She started, then broke into a smile that appeared relieved and rushed to hug him, apologizing for her stained apron in passing.
“Mina, you have to come with me,” Harald said without any preamble.
“Now? We’re so overwhelmed here—”
Her face was wet with fog, or perspiration from running about for endless hours. Harald studied her closely for the first time, the woman who he had sworn to his brother to protect by any means. In Napola terms, it would have meant to slash her neck if no other option was available just so a proud German woman wouldn’t fall into the beastly hands of those sub-human Bolsheviks. With a chilling lack of interest, Harald suddenly wondered if his Napola still stood or was obliterated by the enemy fire together with everything that it signified. Perhaps it was better that way? Wipe them all out as a nation and start with a clean slate? Scorched Earth policy, on a grandiose scale, like everything in the New Reich.
When he spoke, his voice was hoarse for some reason. “It’s Johann.”
Mina’s expression changed at once, became frightful and guarded. “What happened?”
“You just need to come with me. I promised to bring you.”
“Is he here in Berlin?”
Instead of replying, Harald took her by the hand and led her further and further away, until he could hear moaning and crying no longer. To all of her questions and pleas, he only gripped her hand tighter and stubbornly repeated the same, “you’ll see when you get there,” until Mina gave up and followed him along deserted streets.
Artillery began firing in the distance. The enemy was approaching from the south this time. Narrowly escaping an SS patrol, they darted into a street which soon opened into a shadowed alley with abandoned villas lining both sides. Reichstag big-shots’ heaven. Harald pondered something, finally pushed the wrought-iron gates to the nearest one and motioned Mina to follow him. The door was locked fast. A white sheet hung from the closed window◦– a silent plea to spare the villa from plunder. Harald searched the ground, picked up a rock and hurled it through the intricate stained glass with rays of light shining out of small swastikas, shattering the past with savage satisfaction. Leaving speechless Mina behind, he climbed inside. Soon, his grinning face appeared from behind the front door.
“Care to come in?”
“Why did you bring me here? Where’s Johann?” Golden eyes regarded him wrathfully, with apparent mistrust.
“Mina, come in, please.” He wasn’t smiling anymore, his face growing stern and emotionless. Only his eyes stared oddly out of the hollows of that death-head mask, bright-blue and clear.
Leaden with chilling, alien fear which she couldn’t explain to herself, Mina carefully moved forward, inside the hallway, closer to the young man in a dark uniform. How much he had grown; how much he had changed! Taller than her now; maybe taller than Johann even. She still remembered him, a young boy in his Jungvolk uniform, on a train station in Beeskow, standing next to his brother... How long ago was it? Seven years. She couldn’t quite believe it.
“Harald, you’re almost eighteen, aren’t you?”
“I will be, in a few months.”
“No more Napola then? Are they officially enlisting you in the SS?” She followed him cautiously through the dining room and into the kitchen.
Harald stopped his rummaging through the cabinets and broke into hollow, vacant laughter instead of an answer.
Her eyes brimming now, Mina pressed herself against the wall. “Harald, what are we doing here?”
“What do you think I just found? Preserves! We won’t go hungry.”
“Harald!”
He slowly put the can down and turned to face her. Only now Mina noticed a pair of scissors which he had extracted from the cabinet and was now holding in one hand. Harald hesitated for a few moments before finally saying, “Mina, sit down over there, on that chair, please.” His voice was coolly polite, but the request itself had the quality of an order.
“Why?”
“Don’t you trust me?”
Trembling and hot-eyed, she took a step back. A sad smile appeared on Harald’s face. He lowered his gaze as though not to intimidate her any further. “Mina, I’m a Napola cadet who’s been running marathons for his infantry training almost daily just because it pleased my superiors. You won’t even make it out of the front door before I catch you.”
A tear dropped from her eye. She swiped it in some frantic gesture. “What do you want with me?”
“I promised Johann to keep you safe from those Bolshevik hordes.”
A shell exploded in the distance. A sole ray of light tore through the dense clouds and pierced the window, gleaming on the blades of the scissors in Harald’s hand. She had not once ceased staring at them.
“Mina, do you think I will hurt you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He was smiling again. “I’m your husband’s brother. Do you believe for one second that I would hurt his wife?”
“I don’t know you, Harald. You’re not him.”
He considered for a moment; nodded slowly. “You’re right. I’m not him. That was perhaps my biggest mistake; my desire to be someone different. Do you think it’s too late for me? For all of us◦– to change?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded defeated. A voluminous sigh rose from her chest. She walked over to the chair and sat in it, with her back to Harald.
She didn’t hear him approach her, only felt his hand on top of her head as he removed her nurse’s cap and undid her hair.
“Mina, I’m sorry for what I’m about to do but it’s for your own good. It’s only hair; it’ll grow back, I promise.”
The first gilded lock dropped onto her lap. Mina stared at it without comprehension.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.”
Mina finally relaxed a little in her chair and patiently sat, without moving, as Harald stood above her, chopping off her long, beautiful hair. She even firmly gripped the top part that he asked her to hold while he cropped the rest of the hair close to her skin. He clipped the top just to the right length, neatly brushed it to one side and grinned in spite of himself.
“A perfect Hitlerjugend, if I do say so myself. I should have been a barber.”
He then extracted a folded uniform from under his tunic and assured Mina that it came from a local school locker, not some stiffened corpse. It didn’t seem to matter to her now. She was smiling brightly at him, her previous fearful expression gone, vanished like the fog outside.
“What about my footwear?”
“Here, put on my boots, only stuff the socks inside them first so that you can walk without difficulty.”
“What about you?”
“I’m sure that Parteigenosse, who had left this villa in such haste, left something for my feet upstairs.” Harald winked at her and disappeared in the direction of the staircase.
Indeed, in one of the bedrooms, Harald discovered not only a few pairs of brand new boots but a few perfectly starched uniforms as well. They still sat there, perfectly undisturbed, next to the rest of the empty hangers. A Nazi Party pin gleamed softly on the dressing table, next to a rare edition of Mein Kampf, embossed in gold. The small safe stood open on the floor. The drawers had been pulled out, emptied. So, the man took what was dear to him, Harald smirked. Fucking hypocrites, all of them. His former leaders, whom he looked up to with such reverence.
He shoved his legs into stiff black leather, caught his reflection in the full-length mirror and, in a sudden spasm of anger, he grabbed the bust of Der Führer from the dresser and hurled it at his own reflection. Drunk on sudden fury, he swiped everything that was left off the redwood tabletop, smashed the dresser’s mirror as well and had just finished tearing the uniforms apart when Mina suddenly appeared at the door, in her new attire. Harald quickly noted to himself that had he seen her in the street, he’d never even consider, as a distant possibility, that this rascal in front of him was a female.