On the Run To escape is one thing but to stay alive on the run is another. While Adrian had been sharpening his secret weapon in the institution, he had made no plan, only known that he wanted to get home to his mother. Now he had to face the fact that he had no idea how to find her, that he didn’t know where she lived or what she did. Maybe he would aim for the 11th Bezirk, he thought. Someone in the old house on Simmeringer Hauptstrasse might be in touch with her or at least know where she lived now. Or he could try to look for Uncle Ferenc; but even if Ferenc hadn’t been called up (Adrian suspected that he had been) there was no guarantee that he or any of his friends would be able or even want to help Adrian. The elation seeped out of him and was replaced by worry and indecision, and after spending some time aimlessly walking the streets around Lerchenfelder Gürtel, he returned to Ottakring station by midnight. He tried to find a suitable house where he might sleep for a while but, by then, most houses had locks on their street doors. New regulations made it obligatory for all property owners to ensure that no ‘alien elements’ were present in their buildings. The radio broadcasted warnings about the danger of Bolshevik spies. He had heard Nurse Mutsch speak on the subject. Like flies, she had said, they follow you around. Finally, he managed to get into a tumbledown house on Roseggergasse where part of the attic was used for drying laundry. The drying attic was no more than a bare, rough stone floor under a tall wooden roof. At the top of the stairs, the attic was protected by a rusty iron grille into which a wooden door had been fitted. He found a couple of dirty log-sacks and wrapped himself in them but they did next to nothing to stop the cold that rose from the stone floor. He breathed on his hands, clenched and unclenched them to keep some sensation in them and fell asleep after making himself as small as possible, with his knees pulled up to his chest and his hands tucked into his armpits. In the morning, hunger drove him out to look for food. In the daylight, everyone could of course see where he came from and what sort he was. People turned to glance at his bare feet in muddy sandals and he could almost hear them whispering to each other:
… one of those children …
He dived behind rattling trams, crossed one street, then another. He managed to snatch two apples from a stall at the corner of Ottakringer Strasse and Neulerchenfelder Strasse and ran with them under his shirt towards the big brewery on the other side of the street. The wide gateway was blocked by a barrier but he waited around. When the man in the guard hut started a shouted exchange with someone he knew who was on the other side of the street, Adrian sneaked past into the brewery yard. Near the factory building, a pair of dray horses stood waiting, ready to pull their broad wagons. The horses chomped hay from jute sacks and dumped a load of dung now and then. The rich smell of malt mingled with hay and horse manure reminded him of all the times Mrs Haidinger had made him haul radio batteries all the way to Schwechat and back. Again and again, he was almost clipped by lorries that came into the yard loaded with clunking empties. The sound gave him an idea. The empty bottles must be stored somewhere. If he could take just a few of them he could try to cash in the deposits. No one would think twice about it. There were hordes of boys who did their bit by collecting deposit money on bottles. If he came home with a pocket full of money earned in a respectable way, maybe his mother would write to the board of the institution and tell them that she was going to keep him this time. He managed to get into the huge brewing hall and ended up in front of an imposing machine spitting out endless rows of dark-brown bottles onto a conveyer belt. The bottles whizzed past strong metal arms ending in claws that lifted each one, turned it in the air and put it down again. Workers rushed up and down along the moving belt, hollering and shouting, but the noise of the machine was so overpowering that their voices were dulled as if calling out from behind a glass wall. He came back to awareness with a jump when a hard hand squeezed his shoulder. A man in a foreman’s grey coat loomed behind him and a large face hung over the boy like a lamp. The face might have asked what are you doing here? Or it might have mimed the words. Adrian didn’t actually hear anything. Waiting for my mum, he tried to shout or mime, because he had to answer something. The words were sucked into the clamouring, thumping giant machine that at the same moment grabbed hold of the necks of another half-dozen bottles, tipped them upside down and dumped them back on the belt. Wait outside then. The grip on his shoulder changed into a firm hand on his back that pushed him towards the door. The foreman apparently believed him and, as soon as they were back outside the large hall, past the packing shed and the garage for the large lorries, he completely lost interest in the young intruder. He just let the boy out and shut the factory door behind him. Adrian retreated to the corner of the yard where the drays had been waiting. The horses had left, leaving only the dung heaps and scattered remains of their hay. He crouched down and watched as the dark slowly deepened and moved up the fronts of the buildings. Soon, only the top floors were still lit by reflected sunlight. Adrian felt as if the lower, unlit windows secretly observed him. Then the dark swallowed even the attics. He might have been in the bottom of a well. All around him, walls rose to the sky. Closest to him, the tall factory walls around the brewery. Beyond them: the frontages of the buildings around the marketplace. Not one of them showed a single light. Just as in Ybbs, these buildings seemed to have no exterior: all were part of a system of inner courtyards and narrow, interconnecting paths and passages. Like a prison, but in the outside air. The shadow had by now reached the roof of the factory and, as if that were a signal, the workers walked out into the yard in clusters, five or six at a time. Most of them were men, but there were women among them, too. He wished that one of the women really was his mother and that she would see him waiting and call to him so that everyone else heard it, and then he could run to her. Some of the women pushed bicycles and had already pinned the little phosphorus lamps to their coats, ready to leave by the factory gate, climb onto the saddle and wobble along on the star-shaped network of unlit streets. For by now there was no light anywhere except for a pale, faintly green, reflected band near the horizon. He walked to the house on Roseggergasse under that green, darkening ceiling of sky and climbed upstairs to the attic where the warped wooden door still hung open. At first he thought he would never sleep, what with the grinding hunger in his guts and the raw cold that rose from the stone floor and settled in his bones, but he did fall asleep quite soon after lying down. In his dream, his mother appeared in front of him. She hadn’t stopped at just putting on her red lipstick but was also wearing Mrs Haidinger’s red dress. And I who thought you would help me, she said as she bent over him. He felt terribly afraid because he knew this wasn’t really her. When that face came close to his, the red lipstick-smile cracked and behind it were rows of teeth. Hard, bony fingers reached for his hand that clutched the cartridge, tried to force his fingers back one by one and, when he wouldn’t give way, she lifted his fist to her mouth and bit it with her pointy teeth, as sharp as a shark’s, cutting his knuckles. He screamed, woke and sat up with his heart hammering in his chest. All around him shimmered something icily white, which took him some time to realise was only the frozen vapour from his own breaths. He sucked on his hand and tasted the metallic flavour of the blood that stuck his fingers together. He must have clenched his fist so hard around the cartridge that its point had cut him. He was dreadfully cold by now; the shivering began down by his ice-cold feet and carried on all the way up to his teeth, which were chattering uncontrollably. To exercise his legs or wrap his arms around his body didn’t help at all. He tried to make some sounds, moans or whimpers, just to stop shaking, and rolled helplessly on the floor until he hit the wall. Then he heard a man’s voice, quite near:
… and someone’s been up there, you take my word.
