Love and Hate Page 6

  He walked up to me now and took the gun from my hand. He pointed it at the girl.

  “Or I could exterminate the rat. My mercy could be offered that way. You wouldn’t have to do it yourself. You could keep your hands clean of exterminating rats, if you like, and I won’t make you kill Jews. You can live with your illness, as long as it continues to be in silence, and it won’t spread. But if you ever were to take sides with a Jew again, like you did against Gerhard, I would have to kill you. This option allows you to live and keep your hands clean as your sickness demands.”

  He paused and then said, “So what is it going to be, brother? Keep your hands clean, or become a rat yourself?”

  I hesitated for a moment. Father had always said to keep my thoughts to myself and to do good with my actions. I had lived with that creed. If I let Erich kill her, I hadn’t done it, I had already killed Gerhard to save her once—did I need to sacrifice myself for her? Wasn’t I doing good by not shooting her? I could keep my thoughts to myself, as Erich had asked. I had been doing that anyway.

  He cocked the gun. “I am not giving you all day, brother. What is it going to be? I will count to five. One, two, three, four.”

  “Stop, all right, I will become a rat or Jew or whatever you want me to be. Just don’t kill the girl. Please.”

  He feigned shock. “I cannot believe you would choose that option, Hans. But I knew you would. You always have been a rat in German skin. I don’t know why, maybe because your real father murdered your dear mamma. Maybe that made you weak and feeble-minded. But I am a man of my word. You shall become a Jew, and you will have a chance of escape. Though you will likely be caught at some point, it will not be me who looks for you. I will set you free. But when I see you next, if I see you again, you are no longer my brother. I will have no mercy. You will be a rat, and I will treat you as the traitor that you have become.”

  He walked over to his chair with his gun. He put it down on the chair, came up to me, and kissed me on the cheek.

  Then he whispered into my ear, “You Jüdischen bastard.”

  He slapped the rawest side of my face, giving me a hateful stare through squinted eyes.

  Chapter 14

  The guards came to lock us up. They weren’t the same guards that brought us here; they were Erich’s most loyal guards, who kept him secure. They would confidentially carry out his orders.

  He had given them short but direct orders as to what was to happen to us. They took us downstairs, leading us as prisoners by the arm. We reached the bottom of the stairs and were taken to the second door on the right. It was a basement-level room, and no one was likely to hear us down there, I thought. That didn’t seem like a good thing for us. They opened the door. There was a large bed in the center, and it was well appointed with fluffy pillows and a thick comforter that looked downy soft. There were two nightstands, a lamp, a wardrobe, and a large bathroom with a shower. Two linen robes were laid out. For us? I turned to one of the guards questioningly.

  The guard shrugged. “We are under strict orders to cause you no harm. We are to treat you as guests. I will say this only once, though. He said if you try to leave before he has allowed you to escape, we are to kill you at once. So don’t test us. I would love to kill a Jew and a Jew-lover.”

  The guards left for a little while. I had just turned on the shower, desperate to get Gerhard off me as the girl sat silently on the bed when they rapped at the door.

  Both guard-escorts were at the door, and one was grinning. He called me Herr Beck; he purposely dropped the reference to the Nazi rank.

  “I know you are about to take a shower, sir, but I must finish your physical transformation so that you are fully a rat before you leave us. I need you to sit down on the bed. I want it to come out straight.”

  He held a branding iron that had a glowing red Star of David, made of lead, ready to tear into my flesh.

  What was a little more pain? I didn’t even care, and my reaction to the pain would likely leave him wishing to inflict more, his sadistic nature unsatiated. He already looked unsatisfied at my lack of terror and anxiety. Erich loved to pick the sadists. Hungry as this guard was for violence, he patiently waited for me take off my shirt. It that was stuck to me with my dried blood. The girl came over and helped me take it off. I winced. And when I did, it made me most acutely aware of the part of me most in pain at that moment. My eyes. I breathed heavily, keeping my groan inside and away from the bodyguards who wanted to see my suffering, who needed it to feed their sadism, their inhumanity.

  I sat on the bed and said, “All right, let’s get this thing over with.”

  The girl sat on the bed next to me, facing away. I didn’t know if she couldn’t stand to look at them inflict pain on me or if she was showing me some kind of respect by not looking directly. I think she was doing the latter, but she also wanted to show sympathy, so she grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

  Something strange happened. I felt a tingle down my neck—all the way to my waist. The pain melted away, as did any apprehension I had at facing the Nazi with the branding iron. I hadn’t been touched kindly in so long that I couldn’t recall the last time or who had been the last person who had touched me out of their own free will and out of human kindness.

  I was thinking about that when the searing pain jerked me back to reality, and the branding iron attacked my arm. I yelped, letting out a long groan between gritted teeth.

  The man held the branding iron while the other man shouted with joy, “We branded a Jew!”

  The guard without the branding iron spat on me. He did it a second time, this time hitting my chest, not my face.

  “You are now a Jewish son of a bitch,” he said as he tore my uniform shirt in two.

  The man with the branding iron pulled away from my skin, tearing some of my skin away. It smelled of burned flesh, like sausage charred on the grill.

