Up in their Heidelberg garret, V.Ess.43/x and V.Ess.44/x, commonly known as Hinz and Kunz, were sitting in high-backed leather wheelchairs. Their hands and heads were now fully pink with the innocent inflated blush of infants. Their lips, eyelids, ears, noses, and fingernails were yet to develop and take on a more human appearance; these had obtained only a grey crispy quality that seemed more like the rest of their bodies, which still remained in the jet-black atrophy of the forest bog in which they had been found preserved. They enjoyed or endured long days of static silence and long nights of unimaginable sleep, and possibly dreams. Some of the more dedicated night staff had observed movement behind the grey eyelids, indicative of mind activity in slumber. There had been some reports of whispering. But nobody had actually seen or heard them talking. As the months turned into years, Superintendent Capek, the medical administrator of the Rupert the First Retirement Home, became less and less interested in their inactivity. Their attendants, monitoring, and care were running like clockwork and that was the way he liked it. Even the officious Himmelstrup had stopped visiting and sending memos, his Department of Internal Affairs having been renamed and its growing profile in the rapidly changing politics becoming far more important than before. The dawn of the Third Reich came with greater and greater powers being given to Himmelstrup, his powers expanding under his beloved Führer.
All conversation about the disappearance of Professor Schumann had long since ended. That subject was an embarrassment to them all, and Capek suspected that the old meddler had simply died somewhere in London. It would be better for Schumann if he had. Schumann’s mission in London to find another Erstwhile, one that had been fabled to have a voice and a working intelligence, had failed. Patient 126 turned out to be just a lunatic. The other two, Dick and Henry, or whatever their names were, had vanished. Compton, the London overseer of the project, had been attacked and grievously injured. Some said by the decrepit old Jew himself. Himmelstrup found this difficult to believe. Compton had been a large, solid man who could have swatted the frail old man at will. Then there was the dilemma about the money. Schumann had found a way to withdraw the entire allowance he had been awarded to complete his task. Every pfennig had been drained from under Compton’s nose, even before it had been sliced off. Himmelstrup’s immediate response was to send a posse of his elite to find Hector Schumann and drag him back. Himmelstrup knew how to treat such treachery, and his growing power and the evolution of his department into what soon would be called the Gestapo had both the means and the desire. But ultimately his name was pinned to this minor disaster, and it would benefit his ascent to have it known. Fortunately another shift in emphasis was coming from the Führer himself. There were greater issues at stake in Africa than a few shrunken corpses. It was time to unite the German domain in all its colonies. Especially in the vastness of Africa. Finances were changing direction, gaining magnitude and velocity. Best to write off and forget one thieving Jew until after the triumph was achieved.
A week later and Capek’s complacency was dumbfounded and overturned when Hinz and Kunz also vanished from the indifferent scrutiny of his staff and their shuttered attic ward. How would he tell Himmelstrup and what would be the consequences?
During his last infuriated visit, Himmelstrup had mention that all his other researches had paid off and that he had received excellent levels of intelligence about every other subject dealing with Africa. When he was asked why Africa was suddenly so important, he had turned on Capek.
“Because it will be ours soon! We already own four colony states and have control over the mineral wealth of another three. Africa will be the storehouse for the Reich’s war machine. We are sending troops there now and nothing is in our way.”
“How did Professor Schumann’s contribution help in this conquest?” asked the baffled Capek.
Himmelstrup had no answer because he had no idea. The Führer’s own vision had guided this ridiculous quest. What a few living corpses and a crooked old Jewish professor had to do with mining the wealth out of a continent, he never knew. So he responded in the only way he could and bellowed into the superintendent’s quaking face, “What fucking contribution!”
He then stormed out of the retirement home and had not contacted them again. So perhaps the whereabouts of the “living corpses” was no longer of interest; perhaps Capek did not even have to report the event. The recent news of ships full of troops being sent to Africa had verified everything that the officious little man had said, and his growing rank may have even moved him into a more important position. Capek was beginning to think he was off the hook; then he reminded himself that Hinz and Kunz might be human. In which case his moral Christian duty was to care and, even worse, to set about finding them. Three days later news of their whereabouts came to him via one of the female nurses who had access to the upper floors.
“Standing about on the corner they were, just awaiting like.” She sniffed through a long winter cold, her red nose and wet words snuffling into a soggy handkerchief.
“But why there? Where do they think they want to go?” Capek asked himself via the coughing nurse.
“Don’t know, sir, but they are there or abouts all the time, day and night.”
It took Capek almost an hour to cross the misty damp city. The recent snow had turned into frozen slush, which made walking slow and hazardous. There was more than the usual amount of military activity in the streets. The weather had given permission for them to use their more robust vehicles to carry troops and goods into civilian territories. Monstrous half-track caterpillars crunched and groaned their way through the frozen snow, leaving black oiled lines gouged into the silent streets. The marshalling yards seemed to be the focus of all the efforts.
Is this what had attracted them? Made them leave their comfortable beds in the retirement home? Because this is where they had been seen.
Capek went to the exact spot that the nurse had so clearly described. They were not there. Only a bustle of soldiers and the continual clanking movements of goods and cattle trucks. He had never seen so many. Probably another ridiculous and extravagant military exercise, he thought to himself. He looked at the closest wagon, one in a tethered line of twenty or more rolling stock, and noted that it and all the others had been fitted with strengthened locking levers and new shiny padlocks. Such a waste of money, he mumbled to himself. All the heavy wooden sliding doors were open and expectant except one. He walked up to it and peered inside: In the far empty corner crouched tight in the apex they sat. Somewhere they had found two identical trench coats that disguised their strangeness.
“What in God’s name are you doing in there?” he barked. Hinz or Kunz—he could never really distinguish which was which—raised an arm and beckoned him inside. He tutted while finding a foothold to climb into the wooden wagon.
Once inside he also noted that the slit-like windows that allowed the cattle to breathe had also been modified with steel bars. Kunz was still flapping his arm, so Capek approached.
“What are you doing in this stinking boxcar? You must come back home with me.”
They both started shaking their heads, which also made their bodies and overcoats shudder.
“You will freeze or starve to death in here.”
He took another step closer and was about to more forcibly persuade them when Hinz pointed a bony finger at him and then turned it towards his own crusty heart. Capek froze in his tracks. Something about the gesture terrified him, more than if it were made with a loaded gun. All his words, care, and responsibility faded to nothing. Kunz then held up three fingers and nodded.
“Three what?” asked Capek.
The fingers were shaken.
“Three hours, three days, weeks, months?”
Hinz nodded in agreement and Kunz shook his head too.
They both then waved at the confused administrator as if saying goodbye. They did it until he left the wagon, looking back for no apparent reason. There was something very touching about the gesture, like children leaving home. He walked away feeling lost and foolishly sad. As he left the yards he saw a small group of workers and a soldier loitering by the gate.
“There seems to be a lot of activity, considering the appalling weather.”
The men looked at him from under rims of their caps, eyes nervous and distrustful of such questions.
“Where is all this transport going at this time of the year?” Capek boldly asked.
“East,” said the soldier.
Capek was just about to tell them about Hinz and Kunz waiting in the cattle truck when he saw something in the workers’ eyes that changed his mind. With more caution he asked, “When will they be leaving?”
What looked like the oldest worker flicked the stub of his cigarette away and lifted his filthy hand up to Capek’s face and shook three gnarled fingers at him. The other men smirked.
“East,” he said and spat into the trampled grey snow.