The Devil's Blessing (14 page)

There was something that was liberating about being alone, he had to admit. Being able to do whatever he wanted, when he wanted, was an amazing feeling of freedom that he hadn't felt in—he couldn't even remember.

It was as if he was finally free. He knew he wasn't, but the constant fear of being killed by those around him was gone. It was only now that he understood how dangerous his so-called friends had been. There were no friends in war. No comrades, as he had been promised. Just a bunch of men being thrown into the meat grinder of death at the behest of unseen men sitting in leather chairs, hundreds of miles away, who gave their orders over radio.

Another point of positive reflection came with the fact that he was going the right way. He wasn't sure where the end goal was; there was no city to go to, no finish line to cross, because it was changing everyday. Each day the German Empire was growing and shrinking, depending on where you were in the fight. And from what Otto could see, that world, the German world, was shrinking more and more by the moment. If Germany was making any gains, they were losing much more at the same time.

❧

After two days of leaving Lafenz, Ingersleben, and the two Nazi scouts, Otto was relieved to see a sign: Berlin. It was on a pointed arrow pointing towards the west on a road he had been following, although it did not say how many kilometers until the capitol. It was a promising sign. He wouldn’t go through Berlin, but at least he knew that he was going the right way. He took the road south, towards Dresden. Once he reached a town or village with a main road, he’d head back east back towards the original goal of Hanover.

The liberty that was afforded to him also allowed him a different game plan, one that he had decided on. Instead of traveling under cover of darkness and sleeping during the day, Otto decided to travel during the day and sleep at night. This proved to be both a good and bad idea.

It was good in the sense that, since it was only him, it made it that much easier to travel hidden, so the extra cover of night was not as needed. It also meant that he was traveling during the day, which meant slightly better weather conditions for travel. When it rained, it rained at night, when the sun wasn’t there to help take away the moisture from the sky. Better to travel in humidity than in falling water. He could also go faster, as it was easier to see. And finally, the last boon to traveling during the day was that he could sleep at night. He hated sleeping with the light.

❧

Otto didn't hear him or see him at first, so much as he smelled him.

Otto was fast asleep; he had decided to go to bed as early as possible. One good thing about hunger was that it made it easy to go to bed. One didn't want to feel the sting and pang of hunger, so the body was more than happy to comply with sleep.

But now, he thought he smelled something. Something burning. It wasn't a strong scent, but it was there, that unnatural sulfuric smell that only came from burning wood.

A part of him was scared, since he was deep inside a forest, but a few nervous looks around confirmed that he was alone in a cold, slightly wet world covered in darkness. It wasn’t raining, but if everything around him was moist to the touch, he thought, how could something be burning?
And at such a cold temperature as this?

He was ready to put his head back down, and he told himself that it was probably the scent of a town burning that must have made its way to his nose. But then he heard it. The distinct crackles and pops of a fire. He wasn't imagining it, and it was nearer than he thought. Where was it coming from?

He suspected that someone was camping near him, and that they had lit a fire. He needed to be quiet. If the person was a foe, he couldn't be discovered under punishment of death. If it was a friendly civilian, he didn't want to startle the person. Not if they had food. Especially if they had food—something Otto needed desperately.

Slowly, Otto moved in a prone position to the sound. There was a small hill that was hiding what he suspected. A man who was huddled beside a small fire.

Otto paused and looked on. The fire seemed to light the entire world.

The man wasn't old, but he wasn't young either. Probably in his forties, perhaps his fifties. He wasn't a soldier or a volunteer either. His clothes was just the shabby brown wool of the common man. He had gloves on, but they had holes where he had put his fingers through. Maybe they were socks that were repurposed; Otto wasn't sure. The man kept breathing into his hands and placing them over the fire. As much as hunger had filled Otto, he could have sworn that the fire was also making his mouth water.

And then he saw what he had been hoping for. A can of food. Perhaps it was just hopeful thinking, but when he saw the can opener and, more importantly, heard the pop of the can, he knew instantly that this man had a can of beans that he was about to cook over the fire.

