‘Boys,’ he said, ‘I have not come here today to speak of wounds nor of decorations. I am here today because this was the last place I was happy. Some of you will find that hard to believe, but it is true. Five years ago I was the age that some of you are now; I was in my last summer with the HJ. As a child I grew up in these mountains - they are my home. When I think back to that summer, I remember climbing with dear friends, none of whom are alive today. Since that time I have shivered through the long Russian nights; during those nights I often thought of this place, of the songs and the stories, the Drachenwand and the lake. I tell you this because I want you to enjoy it to the full while you still can.
‘When I think back, I also remember our impatience. I wanted action and the chance to test my courage, the chance to win glory. Many of you will no doubt feel that way. It is right that you should feel that way. But do not lose sight of what you already have because you think only of what is to come.
‘I have been asked here today to award the Hitler Youth dagger to two of your comrades. These two Hitlerjungen have distinguished themselves by their courage, their physical prowess and their pursuit of excellence. They have not yet had to spill their blood for Germany, but what they have achieved here would make the Führer just as proud. Many of you will have watched them climb to victory yesterday. Otto Eisinger and Siegfried Rackus, please step forward to receive the blade.’
I was dumfounded but I had little time to wonder. Boys had started cheering and Siggi and I were pushed forward as hand after hand clapped us on the back. This was extremely unusual; the dagger was almost always presented upon graduation from the HJ, hardly ever before that. Occasionally in recognition of acts of great bravery, but rarely simply for winning a sports competition.
Siggi and I mounted the steps that led up to the wooden stage. The cheering died down as we shook hands with SS Brigadeführer Raue. He indicated to us that we should kneel on the wooden floor. As we did so, two younger boys appeared before us. Each boy held in his hands a red velvet cushion. On each cushion lay the silver Hitler Youth dagger with the small swastika embossed on the handle. Engraved in the middle of the blade were the words Blut und Ehre. Brigadeführer Raue took my right hand in his right and Siggi’s right hand in his left, then he placed our right hands over the daggers on the two cushions. He started to recite the oath of allegiance to the Führer and we repeated it after him. When we had finished repeating it, he pressed the daggers into our hands and our friends again began to cheer.
Chapter 16
ONCE PIETRO had left, Fernanda exchanged my white gown for a pale green one, then she gave me an elasticated plastic cap for my head. The anaesthetist arrived as I was putting it on. He was a large man with big, rough hands – quite out of keeping with his occupation and with the polka dot bow tie he was wearing. He explained that I would shortly be taken through to the operating theatre where he would give me a small injection – a ‘scratch’, as he called it – and I would not feel anything until I woke up later in the day with an artificial hip. The pain might be considerable, he said, and I should not be afraid to use the morphine drip to which I would once again be attached. He then looked at his checklist and ran through a few final questions – Did I have any allergies? Was I currently taking medication? – before asking for my signature at the bottom of the list. I signed, he nodded and assured me that I had nothing to worry about, then I was by myself.
I felt ill at ease. In part, this was because I was nervous about the operation. But I also felt that I had not been entirely honest with Pietro. I hadn’t lied to him, but I had not told him everything that had happened during the hour we spent at the girls’ camp. There are some things I am not comfortable sharing with him. Yet in my own mind those events loom large, especially now that I have begun to wonder whether the similarity between Siggi and Pietro could be more than a mere coincidence.
*
The girls offer to show us the camp. We follow them along the path which slopes up into the woods from the shore of the lake. When it becomes steep, I go ahead and take Christiane’s hand. When the path evens out again, I do not release her hand and nor does she remove it from mine. So we walk hand in hand through a glade of silver birch and alder. The white trunks of birch gleam in the moonlight and I can hear the tinkling of water to our right where a small brook runs into the lake, now a little way below us.
‘On some nights we come here to tell stories,’ Christiane whispers into my ear. And I can see why – it feels like an enchanted place.
Christiane tugs my hand. ‘Komm, gehen wir zum Ausichtspunkt,’ she says, then she releases my hand and strikes away from the path. I look round but by now Siggi and Freya are some way behind us.
Siggi and Freya – that’s it. The blond girl was called Freya.
I turn to follow Christiane. The slope grows steeper and we climb over buried roots and between rocks. The trees thin out and I can see the light of the moon reflected off the surface of the lake. Christiane’s hand seeks mine and I hold it for a moment, then I pull her towards me and kiss her on the lips. And it was there, in that opening between the trees, overlooking the lake, that I made love to a woman for the first and, perhaps, the last time.
I have not slept with many women since Christiane, and it never felt as right as it did on that first occasion. That is not usually the way, I know. Over the years I have come to realise that I do not love women the way that other men do. On that first occasion I believed I did, but I also loved a great deal more besides. I loved the sparkling lake below me and the cold water swirling about me and the hot sun on the Drachenwand. I loved my friends, and my country, and bravery, and honour, and the Führer who had brought all these things together. So when I made love it was not just about Christiane; indeed, it was not even primarily about Christiane.
