The Man Who Went Down With His Ship

by Hugh Fleetwood

  ‘So, how’ve you been?’ L said, continuing to grin. ‘I heard you were living round here. To tell the truth, that was partly why I accepted this posting when they offered it to me. Though I would probably have accepted anyway, given the job … I was planning to look you up. I’ve only been here a few months. Got a lot to arrange, clear up. My predecessor killed himself! Stupid fool. But then, when I saw you walking along … You haven’t changed much. Got a bit older, obviously, but – how old are you now?’

  ‘Thirty-seven,’ Peter murmured.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you would be if I’m forty-two … You still queer?’

  Peter glanced at the driver.

  ‘It’s all right. We’re in private here. Nothing you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you. Right, Otto?’

  Otto, at the wheel, grunted.

  ‘Yes,’ Peter murmured, his throat dry.

  ‘Thought you probably were, from your books. Besides, people don’t often change … I used to fuck him in the ass when we were at school,’ L said to the driver. ‘He used to scream and squawk, but – always give a boy what he wants, I say. Eh?’

  Otto, glancing at Peter in his rear-view mirror, grunted.

  ‘How long you been living out here?’

  ‘Nearly – seven years, now.’

  ‘What you doing? Lying low till the war ends?’

  Again Peter glanced at the driver.

  ‘Stop looking at Otto every time I ask you a question! We’re not fools. We know it’s all over bar the shouting, as they say. Another six months, a year at most … We should never have got into a war. That’s what really messed us up. And once America became involved … If we’d just done it quietly, creeping up a little here, a little there … In twenty years the whole of Europe – the whole world, probably – would have come round to our way of thinking. Or recognised that in the final analysis they had always been of our way of thinking. But impatience, impatience, and what do you get? Defeat, ruin, and another century or two of dullness, worthiness and hypocrisy. Well I’m glad I shan’t be around to see it. These past twelve years have been so exhilarating I don’t think I could bear … Well?

  ‘Well?’ Peter echoed.

  ‘Have you been lying low?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter murmured. ‘I suppose so.’

  L looked at him; looked, Peter felt, into him, as he used to, all those years ago.

  ‘Or did you think that if you moved to a small town you’d be safe from me?’

  Again Peter felt faint. It really was as if the man inhabited his head, could read his every thought.

  ‘I always told him’, L said to Otto, ‘that if he didn’t fulfil his promise I would come back to get him. Fuck him – figuratively speaking now, of course! – like I used to. What’s more,’ L continued, still to the driver, ‘he always believed me.’ He turned. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter whispered.

  ‘Well,’ L went on, ‘we’ll talk about that later. But I have read all your books, you know. And I used to sneak off to see your exhibitions. You still painting?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter whispered. He cleared his throat, and went on, not much more loudly: ‘Though in the present climate …’

  ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to apologise. I quite understand. A man must make compromises to survive. As long as they’re only temporary of course, and he doesn’t deviate permanently from his allotted path … I must say, I think you’ve been quite clever in your books. But then you always were, weren’t you? The knuckle-heads could see one thing – if they could read at all! – and the … sharper of eye, let’s say, could pick out the real figure in the carpet. Do you know that story?’

  Peter nodded.

  ‘Thought you probably did … Anyway, it’ll all be quite different once we’re gone and the good guys have won, and – why did you never leave? You could have gone to America, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Probably. But … I wanted to watch, I suppose. See the whole thing at first hand … And even if I’d gone to America, I couldn’t have got away from …’

  ‘What?’ L asked, with real intensity; he waited a beat, then went on to say, with an almost wistful smile rather than his usual grin: ‘Me?’

  Peter too waited a beat, and met the man’s eye before he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. He hesitated, and continued: ‘You meant it, didn’t you?’

  Just for a second L wondered what he was talking about; then he got there. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did.’ Another pause. ‘And I still do.’

  The car was picking up speed; they had reached the outskirts of town and were driving beside the river.

