by Declan Burke
The last thing I wanted was a weapon. I was under no illusions as to why the children had been isolated as hostages.
I asked Richter for permission to speak, and told him that the islanders had taken good care of me, and that that should count for something. It was also true, I said, that many of them, according to the Englishman, were sympathetic to the German cause.
‘Then they should need little persuasion,’ he said. He mounted the steps again, went to the huddled group of children and took a young boy by the wrist. He led the child forward. The adults below seemed to shudder as one, a ripple running through the small crowd.
‘Who speaks for you?’ Richter called out in English. Heavily accented, muffled by the mask, his voice nevertheless carried through the square. After a moment the large bearded man, the mayor, stepped forward.
‘We know the blond Englishman is on the island,’ Richter told him. ‘If he is not here in one hour, this child will suffer the consequences.’
Shouts and wails, a piercing scream. An older woman collapsed to the cobbles. Two men broke from the group, pushing forward past the mayor, both of them protesting or volunteering to take the place of the children – it was hard to say, because as they did so a harsh chattering broke out, deafening in the enclosed square. When the echoes died away everyone remained frozen in place, staring at the church doorway. One of the men guarding the children had fired into the air, over the heads of the adults, spattering the upper wall across the way and shattering windows.
‘If anyone moves towards the children again,’ Richter announced, holding the weeping boy’s wrist aloft, ‘this child will be shot.’ He consulted his watch. ‘The hour has begun. I advise you to hurry.’
They turned as one on the bearded man and began haranguing him and jabbing accusatory fingers, some of which were pointed in my direction. Where before there had been anger and fear, now there was terror, and panic, the voices shrill. But if the babble was indecipherable, their message was clear: they held the bearded man responsible, perhaps for his dallying with the blond man, the English agent, or perhaps for not dropping me back in the lough as soon as I had arrived. He seemed to accept their verdict, a head taller than any of them, nodding and holding up his hands as if in surrender, palms showing.
At this point I was distracted by Richter, who had gone down on one knee beside the little boy, and had taken a pinch of the whimpering child’s nightshirt between thumb and forefinger and was holding it to the boy’s nose, encouraging him to blow. His voice was low as he told the boy not to worry, it was simply a game, one that might seem frightening now but would reveal itself as a joke on the adults. Did the boy want to play a joke on his elders? The boy snuffled and nodded, uncertain. It was clear that he did not believe Richter, but was desperate to cling to any suggestion that what was happening was not real. ‘Good boy,’ said Richter, and ruffled the child’s hair. Then he propelled him towards the gaggle of children huddled in the church doorway and stood up, inclining his head at one of the guards.
When I looked back at the group of adults, the bearded man was gone. Leaderless, with no one to serve as a lightning rod for their rage, they were drifting apart, some weeping quietly, others shaking their heads or staring blankly at the children at the top of the steps. Despite all that had happened they seemed stunned into disbelief, as if they were somehow experiencing a collective nightmare from which they would surely awake. An eerie stillness prevailed. There was hardly a breeze off the harbour to disturb the stifling sense of anticipation. Even the children had fallen quiet. I felt nauseous, my throat muscles constricting. The men guarding the alleyways appeared rigid with expectation. The man who had found me in the loft was breathing hard through his nose where he stood a couple of yards away, knuckles white where they gripped his Schmeisser, fingers clawed around the barrel and the butt, all but the forefinger of his right hand, which was tapping incessantly against the metal, some Morse code message he appeared to be unaware he was sending out.
He stiffened as a woman stepped forward in the square, her hands joined and laid flat upon her head. She stood tilted back, feet splayed, her rounded stomach a kind of white flag – it was the schoolteacher, heavily pregnant, and offering to comfort the children. Richter considered this from the top of the steps, then nodded and went down to meet her, giving her his hand and helping her to climb. As she went up the steps she spoke to him in a confiding tone, so low that I caught only the phrase ‘the Geneva Convention’. He answered her, as he released her hand and ushered her towards the children, by saying that she might want to take up the issue with her government in Dublin, if they ever decided to take a side.
She made no reply, but went to the children with her arms open, going down on one knee and gathering them in.
It was as courageous and foolhardy a gesture as I had ever witnessed. She must have known that Richter was asking for the impossible. If the blond man was, as seemed now very likely, an English agent, he was duty bound to refuse the bearded man, even if the man managed to track him down in the hour allowed. The fate of a handful of children, perhaps even that of the entire village, was not his responsibility. In placing her unborn child in front of Richter’s guns, was she hoping to appeal to his humanity? To remind him of how truly barbaric his proposal was?
She knew nothing.
Richter now ordered two of his men to round up the remaining adults in the square – I counted fifteen as they passed – and herd them up the steps and into the church. One man, dressed in a shabby bathrobe, stepped out of the line and approached Richter, his arms held wide. He identified himself as the priest, Father Cahill, and offered himself and five other men as hostages in place of the children. Richter declined, telling the priest that his courage had been noted, but that his sacrifice would not be required for now. He told the priest to go into his church and comfort his people as best he could, that his greatest test was upon him. He further told him that he should only pray, that any attempt to overpower or disarm his men resulting from a plan hatched in the church would result in the slaughter of them all, adults and children alike. He understood, he said, that the priest was predisposed to believe in fairytales and unlikely reversals in fortune, but that this particular night would not be a good one in which to put his faith in miracles.