Afterwards we sat for a while on a rock looking out over the lake. We talked about the first time we met, during the long march to Nuremberg, just after I had joined the Jungvolk. I reminded her how she often took our side in arguments with older boys. She smiled at that and said, ‘Yes, I always liked you.’ Then she ran her hand through my hair, which was still damp from the swim. I lay down so that my head was resting on her lap. When I looked away from her, I could see the lake glittering below us.
After a while, I broke the silence. ‘We are very lucky,’ I said. Christiane didn’t reply, so I went on, ‘I mean, our parents were never part of anything like this.’ Still Christiane did not respond. ‘They never got to experience anything like this,’ I said as I gestured to the lake below us. Then I looked up at Christiane and saw that her brow was furrowed. ‘Don’t you think we are lucky?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but I’m scared too.’
‘What’s there to be scared of?’ I asked, surprised.
Christiane looked gravely down at me.
‘Promise you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you,’ she said.
‘I promise.’
‘I have an older brother who is a painter,’ she said. ‘My father sent him away to live in Hamburg. He wanted to send him to South America but my mother begged him not to.’
‘Why did your father send him away?’
‘My brother doesn’t believe in the Führer. He says the party is evil.’
‘What?’ I asked, astonished.
Christiane pressed her finger to my lips and whispered ‘Shhhh’. Of course, I knew that the party had its critics, but I never imagined that they would come from good families like Christiane’s. Jews and traitors might hate the Führer, but not pillars of the community. At that moment, on that particular day, the thought that the Führer could be evil struck me as absurd.
‘Christiane, if it weren’t for the Führer and the party, none of this would be possible. Don’t you see that?’
Christiane didn’t reply. After a while, she said, ‘Please Otto, you must never tell anyone.’
I wanted to convince Christiane that her brother was wrong, but then I hea
rd Siggi’s voice calling my name.
Christiane pulled away from me abruptly. I called back, ‘Here. We’re coming.’
We stood up and dusted the earth and the twigs from the blanket, then we followed the path back down through the trees. From a distance I could see Siggi and Freya standing pressed together. They pulled apart when they saw us. Siggi indicated the height of the moon in the sky, then we returned to the wooden jetty where Siggi and I dove into the lake to swim back to our camp.
*
I have never been happier than I was in the days following the climb and the hour by the lake with Christiane and the award of the HJ dagger. I felt I could do anything. Siggi felt it too, I am sure of that, but he expressed it through a surfeit of energy that verged on mania. I suppose it was his nature to push the boundaries; that is what makes a great adventurer. Every night he planned some sort of mischief and I felt it was my duty to accompany him. Mostly they were just harmless pranks – letting down tents or hiding people’s clothes whilst they were asleep; the punishment for any of these would not have been severe. But one night Siggi woke me in order to raid the storage tent - he had seen our Hungarian cooks sneak out of the camp, leaving the tent unguarded.
Siggi and I crept into the tent. We found piles of tinned food and enormous bags of sugar and flour. I am not sure what we were hoping for, but it wasn’t this. We carried on searching and our thoroughness was eventually rewarded with a bottle of unopened Hungarian slivovitz. We took the bottle and ran up through the woods to a small clearing on raised ground; from there it was easy to see if anyone was approaching. Then we sat down and passed the bottle of lukewarm slivovitz between the two of us in the way that only determined adolescents and drunks can.
We were young, entirely unaccustomed to alcohol and we were in very good shape. It did not take long for this potent homemade spirit to take effect. At first we became very talkative. As our excitement grew, so our voices were in danger of becoming too loud and one of us constantly had to shush the other. We were soon giggling uncontrollably. There are few things more likely to induce uncontrollable laughter than the combination of alcohol, high spirits and the danger of giving oneself away. We kept passing the bottle to and fro and soon the edges of my perception began to blur and everything that mattered seemed concentrated in the figure of my friend.
‘Siggi,’ I said, ‘I am so grateful to you.’
‘What?’ he said.
‘No, I’m serious. I am so grateful to you. I know what a great climber you are. I know you could climb with anyone.’
‘That’s nonsense.’
‘It’s true. You know it’s true. And I want to give you something…’
I put my hand in my pocket and took out the small piece of amber with the insect’s wing trapped inside. I always carried it in my pocket.
‘I want you to have this,’ I said. ‘It’s a talisman.’
Then I lit a match and held the amber in front of it. Siggi had already started to protest but he was immediately captivated by the light of the dancing flame glimpsed through the ancient resin and through the delicate insect’s wings. He stared intently at it.
‘The fly got stuck to a drop of Harz on a prehistoric tree,’ I said, then I pressed the piece of amber into his hand.
‘You really want me to have it?’
‘Yes.’
We passed the bottle back and forth a few more times, then Siggi said, ‘Otto, the climbing is nothing. I know this sounds Schmalzig, but I feel like you are the brother I never had.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘I feel like that too.’ I took another swig. I could feel the beating of my heart. ‘I had an older brother. He died before I was born.’ Maybe, I thought to myself, maybe it is his soul in your body.
Siggi was again staring at the match through the amber. He looked across at me. His eyes appeared slightly glazed in the light of the flame.
‘Then we will make a pact,’ he said. ‘As blood brothers.’