  L nodded in the direction they were heading. ‘You ever been out here?’

  ‘No. Of course not. It’s forbidden to go more than two kilometres along this road. And even if it wasn’t …’

  ‘Out of sight, out of mind, eh?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Well, it’ll be an experience for you. Something else you’ll have seen.’

  Peter wondered if this implied that at some stage he would be coming back along this road. He realised that L hadn’t quite said so, but – he relaxed very slightly.

  ‘Not many of your colleagues have seen a fully functioning extermination camp, I’ll be bound.’

  Peter stared.

  ‘Not many would be interested, I suppose, but – no, that’s not true. They’d all be interested. Just most wouldn’t admit it. They’d be too frightened of their consciences. And of course of not getting out alive themselves! But that’s not something you have to worry about, is it?’

  The grin returned; Peter didn’t reply.

  What he said, after he had looked out of the window at the fields on the far side of the river, was: ‘And you? I mean what do you …?’

  ‘I’m the commandant, of course! What did you think? That I’d be taking orders from someone? Come Peter, you should know me better than that. I’ve never taken orders from anyone in my life, even when I seem to.’ He frowned, and said seriously: ‘I wouldn’t take orders from God, if he existed.’

  ‘That’, Peter said, ‘I can believe.’

  L’s eyes narrowed slightly. He changed the subject. ‘I’m married. I have three young children. My wife used to be a barmaid.’ Did he say that with just a hint of defiance, of defensiveness? ‘She cries a lot,’ the man murmured, himself looking out of the window.

  Peter glanced at him as if to say: I imagine you give her a lot to cry about; L, who had turned back and caught his look, nodded.

  ‘Actually,’ he went on, ‘I’ve been coming into town myself most days. But in disguise, as it were. In civilian clothes. I’ve been bringing the children to school.’

  Again there was wistfulness in his voice; even love.

  ‘And since no one ever sees my face when I’m in uniform, or can look into this car when I’m riding around selecting my next victim,’ he laughed, ‘as far as the other parents are concerned I’m just a good papa doing his duty before going off to work. Somewhat reserved of course – in fact I never speak to anyone other than to say good morning – but oh, a real gentleman.’

  Peter considered him at length now, before asking, quietly, as he had asked many years before: ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do I play the good papa?’ L paused. ‘Or why that?’ He lay back in his seat and appeared to be thinking. ‘I sometimes ask myself the same question. I suppose the short answer is the same as ever. I am a psychopath. One who gets pleasure in inflicting pain and destroying his fellow human beings. I always have been. I’ve always loathed humanity. I think humans are the most repulsive of all animals, the cruellest, the most greedy, and the most, far and away the most, hypocritical. No other animal believes itself to be good. Or bad. Yet we, in our self-serving way … We pretend that Mozart and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Michelangelo can somehow justify the horror … and we also seem to think that if we weren’t around to see them, sunsets, mountain ranges, spring flowers wouldn’t be beautiful. Of
course they would be! It’s just our staggering egos that make us …’ He stopped, looked down at his hands, then up again at Peter. ‘I suppose, given the choice, I would have been some sort of “artist” myself. Part of the justification. Since I have no discernible talent … I’ve always had a longing to expose. To expose all the baseness, the stupidity, the foulness of …’ He pointed, surreptitiously at Otto the driver. ‘Of the brutes, the blowflies that buzz around those who stink of power. Especially those who give themselves airs and graces and think they’re superior animals … But also to expose, as I say, the hypocrisy of the – of the hand-wringers, the intellectuals, the aesthetes, the – artists. The other flies that cluster on the bloated, disgusting body …’

