July 4, 1943: Manfred has picked out the escort and decided on a route. His friend Hauptsturmführer Breker does the driving. I later identify him by the gap in his front teeth. At Belize, Goga and the partisans are waiting. They kill everyone and torture Steiner. Goga gets his revenge, extracts the name of Strehling GmbH and makes off, reneging on the agreement. And that is where I enter the picture. Manfred’s old friend and confidant, whom he could rely on not to ask the wrong questions. I could find Goga and make it all look good. Only Kube smelled a rat and sent Grünfeldt and Haber after me.
_ _ _
Presently there are people. I have come to a gathering point where there are water trucks, food and supplies, so many suitcases and hats, so many tins of food, people in nightshirts and slippers, holding children by the hand, all saved from the flames.
On a table: sandwiches made from white bread, black coffee, lemonade, jugs of water.
Salami, pork crackling, blackcurrants.
The cool water in my throat.
I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, my bundle wedged tight between my feet, and fill my pockets.
A little girl stares at me with wide eyes. I begin to cry. I stand there for a moment. I have a human head wrapped in a coat between my feet. I fill my mouth with food and sob. I cram my pockets. The girl is pointing at me now. Her mother is dabbing ointment on her burnt brow. She looks at me too.
Black and pink.
_ _ _
I carry on in a southerly direction. I am picked up by an army truck.
Grave faces. No one says a word. A boy eats from a tin.
The vehicle sways.
July 23, Manfred’s Forum Romanum – that was supposed to fool them all. Goga, bereaved and vengeful. Goga divulges his secret, and I reward him with a panicked coup de grâce.
July 24, that terrible day Manfred took the train to Hamburg. Kube sending his note to make me break down and reveal all. And Dirlewanger, waiting until I stepped into action.
Did Manfred betray me?
Did he leave me to the wolves so he could get away?
When we get to the moor, the soldiers let me out.
Someone tosses me a packet of cigarettes and a water bottle.
I trudge off into the heather. All I have to do is follow the path.
After a while I am gone.
A dot on the landscape.
_ _ _
Like confetti. They are everywhere, small burnished strips of foil. They must have been what I saw yesterday, a silvery shower disrupting the gunfire. I pick one up, it is shiny on one side, black on the other, like a spinner for catching fish. They crackle beneath my feet.
Not a soul on the horizon. An expanse transected by the brows of hills, occasional gravel pits.
Empty, and silent.
I pause for a second and stare in every direction. There is nothing here.
A piece of the puzzle remains.
The note: Who is Strehling?
Why did Kube send it to me?
Why did he not follow the scent himself instead of going through me?
He could have just gone to Hamburg. Manfred’s adjutant told me straight out where he was.
He didn’t need to play detective.
It doesn’t make sense.
The adjutant told me. Because I asked him.
It hits me like a hammer.
Kube didn’t know! He just had his men follow me …
The note was from Manfred, sent after he left for Hamburg.
He knew Goga had spoken to me. He knew I was lying when I told him Goga hadn’t mentioned the gold. He said: You know how much I love you, don’t you?
He was telling me he knew.
He couldn’t take me with him to Hamburg, it would have given rise to suspicion, but he was banking on me coming after him. He instructed his adjutant to tell me: Schlosser has gone to Hamburg. The right name, the right destination, only the one small error as regards Strehling …
A crossword puzzle for a child.
Have you proposed to my sister?
A way of getting to Hamburg without arousing suspicion: Marriage.
You’re malleable, like clay, he said.
Soon you’ll be like me.
You’re easily fooled.
Was he leading me on?
A sordid little labyrinth?
Was that it?
I sit down in the heather. I put the head down in front of me, straighten it so the brow and the sockets are turned towards me. The brake pedal protrudes like some obscene lollipop. I stroke Manfred’s brow, the bone is cold and dead, but the gold is faint electricity.
I put down Maier’s open Soldbuch next to it.
I stare out from the page, my wire-rimmed spectacles, the roundness of my face.
There is not a sound here.
Even now, after I have solved the puzzle, the pieces fail to fit.
A tiny filament in the conflagration.
All the dead.
All those I killed. Etke, Goga, Greta, Masja …
Why should I be saved?
I am a criminal, a beast.
Eline’s Kennkarte is bent.
She looks at me, her head turned slightly to the side, about to laugh.
Her hair is a fountain of flames.
Fear not
And then the birds.
I am on my knees in the midst of teeming nature, a cacophony of cheeping, chirping and cooing, little legs scurrying over sandy earth, a berry in a beak delivered to a hole, an industry of feeding and crapping, humping and hatching. My PPK is snug in my hand.
An extension of my hand forged in steel.
Ballistics: Fired only twice.
Into the neck of a child.