Before he had time to react, the door was pulled open and in the dark above him torchlight sliced the dust-laden air, seemingly at random, into rhomboid shapes full of lit, whirling specks. He couldn’t be sure where he was lying in relation to the jerky beam of light, or if he had been heard, but was aware that he had to stay by the wall. He pulled his arms and legs as close as possible to his body, and waited. A bit away from the sharp-edged light, another male voice called out but it was so harsh and deep it wasn’t possible to separate it from the grating noise made by an iron blade against stone. The caretaker or whoever it was who held the unsteady torch shouted back that he had to lock up first and then, from nearby, came the sounds of chains rattling and a lock clicking. Someone tugged vigorously at the door. The beam of the torch slid upwards as if by its own volition, reached the roof, and then became absorbed into the darkness at the same time as the footsteps on the stairs grew more distant. Adrian stayed lying with his face to the wall as if he was what he had pretended to be: a lifeless object that someone had dumped there. Then he sensed the chilly stickiness between his thighs. He had peed himself. Like Jockerl. He wasn’t the slightest bit tougher. He and Uncle Ferenc had picked up a bird once during one of the summers they had spent together herding cattle down on the floodplain by the Hubertusdamm. The bird had been lying on the mucky grass and looked squashed, as if someone had stood on it. The wing that wasn’t broken was flapping pointlessly in the air. When he held it, about to put it under his shirt, he felt the bird’s heart tapping lightly against the palm of his hand. The sun had hung so low over the river its light was almost white. Now, too, he saw the whiteness. There had been an alcove where they stacked the logs, between the cooker and the sooty wall in the kitchen in the Simmering Hauptstrasse flat. Ferenc advised him to put the bird there, and he had, then settled down next to the bird to keep an eye on it. He didn’t know what kind it was. Its plumage was speckled, its beak long and grey, and the downy feathers under its broken wing were brilliantly white. He had never before felt such a deep and terrible longing to get back to something or somewhere as he did now, when he remembered that sheltered place between the cooker and the soot-stained wall. When his mother had fired the cooker up, it was warm and he could lie there without being seen by anyone. Slowly, he would open the hand that held the trembling bird while, close by, Helmut was asleep on the floor, his sweaty hair sticking to his forehead, and their mother was getting ready to go to work. Then he’d hear her heels on the stairs and the door slam followed by the lighter sound of her feet on the flagged yard as she almost ran across it. The 71 tram came and went on wheels that rattled over the gaps in the rails. He opened his eyes and saw that the dawn light was already strong enough to pick out the shapes of the roof beams in the dark above him. When he made his arms relax their grip on his body, cold cut him like many knives. He breathed on his fingers and the back of his hands until he could move them normally before going to check the wooden door and actually see what he already knew had happened. They had locked him in. The padlock stuck through the hasp had been reinforced with a chain that had been threaded through the iron grid on both sides of the door. He pressed both palms against the upper part of the door. It swung a little on its worn hinges but didn’t shift more than perhaps a centimetre. Pushing his finger between the bars, he could just touch the lock with his fingertips. There was only one thing he could do: dig the hasp out of the warped old wood of the door frame. Sooner or later, it must give way. He gripped the cartridge between thumb and index finger, pushed it out between the bars and began to dig into the wood with its tip. His fingers were soon bleeding again. Then his hand contracted with cramps and he had to massage it, and warm it between his thighs before setting to work again. The light had moved from one end of the attic room to the other when he heard the thuds of the street door open and close several times, and shouts between people who came and went, their shouting multiplied by the echo in the stairwell. One of the voices was the caretaker’s, he felt sure of that, and he quickly backed away to be close to the wall. Too soon, darkness fell again but he had managed to gouge a big pile of woodchips from the door and made it possible to jiggle the hasp about. After a few more hours, it was completely loose. The padlock went with it and the door opened a little but was stopped by the chain that became taut when he tried to push his body through the crack between the frame and the door. The gap widened higher towards the top because the chain had been placed quite low down so, by clinging to the grille, and climbing up it, he succeeded first in getting an arm out, then hauling his body through the gap. By then, he was so exhausted by cold and hunger that he no longer had the strength to stay upright as he tackled the abyss of the stairwell. He crawled backwards down the stairs instead, negotiating one step at a time and holding on to the rail. The white-limed wall looked adrift in dark. The doors to the flats were all locked. No voices, not a sound came from behind them. By the time he had reached the bottom of the stairs, any guiding light from above had disappeared. He fumbled his way to the street door, which thankfully could be opened from the inside, and entered a world of shadows. There was no sky up there. Only a faint leaden sheen reached the street. Adrian kept close to the walls as if afraid that the pavement would give way in front of him if he walked too far out. Now and then, he heard the quiet swishing sound of tyres against cobbles but there would always be some time before he could see the dancing phosphorus glow from the cyclist’s lamp. He looked for lost coins in the telephone boxes but the small metal bowls for returned change were always smooth and empty. Actually, it was meaningless to look for money because food was only available in exchange for coupons and where would he get any coupons without a fixed address? And even if he had coupons and money to pay with, who would give him anything to eat? All you needed to realise that he didn’t belong to anything like a respectable family was a quick look at his face and his clothes. Slowly, the sky grew lighter and the buildings once more emerged from the murk with their closely spaced windows and strictly ordered patterns of panes. He was lying curled up in one of the telephone booths when a uniformed policeman spotted him and dragged him outside. Several passers-by, looking pale and upset, stood about on the pavement. No one stepped forward to kick or hit him. One man actually brought a blanket and spread it over him. The man wore an armband and a lamp on his forehead. He put his hand on Adrian’s shoulder and said in a kind voice that he was to lie still and wait. In the end, an ambulance arrived and he was stretchered into it. The sunlight filtering in through the opaque windows of the ambulance told him that they were on their way up the mountain but, when they stopped, he realised that they had pulled up outside the real hospital, the Wilhelminenspital. He was allowed to spend the rest of the day there, in a bed of his own. A nurse brought him a glass of milk and asked if he was hungry. Then a doctor, a proper doctor, examined him. When Adrian told him where he came from and what he had done, the doctor turned to the nurse and said:
He’ll be staying with us for today. Let’s wait before we inform the institution up the road about his whereabouts.
Then they took him to a large ward where several children were bedded down and put him in a bed, too. The sheets smelled clean and fresh and Adrian fell asleep there and then, an untroubled sleep as if the world no longer existed. The next morning, they came for him and took him back to Spiegelgrund.