  A further examination of the hands, then: ‘When I left school … well, everything was descending into chaos, and I suppose I joined the Party because I thought I was going to have some fun. Like a small boy who gets to go round smashing things up … At the same time, even while I was having fun, and was attracted to the whole – psychopathic streak in the Party, I think in the back of my mind I knew that it was doomed. It reeked of self-destruction. No movement, no religion, no … love, can be that powerful, that violent and nihilistic – even if it pretends to be the opposite – without having its end built into its beginning. It was going to be a blaze that lasted – well, rather less than it has lasted, I thought at the time. And its destructiveness has been on a far greater scale than any I ever dreamed of – hoped for. It’s been staggering, hasn’t it? All mankind’s beastliness not just bubbling to the surface, but bubbling right over and flooding the earth. Oh it’s been breathtaking, Peter, glorious, and – now it’s almost over. We’re just mopping up the last drops before … as I say, it’s back to the same old show …’

  Complete silence fell now, and L stared gloomily out of the window as if he could see, through that dark glass, the ruined earth.

  Indeed, the only further words he spoke before they arrived at the camp were in reply to a question of Peter’s.

  They had just gone through the second of two check-points – at which the guards had saluted L – and in the distance watch-towers, a great expanse of low dark buildings, and five high chimneys could be made out.

  As if there had been no lull in their conversation, Peter said, very quietly: ‘But you did, in your fashion, care about me, didn’t you?

  L turned back to him, and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, his voice distant. ‘In my fashion, I did think – I thought you had … promise.’ Looking straight ahead of him now, at those watch-towers and chimneys, he said: ‘It’s the usual old cliché, isn’t it? Hope springs eternal. Even in the hopeless …’

  They drove, after L had lowered his window several times more to prove that it was really he in the car, right into the camp. Past three rows of barbed wire; past guards with guns at the ready and black dogs on leashes; past innumerable ghostly figures in grey rags shuffling around as if they had been given orders to do just that. Shuffle aimlessly in circles until … Here and there bodies lay on the ground, whether alive or dead it was impossible to tell; now that L’s window was permanently down, the stench was appalling. A smell of urine and faeces, of rotten meat and burnt flesh, over which lay a thin and ineffective layer of disinfectant, that only served to make the underlying effluvia more revolting yet.

  L breathed in deeply and grinned as the car came to a halt. ‘Ah the perfume, the perfume,’ he said. ‘Out you get, Peter. We’re here.’

  Just half an hour ago Peter had been walking down a street on his way to buy some milk. Now – he had already forgotten the terror he had felt when he had heard his name called. It was as if there had been an earthquake, he had slipped through a crack, and plunged so far, so fast, that the world above was impossible to imagine, let alone recall. This was an entirely different world, and if he should not leave it alive – even that, from this perspective, was no tragedy. It would be just normal.

  ‘I thought first we’d have a little tour. Then I’ll take you home to meet my wife and children – they’re on holiday at the moment. And, then, after we’ve had some lunch – we’ll talk about your work.’ He grinned again at Peter. ‘I’ll – pass judgement.’

  No, it would be no tragedy if he were killed here today; even so, Peter felt a twinge in his bowels again.

  He walked around the camp in a daze. Looking into huts where the prisoners slept, or lay all day if they were too weak to move, four to a bunk. Not quite daring to look at the guards, whose blank brutal faces reminded him of L’s side-kicks at school. Not daring to look at all at those thousand upon thousand of shuffling spectres; yet seeing them anyway, and registering the fact that it was impossible to tell what age they were, what sex they were, so emaciated were they, with their shaven heads and shrunken eyes.

  ‘What’, he heard himself whispering to L, ‘is the point? What are they doing here? Why, if you’re going to kill them all, don’t you just – kill them?’

  ‘Logistics,’ L explained. ‘They’re sent here from other camps when they’re too weak to work any more. But the crematoria can only cope with so many a day. And now that other places are closing down or being evacuated, we’re getting more and more – every night trainloads arrive. We’re working round the clock as it is. But eventually a back-log builds up, and as it’s useless putting them to work here … Come, I’ll show you what we do.’

  He marched off, leading Peter through more and more rows of low, stinking huts, across a marshalling yard from which a train had just pulled out, past a high wooden fence, and on towards the river; following at last a set of rails that ran down into the water, and over which, suspended on pylons, hung a thick steel cable.

