The Violent Century (6 page)

Cries outside. Some sort of a disturbance going on. Later, Fogg learns that some of the Jewish inmates have recognised amongst them a former kapo, a guard from one of the camps. By the time the soldiers get to them it is too late, the man is a bundle of meat and blood in the snow.

Schneesturm, Maria says, as though tasting the word. You don’t owe him anything, the Old Man says. We just want to talk to him, the Old Man says. Silence in the room. A gunshot outside. Maria flinches. Fogg doesn’t move. I met him in Warsaw, Maria says, at last, unwillingly. In forty-three. The words dragged out of her. Bursts – I don’t owe him anything!

– You don’t, the Old Man says. Agrees. Nods, encouragingly.

– But I didn’t know what he was.

The Old Man leans back. Inviting her confidence. And Maria talks.

21.
BERLIN–MARIENDORF DP CAMP
1945

Maria Becker cries without sound. So quiet in the interrogation room. Fogg notes dark stains on the floor. Some of it is dried blood, he thinks. Some of it is probably urine. Maria Becker cries and the Old Man sits on the other side of the desk, his hands with the palms down on the desk’s cold surface. He’s waiting.

– Tell me about Erich Bühler, the Old Man says.

– I met him in Warsaw. He was a handsome man … and I was lonely.

– What were you doing in Warsaw?

– I was a secretary working for Obergruppenführer Krüger at the Schutzstaffel.

The Old Man leans back. That glint in his eyes. Makes Fogg wonder what he was like before the change. What work he did. Questions they never ask. The Old Man says, That would be Obergruppenführer
Friedrich-Wilhelm
Krüger?

– Yes.

Schutzstaffel. The SS.

– SS and police leader for occupied Poland?

– Yes.

– Were you close?

– He was a good man, Maria says. He treated me decently.

– He committed suicide, the Old Man confides. In Austria. Did you know that?

– No, I did not know that.

Fogg knows the Allies have little enough interest in people like Maria. The hunt is on for the big fish – for people like Göring and Eichmann and Ribbentrop, Speer, Mengele. An SS secretary interests nobody, and Maria knows it. Her best bet is to talk, to give them everything they want. And what the Old Man wants, it seems, is Erich Bühler, codenamed Schneesturm, once upon a time an esteemed member of the elite Nazi Übermenschen Korps, and now a wanted war criminal, a fugitive from justice.

– I met Erich when he came to the offices. He was meeting with the Obergruppenführer. He stopped to chat to me on his way out. He had an easy smile. I did not recognise him at the time. Later, he showed me clippings. Schneesturm. Hero of Leningrad. Sometimes, when we made love, he made snow fall around us as he held me close, his naked body hot against mine … he could be very romantic. Do I shock you?

The Old Man smiles. I wish you could, he says, genuine regret in his voice. Maria glances at Fogg again, but his face is expressionless, it gives nothing away. Maria says, I thought he loved me.

The Old Man waits. Maria says, He used me. Like he used everyone else. He wanted information about SS operations. I brought him documents. Friedrich-Wilhelm – Obergruppenführer Krüger, that is – was very busy then. He had just been promoted. The Jews … she sighs, a long, suffering sigh. The Jews were rebelling in their ghetto. It was a mess. So much paperwork. The army had to get involved. They were like rats … She stops, catching herself. Starts to cry again, soundlessly, as though the tears offered some kind of protection from her interrogators. Fogg thinks, She must have been pretty, once.

The war made old people of everyone. We know.

– The Warsaw Ghetto uprising? the Old Man says, prompting.

– Yes. Erich wanted to know many things. Then, I didn’t know why. But now I think I do.

– Why? the Old Man says.

– Power, Maria Becker says. That solitary word, like a fog, hovers in the still, cold air of the room. He needed power. He said to me, once, he had been drinking all night, we were sitting in my room, he was naked with his back to me, his buttocks pressed against the thin mattress. He was staring out of the window. It was snowing outside. He said, I no longer believe.

22.
WARSAW
1943

We assemble this picture from conflicting reports, Maria Becker’s testimony, what Fogg learned later. It is in no way accurate.

– I no longer believe.

