David Robbins - Last Citadel

Luis surveyed the camp across the tracks here in Treblinka. From this height he gazed beyond the concertina wire and over the block wall. The camp sprawled in every direction, a massive place of incarceration. Machine-guns were manned in watchtowers every fifty meters. Guards walked the perimeter with dogs. He looked back along the tracks and saw a separate rail line split off and enter the camp. The train cars inside the camp were not for transporting people but livestock. And there they were, the people of the camp, blue-striped and wilting, shaven-headed, shuffling, beaten, miserable in their final forms. He guessed at the numbers that could be housed in the endless barracks: twenty thousand at a time, perhaps more. A tall brick chimney dominated the camp, rising out of a rectangular building. A wrought-iron sign arched above the entryway to the camp, it read Arbeit Macht Frei . Work Makes Freedom.

Luis lowered his eyes to the colossal tank under his boots. Here were the twin faces of the war fought by Germany in Europe. The one face he knew; he’d stared into and embraced it – the face of battle, honor, this face was German in making but Spanish in spirit, hot and glorious. Yes, he’d been wounded and lost so much, but he did not blame war itself, these were the risks you took for the reward if you survived. But this other face, this Treblinka. Luis had passed this way three years in a row: once riding to the attack in 1941, when Treblinka was not the rear but a battlefield; a year later, he returned, flat on his back, sedated in a hospital train and he did not see the way Germany occupied the nations it mastered; and now heading east again, taking Hitler’s tanks to Russia, looking over this fence. The smoke from that chimney. Luis spit and watched the white gob fall far to the ground.

‘What do you see?’ the major asked again.

It did not have to be like this, Luis thought. The Polish people, the Russians, all of Europe, they might have been glad to have us, welcomed Hitler as a liberator from the tyrant Stalin and his atheist Communists. Not now. Not under the pall of that smoke. Now they will fight every inch, with every breath. Now they will all have to be defeated or killed, because they will never stop hating.

Luis raised his eyes one last time to the camp before climbing off the tank. The prisoners were starved, phantoms of men. I know well, he thought, very well how much you can hate the ones who’ve done this to you.

Wehrmacht train moving east Luis went into the bathroom of the train car. He wanted to clean off the sweat of his exertion from walking the tracks and climbing on the Tiger. He needed to wash away Treblinka.

He unbuttoned his tunic, raised his arms and splashed water from the sink under his pits and over his shoulders. He stopped and looked at himself in the mirror. There were the dark eyes of Luis but where was the rest of him? That was his black hair spread across the reflected chest, but where was the muscle? Those ribs, like the naked spars of a boat. He stared at the figure in the mirror, the close walls of the train’s water closet rattled around him as the train bumped along. He cupped a handful of water, leaned over the sink, and played the water over his brow and jet hair. He gazed down into the white scoop of the china bowl, waiting a moment, then stood straight and looked in the mirror again. There he was, his image also the white of porcelain. He slicked his wet hair down and considered himself. He raised a hand to the mirror; the gaunt reflected man reached back and they touched. They spoke.

‘Lo jugue, y lo perdi .’

You played, and you lost.

Cool drips trickled down his chest, he watched them undulate over the corduroy of his ribs. He dried with wads of paper towel and put on his black shirt. When he was dressed again the mirrored man was a captain in the SS. This man Luis touched too, and he reached back, as well.

‘ Soy yo ,’ they said.

It’s me.

Luis returned to his seat. The major was still there. His eyes were closed and his hands lapped over his ample beltline. He opened his lids when Luis sat. He cheered immediately.

‘We’ve still got a ways to go,’ the major chirped.

‘Yes, it seems.’

‘I expect we’ll get to Kiev tomorrow afternoon and Belgorod sometime the next morning.’

Luis gazed out the window. The world whizzing by donned the first shawl of night, it would indeed be a long trip hauling those Tigers into Russia. The major seemed pleasant enough, eager to be obliging. Luis did not know the man’s name.

He leaned forward to shake hands.

‘SS Captain Luis Ruiz de Vega.’

The officer took his hand. ‘Major Marcus Grimm.’

The major made his own voice more comfortable than had Luis, an effort to put the younger officer at ease.

‘What division are you with, Captain?’

Luis sat back, ‘1st SS Panzergrenadier Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler .’

He’d not been with his division in almost a year. It felt strange to say he was part of them anymore. He was a delivery man at the moment. He did not know what role waited for him in the coming battle after the tanks were off-loaded and gone from the Belgorod station. Would he be sent back on the train? Perhaps. But God had given him this second chance in Russia. He would wait and see, it’s all one can do with God.

‘And you?’

‘Interestingly, I’m with 4th Panzer Army. I’m the liaison officer assigned to Leibstandarte .’

Luis nodded. Of course.

‘You’re here to keep an eye on me,’ he said.

‘Oh, no,’ the major laughed, ‘not you, really. More the Tigers than anything else. I’m just here to help. The Führer has a lot at stake on those tanks.’

The major smiled, taking in Luis. His eyes made Luis think there was much more to him than the major could possibly be seeing.

‘But I do think you bear close watching, Captain. May we talk awhile?’

Luis saw no option. The major was his superior, though he was not an SS officer.

‘Of course.’

Major Grimm settled into his seat, his hands layered again over his waist. ‘Tell me how a young Spaniard comes to be in the SS. Tell me about the Blue Division. And if it’s not still too fresh for you to talk about,’ and here the major waggled a finger at Luis, not at his face but at his body, ‘tell me what happened.’

The major’s manner was kind. Luis and he were riding a slow train through the night, over conquered lands. Luis recalled how he used to love conversation when he was the other man, not the one in the mirror. Over wine and cervezas , along the beach and in cafes on the Ramblas, with friends and lovers he would jaw and laugh, he had tales from the bulls and Spanish Morocco and the Civil War. And tonight this fat Major Grimm seemed to see the other man -the young Spaniard, as he called Luis. Not the victim. He saw la Daga . For Luis, this was the first time in so long.

‘Alright,’ he said.

The bull charged into the arena flinging snot, searching, angry, bred to be angry. He lunged at the big capes waved at him in clumsy, hurried veronicas . The old matadors ran the bull about to charge him up, then finished and dashed behind the boards from the onrushing horns. The picador on horseback trotted in holding his lance high, his horse plumed and plucky. He did not wait for the toro but assailed it instead. Three jabs between the bull’s shoulders began the flow of blood down the shoulder and cut tendons to lower the bull’s head, bleeding him but making him wary and madder. Luis’s heart pumped with the bull’s, waiting for the picador and his stunning mount to finish. When the trumpet sounded, the picador withdrew, the arena applauded, and the next stage of the corrida belonged to Luis.