The Scent of Lemon Leaves

by Clara Sanchez

  Then she backed off, threw the bag on the bed, walked out and locked the door with the key.

  I was dumbfounded.

  “It’s for your own good, dear,” she said from behind the door.

  I sat down on the bed and looked out the window. I couldn’t see how I could get to the ground. I was on the second floor, quite high up, and there were no pipes nearby to cling to. I didn’t want to take risks in my state. I could have tried to kick the door down, though I wasn’t sure I had enough strength to break it. Karin had locked me in and was holding me hostage.

  I lay on the bed. If only I had supernatural powers and could communicate with Julián. If only he would pick up that something was wrong and come to get me. But how would a man of eighty, who was so thin a child could break his bones, come and get me? If only Alberto would sense I was in a mess and come running to help me. If only he loved me. If only my parents would do what I’d never forgive them for doing in other circumstances and come here to get me, even going to the police if necessary. If only my sister would get pissed off with the tenant and come to speak to him, and he would tell her that I’d been there with an old woman he’d thought was my grandmother, and my sister would be curious enough to come looking for me. Please come and find me, I thought with all my strength. If only the spirit of Salva, this man that Julián talked about, was here in this room to send me signs about how to get out of here, because, being a spirit, he’d see everything and would see the weak point through which I could escape.

  Salva, I said, you’ve been in a concentration camp, you, who were so many times on the brink of death before you really did die, send me the strength and wisdom to get out of this. I’m thinking of you, Salva, about how strong you were and how cunning you were when you had to overcome evil. Get inside my head, Salva, and tell me what I have to do. Let me think with your brain and let me not have to learn everything you learnt so I don’t give in to fear.

  I’m eighty-seven years old, I thought. I’m eighty-seven years old and I know you people. You’ve exploited me and tortured me and I know how to stand up to you. One, you are vampires from hell and you can’t live unless you’re sucking the blood of others. Two, because of that, I should never ever trust you under any circumstances, as you will deceive me and do everything you can to suck my blood. Three, I’ll have to become like you so you’ll leave me alone. Four, you’re creatures of the night, and night cloaks real intentions, real desires…

  I was still a daughter of the day and I saw things under the light of day, but let’s imagine this light went out. What would these same things be like in the darkness? I closed my eyes. I took out the little bag of sand Julián had given me and squeezed it tight. No, no, it wasn’t like closing your eyes, because with your eyes closed you don’t see anything. In the darkness you keep seeing things but in another way. You don’t see everything as you do during the day but you do see some things that have more luminosity or that stand out for some reason. I closed the shutters and pulled the curtains across, then lay on the bed to see what I’d see. A crack of light came in from under the door. And this line of light, these grains of light, concentrated in my belly. My belly.

  The eyes of those who look in the darkness wouldn’t see in me the shining of my eyes or the slope of my nose, but they’d see my future son in my belly. So it wasn’t madness to think that Karin had exposed herself to my discovering her secrets so she could suck out my time and my energy, so I’d keep her company when she was living exactly as she pleased. Karin had not locked me in here because I had my suspicions about her and Fred and their famous transparent liquid. They could have got rid of me. They did it because they wanted my baby. I tried not to think about it, but the film Rosemary’s Baby came into my head and I felt really bad. Five. Don’t be influenced by evil. The great speciality of evil is making you believe it is more powerful than good.

  My baby was protecting me. While he was inside me they wouldn’t do anything. I should learn to move in the darkness of evil and see what they saw. I should be more cunning than I’d ever been before and not let myself be blinded by the light.

  The only thing they needed was life.

  They were looking for anything with life.

  An eternity went by until I heard the street door. Fred had just arrived. He and Karin were talking about me in low voices so I wouldn’t hear them. I went over to the door and moved away again when I heard footsteps on the stairs, some heavy, some dragging, now coming along the passage to my room. The key turned and they came in. I was sitting on the bed. I lay down facing the window, turning my back to them.

  “Karin has told me what happened and that you can’t explain it. Or can you?”

  I didn’t answer. I was thinking about how I could jump up, run downstairs and get away.

  “Let’s be sensible. Karin locked you in because she didn’t know how to react. She did it to protect you. If it was up to us, we’d let you go but it’s not about us. It’s about the Brotherhood. If the Brotherhood found out that you were thinking about taking the medicine outside our circle, the situation would get a lot worse for you. Do you understand? We have to think together about what to do.”

  “We’re not even going to ask you about why you wanted the ampoule,” Karin said. “To sell it on the black market? Or do you think it’s a drug?”

  I kept lying there with my back to them and not answering. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself telling them what I knew about the liquid, but when they came closer and I felt them nearer, their breath on the back of my neck, I turned round quickly and got up.

  “You know very well that I didn’t take the injection. I didn’t take it. I didn’t take it. This is a trap.”

  “It would be dangerous for people if this medicine was circulating without any control. It is made only for us,” Karin added. “We run the risks of its possible contraindications. We don’t mind. But it can’t go outside our circle.”

  “The problem,” Fred continued, “is that Frida would have told Alice and Alice would have told Sebastian and, when it gets to that level, everyone is going to be upset.”

