Doesn't that mean anything to you?'
'As far as I'm concerned, General, those were just some words on a belt buckle. Another Nazi lie, like 'Strength Through Joy.'' Another reason I said what I said to the little general, of course, was that I never had the brains to make general myself. Maybe they weren't going to kill me. But perhaps I ought to have borne in mind the fact that they could still hurt me. Perhaps. Part of me always knew they were going to hurt me. I think I knew that was always what was on the cards. And under those circumstances I think I figured I had nothing to lose by speaking my mind. 'Or the best lie of all. My own favorite. The one the SS dreamed up to make people feel better about their situation. 'Work makes you free.''
'I can see we will have to reeducate you, Herr Gunther,' he said. 'For your own good, of course. So as to avoid any more unpleasantness in the future.'
'You can dress it up how you like, General. But you people always did prefer hitting people to--'
I didn't finish my sentence. The general nodded to one of his men--the one with the blackjack--and it was like letting a dog off his lead. Immediately, without a second's hesitation, the man took a step forward and let me have it hard on both arms, and then on both shoulders. I felt my whole body arch in an involuntary spasm as, still handcuffed, I tried to lower my head between my shoulder blades.
Enjoying his work he chuckled softly as the pain put me down on my knees and, coming around behind me, he hit near the top of my spine--a crippling blow that left my mouth tasting of Gibson mixed with blood. They were expert blows, I could tell, and they were meant to cause me the maximum amount of pain.
I collapsed onto my side and lay on the ground at his feet. But if I thought he would have been too lazy to bend down and keep hitting me, I was mistaken. He took his jacket off and handed it to the man with the bowler hat. Then he started to hit me again. He hit me on the knees, on the ankles, on the ribs, on the buttocks, and on the shins. Each time he hit me the blackjack sounded like someone beating a rug with a broom handle. Even as I prayed for the beating to stop someone started swearing, as if the ferocity of the blows to my body seemed remarkable, and it took several more agonizing seconds for me to realize that the curses were uttered by me. I had been beaten before, but never quite so thoroughly. And probably the only reason I felt it lasted as long as it did was that he avoided hitting me about the face and head, which might have rendered me mercifully unconscious. Most agonizing of all was when he started to repeat the blows, hitting where he had hit me already and there was now just a painful bruise. That was when I started to scream, as if angry with myself that I could not lose consciousness and escape from the pain.
'That's enough for the moment,' the general said, finally.
The man wielding the blackjack stood back, breathing hard, and wiped his brow with his forearm.
Then the man with the bowler laughed and, handing him his jacket, said, 'Hardest work you've done all week, Albert.'
I lay still. My body felt as if I had been stoned for adultery without the pleasure of the memory of the adultery. Every part of me was in pain. And all for ten red ladies. I'd had a thousand marks and I told myself there would be another thousand red marks when I looked at myself in the morning. Assuming I still had the stomach to look at myself ever again. But they were not yet finished with me.
'Pick him up,' said the general. 'And bring him over here.'
Cracking jokes and cursing my weight, they dragged me over to where he was now standing, beside a beer barrel. On top of this lay a hammer and a chisel. I didn't like the look of the hammer and the chisel. And I liked them even less when the big man picked them up with the look of someone who is about to start work on a piece of sculpture. I had the horrible feeling that I was this ugly Michelangelo's chosen piece of marble. They backed me up to the barrel and flattened one of my handcuffed hands on the wooden lid. I started to struggle with what remained of my strength and they laughed.
'Game, isn't he?' said the big one.
'A real fighter,' agreed the man with the blackjack.
'Shut up, all of you,' said the general. Then he took hold of my ear and twisted it painfully against my head. 'Listen to me, Gunther,' he said. 'Listen to me.' His voice was almost gentle. 'You have been sticking your fat fingers in things that shouldn't concern you. Just like that stupid little Dutch boy who stuck his finger into the hole in the dike. Do you know something? They never tell the whole story of what happened to him. And more importantly of what happened to his finger. Do you know what happened to his finger, Herr Gunther?'
I yelled out loud as someone took hold of my hand and pressed it down flat against the lid of the barrel. Then they separated my little finger from the others with what felt like the neck of a beer bottle. Then I felt the sharp edge of the chisel pressed against the joint and, for a moment, I forgot about the pain in the rest of my body. The big greasy paws holding me tightened with excitement. I spat blood from my mouth, and answered the general. 'I get the message, all right?' I said. 'I'm warned off, permanently.'
'I'm not sure that you are,' said the general. 'You see, a cautionary tale only works as such if the caution is reinforced by a taste of what consequences might follow. Some sort of sharp reminder of the sort of thing that might befall you should you stick your fingers into our affairs again. Show him what I'm talking about, gentlemen.'
Something shiny flashed through the air--the hammer, I presumed--and then descended on the handle of the chisel. For a second there was an indescribable amount of pain and then a thick fog rolling in from the Alps enveloped me. I let go of my breath and closed my eyes.
SEVENTEEN
I ought not to have smelled so bad. I knew I had wet myself. But it ought not to have smelled so bad. Not as quickly as this. I smelled worse than the filthiest tramp. That cloying, sickly-sweet ammonia smell you get off people who haven't bathed or changed their clothes in months. I tried to wrestle my head away from it, but it stayed with me. I was lying on the floor. Someone was holding me by the hair. I blinked my eyes open and found there was a small brown bottle of smelling salts being held beneath my nose. The general stood up, screwed the cap on the bottle of salts, and dropped it into the pocket of his jacket.
'Give him some cognac,' he said.
Greasy fingers took hold of my chin and pushed a glass between my lips. It was the best brandy I ever tasted. I let it fill my mouth and then tried to swallow but without much success. Then I tried again and this time some of it trickled down. It felt like something radioactive traveling through my body. By now someone had taken away the handcuffs and I saw that there was a large and bloody handkerchief wrapped around my left hand. My own.
'Put him on his feet,' said the general.
Once more I was hauled up. The pain of standing made me feel faint so that I wanted to sit down again. Someone put the glass of brandy in my right hand. I put it to my mouth. The glass clattered against my teeth. My hand was trembling like an old man's. That was no surprise. I felt like I was a hundred years old. I swallowed the rest of the brandy, which was quite a lot, and then dropped the glass onto the floor. I felt myself sway as if I had been standing on the deck of a ship.
The general stood in front of me. He was close enough for me to see his Aryan blue eyes. They were cold and unfeeling and as hard as sapphires. A little smile was playing on the corner of his mouth, as if there was something funny he wanted to tell me. There was. But I didn't yet get the joke. He held something small and pink in front of my nose. At first I thought it was an undercooked prawn. Raw and bloody at one end. Dirty at the other. Hardly appetizing at all. Then I realized it wasn't anything to eat. It was my own little finger. He took hold of my nose and then pushed the upper half of my little finger all the way into one of my nostrils. The smile became more pronounced.
'This is what comes of sticking your fingers into things that ought not to concern you,' he said, in that quiet, civilized, Mozart-loving voice of his. The Nazi gentleman. 'And you can think yourself lucky we decided it wasn't your nose that got you into trouble. Otherwise, we might have cut that off instead. Do I make myself clear, Herr Gunther?'
I grunted feebly. I was all out of impertinence. I felt my finger start to slip out of my nostril. But he caught it just in time and then tucked it into my breast pocket, like a pen he had borrowed. 'Souvenir,' he said. Turning away, he said to the man in the bowler hat, 'Take Herr Gunther to wherever he wants to go.'
They dragged me back to the car and pushed me into the backseat. I closed my eyes. I just wanted to sleep
