Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

They drank until midnight. They drank until Hanke, Fischer and Wolff staggered off, followed by the vigilant Schmidt. Abrantes, bored by the Germans' conversation, had turned in at ten o'clock. Lehrer and Felsen went out on to the terrace with a hurricane lamp and another bottle of brandy. They lit cigars, whose smoke lingered before dispersing into the night, now faintly perfumed by the vestiges of the orange blossom still on the trees in the walled garden.

'It's worked out,' said Lehrer, inspecting the coal on the end of his cigar. 'It's worked out splendidly. Thank you, Klaus.'

'You of all people,' said Felsen, picking up on the sentimentality, 'have no need to thank me, Oswald.'

'It's important to thank people,' said Lehrer, swaying a little in his chair. 'You were always very good at showing your appreciation, way back in the Neukölln Kupplungs days. That's how I first heard your name. That's one of the reasons I chose you.'

'And this man Schmidt, why did you choose him?'

'Ah, yes. Schmidt was Gestapo and a very devout Catholic. His priest was very important to our plan. We came here from the Vatican.'

'His nerves might draw attention to you. He must learn to relax.'

'Ach, I know… but it's good to have someone to be careful for you. It's in his nature. Gestapo men are always suspicious.'

Lehrer took a gulp of brandy, swilled it around his mouth and swallowed. He let his arms drop to his sides, dangling the glass and cigar, letting the stress pour off him. He breathed in the warm night, the crickets sawing through their longest shift and the frogs barking their chat like drunkards who never listen or give a damn.

'How long are you going to stay in Brazil?' asked Felsen.

A couple of years,' said Lehrer, and then thought about it, rolling his cigar between his lips, 'maybe more.'

'It'll all blow over in a year,' said Felsen. 'People are desperate to get back to normal.'

Lehrer's head turned slowly in the leaping light from the lamp, his eyes black but not shiny, as if any health in them had gone for good.

'Nothing will be normal again after this war,' he said.

'They said the same after the last war. All those men dead for senseless stretches of mud.'

'Remember what I said to you about the origin of the gold,' said Lehrer in a voice so tired and quiet he could have been on his deathbed. 'There are other names to be careful of… Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Kulmhof, Chelmno…'

In this same quiet voice Lehrer gave Felsen his final lesson. He told him about the rail cars, the cattle trucks all joined together by couplings that used to be made in Neukölln Kupplungs Unternehmen. He told him about the selections, the shower rooms of Zyklon B, and the ovens. He told him numbers, the numbers of people in a single cattle truck, the numbers of rail cars, the numbers tattooed on forearms, the numbers that could fit in a shower room, the numbers they could put through a crematorium in a day. And he told him the names again just so that he would remember.

'I've told you these things,' said Lehrer, 'because this could take as long as five years for the world to forget and during that time any association with the SS will be very dangerous. If you are going to stay here… and there's no reason why you shouldn't… you must keep quiet about these things and when they are mentioned say nothing.'

Felsen did just that. He smoked his cigar and sipped his drink. Lehrer got to his feet and shook his history off his shoulders. He jammed his hands into his kidneys and stretched back his head to look up at the clear night sky.

'It's late,' he said. 'I've drunk too much and I must sleep.'

'Take the lamp, Oswald,' said Felsen. 'You'll need it to find your room.'

'I've slept well here,' said Lehrer. 'The peace has been magnificent.'

'Goodnight.'

'You'll go to bed too?'

'In a while. I'm not sleepy yet.'

Lehrer hobbled into the house, his feet still giving him trouble but not telling him anything any more. Felsen heard the faint click of the latch as he opened and closed his bedroom door. He sat for an hour in the darkness, his eyes gradually picking out the leaves of the fig trees, the line of the wall and the fields beyond. He tuned out the insect noise and listened to the rafters creaking in the cooling roof and to the rhythmic snoring from an open window.

He crouched under the branches of the fig trees and crawled over the low wall. He eased a piece of slate out of the dry-stone wall and took out a cloth package which contained a bowie knife and another, short-bladed, knife used for severing the spinal columns of animals. It was 2.30 A.M.

He went back into the house and opened the second bedroom door on the west side. Abrantes was waiting by the open window. He handed him the short brutal knife and crossed the corridor to the first bedroom. The room was full of Fischer's snoring. The man was lying on his back, his neck perfectly displayed. Felsen drove the blade unhesitatingly in and across the windpipe, feeling the tip connect with the vertebrae. Fischer's eyes snapped open, his mouth widened to draw in air. Felsen threw back the covers and jammed the blade up to the hilt under the man's ribs. He backed out of the room. Abrantes, who'd just delivered Hanke to a deeper sleep with a single stab to the cerebral cortex, was waiting for him. Felsen pointed him down to Schmidt's room at the end of the house.

Felsen pushed against Wolff's door and knew that something was wrong. The door would only open a crack. He rammed his shoulder into it which sent the bed in the room scraping across the floor. He squeezed himself through the one-foot space. Wolff came awake with his hand already enclosed around the butt of his Mauser. Felsen lashed out with his fist and caught him on the side of the neck. The blow smacked Wolff's head against the whitewashed wall but didn't stop him from loosing off a round which seemed to split the roof open with its colossal roar. Felsen grabbed the hand holding the Mauser and thumped the blade of the bowie knife high into the man's rib cage. It went through but only punctured a lung. He yanked it out and punched the blade in once more and hit bone and the knife clattered to the floor. He tore the gun from Wolff's slackening grip. Wolff grabbed at him and hung on. He coughed a splatter of warm blackness into Felsen's neck and chest. Felsen fitted the gun barrel into the man's stomach and fired twice, the force of the bullets jerked the body but Wolff did not release him and they fell on to the bed, exhausted as lovers. Felsen pushed away from him and reeled out into the hall and down towards Lehrer's room.

'He's not there,' hissed Abrantes across the hall, pointing into Schmidt's empty room. 'The window was open and he wasn't there.'

'Before or after the shot?'

'He wasn't there,' said Abrantes, confused.

'Find him.'

'Where?'

'He's out there. Find him.'

Suddenly Abrantes' features crept out of the darkness and into the yellow oily light of a hurricane lamp. Lehrer stood in front of them in a vest and undershorts. He had a Walther PPK in his right hand.

'What's going on?' he asked, not groggy with sleep, but wide awake and full of his old authority.

'Hanke, Fischer and Wolff are dead. Schmidt is not in his room,' said Felsen without pausing to think.

'And him?' he asked, twitching his gun at Abrantes whose short brutal knife was dangling from his hand. 'And you? Your shirt.'

The front of Felsen's shirt was black with the blood from Wolff's haemorrhage. The two men looked at each other. Lehrer's eyes widened with horrific comprehension.

Lehrer's gun was pointed at neither man. Felsen hit it and a bullet ricocheted through Schmidt's open bedroom door. Felsen fired Wolff's Mauser low into Lehrer's body, just to get a round off, not bothering to bring the barrel up and get a killing shot in. Lehrer went down fast with a shout and his gun slithered across the floor. The hurricane lamp shattered and the paraffin burst into yellow flame.