Chapter Seven #4
With each hit, the image of a telegram flashed in Victor’s mind.
The paper pierced with punch holes carrying a message about a breach in their ranks at the front.
Someone had stolen from the archives and passed the documents to the resistance.
Victor had torn the sheet and left the office before the whole message had come through.
Whether his brother had been involved in the leak, he would never find out.
Whatever dealings Tobias had had, the Schwarzschild name was not going to be dragged in the mud, but Victor could not erase what his brother had done with his own hand, how Tobias had taken his own life.
“We tell them it was the resistance—the communists—the Americans, whoever…” Dietmar was talking. He had taken his seat at the head of the table, undisturbed by the corpse. “And that he—no, you two—fought them and they shot Tobias.”
Victor looked at the blood on his hands and the gore smeared over his uniform. He moved his fingers and turned them. His face was already going numb, the blood dripped down his mouth and chin. His blood mixed with his brother’s.
“He failed to uphold his national duty!” Wolfgang hissed.
“No, Tobias fought and died for his country. This is what we tell them,” his grandfather’s voice was firm and calm.
Wolfgang’s knuckles were raw, he stood trembling at Victor’s side.
And his mother? Where was she in all this?
Out of the corner of his eye, flinching as he turned to see her better, Victor saw Elke.
She had slipped quietly into the room and walked towards them, undoing her scarf.
Slowly, gently as if not to wake him, she began to dab Tobias’ temple with her scarf.
With her other hand she patted and smoothed his hair back.
Her hands and clothes were instantly ruined by the blood and brain matter.
The absurdity of it struck him, but Victor could not even laugh.
If he opened his mouth as much as to sigh, he would break down.
A chill ran up his spine at the sudden realization that he was armed: his own revolver, loaded and ready to serve, was in its holster.
He had enough rounds. He could shoot all of them and end this.
Even so—breathing in this nightmare—he still wanted to live.
He was not going to bleed for Germany. With his brother gone there was nothing rooting him to this place. He was not going to stay to rewrite his brother’s wrongs—as they now chose to call them. Victor was not going to climb the ranks in his brother’s stead.
“And this one here,” Dietmar lifted a trembling finger and pointed at his only remaining grandson.
“The Gauleiter[24] owes me a favour. Even if he didn’t, your son has a good record from the Hitlerjugend.
He was never meant for the offices. The regional leader will recruit him to the Werwolf.
They will train and use him to the best of his abilities.
Get him on the front line and away from any investigation. If there is one.”
Victor had never heard of the Werwolf, the guerrilla elite team his grandfather planned to send him to. Nor did he wait for the Gauleiter’s letter of recommendation. If one was on its way, he would never know. The post had long since ceased civilian deliveries.
The next time he heard the air-raid warning, Victor ran.
The bombs and sirens were relentless. Like the beating of a heart, they punched holes into the very foundation of Berlin, plunging the city into chaos. Residential areas in the western parts of the city were obliterated, leaving nowhere to hide.
Victor ran, his breath pluming before his broken face in the cold.
He started to take off his clothes—he flung his cap, letting the wind whip at his hair and burn his ears.
He tore his gloves and dropped them on the ground, his knuckles split and bleeding where he had rammed them into the earth.
At his brother’s funeral he acted and behaved with honour.
Greeting and saluting the other officers, accepting the medals his brother had been awarded in death.
They were going to bury Tobias as a hero, a soldier who fought and died defending his country. Just as Dietmar had promised.
Honour, Victor thought. Honour is a dog. A mad, slavering dog, beaten time and time again. I will not die for honour.
He ripped at the lapels of his greatcoat and wrenched off the buttons, yanked the heavy garment off his shoulders. It almost tripped him as it fell and pooled around his ankles. It dragged through the mud and followed him like a shadow.
I will not die with honour.
He hoped to find the checkpoints empty, the police scattered or hiding.
Performing their duty elsewhere. He ran, like a mad beast. Makeshift barriers and rubble barred his way; he turned corners he would normally avoid, farther and farther out.
A bomb fell on his left and the street erupted, lifting him off his feet; a window shattered, glass and grit raining down on him.
