I glance around. She is speaking to me.
All I can do is move my lips.
‘What?’
They say you eat our rabbits …
‘What? Me?’
They say you were gentle. Aren’t you gentle any more?
She does not wait for me to answer, but turns again towards the film, because now Viktor Staal comes up to her and puts his hand on the railing, they stand for a moment and look out upon the Berlin blackout and the first bursts of flak. His face and his perfect hair fill the screen, as he speaks:
‘Wow, it’s beautiful!’
‘Hm, like a fairy tale.’
‘No, much more beautiful. Like reality.’
I look around me in the darkness. The Hauptmann in the seat in front slaps a fly on his neck and emits a sigh into the barren theatre.
He applauds again.
_ _ _
The next morning Manfred telephones with a place and a time: the hospital courtyard, 4 p.m.
I am to be there before the others.
I put down the receiver and ask Masja to get my dress uniform ready.
I shave, trim the hair at my neck and temples, groom in the Nazi style.
I sit down on a stool and polish my boots with a soft brush. They gleam, black.
I fetch my pistol holster, slide the PPK into the black leather and fasten it to my belt. I have no medals, no copper.
I pomade my hair in front of the mirror, form a parting with the comb, and adjust with the tip of a finger.
I do up the top button and put on my cap. Oberleutnant der Polizei.
I hide my eyes behind the green lenses of my sunglasses.
_ _ _
‘This is not the Forum in Rome …’
The loudspeaker crackles. Manfred speaks in front of the stand on a small stage in the hospital’s inner yard. He has made an effort, they are all here: Generalkommissar Kube, Bach-Zelewski, Dirlewanger, Gottberg and a throng of people I don’t know, officers of the Wehrmacht and high-ranking SS; Kindler is here from Lida, a few officers from Dirlewanger’s Sonderkommando, and Haber and Grünfeldt have come from Minsk. Grünfeldt is wearing a kind of hunter’s hat with feathers in it. I am seated close to the steps, on the stand that has been erected for the occasion. Sand has been spread out in the yard, across the cobbles and throughout the system of pens leading in to the middle, the arena, an octagonal enclosure some twenty by thirty metres, fenced to a height of maybe two metres, a passage running back into the stalls. Manfred has Sturmmänner posted along the boarded wooden fence. I got here an hour ago and took in the set-up: flags, loudspeakers, a smell of freshly painted timber, banners, the whole German rodeo, even a camera crew from the 3rd SS- Panzer Division’s propaganda company, Steiner’s men. Manfred paced about, inspecting before the guests arrived. I asked him about the interrogation. He dismissed it with a wave of his hand and whispered:
‘Perhaps we could present the Führer with a film of it all. Do you think he’d like it, or would that be too …’
‘… bizarre?’
‘No, too … inadequate … Steiner’s SS number was 937, he was one of the old guard. Maybe Himmler, then, if he won’t have it … Christ!’
He was clearly nervous. People were arriving, he couldn’t keep his hands still until they were all seated and there was a two-minute silence for Hubert Steiner. His jaw tensed during the salute of honour, twelve officers from Steiner’s division. He was struggling to keep himself together, his face muscles quivered, but now he is almost the jolly host at the microphone.
‘And what you are about to see is not a Christian cast to the lions, but …’
He pauses.
He is wearing sunglasses, and the full gamut of distinctions: EK (First Class) Panzer badge and Close Combat Clasp in gold. He holds out his arms.
The camera whirs.
‘… a Yid cast to swine!’
Laughter fizzes through the stand and the sombre mood lifts immediately.
‘Some might consider it to be in poor taste,’ Manfred continues, hushing his audience. ‘Unsuitable for honouring the memory of Hubert. And yet I am certain that he in his heaven, the heaven in whose existence he never for a moment believed …’
Mirth all round.
‘… that he in his heaven will appreciate the joke. And that we hereby honour him as a soldier by offering him this … blood sacrifice …’
His voice at once becomes thick again, and he has to cover the microphone with the palm of his hand.
‘I’m sorry … but as many of you know, Hubert was … was my … But no, enough sentimentality! He would have hated it … almost as much as he hated the Jews … Let the festivities commence!’
The microphone squeals out a descant. Nothing happens.
‘Begin!’ Manfred shrieks.
An entrance door of the hospital opens and Goga emerges.
Manfred has made him a Thracian. His costume is finely woven willow and flax, decorated with feathers: a solid helmet, gladius and parma, a small, round shield.
Michael shoves him on through the passage, kicks him from behind, knout in hand.
Goga stumbles and loses the helmet, Michael lashes him with the whip, and Goga scrambles to his feet.
He looks down at the ground.
Michael puts the helmet back on him, grips him by the neck and hurls him into the arena.
The sun is raw, abominable.
_ _ _
Goga stands in the middle of the arena.
A wound has opened up in his thigh.
His feet are bloodied, misshapen in the sandals.
He has no control of his knees, they knock against each other.
Urine trickles down his leg.
Bach-Zelewski points and glances at the man seated next to him. They laugh.
In a moment they will enter. The two beasts.
I know that Manfred has been starving them since they killed the deaf boy.
When Michael kicks open the gate of the improvised stall at the end of the long passage, I see that Manfred has laid his hands on some more. They batter against the fencing, perhaps a dozen in number, a many-headed goods train charging towards
