Death’s Head

by Campbell Armstrong

  She asked, ‘What’s wrong? Why are you so nervous?’

  He laughed slightly: ‘I don’t feel nervous,’ he said.

  ‘Leonhard, you’re trembling. Look at you – you’re shaking like a leaf. What’s the matter?’

  She lifted his hand to her mouth and brushed her lips against it, as if she were trying to smooth away a wound. How could he tell her?

  There was the noise of someone snoring. When his eyes had become accustomed to the dark, Schwarzenbach realized that another room led off from the one in which he was now standing. He moved towards the door and pushed it open. Faintly, in the dimness, he could make out the shape of someone sleeping on the bed. He raised the revolver at the figure, moving forward towards the bed. And then he realized that the man wasn’t Grunwald.

  He switched on the light. The man on the bed sat up, staring wildly around the room.

  ‘Leonhard?’

  Schwarzenbach motioned him to be silent.

  ‘Who are you? Where’s my nephew?’

  Schwarzenbach asked, ‘Herr Gerber?’

  ‘Where’s my nephew?’ Willi pushed the blankets back and shakily rose to his feet. He shivered in the cold room. It was then that he saw the weapon.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  Schwarzenbach stared at the weapon: ‘Where’s Grunwald?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  Herr Gerber shrugged: ‘I don’t know. How should I know?’ He stared at the revolver and Schwarzenbach noticed that his lower lip was trembling, as if he were about to burst into tears. He raised the weapon in a direct line with the old man’s skull. One blast would shatter it like an eggshell.

  Herr Gerber clasped his hands together, muttering below his breath like someone praying. It was a sound Schwarzenbach had heard before: sometimes they used to pray in whispers, facing death they used to pray to God with their useless words. He lowered the revolver to his side.

  ‘What do you want with Grunwald?’ the old man asked.

  Schwarzenbach was silent. The bedroom smelled. He noticed it for the first time, a peculiar odour that seemed a mixture of sweat and incense. He loathed it: it seemed to catch at the back of his throat and choke him. He pushed the window open and stared out into the darkness. The old man did not move from the bed: as if paralysed, he could not take his eyes from the gun.

  Grunwald said, ‘There’s something I ought to tell you.,’

  She smiled: ‘You mustn’t feel under any obligation to tell me anything,’ she said.

  ‘I ought to tell you,’ he said: and then he paused. How could he find the words? How could he tell her about Chelmno and the sight he saw every morning from the barred window of his tiny room, the naked figures crossing the muddy yard just before dawn, walking to the gas installations just as if they were about to be deloused prior to a medical inspection? How could he tell her he had seen this happen from the safety of his tiny room without doing anything to prevent it? Without feeling the temptation to join the shuffling queues himself? The women, the children, the men, all curiously desexed and alike, crossing through the mud and the rain to reach the installations: and he could see his own face, framed against the window, as if he were watching it from the viewpoint of the victims, and he knew that he despised his own blank expression that stared down as the queues shifted forward and kept shifting until the chambers were packed to capacity. Where were they all going? What was the purpose? How could he tell her about the hut, and the medical instruments scattered around the place like the elaborate toys of doom, and the bodies that came into the hut because they had been selected to further the cause of National Socialist science? How could he tell her that he had complied with the insanity, he had grown mad himself, crazy for life as if it were a prize that could only be won by debasement and defilement?

  ‘Well? Aren’t you going to tell me, Leonhard?’

  He looked at her. Her mouth was partly open, her hands clasped on top of his.

  He shook his head: ‘On second thoughts, it isn’t important.’

  ‘Are you going to use it?’

  The question surprised Schwarzenbach because he had quite forgotten about the old man. Looking from the open window he had been thinking of his own peace of mind and how close to him the prospect seemed. He would be alive again, regain something of contentment: with Grunwald dead, the past would at last be over.

  ‘Do you intend to use that thing?’ Herr Gerber asked.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Schwarzenbach said. He felt impatient: he wanted to finish the deed and then forget.

