Juan Gomez-Jurado - The Traitor's emblem

“And the night of his death, what happened?”

“There was a fierce argument. A lot of money, four people shouting. Your father ended up with a bullet in his guts.”

“How did it happen?”

Carefully, Clovis took out the packet of cigarettes and the little box of matches. He took the last one and lit it. Then he lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke toward the beam of the flashlight.

“Why are you so interested, Paul? Why do you care so much about the life of a murderer?”

“Don’t call my father that!”

Come on now… a little closer.

“No? What would you call what we did in Waterberg? What he did to the farmer? He blew his head off; he let him have it right here,” he said, touching his forehead.

“I’m telling you to shut up!”

With a cry of rage, Paul came forward and raised his right arm to strike Clovis. With a skillful movement Clovis threw the lit cigarette in his eyes. Paul jerked back, reflexively protecting his face, and this bought Clovis enough time to jump up and run out, playing his final card, a desperate last attempt.

He won’t shoot me in the back.

“Wait, you bastard!”

Especially if he doesn’t know who fired the shot.

Paul was chasing after him. Dodging in and out of the flashlight’s beam, Clovis ran toward the back of the warehouse, trying to escape the way his pursuer had come in. He could make out a little door next to a window with blacked-out glass. He picked up his pace and had almost reached the door when his feet got tangled in something.

He fell headlong and was trying to get to his feet when Paul caught up with him and grabbed his jacket. Clovis tried to hit Paul, but he missed and staggered dangerously toward the window.

“No!” Paul shouted as he lunged at Clovis once more.

Struggling to recover his balance, the ex-marine reached out his arms toward Paul. His fingers brushed those of the young man for a moment before he keeled over and smashed against the window. The old glass gave way, and Clovis’s body fell through the opening and disappeared into the darkness.

There was a short cry and then a dry thud.

Paul leaned out through the window and pointed the flashlight at the ground. Ten meters below him, Clovis’s body lay in the middle of a growing pool of blood.

Jurgen wrinkled up his nose as he entered the asylum. The place stank of piss and feces, poorly disguised by the smell of disinfectant.

He had to ask a nurse for directions, as this was the first time he’d been to visit Otto since they put him there eleven years earlier. The woman, perched behind a desk, wore a bored expression on her face as she read a magazine, and her feet dangled free of her white clogs. On seeing the brand-new Obersturmfuhrer appear before her, the nurse stood up and raised her right arm so quickly that the cigarette she had been smoking fell from her lips. She insisted on accompanying him in person.

“Aren’t you afraid one of them will escape?” asked Jurgen as they walked down the corridors, gesturing toward the old men wandering aimlessly near the entrance.

“It does happen sometimes, mainly when I’ve gone to the bathroom. It doesn’t matter, though, because the man from the kiosk on the corner usually brings them back.”

The nurse left him at the door to the baron’s room.

“He’s in here, sir, all settled in and comfy. He even has a window. Heil Hitler!” she added, just before leaving.

Jurgen returned the salute reluctantly, pleased to see her go. He wanted to savor this moment by himself.

The door to the room was open, and Otto was slumped in a wheelchair next to the window, asleep. A thread of drool dripped onto his chest, trailing across his dressing gown and the old monocle on its gold chain, the glass of which was now cracked. Jurgen remembered how different his father had looked the day after the attempted coup d’etat-how furious he had been that it had failed, even though he’d not contributed anything to it himself.

Jurgen had briefly been detained and interrogated, though long before it was all over he’d had the good sense to change his blood-soaked brown shirt for a clean one, and he wasn’t carrying a firearm. There were no repercussions for him, nor for anyone else. Even Hitler spent only nine months in prison.

Jurgen had returned home, as the SA barracks had been shut down and the organization dissolved. He had spent several days locked in his room, ignoring his mother’s attempts to find out what had happened with Ilse Reiner, and calculating how best to make use of the letter he had stolen from Paul’s mother.

My brother’s mother, he repeated to himself, confused.

Finally he had ordered Photostat copies of the letter, and one morning after breakfast he presented one to his mother and one to his father.

“What the hell is this?” said the baron, receiving the sheets of paper.

“You know perfectly well, Otto.”

“Jurgen! Show more respect!” said his mother, horrified.

“After what I’ve read here, there’s no reason why I should.”

“Where is the original?” asked Otto, his voice hoarse.

“Somewhere safe.”

“Bring it here!”

“I have no intention of doing that. These are just a few of the copies. I’ve sent the others to the newspapers and police headquarters.”

“You’ve done what?” shouted Otto, coming around the table. He tried to raise his fist to strike Jurgen, but his body didn’t seem to respond. Jurgen and his mother watched, dumbstruck, as the baron lowered his arm and tried to raise it again without any success.

“I can’t see. Why can’t I see?” asked Otto.

He staggered forward, dragging the breakfast tablecloth with him as he fell. Cutlery, plates, and cups tumbled over, scattering their contents, but the baron didn’t seem to notice as he lay motionless on the floor. All that could be heard in the dining room were the screams of the maid, who had just entered holding a tray of freshly made toast.***

As he stood at the door to the room, Jurgen couldn’t suppress a bitter grin as he recalled the ingenuity he’d shown back then. The doctor had explained that the baron had suffered a stroke that had deprived him of the power of speech and the use of his legs.

“With the excesses this man has indulged in during his life, I’m not surprised. I don’t expect he’ll last more than six months,” the doctor had said while putting away his instruments in a leather bag. Which was lucky, because Otto was spared seeing the cruel smile that had flashed across his son’s face when he heard the diagnosis.

And here you are, eleven years later.

He went in now without making a sound and brought a chair over to sit opposite the invalid. The light from the window may have looked like an idyllic sunbeam, but it was nothing more than the sun’s reflection on the bare white wall of the building opposite, the only view from the baron’s room.

Bored of waiting for him to wake up, Jurgen cleared his throat several times. The baron blinked and finally lifted his head. He stared at Jurgen, but if he felt any surprise or fear, his eyes didn’t show it. Jurgen contained his disappointment.

“You know, Otto? For a long time I tried very hard to win your approval. Of course, that didn’t matter to you in the slightest. You cared only about Eduard.”

He paused slightly, waiting for some reaction, some movement, anything. All he received was the same stare as before, alert but frozen.

“It was a huge relief to learn you weren’t my father. I was suddenly free to hate the disgusting cuckold swine who had ignored me all my life.”

The insults didn’t produce the slightest effect, either.

“Then you had the stroke and finally left me and my mother in peace. But of course, like everything you’ve done in your life, you didn’t finish it. I’ve given you too much leeway, waiting for you to correct this mistake, and I’ve been thinking for some time about how to get rid of you. And now, how convenient… someone appears who could save me the trouble.”