Siggi gave me the matches, then he unsheathed his Hitler Youth dagger. He held it in his right hand. My vision had become so blurred that I could barely make out the words engraved on the blade. Then Siggi held out his left hand and laid the shiny metal against the heel of his palm on the inside, a little above the wrist. He pushed the blade down until the skin was depressed, then he pulled it smoothly a few centimetres across. There was a second during which the wound appeared pale and surprised, then a trickle of blood began to flow, very bright and very red even by the flickering light of the match.
Siggi took my left hand in his left hand. My heart was thumping in my chest and I could hear a rushing noise inside my head. He touched the cool metal to my palm. ‘Keine Angst,’ he said, then he pulled the blade across. I felt no pain. Again there was a brief moment before the blood began to flow. Siggi wiped the blade on the grass then put it back in its sheath. He extended his left hand towards me and we pressed our palms together and clamped them with our right hands.
In the silence that followed I felt that the world was spinning around me. Then I heard Siggi’s voice:
‘Otto, do you know why we weren’t punished?’
‘What?’ I said.
‘We weren’t punished because Kurt made me… makes me do things I don’t want to do.’
‘Like what?’ I asked. ‘Like sentry duty? I also hate sentry duty.’
‘No Otto, disgusting things.’
Siggi’s words came out slurred. I wasn’t sure that I had heard him correctly. The world was spinning and I felt nauseous. What was he saying? That Kurt made him do things he didn’t want to do? Maybe climb faces he didn’t think he could climb? But Siggi was drunk too. He didn’t know what he was saying. The world was spinning faster and faster and the rushing sound was getting louder. I tried to focus on Siggi’s face – something solid and familiar – but it was just a blur. My mouth was filling with salty saliva. I swallowed again and again. Then in the next instant I was being sick, violently.
*
I felt nauseous in the hospital too, but not because of the memory of the slivovitz. No, it was the fact that I hadn’t been allowed to eat all day. However, I was spared the sight of the other patients wolfing their lunch by the arrival of the two nurses who were going to wheel me into the operating theatre.
The nurses both congratulated me on the attempt to apprehend the gunman in the shop. It seems that everyone knows about me in this hospital. However, I was not given any time to bask in pride. The nurses undid the wheel locks and wheeled me out of the ward, along a spearmint green corridor, into a lift and up to the fourth floor.
The anaesthetist with the bow tie was waiting for me in the ante-room of the theatre. Now he was wearing a white gown. The nurses attached a little clip to the end of my middle finger, then they took my blood pressure with an inflatable black armband around my elbow. I warned them that those devices make me nervous and that the reading might not be accurate but the anaesthetist dismissed my concern with a breezy ‘tudo bom’. He took hold of my left hand and told me that I would feel nothing more than a little scratch. I looked away and dug the nails of my right hand into my palm to distract myself. The precautions were unnecessary; there was no pain. The last thought I remember was wondering what would happen if the anaesthetic didn’t work.
Chapter 17
SEU OTTO will be in the operating theatre by now. I am not worried about him. Fernanda, his nurse, told me that these operations are routine. And he’s a tough old man, no doubt about that.
It’s a beautiful afternoon. I decide to go for a surf – there are things on my mind, things I need to think about. I drive home to get my board. Marina is at home. I suggest to her that she come surfing with me. We haven’t surfed together for ages.
‘I have to work tonight,’ she says.
‘So do I,’ I say. ‘And I have to see Seu Otto after the operation. Let’s just go for a few waves before dark, then we’ll come straight back.’ Usually we
’d also have a few beers at one of the restaurants by the beach after surfing. When we first got together, that’s what we’d do most evenings – surf, have a few beers, smoke a joint. But that was before I was sponsored by Kauai, and before I’d started promoting nights at Divino.
We drive to Moçambique. It’s a few miles north of Joaquina and you get a lot of posers on the beach. However, I don’t want to see anyone from Kauai. They’d want to know about which contests I was planning to compete in and so on, and that’s not a conversation I want to have. At least, not right now.
Marina is in good spirits. I realise that it’s been a while since we have done something fun together, something other than shopping for groceries or running errands. She rests her arm against the back of my seat and strokes my neck. I put my hand on her knee but I can’t leave it there for long because I have to keep changing gear. Then my phone rings. Marina opens it and holds it to my ear. It is avó.
‘Pietro!’ she shouts down the phone. Even when their hearing is fine, old people always seem to shout into phones. ‘Pietro! Seu Otto is out of the operating theatre. He’s fine, but he’s very tired. He would like you to visit but he’d prefer you to come tomorrow morning.’
‘Sure, no problem,’ I say. The phone cuts out before I can say goodbye. Avó has still not mastered the mobile phone.
‘Your grandmother?’ asks Marina.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The operation went well but Seu Otto is tired. I’m going to see him tomorrow morning. That means we have the whole afternoon to surf.’ I squeeze Marina’s knee.
‘This story about Senhor Eisinger is a great opportunity, Pietro. You have to make the most of it.’
‘I know, I know,’ I say. I don’t like the insistence of her tone. I squeeze her knee harder, digging my thumb and index finger in at just those two points where the sensation teeters between pain and pleasure.
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