The Bunker Naively, he had imagined that his escape attempt would lead to an inquisition session conducted by Mutsch or Rohrbach or one of his other usual tormentors. He was mistaken. Instead, after he had showered, they took him straight to the punishment block in pavilion 11, down into the basement, which seemed to consist mostly of narrow corridors criss-crossed by bulky tin pipes that gave off burping or gurgling noises. One of the corridors ended with a wide iron door closed by massive bolts. His male nurse escort pulled the bolts back and pushed him into a large room, as low-ceilinged as the corridor and lit only by an unshaded bulb in a wall socket. This was the Bunker. And there they all were: seated on one of the benches fixed to the wall he saw the master escapist himself, Zavlacky, next to Peter Schaubach (another Ybbs runaway) and, naturally, Miseryguts, whose head was sagging between his shoulders. None of them seemed particularly surprised to see Adrian turn up. Miseryguts was the only one who spoke but only to state the fact that it was totally insane to run away as Adrian had, in the middle of the night without food or water or warm clothes. No further comments were made. As Adrian would put it later, once you got as far as the Bunker, you were on your own, no one gave a damn and all bridges were burnt – jeer der duchbrennt muss sich um sich selbst kümmern. Even so, being a Bunker detainee brought a certain status. Once you had done time there, no one would try to get the better of you or make fun of you. Evening came. Two male nurses – or were they guards now? – carried a cauldron of soup downstairs. Because all the others had their own bowls, he had to be content with two slices of the dry rye bread that was handed out with the soup. No one offered to share their soup with him. Once the meal was cleared away, the guards returned to take them to their cells on the floor above. Adrian’s cell looked exactly like the lock-up one in his ‘old’ pavilion, with the one difference that here, two benches were fixed to the wall, not just one. When he realised that the other bench had no one assigned to it, it also became clear that his ‘treatment’ was not yet complete and, once that had dawned on him, he of course couldn’t sleep. He spent most of the night speculating about what they would do to punish him. In the morning, he could hear the guards walk along the corridor, unlocking the door to the dormitory where the other boys stayed, then the sounds as they got going, emptying their swollen bladders noisily into the pans, then running water into the basins. His cell remained locked. By mid-morning, they finally came. Doctor Gross and, after him, two nurses. Both ex-asylum nurses, that was easy to see: the same solid build as Nurse Mutsch and the same flat, gormless features. Adrian expected Doctor Gross to acknowledge him, not exactly with a greeting but perhaps with some sign that he had seen Adrian before. But Gross seemed not to recognise him and didn’t address him at all. The older of the two nurses told Adrian to lie on his back. When he didn’t obey instantly, they pushed him down on the bench with practised hands, and then shoved both arms behind the back of his neck. It hurt horribly. The humiliation felt worse still. They manhandled him like an animal. Gross sat down on the edge of the bench and placed the palm of his hand against Adrian’s chest. He held two syringes in his other hand, both about ten centimetres long, but with short needles. Adrian instinctively tried to twist his body away but the quick hands of the nurses had already gripped his kicking legs in vice-like holds while Gross administered the injections, first in one thigh, then in the other. One of the nurses swabbed the needle marks with a cold pad. That was all. What are you doing? Adrian asked pointlessly. Doctor Gross didn’t bother with an answer, just got up and left the room, followed by the nurses. Adrian stayed where he was for a while, feeling slightly nauseous. Nothing else. When he stood to walk over to the half-open door his head spun a little. In the corridor, a little further along, one of the guards stood looking at him with a watchful, worried expression. Because he didn’t want to be on his own in the cell but had no idea where else he would be allowed to go, he turned to walk towards the basement stairs. He saw from the corner of his eye the guard walk into his cell and come back with the institutional clothes he had worn the night before. With the clothes neatly arranged over his arm, the guard followed Adrian down into the basement and along the passage with the oddly slurping pipes. The iron door stood open this time, as if the Bunker welcomed him back. Inside, some twenty boys were waiting with their eyes fixed on him. I hardly felt a thing, he said cheerfully and, to prove it, took a couple of dance steps across the floor. Suddenly, a hideous, icy pain shot up from his legs, all the way into his pelvis. All the blood seemed to be sucked out of his head and he fell, face forward, with both his legs locked in cramp. For a moment, he had a vision of himself as the others must have seen him: his mouth gaping, his eyes staring blindly. He crawled around with his face against the floor, like an insect you have trodden on and almost crushed, and the pain was like nothing he had ever felt before, as if a rusty bolt was being hammered through both his legs to fasten them to the boards. The crowd of boys followed his torment with blank looks on their faces. They had seen it all before. The guard briefly stopped in the doorway before he quietly put down the bundle of clothes on the floor and left, as if he, too, had had more than enough of this spectacle and didn’t care to stay on for more. He barred and locked the door behind him.
