"The Kindly Ones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Littell Jonathan)GIGUEThomas found me sitting on a chair at the edge of the terrace. I was looking at the woods and the sky and drinking brandy out of the bottle, in little sips. The raised balustrade hid the garden from me, but the thought of what I had seen was softly eating away at my spirit. One or two days must have gone by, don’t ask me how I spent them. Thomas had come walking around the side of the house: I hadn’t heard anything, neither the sound of an engine nor a call. I handed him the bottle: “Hail, comrade! Drink.” I was probably a little drunk. Thomas looked around him, drank a little, but didn’t hand the bottle back. “What the hell are you up to?” he finally asked. I smiled inanely at him. He looked at the house. “You’re alone?”—“I think so, yes.” He walked up to me, looked at me, repeated: “What the hell are you doing? Your leave ended a week ago. Grothmann is furious, he’s talking about court-martialing you for desertion. These days, courts-martial last five minutes.” I shrugged and reached for the bottle, which he was still holding. He moved it away. “And you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”—“Piontek told me where you were. He brought me. I came to get you.”—“We have to go, then?” I said sadly.—“Yes. Go get dressed.” I got up, went upstairs. In Una’s bedroom, instead of getting dressed, I sat down on her leather sofa and lit a cigarette. I thought about her, with difficulty, strangely empty, hollow thoughts. Thomas’s voice, in the stairway, drew me out of my reverie: “Hurry up! Shit!” I got dressed, pulling on my clothes somewhat at random, but with some good sense, since it was cold out—long underwear, wool socks, a turtleneck sweater under my office uniform. At the entrance to Bad Polzin, the defenses seemed more solidly organized. Waffen-SS were guarding the road, and a PAK gun, positioned on a hill, covered the approach. Thomas got out of the car to confer with the Untersturmf#252;hrer commanding the platoon, but he didn’t know anything and referred us to his superior in town, at the command post set up in the old castle. Vehicles and wagons were clogging the streets, the atmosphere was tense, mothers shouted after their children, men brutally pulled the reins of their horses, scolded the French farm workers who were loading the mattresses and the bags of provisions. I followed Thomas into the command post and stayed behind him, listening. The Obersturmf#252;hrer didn’t know much, either; his unit was attached to the SS Tenth Corps, they had sent him here at the head of a company to hold the main roads; and he thought the Russians would come from the south or from the east—the Second Army, around Danzig and Gotenhafen, was already cut off from the Reich, the Russians had broken through to the Baltic along the Neustettin-K#246;slin axis, he was almost sure of it—but he guessed the ways leading west were still free. We took the road to Schivelbein. It was a paved highway, long wagons of refugees occupied one full lane, a continuous flow, the same sad spectacle as a month before on the autobahn from Stettin to Berlin. Slowly, at a horse’s pace, the German East was emptying out. There wasn’t much military traffic, but many soldiers, armed or not, walked alone among the civilians, We quickly crossed the forest and took to the fields. The snow was melting on the plowed earth, we sank into it up to our calves; between each plot of land ran rivulets full of water bordered with barbed-wire fences, not tall but hard to pass. Then we traveled on little dirt paths, also muddy, but easier, which we had to leave whenever we approached villages. It was tiring, but the air was brisk and the countryside deserted and quiet; on the roads, we walked at a good pace, Thomas and I a little ridiculous in our dress uniforms with our legs all smeared with mud. Piontek carried the supplies; our only weapons were our two service pistols, L#252;ger automatics. Near the end of the afternoon, we reached Rambin and paused in a small grove of beech and ash trees. It was snowing again, a wet, sticky snow that the wind blew into our faces. A little river flowed on our right; to our left, a little farther on, we could make out the railroad and the first houses. “We’ll wait for nightfall,” Thomas said. I leaned back against a tree, pulling the folds of my coat under me, and Piontek handed us hard-boiled eggs and sausages. “I couldn’t find any bread,” he said sadly. Thomas pulled out of his bag the little bottle of brandy he had taken from me and offered us each a swig. The sky was darkening, the snow flurries were beginning again. I was tired and fell asleep against the tree. When Thomas woke me my coat was dusted with snow and I was stiff from the cold. There was no moon, no light came from the village. We followed the edge of the wood up to the railroad, then walked in the dark in single file along the embankment. Thomas had taken out his pistol and I imitated him, without really knowing what I’d do with it if we were surprised. Our footsteps crunched on the snowy gravel between the tracks. The first houses, dark and silent, appeared to the right of the rails, near a large pond; the little train station at the entrance to the village was locked; we stayed on the tracks to pass through the hamlet. Finally we could put our pistols away and walk more easily. The track bed was slippery and crumbled beneath our feet, and the spacing of the ties kept us from walking at a normal pace along the tracks; at last, one by one, we left the embankment and walked alongside it in the virgin snow. A little farther on, the tracks once again went through a large pine forest. I felt tired, we’d been walking for hours, I wasn’t thinking about anything, my head remained void of any idea or any image, all my effort went into my footsteps. I was breathing heavily, and along with the crunching of our boots on the wet snow it was one of the only sounds I heard, a haunting sound. A few hours later, the moon rose behind the pines, not quite full; it cast patches of white light on the snow through the trees. Later still, we reached the edge of the forest. Beyond a large plain, a few kilometers in front of us, a yellow light danced in the sky and we could make out the crackle of guns, hollow, muffled explosions. The moon illuminated the snow on the plain and I could make out the black line of the railroad, the bushes, the little scattered woods. “They must be fighting around Belgarde,” Thomas said. “Let’s sleep a little. If we approach now, we’ll get shot by our own men.” Sleeping in the snow wasn’t very appealing to me; with Piontek, I gathered some dead branches together to form a nest, rolled myself up in a ball, and fell asleep. A rude blow on my boot woke me up. It was still dark. Several forms were standing around us, I could see the steel of machine guns glinting. A voice whispered abruptly: The cold cut through my drenched clothes and I shivered, but we walked fast and that warmed me a little. Behind us, the fires in the city were crackling, thick smoke blackened the gray sky and veiled the sun. For a while, a dozen starving, panic-stricken dogs harassed us, rushing at our heels and barking furiously; Piontek had to cut a stick and lay into them to make them go away. Near the river, the ground was swampy; the snow had already melted, a few isolated patches showed the dry places. Our boots sank in up to our ankles. A long grassy dyke dusted with snow took shape, running alongside the Persante; to our right, at the foot of the embankment, the marsh thickened, then the woods began, also swampy; and soon we were stuck on this dyke, but couldn’t see anyone, neither Germans nor Russians. Others had come this way before us, though: here and there, slumped in the wood, with a foot or an arm caught in the branches, or else lying head-down on the side of the dyke, we saw a corpse, a soldier or civilian who had dragged himself there to die. The sky was clearing, the pale late-winter sun gradually scattered the grayness. Walking on the dyke was easy, we moved quickly, Belgarde had already disappeared. On the brown water of the Persante, ducks were floating, some with green heads, others black-and-white; they took off suddenly when we approached, quacking plaintively, then settling a little farther off. Across, beyond the river, stretched a large forest of tall, dark pines trees; to our right, after the little stream that separated the dyke from land, we saw mostly birch trees, with some oaks. I heard a distant buzzing: above us, very high in the light-green sky, a solitary plane was circling. The sight of this aircraft worried Thomas and he pulled us over to the little canal; we crossed it on a fallen trunk to reach the trees; but there, firm ground disappeared under water. We made our way through a little meadow covered with tall, thick grass, sodden and bent; beyond stretched out more sheets of water; there was a little padlocked hunter’s cabin, also standing in water. The snow had completely