The Chosen Ones (52 page)

He tries to catch names he recognises. But those who get a mention are children from pavilion 15.
Becker, Julius
, he thinks, the boy with the scissors; but, of course, Becker’s name is not there. And the voice reads on:

Please, turn off here, Adrian had said to Ewald and, without asking any questions, Ewald had swung the car to the right and driven down the long slope to the quayside. Down here, between the silos, it feels much warmer. The air flows and quivers in the roar of the engines as if the entire harbour basin were enclosed in barely transparent, curving glass. Tankers are reversing out towards the loading jetties, the drivers hanging halfway outside the opened cabin doors. They shout and gesticulate to each other but the noise is so tremendous that it is practically impossible to pick up any sounds other than the rumbling of the engines and the rattling of the crane chains as the heavy loads are swung on land. Two harbour workers in hi-viz vests stand with their legs wide apart, ready to grab hold of the long feeder tube from the one of the tankers, then they slowly guide the end of the tube to a gridded opening and, soon afterwards, the grain starts rushing down into the cistern while both men step back and light their cigarettes. Adrian looks around. He doesn’t recognise the place but it must have been here. And it must have been here in Albernen Hafen where dead bodies ended up after being carried downstream, all the dead who Uncle Ferenc had been talking about, the nameless ones who exist nowhere except possibly in the memories of some of those
who missed them but never knew where they went after leaving their homes. He and Ewald drive past the long row of harbour store-buildings until the road ends at a turning circle. Two trucks with concrete mixers mounted on the back are parked here. The massive engines are idling while the mixers are being cleaned by two workers. One of them strides around, directing the jet from a high-pressure hose so powerful that it sounds like a gunshot every time the stream of water hits the metal shell of the mixer. The other one follows, using a broom with an extra-long handle to try to scrape off clumps of concrete that still stick to the metal. Both men are wearing brilliant orange overalls but their bare, tanned skin shows underneath. They’re just like Ferenc. Now, Adrian knows that he is in the right place and, for a moment, he feels almost happy. He gestures to Ewald to stop and climbs out of the car. Ewald wants to say something but knows he won’t be heard over idling engines and the concrete mixers, which are rumbling emptily. By now, it’s incredibly hot, as if the daylight itself has been heated and begun to melt in the diesel fumes and is pouring down into the narrow cleft between loading jetties and store buildings. On top of it, insects fill the air. Insistently buzzing flies and horseflies seem crazed by the greasy exhaust smell. Adrian tries to smack them with the back of his hand but it doesn’t help much. On the far side of the tarmacked area, two gateposts mark where a couple of roughly made steps lead down to a small burial chapel half-overgrown with shrubs and climbers. You see the graves first when you come down the cracked, mossy steps. Unlike a proper cemetery, the paths between the gravestones do not run straight and have no distinct outlines, but instead wind and probe, as if seeking the right direction on their own. Actually, these are not pre-prepared paths but tracks worn by the footsteps of visitors. On one of the long summer afternoons when Adrian and his uncle had been keeping an eye on the cattle down by the Hubertusdamm,
Ferenc had told him of the forgotten, partly buried cemetery down by Albernen Hafen. They had been lying side by side on the rough, gravelly grass and looking up into the warm, empty evening sky, and the insects had been swarming over the riverbanks in big, black clouds, just as they do now. The river took many of them back, Ferenc had said. Especially when the plan was to control the flow by constructing a cut to make the river go where it does now, and then dam and drain the old river branches. Several of Ferenc’s relatives had joined the labour crews. Most of those who didn’t die from typhus during the digging years were taken by the water and either disappeared for ever or else surfaced with all the other drowned corpses just here, down at Albern. For some reason, one of the river currents created an eddy right there, Ferenc had said. The flowing water forms whirlpools as it always does when surface water clashes with stronger and very much deeper currents. Where many currents meet you’ll get a pool of still water, and in it a lot of rubbish from miles away upstream will tend to collect, like grass, pieces of wood, old boxes and even whole sets of furniture. And human corpses, of course. Lots of corpses. Some of them had been in the water all winter and were so inflated with gas that they seemed barely human. So, this is what happened: they were all buried where they were found, at the tip of the promontory. The graveyard grew quite large in the end. Not that the diversion digging was of any use, Ferenc had added. Even though the river was supposed to be regulated, it flooded its plains again and again and, after each flood, they had to strengthen the high-water dam even more and add a new cemetery on the land side of the old one, just to make room for all the new dead bodies that came floating along.

