Death in Rome (10 page)

He was exhausted, and again I offered him some wine, and again he refused, and I wondered if he was this exhausted when he confessed to his superiors. I wasn't his confessor, and I couldn't give him absolution. I saw no sins. I saw only life, and life wasn't a sin. Nor could I give him any advice. Who can advise anyone? It meant nothing to me and it meant an awful lot when he exclaimed: 'But she's my mother, and he's my father!' And so I learned that they were in Rome, my parents, my brother Dietrich, my aunt and Uncle Judejahn, he too, he was alive, and there was Adolf sitting in front of me, though not entirely, I thought, because his priestly cassock set him apart from us, he had freed himself, I didn't want to know at what cost, just as I too had freed myself and didn't want to know the cost. Where should I flee to now, seeing they were here, following me, because Adolf had followed them, her at least, his mother, whom he described in dismaying terms? So when he said to me, 'He's my father, she's my mother,' I didn't want to know. I'd had enough. I'd freed myself. I felt free. I really thought I was free, and wanted to remain free—and I wasn't a Christian. I don't mean I wasn't a Christian in the sense of Uncle Judejahn, I didn't hate Christians, but I didn't go to church, or rather I went to a lot of churches but not to hear Mass, or rather I went to hear Mass, but not the way they celebrated it. But if he was a Christian now and a priest, then surely there was the injunction that one had to leave father and mother—and hadn't he left them?

He buried his face in his hands. He'd told me about the end of the Teutonic academy, the end of the Nazi indoctrination fortress where they let us stew, where they were going to get their future leadership cadres from. There'd been hand-grenades in our day, practice grenades that went off with a sharp crack and a sharp little flame on the playground, and then later they'd equipped the boys with real ones. But there weren't enough to go round, so they had to take some old and dodgy captured Greek-made grenades to make up numbers, and one boy had his belly ripped away by one because the pin had got caught up in his shoulder-strap and worked loose, that's how the teachers accounted for the mishap. And then the teachers had given them guns, captured guns with rusty barrels from victorious days, and they were to go with the old men from the
Volkssturm
reserve, and defend the eyrie—the fastness of the defeated but still bloodthirsty gods—but luckily the gods started eating one another and losing their heads before they could all be killed, and the old
Volkssturm
men sloped off into the woods and hills, or they hid in hay barns and potato cellars, and the dashing instructors ran around like mice, because now they would be called to account for the bacon they'd filched, and now they were caught in the trap, they were sitting pretty in the nets they'd helped to knot themselves. And then it was announced that there was going to be one more train, and the instructors sent the children home on it, without guns, without hand-grenades, just in their brown uniforms, and how could they get home, home was just a memory. The train didn't get far. It was attacked by fighter planes. Like furious hornets the fighters sent stinging volleys of shot through the splintering glass, metal and wood of the train compartments. Adolf was unhurt. But the train was finished, a crippled worm. The children continued on foot, along the tracks, on the gravel, stumbling over the ties. And then they ran into another train. It was a concentration camp that had been put on wheels and had also come to a halt. The children found themselves eyed by skeletons, by corpses. The children trembled in their Party school uniforms. But they didn't know why they should be afraid. They were German children, after all! They were the elect! Still, they found themselves whispering. 'They're from the camps!' they whispered, 'they're Jews!' And the children looked round and they whispered, 'Where are our men, where is our armed escort?' But there were no guards left, and the train was standing between a wood and a meadow, it was a spring day, the first flowers were out, the first butterflies were flitting about, the children in brown jackets "were confronted by the prisoners in blue-and-white convict clothes, and out of their sunken eye sockets the skeletons and the corpses looked right through the Party Junkers, who began to feel they had no bones, no skeletons, as if they were nothing but brown Party jackets, which some evil charm had suspended in the
spring
air. The children ran down from the tracks into the woods. They didn't stay together. They scattered. They went in all directions, without a word, without a salute or
'Heil
Hitler!' And Adolf sat down in the grass next to a bush, because he didn't know where to go. Now a wraith had concealed itself in the bush, and the wraith watched Adolf. The wraith was exactly Adolf's age, but it had only half Adolf's weight. Adolf was crying. He had always been told not to cry. 'German boys don't cry,' said his parents and instructors. But Adolf was crying. He didn't know why he was crying. Perhaps he was crying because for the first time he was alone, and there was no one there to tell him, 'German boys don't cry.' But when the wraith saw Adolf crying, it picked up the stick that was lying beside it, and emerged from the bushes, a tottering figure, an emaciated body, with beaten skin, shaved child's skull, a death mask, and the wraith in its blue-and-white-striped felon's jacket raised the stick, and its nose stuck out large and bony in its starved face, and Adolf
Judejahn
remembered the
Stürmer
picture and recognized his first live Jew, even though the Jew was barely alive, and the wraith, with the stick upraised in its trembling hands, screamed for bread. Adolf opened his pack, he had bread and wurst and margerine, they had been given rations for the journey, and strangely a pound of almonds as well, because almonds happened to be in supply, and Adolf handed over his rations to the wraith, which grabbed the rucksack and sat down a little way away from Adolf and tore off large pieces of bread and wurst and crammed them into itself. Adolf watched. He had no thoughts. No thoughts at all. There was an absolute void in his head, it was as though everything he had hitherto thought and learned had been cleared out, perhaps in order to make room for new ideas, new teaching, but that wasn't definite yet. For the time being his head was empty, an empty balloon dangling over the grass. And the wraith, seeing Adolf watching it, threw him some bread and wurst and called, 'You eat, too. There's enough for both!' And Adolf ate, without appetite and without enjoyment, but also without disgust. When the other saw Adolf eating, he came nearer. He sat beside him. They ate the almonds together. The bag of almonds lay between them, and they both shyly helped themselves from it. 'The Americans are coming,' said the Jewish boy. 'Where will you go?' he asked. 'I don't know,' said Adolf. 'Are you a Nazi?' asked the Jewish boy. 'My father,' said Adolf. 'My family are all dead,' said the Jewish boy. And then Adolf thought that his own father might be dead, probably was, although nothing told him for certain. If he was crying, he was crying for himself, or maybe not even for himself, he didn't know why he was crying, perhaps he was crying for the whole world. But he wasn't crying for his father. And had he not loved his father? He wasn't sure. Had he hated him? He didn't think so. He could only see him as the official Party portrait on the wall—which left him cold. The Jewish boy was sick. He vomited back the sausage and the bread and the margerine. He vomited back the almonds as well. His teeth chattered, it was as though all the bones protruding through his paper-thin skin were rattling together. Adolf took off his brown Party jacket, and laid it over the boy's shoulders. He didn't know why he did it. Not out of pity. Not out of love. Not even out of guilt did he cover the boy. He just did it because he thought he was cold. Later they exchanged jackets. Adolf pulled on the blue-and-white-striped convict jacket with the Star of David. That touched him. His heart beat so hard, he could feel the pulse in his veins. The jacket burned. He felt it. Later they heard rumbling on the road.