Otto turned onto his back and slid down an inch on the hill. What to do?

Should he ask the man for food?

Should he try to take the food from him? He wasn't sure what to do, but he knew that he had to do something, and that the hunger in his body was going to make him move.

❧

This war had shown him many things, one of them being how easily man could fall back into his animalistic state. At the end, that's what all men were, weren't they? Just animals. No different than the common dog or cow. We all want to live, eat, sleep, and procreate. No difference at all. During the time that had gone by, with all the trappings of technology, be they electricity, plumbing, and flight, art, music, paintings, or literature. All these things were just false trappings that made one believe that they are more than just an animal, that they are different from the beast. But in war, man is stripped down to his most basic wants and needs. He became what he always had been: an animal.

So it wasn't with much surprise, even to himself, that Otto came out from the woods brandishing the small pistol he had taken.

"Stop!" he told the man. Under the threat of death, the man did indeed raise his hands, but he dared not drop the can of beans in his hands. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"I am Ulrich Wolter. I am doing nothing wrong," the man said.

"Where are your weapons? Who else are you with?" Otto was surprised at how authoritative his voice was. It was the fear that was driving him. He had to move forward with the course of action he had chosen.

"No one. It's just me. Promise."

Otto realized that he was a few yards away; that meant that he couldn't see his hand trebling holding the gun.

“Then why are you here? Why are you hiding? Shouldn't you be at home, old man?" Otto wasn't sure why he called the man old. It was as if he was giving the man a way out. To say that he was old, therefore unable to fight. It was as if Otto wanted to help the man lie to him. He then realized why. He might give him a reason to have to kill him, and ever since that day with the baby, that was something he didn’t want to do. Something he felt he was unable to do anymore.

"Please," Wolter said, "I’m just an old man, like you said, trying to make his way home."

"Fine," Otto said, "I believe you. But where were you coming from? What made you leave your home in the first place?"

This gave Wolter pause. Otto had seen that confused face before. A face searching for lies to tell. He knew that face, because it was the one he had to wear so many times these days.

"I..."

"I thought so," Otto said, interrupting the man's search for a truth that wasn't there. "Empty your bags. All of them."

The man said nothing and did nothing. Still holding his can of food in the air in one hand. Otto stepped out from the darkness and into the campfire light, directly across from the man. The gun was now very real and squarely pointed at the seated man.

Otto repeated, "I said. Empty your bags."

What the seated man holding a can of beans in the air didn't know was that Otto wouldn't shoot him. He was done with the killing. Even if someone pointed a gun right at him, and Otto was given the opportunity to shoot first and save his life, he wouldn’t do it. It wasn't out of a good conscience or a belief in a higher standard. The thought and act of killing had become so vulgar, so repugnant, that he knew he was willing to do anything else than kill again, even if that meant giving up his own life.

After seeing the gun and, more importantly, the wild eyes of Otto in the shadows of the fire, the man did as he was instructed.

First, with his eyes, he asked if he could put down the food. Otto nodded in the affirmative. Wolter put the can down next to the fallen tree stump he was sitting on, in the unseen darkness. It was the chance he had to pick up a gun and shoot Otto if he wanted to. If he had a gun next to him. But at the end, the only thing that came back up was an empty hand. He either wasn’t armed or had forgotten to carry a weapon with him. Otto wasn't sure if that was stupid or smart. Germany was now the first country in Europe to have citizen-owned weapons banned—a great move in Otto’s mind. An unarmed society was one that could not revolt, something every Nazi like himself wanted.

Wolter again motioned down to one of the sacks on the ground. He had two. He began to put his hand inside the first burlap bag when Otto stepped one foot forward and yelled in a voice that echoed in the cold forest. "No! Do not place your hand inside the bag," he said. "Just empty it."

"Empty it?"

"Yes," Otto said, clearly frustrated. "Just pour out everything on the ground.”

