The Chosen Ones (44 page)

Across the Border
   Adrian Ziegler would many years later have to give an account of himself in front of disbelieving police officers: how had he, who was always unwelcome, managed in the end to find his way home after the war? He had to tell them about how the long march from the youth detention centre in Kaiserebersdorf had been organised, who had been there to supervise it, for how long they had travelled inside barges on the river. And how long had he been in Regensburg? Only a short time, he replied. Maybe a week, at most. He had been questioned by the American military police through an interpreter. When he told them that he came from Wien, the interpreter had let the American policeman know, and both had laughed and said there were so many dead in Wien by now that they stacked corpses on street corners like piles of planks. This image stayed in his mind every minute of his long journey home. His father’s and his mother’s bodies, Laura’s and Helmut’s, all on top of each other like logs with their empty, dead faces turned towards him as if they were just waiting for him to complete the stack. When he had insisted on going home despite the bad news, the MP had turned his face away and the interpreter said that, at present, they let nobody cross that border. After he had left them, he spotted a bicycle leaning against a wall near the bombed-out station building. He took it. Nobody made any attempt to stop him, so he carried on cycling in what he fancied might be the right direction. A couple of kilometres south of Regensburg, a crowd of agitated people blocked the road. A loaded
carriage had overturned on a sharp bend and tins of condensed milk, packets of sugar and cocoa powder, which judging by the stamps had been stolen from an American military store, were scattered everywhere in the road dust. One of the men had unshackled the horse. Now he turned to Adrian and asked where he was going. Passau, Adrian said, because he didn’t dare say that he wanted to go to the border. The man started to tie sugar and cocoa packets to the parcel-rack behind him and gave him a folded banknote and a piece of paper with a street address on it. Go to the address and hand over this stuff, the man said. Adrian had become a fence within an hour of having been released by the Americans. Of course, he never said anything about this to the policemen who were questioning him all those years later. To them, all he said was that he had gone to Passau and then followed the valley of the river Inn southwards. A farmer’s wife gave him something to eat, let him sleep in a barn overnight and told him where the best place was to cross the river. The following night was overcast and a light rain was falling. He knew that he would never have a better opportunity than this. He emptied his pockets, made a bundle of his clothes, held the paper from the US military police stating that he had been discharged from prison –
die Entlassungsschein
– between his teeth and waded out into the river. The water was cold, much colder than he had expected, the current was strong and, although it was May, the sky was hidden behind the high mountain ridges. Soon, the night around him grew as black as the inside of a cave, so black that he didn’t know where he was going or was just allowing himself to be carried by the current. All of a sudden, Jockerl was riding on the back of his neck, sitting so high up that he could feel the flaccid white flesh of the inside of his thighs around his neck, at the same level as the line of cold water.
You’re not forgetting about me
,
are you?
Jockerl said and pushed his
head underwater. Suddenly, Adrian is back in the crowded hold again with water pouring in from all sides. Jockerl’s head is already underwater but it doesn’t matter because he is dead.
We’re alone here, you and I
, Jockerl said and looked at him with his unseeing fish eyes and shiny porcelain smile. And so they were tumbling around in the currents, tightly entangled. Jokerl was pressing his dead lips against Adrian’s who no longer knew where he was or what he was holding in his arms. One moment, he thought it was the blue material of Miss Santer’s dress that was twisting itself around his fingers, next that it was Jockerl’s hair. And then it came to him that he was clutching real, living grass. Rising above him was a long, grass-covered bank. He grappled to hang on, thrashing with his legs to find a foothold in the stony river shallows and then slowly began to haul himself up. He collapsed among the tall grasses, as if inside a huge head. But was he back home in Austria or had he just been swimming with the current and ended up on the German shore? When he turned to lie on his back, there was still no sky to be seen. The only sounds came from the mass of water flowing over the riverbed and filling every space that ground and sky should have occupied, a sound that was to him wondrously light and open. Or was it just because the night around him was so dark?

