppelinstrasse, crossing the Isar by the Reichenbach Bridge. A flotilla of small craft lay unsteadily on the surface of the water. He watched the boats, many of them covered in tarpaulins, and wondered why it was that he couldn’t tell her the truth: the answer to that was simple – he could not bring himself face to face with his guilt. Or perhaps he could not share it. What would become of her feelings if he told her? What would she say then?

  They crossed the Gärtner-Platz and in a tiny side street, miraculously untouched by the bombs, they found a small café that was open. Outside, gathered around the lighted windows as if to savour an illusion of heat, there were six or seven ragged people huddled together. They did not look at Grunwald and the woman as they went through the front door into the café.

  Schwarzenbach found himself walking across the darkened gardens that lay beneath the Maximilianeum. The shrubbery cast weird shapes, black outlines frozen against the lighter darkness beyond. Suddenly he remembered the fact that Peters had made a telephone call immediately after he had left the hotel. Who had he been calling? Why had he made a call just after his encounter with Schwarzenbach? Was there a connection? He remembered the waiter who had recognized him and it seemed to him that there were links, vague but threatening links, between these two events. Did Peters suspect something? Was he a journalist as he claimed? If not, what was he? Had the waiter spoken to him? If these two suspected some thing, how many others in the hotel did?

  He was in the Maria-Theresa-Strasse now where the presence of a few street lamps seemed to dispel his fears. After tonight, he would not need to return to the hotel anyway.

  They drank tasteless lukewarm coffee that Elisabeth paid for and sat at a table away from the door. The café was barren and cold: its cheerlessness made her feel that she would have to make a real effort to appear happy. She held his fingers in her hand. Most of the other tables were empty but here and there sat American servicemen with their German girl-friends: sometimes someone would laugh but the sound always seemed forced and artificial.

  From a distant back-room there came the blurred noise of a radio drearily playing tuneless dance-music. She could not have wished for a more accurate external representation of what she felt inside herself. Grunwald was miles away, but just the same she had been talking for what seemed like ages, listening to the empty noise of her own voice and the meaninglessness of her words. Palestine – why didn’t he make the decision to go to Palestine? As if desperate to convince, she lumped one argument upon another, creating illogical spirals of reasons. Germany was dead, a corpse; he had no family left, other than Willi; there was nothing in Germany to keep him there; how could he live in any case in a land of ghosts; she would look after him when they got to Palestine; they could build a place to live and work the land and what they didn’t know they could easily learn. Yet the more she sought convincing reasons, the more it seemed that Palestine was slipping and slipping away from her.

  Grunwald did not appear to be listening. Yet he heard her words although he could barely make sense of them: the one name, Palestine, recurred again and again. He sipped his coffee: at the back of his mind was the urge to tell her about Chelmno, as if he somehow thought that she had a right to know. The urge increased and the words lay upon his tongue. She had a right to know why he was so cold towards her: she had a right to know, after what had happened, why he could not respond in the way she wanted. But he said nothing, listening to the sound of her voice as it washed over him.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘I wasn’t certain,’ she said.

  ‘You were talking about Palestine.’

  She lifted her cup: ‘How much did you actually hear?’

  ‘Everything you said,’ he answered.

  ‘And how do you respond?’

  He finished his drink, turning his face towards the misted window: outside, thrown in silhouette against the glass, were the figures of several people. At the other side of the room, behind a counter, a waitress in a black frock counted coins in the palm of her hands.

  ‘If I went with you to Palestine, what would happen to Willi?’

  ‘He’s going to die.’ She felt callous suddenly and wanted to explain herself: ‘We don’t have to go until he’s dead –’

  ‘So we wait around like vultures –?’

  ‘You know I didn’t mean that.’

  He played with the empty coffee cup between his fingers. Visions of Chelmno crowded his mind: how could he ever bring himself to tell her? He saw in her face an expression of such hopefulness that to destroy it would have caused him agony. She was waiting, waiting for his reply as if her entire life revolved around the moments of patience. She was offering him a kind of salvation: what did he have to do to accept?

  ‘Leonhard,’ she said, and she covered his hand with her fingers.

  He remembered sleeping with her: once, in the middle of the night it had seemed to him that he had woken himself up calling out Martha’s name – now, remembering, he could not decide if it had been part of a dream. Why did the past cling so tenaciously to him?

  She said, ‘You don’t have to hurry your decision. We’ve got lots of time.’

  But somehow she didn’t believe herself: it appeared to her that time, like an object caught in the wind, was drifting and dwindling away.

  Schwarzenbach stopped in the Schumannstrasse. An American patrol car had gone past. On the corner it braked and stood there a moment, its engine ticking over. He pressed himself inside a doorway and waited. He watched the driver light a cigarette and then the vehicle moved forward and out of sight. Crossing the Schumannstrasse, Schwarzenbach entered one of the buildings. In the hallway he took the revolver from his pocket and looked at it beneath the light of the lamp: it gleamed upon the flat of his hand and he was impressed by its perfection. Why, when they created objects of destruction, did men design such beautiful, economical things? He put it back into his overcoat and moved towards the stairs. He imagined he heard the sound of someone moaning, but it was only the wind rattling through the broken glass of the landing windows.

  ‘How do you propose to travel to Palestine?’

  She caught his hand tightly, as if his question had excited her.

  ‘There are organizations who arrange such things,’ she said. ‘Usually refugees go by boat. It isn’t easy, but it can be done. I have the address of one organization –’

  ‘And what does one do in Palestine?’ Grunwald asked.

  ‘We wouldn’t be alone,’ she answered. ‘I know several people
who went there before the war.’

  ‘How does one eat?’

  ‘From the land,’ she said.

  He wondered at her idealism: from the land – it was so vague it was almost absurd. When he thought of Palestine he thought of miles of scrubland and desert. Yet he admired her for her incredible optimism, for her ability to perceive another world beyond the depressing horizons of Germany. And she wanted him to see and understand the same vision. She stared at him, wondering why she was breathing so quickly: was it possible that he was going to commit himself? Palestine was an excuse, she recognized that fact: a commitment on his part to Palestine was really a commitment to her.

  Waiting for him to speak, she was aware of the empty noises around her: a kettle boiling, money being counted, the distant wireless uttering some trivial announcements. Please, she thought: please say that you will come. Please, please decide in my favour.

  He looked at her, feeling a revitalization of his shame.

  Schwarzenbach saw that the name had been written on the wall beside the door in faded chalk letters: W. Gerber. Outside the door he hesitated, drawing the revolver from his coat. The building was silent. The revolver seemed suddenly weightless, as if it were not an object that he held in his hand, as if all at once his fingers were unaccountably empty. He flexed his hand around the weapon for reassurance and observed his shadow dropping across the door, distorted by the warped wood. Now: now, he thought, and caught the doorknob with his free hand, surprised that the door wasn’t locked and opened just as soon as he touched it, fell open into a dark, shapeless room.

  No. He could not bring himself to tell her. The words became congealed lumps in his mouth. He could not force himself to be honest with her even when her face, her expression, her whole being demanded honesty. He watched the coffee cup slip from between his fingers and shatter on the floor. Two clean pieces. He bent down and picked them up, placing them on the table in front of him. She was watching him all the time. He wondered why he could not look at her eyes now but even without turning his head he knew that they were burning into him, he felt them just as surely as if she had touched him.