disappeared. There was no use sticking to the trees, our boots sank into the water and the mud, the wet ground was covered with rotten leaves that hid quagmires. Here and there a little island of firm land gave us courage. But farther on it became completely impossible again; the trees grew on isolated clumps or in the water itself, the strips of earth between the puddles were also flooded, wading was difficult, we had to give up and go back to the dyke. Finally it opened up onto fields, wet and covered with damp snow, but at least we could walk on them. Then we entered a woodlot of pine trees ready for cutting, thin, straight and tall with ruddy trunks. The sun filtered through the trees, scattering spots of light on the black, almost bare ground dotted with patches of snow or cold green moss. Trunks, abandoned where they fell, and broken branches blocked the way between the trees; but it was even harder to walk in the black mud, churned up by wagon wheels, on the logger’s paths that snaked through the pine grove. I was out of breath, hungry too, Thomas finally agreed to pause. Thanks to the heat given off from walking, my underwear was almost dry; I took off my tunic, boots, and pants, and stretched them out with my coat in the sun, on a cord of pine logs, carefully piled up in a square by the side of the road. I also put the Flaubert there, open, to dry out the curled paper. Then I perched on a neighboring cord, ridiculous in my long underwear; after a few minutes I was cold again, and Thomas passed me his coat, laughing. Piontek handed out some food and I ate. I was exhausted, I wanted to lie down on my coat in the weak sunlight and fall asleep. But Thomas was adamant that we reach K#246;rlin, he still hoped to get to Kolberg the same day. I put my wet clothes back on, pocketed the Flaubert, and followed him. Soon after the wood a little hamlet appeared, nestled in the bend of the river. We watched it for a while—we’d have to make a long detour if we had to go around it; I could hear dogs barking, horses neighing, cows mooing, with that long painful sound they have when they’re not milked and their udders are swelling. But that was all. Thomas decided to move forward. There were large old farm buildings made of brick, crumbling, the broad roofs covering generous haylofts; the doors were smashed, the path strewn with overturned carts, broken furniture, torn sheets; here and there, we stepped over the corpse of a farmer or an old woman, shot point-blank; a strange little snowstorm blew through the little streets, flurries of down raised from ripped-open quilts and mattresses and carried by the wind. Thomas sent Piontek to look for food in the houses and, as we waited, translated a sign hastily painted in Russian, placed around the neck of a farmer tied high up on an oak tree, his intestines dripping from his split stomach, half torn out by dogs: YOU HAD A HOUSE, COWS, TINNED FOOD. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU WANT WITH US, PRIDUROK? The smell of the intestines made me nauseous, I was thirsty and I drank from the pump of a well that still worked. Piontek joined us: he had found bacon, onions, apples, some preserves, which we shared between us and put in our pockets; but he was pale and his jaw was trembling, he didn’t want to tell us what he’d seen in the house, and his anguished gaze shifted from the disemboweled man to the growling dogs that were drawing close through the whirlwinds of down. We left this hamlet as fast as we could. Beyond stretched large undulating fields, pale yellow and beige under the still-dry snow. The path skirted round a little stream, climbed a hill, went past a deserted prosperous farm adjacent to a wood. Then it led down to the Persante. We followed the bank, which was high above the river; on the other side of the water there were more woods. Another tributary barred our way, we had to take off our boots and socks and ford it, the water was freezing, I drank some and sprinkled my neck with it before continuing. Then more snow-covered fields and, far off on a hill to the right, the edge of a forest; right in the middle, empty, stood a gray wooden tower, for duck-hunting or maybe to shoot at crows during harvest time. Thomas wanted to cut through the fields, in front of us the forest descended to join the river, but leaving the paths wasn’t easy, the ground got treacherous, we had to pass over barbed-wire fences, so we went back to following the river when we found it again a little farther on. Two swans were drifting on the water, not at all alarmed by our presence; they paused near a little island, raised and stretched their huge necks in one long gesture, then started preening themselves. Farther, the woods began again. Here the trees were mostly pine, young ones, a forest carefully managed for cutting, open and airy. The paths made walking easier. Twice, the noise of our footsteps caused small deer to run from us, we could see them leaping through the trees. Thomas led us along various paths under the calm high vault of branches and regularly found the Persante again, our Ariadne’s thread. A path cut through a little grove of oak trees, not very tall, a dense, gray tracery of shoots and bare branches. The ground under the snow was carpeted with dead leaves, dry and brown. When I was thirsty, I went down to the Persante, but often, at the shore, the water was stagnant. We were getting close to K#246;rlin; my legs were heavy, my back ached, but here now the paths were easy. In K#246;rlin, battle was raging. Crouching by the edge of the wood, we watched the Russian tanks scattered along a slightly raised road relentlessly shelling the German positions. Infantrymen were running around the tanks, lying in trenches. There were lots of dead bodies, brown spots dotting the snow or the blackish ground. We cautiously retreated into the forest. A little farther back we had spotted a little stone bridge over the Persante, intact; we returned to it and crossed it, then, hiding in a beech grove, we slipped toward the main road to Plathe. In these woods too there were bodies everywhere, Russians and Germans both, they must have fought furiously; most of the German soldiers were wearing the French badge; now, though, everything was quiet. Searching through their pockets we found a few useful things, pocketknives, a compass, some dried fish in a Russian’s haversack. On the road, above us, Soviet tanks were headed at top speed toward K#246;rlin. Thomas had decided that we would wait for night, then try to cross to see farther ahead who held the roadway to Kolberg, the Russians or our own men. I sat down behind a bush, with my back to the road, and ate an onion, which I washed down with some brandy, then I pulled We advanced at night; during the day, we hid in the woods; then I slept or read Flaubert, I didn’t talk much with my companions. An impotent rage was welling up in me, I didn’t understand why I had left the house near Alt Draheim, I was furious at myself for letting myself be led along to wander like a savage in the woods, instead of staying there quietly alone. Beards covered our faces, dried mud stiffened our uniforms, and under the rough cloth, cramps racked our legs. We ate poorly, there was only what we could find in abandoned farms or the debris of refugees’ convoys; I didn’t complain, but I found the raw bacon vile, the fat stayed stuck inside your mouth for a long time, there was no bread to help it down. We were always cold and couldn’t make a fire. Still, I liked this grave, quiet countryside, the serene, airy quiet of the birch woods or pine groves, the gray sky scarcely agitated by wind, the hushed rustle of the last snowfalls of the year. But it was a dead, deserted countryside: empty fields, empty farms. Everywhere the disasters of war had left their traces. Every sizeable hamlet, which we skirted around from afar, at night, was occupied by Russians; from the outskirts, in the dark, we could hear drunken soldiers singing and firing off volleys in the air. There were still some Germans, though, in these villages, we could make out their frightened but patient voices between the Russian exclamations and curses; screams were common too, especially women’s screams. But that was still better than the burned villages to which hunger drove us: dead livestock made the streets stink; the houses gave off a stench of carrion, mixed with the smell of cold ashes, and since we had to go inside to find food, we couldn’t avoid seeing the twisted corpses of women, often stripped naked, even old women or ten-year-old girls, with blood between their legs. But staying in the woods didn’t mean we could escape the dead: at crossroads, immense, ancient oak branches bore clusters of hanged men, usually When something did arouse a reaction in me, it was even worse. The second night after K#246;rlin, around dawn, we entered a hamlet, a few farms surrounding a manor house. A little to the side stood a brick church, set against a pointed bell tower and topped with a gray slate roof; the door was open, and organ music was