Alphabet House (9 page)

One morning the sound of waltz music came from the corridor. The barber came and shaved their cheeks smoother than ever, even though he had been there the previous day. One of the porters, a veteran of the First World War, rattled his iron hook against the nearest bedpost as usual, the signal for bathtime. Bryan felt confused and disorientated about this change of routine.

Among the patients, he wasn’t the only one.

Most of the nursing staff on duty smiled as they handed the patients snow-white, newly washed dressing gowns and told them to get ready quickly. The security officer who had shot the malingerer in the gym stood elegantly, straddling the swing doors. Inspecting the men, he nodded in an authoritative and almost friendly fashion as they stood lined up in front of their beds. Then their names were called out. Some of them never reacted when this happened. Bryan had decided long ago to be different.

‘Arno von der Leyen,’ barked the security officer. Bryan started. Why should he go first? He hesitated, but yielded when an orderly took his arm.

The security officer clicked his heels and stretched out an arm in a
heil
as the strange procession filed past him through the swing doors while their names were called. Only the few patients who had just received shock treatment remained behind, among them James.

Bryan glanced around nervously at the head of the procession. Behind him were seventeen or eighteen men who could still be called raving mad. They had been looked after for over three months now. What were they intending to do with them this time? Were they to be moved to other wards or hospitals, or maybe weeded out? And why was he called out before all the others? The security officer who hammered his boots on the stone floor made him uneasy, as did the orderlies and porters
who escorted the group on either side. Perhaps it was a good thing James hadn’t come with them after all.

The row of men walked past the treatment room, the electroshock room and the doctors’ room and out through the door they had entered the very first day and not been through since. By the time they reached the stairs the group was already showing signs of nervousness and soon a couple of patients were standing along the walls, hugging themselves. They didn’t want to go. The orderlies laughed, forced them back into line and smilingly tried to encourage them.

It was a beautiful day, but it was only the second half of April and at that altitude the dampness was still raw and penetrating. Bryan glanced down at his socks and slippers as he walked, trying imperceptibly to dodge the muddy puddles in the churned-up courtyard. When he saw the group was being led over to the gymnasium he began feeling panicky.

In the lead was an SS officer who was walking one step ahead of Bryan. His revolver hung heavily and incitingly in his belt, only a few inches from Bryan’s arm as it swung forward in the goose step. What were his chances of grabbing it? And where should he run if he did? It was over 200 yards to the fence behind the gym and an even greater number of guards than usual stood chatting not far away.

Then they passed the barrack buildings.

Over behind the gym was a big, open square. Alongside the grass Bryan could now see the houses he had hitherto only been able to imagine. There was a building that lay parallel with the gym, two wards and a complex that resembled an administrative block with small windows and brown double doors. The group came to a halt beside a low wooden corridor that connected the gym and the building behind them, and for a moment the security officer left them alone.

This will be the last sunrise I’ll ever see
, thought Bryan, glancing at the nascent light above the tops of the fir trees and then at the row of men standing with their backs to the wall.
Standing stiffly at attention with head stretched back, Pock-Face towered above them all.

The guy with the broad rubber face stood between them, muttering the words no one could ever hear. At the sound of more footsteps Bryan froze and his neighbour’s lips almost stopped moving.

The first dazzling rays of sunlight swept over the square from behind, adding a touch of grandeur, stylishness and dignity to the black and green uniforms that stepped forward into the light. This was in stark contrast with what Bryan had expected. A carnival of medals, iron crosses, shining diagonal bands and patent leather boots banished all thoughts of an execution squad. SS badges and skull and crossbones were everywhere to be seen. All corps, all types, all ages and all possible kinds of wounds. This was the march of the wounded, an array of bandages, slings, crutches and canes.

The elite soldiers’ proof that war cannot be won without blood.

The soldiers chattered in small groups and filed slowly towards the flagstaff in the middle of the square. After them followed a rear party of soldiers in wheelchairs pushed by nurses. And finally a few beds with huge wheels rumbled forth on the tiled path with sweating porters as anchormen.

The air was miraculously fresh, but also icy cold in the scanty getup of nightshirts and dressing gowns. Bryan’s neighbour’s teeth began to chatter.
Don’t let this get to you
, Bryan thought to himself, as he glanced up at the swastika that had been hoisted in solemn silence, followed by a respectful
heil
.

They were standing almost at the back of the area’s northwest corner. Bryan leaned a bit to one side as if he were about to doze off and cast a sidelong glance behind the corner of the building. From there, he could just make out a small brick building at the edge of the rocks. Presumably the hospital chapel. Down at the opposite end beside the western fence there was another gate, flanked by guards who were standing at attention and staring at the show with arms raised in salute.

