Number two on Lukas’s list: Herman.

Obviously.

Should I warn him? How? By slipping an anonymous note under his pillow? By confiding in his brother, Ludwig, who is in my class? To warn Herman would reveal Lukas as Gunter’s murderer. To warn Herman, I would reveal myself as an accomplice. The events are all connected now; they’re snowballing. I didn’t denounce Lukas the Jew, the Jew who disguised himself and who, under the veil of the perfect Jungmann, intends to stir up conflict in the Napola by killing some of its students. (How many, exactly?)

I hated Herman before; now I feel sorry for him. Every time I see him, laughing, eating, drinking, running or bullying a classmate, I want to say: ‘Enjoy yourself! Pretty soon, you’ll be kaput.’ If only I had an idea of how Lukas was going to commit this second murder. I haven’t the faintest idea when he’s going to strike. Not immediately, in any case.

Several weeks go by without an incident. And if the threat of losing his big brother hangs over Ludwig, it seems as if, on the contrary, my big brother has been restored to me.

Things are changing. Lukas visits me whenever he can. Often in the afternoon, when we sort out our personal belongings. The first time was two days after his confession. Just when I thought he’d given me the cold shoulder, he turned up in my dorm. I was at the sink, washing my singlets.

‘Hi, Skullface! So we’re doing our handwashing? How sweet. Hey, while you’re at it, wash this!’

He threw his bag of dirty laundry at my feet, lay down on my bed and, completely at ease, started to flip through a magazine.

I saw red. I threw the sopping wet singlet at his face. Straightaway he took off one of his muddy boots and threw it at me. In turn, I chucked the whole pile of soaking clothes from the sink at him. Then he threw his other boot at me, then his belt, and his pants. Now I went for the heavy artillery: from the bottom of the wardrobe I grabbed my dirtiest underpants, the ones from the time when I couldn’t get used to the RIF and I couldn’t work out how to wash them with the school’s ersatz washing powder. I bombarded Lukas with these impressive weapons.

It was like a starting signal. All the other students, who had been on the sidelines until this point, now joined in a mighty dirty-clothes battle. Stuff was flying everywhere. (And I noticed that I was not the only one to hide items of my dirty washing. I saw underpants as stiff as cardboard, so impregnated were they with dried urine. Others displayed evidence of more significant deposits. When they hit the bull’s eye, it must have been a tasty mouthful. The victims rushed, screaming, to the sinks to douse themselves with water.) When we ran out of dirty laundry, we pounced on the sheets and pillows. What a hoot! It was great to unwind, to flout the basic rules of discipline by ransacking this damn dorm, turning it into a pigsty, making one hell of a mess.

Alerted by the uproar, the section leader soon turned up. He almost had an apoplectic fit when he walked into the chaos. The floor drenched in water, soiled with mud, the beds torn apart, the pillows ripped open, feathers everywhere, underpants full of dry shit strewn all over the floor. He immediately threatened us with a collective punishment for defacing the premises. But Lukas—who in the meantime had taken off all his clothes—stood in front of him and, with every centimetre of his 1.7 metres, stared him down, full of scorn. The other wimp, who barely reached Lukas’s chest, understood immediately that it would be in his interest to keep the incident a secret and to forget his threats of punishment. Defeated, he lowered his gaze. And clapped eyes on Lukas’s dick—do I need to remind you that it is uncircumcised?—and the two huge testicles framing it. Red as a beetroot, he turned on his heels and disappeared without further ado.

Lukas also comes to visit me in the dining hall after lunch and we head off for a walk before the afternoon activities, far enough away for him to smoke a cigarette. (Jungmannen smoke on the sly and tobacco is one of the items most frequently traded on the black market.) Sometimes he offers me a drag. The first time I thought a grenade had exploded in my chest. Little by little, I’m getting used to it. I like it, it makes me seem like a Jungmann. But I prefer the jam Lukas gives me once in a while. Real jam, not the disgusting beetroot puree they serve up to us these days. Sometimes Lukas even gets me chocolate. He manages to get his hands on a whole lot of food that’s not available. I’m glad because the meals are getting worse at the Napola and my stomach is often rumbling when I leave the dining hall.

