Max

I discovered how Lukas coped. Despite my superior intelligence, I couldn’t work it out by myself. He had to explain it to me. I could never have imagined anything like it.

Study hall. I’m racing to finish an essay I have to hand in tomorrow. The title is ‘Imagine the transformation of an animal by a magic potion.’ Just think how much children my age love that sort of homework. Ordinary children, perhaps. Not students from the Napola. The point is not to waffle on about inanities, describing the transformation of some sweet little puppy playing with a ball into a huge scary dragon breathing fire and terrifying a beautiful princess. This essay, like all our assignments, has to be written from a Nazi perspective.

I’ve got a few ideas…The animal could be Lukas, and the magic potion could be the Napola, which has made him a hardcore Aryan. Or, the animal could be me, and the magic potion, with poisonous properties this time, could be Lukas. Because, and I’m fully aware of it, he has really messed with my head from the day I met him. And it’s not getting any better. Contact with Lukas is transforming me. He is ‘de-Aryanising’ me, and ‘Jewifying’ me. (I’m making up new words for this situation.) Well! Whether the animal is Lukas or me, I’ll know how to structure my homework and I’ll be able to describe a very precise transformation. But how can I work on either of these two ideas without getting myself into deep shit?

I’m stuck. I don’t have any other options. Here I am, facing my blank page, chewing on the shaft of my pen, biting my nails, staring gloomily out the window. It’s dusk outside and it’s barely 5 p.m. I feel like chucking it in. I’m fed up.

Just to top off my annoyance, Manfred is sitting next to me, bent over his exercise book, scribbling away without stopping. At the rate he’s going, he’ll use up our ration of paper for the evening. The scratching of his pen echoes in the silence of the room. It’s giving me the creeps. What can this moron possibly be writing? Reading over his elbow, I can see that his chosen animal is Germany after World War I and his magic potion is the Führer. He’s gone for the simplest, the most obvious idea, and he’ll get the best mark. Idiot!

I’m abandoning the bloody essay for now and I’m going to do something else. Once a month, each of us has to send a letter of support to a soldier at the front. My correspondent is a certain Harald Schwarz, Rottenführer by profession. Okay, at least this is easy: I’ll just write the same things as for the last one, rephrased. He has to stand firm, even if the fighting is tough; his mother country cares for him, believes in him, is proud of him, and has no doubt about the final victory, which is approaching rapidly and to which he will have contributed through his sacrifices. He will be rewarded for his devotion to the Führer, he will return from the front covered in glory, and so on and so forth…So now, I’m off and running, my pen racing faster than Manfred’s. I write ten lines nonstop, and only stop for a second when I get a slight cramp in my hand. (I can run or swim for two hours in a row without getting a cramp, but it hurts to hold a pen for so long!) When I look up, I realise that it’s dark. The days are getting shorter and shorter; soon it will be the winter solstice. It’s as if the night will last forever, and that’s an awful feeling.

Why do I feel so melancholy all of a sudden? Is it yet another weird side effect of the ‘magic potion’ gnawing at me from inside? Despite the shadows, I decide to get back to work and, as I pull myself together, I recognise the silhouette crossing the courtyard. It’s heading towards the primary-school building. My building…What is he doing around here? After all this time, is he finally condescending to recognise that I exist?

I wait, motionless, on the alert. Soon I hear footsteps on the staircase, then on the other side of the study hall door, which opens soon enough.

The main thing is not to move, not to turn in his direction. Not to exhibit any emotion—excitement, annoyance—none whatsoever. Especially not joy.

Anyway, I have no reason at all to rejoice. If Lukas has deigned to appear, it’s not out of friendship for me, but because he’s suffered a real blow lately. Has he come to be comforted by me? He can get lost. Perhaps I’ll get my own back…

The real blow was the death of Gunter last week. I’m not aware of the exact circumstances; all I know is that it happened during a paramilitary exercise. It could have been Herman. It could have been Lukas, since the three of them were inseparable. And Lukas was wounded; he’s swathed in a big bandage below the waist, which doesn’t in any way diminish his elegant demeanour—on the contrary, it looks like a bullfighter’s belt. His posture is even more upright and his bearing even prouder.