Erich sits naked on the thin mattress. His skin is pale everywhere. Maria runs her nails down his back but he shrugs her off. On the small bedside table is a bottle of vodka. A taste he’d picked up in Russia, he says. Talks little about the Eastern Front. Even less of Leningrad, which is still under siege. Told her once of dead horses in the streets, frozen, and children hacking flesh from the horses’ sides. There are no more horses in Leningrad. Erich stares out of the window. Raises the bottle to his lips. Drinks. Outside snow rages, snowdrops beat against the glass. Inside it is warm, the smell of their sex fills the air. Maria rises, presses against Erich’s back, her heavy breasts cool against his feverish skin. You can’t say that, she says. He doesn’t reply, does not even appear to know she’s there. She reaches around to touch him, her hand closes around his cock, but he shrugs her off.

– You’re right, Erich says. Forget I said anything. Now she’s frightened. Think of the future, she whispers. Jumbled images in primary colours. White and red swastika flags waving in the wind; gleaming rockets flying into the air; skyscrapers rise above the Danube, the Thames, the Volga and the Rhine, blond children play under a bright African sun, their uniforms ironed to perfection by their servant-slaves nearby, modern women work at factories assembling Volkswagens, in the mountains in a wood cabin Maria and Erich and their three children go on a skiing holiday, laughing, holding hands, one of the children comes across a strange object in the snow, a six-pointed star made of gold, on a chain. What is it, the boy asks. It is nothing, Maria says. Takes it from him, before throwing it away.

– I saw the ghetto, Erich says.

That damned uprising. The Jews won’t leave the ghetto, the trains, ready to depart for Auschwitz, stand empty at the platforms. Maria stirs, uncomfortable. Tries not to look at the correspondence crossing her desk every day. Rumours of the camps. Letters from a Dr Mengele, seeking twins. It’s almost a joke around the office. Later, the requests change. Classified letters, saying the unthinkable.
Are there Übermenschen in the ghetto? Can you confirm? Specimens urgently required.
Mad. Yet spoken about in hushed tones, almost as if speaking of Vomacht himself. Maria hates Warsaw. Hates the Poles, the way they look at her when she walks down the street, shabby men and women with the reek of the defeated, somehow not quite human, somehow other than her. What did you see? she says. Reaches around to fondle him again. This time he lets her. She feels him harden. I saw them die, he says. It’s war, she says. War. It comes from the throat.
Krieg
. It is a throaty word.
Krrriegggg
. War, he says. War. Stares out of the window. The snow storm outside rises in tempo, it swallows everything, it encloses them inside the room, like prisoners. War, he says. She strokes him until he comes.

23.
WARSAW GHETTO
1943

Children with yellow Stars of David on their arms run down the street, seeking shelter. A nearby building is on fire. The ghetto is ramshackle, buildings crowded into each other, women in shawls peer behind windows, young men stand on the rooftops hurling Molotov cocktails at the tanks beyond the ghetto walls. We watch, we see, we tally. Schneesturm rises into the air above the ghetto, the running boys stop, point to the sky. His uniform is white, the twin lightning bolts of the SS entombed within a giant, umlauted U. A two-man team with a stolen machine gun on the rooftop open fire. The snow grows around Schneesturm, masking him, the boys, excitedly, Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it’s an honest-to-God German Übermensch.

Watching. Schneesturm does not engage. He is not here in an official capacity. But now a new figure emerges onto the rooftops. A man, bare-chested despite the cold. His skin is tanned, almost green. The boys, behind their shelter, whisper. Gunfire from the German forces but they are being held in check, for the moment, by the Jews. The man on the rooftop begins to run. His feet are bare. He seems to grow as he runs, to expand. The snow dissipates, the white form of the German Übermensch reappears. Erich looks curious, hanging up there, suspended in the air. Watches the Jewish man running, growing larger, skin colour turning greener, feeding on the sun. Huge spikes suddenly shoot out of the man’s skin, from his arms, his legs, his feet.

He leaps into the air.

Impossibly high. A roar of rage and defiance shakes the ghetto. A German sniper, unseen, fires at him, but the shot, if it hits, does no apparent damage and the sniper, his location exposed, is eliminated by a Jewish comrade hiding in one of the ghetto’s apartments. But this man, this Übermensch flying across the skies, he seems half plant, he has inhuman power, the boys whisper,
Sabra, Sabra
.

Schneesturm looks shocked when the Sabra reaches him, holds out spiked, prickly-pear arms, wants to grab him in a deadly hug. Schneesturm sends a blast of frozen ice at the Sabra who roars, smashing the ice into snowdrops with his arms, the spikes make a sound like a needle against a gramophone when they crack the ice.

