Everything has turned to shit.

Black shit that lasts for weeks. The sky is more and more threatening. I don’t mean rain or storms, but bombs. Enemy planes crisscrossing the sky above the Napola.

It’s new, disturbing, traumatic. Planes circling above our heads like birds of prey. No one ever led us to believe this would happen one day.

The first time the siren went off, it was the middle of the night. We didn’t take any notice, thinking it was one of the night drills, like ‘the gas siren’, when the instructors release tear gas through the buildings. In total darkness, and plunged in toxic gas, we have to put on our uniforms and gather in the courtyard for inspection. If a student is not dressed properly he has to charge back to the dormitory, then come out again for inspection. Everyone hates these drills. So many of my young friends end up almost choking, as they are made to dash back again and again for a forgotten cap, belt, or because their boots weren’t properly polished. And if the drill wasn’t stressful enough, it was often followed by a night march or a river crossing.

This particular night, when the siren went off, hardly any of us got up. Those who did manage to stir got dressed in a rush. Who cared? Most of the instructors were away, so no one would check uniforms. But, as soon as we were outside, we could tell that the orders were being shouted differently. Panic was in the air. This wasn’t a drill; it was an ‘air-raid warning 15’, which meant enemy aeroplanes were fifteen minutes away. We rushed back to get the lazy boys who might have ended up asleep forever after the bombing. Then we all hurtled down to the air-raid shelters.

Lukas didn’t come down with us that night.

And he doesn’t come down any other night. In fact, he doesn’t get out of bed at all. He just lies there, refusing to speak, smoking, smoking all day long. He doesn’t respond to the sirens, and refuses to turn up for training. Because of his excellent student track record, the directors turn a blind eye and ascribe his ‘depression’ to the distress caused by the deaths of Gunter and Herman. But not for long: depression is a shameful, intolerable condition for a Jungmann. Especially for a Jungmann who is expected to excel in order to soon join the ranks of the Volkssturm.

I’m chosen—they still all think we’re brothers—to get Lukas back on track. I’m given a month to do it, an ultimatum that seems almost identical to the one Ebner gave me in Kalish. But I really don’t want to relive that experience. And I’m fed up with this role reversal. Lukas is the big brother; I’m the little brother. And it’s about time he woke up to that.

Still, I do as I’m told. I don’t have a choice: the directors might not be aware of it, but I have a much stronger connection to Lukas than our so-called status as siblings.

My only real success is to get him to hand over his striped prisoner pyjamas and let me dispose of them. Otherwise, all I can do is rescue his meal rations from a greedy student at his table, and take them up to him in the dormitory. I spoonfeed him, like a baby. He only eats at most a third. But he keeps on smoking like a chimney, as if he wanted to incinerate himself, disappear in smoke like those others. And I’m the one who provides him with cigarettes. The Heimführer told me that, given the present circumstances, my bank account, funded by Doctor Ebner over the years, has been closed, but I can have the money in cash instead. I said yes. So I have plenty of money, but I can’t buy chocolate, or butter, or jam, because there’s no longer any available on the black market. The quartermaster at the Napola—the nerve centre of the black market—is only selling cigarettes. I give most of mine to Lukas and smoke the rest, which makes me lose my appetite a bit.

The trouble is, with all that smoking, Lukas coughs and spits and stinks. It’s disgusting. What’s he on about? Dying a slow and horrible death so he can share the same fate as those Jews?

I try to keep him occupied as best I can. While he’s slumped on the bed, I ask him, ‘What about we masturbate? Like we used to before you left for training?’

No response.

At the end of my tether, I even incite him to murder. ‘Why don’t you kill some more students? It’s easy now with the sirens. When the air-raid 15 siren goes off, you quickly knock off one or two and then head down to the shelter, you can’t go wrong.’

‘Nie dos´ć! Not enough.’

At least that got a response. So he hasn’t turned completely stupid, his hearing and speech faculties are still functioning. Of course, his latest thing is to start speaking Polish again. He doesn’t utter a word of German.

I think for a moment. ‘Why don’t you go for the teachers? They should be your main targets, and then there’d be fewer at the front!’

‘Nie dos´ć!’

Whatever I say, he comes out with the same thing, as well as a few Hebrew prayers. He looks so ridiculous when he mumbles in that barbaric language, with his handkerchief on his head and the cigarette stuck in his mouth.

‘Why do you pray? You said you weren’t religious.’

‘Musze uczcic pamiec mojego ojca.’ I have to honour the memory of my father.

‘Well, your mother wasn’t religious. What would she say if she saw you risking your life because of a prayer?’

‘Moja matka zginela.’ My mother went up in smoke.

‘You don’t know that! She might still be alive.’

There’s a glimmer of hope in his eyes. For a second, he stops sucking on his cigarette butt, then shakes his head. ‘Nie. Nie ma zadnej szansy.’ No, not a chance.

End of dialogue.

Fortunately his mates don’t bother speaking to him anymore. They’re determined to fight the Russians no matter what, so for them Lukas is now just a loser.

‘You really want to help him?’ one of them says to me. ‘Tell him to commit suicide. It’s the only way he’ll get out of this and save face.’

Thanks for the advice.

By staying in bed during the air raids, he seems hellbent on suicide anyway. One of these mornings, I’ll find him reduced to a little pile of ashes, incinerated in a fire started by one of his damned cigarettes. Or reduced to a pulp on his mattress after a bombing raid.

It stinks. It really stinks.