Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

Čutura stopped, turned, and stood where he was until they reached him. They asked for his identity papers, and he showed them a work certificate that had been made out to a butcher’s apprentice in Palanka. They asked him where he was going; he said he had spent some time in the city and was on his way home to work. They ordered him to raise his hands, unbuttoned his coat, and searched his pockets and trouser legs for weapons. As he had been required to hand over his pistol to the contact who gave him the false work certificate the day before, they found nothing. He could therefore assume that they would let him go.

But although their search had been unsuccessful, they remained suspicious, because two days earlier, in connection with preparations for the raid, they had received strict orders, which neither Čutura nor his contact could have known about. One of them blew a whistle, and the figure of a noncommissioned officer emerged from the hemp factory. The whistle was a signal that the two of them would be leaving their post. They then placed Čutura between them, slung their rifles over their shoulders, and set off for Bačka Palanka.

Čutura was well aware that in Palanka his work certificate would be proven false, that he would be taken into custody, and that because he was on the wanted list, he would soon be identified. He naturally regretted having given up his pistol and halted at the gendarmes’ command, but it was too late to escape now: no matter how fast he ran, their bullets would catch him within fewer than twenty paces.

But after they had been walking for a quarter of an hour and came to two bare poplars at a bend in the road, where the first houses of Bačka Palanka showed through the snowy mist, the chance for escape did present itself. One of the gendarmes, short, squat, and somewhat asthmatic, asked the other, the one with the whistle, to stop long enough for him to light a cigarette. The three of them stopped, and the short gendarme let the rifle slip from his shoulder into the crook of his elbow to free up his hands. True, the other gendarme moved back a step and aimed his gun at Čutura, but the short gendarme had trouble getting to his cigarettes — he kept them in the jacket of his uniform, underneath the strap of his knapsack — and since his fingers were stiff from the cold and he had to twist and turn his body to reach them, his rifle started swinging back and forth. At one point the tip of the bayonet grazed the gendarme’s fleshy, red double chin, and Čutura kicked the butt as if it were a football, sending the blade deep into the man’s jaw. The man screamed, threw open his arms, and fell backward, but Čutura grabbed the rifle before he hit the ground, aimed it at the other gendarme, who was staring terrified at his mate, and put a bullet through his chest. The second gendarme fell flailing, and Čutura leaped over both bleeding bodies without a moment’s hesitation, the smoking rifle still in his hands, and fled in the direction of Novi Sad.

But the small, round gendarme had only been lightly wounded; he was more concerned with having nearly been killed by his own bayonet. Seconds after his head hit the snow, his mind cleared and he felt around for his gun. When he failed to find it and caught sight of Čutura running off, he realized the man was escaping with it. He turned to the other gendarme, whose death had taken place in the short interval the small gendarme was unconscious, and saw him stretched out in the snow, his gun at his side. He struggled to his elbows and, paying no attention to the blood streaming down his neck and dotting the snow, crawled over to it. Knowing it was loaded, he scrambled into shooting position — legs spread wide, elbows firm on the ground, right shoulder steadying the butt. He was a good shot, and only because he was in too much of a rush did the first bullet miss its target. The second time he aimed slowly and calmly and hit Čutura just below the right shoulder blade. Čutura twitched, shook his head, losing his black hat, and slipped. He seemed certain to fall, but managed to keep on his feet and even made a half turn, as if to return the gendarme’s fire. Then, clearly lacking the strength to do so, he hunched forward and continued in his original direction, not running now but lurching from one foot to the other, his knees buckling with each step. The gendarme cocked the gun and aimed carefully again, this time hitting Čutura in the small of the back, in the spinal column. Čutura twitched once more, less violently, and after two short scraping steps toppled headfirst into the snow.

Shortly thereafter two gendarmes from the hemp factory, alarmed by the shots, appeared on their bicycles, pedaling strenuously through the loose snow. They stopped just short of Čutura, jumped down, and approached him, guns raised. Čutura was lying on his side with one cheek resting on the snow and his eyes closed; he might well have been sleeping. They turned him on his back. Tiny opaque bubbles of blood were trickling from his mouth. One gendarme stood watch over him while the other ran over to their injured comrade, who had managed to get up on his knees and was pressing a handkerchief to his wound. He helped him to his feet, and together they went over to the man Čutura had shot. He lay there dead, white, his palms upward, seeming to beg, his eyes open, glassy. The gendarme who had helped the wounded man up asked him if he could hold out until first aid came, and when the latter nodded, the gendarme went back to Čutura, jumped on his bicycle, and rode off to Palanka for a car. By the time it arrived, Čutura had died without regaining consciousness. They loaded the two bodies into the car, and the wounded gendarme squeezed in at their feet, still pressing the blood-soaked handkerchief to his ample double chin.

*

“Are you Leon Funkenstein?”

“I am. What can I do for you?”

“I need to talk to you. But not here in the hallway.”

“Come in, then. Here, have a seat. What can I offer you?”

“Is this your apartment? You live alone?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Sorry to be so forward, but it’s not an idle question. Have you always lived alone, or did you by any chance lose your family?”

“I have nothing to hide, even though I never saw you before in my life. Yes, I did lose my family. And given my name, you can pretty much guess why and how.”

“Did they die in a camp?”

“Some did. Of my immediate family of four, three died in a camp: my mother, my wife, and my daughter. My son froze to death doing forced labor in the Ukraine. Of my extended family of nineteen, thirteen died in camps, two were killed during the raid, one was hanged at the very beginning of the Occupation for supposedly having opened fire on Hungarian soldiers, one aunt died here at home after being tortured, and one nephew poisoned himself just before he was to be sent to a camp.”

“You keep a careful record, I see.”

“You know how it is. You have them on your mind, and you go over and over them through the years. At some point you decide to sort them out.”

“Sort them out? Why? For revenge?”

“Revenge? Revenge is for the authorities.”

“And if the authorities fail?”

“If the authorities fail, we as individuals are all the more powerless.”

“That’s not completely true. Surely you’ve heard of the agency in Vienna that tracks down war criminals. It’s run by a Jew. The one who brought Eichmann to trial.”

“You mean Wiesenthal? Wiesenthal is an important man, an expert with a worldwide network and lots of money. We little people can’t do anything.”

“You can’t do what he’s doing, but on a limited, personal scale…”

“I don’t see how. Do you expect me to find the gendarme who packed me off to the camp? The officer who put my son on the forced labor list or chased him into the freezing cold? They escaped, they’re in hiding. Or they’ve been punished by now.”