coming out; Piontek had already left to search the kitchens; followed by Thomas, I went into the church. An old man, near the altar, was playing Bach’s The weather was fickle, it suddenly got warmer; as soon as the cold disappeared, it got hot, and I sweated copiously in my coat, the slippery earth of the fields stuck to my feet. We remained north of the road to Plathe; imperceptibly, to avoid spaces that were too open, and to stay close to the forests, we were drifting even farther north. Whereas we thought we would cross the Rega around Greifenberg, we reached it near Treptow, less than ten kilometers from the sea. Between Treptow and the river’s mouth, according to Thomas’s map, the entire left bank was swampy; but at the sea’s edge lay a large forest, where we could walk safely to Horst or Rewahl; if these seaside resorts were still in German hands, we could pass through the lines; if not, we would head back inland. That night, we crossed the railroad that links Treptow to Kolberg, then the road to Deep, waiting for an hour for a Soviet column to pass by. After the road, we were almost out in the open, but there were no villages there; we followed little isolated paths in the bend of the Rega, approaching the river. The forest, opposite, was growing visible in the darkness, a large black wall in front of the clear wall of the night. We could already smell the sea. But we couldn’t see any way of crossing the river, which kept getting wider as it neared its mouth. Instead of turning back, we continued on toward Deep. Skirting around the town where the Russians were sleeping, drinking, and singing, we went down to the beach and the bathhouses. A Soviet guard was sleeping on a chaise longue, and Thomas bashed his head in with the metal shaft of a beach umbrella; the noise of the waves drowned out all sounds. Piontek broke the chain fastening the pedal-boats. An icy wind was blowing over the Baltic, from west to east; along the coast, the black water was rough; we dragged the pedal-boat onto the sand to the mouth of the river; there it was calmer, and I launched onto the waves with a swell of joy; as I pedaled, I remembered the summers on the beaches in Antibes or Juan-les-Pins, where my sister and I begged Moreau to rent us a pedal-boat and then set off on our own on the sea, as far as our little legs could push us, before drifting happily in the sun. We crossed quickly, Thomas and I pedaling with all our strength, Piontek, lying between us with his gun, watching the shore; on the far bank, I abandoned our craft almost with regret. The forest began immediately, stocky low trees of all kinds bent by the wind that swept this long, gloomy coast unceasingly. Walking in these woods is not easy: there are few paths, and young saplings, birch trees especially, invade the ground between the trees, you have to clear a path for yourself among them. The forest came up to the sand on the beach and overlooked the sea, right up against the large dunes that, shifting under the wind, poured their sand between the trees and buried them up to midtrunk. Behind this barrier the backwash of the invisible sea thundered endlessly. We walked until dawn; farther on, it was mostly pine trees; we made better time. When the sky cleared, Thomas climbed a dune to look at the beach. I followed him. An uninterrupted line of debris and corpses cluttered the cold, pale sand, wrecks of vehicles, abandoned artillery guns, overturned, shattered carts. Bodies lay where they had fallen, on the sand or with their heads in the water, half covered by white foam, others floated farther away, tossed by the waves. The seawater looked heavy, almost dirty on this beige, pale beach, the gray-green of lead, hard and sad. Fat seagulls flew level with the sand or soared above the rumbling swell, facing the wind, as if suspended, before heading off away with a precise movement of wing. We ran down the dune to rapidly search some corpses for provisions. There were all kinds of people among the dead, soldiers, women, little children. But we didn’t find much to eat and soon hurried back to the forest. As soon as I moved away from the beach, the calm of the woods enveloped me, letting the roar of the surf and the wind resound in my head. I wanted to sleep on the flank of the dune, the cold, hard sand drew me, but Thomas was afraid of patrols, and led me farther into the forest. I slept a few hours on pine needles and then read my misshapen book until nightfall, forgetting my hunger in the sumptuous descriptions of the banquets of the bourgeois monarchy. Then Thomas gave the signal for departure. After two hours of walking, we reached the end of the forest, a curve overlooking a little lake separated from the Baltic by a dyke of gray sand, surmounted by a line of pretty beach cottages, abandoned, built down to the sea on a long, gentle strand scattered with debris. We threaded our way from house to house, keeping an eye out on the paths and the beach. Horst was a little farther on: a former seaside resort, popular in its day, but for some years past given over to invalids and the convalescent. On the beach, the jumble of wrecks and bodies grew thicker, a big battle had taken place here. Farther on, we could see lights and hear engine noises, it must have been the Russians. We had already passed the little lake; according to the map, we were no more than twenty or twenty-two kilometers from the island of Wollin. In one of the houses we found a wounded man, a German soldier hit in the stomach by a piece of shrapnel. He was crouching under a stairway but called to us when he heard us whispering. Thomas and Piontek carried him onto a gutted sofa, holding his mouth so he wouldn’t cry out; he wanted something to drink, Thomas wet a cloth and wiped his lips with it several times. He had been lying there for days, and his words, between the panting, were scarcely audible. The remains of several divisions, herding tens of thousands of civilians, had formed a pocket in Horst, Rewahl, Hoff; he had arrived there with what was left of his regiment, from Dramburg. Then they had tried to break through to Wollin. The Russians held the cliffs above the beach and fired methodically at the desperate mass that passed beneath them. “It was like a pigeon shoot.” He had been wounded almost immediately, and his comrades had abandoned him. During the day, the beach was swarming with Russians, who came to strip the dead. He knew they had taken Kammin and probably controlled the whole shore of the Haff. “The region must be swarming with patrols,” Thomas commented. “The Reds are going to look for survivors of the breakthrough.” The man kept muttering and moaning, he was sweating; he asked for water, but we didn’t give him any, it would have made him shout; and we didn’t have any cigarettes to offer him, either. Before letting us go, he asked us for a pistol; I gave him mine, with the rest of the bottle of brandy. He promised to wait till we had gotten far away to shoot. Then we started off south again: after Gross Justin and Zitzmar there were woods. On the roads the traffic was incessant, American Jeeps or Studebakers with the red star, motorcycles, more tanks; on the paths there were now foot patrols of five or six men, and it took all our alertness to avoid them. Ten kilometers from the coast, we found snow again in the fields and woods. We headed toward G#252;lzow, west of Greifenberg; then, Thomas explained, we could continue on and try to cross the Oder near Gollnow. Before dawn we found a forest and a hut, but there were traces of footsteps and we left the path to sleep farther off, in the pine trees near a clearing, rolled up in our coats on the snow. I awoke surrounded by children. They formed a wide circle around us, dozens of them, looking at us in silence. They were in rags, dirty, their hair disheveled; many of them wore scraps of German uniforms, a jacket, a helmet, a coarsely cut coat; some were clutching farm tools, hoes, rakes, shovels; others, rifles and submachine guns made of wire or cut from wood or cardboard. Their gazes were sullen and threatening. Most of them looked between ten and thirteen years old; some of them weren’t yet six; and behind them stood a few girls. We rose, and Thomas greeted them politely. The tallest of them, a blond, lanky boy wearing a staff officer’s coat with red velvet lapels over a tank-driver’s black jacket, stepped forward and barked: “Who are you?” He spoke German with a thick So we started off with this horde of children in rags, leaving poor Piontek’s body lying there. Thomas took his submachine gun, and I picked up the bag of provisions. The group included almost seventy kids in all, including a dozen girls. Most of them, as we gradually learned, were orphan This march with the children lasted for several nights. I felt as if I were gradually losing control of myself, I had to make an immense effort not to hit them in turn. Thomas still kept his Olympian calm; he followed our progression on the map and with a compass, conferring with Adam about what direction to take. Before