  I sat there breathing heavily.

  The man with the iron put it close to the face of the man who had spat on me.

  “Fuck you, get that thing away from me!” he screamed.

  “You will not threaten or disrespect him or her.” He looked at the girl with disgust. She was still holding my hand tightly. “Obergruppenführer Beck said we shall treat them as special guests until they are set free. The only harm or disrespect was to be this.”

  He put the branding iron almost to the man’s eyeballs and laughed as the younger man fell back against the wall. His chest was heaving slightly, I think from fear. This made the one with the branding iron laugh even louder. He patted the man on the back and assured him that he would only brand Jews.

  They both let out an awkward laugh as they looked at me. It was the first time I felt it. They looked at me as if they could see through me. They looked at me as a thing now. They had to be nice to me. They had been given orders. But I was an animal to them now. I could see it in their eyes. They placed their hate around me, inside of me. All of it. I felt their hate, the weight of it—of the exclusion—of how I was the other to them. The lesser, other—the rat.

  But they had changed to me as well. Before they may have been evil men, but they were men. When I looked at them now, they seemed like predators. They were sharks that smelled my blood. I was the prey. They lived to eat me, and I lived to be eaten by them. It was the natural order of the world that they had created. I saw their teeth as fanged as they left the room. They were holding back their hunger.

  What I didn’t realize yet was how much I would change the way I viewed myself.

  The girl said, “Can I help you to the shower, or would you rather lie down?”

  “I would like to lie down, but I will pay a steep price if I do not cleanse my wounds.”

  She carefully helped me hobble to the shower. Without asking, she undid my belt and pulled down my pants and boxer shorts, as gently as she could. She averted her gaze from me, and my exposed parts, as much as she could. She started leaving the room without looking at me.

  But the
n she turned around and looked at me. She looked at my naked, beaten body. She smiled kindly, looking me in the eyes. Her gaze was tender. She said thank you, without words, just with her soft brown eyes. She took my hand and placed it over her mouth, kissing the palm of my hand. I was shocked as she slid off her dress and slid her panties down her slight legs. She stepped out of them and undid her bra. She was beautiful. But I did not admire her as I might usually have done. I was too raw and beaten, and this was not the right time for that. However, she was too perfect-looking not to admire for a moment from a purely aesthetic view. She was very thin, with tanned skin. And her breasts were young and supple. She had boyish hips. I hadn’t had a moment to notice before just how absolutely beautiful she really was.

  She walked over to me and took a washcloth from a basket near the sink. She took my hand and led me to the shower. I went in first, and she right after. She carefully washed me, more carefully than I would have washed myself. I stood there as she washed every part of me, paying special attention to my wounds—careful to apply just the amount of pressure necessary to cleanse them without causing additive pain.

  We got out, and she patted me dry. She put the robe back on me, stained as it was. I let her take care of me, because I really was spent. It took all my energy just to stand upright. She took the bandages and packs of ice they had left us, and she bandaged me where my skin was torn from the branding. On my swollen, puffed red, black-and-blue eye-slits, she applied the ice packs. I gritted my teeth, and she apologized for having to apply pressure.

  When we lay down and she turned out the light, she said some little prayer for me. I couldn’t hold her because my chest was so raw from the beating. She laid my head on her chest. I felt safe and protected, though I was far from it. I felt like Mamma was holding me safely in her arms. As we drifted off to sleep, like it was almost a dream, the girl whispered to me.

  “So your name is Hans?”

  “Yes, and yours?”

  “Liselotte, but you can call me Lilo. That is what those close to me call me.”

  I smiled and said, “Goodnight, Lilo.”

  “Goodnight, Hans.”

  Chapter 15

  I dreamed that night that Lilo and I were dancing in a grand ballroom. Only the two of us. We were dancing silently, and then a band played “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller. It was a popular American big band song, and we swayed to it. And the moonlight swayed with us. Somehow the moonlight peered into the dark ballroom, going through what must have been a glass ceiling to paint our shadows, lingering on the canvases that were the grand outer walls. I looked into her eyes as the song ended, and I twirled her around.

  Then came a melancholy song that I didn’t recognize. I slowed my movement, looking at Lilo. It went down then up—the deep sound. As if crying. Hm um, hm um. A man said something in a language I didn’t understand, and Lilo whispered to me.

  “He is welcoming you. You are one of us. You are beloved, Yahweh’s child.”

  I swayed with her, and the sound made tears gather at my eyes, brimming but not falling. She reached behind my neck, pulling me to her, and kissed me hard. I kissed her back— delicately touching her tongue with mine. I pulled back. The music was so sad, I didn’t know why. I felt a longing for Lilo and knew that I belonged with her and that I needed to finish this dance—that I was meant to. She was welcoming me to her. And I very much wanted to be here with her. Dark as the music seemed, it was calling me to a burden that I wanted. A burden inside Lilo’s kiss.

  Then I was awoken, as if out of a stupor. The German march song “Alte Kameraden” was jubilantly playing. I used to like the song and its happy sound. But now it sounded like a death march. I looked at Lilo. She wouldn’t look at me—she looked at the ground. She wouldn’t look even when I called her, and she backed away from me.

