Дэймон Найт - Orbit 10

“But now, our country is at war. We march against the czar. Our Wilhelm takes us against the Russians, and today we are at war also with the French. There has been a general call for doc­tors, and I must now tell you that the sanatorium is closing. Your Gretchen may be taken home; I had been already considering that recommendation. It may do her more good than this close but impersonal attention . . .”

“Why am I here? I can’t remember my husband here.

“As I recall, we were driving to Mainz. Our little brown VW. We pronounced it fow— vay in Germany. Driving along the Auto­bahn. I remember this Mercedes. We had the temerity to pass this black Mercedes. In our little VW.

“This feeling, I’m twisting…

“Here…

“Ich …”

“How is she today?”

“Better, poor thing. She’s just wasted away from being in that awful hospital. She sounds as if she’s just out of her head, pure and simple.”

“And now, what with the war…”

“It is interesting to leaf through the documents that were dis­covered following the surrender. For instance, this communica­tion: ‘We started with three and a half million Jews here. Of that number, only a few work companies remain. Everybody else has —let us say—emigrated.’

“Where are all those soldiers now? Sousaphone players in the Bratwurst Festival?

“How can I say that I am not guilty?

“I cannot listen anymore. I cannot listen to the charges.

“Please, stop.”

“Mama, does Gretchen know the news?”

“No, Liebchen, she cannot understand.”

“Will you tell her about the Lusitania?”

“Nein, sie wurde es nicht verstehen.”

“We must keep to ourselves. Everyone—the Russians, the French, the English, especially the Americans - they all watch. They hope to catch us, like little boys stealing the pfennigs from Mama’s purse.

“We are here. We know what we have done; it is only left to atone for our deeds, or to justify them.

“We cannot know which course is the more horrible.”

“Ernst. My husband’s name is Ernst. He was born near Gelnhausen. We met in New York, during the Depression. But I can’t remember . . .”

“Have you heard enough? Then consider the Sonderkommando.

“Little wooden and concrete block outhouses. Signs indicated that they were baths. How thoughtful of the German High Com­mand. The inmates were gathered together; those who could play musical instruments were commandeered to play cheerful tunes from The Merry Widow. Everyone watched as the band played; soon everyone would have their turn for the delousing.

“They got a couple of thousand in one of those buildings. They got their money’s worth out of the hydrogen cyanide.

“Twenty minutes later, after the spasms had stopped, they called in the Sonderkommando. They were male Jews who were promised immunity from execution for their services. They went into the gas chambers and pulled the tangled corpses apart with hooks. They hosed down the walls, cleaning off the blood and fouler material. They extracted the gold teeth of their kinsmen. A week later, they were gassed, too.

“You’ve heard it before, don’t kid yourself.

“It is said that God appeared to Paul Joseph Goebbels dressed in a leather corset, tightly laced high-heeled hip boots, and bran­dishing a riding crop. To this day the breezes, according to the neighborhood fools around Bayreuth, to this day you may hear gentle whisperings, wind whistles of the Horst Wessel, and you know that it’s just a matter of time before die Fahne is again hoch.

“After reading about Argentine political murders, can you spare some outrage for the merry pranks of thirty years past?

“Picture: It is night. The darkness is made more complete by the storm clouds which obscure the moon and stars. There is nothing to be seen but the light of a small lantern shining through the window of a farmhouse, about a hundred yards away. It is early December near Metz; it is very cold. There is ice on the Moselle, whose banks curve away about three kilometers beyond the farm. The German patrol halts on the rutted dirt road. Two of the six soldiers are sent up to the farmhouse. They knock loudly on the door. There is a long pause before the door is opened; then the light spills out through the narrow crack. Someone inside the house gasps, someone cries, another curses softly. The Germans force their way into the house. Sometimes in this situation there are shots, sounds of breaking glass, objects falling to the floor. At last one vert-de-gris comes to the door. He calls the other four, who still stand in the road, slapping their gloved hands and stamping their jackbooted feet.

“The six Germans are named Gerd, Thomas, Heinrich, Karl, Sigmund, and Gottlob. Their job is to stay in the farmhouse and guard it against the Allies. All over Europe there are similar pockets of Deutschland; this is how the war was fought, from farmhouses. Sometimes they are attacked by Burt Lancaster. Gen­erally Heinrich, stranded hundreds of kilometers from the collab­orating dévoreuses of Paris, goes mad and shoots a couple of his mates, or dies of lockjaw. In the end the Allies arrive in force, and the Boche are made to abandon the house, throwing their Lugers on a pile and crying ‘Kamerad!’

“And so, these days, as you take your Polaroid Swinger shots of the Kölner Dom, you will meet a man. He is selling green and yellow balloons, ice cream and peanuts, plastic novelties. You speak to him in your halting German, ‘Bitte, können Sie mir sagen, wie komme ich zur Bedürfnisanstalt?’ He smiles at you and answers in flawless English. ‘The public lavatory that you seek is located there, built into the side of the Victory Monument. My name is Sigmund. You must be Americans. How charming; I was a Stormtrooper, myself.’

“This never happens. If you ask a German student about the Nazizeit, he says, ‘Terrible. Simply terrible. It is frightening to believe that an entire nation could be so deluded. It was all like a monstrous dream.’ A dream.

“ ‘Yes,’ you say, ‘but what did your father do during the war?’

“His eyes shift nervously, his tongue licks his full, Aryan lips, and he coughs. ‘My father? Oh, during the war he was taking care of some mining interests in South America. We lived in Sao Paulo then; we never had any actual contact with the Reich.’

“So much for atrocities.

“You must be the conscience for your family: your daughter is busy with ecology, and your husband leads the commuters’ fight with the Long Island Railroad. You must keep these memories alive, before you are seduced away by the plight of the American Indian.”

“We have shown the way. It is always Germany that develops, nicht wahr, it is always Germany that knows its resources, that knows what to do with its people.”

“Ach, what is it now, Herr Müller? In what new and resourceful way are we now superior?”

“You have right, Frau Kämmer, in calling us resourceful. For, indeed, we are the practical nation. How did they fight wars? How did the human race battle previously? Why, by loosing various missiles at the enemy, and hoping that the paths of the projectiles and the opposing soldiery might intersect. Ah, look at the probability. Very low, n’est-ce pas? What we have done, what the German Command has done, April 22, 1915, at Ypres, is to harness the potential of the very air as a weapon! The atmosphere has become our ally, spreading our new and tiny globules of death. We use gas. The new aircraft dispense thick yellow clouds, and the French are overcome, they are disabled, or they die.”