With their outstretched arms still pointing up at the flag, they suddenly all burst simultaneously into the
Horst Wessel
song with such enthusiasm that it made birds flutter up from the bushes.

None of the mental patients joined in. They stood either passively or mumbling to themselves, gazing round in confusion. The echo and force of the many voices filled the square and the air with intoxication and determination and gave the flag an impressive look. Bryan was still petrified by the grotesque beauty of the scene, and not until they unveiled the
Führer’
s portrait did he grasp why they had been assembled there and why they had been shaved a day too early. He closed his eyes and visualized yesterday’s scrap of paper hanging above Calendar Man’s bed. It had read 19 April, so today was the 20th, Hitler’s birthday.

The officers held their caps tightly clamped to their sides beneath the elbows. They stood stock-still despite their wounds, looking respectfully at the portrait, which contrasted starkly with the caricatures of Hitler that usually decorated the RAF crews’ barracks, defiled by added features, darts and abusive language.

Some of the veteran warriors were lost in a world of ecstasy and shaded their eyes from the morning light as they stared devotedly up at the flag, dazzled by its beauty and their own sentimental emotions. Bryan checked out the area behind them. Beyond the barbed-wire fence on this long side there was yet another fence made of rough-looking planks intertwined with barbed wire. The stone track they had once driven up along hugged the fence for a short while and then presumably continued alongside the boulders and up over the mountain. Bryan turned his head a few degrees and glanced once more to the west and over at the guards who were now talking together.

This was the direction in which he would escape. Over the first fence and under the next, along the road and its accompanying brook, then down into the valley and over towards the railway line that followed the Rhine all the way to Basel.

If he followed the rails further southwards he would reach the Swiss border sooner or later.

How he would cross it, time would show.

A sixth sense made Bryan turn his head. He found himself looking straight into Pock-Face’s eyes, at which point the huge man instantly looked down and kept his eyes on the ground. There had been something very attentive about the gaze he had met. Bryan would have to keep an eye on Pock-Face, as discreetly as possible. Then he looked at the fence again.

It wasn’t too high, he judged.

If only the flagstaff could be tipped over by removing its bottom bolt, it could be leaned over the fence like a bridge. But flakes of rust spreading out over the nuts made him change his mind. If he’d had a wrench he could have done it. It was small things like this that were so important. Insignificant items and events like the chance meeting of a future wife or husband, unexpected incidents in one’s childhood, or luck that smiled on one in a propitious second. All the isolated fragments that suddenly emerged and together constituted the future, making it unpredictable.

Just like the random patch of rust on the random bolt.

So he would have to crawl over the fence and count on tearing himself to shreds on the barbed wire that topped it. And then there were the guards. Because it was one thing to climb over unseen, another was to get away afterwards. A single, stray burst of machine-gun fire in the dark would be enough. There was chance again.

He couldn’t leave things to chance if he could at all help it.

The ceremony concluded with a short speech by the chief security officer, delivered with a fervour that no one ever would have credited to such an anaemic looking individual. Finally there was an extended wave of
heils
, so long as to seem endless. Thereafter the square was slowly emptied of wheelchairs and bedridden patients who lay with a smile on their lips, exuding
pride and patriotism. Presumably convinced that they had done their bit and were now safe.

The dark firs behind their block shook gently in the wind. The cold and the few hundred yards’ walk over to the building made all his joints ache. No good came out of trying to make them move faster.
Look after yourself. Take care not to get ill
, thought Bryan.

Now he’d found an escape route. If he got sick, he and James wouldn’t be able to get away before the next series of electroshocks. So there was some rapid, thorough thinking to be done. And James had to be initiated, whether he liked it or not. Without James, no tenable planning.

And without James, no escape either.

James felt awful when he woke up from the aftermath of the electroshock. It had been like this every time. Most of all he was weak. Every fibre of his body was at low ebb. And then there were the emotions, the sentimentality, the self-pity and confusion. All his mental states were churned up like mud, leaving him in a chronic state of anxiety and melancholy.

Anxiety was a strict master, James had realised this long ago. But as time went by he’d learned to live with it and tame it. And as the war drew nearer and the rumble of bombs over Karlsruhe resounded in the distance, he began to cherish a faint hope that the nightmare would come to an end at some time. Though always on the alert, he tried to enjoy what hours he could. He lay very still, surveying life around him or dreaming himself far away.

In the months that had passed he had learned to get fully into his role. Nobody could suspect him of simulating. They could arouse him from his torpor, no matter when, and receive but an empty stare in return. The nurses didn’t have much difficulty with him either, for he ate as he was supposed to and didn’t soil his bed. Most importantly, he took his medicine without showing the slightest reluctance. Which is why he was eternally lethargic, slow-thinking and, during occasional lucky moments, indifferent as well.