  ‘Are you going to use that on my nephew?’ Herr Gerber asked.

  ‘Shut up. Sit down on the bed and shut up.’

  It was cowardly: he had run away again. Faced with the prospect of a confession, he had rejected it. Was he destined forever to lack real courage? He used to help Schwarzenbach dispose of the corpses: they were taken outside the hut into a small rear yard and thrown on to a truck, where they were covered over with old scraps of cloth. Once a week one of the guards would drive the truck to the crematorium: at least Grunwald had always imagined that the bodies were taken to be burned. It seemed fitting somehow that they should be set on fire: whatever function they had once served, they were meaningless now. Why hadn’t Schwarzenbach simply killed him?

  Elisabeth said, ‘It’s getting late.’

  They got up from the table. He followed her into the street. Along the pavements people were sleeping, huddled together to keep warm. A strong stench of staleness rose from their bodies and the sight of them made him feel despondent. Everything had become so grey. He tried to imagine sunlight and constant brightness and he thought of Palestine: did the sun burn all the time there? Was it always bright and hot? He longed for warmth: he longed to take his clothes off and lie in the sunlight.

  She took him by the arm. The gesture, so simple, moved him. She was prepared to change her life just to accommodate him: why did she care like this?

  ‘Let’s go back to the house,’ she said.

  He thought of lying beside her in her narrow bed and sleeping with his arms around her body, safe, certain, protected. For a moment the prospect relieved him of his guilt and he imagined he could live the rest of his life blindly, keeping secrets from himself.

  ‘Palestine has a warm climate, hasn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘It has a beautiful climate,’ she answered.

  ‘What was that?’ Schwarzenbach asked. He had heard a noise on the stairs: a sound of thin laughter.

  The old man stood up in alarm. Schwarzenbach caught his arm, and twisted it, and forced him to sit down again.

  They stopped at the top of the first flight of stairs. She could not explain to herself why she felt so happy. She wanted to laugh: it was irrational, because he hadn’t actually committed himself, but she felt within herself that he had at last decided. She put her arms around his thin body and tried to imagine him strong again, his flesh filled out, she tried to envisage him as he would be with a sense of purpose.

  She held him against her a moment longer. They said nothing to one another and yet she felt that she had accomplished something: she experienced a sensation of triumph, as if she had conquered some terrible adversity. Holding him against her, she realized that she did not want to let him go. She had discovered him. Now he seemed more relaxed than ever before, as if she had achieved some miracle of chemistry and had managed to dissolve the taste of the past for him.

  ‘The climate is beautiful,’ she said: and she didn’t want to stop talking about Palestine. ‘I’ve read all the guidebooks and travel-guides, and according to them all the climate is almost unbelievable –’

  He silenced her by putting a finger to her lips. From somewhere, somehow, he would find the courage to tell her about Chelmno.

  ‘Keep quiet.’

  Schwarzenbach raised the revolver at the old man and, crossing the floor, went into the other room. As if dazed, Herr Gerber followed him.

  �
��One word. That’s all.’

  Schwarzenbach stood behind the door. His entire life had become intensified upon this single, waiting moment. The gun. The Jew coming up the stairs. Behind him, Herr Gerber stood in the middle of the room, a blanket drawn tightly around his body.

  Schwarzenbach lifted the revolver. And he waited.

  ‘Shall we go into my room?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to?’

  He hesitated a moment, wondering even now why he was holding himself back. ‘Yes, I want to.’

  She took her key from her coat and dropped it. As she bent down to pick it up, she said, ‘Perhaps I ought to look in and see if Willi is comfortable first.’

  ‘He’s all right. Don’t worry about him.’

  ‘No, I really should.’

  Grunwald shrugged: ‘If you feel you must.’

  She started to move along the corridor towards Herr Gerber’s room.

  Herr Gerber moved as quickly as he could towards the door. Wheeling round, Schwarzenbach struck him across the throat with the revolver. The old man tried to speak but couldn’t, yet he still persisted in trying to get past. Schwarzenbach pushed him back, conscious of the footsteps coming along the corridor. The old man lost his balance but he did not fall. He caught the arm of the chair, raised himself upright, and reached the door just as Schwarzenbach had started to open it.