Gollnow, we had to cross the Kammin railroad, then, in several compact groups, the road. Beyond was nothing but an immense, dense forest, deserted but dangerous because of the patrols, which, fortunately, kept to the paths. We also began again meeting, alone or in groups, German soldiers, who like us were headed toward the Oder. Thomas stopped Adam from killing the isolated ones; two of them joined us, including a Belgian SS man, the others went their own way, preferring to try their luck alone. After another road, the forest became a marsh, we weren’t far from the Oder; to the south, according to the map, these swamps led to a tributary, the Ihna. Moving became difficult, we sank up to our knees, sometimes our waists, the children almost drowned in the bogs. It was very warm now, even in the forest the snow had disappeared; I finally got rid of my coat, still wet and heavy. Adam decided to escort us to the Oder with a smaller troupe and left part of his group, the girls and the smallest ones, under the guard of the two wounded children, on a strip of dry land. Crossing these desolate marshes took most of the night; sometimes we had to make considerable detours, but Thomas’s compass helped guide us. Finally we reached the Oder, black and gleaming beneath the moon. A line of long islands seemed to stretch between us and the German shore. We couldn’t find a boat. “No matter,” Thomas said, “we’ll swim across.”—“I don’t know how to swim,” the Belgian said. He was a Walloon, he had known Lippert well in the Caucasus and had told me about his death in Novo Buda. “I’ll help you,” I said. Thomas turned to Adam: “You don’t want to cross with us? Go back to Germany?”—“No,” the boy said. “We have our own mission.” We took off our boots to tuck them into our belts and I shoved my cap inside my tunic; Thomas and the German soldier, whose name was Fritz, kept their submachine guns in case the island wasn’t deserted. At this spot the river must normally have been about three hundred meters wide, but with the thaw, it had risen and the current was strong; the Belgian, whom I held under the chin as I swam on my back, slowed me down, I was soon carried away and almost missed the island; as soon as I managed to get my footing, I let the soldier go and pulled him by the collar, until he could walk on his own in the water. On the bank, I was overcome with fatigue and had to sit down for a while. Opposite, the marshes barely rustled, the children had already disappeared; the island on which we found ourselves was wooded, and I didn’t hear anything here, either, except the murmuring of the water. The Belgian went to find Thomas and the German soldier, who had landed farther up, then came back to tell me that the island seemed deserted. When I could get up I went through the wood with him. On the other side, the shore was also silent and dark. But on the beach, a pole painted red and white indicated the location of a field telephone, protected beneath a tarp, whose wire vanished into the water. Thomas took the receiver and made the call. “Hello,” he said. “Yes, we’re German soldiers.” He gave our names and ranks. Then: “Good.” He hung up, straightened, looked at me with a big smile. “They say we should stand in a row with our arms out.” We scarcely had time to get in place: a powerful spotlight on the German shore came on and aimed at us. We stayed that way for several minutes. “Good idea, their system,” Thomas commented. An engine noise started up in the night. A rubber dinghy approached and landed near us; three soldiers examined us in silence, holding their weapons until they were sure we were indeed German; still without a word, they herded us into the boat and the dinghy set off, bouncing through the black water. On the bank, in the darkness, Feldgendarmen were waiting. Their big curved neck plates shone in the moonlight. They led us into a bunker to face a police Hauptmann, who asked for our papers; none of us had any. “In that case,” the officer said, “I have to send you under escort to Stettin. I’m sorry, but all kinds of people are trying to infiltrate.” As we waited, they handed out cigarettes and Thomas talked amiably with him: “You have a lot of crossings?”—“Ten or fifteen a night. In our entire sector, dozens. The other day, more than two hundred men arrived all at once, still armed. Most of them end up here because of the swamps, where the Russians don’t patrol much, as you saw.”—“The idea of the telephone is ingenious.”—“Thank you. The water has risen, and a lot of men drowned when they tried to swim across. The telephone spares us bad surprises…at least, so we hope,” he added, smiling. “It seems the Russians have traitors with them.” Around dawn, they had us get into a truck with three other In Berlin, we had some trouble justifying ourselves, but less than I expected; not like ordinary soldiers, who were unceremoniously hanged or shot on suspicion alone. Even before shaving or washing, Thomas went to present himself to Kaltenbrunner, whose headquarters were now in the Kurf#252;rstenstrasse, in Eichmann’s old premises, one of the last RSHA buildings still pretty much standing. Since I didn’t know where to report to—even Grothmann had left Berlin—I accompanied him. We had agreed on a story that was for the most part plausible: I was taking advantage of my leave to try to evacuate my sister and her husband, and the Russian offensive had caught me short with Thomas, who had come to help me; Thomas had had the foresight to provide himself with a mission order from Huppenkothen before leaving. Kaltenbrunner listened to us in silence and then dismissed us without any comment, informing me that the Reichsf#252;hrer, who had resigned the day before from his command of Army Group Vistula, was in Hohenlychen. The report on Piontek’s death took me no time at all, but I had to fill out a number of forms to justify the loss of the vehicle. In the evening, we went to Thomas’s place, in Wannsee: the house was intact, but there was neither electricity nor running water, and we could only have a quick wash with cold water, and shave with difficulty before going to bed. The next morning, wearing a clean uniform, I went to Hohenlychen to present myself to Brandt. As soon as he saw me, he ordered me to shower, have my hair cut, and come back when I looked presentable. The hospital had hot showers, I spent almost an hour under the stream of water, voluptuously; then I went to the barber and, while I was at it, had myself shaved with hot water and sprinkled with eau de Cologne. Almost cheerful, I went back to see Brandt. He listened to my story severely, berated me curtly for having cost the Reich, through my imprudence, several weeks of my work, then informed me that in the meantime I had been reported missing; my office was dissolved, my colleagues reassigned, and my files archived. For now, the Reichsf#252;hrer had no more need of my services; and Brandt ordered me to return to Berlin to put myself at Kaltenbrunner’s disposal. After the interview, his secretary led me into his office and handed me my personal mail, transmitted by Asbach when the Oranienburg office was closed: mostly bills, a note from Ohlendorf about my wound in February, and a letter from Helene, which I pocketed without opening. Then I went back to Berlin. A chaotic atmosphere reigned at the Kurf#252;rstenstrasse: the building now housed the headquarters of the RSHA and of the Staatspolizei, as well as numerous representatives of the SD; everyone needed more room, hardly anyone knew what he was supposed to be doing, all wandered aimlessly through the hallways, trying to look busy. Since Kaltenbrunner couldn’t receive me before nightfall, I settled into a chair in a corner and resumed my reading of I slept little and returned early to the Bendlerstrasse. The sky had cleared and there were Sturmoviks everywhere. The next day it was even nicer out, the gardens, in the ruins, were flowering. I didn’t see Thomas, he had gotten caught up in some business between Wolff and Kaltenbrunner, I don’t know too much about it, Wolff had come up from Italy to discuss the possibility of a surrender, Kaltenbrunner had gotten angry and wanted to arrest him or have him hanged, as usual it ended up in front of the F#252;hrer, who let Wolff go. When I finally saw Thomas again, the day the Seelow Heights fell, he was furious, raging against Kaltenbrunner, his stupidity, his narrow-mindedness. I myself didn’t understand at all what Kaltenbrunner was playing at, what use it could be to him to turn against the Reichsf#252;hrer, to intrigue with Bormann, to maneuver to become the F#252;hrer’s new favorite. Kaltenbrunner wasn’t an idiot, he must have known, better than anyone, that the game was coming to an end; but instead of positioning himself for what would come after, he was wasting his energy in pointless, futile quarrels, affecting a hard-line attitude that he would never, as was obvious to anyone who knew him, have the courage to bring to its logical conclusion. Yet Kaltenbrunner was far from being the only one to lose