Among the Punished With time, he would become familiar with the range of treatments that Doctor Gross and the institution’s other medics would apply to suppress any resistance. He had endured the sulphur cure, generally regarded as the worst. For two weeks afterwards, he could barely support his weight on his legs. Even when lying down on a bench, the cramps could start in his thigh muscles and spread into his hips and lower back. It made resting on his back impossible. As soon as he moved even very slightly, the contractions became so intensely painful that the tears streamed from his eyes. Helplessly, he screamed and flailed about, striking the cell walls as if desperately drawing attention to himself so that someone would come and help him. For several days and nights, he fought the pain as if it were a wild animal. He couldn’t sleep but sometimes went into inexplicable semi-comatose states. Finally, the pain died down a little. It didn’t go away but rather seemed to have retreated back down into his legs where it created a numb, unceasing ache. He still couldn’t stand. As soon as he tried to get up, his legs gave in as if made of rubber. Zavlacky and Miseryguts took turns to bring him food in his cell. It’s important that you keep eating, Zavlacky said with the weary assurance of someone who has endured most things. It was strange to see how much both boys had grown. Miseryguts had powerful shoulders, and Zavlacky, who looked more like a weasel than ever, had an Adam’s apple as prominent as a grown man’s. Whenever he raised his new voice, nobody doubted that he was in charge. He could stand, arms akimbo, and say things like has everyone here understood what I’m trying to tell you? or any questions? After a week in the isolation cell, Adrian was allowed to sleep in the same dormitory as the others. The boy who slept in the bed next to his was known as Gangly, and looked weird, with his long legs, skewed shape, strangely shifty eyes and yellowish horses’ teeth that showed when he smiled. Gangly moved just like Jockerl, in a jerky, evasive way as if any time expecting blows and kicks from every direction. Adrian tried to ask Gangly questions when the two of them were on their own together, but Gangly never replied. He only spoke when there were several people around and then compulsively, in long, incoherent orations. Gangly’s idea was apparently to distract his audience away from himself, as if the flow of words formed a wall he could shelter behind. And he kept smiling while he talked: a weird smile with his lips stretched over his teeth and a dull, submissive look in his eyes. Please don’t hit me, his eyes pleaded. All the same, Gangly was the one who made sure that Adrian got up in the morning and helped him wash and dress while the effect of the treatment meant that he couldn’t stand or walk. It was also Gangly whom Adrian had to thank for being taken down into the Bunker each morning and, when the guards unlocked the big door in the evening, it was Gangly who offered his shoulder for Adrian to lean on as he limped up the steep basement staircase. It was odd, the way we were left to our own devices, Adrian said later when he looked back on these days. As if running away once and for all turned us into a special category of boys. No longer ordinary inmates in a care home but not exactly prisoners, either. I never figured out what we were seen as. The male nurses or nursing assistants who looked after us behaved above all like guards, even though they wanted the title ‘Tutor’ – Erzieher. He remembers two of them especially well. Kohler was the one who had followed Adrian down into the basement after the sulphur injections and brought his clothes. The name of the other one was Sebastian. Because they had the same rota, they were often talked about as the collective Kohler ’n’ Sebastian. The boys were given daily tasks by Kohler ’n’ Sebastian. One morning, they might be told to scrub the basement stairs, or clean the kitchen and the dormitory, or make the beds. Everyone made their own first, of course, but then Kohler, or perhaps Sebastian, would rip everything up and order them to start again. It could go on for hours. If anyone objected, he had to stand in front of his unmade bed, as if in the stocks, while the others, boys who knew what obedience meant, were excused the rest of the bed-making. Then again, they might be divided into labour crews, and one crew left behind to carry out Bunker chores while the rest marched off to do straightforward jobs like ditch-digging, or sawing and stacking logs. It was usually Zavlacky who decided who belonged to which group and, for as long as he did it, the allocation of jobs went smoothly and without any conflicts. Adrian would later recall an occasion when one of their so-called tutors (someone who was neither Kohler nor Sebastian) had turned up in the Bunker to row them for not cleaning tools and returning them in good order to the shed, and then Zavlacky had stepped forward as if to physically defend his group. He went with the man to the tool shed and came back an hour or so later, looking as calm as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. No punishments were meted out either. In their previous pavilion, the situation would have been unthinkable from beginning to end because justice there bore no immediate relationship to the offence, but was no more than a device for maintaining a pre-determined, abstract order. Why this approach to discipline did not apply in the Bunker, Adrian never understood. Unless the fact that they were in the Bunker at all was seen as punishment enough.
The Women’s Pavilion One early December morning, Adrian’s crew had been assigned to ditch-digging around one of the outlying areas of the hospital’s gardens. Frosty nights and an early fall of snow had hindered previous attempts to complete the work. By now, only a few weeks left to go before Christmas and, if the new vegetable plots were to be drained and dug before the serious cold set in, all who could had to help. Adrian was grateful to get away. He was fed up of the stench of stale sweat and old urine that hung around Gangly wherever he went, and after only a few hundred metres’ march in the preferred army-style ranks, he was amazed at how much light and open sky you could find even here, in obscure corners of the walled-in hospital site. They worked for three hours before midday and then sat down to eat the meagre rations they had been given. The place that was to become part of the gardens was a low-lying meadow between two intersecting roads. Pavilion 23, the so-called women’s pavilion, stood behind tall trees on the other side of the meadow. It looked like their own pavilion, Adrian thought, but perhaps a bit longer. It would have seemed abandoned but for the smoke rising from one of the chimneys. When they had been sitting with their spades across their knees for some twenty minutes, two female guards came out and stopped just outside the main entrance. Their clipped voices resounded under the frost-white sky. Soon, twenty-odd young women, in some kind of prison outfits, came outside, stood to attention – Habt-Acht! – and then received an order delivered at screaming pitch, turned and came marching straight towards the boys. Who just stared. The women marched briskly, two by two. When about half the line had passed, one of them suddenly turned to the boys, ripped off her prisoner’s cap and exposed her clean-shaven skull. A little later, two of the other women did the same and raised their arms triumphantly in the air. It enraged the guard in front. She blew her whistle and then walked along the line, slapping the prisoners as she went. The boys were fascinated and kept staring:
Zavlacky, you want to stay away from women like that lot
and Adrian, wonder where they’re off to
and Zavlacky, if they’re not off to labour camp it’s their lucky day
and Adrian, what kind of labour camp?
but by then Zavlacky seemed not to listen anymore, only smiled as if at some sudden inner vision. And then he spat between his drawn-up knees into the grass. Instead, Miseryguts had to step in with missing information:
it’s what they do to punish them for being brazen
they flog the shit out of them
and the entire crew naturally burst out laughing so it was no good trying to find out more. But once they had returned to the Bunker that afternoon, Zavlacky sat down next to Adrian and said that he had better not expect to be allowed to stay. The punishment bunker was a transit station, just like everywhere else. Sooner or later, they would all be called to appear in front of the commission. Adrian didn’t even know what the commission was all about. The commission, Zavlacky explained, is the authority that decides if you’re smart enough to be sent to labour camp or if you’re to join the idiots. And, when Adrian just kept staring at him (Miseryguts: don’t say you fancied that punishment meant sitting around in a heated bunker all day long…) Zavlacky went on to say that he knew of several Bunker inmates who had been sent off to labour camp. Some said it was like a concentration camp though they didn’t treat you like the Commies or the Jews. For a bit, Adrian kept staring at them (Miseryguts: hey, are you to join the idiots or what?) and then asked, was there really no other choice? Zavlacky suggested: try to sell it to the commission that you’re too stupid to be in a camp but just smart enough not to end up with the idiots, it’s not easy but some people make it, nodding towards Gangly who was sitting a bit further away but started at once to chatter and grin as if he couldn’t agree more.
A Parcel From that day on, Adrian expected to be called to appear in front of the commission. He wasn’t. Instead, he received a parcel. It was two days until Christmas Eve. His mother had written his name on the parcel in large letters and, to prevent any mistakes, drawn a ring around the number of his old pavilion. So, she hadn’t been informed about his failed escape attempt, nor where he might end up next. The parcel contained a box of dry biscuits (Adrian shared them at once with Zavlacky and Gangly), a sweater and a pair of socks knitted in thick, grey wool. He couldn’t recall ever having seen his mother knit. She wouldn’t have been able to afford the yarn, didn’t have the time, what with four young children to look after, and, besides, had she had no time to spare, there were other more important things to do. Where did that yarn come from? And was the sweater even meant for him? He tried to put it on and when he saw his bare arms sticking out of the far too short sleeves, the lump forming in his throat swelled and, in the end, even Gangly looked away. The sweater must have been for Helmut, or did his mother truly think he still was that small?
