Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

In the meantime, the execution platform was erected in the citadel's square, to be level with the prince's cell; on the king's direct order the cell window was enlarged, cut all the way to the floor, and the new opening, through which one could actually step out onto the platform, was, for the time being, draped with a black cloth.

The noisy construction took place in the presence of the prince, with nine masons and seventeen carpenters working under several overseers, so the prince quite naturally believed they were making preparations for his execution.

At six minutes before seven o'clock in the morning, the commander of the fort, Captain Löpel, entered the prince's cell, informed him that it was the king's wish that he watch Katte's beheading, and, having brought with him a brown suit, asked the prince to disrobe and put it on.

When he finished changing, the black cloth covering the opened wall was removed, and the prince could see the newly and very professionally built scaffold.

Three long minutes went by, and then his friend, wearing an identical brown suit, was led forth, while at the same time the prince was asked to step up to the opening in the wall.

The strikingly identical suits made such a shocking impression on the prince — in no small measure because he knew it had to have been his father's idea — that he was ready to cast himself into the courtyard gaping below, but they pulled him back and held him by the arm; later, nothing would induce him to part with this suit, and for three years he wore it day and night until it was in tatters.

When they pulled him back, he began to weep and wail, imploring those around him to delay the execution, for pity's sake; if his life was to be spared, he must write to the king at once; he pleaded and protested, he was ready to renounce everything, the crown, his own life, if that would save Katte's, they must allow him to send his plea to the king.

Ignoring his sobs and screams, they proceeded to read out the sentence.

After the last word had been spoken, Katte, who was also being held by his arm behind his back, stepped closer to the prince, and that's how they looked at each other for a silent moment.

Merciful God, the prince shouted, how great a misery you have given me! my sweet, my dearest, my only friend, I am the cause of your death, I, who would so wish to take your place now.

They both had to be held firmly, as Katte, calling him my dear prince, said in a feeble voice that if he had a thousand lives he would sacrifice them all for him, but now he had to depart this vale of tears, and with that he knelt in front of the guillotine.

He was allowed to have his own servants accompany him on his last journey, and now one of them offered to put a blindfold on him, but he very gently pushed away the trembling hand holding the kerchief and, lifting his eyes heavenward, said. Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.

The two headsmen placed the condemned man's neck under the blade, the two servants stepped back, and in that instant the prince fainted and sank into the arms of his attendants.

They laid him on his bed, but not until midday did he regain consciousness.

At the king's instruction, Katte's mutilated body had to stay on the block, in the prince's sight, until late in the evening.

When he came to and looked out from his bed, the prince saw the stump of the neck sticking out from the naked torso and the bloody head in the basket.

His body was racked with fever, and he began to wail so piteously, making sounds so piercing, that for a moment the sentries on the ramparts looked at each other in alarm, then he lost consciousness again.

Lieutenant Katte's body was placed in a casket that evening and buried in the fortress wall.

Crouching near the wall of his cell, the prince cried for two weeks, now and then accepting a little water but refusing to take food, and even after his tears dried, he remained silent for months, and when he spoke again, he said no, he wouldn't take off the brown suit, and when the brown suit turned to shreds on him, the pain crawled under his skin.

In my anger I must have dozed off by the time they finished talking on the telephone, because it was the motionless silence in the room that woke me.

I imagine that after he hung up he stayed in his chair for a while, ruminating; I could hear only his silence, the segment of lingering silence in which he sorted out and stored away what had been said and heard, and for this reason it seemed that what I was hearing was not the silence of his presence but his absence.

And after my startled awakening I must have sunk back even deeper into that state of slumbering that hovers on the border of sleep and wakefulness, because the next thing I knew Melchior was pressing himself against the wall and squeezing me out a little as he climbed under the covers.

Trying to settle in, he squirmed and wriggled some more, very slowly and considerately so as not to wake me, but I didn't feel like giving up my place or making the closeness inviting, and I let him have only as much space as he could squeeze out for himself, I didn't open my eyes, I pretended to be fast asleep.

For a while he lay motionless, pressed to the wall, with my drawn-up knees against his belly; I could have relaxed a little, making believe I moved in my sleep, but because I was awake I continued all the harder to fake being asleep.

I could let him have a little room, he said out loud, exposing my pretense and letting me know he knew I was awake.

I was trying to loosen up, not to be so obvious about my shamming.

Sticking one of his arms under my neck and hugging my back with the other, he wanted to pull me to himself, but my drawn-up knees made that impossible, giving him neither the intimacy he was looking for nor enough space to rest comfortably.

For a while he seemed to be reconciled to his discomfort, to the impossible position of his body, and stopped squirming; resting his forehead on my shoulder, he began to breathe with a quiet, even puffing and wheezing, as if trying to breathe himself to sleep, then suddenly he let out a growl and pulled his arm from under my neck; Just you wait, he said, I'll show you, and with that he yanked the blanket off both of us, pushed himself away from the wall, and slipped off the couch.

He was getting undressed, I heard the swish of his shirt, the pants being unzipped, how he quickly threw all his clothes on the floor, then he leaned over me, fumbling around my waist and unbuttoning my pants, grabbing them at my ankles to pull them off while I made no move on my own, my body simply yielding to his forceful movements; he peeled the socks from my feet, reached under my behind, and raising it a little pulled off my underpants.

To get to my shirt he had to crawl back, creep back on his knees on the inside of the couch next to the wall, and since the point of the game was for me to pretend to be asleep, he now had more room to maneuver, because when he yanked off my pants he also straightened out my legs and now they had to stay that way — moving, like pulling up my knees again, would have been breaking the rules of the game.

He had to pull out my hand, which I'd stuck under the pillow, straighten and lift my arms, and pull out the shirt from under my back and shoulders, and he had to fight my body weight with every move; he was panting, grunting, and moaning, also part of the game, though I really had let myself become such a dead weight that his job couldn't have been easy.

And while he planted himself firmly on the soft sagging couch and, with his knees spread wide apart, leaned over me, I was assailed by the raw smell of his body: clothes hold in body scents and isolate them from the outside world, but when they are removed, the subdued exhalation of the body, like a swollen river from behind a dam, surges forward in wild and abundant streams.