all sense of moderation. Everywhere, in Berlin, Sperrkommandos were appearing, blocking units made up of men from the SD, the police, various Party organizations, Feldgendarmen, who administered an extremely summary justice to those who, more reasonable than they, just wanted to live, and sometimes even to some who had nothing to do with anything, but who just had the misfortune to be there. The little fanatics of the Leibstandarte hauled wounded soldiers out of basements to execute them. Everywhere, exhausted veterans from the Wehrmacht, recently called-up civilians, sixteen-year-old kids, their faces purplish-blue, decorated lampposts, trees, bridges, S-Bahn elevated tracks, anyplace from which a man can be hanged, and always with the invariable sign around their necks: I AM HERE BECAUSE I ABANDONED MY POST WITHOUT ORDERS. Berliners had a resigned attitude: “Instead of getting hanged, I’d rather believe in victory.” I myself had problems with these maniacs; since I moved around a lot, they were constantly checking my papers, I thought of asking for an armed escort to defend myself. At the same time, I almost pitied these men, drunk with fury and bitterness, devoured by an impotent hatred that, as it could no longer be directed at the enemy, they turned against their own, like rabid wolves devouring one another. At the Kurf#252;rstenstrasse, a young Obersturmf#252;hrer from the The news I was bearing several times a day was rarely good. Day after day, the Soviets were advancing, entering Lichtenberg and Pankow, taking Weissensee. Refugees crossed the city in large columns, many of them were hanged, at random, as deserters. The Russian artillery bombardments caused more victims: on the F#252;hrer’s birthday, they had arrived within cannon’s range of the city. It had been a beautiful day, a warm, sunny Friday, the smell of lilacs filled the air of the abandoned gardens with their fragrance. Here and there flags with swastikas had been hung on the ruins, as well as large signs whose irony I hoped was unconscious, like the one that dominated the rubble on the L#252;tzowplatz: WE THANK OUR F#252;HRER FOR EVERYTHING. But people’s hearts weren’t really in it. In midmorning, the Anglo-Americans had launched one of their massive raids, more than a thousand aircraft in two hours, followed by Mosquitos; after they left, the Russian artillery had taken over. It was certainly a beautiful fireworks display, but few appreciated it, on our side at least. Goebbels did try to have extra rations distributed in the F#252;hrer’s honor, but even that turned sour: the artillery caused many victims among the civilians standing in line; the next day, in spite of the heavy rain, it was even worse, a shell struck a line of people waiting in front of the Karstadt department store, the Hermannplatz was full of bloody corpses, scattered pieces of limbs, children screaming and shaking the inert bodies of their mothers, I saw it myself. On Sunday there was a brilliant spring sun, then showers, then sun again that shone on the rubble and the soaking ruins. Birds sang; everywhere tulips and lilacs were blooming, apple trees, plum and cherry trees, and in the Tiergarten, rhododendrons. But these gorgeous flower aromas couldn’t mask the stench of rotting and burned brick floating over the streets. A heavy, stagnant smoke veiled the sky; when it rained, this smoke grew even thicker, filling people’s throats. The streets, despite the artillery strikes, were full of life: at the antitank barricades, children with paper helmets, perched on top of the obstacles, were waving wooden swords; I passed old women pushing strollers full of bricks, and even, crossing the Tiergarten toward the zoo bunker, soldiers chasing a herd of mooing cows before them. At night it rained again; and the Reds, in turn, celebrated Lenin’s birthday with a brutal riot of artillery. The public services were shutting down one by one, their personnel evacuating. A day before being dismissed, General Reynmann, the city Kommandant, had distributed to NSDAP officials two thousand passes to leave Berlin. Whoever hadn’t been lucky enough to get one could still buy his way out: at the Kurf#252;rstenstrasse, a Gestapo officer explained to me that a complete set of valid papers fetched around eighty thousand reichsmarks. The U-Bahn ran until April 23, the S-Bahn until the twenty-fifth, the interurban telephone worked until the twenty-sixth (they say a Russian managed to reach Goebbels at his office, from Siemensstadt). Kaltenbrunner had left for Austria immediately after the F#252;hrer’s birthday, but M#252;ller stayed on, and I continued my liaisons for him. I usually went by the Tiergarten, because the streets south of the Bendlerstrasse, by the Landwehrkanal, were blocked; in the Neue Siegesallee, repeated explosions had smashed the statues of the sovereigns of Prussia and Brandenburg, the street was strewn with Hohenzollern heads and limbs; at night, the fragments of white marble gleamed in the moonlight. At the OKW, where the city Kommandant now had his HQ (someone named K#228;ther had replaced Reynmann, then two days later, K#228;ther had in turn been dismissed to make way for Weidling), they often made me wait for hours before finally granting me a few useless fragments of information. To avoid being too much in the way, I waited with my driver in my car, beneath a cement roof in the courtyard, I watched, as they scurried about, overexcited, haggard officers, exhausted soldiers dawdling so as not to go back under fire too quickly, Hitlerjugend greedy for glory come to beg for a few The noose was tightening. The Adlon had closed its doors; my only diversion was drinking schnapps at the Kurf#252;rstenstrasse, or at Wannsee with Thomas, who, laughing, filled me in on the most recent events. M#252;ller now was looking for a mole: an enemy agent, apparently in the entourage of a high-ranking SS official. Schellenberg saw in this a conspiracy to destabilize Himmler, and so Thomas had to follow the developments of the affair. The situation was degenerating into vaudeville: Speer, who had lost the F#252;hrer’s confidence, had returned, dodging Sturmoviks to land his crate on the Ost-West-Achse, to beg for his Soon the Kurf#252;rstenstrasse too had to be evacuated. The remaining officers were dispersed; M#252;ller withdrew to his emergency HQ, in the crypt of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche on Mauerstrasse. The Bendlerstrasse was practically on the front line, the liaisons had become very complicated: to reach the building, I had to thread my way through the rubble to the edge of the Tiergarten, then continue on foot, guided through basements and ruins by Soon afterward, they had us go into the back room. We pushed back the map-covered tables ourselves and lined up against the wall, our feet in the wet carpet. The two generals who had just been shouting about the water went and stood at attention in front of a door opposite us; on one of the tables, an adjutant was preparing the boxes with the medals. Then the door opened and the F#252;hrer appeared. All of us stiffened simultaneously, launched our arms into the air, and bellowed our salute. The two generals were also saluting. The F#252;hrer tried to raise his arm in response but it was shaking too much. Then he came forward with a hesitant, jerky, unstable step. Bormann, buttoned up tight in his brown uniform, emerged from the room behind him. I had never seen the F#252;hrer so close up. He wore a simple gray uniform and cap; his face looked yellow, haggard, puffy, his eyes remained fixed on one spot, inert, then began blinking violently; a drop of spittle stood out at the corner of his mouth. When he tottered, Bormann held out his hairy paw and supported him by the elbow. He leaned on the corner of a table and gave a brief, somewhat disjointed speech that included Frederick the Great, eternal glory, and the Jews. Then he went over to M#252;ller. Bormann followed him like a shadow; the adjutant was holding open a box with a medal. The F#252;hrer took it slowly between his fingers, placed it without pinning it on M#252;ller’s right pocket, shook his hand, calling him “My good M#252;ller, my faithful M#252;ller,” and patted his arm. I kept my head straight but watched from the corner of my eye. The ceremony was repeated for the next man: M#252;ller barked out his name, rank, and service, then the F#252;hrer decorated him. Thomas was decorated next. As the F#252;hrer approached me—I was almost at the end of the line—my attention was caught by his nose. I had never noticed how broad and ill-proportioned this nose was. In profile, the little moustache was less distracting and the nose could be seen more clearly: it had a wide base and flat bridges, a little break in the bridge emphasized the tip; it was clearly a Slavonic or Bohemian nose, nearly Mongolo-Ostic. I don’t know why this detail fascinated me, but I found it almost scandalous. The F#252;hrer approached and I kept observing him. Then he was in front of me. I saw with surprise that his cap scarcely