The priest was the last to enter the church. The doors were locked. Then began the waiting.
I have never known time to stand still in that way. It was as if the world had paused to glance this way and now held its breath, shocked into silence by the depth of Richter’s depravity. And yet the minutes flew. The men were nervy as they paced back and forth at their stations, clockwork toys with erratic mechanisms, jerky and repetitive as they checked their weapons and adjusted their masks, aiming their guns down the shadowy alleys and doing what they could to take their minds off what was to come.
The only man who did not check his watch during that time was Richter. He sauntered around the square with his hands clasped behind his back, offering encouragement here, a word of advice there. But even Richter was affected by the mood, the sense of dread. Not once did he raise his voice to the point where it was audible at the top of the steps.
It was eight minutes off the hour when the blond man appeared. We heard him first, announcing his presence as he came down the alleyway closest to the church, calling out that he was unarmed and asking for the senior officer to make himself known so that he could surrender. Richter did so, moving to the centre of the square, then ordered the man nearest the Englishman to search him for hidden weapons. The blond man did not resist, standing with his hands clasped to the back of his head, his eyes on Richter. When they were satisfied he was unarmed, Richter pointed to the house beside the church. This, at least, was a matter of some relief, as it meant that what would happen next would not be witnessed by the children. Then I realized Richter was beckoning me on, that I was expected to join them. A jolt in my lower back from the barrel of a Schmeisser informed me that it was not a request
I could refuse.
Inside the house the room was low-ceilinged and dimly lit, a turf fire smouldering in the grate. As the Englishman was lashed to a wooden chair I wondered if I was expected to take part in what was to follow, as a way of proving my credentials. Instead, Richter asked me to confirm that the Englishman – the Tommy, he called him – was the agent who had interrogated me. I said that I had no proof that he was an agent, but that he was the man who had questioned me in the stable loft. Richter then turned to the Englishman.
‘Tommy,’ he said, ‘you know what we need to know. You can save us time and yourself pain if you tell us now.’
I was in no doubt the Englishman was afraid. There was something shrunken about him, as if he was drawing into himself, attempting to protect something valuable at his core. He held himself steady but there was an unnatural stillness to his eyes as he told Richter that he was an archaeologist living on Delphi since 1939, excavating an ancient Celtic site on the southern tip of the island. Any of the villagers could confirm this fact.
‘That may well be true, Tommy. What is also true is that you are a British agent with the code name Morrigan.’
‘Not true.’
‘As you already know, because you told our friend here this afternoon, Klaus Rheingold was arrested last night in Derry. I assume he has been questioned?’
‘I know nothing about any of this.’
‘I believe you do but we are wasting time. What I want to know is when the U-boat is returning, and where it will arrive.’
‘I don’t know that.’
‘I find that hard to believe, Tommy.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Very well.’ Richter glanced up at the masked man standing behind the Tommy. The man placed his machine gun on the table, then stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the Tommy’s head, holding him rigid. Richter reached into his pants pocket and took out two simple tools, a pair of pliers and a knife with a serrated edge. He put the pliers on the table and held up the knife. An ugly blade, the kind used to gut fish. ‘This is on your own head, Tommy,’ he said. ‘I give you one last chance to tell us what we need to know.’
The Tommy’s eyes were bulging, either in fear or because of the pressure exerted by the man half-strangling him. He tried to shake his head.
Richter stepped forward and pinched the Tommy’s earlobe. Then he began to saw.
For a moment I am frozen in place, stunned by the savagery of the act – because an act is how it seems to me now, one staged by flickering candlelight to give it an ancient weight. When the blood starts to spurt the man behind me makes a gagging sound behind his mask, and when I back away towards the door, pushing him aside, he follows.
Outside the air is cool and clear, and in our hurry to leave we have forgotten to shut the door. The Englishman’s scream is shrill on the night air and goes shivering through the hushed village. It ascends rapidly to reach an agonized pitch, sharp as gunshot, then fades as quickly in tremulous sobs. Now there is a shocked silence. The masked men ringing the square glance quickly at one another, then begin scanning the cliffs above the village for possible threats and reprisals.
The second scream was louder still, and throbbed with desperation. To endure pain is one thing, because even a child knows that pain is an inevitable consequence of life, and suffering has its own logic. But where there is an awareness of no possibility of relief, when pain, deliberately inflicted, exists for its own sake, then the mind too suffers the agonies. There was in that scream, and those that followed, a note of helplessness that infected the children. Soon the little group was a bedlam of wails and moans and screeching, an anarchic symphony of despair that rose and fell in tandem with the prisoner’s, and yet never loud enough to drown him out entirely.