The pills were incredibly effective.

On his first visits to the surgeon lieutenant he had merely nodded when the latter raised his voice. He never made a movement without being ordered to. The senior nursing officer sometimes read aloud from his case history so his borrowed life history slowly grew as James assumed it from the lined yellow pages. If he’d ever had a guilty conscience about throwing the corpse out of the train window, it would have ceased the instant he became acquainted with the true nature of his saviour.

James and his victim were roughly the same age. Gerhart Peuckert, as he was called, had risen through the ranks incredibly
fast, ending up as a
standartenführer
in the SS security police – a kind of colonel. Thus, apart from Arno von der Leyen, whose place Bryan had taken, he had the highest rank in the ward. He enjoyed special status. Sometimes he even had the impression that some of them were afraid of him or hated him, and sat on their beds staring at him coldly.

There was no sin this man had not committed. Gerhart Peuckert had ruthlessly removed all obstacles in his path in every situation and had dealt out punishment mercilessly to anyone who displeased him. The Eastern Front had suited him admirably. In the end, some of his subordinates had gone berserk and tried to drown him in the same receptacle he had used when he personally tortured Soviet partisans or troublesome civilians.

The attack left him lying in a coma in a field hospital. No one had expected him to recover.

Proceedings against the assailants had been swift, piano wire around their necks. When he woke up nevertheless, it was decided to take him home to Heimatschutz, to the embrace of the Fatherland. It was on this journey that the real Gerhart Peuckert finally paid for his misdeeds and James took his place.

James’ case was characteristic of the ward as a whole. He was a high-ranking SS officer, mentally unhinged and too clever a henchman to be abandoned just like that. Normally there was only one SS cure in critical cases such as this: an injection and a coffin. But as long as there was hope that just one of these high-ranking officers in the
Führer’
s most loyal bunch of adherents would recover, all available means were used to bring it about. Until then, the fate of the patients was largely kept a close secret from the outside world. An SS officer could not be brought home insane. It would be demoralizing, a slight to the greatness of the German Reich, and could have unforeseen consequences regarding confidence in reports from the front. Furthermore, it would sow doubt in the minds of the population about their heroes’ invulnerability. The officers’
families would be disgraced, as the security officers had repeatedly impressed upon the doctors.

Rather a dead officer than a scandal, they might have added.

This circumstance, combined with the fact that the physically wounded SS officers also constituted an elite, had made the area a strategic target for external as well as internal enemies of the state. The hospital was therefore converted into a fortress that no unwanted person entered and only healthy patients and their keepers were permitted to leave.

The capacity of the hospital was constantly being stretched by new wounded soldiers, though no longer by mental patients. Perhaps, in view the way the war was progressing, it had been discreetly accepted that the Third Reich wouldn’t have time to recycle the latter. After the collapse of the Eastern Front there was no time to waste on trying to heal their minds.

Lately, many of the patients had begun showing so many signs of improvement that anyone lagging behind in treatment results would be conspicuous. James stopped humming and hoped to escape the recurring shock treatments. More than anything else, this violent treatment affected his powers of concentration and therefore constituted a threat to his principal occupation: lying flat on his back, eyes closed, visualizing his favourite films…

Gunga Din
was one of them. A regular feature in his daydream-film repertoire.

When he ‘screened’ one of his films he usually started as the beginning and went through the entire film, scene by scene, as well as he could. A sequence that only took an hour in the cinema could easily take him a whole morning or evening. So long as he was engrossed in the film, he was lost to the world. This pastime comforted him whenever sad thoughts or the fear of never seeing his loved ones again became too much for him.

His generous mother had often handed him and his sisters a few coins so they could go sit in the folding chairs at the Sunday film matinée. They spent a great deal of their childhood in the
flickering light of Deanna Durbin, Laurel and Hardy, Nelson Eddy and Tom Mix, while their parents strolled through town exchanging platitudes with other members of the middle-class citizenry.

James could recall his sisters, Elizabeth and Jill, without effort. Under cover of darkness they used to giggle and whisper to one another while the hero kissed the heroine and the rest of the audience howled.

The memories, the films and the books he had consumed throughout this schooldays prevented him from going crazy. But the more shock treatment they subjected him to and the more pills he swallowed, the more frequently he got stuck in the middle of a scene, foiled by a sudden hole in his memory.

Right now he couldn’t remember what Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Victor McLaglen were called in
Gunga Din
. But it would surely come back.

It always had before.

James rested his head heavily on the pillow and fingered Jill’s scarf under the mattress.

‘
Herr Standartenführer
, don’t you think you should try to get up and walk around a bit? You’ve been snoozing the whole morning. Don’t you feel well?’

