Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

Geiger shrugged. “There’s plenty of time to do that. Besides, now we’re here in Banja Luka, I know a good place to eat and to stay. Tonight you’re my guest. And we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

It was a beautiful warm day and we made excellent progress back along the narrow road to Jasenovac. I’d managed to persuade myself that once there I would be halfway back to Zagreb and then Germany, which would somehow make everything all right. You can stand to see almost anything provided you know it isn’t going to be for very long. Reeking of alcohol, Geiger dozed in the passenger seat beside me, while Oehl and another SS man followed in the car behind. A couple of times we saw Ustaše trucks heading the other way but the men inside them paid us little regard. Once or twice we heard the sound of small-arms fire in the distance and as a precaution stopped for a while and had a smoke. But if it was Proles, we didn’t see them. Our new companion, a Croatian SS corporal called Schwörer, was a boy not much older than the one Geiger had shot the previous day. His hair looked like fine gold thread and his complexion was as fair as a schoolgirl’s. He didn’t say much. It wasn’t a place for conversation. He tried to match us smoke for smoke but ended up puking at the side of the road after turning himself green with tobacco, which Geiger thought was very funny. We set off again and, after a couple of hours, we slowed to cross a wooden bridge near the confluence of the Sava and Una rivers. Underneath the light mist that hung above the water like the breath of some foul underwater creature, something caught my eye. I stopped the car and got out to take a look and quickly lit a cigarette when I heard the whine of a mosquito. I never did take to being bitten by anything very much, even if it was female. For a brief moment I thought the object in the water was someone swimming. But as I was about to discover, we were a long way from Wannsee and the Havel and anything as innocent as swimming.

“What is it?” asked Geiger.

“I’m not sure.”

I pointed at the river and waited for the slow, mud-brown water to bring the object nearer but I already had a strong suspicion about what it was. It was a woman’s body, still wearing a floral dress, and it floated right under the bridge we were standing on — close enough to see that her hands were tied behind her back, her eyes had been gouged out, and a large piece of her head was missing. A second body and then a third were in the water not far behind her and these were women, too, also mutilated. Schwörer stared impassively at these bodies and I got the strong impression that despite his innocent-looking face he was already familiar with such sights as this.

“This river goes right through Jasenovac before it gets here,” said Geiger.

“On its way to Hades, perhaps. And meaning you think that’s where they were killed. In Jasenovac.”

“Probably.”

“Shit.”

“I did warn you it wasn’t a place for us. I believe there used to be an SS office at Jasenovac until they closed it a year ago, after the last Jews there were killed. That’s the official reason. No more Jews, no more German interest. What the UNS do with Serbs is their own affair. But from what I heard, the five Germans who had stayed on there couldn’t take it anymore and left, without permission. So it must have been bad. As bad as this, I guess.”

“UNS?”

“The Ustaše Supervisory Service. The special police force that guards these camps. And that reminds me, Gunther. When we get to the brickworks, it would be very advisable if you kept your very obvious disgust under control. It’s not just Serbs, Jews, and Roma who disappear in this part of the world. It’s anyone who the UNS decide they’ve taken a dislike to. And that could easily stretch to include me and you. For all I know, those five Germans who were stationed there didn’t disappear at all, but were murdered. You see, these UNS bastards are killing not for ideological reasons like me and the sergeant but because they like to kill and because they take pleasure in cruelty, and you don’t want to piss them off with any of your Berlin airs and graces. Me, I might enjoy the company of a civilized man like you occasionally, but these boys don’t think like that. Out here the better angels of our nature simply don’t exist. Out here there’s just the beast, and the beast is insatiable. Back in Banja Luka that intelligence officer said something about your evil friend Colonel Dragan that I failed to mention. A couple of times he referred to him as Maestrovich, and once he even called him the maestro, which, as I’m sure you know, is an honorific title of respect. Well, you can imagine the sort of thing that commands respect down here. And it isn’t playing the bloody cello. So, please try to remember that when you deliver your fucking letter.”

I nodded silently.

“Serb or not, I can’t see the point of killing a woman unless she’s a Prole rifle slut, and she’s had a pop at you,” said Oehl. “And even then, not until you’ve had some fun with her.”

“You mean raped her,” I said.

“It’s not rape,” said Oehl. “I’ve never fucked a rifle slut who didn’t want me to fuck her. Really. Even a Prole will try and get you to fuck her if she thinks she’s going to be shot. That’s not rape. They want you to fuck them. Sometimes they want you to fuck them even when they know you’re going to kill them immediately afterward. It’s like they want to die with some life still wriggling inside of them, if you know what I mean. But these girls don’t look like they’ve even been touched.”

Reflecting that the legal niceties of what constitutes consent were likely to be lost on a man like Oehl, I lit a cigarette with the butt of the other. “Camps,” I said. “You said camps, Geiger.”

“The brickworks at Jasenovac is just the largest of at least five or six concentration camps in this area. But there could be more. Out here, in this swamp, who knows? I heard tell that they’ve got a special camp just for Roma where all the usual cruelties have been refined to a hellish level.” He shrugged. “But you hear all kinds of things in this country. Not all of them can be true.”

“I don’t think the Ustaše can teach the SS very much when it comes to cruelty,” I said. “Not after what I saw in Smolensk.”

“Don’t you now? From what I hear, the SS in Poland is killing Jews with poison gas now, for humane reasons.” Geiger laughed grimly. “No one gets gassed in Yugoslavia. As you can see for yourself.”

While we were standing there, at least nine or ten bodies floated by like driftwood. Most had their heads bashed in or their throats cut.

“They smash their heads in with big mallets,” said Geiger. “Like they were knocking in tent pegs. So much for humanity.”

I sighed and took a double drag on my cigarette and shook my head. “To save bullets, I suppose,” I heard myself say.

“No,” said Geiger. “I think the UNS just likes cracking Serb skulls.”

“Why do they throw them in the river like that?” I asked, as if I actually expected an answer that would count as even vaguely reasonable. And the fact was, it wasn’t really a question at all, but an observation born of an infinite sadness and the absolute certainty that I didn’t belong here. I took off my cap, tossed it into the car, and rubbed my head furiously with the flat of my hand as if that might enable me to understand something. It didn’t.

“Saves the effort of burying them,” said Schwörer. “I expect they think the fish will tidy things up. They’re right about that, too. There’s asp in this river that grow to be at least a meter long. I’ve fished a bit so I know. Had a friend once who caught an asp in the Sava that was twelve kilos. You mark my words, in a month or two you won’t ever know those bodies were here.” It was as much as he’d said since leaving Banja Luka.