The One from the Other

EIGHTEEN

It was day. Sunshine was streaming through the windows. Dust motes floated in brilliant beams of light like tiny characters from some celestial movie projector. Perhaps they were just angels sent to conduct me to someone’s idea of heaven. Or little threads of my soul, impatient for glory, intrepidly scouting out the way to the stars ahead of the rest of me, trying to beat the rush. Then the sunbeam moved, almost imperceptibly, like the hands of a giant clock, until it touched the bottom of the bed and, even through the sheet and the blankets covering them, warmed my toes, as if reminding me that my worldly tasks were not yet done.

The ceiling was pink. A great glass bowl was hanging from it on a brass chain. At the foot of the bowl lay four dead flies, like a whole squadron of downed fighters in some terrible insect war. After I was done staring at the ceiling, I stared at the walls. They were the same shade of pink. Against one of the walls was a medical cabinet full of bottles and dressings. Beside it was a desk with a lamp where the nurses sometimes sat. On the opposite wall was a large photograph of Neuschwanstein Castle, the most famous of the three royal palaces built for Ludwig II of Bavaria. He was sometimes referred to as Mad King Ludwig, but since entering that hospital, I found I had a better understanding of him than most people. Not least because for a week or more I had been raving myself. On several occasions I had found myself locked in the topmost tower of that castle—the one with the weather vane and the eagle’s-eye view of fairyland. I’d even had visits from the Seven Dwarfs and an elephant with big ears. A pink one, of course.

None of this was at all surprising. Or so the nurses told me. I had pneumonia. I had pneumonia because my resistance to infection had been low on account of the beating I had taken and because I was a heavy smoker. It came on like a bad dose of flu and, for a while, that was what they thought I had. I remembered this because it seemed very ironic. Then it got worse. For around eight or nine days I had a temperature of 104, which must have been when I went to stay at Neuschwanstein. Since then my temperature had returned to near normal. I say near normal, but in view of what happened next I must have been anything but normal. That’s my excuse, anyway.

Another week passed, a long weekend in Kassel, with nothing at all happening and nothing to look at. Not even my nurses were diverting. They were solid, German housewives with husbands and children and double chins and powerful forearms and skin like orange peel and chests like pillows. In their stiff, white pinafores and caps they looked and behaved like they were armor-plated. Not that it would have made any difference if they’d been better-looking. I was as weak as a newborn. And it puts a brake on a man’s libido when the object of his attention is the one who fetches and carries and, presumably, empties his bedpan. Besides, all of my mental energy was reserved for thoughts that had nothing to do with love. Revenge was my abiding preoccupation. The only question was, revenge on whom?

Apart from the certainty that the men who beat me to a pulp had been put up to it by Father Gotovina, I knew nothing at all about them. Except that they were ex-SS men like myself, and possibly policemen. The priest was my only real lead and, gradually, I resolved to be revenged on the person of Father Gotovina himself.

I did not, however, underestimate the gravity and difficulty of such a task. He was a big, powerful man and, in my much weakened state, I knew I was not equal to the task of taking him on. A five-year-old girl with a roll of sweets in her fist and a good right hook would have wiped the kindergarten floor with me. But even if I had been strong enough to tackle him, he would certainly have recognized me and then told his SS friends to kill me. He didn’t strike me as being the kind of priest who would be squeamish about such a thing. So whatever I did to the priest was obviously going to require a firearm and, as soon as I understood this, I also realized that I was going to have to kill him. There seemed no alternative. Once I pointed a gun at him there would be no room for half measures. I would kill him or he would surely kill me.

Killing a man because he had counseled other men to hurt me may look disproportionate, and perhaps it was. The balance of my mind could have been disturbed by all that had happened to me. But perhaps there was also another reason. After all I had seen and done in Russia, I had less respect for human life than of old. My own included. Not that I would ever have made much of a Quaker. In peacetime I had killed several men. I’d taken no pleasure in it. But when you have killed once it becomes easier to kill again. Even a priest.

Once I had resolved who, the questions turned into when and how. And these questions led me to the realization that if I did manage to kill Father Gotovina, it might be a good idea to leave Munich for a while. Perhaps permanently. Just in case some of his finger-chopping friends in the Comradeship put two and two together and made me. It was my doctor—Dr. Henkell—who offered me a solution to the problem of where I would go if I did leave Munich.

Henkell was as tall as a lamppost, with Wehrmacht-gray hair and a nose like a French general’s epaulette. His eyes were a milky shade of blue with irises the size of pencil points. They looked like two lumps of caviar on Meissen saucers. On his forehead was a frown line as deep as a railway cutting; a dimple made his chin look like the badge on a Volkswagen. It was a grand, commanding sort of face that belonged properly on some fifteenth-century bronze duke, astride a horse cast from melted cannons and set in front of a palazzo with hot-and-cold-running torture chambers. He wore a pair of steel-framed glasses that were mostly on his forehead and rarely on his nose and, around his neck, a single Evva key that was for the medicine cabinet in my room and several others like it elsewhere in the hospital. Drugs were often being stolen in the state hospital. He was tanned and fit-looking, which wasn’t surprising given that he had a chalet near Garmisch-Partenkirchen and went there nearly every weekend—hill-walking and climbing in summer, and skiing in winter.

“Why don’t you go and stay there?” he said while he was telling me about the place. “It would be just the thing for someone recuperating from an illness like yours. Some fresh mountain air, good food, peace, and quiet. You would be back to normal in no time.”

