The Fantastical Adventures of Leutenlieb of the House of Munchausen

by Shlomo Kalo

  The phenomenon was clearly visible and caused concern to all who saw it, including the loyal representatives of the "Savage Beasts", our supervisors. And since the Red Indian race does not feature at all, not meriting so much as a single word, in My Mania, that work of genius which went through 703 editions in the space of 14 months and was translated into every known language – the supervisors sent an eloquent letter to the most senior and best qualified interpreter of My Mania, of truly oracular status, none other than Field Marshal "Stinker" Gerbils, and consulted him on the subject. The answer was not slow in coming: "The red race," Gerbils noted in his trademark wedge-shaped handwriting, "by its very nature belongs among the wavers of red flags, and it is on that basis that all its representatives, official or semi-official should be treated, together with hangers-on, sympathizers and the like."

  As a direct result of this interpretation of My Mania, our work-quotas were doubled, and it was clear that we couldn’t cope with these and many of our number would be sent to the other furnaces, those specializing in the bulk manufacture of soap from human body-fats.

  So we were left with no option but to stop the humming of the Indian hymn, there and then – and this took effect in virtually no time at all; within exactly one hundred minutes, or with even greater precision – one hour, forty minutes and 0.07 thousandths of a second – our faces changed: the purple color drained from them completely and was replaced by the habitual pallor of anxiety. The skin of our bodies changed too, losing that unique red sheen which provoked the suspicions of the supervisors, accredited representatives of the "Savage Beasts".

  The sight of our new-old faces caused further concern to the enthusiastic devotees of "Stinker" Gerbils and they sent him another letter giving a detailed description of the astonishing change that had befallen those of Indian extraction immediately after the announcement of the doubling of quotas.

  The reply was slow in coming. When it was finally received, on official paper this time and in the square print of one of the most sophisticated typewriters then available, it contained little more than some very juicy epithets, positively folkloristic, lambasting the senders of the letter and adding serious threats of their imminent dispatch to the Eastern Front, should they continue in their attempts to sabotage the war-effort by wasting the precious time of Field Marshal Gerbils with Semitic issues to do with Indians and palefaces.

  The supervisors took fright at this and no longer put pen to paper, the work-quotas were as before and we, for our part, returned to the Indian hymn and the Indian pattern, and especially to our exemplary powers of endurance, tending the fires in the furnaces as they turned sand into glass – for nineteen hours per day. Thus matters proceeded for five successive years and not one of the 23,421 glass-workers ever collapsed at his post – to be sent to the gas-taps and from there to the soap factory.

  Needless to say, we were all hungry and the appetite for glass was kindled in me, sometimes almost driving me mad, but I resisted the temptation, not wanting to be different from my partners in destiny, to enjoy advantageous conditions and feel less hunger than they were feeling. So I did not succumb to the impulse, and never laid the tiniest sliver of glass on my tongue.

  And then, at the end of those five long years, there fell on us that bitter and frantic day. After the back-breaking work with the glass furnaces we were ordered to unload a "consignment" that had arrived late – comprising in fact some thousands of human beings, whom the regular personnel had not had time to process.

  This fateful consignment consisted mainly of women and children, almost all of whom were destined for the gas-chambers and the crematoria, covering a space comparable to a half of the area of London before it was a city.

  A little boy of about six or seven, who realized what was going on, resisted the overseers and refused to move forward with the rest of the consignees. Even the bayonets brandished in his face, one of them scratching his tender chin, failed to persuade him. The child wept bitterly and softy and stood as if rooted to the spot, holding up the whole line, the procession waiting with exemplary patience to be swallowed up by those buildings, fruit of the inventive genius of the Hottentots, conquerors of the world. In the absence of clear instructions and fearing that skewering the child with his bayonet might lead to trouble, the corporal in charge of the batch decided to turn to the major responsible for the administration of the camp, who was standing close by.

  The major, smiling satanically, approached with measured tread from one side of the line – and I, from the other. We met beside the boy, still determined not to move, shaking with fear, sweating and shedding silent tears, trying to wipe them away with a soft, babyish hand.

  "Ah – Leutenlieb!" the man with the satanic smile called out to me, in the tone of crude contempt that used to be characteristic of Hottentots.

  "I and no other!" I called out to him, replying to the smile which had not shifted from his lips with a smile of my own, open and devoid of any hint of scorn.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked smugly, with a clear touch of menace perceptible in his voice.

  "My intention," I began in a resolute but reasonably light-hearted tone, "is not to let you burn this little boy!" His smile turned to a venomous sneer which did not augur well. For a long moment he pondered my words inwardly, eyes fixed on the toecaps of his boots, polished by one of his relay of servants (he used to keep a servant for the day, then send him to the gas-chambers and replace him with another, and repeat the process). Suddenly he looked up, turning mottled eyes to me, a look in which there was something that any savage beast walking on four legs would have been ashamed of. "You will be given an opportunity, my old friend, Leutenlieb… A colonel, I believe – that was your rank at the end of the previous world war?" I nodded in assent.