We also see each other at the farm, when we engage in ‘experience in agricultural labour’. More and more, students have to muck in to make sure we still get provisions from the farm, and to look after the few remaining animals. Lukas is by far the best at catching chickens. Even when he demonstrates his technique to me, I can’t do it. Filthy creatures, they’re so fast when they smell danger. They slip through my fingers and I end up flat on my face, my nose in their bird shit.

‘Just think of them as Jews,’ Lukas said to me one day with a forced smile. ‘The only difference,’ he added under his breath, ‘is that at least the chickens don’t allow themselves to be led to the abattoir without putting up a fight.’

Lukas let the last surviving chicken on the farm go free. I didn’t stop him because I knew it would never end up on our plates but on those of a few teachers and the Heimführer.

‘I anoint you head of the Jewish resistance,’ pronounced Lukas ceremoniously, as he let the chicken go behind the outer wall of the school. Earlier, he had filled a little bag with grain that he tied around the chicken’s neck, so it would have something to live off for a while.

We also had to milk the cows, which was getting really difficult. They were so thin and underfed that they only pissed out a trickle of milk.

‘You know what? I’ve had enough! I’d rather pull on something else than the udders of these fucking cows.’

Without a second thought, Lukas headed to the other end of the stable and pulled his pants down. He had his back to me but I could see the movement of his right hand going up and down without stopping, really fast, as he groaned ‘Oh!’, ‘Ah!, ‘Aahh!’ I knew he was fondling his dick. He was masturbating.

‘But you’re not allowed to!’ I called out, furious. ‘Isn’t it enough that you’re Jewish and a murderer? As well as the yellow star and the green triangle, do you want them to stick a pink triangle on you? Are you trying for the full collection of geometric shapes?’

‘Shut up, Skullface. Watch and learn.’

He showed me how to do it, but it’s not easy—my dick is too small. Sometimes, it sort of works; I manage to rub it against my pants and it feels funny, like heat spreading through my lower belly. It’s kind of nice, but it doesn’t work often. I reckon smoking is easier.

Lukas also sometimes takes me to the carpentry workshop. We don’t talk a lot, not freely in any case, because we’re hardly ever alone, carpentry being more popular than farm work. Lukas is working hard at making a wooden object, a sort of statuette. He told me it was a toy, for me, that he’ll give me when it’s finished. I can’t wait.

All that doesn’t stop the two of us from fighting a lot. It’s in Lukas’s temperament to blow hot and cold.

‘You son-of-a-bitch-whore Kraut!’

It comes over him all of a sudden, like he wanted to piss from his mouth.

‘Filthy Jew!’

‘Nazi!’

‘Polack dog!’

‘Reich’s sprog!’

‘Subhuman!’

‘Bastard!’

‘Parasite!’

‘Your parents fucked in Nazi fornication factories!’

‘Yours will never fuck again!’

I don’t mind it when we argue and insult each other. That’s supposed to be normal between brothers: we love each other and and at the same time we hate each other to the point of sometimes wanting to kill each other. What I can’t stand is when, just when I least expect it, in a really creepy way, Lukas’s poisonous magic potion infiltrates me, drop by drop.

Movies are important teaching tools at the Napola. They show us a lot of films, at least one a week. In the beginning it was mostly films of the huge mass demonstrations organised by the Reich: the singing, the crowds, the public speeches by our Führer—it was all wonderful. Now, we watch films about the war, which is also wonderful: we’re kept up-to-date with the new weapons developed by the Reich. We saw, for example, demonstrations of the Panzer V and the Tiger. The commentator explained—in his deep, warm melodious voice and with perfect diction—that the Panzer is the tank most feared by the Allies, who can only put up their inferior Sherman against it. The Allies themselves acknowledge that three of their armoured vehicles will be destroyed before a panzer can be overtaken.

The commentator also talks about the Goliaths. They’re brilliant! Tiny little armoured cars stuffed with dynamite, operated by remote control to infiltrate a bunker and explode inside.

