The Third Reich

SEPTEMBER 23

I’m woken by a noise from the street. When I sit up in bed I can’t hear anything. And yet the feeling of having been called is strong and ineffable. I go out to the balcony in my undershorts: the sun isn’t up yet or maybe it has set already, and parked in front of the hotel is an ambulance with all its lights on. Between the back of the ambulance and the stairs, three people are speaking in soft voices, though they gesture emphatically. Their voices reach the balconies reduced to an unintelligible murmur. The horizon glows dark blue with phosphorescent streaks, like the prelude to a storm. The Paseo Marítimo is empty except for a shadow that vanishes along the boardwalk toward the tourist district, which at this time of day (but what time of day is it?) resembles a milky gray cupola, a bulge in the curve of the beach. At the other end, the lights of the port have faded or simply gone out. The asphalt of the Paseo is wet, a clear sign that it has rained. Suddenly an order rouses the men who are waiting. The doors to the hotel and the ambulance open simultaneously and a stretcher comes down the stairs carried by a couple of medics. With them, lagging solicitously a few steps behind, near the head of the prone figure, come Frau Else dressed in a long red coat and the big talker with the heavy tan, followed by the receptionist, the night watchman, a waiter, the fat lady from the kitchen. On the stretcher, a blanket pulled up to his chin, is Frau Else’s husband. The way they come down the stairs is extremely cautious, or so it seems to me. Everyone is watching the sick man. Lying on his back and looking desolate, he murmurs instructions for going down the stairs. No one pays any attention to him. Just then our gazes meet in the transparent (and shuddering) space between the balcony and the street.

Like this:

Then the doors close, the ambulance sets off with its siren blaring, though there isn’t a single car to be seen on the Paseo, the light coming through the ground-floor windows goes out, silence descends once again on the Del Mar.

Summer 1944. Like Krebs, Freytag-Loringhoven, Gerhard Boldt, I record the stages of war despite knowing that it is lost. The storm has broken and now the rain is beating down on the open balcony like a long and bony hand, strangely maternal, as if trying to warn me of the hazards of hubris. There’s no one keeping watch over the doors to the hotel, so El Quemado had no problem coming up to my room on his own. The sea is rising. It whispers inside the bathroom where I’ve brought El Quemado to towel offhis hair. It’s the perfect moment to hit him, but I don’t move a muscle. El Quemado’s head, wrapped in the towel, exerts a cold and bright fascination over me. Under his feet a little puddle of water forms. Before we start playing I make him take off his wet T-shirt and put on one of mine. It’s a bit tight on him but at least it’s dry. As if at this point it were only natural for me to give him something, El Quemado puts it on without a word. It’s the end of summer and the end of the game. The Oder front and the Rhine front collapse at the first onslaught. El Quemado moves around the table as if he’s dancing. Which may be the case. My final circle of defense is Berlin–Stettin–Bremen– Berlin; everything else, including my armies in Bavaria and the north of Italy, is cut offfrom supply lines. Where will you sleep tonight, Quemado? I ask. At my place, answers El Quemado. The other questions, of which there are many, stick in my throat. After we parted, I went out on the balcony and stared into the rainy night. Big enough to swallow us all up. Tomorrow there is no doubt I’ll be defeated.