  All right then, the child will not be thrown into the gas-chambers, and you have my word as an officer in the Savage Beast Wermacht! Or don’t you trust this Wermacht?"

  "I don’t trust it an inch!" I replied with engaging sincerity,

  He scanned me again with his venomous and predatory look, apparently amused:

  "One way or the other," he declared, "you don’t have any choice. You will be forced to put your trust in my word… Speaking personally, I agree with you entirely – I wouldn’t trust me either… Anyway," the major returned to the subject, "if you take the place of the child and you’re prepared to go instead of him into the gas chambers – the child will be taken out of the line and sent to take your place in the glass factory…" He scanned me again with a gleam in his eye, somehow reminiscent of the look of a cobra about to strike. "What is your opinion?" he asked, and saw fit to add: "I’m expecting a prompt answer from you, as befits an officer of your rank, if only a former officer!" Malice oozed from him, from his eyes, in the sounds of his voice and the movements of his hands, twitching erratically as if impatient to be catching prey and hunting for spoils.

  It was obvious to me he had no intention of sparing the boy’s life, and was only postponing his murder for a few hours. But as he said, and quite rightly, I had no choice in the matter. The complex situation in which I found myself was such that if I were to go back on my word, something not even to be contemplated, the satanic major would see to it that I witnessed the death-throes of the boy, and in the end would find a way to exact vengeance from me, putting an end to my life in the most ignominious manner imaginable. From a certain perspective, this complex situation was working to my advantage. It had been made possible for me to avoid seeing the boy die, and perhaps also to cherish a faint sliver of hope, innocent and childish though it might be, that with a change of circumstances the boy might yet survive, in spite of the major and his vindictiveness. What was on offer here was a temporary reprieve, and as things stood, it had to be said this was a reasonable offer.

  "We have a deal?" the Hottentot Wermacht officer asked impatiently

  "We have indeed!" I declared with a smile that was interpreted by those standing around me as nothing but
the final evidence that I had gone out of my mind, and ignoring the hand that the major extended to me, I turned to the boy and took him out of the queue for the gas-chambers. I expected him to run to the small group of able-bodied men who had been assigned to hard labor in the camp, but he stood there at a loss, big eyes staring at me through his tears which were steadily subsiding, as if he was pondering something profound, with maturity beyond his years.

  "Run!" I urged him in the kind of authoritative tone that no one is better fitted to adopting than I am, when the circumstances demand this.

  Roused from his inertia, the little boy turned and ran straight into the arms of one of the men, evidently his brother or his father.

  So I took the place of the boy and moved along with the column of prisoners on their way to asphyxiation, ignoring the clumsy gibes of the satanic major, who walked along beside me and kept up a constant patter. By the dark entrance to the building, he called out to me:

  "I’ll be seeing you, Leutenlieb my friend, a thousand years from now!"

  I turned to him and replied with a steady smile: "See you in an hour!"

  "Are you trying to threaten me?" – the twisted line of his venomous smile faltered slightly, and his face took on a severe expression.

  "I don’t belong to the Savage Beast Wermacht!" I called back at him. "What I say – is the truth!" and I entered the dark building.

  After we had stripped off our clothes, and here too I salvaged the whistle, hiding it in my fist, we were pushed into a sealed stone-built room – a crowd so densely packed that shortage of natural air alone would be enough to choke everyone to death within a few minutes. The Savage Beasts of the Biter had not yet hit on this economy measure.

  I tried, as far as possible, to encourage my partners in destiny. I reminded them of the vanity of life and the end of it which is the same for everyone, and how good it is to know how to endure it with fortitude; I should say that they paid attention to me and listened with dignity, and it seems they took some of it in and tried to emulate the exemplary composure which I displayed – and then the gas-taps were turned on. At that moment I stopped breathing altogether, as I had been taught by Maharishi Cirrus-Cloud, the renowned guru of the Subcontinent.

  A long time before I breathed again and filled my lungs with air – the steel doors of the choking room were opened and the auxiliaries began dragging out the twisted corpses for transfer to the furnaces of the soap factory.

  I mingled with the auxiliaries, and without anyone noticing, put on my striped suit which was still hanging in the doorway, and walked unscathed out of the building.

  The sun shone, pure and high and overflowing with goodwill, ready to offer assistance to all comers of the world, to light up their hearts, to pave their way towards the eternal happiness of the creator. The columns moved on. Towards the one closest to me that satanic major came, carrying the child in whose place I had entered the gas-chambers and come out again. He carried him in his arms, although the boy, unlike before, seemed very docile, not protesting, not weeping or uttering a sound and showing no resistance at all. And perhaps the reason for this was the utter bemusement clearly visible in his big eyes, still wet, and staring into my face in dumb disbelief.

  The satanic major soon realized something unusual was going on here, since the line had stopped moving and even the overseers stood open-mouthed, no longer using their whips and clubs to urge on the crowd of people being led to the slaughter. The eyes of all were turned towards the open doors of the gas-chambers, from which the removal of bodies had just begun, or more precisely, to the left of the chambers, in my direction – and were focused on me and on my tattered clothing.