  They couldn’t deceive me any more. I saw into their darkness. I saw what they were seeing.

  “We need to think what to do,” Karin said, sitting on the bed.

  “Yes, we have to come up with something,” said Fred, scratching his chin.

  “I’ve got it.” Karin smiled at me. “We’ll say it was an error of mine, that I put it in the box that only had one left in it, so there’d be two, and then I forgot.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “But,” Fred intervened, “they’ll only half-believe that. You’ll have to join the Brotherhood so we can keep this episode in the family. From the moment you join the Brotherhood you’ll have to observe the hierarchy, the rules, and then we’ll all feel more secure, you, us and them.”

  The darkness told me that if they were so keen for me to join the Brotherhood it was because they’d have me locked up in a prison without bars from then on. The locks would be in my mind.

  “There’s no other way out,” one of them said.

  They were in the darkness. In the light was Julián, who’d soon start worrying about me.

  “And what do I have to do to join the Brotherhood?”

  Both of them smiled. They drew closer to me and put their hands on my shoulders.

  “You’ll see how good it is,” Karin said. “Your life’s going to take a spectacular turn for the better. You won’t have to worry about anything. You’ll be our protégée, and all this,” she told me, doing a half-turn around the room, “will be for you when we’re no longer here.”

  “Tonight we’re going to invite Alice and Otto to dinner so we can tell them the good news, and maybe we’ll phone Sebastian as well. He might come too, since it’s about you. We’ll see.”

  At the dinner they talked about my joining the Brotherhood, although I didn’t manage to take anything in because I was very tired and my vision was blurry. Ha
lfway through, I said I didn’t feel well and Sebastian stood up and pulled out my chair for me.

  10

  No One Sees Us

  Julián

  Martín was taking Sebastian to and from the Nordic Club, banks, a law firm and on longer trips. The Black Angel was spending a lot of time in the back seat of the car checking through papers. Martín also accompanied him to the cliff-top restaurant. Sometimes he ate with him and sometimes he waited outside. It was one of the times when he was alone that I took the opportunity to go over to his table. I told him my full name and asked if I could sit down for a moment.

  Just as I imagined, Martín came rushing over, but Sebastian signalled with his hand that he was not to bother me. He reacted as I’d expected, like a gentleman. Martín whispered something in his ear as he kept looking at me. Sebastian grimaced in disgust, whether because of the close proximity of Martín’s voice or because of me, I wouldn’t know.

  I formally introduced myself. I told him I was a Spanish republican who had been in Mauthausen the last year of the War and that I’d joined an organization that hunted down Nazis. He listened very attentively.

  He took an oyster from the tray where they nestled in crushed ice and invited me with a gesture of his hand to do the same. I declined, also with my hand. He offered me champagne. I let him pour me a glass but I didn’t drink it.

  “It doesn’t agree with me,” I told him, and it was true.

  “I am sorry you had to go through that,” he said.

  “Are you really sorry?” I enquired in the same tone, the tone of a conventional, even friendly conversation. To some, we might have looked like old acquaintances, which to some extent was true.

  “Why would I not be sorry? It was never my aim that people should suffer. I was fighting for a better world. The world always improves when some people take the reins and guide the rest. People in general don’t know what they want.”

  “People didn’t want what you wanted, so you lost.”

  “The world lost. The human species lost. We wanted to shun mediocrity, wanted to make a leap to excellence, which was achieved in many cases as many people have been favoured by our efforts. However, what you say is true. We lost the War.”

  “You’re predators. You were robbers, taking for yourselves the efforts and talents of other people. You stole the lives of others, although, of course, you didn’t call it life but human material.”

  “There was some immoderation. I never agreed with that.”

  “Was it immoderation to kill millions of people?”

  He thought about it while he savoured the oyster flesh.

  “Do you know who I am? You haven’t made some mistake?”

  “I doubt it. Fredrik and Karin Christensen, Otto Wagner, Alice, Anton Wolf, Elfe, Aribert Heim or the Butcher of Mauthausen, Gerhard Bremer and Sebastian Bernhardt and a few others. It’s a good story. This town could become famous. Your guards, Martín, Alberto and the rest won’t be able to gag the press.”

  “We have no fear of the press.”

  “And justice?”

  “Who can bring us to justice at this stage of life?”

  “I’m not referring to that justice, but to the justice that contrives to keep a balance in the universe, making sure there is the proper amount of helium so we can exist and the proper proportion of good and evil, of suffering and pleasure that makes life possible. You destroyed the balance.”

  “Nowadays,” he said, inclining his body as far as he could towards me, “it is very easy for you to judge because we lost, it turned out badly, but imagine for a moment that we won. The balance you speak of would have been achieved because balance is order, beauty and purity.”

  “I’ve been looking for you for a long time now. I need to speak to you. I need you to understand me.”

  Sebastian assented and he didn’t seem to think it appropriate to take another oyster. He crossed his hands on the linen tablecloth.

  “There’s no time to go backwards now. This is the moment of truth. I want to know whether you understand my suffering, my humiliation, my pain at being reduced to human material.”

