call me a monster. Oh boy.’
‘All of that is a filthy American lie,’ Dussander said, stung. He set his glass down with
a bang, slopping bourbon onto his hands and the table. The problem was not of my
making, nor was the solution. I was given orders and directives, which I followed.’
Todd’s smile widened; it was now almost a smirk.
‘Oh, I know how the Americans have distorted that,’ Dussander muttered. ‘But your
own politicians make our Dr Goebbels look like a child playing with picture books in a
kindergarten. They speak of morality while they douse screaming children and old
women in burning napalm. Your draft-resisters are called cowards and “peaceniks”. For
refusing to follow orders they are either put in jails or scourged from the country. Those
who demonstrate against this country’s unfortunate Asian adventure are clubbed down in
the streets. The GI soldiers who kill the innocent are decorated by Presidents, welcomed
home from the bayoneting of children and the burning of hospitals with parades and
bunting. They are given dinners, Keys to the City, free tickets to pro football games.’ He
toasted his glass in Todd’s direction. ‘Only those who lose are tried as war criminals for
following orders and directives.’ He drank and then had a coughing fit that brought thin
colour to his cheeks.
Through most of this Todd fidgeted the way he did when his parents discussed
whatever had been on the news that night – good old Walter Klondike, his dad called him.
He didn’t care about Dussander’s politics any more than he cared about Dussander’s stocks. His idea was that people made up politics so they could do things. Like when he
wanted to feel around under Sharon Ackerman’s dress last year. Sharon said it was bad for
him to want to do that, even though he could tell from her tone of voice that the idea sort
of excited her. So he told her he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up and then she let
him. That was politics. He wanted to hear about German doctors trying to mate women
with dogs, putting identical twins into refrigerators to see whether they would die at the
same time or if one of them would last longer, and electroshock therapy, and operations
without anaesthetic, and German soldiers raping all the women they wanted. The rest was
just so much tired bullshit to cover up the gooshy stuff after someone came along and put
a stop to it
‘If I hadn’t followed orders, I would have been dead.’ Dussander was breathing hard,
his upper body rocking back and forth in the chair, making the springs squeak. A little
cloud of liquor-smell hung around him. “There was always the Russian front, nicht wahr!
Our leaders were madmen, granted, but does one argue with madmen … especially when
the maddest of them all has the luck of Satan? He escaped a brilliant assassination
attempt by inches. Those who conspired were strangled with piano-wire, strangled
slowly. Their death-agonies were filmed for the edification of the elite-‘
‘Yeah! Neat!’ Todd cried impulsively. ‘Did you see that movie?’
‘Yes. I saw. We all saw what happened to those unwilling or unable to run before the
wind and wait for the storm to end. What we did then was the right thing. For that time
and that place, it was the right thing. I would do it again. But…’
His eyes dropped to his glass. It was empty.
‘… but I don’t wish to speak of it, or even think of it. What we did was motivated only
by survival, and nothing about survival is pretty. I had dreams …’He slowly took a
cigarette from the box on the TV. ‘Yes. For years I had them. Blackness, and sounds in
the blackness. Tractor engines. Bulldozer engines. Gunbutts thudding against what might
have been frozen earth, or human skulls. Whistles, sirens, pistol-shots, screams. The
doors of cattle-cars rumbling open on cold winter afternoons.
Then, in my dreams, all sounds would stop – and eyes would open in the dark,
gleaming like the eyes of animals in a rainforest For many years I lived on the edge of the
jungle, and I suppose that is why it is always the jungle I smelled and felt in those
dreams. When I woke from them I would be drenched with sweat, my heart thundering in
my chest, my hand stuffed into my mouth to stifle the screams. And I would think: the
dream is the truth. Brazil, Paraguay, Cuba … those places are the dream. In the reality I am still at Patin. The Russians are closer today than yesterday. Some of them are
remembering that in 1943 they had to eat frozen German corpses to stay alive. Now they
long to drink hot German blood. There were rumours, boy, that some of them did just that
when they crossed into Germany: cut the throats of some prisoners and drank their blood
out of a boot. I would wake up and think: The work must go on, if only so there is no
evidence of what we did here, or so little that the world, which doesn’t want to believe it,
won’t have to. I would think: The work must go on if we are to survive.’
Unlike what had gone before, Todd listened to this with close attention and great
interest This was pretty good, but he was sure there would be better stuff in the days
ahead. All Dussander needed was a little prodding. Heck, he was lucky. Lots of men his
age were senile.
Dussander dragged deeply on his cigarette. ‘Later, after the dreams went away, there
were days when I would think I had seen someone from Patin. Never guards or fellow
officers, always inmates. I remember one afternoon in West Germany, ten years ago.
There was an accident on the autobahn. Traffic was frozen in every lane. I sat in my
Morris, listening to the radio, waiting for the traffic to move. I looked to my right. There
was a very old Simca in the next lane, and the man behind the wheel was looking at me.
He was perhaps fifty, and he looked ill. There was a scar on his cheek. His hair was
white, short, cut badly. I looked away. The minutes passed and still the traffic didn’t
move. I began snatching glances at the man in the Simca. Every time I did, he was
looking at me, his face as still as death, his eyes sunken in their sockets. I became convinced he had been at Patin. He had been there and he had recognized me.’
Dussander wiped a hand across his eyes.
‘It was winter. The man was wearing an overcoat. But I was convinced that if I got out
of my car and went to him, made him take off his coat and push up his shirtsleeves, I
would see the number on his arm.
. ‘At last the traffic began to move again. I pulled away from the Simca. If the jam had
lasted another ten minutes, I believe I would have gotten out of my car and pulled the old
man out of his. I would have beaten him, number or no number. I would have beaten him
for looking at me that way.
‘Shortly after that, I left Germany forever.’
‘Lucky for you,’ Todd said.
Dussander shrugged. ‘It was the same everywhere. Havana, Mexico City, Rome. I
was in Rome for three years, you know. I would see a man looking at me over his
capuccino in a cafe … a woman in a hotel lobby who seemed more interested in me
than in her magazine … a waiter in a restaurant who would keep glancing at me no
matter who he was serving. I would become convinced that these people were
studying me, and that night the dream would come – the sounds, the jungle, the eyes.
‘But when I came to America I put it out of my mind. I go to movies. I eat out once
a week, always at one of those fast-food places that are so clean and so well-lighted by
fluorescent bars. Here at my house I do jigsaw puzzles and I read novels – most of
them bad ones – and watch TV. At night I drink until I’m sleepy. The dreams don’t
come anymore. When I see someone looking at me in the supermarket or the library or
the tobacconist’s, I think it must be because I look like their grandfather … or an old
teacher … or a neighbour in a town they left some years ago.’ He shook his head at
Todd. ‘Whatever happened at Patin, it happened to another man. Not to me.’
‘Great!’ Todd said. ‘I want to hear all about it.’
Dussander’s eyes squeezed closed, and then opened slowly. ‘You don’t understand. I
do not wish to speak of it.’
‘You will, though. If you don’t, I’l1 tell everyone who you are.’