James opened his eyes and looked straight into the nurse’s face. She smiled at him, getting up on tiptoe so she could insert her arm under his pillow and ease it up. For months James had been feeling like answering her or showing faint signs of improvement. Instead he stared at her emptily, his face expressionless.

Her name was Petra and she was the only really human entity he had seen there thus far.

Petra had arrived as if sent by providence. The first thing she had done was to see that the nurses left Werner Fricke, the man opposite him, in peace with his calendar calculations.

Then she stood up to a couple of the other nurses so that bed-wetting or eating food in an unsuitable manner was no longer punished so severely.

And finally, she took special care of James.

It was obvious he had aroused her sympathy from the first time she saw him. Others in the ward had benefitted from her special care, too, but so far James had been the only one who could get her to stop at the end of the bed with a sad and vulnerable expression on her face.
How can she feel anything for a man like Gerhart Peuckert?
James wondered, assuming she was just a naive and unimaginative young girl who had landed in the nurses’ training college at Bad Kreuznach straight from convent school.

She was clearly quite inexperienced in life. Whenever Petra mentioned her mentor and guardian angel, Professor Sauerbruch, to her colleagues, her eyes shone with devotion and her hands worked even more swiftly and surely. And when a patient went amok and cursed everyone to hell, she promptly made the sign of the cross before running to get help.

The most probable explanation for Petra’s partiality for James was that she was a rather diminutive, shy, romantic girl with natural appetites, who also thought he was quite handsome with his white teeth and straight shoulders. The war had been going on for nearly five years. She had scarcely been more than sixteen or seventeen when hard and exacting hospital work had become her everyday life. How could she have found an outlet for her dreams and fantasies in the meantime? It was hard to believe she’d ever had the opportunity to love or be loved.

James had nothing against the possibility that he might have stimulated her imagination. She was a quite nice and pretty girl. For the moment he was being cautious and taking advantage of her care. So long as she was there to force some food into him after the shock treatments and close the window if the draft started making his shoulder muscles stiff, he knew his body would not be the first thing to fail him.

‘This is no good,
Herr Standartenführer,
’ she continued, pushing James’ feet over the edge of the bed. ‘You’re not much help. You want to get better, don’t you? Then you must get up and walk!’

James stood halfway between the beds and began edging his way to the central corridor. Petra nodded and smiled. It was this form of special treatment James was less keen on. It drew the attention of the other nurses. It gave him a kind of priority status that could lead to reprisals and repercussions in the name of justice.

However it was not the possible outcome of this situation that James feared the most. More and more he sensed a kind of vigilance and tension in the room. The feeling came over him like a sudden tap on the shoulder. And this day it was there again. James glanced across the corridor through half-closed eyelids.

It was the third time that day that Bryan was staring at him, trying to attract his attention.

Bryan, stop staring at me, dammit! It’s much too obvious!
he thought. Bryan’s pleading eyes were fixed on him. Petra took James by the arm, chatting to him as usual about this and that as she led him over to the window beside the trolleys at the opposite end of the room. Behind him James noticed that Bryan was struggling to get up. It was only one day since his last shock treatment, but this didn’t hold him back.

The little nurse’s stream of words stopped when James began hauling her back towards his bed. He was not going to be trapped in a corner with Bryan. Noticing James’ reaction, Bryan let his arms flap down limply by his sides. He leaned back dejectedly in his bed as James marched by with the eager Petra.

Right now you’re weak, Bryan, but tomorrow you’ll perk up again,
thought James.
I’m not going to feel sorry for you. Just leave me alone. You know that’s best! I’ll get us out of here, trust me! But not now. They’re watching us!
James heard Bryan’s bed creak and felt his despairing gaze boring into his back.

The pockmarked man, whose name was Kröner, strode quietly after them and slapped Bryan on the shoulder. ‘
Gut Junge
, upsy-daisy,’ he growled, shaking the bars of the next bed’s bed-end.

Back to Gunga Din
, James thought frantically, as he wriggled out of Petra’s grasp and back into bed.
What did they call
those bloody sergeants? Think carefully, James, you know you know it!

Kröner sat down heavily, staring at Petra’s retreating bottom with its fluttering white bow as she finally continued her rounds. ‘Lovely bum-bum, isn’t it,
Herr Standartenführer?
’ he said, addressing James.

Every word was like stinging ice.

The big man folded his legs under him, bumping his knees against the side of the bed until the entire iron frame rattled. James never reacted to his question. Sooner or later he would stop talking.

The men beside Kröner sat straight up in bed like vultures and stared across at Bryan, who was burrowing into the blankets until he finally lay down in the messy pile, exhausted.
Relax
,
Bryan
, James begged silently,
otherwise they’re going to get us!