  He looked me in the eye, taking me very seriously.

  “It gives me no pleasure to think that you suffered, but in periods of thoroughgoing historical transformation of reality there is no time to sift the chaff from the grain.”

  “And your duty was to transform reality, to turn it into something else.”

  “Exactly. I always believed I came into the world to change it. My life had a goal, a mission. Otherwise, my birth would have been absurd. National Socialism gave me the chance to act.”

  “Did you have an ideal world in mind?”

  “Yes, a beautiful planet.”

  “In the camp where I was there was no beauty. Do you think Heim’s experiments on us were beautiful?”

  “We didn’t have time to see the results. The results are what count. Perhaps at some other point in history…”

  “Neither one of us is going to see it.”

  “I visited your camp once,” he said. “It was in the spring of the year you said you were there. It had snowed heavily.”

  It was terrible to share anything with that man, but I was one of the people who could barely lift a shovel that spring.

  “I didn’t think about your suffering. I didn’t even think about you. I saw you all without thinking. That’s how things were. I was wearing an SS uniform and you were in the striped prisoners’ uniform. We were part of an established order that was impossible to break. There was nothing to think about. We had found a balance. Do you understand?”

  “And what do you think now? The world has changed without you.”

  “It was a bitter blow, because I am absolutely convinced that society has erred. I am convinced that everything would have been more perfect now.”

  “And do you understand that I hate you and your people, and that, in these last days of your lives, I want to see you suffering more than I had to suffer?”

  “Am I to suppose that I am being bitten by a rabid dog?”

  “But I’m not a dog. I wouldn’t bite you. I’d do something worse.”

  “What I did to you was not for personal reasons but for reasons of a higher order that are beyond good and evil. That is why you are behaving like a dog and I am not.”

  He was serious, convinced of what he was saying. All of them had clung to such ideas and programmes to exonerate themselves from guilt.

  “Don’t you accept any kind of responsibility for all those deaths, those millions of murders?”

  “Guilt, remorse and repentance hold back human progress. Do you feel much remorse when they slit a cow open or shear a sheep to use its wool? If one sees the objective and the way there clearly, and the objective is good, globally, as they say nowadays, then one must not hesitate.”

  “And you think I’m supposed to understand you?”

  “That would be all but impossible. You have been on the side of the victims.”

  “What I find impossible is that nobody, not a single one of you, has been tormented by having taken part in your atrocities.”

  He pondered that for a while. He’d finished his coffee and he sipped a little more champagne.

  “Hardly anyone is tormented by what he has done, but rather by what he has not done, what will be left undone when he dies. Take the case of poor Elfe, who said she drank to forget, but that might not be true. One always looks for excuses to justify one’s vices.”

  Poor Elfe. He said her name as if it was of no importance, because he couldn’t imagine that I knew her. Sebastian, I thought, you don’t know it all.

  “She doesn’t drink any more?”

  “If she is still drinking, it will be somewhere else without obliging us to deal with her mental debility.”

  “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth, and if you don’t tell me the truth now the mark you leave on the world will always be blurry. You won’t have managed to be totally real.”
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  He agreed with a slight inclination of his head. He was taking our conversation extremely seriously.

  “You are not mistaken. Now, for better or worse, we are invisible. No one sees us, except you, of course.”

  “If you get your people to go after me now,” I said, “your story of serving a higher cause will be a lie. If you kill me, it will be for purely personal reasons, because I’ve unearthed you and endangered your way of life.”

  He agreed again. I didn’t know whether his affirmation meant that he was going to kill me or whether I was right. I waited for some sign.

  “There is a girl who joined our group not long ago,” and he gave me an inquisitive look that make my hair stand on end. “Her name is Sandra. She has little idea of what she has got into and she is not one of us. She is a fresh rose that will very soon be wilting in the mediocre world in which it is her lot to live. She will look for a job that does not fulfil her, a husband, she will have children – indeed, I believe she is pregnant – and she will grow old without enjoying her life. We may be able to save her from all that. One has to help. Not everybody knows how to find salvation. People do not know their destiny.”

  I didn’t say anything, pretended not to be paying much attention, and that the name Sandra meant nothing to me. Would the Eel have told him that Sandra was secretly meeting me? If not, why would he have mentioned her?

  I left him having another coffee. He had a cast-iron constitution. I was quite wound up. I’d had to restrain myself so much in order not to punch him or smash a glass over his head that my hands were shaking. Outside, in the car, Martín was waiting for him and, seeing me leaving, followed me with his eyes. I was almost certain that Sebastian wasn’t going to tell him who I was, because, basically, I was from the world that he’d lost, and he’d be wanting to talk with me again. At some point in the conversation I wondered what Salva would be doing in my place and I think he would have partly approved.

  Salva was much smarter than me and he would probably have had Sebastian on the ropes, would have seeded doubts and would have demolished him from within. In the same way as he’d known how to encourage me so often, just as he convinced me that life is always worth living that day I’d tried to commit suicide, he would have made Sebastian see that his plan was always, absolutely always, utter imbecility. I, in contrast, had offered him arms he could use to fortify himself.