Gulliver Comes Back Home
   After that river crossing he decided to get rid of Jockerl once and for all. He had worked out how to go about it in Kaiserebersdorf, the day they had been driven in trucks to help clear up after the bombing of Alberner Hafen. He was going to smash Jockerl to pieces with a spade, or perhaps a shovel. He had landed a job on a farm on the outskirts of St Florian. It hadn’t been at all hard. He had been picked up by American MPs on this side of the river as well and they had interpreters who spoke German. In
Grieskirchen, the interpreter advised him to present himself at the mayor’s office and they had exchanged the provisional identity papers issued by the Americans in Regensburg for a new document in his own name and stating the names of his parents in clear typescript, with signatures and proper stamps underneath. He had also been told to go to a farm a few kilometres south of St Florian. They could give him a job there. The farm’s owner was called Maximilian Gruber, a very affluent man. Gruber actually owned two farms. One was a major establishment, where the farm buildings formed a large square, a
Vierkanthof
, situated on the long slope above the village. His second, smaller place was a few hundred metres further down in the valley. The large farm also had a long, barn-like building where some thirty-odd labourers were housed. They were all kinds of people – milkmaids and tractor drivers and even a groom and a carpenter with his own workshop. The first floor in the house had been taken over by half a dozen bad-tempered Polish POWs who spent their time playing games with matches. Adrian is housed with these would-be arsonists who tell him that if they aren’t let out of here soon they
will
set the whole shit heap on fire. Big-time farmer Gruber deserves to burn, they say, because Gruber was a Nazi and a prominent member of NS-Bauernschaft. The local people told them all about it. The only reason why the locals don’t dare to demand that justice is done is that he employs so many people in the neighbourhood – refugees from the war, too, and old enemies like us, one of the Polish pyromaniacs says and strikes a match. Gruber has a twelve-year-old son who follows him everywhere as if joined to the big farmer’s broad hip. The boy is as thin as a rake and his body won’t stop trembling. It looks as if he suffers from the cold shivers even though it is June already. Adrian knows the type. One of those who at the time would have been picked for special treatment at
Spiegelgrund straightaway. Gruber must have had the authorities in his pocket or else he knew something about how to make children escape special treatment that most people didn’t. When he lies awake at night, Adrian thinks about this. Generally speaking, he thinks a lot about what one might call, for wont of a better phrase, social justice. He thinks back on the time when he was Gulliver, large and powerful but tied head and foot at the same time. Everything is connected. That is why he thinks that it is high time now for him to break free for good from all that ties him down, and from Jockerl first of all. He is sure that if he doesn’t do it now, he will be wandering about with that ghost on his heels for all eternity and never come home. Of course, he also knows that if he
does
do it, if he really kills Jockerl, then he still won’t be free. If you murder someone, you will never be free. The next day is a Sunday and everyone on the farm, including the Polish pyromaniacs, has gone to church to celebrate Mass. The morning is lovely, with a high, clear blue sky and gentle tolling of bells that hangs in the air over the valley. One wouldn’t have believed that there has just been a war on. Adrian looks down over the dirt road that links Farmer Gruber’s two farms. It winds its way between the sunlit fields like a bright, white ribbon. Only the dung heaps behind the barn are still in the shade. Jockerl is lying on the grass, waiting for Adrian to come and kill him. He holds his hands over his head even though he knows that it is pretty pointless and the familiar Jockerl stench is spreading around him. Jockerl stench. Dung stench. Adrian raises his spade to strike. He goes on, one blow after another, gripping the handle firmly with both hands as if shovelling broken masonry. He only stops now and then to wipe the sweat from his forehead and shift his grip. Jockerl-sweat on the shovel handle. A pair of staring Jockerl-eyes rolls into the grass. A Jockerl-skull cracks and then the old Jockerl-brainstuff wells out and