'Tanks,' said Adolf. 'The Americans,' whispered the boy. His life was saved, but he lacked the strength to crawl towards the tanks. What about Adolf? Had he lost his life, did the armoured column break it as it crashed and rumbled through the German countryside? The boys lay down in the leaves, and covered themselves with branches. They lay together and kept each other warm in the night. In the morning they went into the village. The young Jew went to look for the Americans. He said, 'Come on.' But Adolf didn't go with him. Adolf walked through the village. People stared at him, a boy in the black uniform trousers and red stripe, a military haircut and wearing a convict's jacket. He sat down in the village church. He sat in the village church, because its doors were open as no other doors were, and because he was tired, and because he had no place to go. And so the priest came upon him. He came upon him sleeping. Was it a vocation? Had God called him? On Sunday, the priest's text was: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.' Did Adolf want to live? Did he want to avoid condemnation? There were women and fugitives in the church, and men who had quickly slipped on civilian jackets to avoid imprisonment. There were American soldiers in the church as well, holding their helmets in their folded hands, and their short light rifles rested against the pews. They had survived. They said they were liberators. They had come from across the ocean. They were Crusaders. Adolf
Judejahn
had heard about the Crusades in the National Socialist academy, but his instructors had disapproved of them.

The conquest of earth was their teaching, not heaven. And for them it wasn't worth it to conquer the Holy Sepulchre; and yet they had no fear of sepulchres. Adolf no longer believed his instructors. He no longer trusted human beings. He wanted to serve the Lord. God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Death was at hand. He didn't want to die. He was scared. Judejahn had got into the car of his extraordinary subordinates, of the serviceable servicemen. It was a battered vehicle, almost a military vehicle, a jeep. They were in open terrain, on a reconnaissance mission, probing forward. Which way were they going? The direction didn't matter. The movement was all that mattered. Judejahn had ordered, 'To the station.' Why the station? He didn't know. But the station was an objective. It was a terrain. One could hide in it. One could find cover. One could go under, leave, disappear, fake one's death; Judejahn could become a legend like the Flying Dutchman, and Eva would be proud of him. The station, the objective, was near by. But Judejahn, sitting next to the driver—the other was sitting behind him, sitting on his tail—Judejahn sensed that they weren't going to the station at all, that their progress was rambling, they were driving around in circles, searching no doubt for dead ends and quiet alleyways, or alternatively for the roar and confusion of traffic where a gunshot might go unnoticed; they really thought he was going to pay, stupid bastards, they thought they had him in their sights, but Judejahn knew his way around, and that was the way you drove in the killing grounds: a blow from behind, a shot in the back, then the wallet plundered from the corpse and, in the lee of a wall, the car door opened and the body kicked out on to the rubble. He knew the ropes, and ultimately it was the Führer's orders to kill the commander who failed, the coward who surrendered, an order to anyone, but specifically an order issued to these Austrian SS, the Führer's praetorians. But Judejahn hadn't failed, he hadn't surrendered, and it was only in Rome that he was afraid, only in that damned priests' town, but he wasn't a coward and they couldn't do that to him. They planned on going to the brothel at his expense, but Judejahn wasn't about to get himself shot while attempting flight; he'd devised the method himself, and he wasn't going to be forced to flee. He was following tactical detours, on circuitous paths, on desert tracks, jackal strategy, but his goal remained Germany, Grossdeutschland was his fata morgana, nothing would deflect him, and he gave them an earful. The car stopped right away. The rotten metal quivered. It made Judejahn feel good, giving them an earful. They were his fellows, his bloodhounds, his lads. He chewed them out. They recognized their master's voice. They didn't talk back. They denied nothing. They would have licked his boots. He got out of the car. He commanded them, 'About turn!' They turned. They roared off towards Valhalla. Judejahn would have liked to tell them to report to him. But where would he have had them come? Report in Hell? Judejahn didn't believe in Hell. He was a grown man. He was disabused. Hell didn't exist. It was something to frighten children with. The Devil was the priests' bogeyman. The only possibility was reporting to Death, to friend Death, it was Comrade Death they should report to, to Death, whom little Gottlieb feared, and Judejahn—following the school song of Andreas Hofer which little Gottlieb had learned—had sent Death into the valley many times, and not just into the valley.