How long did it last? Impossible to say. No one checked their watch to measure off the minutes, because to do so would confirm that the torture had gone on that long, and had yet to end. One of the masked men, the one stationed at the head of the alleyway leading to the harbour, went down on one knee and half-turned away, tugging up his mask to vomit on to the cobbles. The others saw and tried not to see, and took a tighter grip of their weapons. A suppressed rage, sour as barracks sweat, was palpable in the square.
Had the adults not begun to sing inside the church, events might have unfolded very differently. There were many nights, long after the war was over, when I wondered if such a scenario might not have been for the best – if the Englishman, as cruel as it sounds, had died under torture without revealing what he knew. Not simply because the death of one man is preferable to the slaughter of children, but because it might have pre-empted the possibility of the massacre. Richter, had he any experience in the matter, would have known that no one resists torture. Strength and courage might help a man to hold out for longer than even he himself expects, but in the end, and regardless of training or loyalty or love, everyone breaks. Had the Englishman died it would have confirmed that Richter’s mission was pointless, that the information he sought was not to be had.
I have wondered many times over the years if Richter would have accepted that conclusion. If at that point he could have allowed for the possibility that his mission was doomed even before it began. If he was even entitled, according to his orders, to cut his losses and depart. It is difficult to say. It was not inevitable that Richter, having failed with the Englishman, would turn his attention to the villagers. But having travelled so far with the Tommy and left so much behind, Richter had very little left to lose. Did the power corrupt him so fully? Was it something as petty as frustration that tipped him over the edge? Was it the stink of blood?
The singing begins hesitantly, with a single hoarse voice.
‘Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Gabhla …’
A simple line, repetitive, a sea shanty. Other voices take it up.
‘Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann …’
Low at first, now rising in intensity, the words coming together in a quavering harmony.
‘Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Gabhla, báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann … ’
At first I believe they are singing to drown out the screams coming from the house next to the church, a lullaby to comfort the children, who are now themselves bawling in terror. But as the schoolteacher marshals them, encouraging them to sing along with their parents, I understand that they are singing to support the tortured man, singing in solidarity, employing the only weapon at their disposal: contempt.
The door to the house bursts open and Richter storms out already roaring orders. But it is not his rage that is terrifying: behind him the second masked man drags the Tommy into the square, the pair of them trailing a stench of sweat and blood and singed flesh and fresh shit. One look at the prisoner, before I turn away with bile surging hot and bitter into my throat, confirms that whatever will follow will be terrible beyond my most—
‘Daddy?’
Emily was stirring, sitting up with an arm draped across her forehead, blinking as she tried to work out where I was in the dimly lit room.
‘I’m right here, love,’ I said.
FOURTEEN
‘I thought you were gone,’ Emily said, sounding nasal and muffled, the way she always does when she wakes.
‘Afraid not,’ I said, lying down on the bed and cuddling in around her. ‘Your stinky old dad is still here, stinking out the whole room.’
‘Your breath is stinky,’ she muttered, but she shuffled backwards into the cuddle and closed her eyes again. When she was fully awake I took her to the bathroom, and we brushed our teeth and then got dressed. She played with her fashion princess Barbie while I got us packed, and then we went downstairs and settled the bill with Mr Elliott, there being no sign of Mrs Elliott, who was – presumably – in the kitchen and responsible for the delicious aroma of Ulster fry wafting through the house.
‘Daddy?’ Emily said as I strapped her into the booster seat.
‘Yes, love?’
‘I had a bad
dream.’
‘Really? What was it about?’
‘Clowns.’
I kissed her on the head, for luck, as was my habit when driving with Emily in the car, then went around and got into the driver’s seat. ‘Clowns aren’t scary, are they?’ I said. ‘They’re funny.’
Rathmullan was a little livelier that morning. I counted at least three pedestrians as we drove along the shore road, aiming for the pier.
‘Daddy?’
‘What?’
‘Clowns can’t get into our house, can they?’
‘No they can’t, love.’
‘If a clown got into our house, what would you do?’
‘Well, I’d give him a kick in the butt. Kick him all the way to the moon.’
She giggled at that. ‘In a rocket?’
‘No, he’d just fly up there.’
‘Oh, Daddy,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t you know there’s no grabity in space?’
‘Really?’ Grabity. My heart gave a soft kind of twist. ‘Who told you about grabity?’
‘Mommy’s Peter. He went to the sun in a rocket.’
‘Wow. I didn’t know Peter was an astronaut.’
‘Did you ever go to the sun, Daddy?’
‘Not yet, love. I was waiting until you were old enough, so we could go together.’
I turned up towards the café, pulled in and got parked.
‘Hey, Dad?’
‘Yes, love?’
‘Jake says if you go to the sun you’ll burn into nothing.’
Jake, her cousin, a couple of years older and obsessed with Star Wars, Minecraft and doom of all stripes and shades.
‘Did he now?’
‘Yeah. Why didn’t Mommy’s Peter burn into nothing when he went to the sun?’
‘Well, he was probably wearing a special space suit.’
‘Jake says he was telling lies.’
I got out of the car, went around to Emily’s side and helped her out, then hunkered down in front of her. ‘You like Mommy’s Peter, don’t you?’