Hysteria bubbled up Victor’s throat and he barked, his boots crunching through the snow, and through a nation’s madness.
A nearby pile—more debris, newspapers and belongings—quivered; something inside pushed through it.
Victor stopped trying to climb over and looked at the rubble, worried that someone might be trapped under it.
He was a coward and a deserter, but he was not unkind.
He began moving stones and pieces of wood, torn tires and window frames.
Broken porcelain spilled between his fingers, a woman’s tattered dress.
The poor soul on the inside of the rubble kept pushing, Victor heard him huff and heave; a miserable wail rose from within, and the pile shifted.
His hand brushed a fur coat, wet and bulky, and he dug in with both hands, trying to pull the coat out of the way.
The mass under his palms pulsed and heaved, the wail now growing desperate. Was he trying to save a dog? Victor laughed, sweat ran down his neck and back. How fitting, he thought, he failed to save his brother—his own flesh and blood—and here he was digging a mongrel out of the rubble.
“I am taking you with me. The two of us,” Victor said, feeling jittery. “Two mongrels, the Reich’s finest.”
I will call you Pflicht[25], little one.
The wet tip of a muzzle peeked through, a panting maw between the wreckage: black fur, matted with blood and plaster.
Slowly, the dog started to force its way out, the whole pile shuddered.
Victor lost his footing and fell back, scraping his palms. He watched Pflicht emerge and shake its fur, the muzzle with its thick tongue and sharp teeth, pressing to Victor’s face, as it looked down on him.
The animal stood on all fours and loomed in its crooked form.
The fur black and clotted with pus and blood; torn patches of muscle and flesh bore the signs of starvation and gangrene.
Like Fenrir of old, the creature rose, its jaws yawning wider, a nightmare growing bigger and bigger.
The sirens died away and the creature growled, slavering, its yellow eyes glowing.
Victor fumbled for his revolver in the holster…
having forgotten that he had thrown it away.
His hand closed on the only thing strapped to his belt, the dagger’s sheath that he had not yet discarded.
The beast pounced. Victor tore the dagger free and slashed, its blade like a sewing needle against the thick pelt.
The crunching grew louder, like teeth tearing through connective tissue, pulling and ripping.
Victor opened his mouth, desperate to breathe, the air going down his throat made him gag as the blood surged up.
The left side of his torso felt slick and dripping.
His whole body was dissolving into one large sodden mass, merging with the snow and the pavement.
He tried to lift an arm, wipe some of the blood and muck off his face, but the muscles refused to obey.
His arm burned; the dagger was gone. Only the crunching echoed in the night. It had suddenly gotten too quiet. The bombs had ceased. The earth lay in wait, embracing him after he had fallen with the beast. And where was the mongrel creature? That gangly, foul thing—
The edges of his vision turned red, pulsing, mingling with the whiteness of the snow.
The crunching stopped close to Victor’s head. He tried to turn and again coughed and gagged. His spittle stained the ground black, some of it splattering a pair of leather boots.
He heard voices, the words smeared and dripped.
A hand reached out and cupped his face, turned it towards the light of a torch.
The man crouching over him wore a black uniform with insignia sewn into the collar of the shirt and lapels.
Victor recognised the diamonds and runes stitched in silver; they made his heart race, his chest fighting to expand with each ragged breath.
The long winter coat pooled around both of them like a dark shroud.
Victor could not make out the man’s face—the peaked cap cast a shadow across it—but he saw the mouth move.
It twisted in a grimace full of curiosity.
There was a kind of vitality and youthfulness to the face that seemed grotesque in the middle of all this suffering and wreckage.
He did not understand the words the men spoke, yet he knew the language.
How strange, Victor thought, why was a lieutenant of the Schutzstaffel speaking French?
He must have spoken his thought aloud because the man barked with laughter, his mouth opened wide. Victor did not like the sight of those teeth.
The hand pulled away, letting Victor’s head thump back into the filthy snow. Iron fingers clamped across his torn shirt and hauled Victor upright. Pain lanced through his whole body; the ragged flesh of his torso and arms leaked, leaving a crimson trail in the snow as they dragged him away.