The banked-up ridge running along the shore to Adrian’s right is the latest attempt to stop the river from flooding this burial ground. There, the dead lie close to each other in disorderly rows, side by
side because there are so many of them. Some graves are marked by a wooden board stuck in the ground that says
Unknown, nameless
. Or else, nothing, or only a date:
14/04/1931
. Is that the day when the dead, one or many, were buried? But not all the graves are untended. Here and there, tree seedlings and weeds have been cleared away and fresh flowers put into an old paint-pot, or else the image of a saint has been left on guard, or perhaps a lantern with a burnt-down candle placed inside a glass container stained on the outside by muck and dead insects. The boards or stones on some of the graves even carry inscribed names:
Martin
, it says on a wooden stick, and on a stone a bit further away,
Hildegard
. Adrian wants
Jockerl
to be written on a memorial and, at one point, almost thinks he sees a
J
, just a faint mark on a stone. When he tears the moss away it is another name and there are so many critters crawling around his mouth and nose that he hardly dares to breathe. And there are insects creeping and swirling on and around the back of his neck and head, and swarming around his forehead and eyes. Strangely enough he can hear the angry whining of their wings even though he can no longer hear the clamour of the harbour with its loading cranes and stores from only a stone’s throw away. The marshy, sodden ground of the graveyard is on another level, as if it belongs to a different world. Using what strength he still has, he clambers up the embankment, holds on to shrubs and roots until he stands in the sunlight at the top. Up there, the wind blows and the insects vanish as if by magic. In the glow of the setting sun, the branch of river spreads out in front of him, all the way down to the power stations at Freudenau. Turning to look in the opposite direction, there is Albern and its narrow harbour entrance, and there is Ewald, smoking a cigarette next to his bright red SEAT. In the middle of the river, a barge is chugging upstream as if moving across a floor of light. Someone shouts. It is Ewald.
Adrian!
he calls.
Adrian sees his mouth opening and closing and his hand pointing to his watch. He turns back to the river for a last look. The barge has disappeared and only the shapeless expanse of water is left, in constant motion but apparently immobile, only reflecting the light from above as if from the unseen inner surface of the sky,

and the voice reads on

There is by now a very extensive literature about and around the project of euthanasia of children that was initiated at Spiegelgrund by the Nazi regime, and it would create too long a digression to refer here to the material that I have relied on. However, I must take this opportunity to thank especially Friedrich Zawrel, whose childhood and youth and late, unexpected encounter with his former tormentor Heinrich Gross have inspired corresponding passages in this novel. In many interviews for books, films and lectures, as well as in conversations with me, Zawrel has given insightful and detailed accounts of what an upbringing at Spiegelgrund could be like and this has been invaluable for my writing. I also want to thank Andrea Fredriksson-Zederbauer for all her help with research for and editing of the book, as well as for her many critical and constructive comments. Thanks also to René Chahrour and Herwig Czech, and to Werner Vogt, whose talk on 28 April 2002 at the burial in Wien’s Zentralfriedhof of the remains of the several hundreds of Spiegelgrund victims of child murder is quoted here in an abbreviated form (pp.546–7).

The translator is responsible for translations of German words, phrases, text extracts (e.g. from case notes) and concepts, and also, now and then, the brief explanations.

Steve Sem-Sandberg was born in 1958. He divides his time between Vienna and Stockholm.

THE EMPEROR OF LIES