reached my eyes; and yet I am not tall. He muttered his compliment and groped for the medal. His foul, fetid breath overwhelmed me: it was too much to take. So I leaned forward and bit into his bulbous nose, drawing blood. Even today I would be unable to tell you why I did this: I just couldn’t restrain myself. The F#252;hrer let out a shrill cry and leaped back into Bormann’s arms. There was an instant when no one moved. Then several men lay into me. I was struck and thrown to the ground; rolled into a ball on the wet carpet, I tried to protect myself from the kicks as well as I could. Everyone was shouting, the F#252;hrer was bellowing. Finally they pulled me back to my feet. My cap had fallen; I at least wanted to adjust my tie, but they held my arms firmly. Bormann was pushing the F#252;hrer toward his room and shouting: “Shoot him!” Thomas, behind the crowd, was observing me in silence, looking both disappointed and mocking. They dragged me toward a door at the back of the room. Then M#252;ller interrupted in his loud, harsh voice: “Wait! I want to question him first. Take him to the crypt.” Trevor-Roper, I know, never breathed a word about this episode, nor has Bullock, nor any of the historians who have studied the F#252;hrer’s last days. Yet it did take place, I assure you. This silence of the chroniclers is understandable: M#252;ller disappeared, killed or gone over to the Russians a few days later; Bormann certainly died trying to flee Berlin; the two generals must have been Krebs and Burgdorf, who committed suicide; the adjutant must be dead too. As for the RSHA officers who witnessed the incident, I don’t know what became of them, but one can easily imagine, given their service record, that the ones who survived the war must not have bragged about being decorated by the F#252;hrer in person three days before his death. So it’s entirely possible that this minor incident indeed escaped the attention of researchers (but perhaps some trace of it remains in the Soviet archives?). I was dragged to the surface up a long stairway that opened onto the chancellery gardens. The magnificent building lay in ruins, gutted by bombs and shells, but a fragrant smell of jasmine and hyacinth filled the cool air. I was brutally pushed into a car and driven to the nearby church; there, they led me down into the bunker and threw me unceremoniously into a concrete room, bare and wet. Puddles dotted the ground; the walls were sweating; and the lock on the heavy metal door plunged me into absolute, uterine darkness: even with my eyes open wide, not the slightest ray of light filtered through. I remained like this for several hours, wet and cold. Then they came to get me. They tied me to a chair, I blinked, the light hurt me; M#252;ller in person interrogated me; they beat me with truncheons, on my ribs, shoulders, and arms, M#252;ller too came over and boxed me with his big peasant’s fists. I tried to explain that my thoughtless gesture meant nothing, that I hadn’t premeditated it, that I had just gone blank, but M#252;ller wouldn’t believe me, he saw a carefully prepared conspiracy, he wanted me to name my accomplices. No matter how much I protested, he wouldn’t give up: when M#252;ller set his mind on something, he knew how to stick to it. Finally they threw me back into my cell, where I remained lying in the puddles, waiting for the pain to subside. I must have fallen asleep like this, my head half in the water. I woke up chilled to the bone and twisted with cramps; the door was opening, another man was being shoved in. I just had time to glimpse an SS officer’s uniform, without medals or insignia. In the darkness, I heard him swearing in a Bavarian dialect: “Isn’t there a dry place in here?”—“Try near the walls,” I murmured politely.—“Who’re you?” His voice barked vulgarly, though in a cultivated tone. “Me? I’m Obersturmbannf#252;hrer Dr. Aue, from the SD. And you?” His voice became calmer: “My apologies, Obersturmbannf#252;hrer. I’m Gruppenf#252;hrer Fegelein. Ex-Gruppenf#252;hrer Fegelein,” he added with a rather pointed irony. I knew him by name: he had replaced Wolff as the Reichsf#252;hrer’s liaison officer to the F#252;hrer; before, he had commanded an SS cavalry division in Russia, chasing partisans and Jews in the Pripet marshes. At the Reichsf#252;hrung, he was said to be ambitious, a gambler, a good-looking braggart. I leaned up on my elbows: “And what brings you here, ex-Gruppenf#252;hrer?”—“Oh, it’s a misunderstanding. I’d had a little to drink and I was at home, with a girl; those lunatics in the bunker thought I wanted to desert. Another one of Bormann’s tricks, I’ll bet. They’ve all gone mad over there; their Walhalla business is not for me, thanks. But it should get sorted out, my sister-in-law will take care of it.” I didn’t know who he was talking about, but I didn’t say anything. It was only when I read Trevor-Roper, years later, that I understood: Fegelein had married the sister of Eva Braun, whose existence I was unaware of at the time, like pretty much everyone else. This highly diplomatic marriage, unfortunately, proved of little help to him: despite his connections, his charm, and his easy tongue, Fegelein was shot the following night in the chancellery gardens (this too, I only learned much later). “And you, Obersturmbannf#252;hrer?” Fegelein asked. Then I told him my misadventure. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “That was smart. So that’s why they’re all in such a bad mood. I thought that M#252;ller was going to tear my head off, the brute.”—“Oh, he hit you too?”—“Yes. He got it into his head that the girl I was with is a British spy. I don’t know what’s gotten into him all of a sudden.”—“It’s true,” I said, remembering Thomas’s words: “Gruppenf#252;hrer M#252;ller is looking for a spy, a mole.”—“That’s possible,” he muttered. “But it has nothing to do with me.”—“Excuse me,” I interrupted, “do you know what time it is?”—“Not exactly. It must be around midnight, one o’clock?”—“Then we should get some sleep,” I suggested pleasantly.—“I’d have preferred my bed,” Fegelein grumbled.—“I can only agree.” I dragged myself on the ground against the wall and dozed off; my hips were still in the water, but it was better than my head. I slept well and had pleasant dreams; I emerged from them regretfully, but I was being kicked in the ribs. “Get up!” a voice shouted. I stood up with difficulty. Fegelein was sitting by the door, his arms around his knees; when I went out, he smiled at me timidly and made a little sign with his hand. They took me up to the church: two men in civilian clothes were waiting, policemen, one of them with a revolver in his hand; there were also SS men in uniform with them. The policeman with the revolver took me by the arm, pulled me into the street, and shoved me into an Opel; the others got in too. “Where are we going?” I asked the policeman who was driving the barrel of the revolver into my ribs. “Shut your face!” he barked. The car started off, turned onto Mauerstrasse, went about a hundred meters; I heard a high-pitched whistle; an enormous explosion lifted the car and threw it onto its side. The policeman, beneath me, pulled the trigger, I think: I remember having the impression that his shot killed one of the men in front. The other policeman, covered in blood, had fallen inert on top of me. I kicked and elbowed my way out of the overturned car through the rear window, cutting myself a little on the way. Other shells were falling nearby, projecting huge showers of bricks and earth. I was deafened, my ears were ringing. I collapsed onto the sidewalk and lay there for a minute, stunned. The policeman tumbled out behind me and rolled heavily onto my legs. With one hand I found a brick and struck his head with it. We rolled together in the rubble, coated with red brick dust and mud; I hit him with all my strength, but it’s not easy to knock out a man with a brick, especially if this brick has already burned. At the third or fourth blow, it crumbled in my hand. I cast around for another one, or for a stone, but the man knocked me over and began strangling me. The blood running down his face traced furrows in the red dust covering it, his eyes were mad, rolling wildly. My hand finally found a cobblestone and I slammed it up and sideways into him. He collapsed on top of me. I freed myself and pounded at his head till his skull burst, leaking brains mixed with dust and hair. Then I stood up, still deafened. I looked for his revolver, but he must have left it in the car, one wheel of which was still spinning in the air. The three other men inside looked dead. For now the shells had stopped falling. I began to run limping down Mauerstrasse. I had to find somewhere to hide. Around me there were only ministries or government buildings, almost all of them in ruins. I turned down Leipzigstrasse and went into the lobby of an apartment house. Bare or stockinged feet floated in front of me, turning slowly. I raised my head: several people, including children and women, were hanging from the stairway