Wolter quickly nodded. That's when Otto saw the tears. He was hiding something, and he was about to be found out. If it was a weapon, the man did not need to worry. He understood the common man's desire to protect himself in a world like this, even if it was now illegal.

He poured out the contents of the first bag. It was nothing but basic things. An extra pair of pants, a knife, boxes of penicillin, and the real prize—a few cans of food. But there was no gun. None that he could see, anyway.

"The other one too!" Otto said, probably a little too loudly, but his nerves were in charge now. The man seemed startled, as if the contents of the first sack should have gotten him shot. But he did as he was told and dropped out the contents of the second one. This time, it was more food. Not that much, since it was a smaller sack, but it was everything.

"Is that it?"

The man quickly nodded yes, tears still rolling down his face, shocked that nothing was happening to him.

Otto didn't understand. What was this man hiding? The cans of food weren't a crime. He had enough for a few days—weeks, even, if he rationed out the food correctly. All he had was that, some clothes, a knife that seemed as sharp as a spoon, some medicine—

That was it. The medicine. It was penicillin. What would a man like this be doing with something that should only be in hospitals?

“The medicine!" Otto said, trying to stretch the gun out more, but he knew he couldn't. "Why do you have penicillin?" Otto had seen enough penicillin in the earlier days when he was stationed in a hospital. The brown box with red lettering stood out like a diamond in the sun, like a golden calf to be worshipped in the field of battle. It saved lives. A man could be grazed by a bullet and then die from the following infection. But with penicillin, a man's leg could be taken off in the field of battle, and, if he didn't bleed out, he could live with penicillin. Disease was the real killer of this war, not the bullets, and penicillin was like Perseus's Shield.

The tears returned. “It's for—" He was searching again. Finally, he bowed his head in defeat and said the honest truth. “It's for my son, Richard. He has tuberculosis."

Tuberculosis. The White Death had been killing Germans long before any bomb had touched their cities.

"How did you get it?"

The man looked up. Did he really need to answer that? It was obvious he had stolen it. Otto recanted.

"Never mind," he said, sitting himself down on a large rock. "I understand. You were making your way back to your home to give your son illegal medication. That's admirable. I won't turn you in."

The man smiled away his tears.

Finally, it was time for Otto to make his move for the real prize, the thing he really wanted. The thing he needed, but didn't want to show.

"We'll talk about what to do with you and your situation later," he said, putting the gun into the belt on the small of his back. "Until then, how about we share that can of beans?" he asked with a smile.

Wolter happily obliged, grabbing the can and making room for the armed man to sit next to him. Otto tried not to eat too much and too fast. He still couldn't let the man know that he was a starving soldier on the run. Otto was the man in charge, but if the civilian caught wind of the fact that he was a deserter, it would be him, and not the man with the bag of beans, that would have a gun pointed at him.

For Otto and his new friend, Ulrich Wolter, it was a long night. Otto was used to sleeping at night again, and the fact that Wolter was doing the opposite—traveling at night and sleeping during the day—made for over twenty-hours of no sleep for Otto. They weren't exactly friends, of course, but they weren't enemies either; but one of the hardest lessons he had learned was that you could not trust anyone. Everyone was out for himself and him alone. And that was a bit of a comfort to Otto. Realizing that everyone was just as desperate to live as him made him feel less of a coward, since by that reasoning, everyone else was just as cowardly as him. While everyone covered their cowardliness in words of bravery, at the end, everyone was scared to die, just like him.

Otto and Wolter spent the night having small talk, taking turns keeping the fire lit. It was a task unto itself, since all the nearby combustibles were wet. The rain had covered the earth in a hidden moisture, frozen. Even if it seemed that a branch was as dry as a bone, it wasn't. The inside was still kept moist and fresh from the cold outside. Everything in the world was working against him. Even the twigs were conspiring against him. What had he done to deserve such a punishment from God? He was a mild-mannered man who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. He was the one who had had the war thrown at him. He didn't want any part of this fight. So why was he being treated so?