Anyway, Gunter’s gone; there are only two musketeers left. And he continues to make our lives hell: because of his death, the Christmas and winter solstice festivities have been cancelled. The school is in mourning. The ceremony we did end up attending was a funeral wake. The Heimführer, the head of teaching, the bursar, the service staff (admin, kitchen, laundry, medical) and students, of course—we were all gathered around Gunter’s coffin, which was draped in the Reich’s flag. We were all in full uniform, decorated with a black armband. The speeches and ceremonial rites went on forever. And it was cold in the snow. And we were tired. Gunter’s parents were the guests of honour and left with the body as soon as it was all over. I have no idea how significant it was that Obergruppenführer Lübeln was present, or how appropriate it is to sing the praises of the dead. But the fact is that Gunter the idiot, Gunter the thug, as thick as two planks, Gunter who had a pea (or make it a bean, because I’m so funny!) for a brain, has become Gunter the brave, Gunter of the elite intellectuals, Gunter the model Jungmann. He died in a remarkable demonstration of his courage and incomparable Draufgängertum. He magnificently embodied the major slogan of the Hitler Youth movements: We are here to serve the Führer and to die for him. I swear he wouldn’t have received more hon-ours if he had single-handedly destroyed twenty Russian tanks at Stalingrad.

Serious accidents—never fatal—are frequent at the Napola. A month ago, a guy tried to escape and they organised a manhunt. Every student in his class joined in wholeheartedly. When they found him, they threw him naked into the river behind the school, then they thrashed him with their leather belts. A few weeks earlier, a guy was denounced for stealing money. His punishment was to jump into the courtyard from the fourth floor, without a net. He broke his pelvis. He’s still in hospital.

Gunter did well. He didn’t just settle for being seriously wounded, he checked out in the process. He excelled himself there, at least.

Obviously I’ve grown, I’m nearly eight. And same to you. You look a lot older than fourteen. You look like a man.

Lukas sits down next to me, after giving Manfred the order to clear off and wait somewhere else. Manfred was quick to obey, Lukas being one of those Jungmannen respected and feared by the younger kids. Despite the circumstances, I can’t help feeling proud.

Lukas lays his broad, strong hand, the nails impeccable, on top of my letter. I can smell some kind of perfume on him, like eau de cologne. Where could he have got hold of that? Is that how he masks the stink of the RIF he soaps himself with every day?

I give a quick ‘Hi’. Cool, detached, as if I had just seen him last night, when it’s been ten months since we arrived at the Napola. I push his hand away to grab my letter, which I intend to keep writing. But he takes it from me and reads it.

His smile stretches from ear to ear, that interminable mocking smile that has the knack of making my blood boil. ‘Rubbish!’ he shouts, throwing the letter on the table.

I give him a furious look. He snatches my pen and turns over the sheet of paper. ‘I’m going to help you write this letter,’ he tells me.

‘No way! I’m not letting a dirty Jew like you dictate what I have to say to our soldiers.’

Manfred and another student in my class, also sitting in the study hall, turn around and burst out laughing. They find it funny because calling someone a ‘dirty Jew’ is either the latest joke, or an insult as trivial as ‘bastard’ or ‘stupid idiot’. They don’t know, they can’t know, that, coming from me, it is not a joke.

Lukas laughs too—it’s a bit forced all the same; I recognise that characteristic twitching of his lips—then, after making sure that Manfred and Kaspar have settled back to work, he puts his index finger on my mouth to stop me from replying and then beckons with it for me to come closer. He writes on the paper, one word.

There you go, just what I thought. Saddened by the death of his alter ego, he’s come to talk about it with me. I manage to refrain from telling him that he can go and cry on Herman’s shoulder. His smile, that glimmer of jubilation in his shining eyes…It’s odd. Lukas does not seem at all sad. But, during the wake, his eyes filled with tears, he received the condolences of his classmates as if he were Gunter’s brother. Something is not quite right.

Again he silences me with his index finger, and glances suspiciously at Manfred and Kaspar.

I shake my head. Lukas stares at me for a long time, no longer smiling. He’s tense. He picks up the pen again and starts writing, quickly, without stopping.

The night before the exercise, Gunter got hold of some schnapps. He asked me to drink with him, like we often did. Not such a great idea, given what we had to do the next morning. But he didn’t have the slightest idea what we had to do the next morning. He didn’t know that a very dangerous exercise was scheduled for dawn. But I did…It’s always possible to bribe an instructor…I pretended to drink, to get drunk with him. It was just the two of us; Herman played it safe and went to sleep. Gunter passed out at 2 a.m. and, at 5.30, when the wake-up bell dragged us out of bed, he was in a shocking state. He had a raging hangover. I had to help him get dressed, put on his underpants, trousers, button his shirt, like a baby. Then, so he wouldn’t topple over, I had to support him while we stood to attention during roll call. In the truck, on the way to the parade ground, he spewed up his guts. If he hadn’t been the son of Obergruppenführer Lübeln, I’m sure the guys in the section would have lynched him. When we got down from the truck, the Scharführer on duty threw us some spades and lined us up opposite three tanks, stationary in the fog, their motors firing. Three Panzers. Metal mastodons: each one seven metres long and fifty-five tonnes.