  The Hottentot major stopped for a moment and in an almost involuntary movement turned around – and saw me. He dropped the child he was carrying and for a long moment, stood rooted to the spot, mouth and eyes gaping. When he recovered his composure, or something like it, he hurriedly fastened on his thin lips his most devilish smile, which despite his sincere efforts, was not entirely devoid of an inerasable twitch, a twitch of fear, masked by bonhomie.

  "You!" he cried, his voice cracking, "Now it’s clear you have pure Semitic blood flowing through your cultured veins! What kind of a trick have you pulled here – hook-nosed Semitic trickery no doubt! But this will be your last trick! You have my word for that, the word of an officer of the wild and savage beasts of the Wermacht!" And saying this he drew from his gleaming holster a heavy, black and long-barreled service automatic.

  "Keep this promise as you kept your previous one!" I grinned at him and went on walking towards him, showing a sunny disposition which only added to the consternation of all the onlookers, including the satanic major, whose butcher’s hand frantically squeezed the trigger, shaking and awash with reeking sweat.

  In rapid succession nine shots reverberated in the air. And when the jollity was over, and the pistol-housing had stopped its rhythmical sliding back and forth, stopped completely, thus telling the satanic major that the clip was empty – I stood before him alive and well, and in the same buoyant mood, smiling from ear to ear. My smile reflected the hearty, victorious smile of the bright sun, still hoping that humanity will one day give up its insanity, learn to accept the fullness of the radiant love that the sun bestows, bestows gratis and free of charge, and learn to enjoy it in peace.

  The satanic face of the major turned green and contorted. His butcher’s hand, shaking in the style of a Parkinson’s sufferer, reached for the reserve magazine attached to the holster. But it seemed both the gun and the magazine were about to fall from the grasp, precarious by any standards, of those convulsive fingers, gripped by some kind of hysterical seizure. With the aim of preventing any unfortunate accidents, perish the thought, I took the magazine and the pistol in as discreet a manner as possible, detached the empty magazine with an expert movement, inserted the new one in its place, cocked the pistol and held it out to the major. Black froth began bubbling between his lips, which had turned white like two thin strips of plaster daubed on a green mask. Instead of taking the weapon for which he had signed, and the defective performance of which, to say nothing of its loss, would mean his arraignment before a military court, with all the consequences – the satanic major fled for his life. But he didn’t get far. The "lines" broke up and thousands of people who had been walking to their deaths like lambs to the slaughter – sprang forward and surrounded him on all sides and for a moment he looked like a hungry wolf cornered by a pack of lusty hunting-dogs.

  "Hold him!" I commanded, and turned towards the nearest guard-tower. The guard in the tower aimed his clumsy machine-gun in my direction and frantically opened fire, spraying me with bullets which of course, on account of the Indian ointment, still fully effective, produced no results whatsoever. And when, calm and cool-headed, I climbed up to the platform of the tower, I found the shooter in a dead faint at my feet. I called out to some of the prisoners and when they came running I asked them to climb up and secure the unconscious guard with his own handcuffs and take him down. The machine-gun was confiscated.

  I went from tower to tower, and from one building containing savage beasts of the Wermacht to another, confiscating the weapons there, and handing over those who had wielded them into the care of my loyal assistants, my partners in destiny.

  By the early hours of the afternoon, still awash with bright, enchanting and captivating light, evoking radiant memories of a meadow where violets, chrysanthemums and a thousand other delightful varieties of flower peep out among the clumps of luscious grass – all the savage beasts of the Wermacht were bound hand and foot, trembling where they sat and some 75% of them defecating in their baggy trousers or grey riding-britches, so intense was their agitation. The remaining 25% used old newspapers or rusty saucepans for this purpose. These were members of the officer-class, who could not forego a degree of luxury even in hard times and in stinking surroundings.

  I went up to the top of the highest guard-tower, soaring up from the hear
t of the camp like the minaret of a gaudy mosque. And then I noticed that at the eastern end of the camp the former prisoners were busy setting up improvised gibbets.

  "No!" I shouted, and the work stopped and people came streaming towards the foot of the tower. "We shall not descend to the level of these wretches!" I thundered and added: "The dregs of humanity who call themselves wild beasts, thereby impugning the honor of the animal world! There has to be a change since otherwise – all our heroic efforts are in vain and our insurrection is a fraud! So long as it is not within the power of flesh and blood to bring the dead back to life – killing should not be tolerated. This is the law which has been trampled under the clumsy boots of certain exceptional types, bringing down on humanity the calamities which we are experiencing… if one pathetic biter, who came into the world damaged from the outset, infected with rabies, bubonic plague and the swastika, and instead of seeking the help of people for the curing of his ailments, tries to infect the whole world with them – his is not an example that we should follow, not in the slightest degree! Not even in the shadow of a passing thought!"