K Jeter - The Kingdom of Shadows

The cold water trickled into the corners of Pavli’s mouth. When he closed his eyes, he could see the startled birds wheeling up from the tops of the trees and vanishing into the sky.

Pavli stood among his Lazarene brethren, with the wet smell of the showers and the cloying, sickly odor of the delousing compound drifting between their bodies. They had all submitted to their genitals being swabbed with a fluid the bright orange color of iodine, a bored-looking male nurse dipping a rag on a stick into the bucket beside his wooden stool. No resistance or jokes had been made, not even by the younger men; the echo of the rifle shot from out in the woods, faded except from memory, still oppressed the group.

His brother Matthi had taken advantage of the milling about that had followed the men’s emergence from the tiled washroom, to come close to him and lay a hand on his bare shoulder. “Are you all right?” Matthi whispered close to his ear.

Pavli nodded. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about…” He was trying to be comforting in turn. He craned his neck, trying to look past Matthi and the other Lazarene men, back to where they had left the little mounds of their folded clothes near the entrance to the showers. Something did indeed worry him: a secret treasure tucked inside the lining of his boots, a precious thing of paper curved against the worn leather. Perhaps all the boots and shoes, and the good coats and other bits of clothing, were to be gathered up and shipped off as part of the Winterhilfe, the charity for poor deserving Germans, the real ones. Or one of the Lazarenes might steal Pavli’s boots, leaving behind a shabbier pair, without a treasure hidden inside. The thief might never even discover what he had taken, the only thing of value that Pavli had left to him.

Would one of his own kind, his brethren, do that? Steal from him? He didn’t want to think so, but he couldn’t be sure; there was an empty place near his heart, where there once had been the sure knowledge of being one of them, of being Lazarene. That had leaked away, a hidden wound of his own, when his brother and the elders had determined not to initiate him into the faith upon his coming of age. Matthi had explained it all to him, that these were bad times, the worst since the Catholics in France had washed the streets with the blood of those they called heretics; to be marked with Christ’s stigmata was to draw the wolves upon oneself through the dark corridors of the forest…

Pavli got a grim satisfaction out of the failure of his brother’s plan. All the elders and Matthi had conspired to cheat him of his rightful heritage, and for what result? Here he stood with the other Lazarene men, stripped naked under the hard eyes of the SS guards, their skin turned to gooseflesh by the winds that sifted through the cracked and dusty windows high above the walls’ green tiles. Rounded up with the others and brought here, the eyes in his face enough of a mark to claim his place among them. With the young men, some only a year or so older than him, the muscles of their legs and arms grown lean and taut on the meager diet their ration cards had allowed them; and the true elders, the greybeards, wisps of white hair across brown-spotted skulls, sunken chests and spindly legs bowed by the weight of years. The old men folded their gnarled, large-knuckled hands over their shriveled privates, bearing the shame of their nakedness with silent endurance.

“Silence!” The Scharfuhrer shouted, unnecessarily; his voice slapped against the damp walls. “You, the first ten – step forward.”

Using the muzzles of their rifles, two of the guards separated a small group out from the rest of the Lazarene men; both Pavli and his brother Matthi were part of the chosen number. He glanced over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of his belongings left piled against a far wall, to see if the treasure hidden inside one of his boots was still safe. The broad chest and scowling face of the nearest guard blocked his view.

“You heard the order,” said the guard. He jostled the wooden stock of the rifle against Pavli’s shoulder blades. “Move!”

Another room, smaller, the naked forms of the ten Lazarenes filling one side. An eye of glass, a little curved window, stared at them; Pavli blinked at the distorted reflection of his own image before he realized that it was a camera lens. It was like a piece of another world, the one that had been left behind on the other side of the truck journey, the world that had held his uncle Turro’s shop on a narrow street in Berlin.

The guards shoved the Lazarenes in a line against the wall; the camera, mounted on a heavy tripod, stood only a few feet away from Pavli. A model he’d never seen before, a big professional machine, the likes of which had never been displayed in his uncle’s shop. At the front of the black folding bellows, the Zeiss lens seemed nearly as broad as his flattened palm; behind the blue glass, the blades of the shutter could be seen.

Raised voices, the harsh words of Ritter and the Scharfuhrer, brought Pavli back from his study of the camera.

On the other side of the room, near the doorway that led to the building’s central corridors, Ritter gestured with an upraised hand, his face darkened with anger. “Where is he? What’s wrong with him this time?”

The Scharfuhrer echoed Ritter’s demand, turning to call down the corridor. Another pair of guards appeared, dragging a man between them. A drunken man, from the looks and smell of him – the acrid scent of schnapps and sour vomit curled in Pavli’s nostrils as the man was thrust forward. He caught himself against the camera, nearly toppling himself and the tripod over to the floor. He swayed unsteadily, fumbling a hand across the stains that covered the front of his uniform jacket, the tight-fitting military collar loosened and flapping open. From just the color of the uniform, Pavli could see that the man was not SS, but regular German army.

“Get to work!” Ritter confronted the drunkard; a backhanded slap across the face brought the bleary eyes open wider, head wobbling upon the man’s neck. “There’s much to do. You’ve shirked your duties long enough.”

The other smiled, eyes slitted and red. “Put me on report, then… Herr Doktor Ritter. Send me to the Eastern Front. I don’t give a damn -”

“Shut up!” The Scharfuhrer ’s voice barked out, and the two guards lifted the drunkard even higher between them, so that his feet dangled, barely touching the floor.

“And to hell with you, too.” The drunken man’s gaze grew sharper, nostrils flaring as he looked down at Ritter. He knew how far he had already gone, that there was no turning back, no begging forgiveness. “I don’t care what you bastards do. But I’m not part of it anymore -” He struggled against the guards’ grasp upon his arms. His voice was raw with alcohol. “You hear me? You can send me back to the camps, you can put me on the other side of the wire, I don’t care. I’m not going to help you -” He started to kick, and the toe of one boot caught a slender wooden strut of the tripod, sending the camera crashing onto its side. “I’m not -”

Ritter struck the man with his fist this time, hard enough to knock him free from the support of the guards and send him sprawling against the corner of the floor and wall. The man suddenly burst into sobbing, his hand smearing tears through the blood pouring from his nose and torn upper lip.

“Get him out of here.” The guards scrambled to carry out Ritter’s orders. The drunken man was dragged out of the room while the Scharfuhrer righted the fallen camera. Ritter’s expression changed to one of exasperated disgust. “Cable the Ahnenerbe offices in Berlin; tell them we’ll need another photographer sent out. He’ll have to have the same security clearances as this last one… Schei?! ” Ritter ground his teeth together. “There’s no telling how long that will take.”