  ‘You old fool!’

  She did not understand at first: she saw Herr Gerber, wrapped in a blanket, and she imagined that he had had a seizure of some kind. His arms were raised in the air and it appeared to her that he was trying to say something, but the only sound that issued from him was a low, tearful cry. Because of her concern for the old man, she was barely conscious of the other figure that stood just behind him, a darker, taller figure that she saw only from the corner of her eye. The blanket slipped from his body and he moved slowly forward towards her and, quickening her step, she rushed to catch him because it seemed that he was about to fall. Yet he did not fall although he appeared to have lost his balance, and it was only when she was about eight feet away from him that she wondered who the other person was. Suddenly, as if he had been conjured out of existence, Herr Gerber was no longer there. Willi! Willi! Had she called out his name? Or had the voice been that of Leonhard, who was standing several yards behind her? Dizzy, sickened, she looked around for Willi, and thought she saw him sprawling across the floor, his hands upraised, when she became conscious of a loud noise and a single second of flame that seemed to her an echo of an earlier noise that she had hardly registered in her concern for Herr Gerber. Pain was spreading through her, starting in her chest and rising with the force of lightning to her neck and brain: stiff with panic, she suddenly discovered that she could no longer stand up. She went down on her knees, aware of someone rushing past her, aware of the third and fourth noises that shattered the fading echoes of the previous sounds. She put her hands to her throat. Leonhard! Leonhard! Where was he? Why hadn’t he come to help her? It was silly, she was imagining things, he would be at her side in only a moment with an explanation for all this –

  ‘Leonhard,’ she said, ‘Leonhard, please.’

  The old fool had got in the way. And then the girl, the stupid girl. Ahead of him, rushing down the stairs, he could hear the frightened sounds that Grunwald left behind him like the scent of a dying animal.

  For Christ’s sake why didn’t her body respond to her demands? Move. Move. Move! And why was she alone now? Alone with this awful silence. Frozen, her back flat against the wall, she was conscious of blood falling from her body and yet when she looked at it in her hands it wasn’t her own blood, it wasn’t even real blood, it was some substitute matter that might have been used in an amateur theatrical. Not her blood. Christ, the pain had anaesthetized her scalp, there was a numbing, tingling sensation. Like the kind you experienced at a dentist’s when you were falling asleep and couldn’t stop yourself. Was she falling asleep? It felt that way because it had become more difficult to make out shapes around her, they were distorted, dream-shapes, they wouldn’t keep still and the dream seemed to be erecting a fog of blindness around her. Leonhard. Leonhard. He would come in a moment. He was bound to come. She whispered his name. Leonhard, I love you, I pity you.

  20

  He paused in a dark semicircle of trees. Before him lay an open stretch of lawn. He raised the revolver upwards and suppressed the sudden urge to fire it blindly through the branches of the trees. There was a half-moon, partly enclosed by cloud, and the bare branches were imposed upon it like a complex of scars.

  The Jew. The Jew was around here somewhere. Hiding. But there was always an end to hiding, a moment when the barricades of concealment were finally broken down. He would find the Jew. It was a matter of time.

  He thought of how the first bullet had gone through the old man’s neck; and the second had struck the woman in the chest. He remembered the expression of surprise on her face and the sight of Grunwald lurking somewhere behind her, a dark shape thrown by the lamp against the wall.

  Clutching the revolver against his side, he crossed the lawn until he reached the lamps that burned along the side of the Isar. He took the box of cartridges from his coat and replaced the two he had already used. He snapped the chamber shut.

  Turning, he walked back across the gardens to the trees.

  The Jew was here. Somewhere in these gardens.