  On the other side of the river the great black chimneys of what were obviously the crematoria pumped dark smoke out into the fine October morning.

  ‘We won’t go over there,’ L said. ‘You might find it a bit much, with your delicate sensibility. But I just thought I would show you … I don’t know if you can see, right under the main entrance, there are a series of cages on wheels?’

  Peter narrowed his eyes and looked where L was pointing; he nodded.

  ‘It’s very simple. Quite beautifully simple. The prisoners are loaded into the cages on this side. The cages are hauled by that cable on those rails, which run right across the river on the bed. It takes about ten minutes for the crossing to be completed; for six or seven minutes the cages are completely submerged. By the time they emerge at the other side – the contents can be unloaded, and tipped straight into the furnaces.’

  The man spoke so casually, so flippantly even, that Peter more than ever felt he was dreaming.

  ‘Don’t they protest?’ he heard himself whispering. ‘Before they’re … loaded?’

  ‘Some do. But the guards don’t take very kindly to protestors, so – on the whole they go quietly. Also, that fence there hides what’s going on from the main body of the camp. So they don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when they’re put into the cages. Though obviously they have a pretty good idea. It’s amazing, isn’t it? When you see all those people, and think just a few months, or maybe a couple of years ago, they were housewives, bank-clerks, lawyers, school-teachers, nurses, miners, shop-assistants, factory-workers – even artists! And now, reduced to …’ He looked at his watch. ‘But enough of all that! It’s lunch-time!’

  They were driven in a jeep to L’s house, which stood about a mile outside the perimeter fence, and was built on the side of a low hill; from its windows, it was impossible to see anything of the camp itself, but the smell was as pervasive as ever.

  As they approached the front door, and Peter gazed down the hill across a wood stretching almost as far as the eye could see – the trees were changing colour in the autumn, and all was gold, and russet, and red – L said: ‘I’ve taken a small flat in town. I take the children there to change, before they go to school. Or my wife does. Otherwise I’m afraid their friends might complain of the odour clinging
to them.’

  ‘Don’t they say anything to their friends?’ Peter said, still whispering.

  ‘No. I’ve told them that I work in a top-secret establishment, so they can’t know anything more, and, as far as they’re concerned, it’s true.’

  ‘Even so,’ Peter continued to whisper, ‘they must know.’

  ‘Must they?’ L said. ‘Did you? Or any of your fellow citizens?’

  ‘No. But – yes, of course we knew. But not – not that it was like that.’ He gestured towards the unseen camp.

  ‘Bullshit,’ L muttered. ‘What did you think? That it was a rest home? Of course you knew, if you thought about it. Just as the children must have a pretty good idea, even if they’re too young for their ideas to be clear. But – they prefer not to think about it, too. As their friends prefer not to think about it, and their teachers prefer not to think about it. It’s easier if you tell yourself that this place is top-secret, and that, therefore – Marie!’ L bellowed. ‘We have a guest!’

  As L and Peter went into the hall of the house, a woman emerged from a room on the far side. She was blonde, and quite pretty in a washed-out way; but she looked tired, scared and unhappy. Her eyes were puffy.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, in a voice as lacklustre as her complexion.

  ‘This is Peter. An old friend of mine.’

  ‘Hello,’ Marie repeated, her tone unchanged.

  ‘Do you think we can give him some lunch?’

  ‘Yes. I expect so.’ The woman paused, and went on, a little petulant now: ‘It would have helped if I had known in advance.’

  ‘I didn’t know myself in advance! I just saw Peter walking down the street and I called him over, and – Peter’s a distinguished writer, you know. And painter.’

  Marie stared. ‘Oh,’ she said. Then, wearily: ‘It’ll be ready in five minutes if you want to go and wash your hands.’

  ‘Marie’s very particular about hands being clean,’ L said, with one of his grins. ‘I think she thinks soap is the solution to all the world’s problems.’