Schneesturm rises higher. Does not want to engage. The Sabra falls down onto the rooftops, the German forces fire at him, a wound opens in his side, green liquid oozes out but the wound closes, cactus-flesh sealing over, the Sabra lands on the roof, bent knee, one hand down on the roof, frozen like this, for just a moment, we see him in silhouette. Then he rises, shouts abuse at the German forces in their own tongue, and the ghetto cheers as one, the boys jump up and down, Schneesturm, watching from on high, wraps snow around himself and disappears, an apparition out of nightmare defeated, perhaps, by this Beyond-Man Jew.

Perhaps.

24.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– Schneesturm, the Old Man says. Snow Storm. Turns his face from Fogg, for just a moment. We choose such fanciful names, don’t we, Oblivion?

– Sir?

Oblivion stirs. Almost as if he had fallen asleep. Fogg isn’t fooled. Not for a moment. The Old Man, too, shakes his head at such foolishness. Pulls out a folder, lays it on the table. Lets it rest a moment. Drums on it with his fingers. As though listening to invisible music. Opens it. A handsome young man stares out from an old photo. His hair so blond it’s white. Clear, innocent blue eyes. Smiling at the camera. Snow behind him.

– His real name was Erich Bühler. You remember Erich, don’t you, Fogg?

Fogg remembers. Doesn’t say a word. The Old Man says, He was a handsome young man, wasn’t he?

– He died, Fogg says, at last, unwillingly. He died in Berlin, in forty-six.

Remembers the first time he’d seen him.

25.
LENINGRAD
1942

And again in the snow and the ice, the Old Man’s two reluctant observers, Fogg and Oblivion, Oblivion and Fogg, walking slowly, dejectedly, across the ice. The sky is dark and clear. The sun sets ahead of them, the last of its rays falling on the snow-covered landscape.

– Observer mission to Eastern Front, on behalf of the Bureau for Superannuated Affairs, on His Majesty’s Secret Service, bugger me it’s cold, Fogg says.

– Report concluded? Oblivion says. It is cold but strangely beautiful, too, with Leningrad rising ahead of them in the distance, its rising spires of the Admiralty building and the Cathedral of the Saviour on Blood and Luftwaffe airplanes flying above like bats or eagles, colouring the sky a deep crimson, smoke rising into the sky, making Fogg want to reach out a hand and shape it, mould it into oblivion.

– Bugger the Old Man, Oblivion says, and bugger Russia, and bugger the buggering Nazis.

Fogg is so hungry he could kill a dog. Or something. There are no dogs. Oblivion keeps waving his hand in the air, obliviating snow and ice, as if he could do the same thing to the entire world. The air around him is clear and there are hisses of discharge and the tang of ozone every time he moves his hand. Bugger, Fogg says, agreeing. Goes back to composing the mental report in his mind. We are beyond the Nazi line of attack, he says. Leningrad lies ahead of us, at a distance of about – Oblivion?

– Damned if I know.

– Damned if we know, Fogg says, ceremoniously. But anyway it’s there.

He looks ahead. Imagines what’s inside the walls of this ancient city, this St Petersburg, this Leningrad. Starving children chasing a rat for their supper, skeletal men armed with guns patrolling the streets, women like emaciated storefront mannequins joining the fight, and thinking, can they hold on, thinking, this is something out of a bad novel, before the Revolution happened, before a man called Hitler rose to power and rewrote the world like a lurid paperback. Thank God we’re not inside there, Fogg says.

– I’m hungry, Oblivion says.

– To conclude we believe the Nazis have made a mistake invading Russia, Fogg says—

– A big bleeding mistake, Oblivion says—

– And suggest leaving the Huns and the Ivans to slug it out amongst themselves while we go home to merry old England. Bugger me it’s cold.

– Report concluded, Oblivion says. Fogg?

– Yes, Oblivion?

– Get down!

Fogg slips in the ice as Oblivion pulls him sharply by the arm, face down into the snow, he curses, but quietly.

– What!

– Look.

Lying on their stomachs they nevertheless raise their heads, looking at the sky:

And rising, from behind them, and heading towards the city, a fleet of rocket-men, spread out like a flock of black birds against the darkening sky, plumes of fire erupting from their backs, their metal helmets shining in the dying light of the setting sun.