“You’re kind of caring, aren’t you?” I remarked. “For a doctor, I mean.”

“Maybe I like you.”

“I know. I’m real easy to like. I sleep all day and half the night. You’ve really seen me at my best, Doc.”

He straightened my pillow and looked me in the eye.

“It could be I’ve seen more of Bernie Gunther than he thinks,” he said.

“Aw, you’ve found my hidden quality,” I said. “And after all the trouble I took to hide it.”

“It’s not so well hidden,” he said. “Provided one knows what to look for.”

“You’re starting to worry me, Doc. After all, you’ve seen me naked. I’m not even wearing makeup. And my hair must be a mess.”

“It’s lucky for you you’re flat on your back and weak as a kitten,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “Any more remarks like that and my bedside manner is liable to turn into a ringside manner. I’ll have you know that at university I was considered to be a very promising boxer. Believe me, Gunther, I can open a cut just as quickly as I can stitch one.”

“Wouldn’t that be against the Hippocratic Oath, or whatever you pill pushers call it when you’re taking yourselves too seriously? Something Greek anyway.”

“Maybe I’ll make an exception in your case and strangle you with my stethoscope.”

“Then I wouldn’t get to hear about why you like me,” I said. “You know, if you really liked me you’d find me a cigarette.”

“With your lungs? Forget it. If you take my advice you’ll never smoke again. The pneumonia’s very likely left a scar on your lung.” He paused for a moment and then added: “A scar as pronounced as the one under your arm.”

Outside my room someone started drilling. They were repairing the hospital, just like the women’s hospital where Kirsten had died. Sometimes it seemed like there wasn’t anywhere in Munich that wasn’t having some building work done. I knew Dr. Henkell was right. A chalet in Garmisch-Partenkirchen would be a lot more peaceful and quiet than the builder’s yard I was in now. Just what the doctor ordered. Even if it was a doctor who was beginning to sound suspiciously like an old comrade.

“Maybe I never got around to telling you about the men who put their paws on me,” I said. “They had hidden qualities, too. You know, like honor and loyalty. And they used to wear black hats with funny little signs on them because they wanted to look like pirates and frighten children.”

“As a matter of fact, you told me that they were cops,” he said. “The ones who beat you up.”

“Cops, detectives, lawyers, and doctors,” I said. “There’s no end to what old comrades can turn their hands to.”

Dr. Henkell did not contradict me.

I closed my eyes. I was tired. Talking made me tired. Everything seemed to make me feel tired. Blinking and breathing at the same time made me feel tired. Sleeping made me feel tired. But nothing made me feel quite so tired as the old comrades.

“What were you?” I asked. “Inspector of concentration camps? Or just another guy who was obeying orders?”

“I was in the Tenth SS Panzer Division Frundsberg,” he said.

“How the hell does a doctor end up in a tank?” I asked.

“Honestly? I thought it would be safer inside a tank. And, for the most part, it was. We were in the Ukraine from 1943 until June 1944, when we were ordered to France. Then we were at Arnhem and Nimegen. Then Berlin. Then Spremberg. I was one of the lucky ones. I managed to surrender to the Amis, at Tangermünde.” He shrugged. “I don’t regret joining the SS. Those men who survived with me will be my friends for the rest of my life. I’d do anything for them. Anything.”

Henkell did not question me about my own service with the SS. He knew better than to ask. It was something you either talked about or you didn’t talk about. I never wanted to talk about it again. I could see that he was curious. But that just made me all the more determined not to say anything about it. He could think what he liked. I really didn’t care.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “you would be doing me a huge favor. If you went to Mönch. That’s the name of my house in Sonnenbichl. A friend of mine is living there at the moment. You could keep him company. He’s been in a wheelchair since the war and he gets rather depressed. You could help him to keep his spirits up. It would be good for you both, you see. There’s a nurse and a woman who comes in to cook. You’d be very comfortable.”

“This friend of yours—”

“Eric.”

“He wouldn’t be an old comrade, too, would he?”

“He was in the Ninth SS Panzer Division,” said Henkell. “Hohenstaufen. He was also at Arnhem. His tank got hit by a Tommy armor-piercing seventeen-pounder in September 1944.” Henkell paused. “But he’s no Nazi, if that’s what you’re worried about. Neither of us was ever a Party member.”

I smiled. “For what it’s worth,” I said, “neither was I. But let me give you some free advice. Don’t ever tell people that you were never a Party member. They’ll think you’ve got something to hide. It beats me where all those Nazis disappeared to. I guess the Ivans must have them.”

“I never thought of it like that,” he said.

“I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear what you said and then I won’t be too disappointed when he turns out to be Himmler’s smarter brother, Gebhard.”

“You’ll like him,” said Henkell.

“Sure I will. We’ll sit by the fire and sing each other the Horst Wessel Song before we turn in at night. I’ll read him some chapters of Mein Kampf and he’ll delight me with Thirty War Articles for the German Volk by Dr. Goebbels. How does that sound?”

“Like I made a mistake,” Henkell said grimly. “Forget I ever mentioned it, Gunther. I just changed my mind. I don’t think you’d be good for him, after all. You’re even more bitter than he is.”

“Take your foot off the Panzer’s gas pedal, Doc,” I said. “I’ll go. Anywhere would be better than this place. I’ll need a hearing aid if I stay here any longer.”