The Violent Century

by Lavie Tidhar

  – Tigerman, is it true the United States government has lodged a formal complaint with the Israeli authorities over the arrest and kidnapping of de la Cruz?

  – I couldn’t possibly comment, Theresa, Tigerman says, and the smile he flashes her is feral, it is of a wild animal showing its teeth, and the anchorwoman shies back from him. But I am sure we all, Tigerman says, simply want to see historic justice done here over the coming days.

  – Thank you, Tigerman—

  But the Übermensch is already turning away from her and, as the camera zooms in on his back, we see him joined by a woman in a blue, tight-fitting costume, with dark hair, a slender figure, and we hear Theresa of CBS drawing in her breath as she says, And that was the renowned Tigerman, a national hero, and there with him, it can be none other than the famous Whirlwind. They, and many more, are here in Jerusalem, Israel, for what some are already calling the Trial of the Century. This is Theresa Conway, in Jerusalem, reporting for CBS.

  The Old Man smiles without humour and watches Tigerman disappear into the narrow streets. The Old Man goes and sits in the bar and orders a scotch and swirls it in the glass. He is not looking forward to the trial.

  Now he sits at court wishing he still had that Scotch to keep him company. Waiting. Watching. They have no juries in Israel, and the three judges sit alone, on a plain dais, overlooking the prosecution and the defence benches, and the rows of journalists and spectators. In the middle of the courtroom sits a transparent box made of bulletproof glass, with a chair and a microphone inside it, and that is where the man sits. Woven into the glass are fine filaments of electric wire, and a faint eldritch glow suffuses the box, as though a force field of some form is engulfing it, sealing the man inside and whatever power he may possess. They are taking no chances, the Israelis. Not after Buenos Aires …

  He is not a formidable man, this de la Cruz. He is a grey man in a grey suit, with grey short-cropped hair and old-fashioned spectacles and an impeccably knotted grey silk tie. He, too, looks hot in his glass aquarium box.

  The Old Man sits down at the very back, so he may watch without being observed. Each chair has a pair of large earphones plugged into a socket by its side. The proceedings are conducted in Hebrew while witness interviews may be done in the witness’s native tongue or in English. For the benefit of the journalists and audience, a simultaneous translation is broadcast in real time, directly into their earphones. The Old Man doesn’t put them on yet. Instead he watches the journalists and the photographers and the television men. They are here from all corners of the Earth. Americans mix with Chinese, Russians with West Germans, everyone wants to cover this trial, everyone wants the scoop on the man in the glass box.

  The courtroom is filled with Israeli officials in cheap, worn suits; of newspapermen with open collars and ink-stained fingers; and it is full of the costumed heroes, who sit still and silent, for the most part, lending the only colour to this otherwise rather drab courtroom. The man in the glass box, this anonymous de la Cruz, sits quietly, hands folded in his lap. The only thing in motion are his eyes; they scan the courtroom rapidly, back and forth, and the Old Man knows he is missing little. The eyes are alive with a fierce intelligence. The judges gather their papers. A hush slowly settles on the court.

  The court clerk stands up. Clears his throat.

  And the trial, The State of Israel vs. Joachim Vomacht, at last begins.

  85. JERUSALEM 1964

  There’s a murmur of interruption, a moment during Anton Gerasimov’s testimony. The Israeli soldiers scattered along the walls, even they stand to attention, and the judges perk up, and the foreign correspondents turn this way and that as if unsure exactly as to the nature of the interruption. The doors to the courtroom open and in comes a large, barrel-chested, as they say, man. He wears dusty khakis and what the Israelis call a Tembel hat, a cotton, bell-shaped hat that shades his dark face from the sun. The man’s skin is indeed dark – no, not dark, not so much dark as a peculiar shade of deep green. He pauses and looks around the courtroom and the murmurs rise, and someone gasps, The Sabra!