Christmas At this time last year, they had been housed at Ybbs and all Adrian remembered of that Christmas celebration was tired apples being handed out and the booming sound of the river on the other side of the thick, ice-cold walls. The river was heard so distinctly then, as if there had been no other sounds to listen to that freezing winter’s night. It was as cold this year. On the morning of Christmas Eve, they had to scrub their section of the pavilion. Kohler opened all the cell doors and organised two bucket chains: one lot of boys dealt with the buckets and basins full of hot, soapy water from the kitchen, and the other with the buckets of clean rinsing water. Within a few hours, the section was awash with floor-soap foam and water and, because the pavilion wasn’t ever properly heated, the floors soon turned as slippery as oiled glass. It was particularly bad just inside the front door, propped open by Kohler. Inevitably, someone slipped on the wet floor, a frail-looking boy called Felix Rausch. He was on the hot-water team, so boiling water washed over him and he had to be carried, screaming with pain, to casualty. The outcome of this incident was that they were late for the hospital board’s specially arranged Christmas party that every ward and section of the entire institution were under strict orders to attend. The talk was of a Weihnachtsfest, but actually, everything to do with Christmas was forbidden. Not even Christmassy words, so glitteringly light and heart-warming, like Weihnachtsfeier or Weihnachtslieder, were allowed. You’re to say ‘Feast of Light’, Kohler told them, no argument. But there was not much light to be seen in the snowy yard in front of pavilion 3, where the punishment-block boys were lined up to wait for Felix, the burns patient, to come outside. And there he was at last, a strange-looking figure leaning on Kohler. Felix’s head had been bandaged so generously that only the tip of his nose and half of one ear stuck out. Now that their number was complete, they marched off across the creaking layer of snow. Large banners with swastikas on them had been hung from the second floor windows of the institution’s theatre and, outside its entrance, Hitlerjugend youths formed a guard of honour. They held large flaming torches that gave off a sour smell of oil and smoke. But inside the theatre it was dark – and so silent; an almost tangible silence, like in a crypt. Adrian craned his neck to try to catch a glimpse of some of the children from his old pavilion but all he could see was a sea of stiff backs, slightly bent as if for a beating. There was a large podium set up on the stage and on it all the nurses and other members of staff were on parade, their faces turned to the audience. A little to the left of centre, he spotted Mutsch and Demeter, neatly attired in starched uniforms. There was a lectern, too, with swastika flags placed on either side of it. The board members as well as the administrative staff, including accountants and secretaries, stood around the lectern and Doctor Krenek himself stood behind it, speaking from a large bundle of notes. But although he spoke loudly and enunciated clearly, it was as if the words wouldn’t quite take off from his mouth but instead hung on like large bubbles and, all the while, even more word-bubbles were pushing forward from wherever they were created. Unser über alles geliebter Führer – the leader we love more than anyone and anything – made one bubble; der Endsieg and then der ewige Tag eines grossdeutschen Reiches were other bubbles – the final victory, and the eternal day of the greater German Reich – and all the while more saliva-sprinkled bubbles kept being produced, now about the soldiers who fought in snow and ice for their German homeland, and as he spoke, he stroked his head with his hand, again and again. Had something had got stuck in his hair? Adrian was just going to point this out to the boy next to him when he – it was Miseryguts – said:
A LARGE BIRD SITS UP THERE AND SHITS ON HIS HEAD.
He whispered but articulated every syllable very clearly. A wave of subdued laughter ran through the row of boys. In the next moment Doctor Krenek inevitably lifted his hand to his head again and Zavlacky followed up with:
MAYBE IT’S THE FÜHRER HIMSELF WHO SITS THERE AND SHITS IN HONOUR OF THE DAY.
The whisper was just as quiet, almost inaudible, but impossible not to hear. By then they couldn’t keep their laughter down anymore. It fizzed and fermented with such irresistible force that the only way seemed to be to bend forward and try to strangle it between your knees. Adrian just had time to see Kohler’s alarmed face turn towards them from the row in front. Just as well that it grew no worse, as far as the anxious Kohler was concerned, because when the laughter was about to spread to the rows in front and behind them, everything was drowned out by the enormous roar made when the entire audience stood as one man and shouted:
HEIL HITLER…!
Doctor Krenek had just that moment produced another huge bubble with Heil Hitler inside and stood with his right hand stretched up and out. All around him and the lectern, and all over the podium, where the doctors and nurses and allied staff were standing, either in professional whites or in their best outfits, arms were raised in the German greeting. In the audience, the model patients in their grey institutional uniforms aped everyone else, held up their arms and shouted Heil Hitler! in their hoarse voices. All joined in, except Miseryguts who muttered Grüss Gott. But by then Kohler had already got the group moving. Because they had been among the last to get in, they were let out early. Even before the singing had had time to erupt inside the theatre, they were ordered to line up in Zweiereiher and run back to their pavilion. They truly sounded like chain-gang prisoners as they jogged along, breathing heavily, the cold prickling around their eyes. When they arrived, they were not even allowed to go into the Bunker but were told to undress immediately and go to bed. Adrian slept with the ugly, far too small and roughly knitted sweater jammed between his legs, and went to sleep wondering if being brazen might be something as seemingly innocent as to take one’s cap off to show one’s shaved head. When he got down into the Bunker the next morning, neither Miseryguts nor Zavlacky was there. Adrian asked around to find out where they had gone but nobody knew. Gangly only showed his yellow teeth in his usual grin and talked wildly. Felix Rausch, the boy whose face had been scalded, had vanished and his destination was also unknown.
Facing the Commission Four days into the New Year, on Monday 4 January 1943, Adrian Ziegler finally appeared in front of the commission. The interrogation took place in pavilion 1, the same pavilion in which Doctor Gross on another January day two years earlier had measured and described all Adrian’s unseemly flaws. Half a dozen people were seated behind tables placed in a semi-circle around the central area of the room where he was told to stand at Habt-Acht. The director of the reform school Doctor Krenek, occupied the middle of the semi-circle as the would-be leader of the inquisition. To Krenek’s left and right, grimly concentrated men and women sat behind piles of documents and folders. Many of them he had never seen before but he assumed they must be the providers of ‘expertise’ – pedagogically trained staff from the social services department who had been called in to attend the questioning. He did recognise the psychologist Edeltraud Baar and one of the teachers from the school pavilion, a Mr Ritter. The usual Führer portrait hung on the wall behind just behind Ritter. One of the experts, who seemed to function as some kind of secretary because he was writing all the time, addressed Adrian without even looking up from his notes, telling him to state his name and when he was born, and then, because he obviously wasn’t speaking distinctly enough, demanded that he repeated the answers several times. When at last everyone was satisfied, Doctor Krenek opened one of the folders and started to read aloud in a declamatory, almost indignant voice from what seemed to be an official compilation of various reports, all about Adrian.