railing, their arms dangling. I found the entrance to the basement and opened it: a gust of putre-faction, shit, and vomit assailed me, the basement was full of water and swollen corpses. I closed the door and tried to go upstairs: after the first landing, the staircase opened onto the void. I headed back down, around the hanged people, and went out. It had begun to rain lightly, I heard explosions everywhere around me. In front of me was the entrance to a U-Bahn station, Stadtmitte on the C line. I ran down the steps, went through the gates, and kept going down into the darkness, guiding myself with one hand on the wall. The tiles were wet, water was welling out of the ceiling and streaming down the vault. Sounds of muffled voices rose from the platform. It was littered with bodies, I couldn’t see if they were dead, sleeping or just lying there, I stumbled over them, people were shouting, children crying or moaning. A train with broken windows, lit by wavering candles, was standing at the platform: inside, some Waffen-SS with French insignia were standing at attention, and a tall Brigadef#252;hrer in a black leather coat, with his back turned to me, was solemnly handing out decorations to them. I didn’t want to disturb them, I went quietly by and jumped down onto the tracks, landing in cold water that came up to my calves. I wanted to head north, but I was disoriented; I tried to remember the direction of the trains when I used to take this line, but I didn’t even know what platform I had stumbled upon, everything was confused. To one side, in the tunnel, there was a little light: I went that way, wading in the water that hid the tracks, stumbling over invisible obstacles. At the end of the platform several trains were lined up, also lit by candlelight, a makeshift hospital, crowded with wounded, shouting, swearing, groaning. I walked alongside these cars without anyone noticing me, and groped my way forward, using the wall to guide me. The water rose, reached midcalf. I stopped and plunged my hand into it: it seemed to be flowing slowly toward me. I continued. A floating body bumped against my legs. I could scarcely feel my feet, numb from the cold. In front, I thought I saw a gleam of light, and I seemed to hear other noises besides the lapping of the water. Finally I reached a station lit by a single candle. The water came up to my knees now. Here too there were a lot of people. I called out: “Please, what station is this?”—“Kochstrasse,” someone replied amiably. I had gone in the wrong direction, I was heading toward the Russian lines. I turned around and headed back down the tunnel toward Stadtmitte. In front of me I could make out the lights of the U-Bahn hospital. On the tracks, next to the last car, stood two human figures, one quite tall, the other shorter. A flashlight switched on and blinded me; as I was hiding my eyes, a familiar voice grunted: “Hello, Aue. How’s it going?”—“You’ve come at the right time,” a second, reedier voice said. “We were just looking for you.” It was Clemens and Weser. Another flashlight turned on and they came toward me; I waded backward. “We wanted to talk with you,” said Clemens. “About your mother.”—“Ah, meine Herren!” I exclaimed. “Do you really think now is a good time?”—“It’s always a good time to talk about important things,” said the slightly rougher, higher-pitched voice of Weser. I retreated some more but found myself backed against the wall; cold water seeped through the cement and froze my shoulders. “What else do you want with me?” I squealed. “My case has been closed for a long time now!”—“By corrupt, dishonest judges,” Clemens said.—“You wriggled your way out with your intrigues,” said Weser. “Now all that’s over.”—“Don’t you think it’s up to the Reichsf#252;hrer or to Obergruppenf#252;hrer Breithaupt to decide that?” The latter was the head of the “Listen,” I stammered, “all this is a huge misunderstanding. I am innocent.”—“Innocent?” Weser curtly interrupted. “We’ll see about that.”—“We’re going to tell you how it happened,” Clemens began. The powerful light from the flashlights dazed me, his big voice seemed to emanate from this harsh light. “You took the night train from Paris to Marseille. In Marseille, on April twenty-sixth, you had someone issue you a pass for the Italian zone. The next day, you went to Antibes. There, you presented yourself at the house and they welcomed you as a son, as the genuine son that you are. That night, you dined with the family and afterward you slept in one of the upstairs bedrooms, next to the twins’ room, opposite the bedroom of your mother and Herr Moreau. Then it was the twenty-eighth.”—“Hey,” Weser interrupted. “It’s the twenty-eighth of April, today. What a coincidence.”—“Meine Herren,” I said, trying to sound confident, “you’re raving.”—“Shut your face,” Clemens roared. “I’ll go on. During the day, we don’t really know what you did. We know you cut some wood, and that you left the axe in the kitchen instead of putting it back in the storeroom. Then you walked into town and bought your return ticket. You were wearing civilian clothes, no one noticed you. Then you came back.” Weser went on: “Afterward, there are some things we’re not sure about. Maybe you talked with Herr Moreau, with your mother. Maybe you had words. We’re not sure. We’re not sure about the time, either. But we do know that you found yourself alone with Herr Moreau. Then you took the axe in the kitchen, where you’d left it, you returned to the living room, and you killed him.”—“We’re even willing to believe that you weren’t thinking of it when you left the axe,” Clemens went on, “that you left the axe there by chance, that you didn’t premeditate anything, that it just happened like that. But once you began, you certainly went all the way.” Weser continued: “That’s for sure. He must have been quite surprised when you laid into his chest with the axe. It went in with the sound of crushed wood and he fell gurgling, his mouth full of blood, taking the axe down with him. You put your foot on his shoulder for leverage and you pulled out the axe and swung again, but you got the angle wrong and the axe bounced back, just breaking a few ribs. Then you stepped back, aimed more carefully, and brought the axe down on his throat. It went through the Adam’s apple and you clearly heard the cracking when it crushed his spinal column. He vomited dark flows of blood in one last great heave all over you, it was gushing from his neck too and you were covered with it, and then in front of you his eyes went dull and his blood emptied out through his half-severed neck, you watched his eyes go out like those of a sheep whose throat’s just been cut on the grass.”—“Meine Herren,” I said forcefully, “you are completely insane.” Clemens took up: “We don’t know if the twins saw that. In any case, they saw you go upstairs. You left the body and the axe there and you went upstairs, covered in blood.”—“We don’t know why you didn’t kill them,” said Weser. “You could have, easily. But you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t want to, maybe you wanted to, but too late, and they’d run away. Maybe you wanted to and then changed your mind. Maybe you already knew they were your sister’s children.”—“We went by her place, in Pomerania,” Clemens grunted. “We found some letters, some documents. There were some very interesting things, among others the children’s documents. But we already knew who they were.” I let out a hysterical little laugh: “I was there, you know. I was in the woods, I saw you.”—“Actually,” Weser went on imperturbably, “we thought so. But we didn’t want to insist. We said to ourselves that we’d find you sooner or later. And you see, we did find you, in fact.”—“Let’s go on with our story,” said Clemens. “You went upstairs, covered in blood. Your mother was standing there waiting for you, either at the top of the staircase, or in front of the door to her room. She was wearing a nightgown, your old mother. She spoke to you, looking into your eyes. What she said, we don’t know. The twins listened to everything, but they didn’t tell anyone. She must have reminded you how she had carried you in her womb, then fed you at her breast, how she had wiped your ass and washed you while your father was chasing whores God knows where. Maybe she showed you her breast.”—“Not very likely,” I spat out with a bitter laugh. “I was allergic to her milk, I never breastfed.”—“Too bad for you,” Clemens continued without batting an eye. “Maybe then she stroked your chin, your cheek, she called you her child. But you weren’t moved: you owed her your love, but you thought only about your hatred. You closed your eyes so you’d stop seeing hers and you took her neck in your hands and you squeezed.”—“You’re mad!” I shouted. “You’re making all this up!”—“Not at all,” Weser said sardonically. “Of course, it’s a reconstruction. But it agrees with the facts.”—“Afterward,” Clemens continued in his calm bass voice, “you went into the bathroom and got undressed. You threw your clothes into the bathtub, washed yourself, cleaned off all the blood, and returned to your bedroom, naked.”