  The Sabra’s eyes pan across the room until they find the man in the glass box, and there they linger. The Old Man watches from the back of the room. A tension in the courtroom, like an electric current (but not from the Electric Twins, only one of whom is present). The Sabra moves his head, his neck is thick, he raises one arm and thorns burst out of it, and in a ring around his neck, and out of his back. Then they deflate and disappear and the Sabra walks to the back of the room, quietly, where a nervous young man vacates his seat for the great man, this hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the War of Independence and of Operation Kadesh and, of course, of the Vomacht kidnapping itself. The Old Man looks at the Sabra and, for just a moment, the Sabra looks back. Recognition floods his eyes. He nods, wordlessly. The Old Man nods back.

  On the witness stand, Anton Gerasimov resumes his testimony. He is wearing white, a plain one-piece white suit. He has no hair. His face is deeply scarred. His eyes are blue and cold.

  – You were a partisan? the counsellor for the prosecution, a tall, thin man in his sixties, wearing a yarmulke and a conservative suit, says.

  – Yes.

  Gerasimov has a deep, hoarse voice.

  – Against the Germans.

  – Yes.

  – Where was this?

  – I operated in Belarus. I was at the fall of Minsk. Later, I led a group of comrades against the Nazi animal and the Einsatzgruppen.

  – Einsatzgruppen? the counsellor says.

  – Death squads, Gerasimov says.

  The counsellor nods, half turning to the audience, to make sure they got the point.

  – You are changed, Mr Gerasimov?

  – Kerach, Gerasimov says.

  – That is your moniker, correct?

  – That is what you will call me, the man on the witness stand says.

  The counsellor colours, a little. Of course, he says. Kerach. A half-laugh from the audience, primarily, the Old Man notes, from the costumed Übermenschen.

  – You are changed, Kerach? You are an Übermensch?

  – Yes.

  – Could you … could you show us?

  – Here? Now?

  – If the court has no objection? the counsellor says, turning to the judges.

  – We’ll allow it, the lead judge, a white-haired man with reading glasses on a string around his neck, says. On the witness stand, Kerach shrugs. Very well, then, he says.

  He raises his hand, his palm upwards, open, as if to capture unseen snow. The temperature changes in the courtroom, it drops. The Old Man’s breath fogs in front of his face. Ice crawls along the windowsills and the sunlight breaks through the glass into rainbows. An icy sheen covers the parquet floors. Kerach moves his hand, gently, the cupped fingers turning, outstretching towards the man in the box. A crack like gunfire echoes in the still courtroom and the bulletproof glass breaks. Shouts break out and soldiers rush towards the box. Stop! Someone shouts. Stop! Kerach’s fingers move as though composing a silent symphony. Ice crawls over the glass witness box and the man inside it is trapped without sound, sealed within. IDF soldiers jump on Kerach and wrestle him to the ground. He does not fight them. They pin his hands behind his back and cuff them and still he does not resist. Do something!

  – Perhaps I can help, someone says. Who the hell are you, the lead judge says. The man is wearing a flaming red outfit and has a Texan accent. I’m Flame Beast, he says. The judge nods, reluctantly. The Texan clicks his fingers and a flame comes alive in his hand. Gently he reaches towards the box and blows on the flame, which shoots out, expanding, engulfing the box.

  – This is a bloody disaster, someone says, groaning. But a moment later Flame Beast extinguishes his fire and the glass box appears to be defrosting. Water puddles cover the floor and inside the cage the prisoner is breathing again, his hands grasping his neck; his colour is slowly returning.

  – A bloody disaster, someone says agai
n.

  – Order! Order!

  – Take him away to calm down, the judge on the left, a portly man with brown hair, says. Honestly. And fix the prisoner’s stand. The court will adjourn until tomorrow.

  The gavel comes down. The audience stands. Soldiers lead Kerach away. He is still unresisting. A cheer rises from the ranks of the Übermenschen as he passes amongst them, and many clap him on the back as he walks.

  The Old Man shakes his head in disgust and gets up. A drink in the air-conditioned hotel bar would be just the thing to salvage what’s left of the day.

  86. JERUSALEM 1964

  – The court will rise!

  – Please sit down.

  – Counsellor, I trust that the witness will not be in contempt of court again this afternoon?

  – The witness has assured me there will not be a repeat of yesterday’s unfortunate events, Your Honour.

  – Very well … the judge rubs the bridge of his nose wearily. The witness is yours, he says.

