Reinhard seemed paralyzed.
‘One … two … three,’ Willi counted. Reinhard still did not move. The explosion of the Luger being fired made both their ears ring. Reinhard screamed and stared at his shattered hand. Tears welled in his eyes and he started sobbing.
‘I said take off your clothes,’ said Willi. Reinhard hurried to do as he was told, but having one hand out of commission slowed him down.
Escape
Most successful escapes from Dachau, and they were few and far between, were opportunistic, where a prisoner or prisoners suddenly saw an opening and took it. That was the situation Willi found himself in now as he stepped from the building. He had committed. His decision to escape was irreversible – either he would succeed, or he would be killed.
Willi was taller than Reinhard, and thinner, and the uniform was a bad fit. But he was only six steps from the car, so it didn’t matter. Reinhard Pabst had sobbed and lain still as a baby while Willi tied his hands behind his back and to his feet using Willi’s prison clothes twisted into makeshift ropes. Reinhard’s disgrace was sudden and total.
It was raining lightly, a cold rain. Willi pulled the hat brim low over his eyes. A work party of twelve or so was marching past with two kapos – one of them Neudeck – in charge. They were singing as they marched.
Neudeck’s eyes widened slightly as he recognized Willi. ‘Good luck,’ he whispered as he passed. He saluted and Willi returned his salute. The guards in the tower above were watching. Willi gave them a long stare and they looked away.
Willi started the car easily, put it in gear, and drove to the gate. At that moment another work party was about to march through. The guards had already swung the gate open. But now they held up the work party, and waved Willi through. They snapped to attention and saluted. He turned left through some SS barracks, then right on Friedenstraße. Peace Street. And just like that, he was out.
Later that evening the Bergemanns’ phone rang. ‘It’s for you,’ said Sofia.
‘Who is it?’ said Bergemann.
‘He wouldn’t say.’
Bergemann picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Come downstairs and walk south,’ said a voice.
‘Who is this?’
‘Come downstairs, Hans, and walk south.’ The line went dead.
‘Who was it?’ asked Sofia.
The voice was familiar, yet unfamiliar. Then he realized why and jumped up. ‘I’m going out,’ he said.
‘Where?’ she said.
‘Willi,’ he said. Before she could ask, he was out the door. She understood it might be a while before he came back.
Bergemann’s heart was pounding as he hurried along the street. He had heard rumors more than once that Willi Geismeier was dead. Gruber had said so a while back. They were at lunch, and Gruber had raised a glass to celebrate. He had probably just been trying to goad Hans; Gruber always seemed suspicious of him, although he never came right out and said it. Even though Bergemann didn’t believe the rumors, he had feared that Willi might die in Dachau.
‘Keep walking,’ said a voice, and there was Willi beside him, wraith thin and haggard, but it was Willi for sure. Bergemann couldn’t help putting his arm around Willi’s shoulder and hugging him to him. He could feel his ribs and thin arms through his coat.
‘Me too,’ said Willi, and he smiled. ‘Can we sit somewhere?’ he said.
‘My sister lives nearby,’ said Bergemann.
‘Monika?’ said Willi.
‘That one,’ said Bergemann.
It was another ten minutes to Monika Bergemann’s, and they walked in silence.
There were five Bergemann siblings, two brothers, two sisters and Hans. Monika was the eldest, Hans the youngest. She had never married or had any desire to do so. She had once been in love with a pretty young woman, who had decided after some months that loving a woman was too difficult, and had left to marry a man.
Poetry was Monika’s only love now. She wrote constantly, filling notebooks, and publishing occasionally in small journals or in editions of a hundred books. Half of those might sell, if she was lucky. She didn’t care about that. Critics said she was a poet’s poet, which meant that her poetry was difficult and obscure. It was a good thing too, because if she had been more readily understood by the powers that be, if they had understood her obscure allusions, she would almost certainly have been arrested.
Monika and Willi were both prickly characters. They liked each other well enough, in part because they had a love of books in common and in part because they saw one another so infrequently. She knew from Hans that Willi had been imprisoned in Dachau, and so she embraced him happily when they arrived.
She offered them beer and then announced she was going to bed. Bergemann wanted to hear everything, but Willi was exhausted, so he stuck to the necessities, which were marvelous enough. Willi explained that he had learned for certain that morning that Friedrich Grosz was SS colonel Reinhard Pabst. ‘I laid a trap for him,’ said Willi. Bergemann had to laugh at the sheer preposterousness of that proposition, and because it was true.
‘I hit him with a crystal water pitcher, got his Luger’ – Willi patted his side pocket – ‘and left him tied up in the interrogation room.’
‘You didn’t kill him?’
‘Not my job,’ said Willi.
Lying on the stone floor trussed up like a pig about to be slaughtered, Reinhard sobbed, then raged, then cursed, vowing revenge one moment and despairing the next. His curses echoed off the stone walls and died a silent death in that room. This was a humiliation and a defeat he would not live down.
Still, eventually he wriggled and writhed and worked himself free.