—“There, we can’t say,” Weser commented. “Maybe you engaged in perverted acts, maybe you just slept. At dawn, you got up, put on your uniform, and left. You took the bus, then the train, you returned to Paris and then to Berlin. On April thirtieth, you sent a telegram to your sister. She went to Antibes, buried your mother and her husband, then she left again as soon as possible, with the boys. Maybe she had already guessed.”—“Listen,” I babbled, “you’ve lost your minds. The judges said you had no evidence. Why would I have done that? What would be the motive? You always have to have a motive.”—“We don’t know,” Weser said calmly. “But actually it’s all the same to us. Maybe you wanted Moreau’s money. Maybe you’re a sex fiend. Maybe your wound messed up your head. Maybe it was just an old family hatred, that’s pretty common, and you wanted to take advantage of the war to settle your accounts on the sly, thinking it would hardly be noticed among so many other deaths. Maybe you simply went mad.”—“But what are you after, damn it!” I shouted again.—“We told you,” Clemens murmured: “we want justice.”—“The city is burning!” I shouted. “There aren’t any more courthouses! All the judges are dead or gone. How do you plan on judging me?”—“We’ve already judged you,” Weser said in a voice that was so quiet that I could hear the water streaming by. “We found you guilty.”—“You?” I sniggered. “You’re cops. You don’t have the right to judge.”—“Given the circumstances,” Clemens’s big voice rumbled, “we’ll take that right.”—“Then,” I said sadly, “even if you are right, you’re no better than I.” At that moment, I heard a great din coming from Kochstrasse. People were shouting, running, splashing frantically. A man passed by crying, “The Russians! The Russians are in the tunnel!”—“Shit,” Clemens belched. He and Weser aimed their flashlights toward the station; German soldiers were surging back, firing randomly; I could see the muzzle flashes of machine guns, bullets whistled by, cracked against the walls or hit the water with soft little The street was deserted, except for three foreign Waffen-SS men charging toward Zimmerstrasse with a heavy machine gun and some Unter den Linden was still empty; here and there, a shell struck a fa#231;ade or a pile of rubble. My ears were still ringing from the Frenchman’s machine-gun volley. I began running toward the Brandenburg Gate. I had to get out of the city at all costs, it had become a monstrous trap. My information was already a day old, but I knew that the only way out was to go through the Tiergarten and then by the Ost-West-Achse down to the Adolf-Hitler-Platz; then I’d see. The day before, that side of the city still wasn’t sealed off, some Hitlerjugend still held the bridge over the Havel, Wannsee was in our hands. If I can reach Thomas’s place, I said to myself, I’m saved. The Pariser Platz, in front of the still relatively intact Gate, was strewn with overturned, wrecked, burned-out vehicles; in the ambulances, charred corpses still wore on their extremities white casts made of plaster of Paris, which doesn’t burn. I heard a powerful rumbling noise: a Russian tank passed behind me, sweeping wrecked cars in front of it; several Waffen-SS were perched on top, they must have captured it. It stopped right next to me, fired, then started off in a clatter of treads; one of the Waffen-SS observed me indifferently. The tank turned right into the Wilhelmstrasse and disappeared. A little farther on, down Unter den Linden, between the lampposts and the rows of shredded trees, I glimpsed a human shape through the smoke, a man in civilian clothes with a hat. I began running again and, threading between the obstacles, went through the Gate, black with smoke, riddled with bullets and shrapnel. Beyond lay the Tiergarten. I left the road and dove into the trees. Aside from the whirring of flying mortar shells and distant explosions, the park was strangely silent. The This part of the zoo was completely flooded: the bombardments had ripped open the Aquarium and the fish tanks had burst, pouring out tons of water, strewing the lanes with dead fish, crayfish, crocodiles, jellyfish, a panting dolphin that, lying on its side, contemplated me with a worried eye. I waded forward, around the baboon island where babies clutched with minuscule hands the stomachs of their panicking mothers, I wove between parrots, dead monkeys, a giraffe whose long neck hung over a railing, bleeding bears. I entered a half-destroyed building: in a large cage, an immense black gorilla was sitting, dead, a bayonet stuck in its chest. A river of black blood flowed between the bars and mingled with the pools of water. This gorilla looked surprised, astonished; its wrinkled face, its open eyes, its enormous hands, seemed frighteningly human to me, as if it were on the point of talking to me. Beyond this building stretched a long enclosed pond: a hippopotamus was floating in the water, dead, the fin of a mortar shell stuck in its back; another one was lying on a platform, riddled with shrapnel, dying in long, heavy gasps. The water overflowing from the pool was soaking the clothes of two Waffen-SS lying there; a third one rested, leaning against a cage, his eyes blank, his machine gun across his legs. I wanted to go on but I heard bursts of Russian voices, mixed with the trumpeting of a panic-stricken elephant. I hid behind a bush and then turned back to go around the cages across a kind of little bridge. Clemens barred my path, his feet in a puddle at the end of the footbridge, his wet hat still dripping with rainwater, his automatic in his hand. I raised my hands, as in the movies. “You made me run,” Clemens panted. “Weser is dead. But I got you.”—“Kriminalkommissar Clemens,” I hissed, out of breath from running, “don’t be ridiculous. The Russians are a hundred meters away. They’ll hear your gunshot.”—“I should drown you in a pool, you piece of shit,” he belched, “sew you up in a bag and drown you. But I don’t have time.”—“You haven’t even shaved, Kriminalkommissar Clemens,” I bellowed, “and you want to pass judgment on me!” He gave an abrupt laugh. A gunshot rang out, his hat came down over his face, and he fell like a block across the bridge, his head in a puddle of water. Thomas stepped out from behind a cage, a carbine in his hands, a large, delighted smile on his lips. “As usual, I arrive just in time,” he said happily. He glanced at Clemens’s massive body. “What did he want with you?”—“He was one of those two cops. He wanted to kill me.”—“Stubborn guy. Still for the same business?”—“Yes. I don’t know, they’ve gone mad.”—“You haven’t been very smart, either,” he said to me severely. “They’re looking for you everywhere. M#252;ller is furious.” I shrugged and looked around. It had stopped raining, the sun shone through the clouds and made the wet leaves on the trees and the patches of water in the lanes glisten. I could still make out a few scraps of Russian voices: they must have moved a little farther off, behind the monkey enclosure. The elephant trumpeted again. Thomas, his carbine leaning on the railing of the little bridge, had crouched down next to Clemens’s body; he had pocketed the policeman’s automatic and was rummaging through his clothes. I passed behind him and looked to that side, but there was no one. Thomas had turned toward me and was waving a thick wad of reichsmarks: “Look at that,” he said, laughing. “A gold mine, your cop.” He put the bills in his pocket and kept searching. Next to him, I saw a thick iron bar, torn from a nearby cage by an explosion. I picked it up, weighed it, then brought it down with all my strength on the nape of Thomas’s neck. I heard his vertebrae crack and he toppled over like a log, across Clemens’s body. I dropped the bar and contemplated the bodies. Then I turned Thomas over, his eyes were still open, and unbuttoned his tunic. I undid my own and quickly switched jackets with him before turning him onto his stomach again. I inspected the pockets: along with the automatic and Clemens’s banknotes were Thomas’s papers, those of the Frenchman from the STO, and some cigarettes. I found the keys to his house in his pants pocket; my own papers had stayed in my jacket. The Russians had moved farther on. In the lane a little elephant came trotting toward me, followed by three chimpanzees and an ocelot. They went around the bodies and over the bridge without slowing down, leaving me alone. I was feverish, my mind was coming apart. But I still remember perfectly the two bodies lying on top of each other in the puddles, on the footbridge, and the animals moving off. I was sad but didn’t really know why. I felt all at once the entire weight of the past, of the pain of life and of inalterable memory, I remained alone with the dying hippopotamus, a few ostriches, and the corpses, alone with time and grief and the sorrow of remembering, the cruelty of my existence and of my death still to come. The Kindly Ones were on to me. |
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