DOCTOR KRENEK: [reads] Adrian Z has shown himself to be a degenerate, ingratiating character, which stems from his depraved and filthy home conditions and his upbringing by an alcoholic father and a frivolous, flighty mother with unmistakably limited gifts. [Leafs through the pages.]
Erbbiologisch ist die Sippe sehr minderwertig – the family’s biological inheritance is of very low quality. On the father’s side, a long history of work-shy individuals and drunkenness; on the mother’s, of debility and imbecility. One of the mother’s brothers was kept at Steinhof for a considerable length of time.
Adrian learnt early to use cringing as his approach to life. His nature is essentially frivolous, obsequious and full of tricks while on the trail of personal advantage, otherwise he is idle and recalcitrant.
One care worker has reported that A. Z. occasionally finds it so difficult to concentrate that he seems barely aware of his surroundings and, thus, only physical means serve to make him conscious of his situation. The veracity of this observation is confirmed by several other, mutually independent witnesses:
[A. Z.] has a certain ability to think on his feet, an expression of fast reflexes rather than of intelligence. He is well versed in deceit, ‘hardened’ and, in his ‘gang’, assumes a leadership role but is ready to submit when challenged.
When told to write a school essay on the subject of his aspirations for work in the future, he stated a wish to train as a waiter because his father knew somebody who could take him on. In other words, the degenerate pattern is repeated in the youth’s dreams about the future. To him, work entails pretending to oblige, the aim of service is to steal and so forth.
The disciplinary issues pertaining to Adrian Z add up to a formidable list:
On 22 March last year, he was entrusted with the task of fetching an additional portion of the evening meal from the institution’s kitchen but skulked in an unknown location before returning from his errand. When required to explain the delay, he threw the tray on the floor in a fit of rage. His punishment was to be isolated from the other children for a brief period but, instead of spending the time in reflection about his severe misdemeanours, he enticed his carer into the cell on the pretence of having ‘something to show her’ and then attacked her ‘with blows and kicks’.
Adrian Z’s character traits emerge clearly from these notes. Ostensibly, he gives the impression of a well-behaved boy – although far from gifted. However, behind the quiet surface lurks a manipulative intelligence worthy of a ruthless criminal. Thus, for example, immediately prior to the escape attempt on 22 October this year, was a period of reasonable calm. Day-notes entries include:
06/10 A. Z. causes no trouble, well-behaved; pays attention to his work and completed it …
14/10 A. Z. works hard; offers to help with doing the dishes …
16/10 A. Z. replies politely and shows interest …
In fact, throughout this period he had stealthily planned the escape that he executed on 22 October: A. Z. asks leave to go to the toilet, then breaks the window locks with a tool he must have had in readiness to this very end. Later, he is picked up in a very poor state and taken to Wilhelminenspital where he is cared for overnight.
Even though his attempt to run away was a pathetic failure and clumsily executed, it had obviously been planned for a long time with the help of at least one, if not several, helpers or conspirators.
EXPERT 1: [interrupts his note-taking] Doctor Krenek. In my opinion, this youth isn’t paying full attention to the proceedings. He appears to be laughing.
DOCTOR KRENEK: [irritably, to Adrian] What are you looking at?
ADRIAN Z: Nothing … at our Führer.
DOCTOR KRENEK: You’re to listen and look at me, and speak up when you’re spoken to.
ADRIAN Z: [stares straight ahead]
EXPERT 1: As a matter of fact, he was laughing.
DOCTOR KRENEK: Do you have any understanding of why you’re here?
ADRIAN Z: […]
DOCTOR KRENEK: You might begin by telling us who helped you to run away. Then we’ll have that matter out of the way, once and for all.
ADRIAN Z: […]
EXPERT 2: [leafs through documents] In my view, it’s high time to go to the root of the trouble. Now, as far as I can see, the youth spent three years in the Münnichplatz primary school and was, even then, a knowing rebel. He failed in most subjects. Despite being urged to, he refused to join in the Heimabend programme of home get-togethers for the young.
ADRIAN Z: I couldn’t go to any of the Heimabenden because I had to look after my brother.
EXPERT 2: That’s a lie. He didn’t attend any Heimabend because his father had been deemed of inferior racial stock. Hence, he was unfit for wartime service.
ADRIAN Z: That was before, when I was with the Haidingers.
DOCTOR KRENEK: Quiet unless spoken to!
EXPERT 2: Can this boy tell us anything he has learnt in school? Anything at all?
EXPERT 1: Describe a right-angled triangle.
ADRIAN Z: […]
EXPERT 1: Name the three longest rivers in Europe.
ADRIAN Z: […]
EXPERT 2: The date our Führer was born?
ADRIAN Z: […]
EXPERT 2: He has no idea. Obviously an idiot.
DOCTOR KRENEK: What was all that about your brother?
ADRIAN Z: I couldn’t go to any Heimabenden because I had to look after my brother. Besides, no one wanted me to be there.
EXPERT 2: For good reason.
ADRIAN Z: Mrs Haidinger always liked Helmut better and if she bought things or had clothes made up, it was always for him. So he could go to those evenings because he was blond, but Mrs Haidinger didn’t think I should be there because I wasn’t and it didn’t look right.
EXPERT 1: Being present at the at-home evenings is a duty for everyone.
DOCTOR KRENEK: And now, can we return to the agenda? [Looks sternly at some of the experts who are chatting, some even trying to hide smiles behind their hands.]
ADRIAN Z: There’s nothing wrong with Helmut, there’s no need to kill him. Dad always used to say that Mum must’ve got him with someone else because he … [Bursts into tears.]
EXPERT 2: [gets up, approaches Adrian Z, close enough to slap him hard across the face] You speak when spoken to. Is that understood? And you can cut out that pretend-weepiness at once.
DOCTOR KRENEK: [speaks with surprising gentleness] Where did you think you were going to run to when you got out of Spiegelgrund, Adrian?
ADRIAN Z: [mumbles something]
EXPERT 2: Speak up when you’re spoken to!
DOCTOR KRENEK: Home, did you say? But you have no home. You had a foster-home but you didn’t want to stay there either. Where did you think you’d stay?
ADRIAN Z: [mumbles]
EXPERT 1: But the person you call ‘mother’ is a racially inferior woman, a depraved and work-shy parasite who hasn’t the slightest notion of the responsibility and strength of mind required to bring up children nowadays.