mixes with gravel and straw and dung. But the shovel keeps slipping in his hands, so he has to shift his grip again before he sets to and chops up the upper part of the body, the jaw with all the Jockerl-teeth, until not one single scrap of grinning porcelain splinters remains. Then he stamps on everything until it is buried in the dungheap, shovels and forks it all down, and scrapes soil on top. Even so, many more Jockerl bits and pieces are still around. So much more to stamp on and bury, all of that Jockerl-carcass, his cartilages and bones that will not break. Fingers that still fumble in the air. Adrian puts the fork down, wipes his face with the back of his hand and realises that blood is seeping from his eyes. He screams at that point. He isn’t sure why he screams. Even though his head swims and his eyes bleed, he doesn’t feel particularly angry or upset. Perhaps he screams because he should have done it long ago but now he has the strength and the lung volume. But his scream dissolves in the vibrating noise as the church bells ring out. It flies harmlessly up into the sky and vanishes unheard. When he lowers the fork he sees his father come walking up the road between the two farms. He recognises him straightaway. There is the shabby black hat his father always used to wear. Now he carries it in his hand and a bottle in his other hand. The way he holds the bottle, dangling somehow absent-mindedly between his fingertips, and his odd way of walking, teetering from one side of the road to the other, only to stop now and then as if he had hit an invisible wall – all that points to him being drunk again. His usual rambling about after a piss-up. He stops again, looks towards the big farm, and it must be that the booze has sharpened his eyesight because he smiles and waves at Adrian. And Adrian, who had believed himself to be out of sight in the shade that falls over the dungheap, suddenly becomes very busy. He can’t think how to dispose of the rest of the body parts from the Jockerl-corpse but
carries on digging and, thankfully, the soil is soft. He hides all the shameful bits of Jockerl in holes in the ground just in time before a cluster of folk from the farm becomes visible on the road from the church, and noises from the kitchen are heard once more. When he steps inside, he sees his father seated at the large, round table where they all sit every evening after the dinner bell has been rung, the bigtime farmer as well as farmhands like himself or the Polish arsonists. His father looks bigger than he remembers him. Or, rather, he looks inflated, and his head and body look somehow
heavier
. When he turns to Adrian, he has to lean his arm on the edge of the table and move his whole torso as his face opens up into a big grin. I’ve come to pick up
that one
, he says and points at Adrian, who isn’t sure whether the paternal finger is trembling because he wants to put extra emphasis on their relationship or if he is in the grip of some momentary excitement, and has forgotten his son’s name. Adrian thinks the latter is more likely. His father is so drunk he can barely sit upright but he is still determined to do what he has come here for. Eugen Ziegler, the self-same Ziegler who once swore he’d kill his son if he had any dealings with the Nazis, is now doing business with an old Nazi farmer. The bottle that dangled carelessly from his hand now stands between the two of them on the table and, as the talk continues, he produces yet another bottle from what must be a sizeable store. And Gruber doesn’t mind being treated. After all, Mass has been attended to. Every time an ever-more slurred and incoherent Eugen Ziegler gabbles another joke between gulps of drink, the over-loud Gruber belly laugh rings out obligingly. Meanwhile, the cardboard boxes that Gruber’s wife puts on the table are steadily filled with every conceivable type and shape of cheese and ham and sausages, long strings of
Rauchwurst
and
Selchwürste
, glass jars with gherkins and cooked apple and preserved horseradish. All the boxes
are packed in the rucksack and shoulder bags that his father has brought and any items that can’t be packed, young Ziegler has to carry all the way to the station. His father is obviously very pleased as he lurches along the road with one arm nonchalantly draped across his son’s shoulders. Just think about it, in Wien there are people who’d kill for just ten grams of this sausage, he says and pulls out a few curls of the dark red blood sausage from his rucksack. Adrian can look over the top of his father’s head now and observes that his old man’s hair is thinning. In that black mane, his father’s pride and joy, always oiled at bedtime and protected by a stocking every night so it would keep its styling, and which Ziegler would later claim to be a dead ringer for the boxer Joschi Weidinger’s hair, Adrian can now see the scalp with its short hairs, like pig’s bristles, through the strands carefully combed back from the hairline. How sad it looks, how pathetically white. And how far his father must have travelled for the sake of his son. Or else, his father’s travels had nothing to do with his son and everything with the satisfaction of setting up in business again. Now they are sitting on a crowded train