  The counsellor paces. The man in the repaired glass box sits stoically. Anton Gerasimov – Kerach – is back on the witness stand.

  – We have established, the counsellor for the prosecution says, that you were a partisan, operating in Belarus during the war. You are – as I think we have all quite conclusively seen—

  A small laugh from the otherwise-silent audience.

  – An Übermensch. One of the changed. Is that correct?

  – That is correct, Kerach says.

  – I see, the counsellor says. And how long were you in operation, during the war? he asks.

  – I was captured in the beginning of nineteen forty-three, if that’s what you mean, Kerach says.

  – Captured?

  – By the Nazis, Counsellor. By the degenerate Nazi animal. He makes as if to spit. Wolfskommando, he says.

  The counsellor makes a show of consulting some papers, fooling no one. You are referring to Gestapo Department F? he says.

  – Yes.

  – That would be the special department within the Nazi secret police established for the purpose of capturing Allied Übermenschen?

  – Yes.

  Whispers in the court. The counsellor ignores them.

  – Can you tell me how you were captured? he says.

  Kerach shrugs. We had gone to a village the Nazis had marked for extermination, he says. The village had a special school for the disabled. Our information suggested that a Nazi death squad had been sent to purify the school.

  – Purify?

  – Exterminate. The death squads used mobile gas trucks. They would lock the children inside and gas them to death. It was considered humane.

  – I see.

  The courtroom is deathly quiet. The counsellor says, What happened when you got there?

  – We were too late. The school was empty. The Einsatzgruppen had already been, hours before. We found the children buried in a nearby field, in a mass grave. It was … not dug deep.

  – I see.

  Again the counsellor for the prosecution lets a moment of silence pass. What happened then? he says, gently.

  But there is nothing gentle in Kerach’s reply.

  – We were set up, he says. It was an ambush. They had been waiting for us and once we were there they closed the trap. They killed my men. Shot them over the same common grave they had dumped the children in. But they didn’t kill me. He smiles, without humour. They went to great lengths not to kill me.

  – They?

  – Brigadeführer Hans von Wolkenstein, Kerach says. Again that chilly smile. Der Wolfsmann.

  A sigh, a gasp from the audience at the mention of that name. Tigerman growls in the front row and Whirlwind lays a hand on his shoulder until he settles back. The counsellor looks at the audience, at the judges, and turns his attention again to the man on the witness stand.

  – That would be the head of Gestapo Department F? he says.

  – Yes. He is a nullifier.

  – Nullifier?

  – His presence nullifies other Übermenschen’s abilities.

  – So you were not able to—

  – No.

  Kerach smiles that icy smile again. We met before, he says. He and I. I do not need powers to take a man on. When he says powers, he looks to the man in the glass box. All I need is a fair fight. He shrugs. That was not something I was given.

  – You were captured.

  – Yes.

  – Then what happened?

  – At first they put me in a POW camp on the Polish border. It was a general camp. They didn’t keep me there long. I got the sense it was a temporary arrangement. A few months after I was captured they transferred me again. This time to Auschwitz.

  A silence in the court. Auschwitz, the counsellor says quietly.

  – Yes.

  – And there? the counsellor says.

  – I was given into the charge of a Dr Mengele, Kerach says. Dr Josef Mengele.

  A murmur in the audience. The name is well known.

  – And what did that entail? the counsellor for the prosecution says.

  – I was kept in a special quarters separated from the other inmates of the camp, Kerach says. It was referred to by both inmates and camp staff as the Menagerie. It was a secure facility, housing only Übermenschen. Dr Mengele had a special dispensation from the Reich to experiment on the nature of the condition. In another lab he kept twins, he had an obsession with twins – twins and midgets. I don’t know how many people went through his labs during the war. But there were many of us in the Menagerie.

  – And you say he experimented on you?

  – On all of us. He gassed us. He cut us open. He tested us with electricity, acid, wanting to see how much damage we could take. Some – many – of us didn’t make it.

  – Can you tell us of some of the things he did?