DOCTOR KRENEK: [bends forward, raises both hands with the palms inclined upwards] You take a look at these hands of mine, Ziegler! They are large and strong and white and always clean. When they strike a blow, they remain clean and pure because, when they hit out, the blows are for justice. I wish that your hands were the same as mine. But instead of showing your hands, you hold them hidden behind your back. You use your hands for deceitful things, to steal and to conceal. Now, there are many places where we can send boys like you to teach them what working with their hands is like, like a Jugendschutzlager where you might have to work twelve hours a day.
ADRIAN Z: [still speaking almost inaudibly] I don’t want to … to go to a camp.
DOCTOR KRENEK: Then you must take the opportunity to stretch out your hands, straightaway, and say: ‘I have done what is wrong but I will improve from now on.’ He who has nothing to hide, has nothing to fear, Adrian. So, begin with naming the boys who helped you escape.
ADRIAN Z: Nobody helped me.
DOCTOR KRENEK: You’re a hardened miscreant. You disobey me out of sheer defiance. Camp is the only place for you.
ADRIAN Z: I did it on my own.
DOCTOR KRENEK: Had you only had the wit to spend more time pulling your weight, actively work as best you could for a healthy, forward-looking community, then you wouldn’t have been standing here in front of us. Indeed not. Now, had you thought about that? As things stand, you have obviously chosen to make a virtue of your sins.
ADRIAN Z: I don’t want to go to a camp; all I want is –
DOCTOR KRENEK: All we want is to cure you.
ADRIAN Z: [weeps] Cure me of what … what will you cure me of?
Mr Guido And so he was dispatched to Mödling again, just as he was when his foster parents had thrown him out. Only, this time, there was no father who stepped out of the director’s cupboard to save him. Only Mr Guido mattered. Guido’s view of Mödling, as he put it to Adrian, was that you were there because you deserved to be, that Mödling was something that had grown out of your own head and, if you wanted to be released from there, you first of all had to rid yourself of whatever was in your head. There was nothing else for it. Guido’s surname was Peters. In this institution, almost all the staff were men and everything had a military flavour. Clothes must almost be immaculately looked after and time was even set aside for kit maintenance. To get from somewhere to somewhere else, like the dining hall or the gym hall, the boys had to line up and march. When floors were to be scrubbed or toilets cleaned, jobs carried out by teams according to a rota, a foreman-type always came along to force the pace and shout, beat and kick those who were too slow. Guido Peters was one of the worst slave-drivers. When they marched, he walked alongside to keep an eye on everyone, yelling things like get a move on and back straight and doling out slaps. But later in the day, when it was time for kit cleaning or at bedtime in the dormitory, he might jokingly grab somebody by the shoulder or say something jolly to show that all that yelling meant no harm after all. His gait was curiously soft and elastic, so you easily missed that he had come to watch you. He told Adrian that he, Guido, had worked with young people for twenty years and knew how they thought and felt. Take yourself, now. I know what you’re thinking, Guido said. His round face was somehow rubbery, without a single wrinkle and looked younger than he actually was – which was late forties, maybe, or early fifties. You’re thinking that you want to escape from this place, he said. Adrian kept looking at Guido because he didn’t dare not to. Relax, Guido said, I’ll look after you. People who work here believe that only fear can make boys like you learn to obey but I know what boys need and that’s simply someone to trust. I might pick you to be a leader, a Gruppenführer, he added. All you’ve got to do is behave yourself. It was the first time that an adult had ever spoken to him in this way, as if Adrian was not only grown up enough to understand but also as if there was a bond between them. Day in and day out the eyes in that large, rubbery face kept watching him, during the gymnastics lessons, in the dining hall, on their marches across the yard from the auditorium to the dormitory, but Guido showed nothing; on the contrary, he often came along to shout move on, you lazy arsehole and slam his whole hand into the back of Adrian’s head. But from the day of their talk, he knew that, even if Guido hit him, he wasn’t to take it seriously. In fact, slapping was Guido’s way of reassuring the others that Adrian wasn’t given any special treatment. The trust between them was not affected. Sometimes, when Guido was on night duty, he would patrol the dormitory after lights-out and, although his movements were soundless, Adrian would hear his voice as he stopped occasionally on his strolls between the beds to say something in confidence to one of the boys. And Adrian would think, please come to me, too, Mr Guido, come to me. Then, one day, it happened. Mr Guido stopped to talk to him. He had brought a whole ration of bread as well. He said that he knew what was on Adrian’s mind just then. Girls, right? Guido said. That’s what boys think about. Young things with soft breasts and wet little cunts. Right? he said, as he probed underneath the blanket for Adrian’s sex and touched it. Adrian, who was lying flat on his back, didn’t dare to move a millimetre. I know what boys think about, Guido mumbled while his treacherous hand stroked Adrian’s penis from root to glans, until the terrified limb reluctantly stiffened. Tell me, am I right or am I right? he mumbled and bent forward, still holding Adrian’s penis, to whisper into his ear with warm, moist lips, don’t be afraid, despite your shameless behaviour I’ll help you to get out of here. Guido always keeps his promises. Adrian wriggled uneasily because by now his sex had gone painfully hard and pulsating in response to Guido’s insistent rubbing. Guido laughed. I’ll make you group leader one day, he said and then let go. It soon became obvious that Guido had several favourites among the boys and one of them, who was called Roman, was especially select. He was blond, blue-eyed and heavily built, with a broad neck and shoulders. Roman’s back was always the straightest of all when they lined up and his deep, powerful voice the loudest and most resounding when they sang. Roman was also the first to call out the correct answers to the questions their teacher asked the class. The trouble was that he had instantly identified Adrian as the tinker’s lad he was, an alien exiled to the great Mödling community without having done anything to earn his place and, consequently, someone who should be excluded, one way or another. It began imperceptibly with the odd push from behind when they were lining up for a march, or roughing up Adrian’s bed when he had finished making it, or hiding one of his shoes just when they were ordered outside into the exercise yard. The mornings in the washroom were worst, when dozens of legs twisted themselves between his to make him fall to the tiled floor that was slippery with soapy water. Once, they succeeded and when he leapt furiously at the boy closest at hand, Roman immediately put his arm around Adrian’s neck and wrestled him back down onto the floor. In that instant, the usually unruly crowd of boys split itself into two groups, one on each side of the two entangled fighters, and rhythmically called out their names, on one side Roman! and on the other (laughing madly) the name that had become Adrian’s:
tinker! tinker! tinker! tinker!
