He is reclined, making dog ears in my copy of Jünger’s The Adventurous Heart. He hums a popular tune, moistens his finger and turns down the corner of another page.
‘Manfred?’
‘Mmm …?’
‘We found six pistols and one carbine, how does that match up with 988 partisans?’
‘Bandits … they’re called bandits. Himmler’s decree, as of today.’
‘Bandits, then. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘You wrote it down yourself.’
‘But it’s a lie, Manfred, for Christ’s sake. And stop ruining my book.’
He props himself up on his elbow.
‘It’s quite simple, Heinrich. Once they’re dead, they can’t ever become bandits, can they?’
‘It’s not funny, Manfred.’
‘No, you’re right. It’s not.’
He puts down the book, gets to his feet and turns his boots.
‘It’s all politics,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I think we do it all the wrong way.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘By separating words and reality. “Special treatment”, “liquidation”, “cleansing”, “Judenfrei”. It’s all killing, Heinrich. I mean we’re not cleaning ladies or functionaries, are we, for Chrissake? We’re not just giving the Jews a clean, like they were some bloody germ. We plunder them, we take everything they own, whip the shit out of them, we strip them naked and put bullets through their brains while their children are watching … the prayers, fear, all that trembling before death … Elohim Yisrael …’
‘Manfred, stop—’
‘No Heinrich, you stop. For once, just shut up. It’s what we do … it’s what we do, for God’s sake. We burn down a village, but what we have to say is we killed twelve hundred partisans. Sorry, bandits! Bandits and evacuation … one sounds like a boy’s adventure story, the other’s a bodily function … Winnetou and castor oil!’
‘Not so loud, Manfred …’
‘Why, are you scared? Are you actually scared?’
‘Of ending up in the basement, yes.’
Manfred considers me for a moment, disappointed, wounded.
‘It’s Himmler,’ he says quietly. ‘That cretin.’
‘What?’ I say, astonished.
‘He came out with us in October ’41, near Minsk. He wanted to see an operation; Steiner had kept some Jews for him. He stood on the edge of the pit, much too close to the edge, only no one had the guts to tell him. You should have seen the man! He couldn’t stomach it – spewed up and fainted … And now he wants to gloss things over, so they can all sit nice and cosy at home and think it’s being done in an orderly fashion. As if killing can be detached – gas chambers and Zyklon B … as if it’s a science … How sentimental, how stupid … As if fucking categories are going to help us …’
‘Carl Schmitt says our whole identity rests on having an enemy … which is a category of sorts …’
‘Exactly! But why can’t we just say it, like Jünger here. We’ve overstepped a boundary, where everyone is equal. This—’
He rises, gesticulating.
‘This is a new world … to kill is to strike down into that new world, a virgin land …’
‘So when you sent the boy in to the pigs you created a new world?’
‘Yes! Truth is—’
‘… consistent. So you said. But it’s grotesque and cruel …’
‘Who says so?’
‘I do!’
‘You? What about your beloved Romans? They celebrated killing, dressed it up, made an occasion of it, but you think you can take their marble statues and splendid poetry – oh, Cicero, the Capitol – and forget all about the violence. That’s grotesque, Heinrich.’
‘You killed a boy, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Yes. And that’s exactly what Steiner taught me. Consistency. To stick it out and remain decent. The community …’
He lifts his sleeve to his eyes, and for a brief moment he seems infinitely small and frail as he stands there in the hum of night, rocking on his bare feet.
‘Do you even know what it means?’ he continues. ‘Community; love?’
‘That’s just a lie, too,’ I say, but he throws up his arms. ‘A malicious lie.’
‘So what is it you want, Heinrich?’
He sits down and puts his boots back on. His foot slips inside the thick leather, making a moist suction sound.
‘Would you rather be on your own?’
_ _ _
Later, when I wake up, it is still night.
Manfred is gone, his sleeping bag with him.
I sit up. His saddlebags are gone too. And the hatbox.
I wriggle out of my sleeping bag, draw back the canvas.
The other tents have been dismantled.
The fires have gone out. Where are the guards?
Vehicle tracks.
At once I am wide awake. I take my PPK from the holster and crawl out.
‘Is anyone there?’
Nocturnal noises are my only reply; the wind in the tall firs.
There is no one here, not a single person.
Only darkness and stars, and a little further away, a babbling brook.
My pulse races at the snap of a branch.
‘Where the hell is everyone?’
A swish, a crack, the thin slit of a spade.
Behind me, in the low birch trees, back in the scrubland.
I am there in a second.
Just some tins left behind, half dug into the earth, and the remains of preserved fruit.
A shadow. I swivel and shoot.
The bullet whistles through the bushes.
I sprint after it, branches whipping into my face, PPK, right to left.
_ _ _
I pull up.
Nothing but leaves; they flutter in the darkness.
No. There is someone there. A sudden movement, and I shoot again.
Hindquarters in the air, a kick of the legs.
Shots, bark ripping; the flash of the muzzle.
The white rump patch is gone in a rustle of undergrowth.
A deer. It was just a deer, eating the fruit from the tins.
I click out the magazine. One cartridge left.
I am alone in the forest.
_ _ _
I return to the tent in the diffuse light of dawn, a pale illuminating haze.
I bend down to pull up the tent pegs and hear the sound again.
There is someone, down at the stream now. I straighten up and go slowly down the slope.
The sound increases, becomes more distinct: a knocking noise, a clatter of stones, splashing.
It’s coming from behind the rocks, where the stream turns, a few metres below me.
Someone is sitting there with their back to me.
It looks