and can’t feel quite safe, his father explains, before they have been through Enns. The thing about Enns is that the Russian patrols take over there. Still, he – Ziegler – can deal with Bolsheviks as craftily as with old Nazi farmers. Just you wait and see, he says. Sure enough: a foreign tongue rings out in the carriage corridors, and the tramping of heavy boots and the quick slamming sound when compartment doors are opened and shut. Eugen makes no attempt to hide the blood sausage. On the contrary, he has wound loops of sausage around his neck. When the door opens, he holds a side of fatty bacon up in one hand, shushes with one finger across his lips at the confused young man in a private’s uniform and waves to him to come in. The soldier looks quickly right and left, then stealthily closes the door to the
compartment. They are alone and while his father gestures expressively and smiles and gabbles in the same crazy Russian that Adrian has heard him use before, the side of bacon and half the sausage are slipped in under the soldier’s belt. A quick salute (both men salute), the door opens and shuts, the stationmaster blows his whistle and, as they watch through the window, the train departs from the platform and, shaking intermittently, rolls into the Soviet occupied zone. Several new passengers have come on board at Enns. Most of them carry rucksacks full of food and fuel, all so bulky that their owners can hardly find space for them in the narrow compartments. An older man has brought a cage of rabbits. When the train shudders, the passengers shudder too, and the furry bodies in the rabbit cage slide around. Large, terrified rabbit eyes are staring out between the bars. The rabbit owner opens his mouth, then gestures with both arms as if to apologise. Adrian notes immediately that this is a Jockerl-smile. A wrinkled strip of skin has been ripped apart to expose a set of porcelain-grey teeth. Adrian doesn’t know where to look other than stare stubbornly at the floor with its covering of trampled fag ends. His father has produced another bottle. How much do you want for one of the rabbits? he asks the rabbit man. The bottle starts circulating and the atmosphere becomes jolly and loud. Adrian takes a drink from the bottle and the alcohol is at body temperature and bitter and, despite having gone round several times, still tastes of his father’s strongly scented hair lotion. The rabbit man tears the skin flaps apart over his teeth and a raucous almost-song flows from his mouth, but his singing is chopped up by the shaking and rolling of the carriage. After a few more grabs at the neck of the bottle, he opens the cage door and hands over one of the kicking animals. As Eugen breaks the rabbit’s neck with one practised twist, Adrian watches the reflection of his father’s grimacing face in the window.
You haven’t once asked
me where I’ve been
. Adrian turns back to the floor, which rises up and slams hard into his face, like the deck of the river barge. The carriage swings and grinds against the rails and for a while it feels as if it straddles the track while the rails slip further apart. At this point the lights outside the window grow more numerous, the train passes an angrily ringing barrier signal and then a whole block of dark housing with emptily gaping windows. A station sign flicks past but Adrian has no time to read the name because his father has got up in his usual abrupt way and begun to collect his bags from the luggage rack. Here! he says and pushes the rabbit down under Adrian’s collar. Something sticky and rubbery, excrement or clotting blood, drains from the rabbit’s body and runs down his chest and belly. And then: here! his father says again.
Not once have you asked
. Everyone is trying to squeeze out of the door simultaneously. Adrian can feel the carriage lean over even though it is definitely standing still. The voice over the loudspeaker bangs in his ears. The text on something like a station sign reads
WESTBAHNHOF
. However, there is no station building behind the sign, only a small hatch at one end of a pile of masonry. Behind it is a barrier and, next to the barrier, half a dozen Russian military police have set up a kind of passport control with a sign written in unreadable lettering in red and black. You leave this to me, his father says and immediately starts walking towards the wall of uniformed police and passport officers. Adrian tries to walk after him but the ground still behaves like the river barge, toppling this way and that, and even though he does move forward he seems to be getting nowhere except into an ever-denser dark. The further he enters into the murk, the heavy, swollen taste of the drink seems to rise higher up his gullet and soon nausea wells up inside him. He tries to hold the rabbit’s body in place just below his collar but it glides further and further down; the straps of his case are cutting