  Breathless, Grunwald lay with his face flat against the mud, his hands sinking into a puddle of water beside him. After some minutes he became conscious of his predicament. He sat up, his body still heaving, and peered through the darkness. A light wind rustled in the trees and shifted the shrubbery, drawing out tiny, echoing sounds. Along the empty streets he had heard Schwarzenbach’s footsteps: he heard them even now, the clatter of feet running over the concrete. When he had reached the gardens he had the advantage of complete darkness, and the terrible disadvantage of no longer being able to hear whether Schwarzenbach was still behind him.

  He lay down, his hands in his pockets, and felt that he wanted to sleep. He wanted simply to close his eyes and drift out into the forced unreality of a dream. How else could he cope? He tried to think of Elisabeth, and imagine that she was well and that she had fallen down because she had suffered a superficial flesh wound. Yet he could not obliterate from his mind the stark realization that the bullet had entered her body somewhere and that by now she was probably dead: or close to death. Why was it that everything he seemed to touch surrendered itself eventually to death? Why did he drag so much suffering and loss behind him? He tried to imagine that he was kneeling beside her, holding her head in his hands, consoling her, and yet the image would not assume a definite shape: instead he saw her lying across the floor, her arms thrown back her blouse discoloured with blood. She was dead. And he had run away.

  He had run away.

  Running, running, running: I know about myself. I know exactly what I am. I see how transparent I am: a thin, filmy thing held up to the light, penetrated as if by an X-ray machine. As transparent as that.

  Turning over on his side, aware of a violent pain that racked his chest, he seemed like a spider creating and spinning around itself a poisonous web that inflicted fatality at a single touch. Elisabeth. Elisabeth. The hand he had held in the café and in the street, the eyes that had reflected the bonfire across the Isar, the body that had been offered to him like a sacrifice: these things had become hideous because he had touched them.

  Straining, he rose to his feet and stumbled through the darkened gardens. Some yards away he saw a lamp that he moved towards: below he saw the black surface of the Isar. Why had he run? Why had the first impulse been that of self-protection? Cowardice was more than a frame of mind, or an attitude: it was a disease that had spread and permeated through the entire self. He felt like going over the wall and into the water. He imagined the experience of drowning, going down time and again to the very bottom of the river until the lungs bu
rst and the heart collapsed.

  He turned away from the river and was conscious suddenly of how the lamp exposed him. He moved back towards the edge of the darkness and stood for a time beneath a tree, his face flat against the cold bark. Involuntarily he envisaged Elisabeth and the picture tortured him, not because he saw her this time as she would look now if she were dead, but because he imagined her as she had been in the café: alive, intense, hanging on to him and waiting for him to make the decision that would change his life. He couldn’t remember whether he had decided; all he could recall was the feeling of warmth he had experienced, as if he had realized for the very first time that she contained all the future possibilities of his existence. Palestine! It sounded like a fabled word, a talismanic piece of apparatus that would open, like some magic key, the hundred doors that were closed to him, and that were suddenly closed to him again. It all seemed like an improbable dream that, left to itself, would dissolve and fade like salt in water.

  He moved amongst the trees silently. The world around him seemed empty, a great crazy sphere suspended – to no apparent purpose – in an irrational universe.

  He heard a faint crackling sound behind him and he caught his breath. Somewhere in the darkness he was being tracked by Schwarzenbach: the name, the man’s name, seemed branded in the memories of his mind.

  He gripped the revolver. To get to Grunwald he had shot the old man, Herr Gerber, and the woman as well. They were nothing – distant, impersonal events. They were surgical. Cold operations. It all seemed to fall into place as he thought about it: in the scheme of things, some people had to die so that others could live. Those who had to die expired in shabby rooms, wrapped up in their solitude and insignificance: and yet, given the pattern he had imposed upon reality, their deaths were not exactly meaningless – because they had died simply that others, like himself, could go on living. It was a system of hierarchies, within which certain people had an elected right to existence while others perished dutifully. And he recognized this now as an immutable law of nature. Some had their grasp on a kind of immortality. It was an overpowering concept and as he framed it it seemed to him that the death of the Jew was just another trivial fact within the design of life.