‘You’d better dig fast, you bunch of shits! And deep! Now we separate the smart-arses and degenerates from the real soldiers, the ones with balls!’

We got started. In these situations, it’s each to his own. There’s no time to look out for your neighbour. We all knew that the sadistic Scharführer, who was swearing and shouting at us as we dug, could decide at any moment to give the signal for the Panzers to start moving. Like the others, I just kept digging, without worrying about Gunter. I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, his hands clamped by the cold onto his spade handle; he hadn’t even managed to make a dent in the layer of ice covering the ground. The tanks started up. I jumped in my hole. Gunter was still standing, motionless, terrified. I screamed at him to get in next to me. I told him there was enough room for two, that I had dug deep. He believed me. He jumped. He almost broke my back when he fell on top of me. The moment he realised that the hole wasn’t deep enough, that the top of his head stuck out, the tank was only a metre away; he didn’t have time to climb out. He started hammering me, kicking me, stomping on me, to crush me into the ground. He was yelling, sobbing. At one point, I felt a slimy liquid running over me. He had pissed himself. But it was so cold in that fucking frozen hole that the piss was almost welcome. In any case it gave me the necessary strength not only to resist his blows, but to push him up from the hole, at the very instant the tank rolled over us, so that it took off his head.

Lukas stops briefly. I’m reading as he writes. He’s writing fast, his hand trembling. It’s hard to decipher his scribble. And it’s hard to believe what I’m reading, so I re-read a sentence here and there. When I put my hand over his to make him slow down, I can feel the tremor.

In the Scharführer’s report on the ‘accident’, he pointed out that Gunter had not dug a hole and had jumped in mine, thus endangering both our lives. (He didn’t know that I had got Gunter drunk the night before. And the noise of the tanks prevented him from hearing me tell Gunter to jump in with me.) Schmidt summoned me and asked me, for the school’s reputation, and for Gunter’s parents, if I would corroborate another version of events, an ‘official’ version. An unfortunate set of circumstances, the caterpillar tracks of the tank had jammed…a whole pile of rubbish. I agreed and Schmidt was extremely grateful.

I raise my head. I open my mouth as if I’m going to scream, but nothing happens. There’s definitely a scream inside me, but it’s stuck in my throat. It won’t come out, it’s choking me. I turn to Manfred and Kaspar. Still busy with their homework, they don’t notice me. Help!

‘What? What’s the matter?’ says Lukas out loud. ‘Do you think my letter is too tough? You’re wrong, Konrad. You have to see things as they are: your correspondent, our brave soldier Harald, knows very well that he could die at any moment at the front. Your duty is to explain to him that his death is necessary, perfectly justified. That will give him courage. Here you go, I’ll add this:

When Gunter carked it, squealing like a pig, I thought about my father’s death. My little brother’s death. And I thought about my mother, too, who has probably died at Treblinka…That’s one against three. Not a fair deal. But it’s just the beginning. Do you know that old Jewish saying: ‘Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.’ I intend to avenge the death of my family. I strike right where I am. From the inside. That causes more pain. When Gunter’s mother held me in her arms, sobbing, I said to myself: ‘You dirty bitch, now can you imagine what thousands of mothers have gone through? When her bastard of a husband shook my hand, I said to myself: ‘That’s for every one of them shot under your orders.’

You haven’t denounced me as Jewish. Thank you. One day I’ll repay you. But you could still denounce me as a murderer. Up to you.

Lukas looks at me, smiling. He’s no longer trembling. He’s pulled himself together in no time at all. He picks up the piece of paper he’s been writing on, waves it under my nose for a second, then gets up and throws it on the coals of the wood stove.

Once the paper has been reduced to ashes, he comes back over to me. ‘What did you think, Skullface? That I was going to write your letter for you? Too easy! I gave you some ideas to inspire you, but there’s no way you can content yourself by copying out mine; you have to find your own words. See you soon!’

‘You are so lucky to have a big brother like Lukas,’ he said. ‘He’s such a great role model for you.’