  – I remember the twins, Kerach said. They weren’t changed. They were nothing. Roma. Gypsies. He … for the first time here Kerach pauses. He blinks. Mengele sewed them together, he says. He wanted to see if he could make conjoined twins. They survived the surgery but the infection killed them, later. He had child patients. He used to call himself Uncle Mengele when he came around to see them. He gave them sweets. Once, he took fourteen pairs of identical twins and injected chloroform into their hearts and once they were dead he cut them open on his operating table and measured up and compared their organs. What he did to us was easy by comparison. We were Übermenschen, we were harder to come by. Still, we didn’t all make it. Those who didn’t were carted off to the crematorium. I will always remember the smell. You can’t wipe away the smell of three million dead. It never goes away. We? Kerach says. We who lived? We were the lucky ones.

  A silence in the court, the counsellor for the prosecution turns his head this way and that like a stork. Comes to settle on the man in the glass box. I want you to think carefully now, he says. Speaking to Kerach but looking at the man in the glass box. Did you ever get visitors at the … Menagerie? Nazis?

  – Often, Kerach says. Hitler himself came once, to stare. It was not considered safe for him to go inside. We were deemed too dangerous. Instead we were paraded out to him, one by one. Kerach shrugs. Hitler looked bored, he says.

  – Anyone else?

  – Martin Bormann, the same time as Hitler. Eichmann, twice. Alfred Rosenberg came – he was the main figure behind Nazi philosophy, the Party’s spiritual leader. He argued with Mengele, I remember. Said the Menagerie was a disgrace, and that we should all be exterminated immediately. It was the only time I saw Mengele lose his temper. He was close to tears. It is my life’s work, he kept saying. My life’s work. I guess Rosenberg didn’t get his way, though, because we were still there the next morning. I had rather thought that we wouldn’t be.

  – And this man? the counsellor for the prosecution says softly. And in the total hush of the courtroom we realise all of this, the questions, the back-and-forth, were all, simply, a lead-up to this one single question. This man, t
he counsellor says, in his soft cultured voice, and his hand rises, pointing at the man in the glass box. Did you ever see this man at the holding facility in Auschwitz?

  Kerach looks at the man in the glass box. Looks at him for a long moment. The man in the glass box doesn’t look back. He sits quietly, his hands in his lap.

  – Yes, Kerach says.

  – Silence!

  Kerach is stoic, and so is the man in the glass box. But the court is anything but. The counsellor for the prosecution patiently, with a sense of theatrics, waits for order to return.

  – Could you identify him for the court? he says at last.

  – We were never … formally introduced, Kerach says – which draws a few laughs.

  – However, I overheard Mengele referring to him as Dr Vomacht, Kerach says, and again there is noise.

  – Vomacht, the counsellor says.

  – Yes.

  – Has he visited more than once?

  Kerach shrugs. Two or three times, he says.

  – Can you be more exact?

  – Three, Kerach says. Three times.

  – And you are sure this is the man you saw?

  – Yes, Kerach says. Looks at the man in the glass box, who finally, calmly turns his head then, and looks back at him.

  – Yes, Kerach says. I’m sure.

  87. JERUSALEM 1964

  – No, he says. Shakes his massive head. No, I won’t do it. I can’t.

  The Old Man wipes his brow with his handkerchief. From the Friday evening and on through Saturday Jerusalem becomes a veritable desert: shops close, public transport ceases, and a hush descends on the Israeli side of the city. The Old Man and many of the foreign visitors flock to the handful of open bars catering mostly to tourists and visitors. Now he sits at one such place, Mike’s, waiting for the air-conditioning to kick in, drinking a twelve-year-old scotch and rather wishing the whole interminable affair were over.

  – So how have you been, Tank? he says.

  – Living, Tank says. One day at a time.

  The Old Man examines him. We don’t age, he says, but quietly, almost to himself. He’d seen Tank after the war, after the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by the Red Army. The once-giant man had weighed less than eight stone – under fifty kilograms. He was a walking skeleton, his loose skin hung in folds from his bones, his teeth and his hair had fallen out. The Old Man had found him in a Red Army field hospital and pulled him out, shouting at the Russian officers in attendance, who glared at him mutely. A British Übermensch, they seemed to imply, was not high on their list of priorities.