  I yelled her name, “Lilo.”

  She looked up at me with terror in her eyes. The place was suddenly lit up as the song continued to play.

  I said, “It is just a song.” I smiled and whistled. “Old comrades on the warpath. After the battle the whole regiment goes. Into quarters in the nearest house village house element. And when the host’s flirting. With the girls and the landlord’s daughter. Tiralalalalala. Prosit!”

  The room was lit up and the music faded to a hum. It was not a magical place any more. I looked into the long, mirrored inner walls and found I was wearing my full dress Schutzstaffel uniform with a Nazi armband. I looked up, and it was Erich’s grinning face instead of mine that I saw in the mirror staring back at me. I stepped back and almost fell over with shock. I then looked at Lilo, and I no longer saw her but a large rat with fangs. It scurried away, but I chased it. I took my shoe off as “Alte Kameradan” played again, but it was louder this time, so loud that I could hear nothing else. It pulsed through my blood. I wanted to kill that rat. It was disgusting with its long, thick tail. I smacked it hard with the heel of my shoe as it tried to run away. I struck it on the head. It squealed, giving me instant pleasure. I smiled and raised my shoe again, only noticing this time that it wasn’t a rat, but Lilo. She lay bleeding badly on the floor. I breathed in, short, scared breaths.

  I cried, “No, Lilo! I am so sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”

  She was hardly lucid, but she was lucid enough to scoot away from me in fear and loathing. I ripped off my armband and said that I would never be one of them again. She lifted her head off the floor and looked at me, beautiful and hateful, with blood surrounding her slight body.

  She amassed enough energy to say, “You will always be one of them. You cannot wash the blood out of your soul. You cannot stop the bleeding there, Hans.”

  The music halted with a sound like the pull of a needle abruptly off a record. Her head slammed down on the wooden floor, and she stopped moving. I ran to her side, sobbing, and grabbed her hand. I prayed for forgiveness to whatever God might be listening. I reached for my service weapon, placed it at my temple, and pulled the trigger without a thought. I could see myself, looking down at my dead body slumped over Lilo. My whole vision from up high was tinged with red—crimson from the top of the ceiling down to the blood surrounding my body below. When I looked at the moon, it wasn’t yellow but blood red, like everything else. My body was below, and my soul was floating above. And it was covered in blood. My vision got redder and darker, until the red was almost black and totally obscured my vision. I was bleeding there in my soul. She was right, and I could not be forgiven.

  Chapter 16

  “Wake up! It’s time to leave the nest, little Jews.”

  The two guards came in. The younger one jerked open the curtains, unleashing a bright winter sun. I opened my eyes to great pain as the light hit them, magnifying the rawness. Lilo instinctively blocked the light with her hand from fully hitting my eyes .

  The more senior guard said, “Obergruppenführer Beck has been very gracious and has given me instructions to give you four things. One!” he shouted unnecessarily. “You shall receive fifty Reichsmarks each. Two! You shall be given these clothes.”

  He threw down simple but warm clothes and the money.

  “Three! You are now a Jew, and so here are your papers. Also, here are yours back.” He handed Lilo her papers. On the papers, I was named “Israel” and she “Sara.” These were the names that all Jews were given by law. To dehumanize us so that we were not individuals. To collectivize us, I thought. I didn’t realize that I had begun to think of myself as one of them. My inner dialogue had shifted.

  “Four! You will be given a golden ticket for twenty-four hours. It is this signed paper by Obergruppenführer Beck, granting you the right to be out of the ghetto, on his order, for twenty-four hours. Well, now twenty-three hours. So we will leave, you will dress, and then we will lead you through the gates and allow you out of the ghetto. After twenty-three hours, you will never be safe again. So enjoy your free time, Jewish bastard and whore. We shall be back to collect you in exactly ten minutes.”

 
And then they left. I grabbed my clothes and headed to the bathroom to change. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. But as I did so, she grabbed my hand.

  She took my robe off gently and then let hers slip to the floor.

  “Do you think that I am pretty?”

  She was pretty; beautiful, in fact. Light brown hair and soft brown eyes. A curvy shape, skinny but not too much so. She had full lips that were naturally pink, with high cheekbones. She was slight in build and her breasts were beautiful. She was at the height of feminine beauty.

  “Yes, you are, you are beautiful, Lilo.”

  She then walked into the bathroom, shut the door and got dressed, and so did I.

  And there we were, facing the gates, the exit out of the ghetto. I stared up at the guards in the towers. They were looking down at us. Erich had to be keeping this a secret. This was against the rules. But they did not take much notice, noting that we were being led by his SS guards. The older guard gave a paper to one of the two gate guards, armed with machine guns, at the wrought iron gate. The guard took off his gloves to hold the paper more securely, first rubbing his hands together to keep warm. He stared at the papers as if in deep thought.

  “Why are these two Jews being allowed out for a day?”

  The older of the two guards who had brought us shrugged. “It is on Obergruppenführer Beck’s orders, as you can well see.”

  “I see that, but I need to know why.”

  “What rank are you? Do you have more authority than Obergruppenführer Beck? Should I fetch him to your post?” he said calmly, staring at the guard.