None of the carers intervened, not even Guido, whose rubber features Adrian had glimpsed clearly, sometimes behind but sometimes in among the wildly yelling but, by now, scared boys who surrounded him. Guido, who was holding a towel and a piece of soap, stepped forward first when two other carers had detached Roman’s sweating, terrified body from Adrian’s grip. All around them, the echo of the whiplash sound of water from the showers hitting the tiles was overlaid by the shrill screams of fifty-odd boys, a layer of sound that floated on top of the hollow, slapping noise of the water. Guido stared at Adrian as if he realised exactly who he was looking at for the first time. And he shook his head. Do you think you’ll get away with it? he said. Do you think tinkers and half-Jews like you end up here by chance? Any idea what they do to Jews nowadays? (He didn’t seem to expect answers to his questions.) I’ll tell you about Jews, they’re turned into soap. He held out the bar of green institutional soap to Adrian. Two hundred and fifty of them, at least, go into a bar this size. Adrian washed himself with it. I’m not a Jew, he said. Guido scrutinised him from top to toe, then knocked several times on his round, hairless skull with his knuckles. I’ll help you get out, he said. His rubber face stretched itself into a large smile. You’ll see, you’ll get out of here in one piece.
A Degenerate Character From that day on, Guido came to him at night. Adrian lay awake, waiting. Mostly, Guido touched him but he would sometimes insist that Adrian would do the same for him and Adrian obeyed as he knew he must to be left alone and finally be allowed to sleep. The beds looked like ships in the bluish, shimmering night-light, all of then sailing off towards the same distant, grey horizon. He imagined himself standing at the bow of one of the large Donau ships that his Uncle Ferenc used to fantasise about captaining. The journey went upstream but, because it was dark, one couldn’t see the land towering up on either side of the river, and the further he travelled the more powerfully the currents tugged at the boat’s hull until the water grew so violent it felt as if the ship moved backwards and down rather than forwards. He was woken by someone holding his head in a vice-like grip but it was only Guido, whose hot breath swept over the side of Adrian’s face while his small hands fumbled underneath the blanket. Adrian was told to stay completely still and hold the round, hairless skull with both hands while its lips and teeth were busy nibbling and biting his nipples and then moved on to lick and suck at his penis as if it were an udder. He wanted to push the large head away or, at least, to the side, but Guido shoved a hard, determined finger up Adrian’s anus and when he was about to scream, Guido covered his mouth with his other hand and swore at him to shut up. The next morning, it was as if nothing had happened. Guido stood in the changing room, as upright and strict as always, handing out towels and soaps to the boys, and when they lined up, he didn’t even glance Adrian’s way. Adrian realised of course that this was how Guido wanted it. Clearly, if you wanted to stay in favour, you had to be prepared to show willing at any time. Adrian tried to look elsewhere, to make his face neutral as if he didn’t even know who Guido was. The game of pretence between them went on like this for a few days. Guido apparently loved this game, because when he came back for his night-time visits, he brought substantial gifts, like extra slices of bread and a little package of margarine that Adrian was allowed to spread on the bread, and sometimes also apples and sweets. There was of course a price to be paid for all these delicacies and while Adrian carried on chewing and sucking on all that Guido stuck into his mouth, his body was subjected to every kind of obscure exploration. Some nights, Guido was at it for so long that the hours of the day and night seemed to shift. Even when Guido did not come to his bed, Adrian stayed wide awake and waited all night. During the day, his seat in the schoolroom transformed into a freight barge cleaving the long swells in the shipping channel of the river while, on the upper deck, he was slowly rocked to sleep as he rested on the loose metal hold-covers that had grown warm from the heat of the engine. Because he had at this stage become used to people constantly doing things to his body, he didn’t even realise that his teacher had bent over him and was trying to shake him awake. Behind the teacher, there were others, all serious men and women wearing white coats. Doctors and psychologists. They accompanied him back to the dormitory and watched as his bed was given a thorough once-over and his treasure trove discovered: a pillow case full of bits of bread and wrappers of margarine rations. Adrian confessed immediately the source of these offerings. Strangely enough, he was never punished for his confession. The white-clad delegation withdrew after exchanging quick, meaningful glances. That night, and for a few more to follow, Adrian slept almost normally. No Guido loomed into sight. Two days later, there was more upheaval. In the middle of a lesson, a secretary came into the classroom to call Adrian to the director’s office immediately. At this time, Mr Heckermann no longer ran the institution and the new director didn’t have a bird-like beak and high, pointy shoulders like a bird’s, but the swastika banner was the same and so was the portrait of the Führer that had hung on the wall when the director had walked from his desk to open the door to the magic cupboard at the back of the room. No such miraculous intervention would take place today. Adrian realised this immediately when he entered and saw Guido Peters standing in front of the director’s desk. This was another Guido Peters than the man Adrian had come to know. The sunny smile had been wiped off his lower face and his back was as straight as if his lumbar curvature had been hammered flat. His eyes were narrow slits and his lips so firmly pressed together that the saliva sprayed from his mouth when he, gesturing with an index finger that trembled with indignation, gave an account of the perversities that Adrian had tried to tempt him into carrying out. Not only had Guido himself been a victim of the youth’s lewd acts but Adrian had tried to inveigle other children into sodomy in the shower room. The bits of bread found in Adrian’s bed were clearly blackmail payments that this depraved delinquent had received from other boys in return for not telling on them. When Guido had finished, the director turned to Adrian and asked him in a stern voice if there was any truth in what Guido had said. Adrian did not dare to meet Guido’s eyes. He looked down at the carpet and shook his head. In that moment, he knew that no one would believe him. The director told Guido to leave and, once the door closed behind him, ordered Adrian to go into the room where the secretary was sitting. Adrian watched as one specialist after another came and went. At one point, there seemed to be as many as four or five of them in the director’s office and their voices sounded upset. Either, he’s seriously disturbed or else he’s like that himself, he heard one voice say. How else could he have put up with it for so long?
The Bleeding Führer In the end, he was told to go back into the office. The Führer looked him in the eye but the director did not, so Adrian decided that it was better to stare at his Führer. While the director held forth, Adrian kept his eyes fixed on the Führer and observed how one wound after another opened up on the great commander’s face. First, a small wound in his cheek, just below his left eye, and then another one a bit further down, by the cheekbone. And a third one, by the chin. At once, blood started to flow from all of them. His first thought was that Hannes Neubauer had been right all along and that the Führer was actually an air force pilot in disguise. But he changed his mind when it came to him that the Führer was bleeding for him – for Adrian. He carried on watching the face in front of him to see if its expression would change now that the wounds were opening up everywhere. It did not. How could it? Bleeding or not, it was the Führer’s unyielding face. The only thing that happened was that the blood ran down over the white institutional wall below the portrait. Outside these walls, the car that was to take him back to Spiegelgrund stood ready and waiting. It delivered him to pavilion 17, section Bu – for Bildungsunfähige, for the severely retarded, the unteachables.