Behind him was the tunnel. It lured
Judejahn.
He ran into it, it swallowed him up. Again, he went through a gate into the Underworld. It was the gate of Hades. The tunnel was long and lined with cool tiles, it was a sewer for traffic where buses roared and neon lights painted the Underworld in spectral colours. This was where they had meant to kill him. His instinct hadn't let him down; he'd leapt out of the jeep at the very last moment. He walked down the narrow pavement by the tunnel wall. It felt like walking through his grave. It was an elongated grave, a hygienic grave, it was a mixture of kitchen, refrigerator and
pissoir.
You got no earth to chew in the morgue. The victim of the killing grounds chewed earth. The victim had been young.
Judejahn
had been young at the time as well. The victim was a comrade. The field shovel quickly buried the victim. And others had swallowed earth, too. In Poland, in Russia, in the Ukraine, they had swallowed earth. They were made to dig a ditch. Then they undressed. They stood naked before the ditch. Photographs came into the possession of leadership circles, were handed round, scrutinized over breakfast; jokes were cracked, tit jokes, cock and cunt jokes. Procreation and death, union with death, the ancient myth. A professor of race and an anthropologist were dispatched to study their dying erections. The photographs appeared in the
Stürmer.
The
Stürmer
was opened out and pinned on school noticeboards, eight-year-olds read it. Eight-year-olds shot. Riddled corpses filled the ditch. Man was destroyed, man desecrated, man dishonoured, and overhead was blue sky. The next up covered the first lot with earth. Over
Judejahn
was earth; the tunnel ran under the Quirinal Gardens. Popes wandered in the garden. Their prayers had not been heard; or what in heaven's name was it they had asked for from God? Two thousand years of Christian enlightenment and at the finish,
Judejahn!
Why did they ever drive the old gods out? Thou shalt not kill!' Was it that resounding off the tunnel walls? The Pontifex Maximus of old Rome had been unfamiliar with that commandment. He had sat and happily watched the gladiatorial contests. The Pontifex Maximus of the new Rome served the Decalogue, he had the Commandments taught, and ordered them to be obeyed. And had the killing stopped? Or had the Christian shepherd at least set his face against it, and said before all the world, 'See, I am powerless, they kill in spite of me and my pastoral word'? 'Justice for
Judejahn'
echoed off the tunnel walls. At school little Gottlieb had learned that even popes allied themselves with death, and there was a time, not so very long ago, when popes engaged the services of executioners, of people like
Judejahn.
And how many generals had paid homage to the popes, and how often had they received blessings for their victorious standards! Justice for
Judejahn!
And kings had walked in the Quirinal Gardens, enjoying the sunsets. But kings were less impressive than popes.
Judejahn
still saw them as the caricatures of the First World War comics that little Gottlieb had just learned to read, the kings were short, sell-out was written all over their faces, and in their timid hands they held umbrellas. And hadn't Chamberlain carried an umbrella, Chamberlain, the
bringer
of peace, who had meant to deprive the
Führer
of his war, a laughable figure? Kings and their diplomats, what were they but pathetic umbrella-wielders under the massing clouds of disasters?
Judejahn
had no use for umbrellas. Little Gottlieb wanted to be a man; he wanted to defy God the Father and his own schoolteacher father. Men braved all weathers, they mocked at the raging heavens: men walked into the hail of bullets with heads held up, men walked through the fire-storm—that was how little Gottlieb saw it, and justice for
Judejahn!
The automobile headlights were like the eyes of great rodents in the tunnel. The rodents left
Judejahn
alone. They were off in pursuit of other booty. The hounds of hell didn't bite
Judejahn.
They hunted other prey.
Judejahn
came to the end of the tunnel. The Underworld unhanded him. He reached the end. The grave released him. Hades spat him out