We bring the house down with our applause. And that’s the opportunity Lukas takes to kick my neighbour out of his seat and sit down next to me. He’s clapping, just like everyone else. He’s smiling, just like everyone else. But at the same time, imitating the commentator’s tone, he turns on a strong Polish accent and whispers crazy things in my ear: The Panzer V was only in response to the formidable Russian tank, the T-434, which is a total destroyer. He describes twin-engined Russian ground-attack aircraft that fly silently at low altitude in the Leningrad night skies and destroy German convoys. They’re nicknamed the ‘Flying Tanks’.

‘Shut up! You’re talking shit.’

I shove him away with my elbow and try to concentrate on the screen where they’re showing scenes from the sieges of Moscow and Leningrad. Even though our soldiers are suffering from the cold, and they’re thin and exhausted, they are smiling at the camera, looking confident. The commentator moves on to the campaign in North Africa, where Rommel’s Afrika Korps is well entrenched. North Africa seems so far away, and yet this region now belongs to the Reich. Occupied Europe is ancient history now. As for the attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese, although the teacher in charge of the screening doesn’t have any images of it, he describes it in minute detail several times a week. You’ve got to hand it to them, those Japanese were amazingly courageous with their kamikaze planes. Everyone in the room is enthusiastic—the older Jungmannen leap up, as if they’re about to climb into one of the suicide planes. In the end the teacher stops his commentary and tries in vain to restore order.

Once the room is silent again, Lukas goes back into attack, too.

‘It’s all just a montage,’ he whispers in my ear. ‘Nothing but dumb propaganda. These films have been tampered with, and they’re not at all up-to-date. I’ll tell you the truth: there’s a pincer attack on the Afrika Korps, by the British from the west, and the Franco-Americans from the east. Since the Americans have entered the war, there’s a whole lot of new military technology: decoding of enemy communication, radar, sonar, and the German submarines have all been destroyed. The Krauts surrendered at Stalingrad. There were 91,000 prisoners. You and your little buddies can start shitting yourselves because the Red Army is on its way fast. It entered Kiev, liberated Leningrad, and is on the outskirts of Warsaw now. Ivan’s* army is on its way, Skullface! They’ll march on Berlin any day. I’m telling you, there’ll be trouble!’

It’s all lies, rubbish. Where could he find out all that? From the chooks he plucked at the farm? Did he listen to a radio in a cow’s udder?

Nothing proves what Lukas said. Not a thing. Well, hardly anything. So, there is a lot more food rationing. So, quite a few teachers have left for the front and haven’t been replaced. So, the sixteen-year-old Jungmannen are undergoing intensive training in case they need to be mobilised under exceptional circumstances. But apart from those few hitches, it’s business as usual inside the Napola. So surely things must be the same outside…surely?

The Reich is invincible. Invincible.

I can’t bear listening to any more of Lukas’s bullshit, so I leap out of my seat like a spring and disturb everyone as I try to find another spot. The teacher is furious; he storms over, grabs me by the ear and frogmarches me out of the room, all the while yelling out my misdemeanours: inability to concentrate, insubordination (because I’m trying in vain to object), causing a disruption during an important training session.

I’m grounded for ten days.

No more chats at the farm or at the carpentry workshop. That’s the end of cigarettes, jam, chocolate and dick-rubbing. I’m banned from all official ceremonies. (I don’t give a damn! And anyway, there haven’t been any ceremonies for a while.) I eat by myself, I exercise by myself, my bed has been moved to the other end of the dorm.

But one evening I find something under my pillow. The statuette. The toy Lukas was making for me. He finished it and somehow found a way to get it to me. That cheers me up a bit, especially as it’s really well made—it’s a miniature Führer. The wood is incredibly well carved. It has the moustache, the hair combed to the side, the inscribed belt buckle. There’s a piece of string, with a metal bead on the end, hanging from the right hand. The statuette works like a puppet when I pull on the string: the right arm rises, the Führer leans forward, which makes his buttocks stick out and…

The noise echoes in the silent dorm and everyone bursts out laughing. I pull the sheet over my head in shame.

The noise was a fart.

I quickly hide the statuette under my mattress before the section leader turns up.

Lukas is a bastard.

Once I’m no longer grounded, I run into the secondary-school building to return his so-called present. But they turn me back at the entrance. Official ban on entering the premises.

There’s been a shocking incident, they tell me.

Herman is dead.