“Listen,” I stammered, “all this is a huge misunderstanding. I am innocent.”—“Innocent?” Weser curtly interrupted. “We’ll see about that.”—“We’re going to tell you how it happened,” Clemens began. The powerful light from the flashlights dazed me, his big voice seemed to emanate from this harsh light. “You took the night train from Paris to Marseille. In Marseille, on April twenty-sixth, you had someone issue you a pass for the Italian zone. The next day, you went to Antibes. There, you presented yourself at the house and they welcomed you as a son, as the genuine son that you are. That night, you dined with the family and afterward you slept in one of the upstairs bedrooms, next to the twins’ room, opposite the bedroom of your mother and Herr Moreau. Then it was the twenty-eighth.”—“Hey,” Weser interrupted. “It’s the twenty-eighth of April, today. What a coincidence.”—“Meine Herren,” I said, trying to sound confident, “you’re raving.”—“Shut your face,” Clemens roared. “I’ll go on. During the day, we don’t really know what you did. We know you cut some wood, and that you left the axe in the kitchen instead of putting it back in the storeroom. Then you walked into town and bought your return ticket. You were wearing civilian clothes, no one noticed you. Then you came back.” Weser went on: “Afterward, there are some things we’re not sure about. Maybe you talked with Herr Moreau, with your mother. Maybe you had words. We’re not sure. We’re not sure about the time, either. But we do know that you found yourself alone with Herr Moreau. Then you took the axe in the kitchen, where you’d left it, you returned to the living room, and you killed him.”—“We’re even willing to believe that you weren’t thinking of it when you left the axe,” Clemens went on, “that you left the axe there by chance, that you didn’t premeditate anything, that it just happened like that. But once you began, you certainly went all the way.” Weser continued: “That’s for sure. He must have been quite surprised when you laid into his chest with the axe. It went in with the sound of crushed wood and he fell gurgling, his mouth full of blood, taking the axe down with him. You put your foot on his shoulder for leverage and you pulled out the axe and swung again, but you got the angle wrong and the axe bounced back, just breaking a few ribs. Then you stepped back, aimed more carefully, and brought the axe down on his throat. It went through the Adam’s apple and you clearly heard the cracking when it crushed his spinal column. He vomited dark flows of blood in one last great heave all over you, it was gushing from his neck too and you were covered with it, and then in front of you his eyes went dull and his blood emptied out through his half-severed neck, you watched his eyes go out like those of a sheep whose throat’s just been cut on the grass.”—“Meine Herren,” I said forcefully, “you are completely insane.” Clemens took up: “We don’t know if the twins saw that. In any case, they saw you go upstairs. You left the body and the axe there and you went upstairs, covered in blood.”—“We don’t know why you didn’t kill them,” said Weser. “You could have, easily. But you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t want to, maybe you wanted to, but too late, and they’d run away. Maybe you wanted to and then changed your mind. Maybe you already knew they were your sister’s children.”—“We went by her place, in Pomerania,” Clemens grunted. “We found some letters, some documents. There were some very interesting things, among others the children’s documents. But we already knew who they were.” I let out a hysterical little laugh: “I was there, you know. I was in the woods, I saw you.”—“Actually,” Weser went on imperturbably, “we thought so. But we didn’t want to insist. We said to ourselves that we’d find you sooner or later. And you see, we did find you, in fact.”—“Let’s go on with our story,” said Clemens. “You went upstairs, covered in blood. Your mother was standing there waiting for you, either at the top of the staircase, or in front of the door to her room. She was wearing a nightgown, your old mother. She spoke to you, looking into your eyes. What she said, we don’t know. The twins listened to everything, but they didn’t tell anyone. She must have reminded you how she had carried you in her womb, then fed you at her breast, how she had wiped your ass and washed you while your father was chasing whores God knows where. Maybe she showed you her breast.”—“Not very likely,” I spat out with a bitter laugh. “I was allergic to her milk, I never breastfed.”—“Too bad for you,” Clemens continued without batting an eye. “Maybe then she stroked your chin, your cheek, she called you her child. But you weren’t moved: you owed her your love, but you thought only about your hatred. You closed your eyes so you’d stop seeing hers and you took her neck in your hands and you squeezed.”—“You’re mad!” I shouted. “You’re making all this up!”—“Not at all,” Weser said sardonically. “Of course, it’s a reconstruction. But it agrees with the facts.”—“Afterward,” Clemens continued in his calm bass voice, “you went into the bathroom and got undressed. You threw your clothes into the bathtub, washed yourself, cleaned off all the blood, and returned to your bedroom, naked.”—“There, we can’t say,” Weser commented. “Maybe you engaged in perverted acts, maybe you just slept. At dawn, you got up, put on your uniform, and left. You took the bus, then the train, you returned to Paris and then to Berlin. On April thirtieth, you sent a telegram to your sister. She went to Antibes, buried your mother and her husband, then she left again as soon as possible, with the boys. Maybe she had already guessed.”—“Listen,” I babbled, “you’ve lost your minds. The judges said you had no evidence. Why would I have done that? What would be the motive? You always have to have a motive.”—“We don’t know,” Weser said calmly. “But actually it’s all the same to us. Maybe you wanted Moreau’s money. Maybe you’re a sex fiend. Maybe your wound messed up your head. Maybe it was just an old family hatred, that’s pretty common, and you wanted to take advantage of the war to settle your accounts on the sly, thinking it would hardly be noticed among so many other deaths. Maybe you simply went mad.”—“But what are you after, damn it!” I shouted again.—“We told you,” Clemens murmured: “we want justice.”—“The city is burning!” I shouted. “There aren’t any more courthouses! All the judges are dead or gone. How do you plan on judging me?”—“We’ve already judged you,” Weser said in a voice that was so quiet that I could hear the water streaming by. “We found you guilty.”—“You?” I sniggered. “You’re cops. You don’t have the right to judge.”—“Given the circumstances,” Clemens’s big voice rumbled, “we’ll take that right.”—“Then,” I said sadly, “even if you are right, you’re no better than I.”
At that moment, I heard a great din coming from Kochstrasse. People were shouting, running, splashing frantically. A man passed by crying, “The Russians! The Russians are in the tunnel!”—“Shit,” Clemens belched. He and Weser aimed their flashlights toward the station; German soldiers were surging back, firing randomly; I could see the muzzle flashes of machine guns, bullets whistled by, cracked against the walls or hit the water with soft little thwacks. Men were yelling, falling into the water. Clemens and Weser, lit by their flashlights, calmly raised their pistols and began firing round after round at the enemy. The whole tunnel echoed with cries, gunshots, the sounds of water. From the other side, machine-gun fire volleyed back. Clemens and Weser made to switch off their flashlights; just then, in a fleeting burst of light, I saw Weser catch a bullet under the chin, rise as if lifted up, and then fall straight backward in a huge splash. Clemens bellowed, “Weser! Shit!” But his light had gone out and, holding my breath, I dove underwater. Guiding myself by holding onto the tracks rather than swimming, I headed toward the cars of the makeshift hospital. When my head emerged from the water, bullets were whistling around me, patients screamed in panic, I heard French voices, curt orders. “Don’t shoot, guys!” I shouted in French. A hand seized my collar, dragged me, dripping, toward the platform. “You’re one of ours?” went a cocky voice. I was breathing hard and coughing, I had swallowed water. “No, no, German,” I said. The man let off a volley of rounds next to my head, deafening me just as Clemens’s voice resounded: “Aue! You son of a bitch! I’ll get you!” I hoisted myself onto the platform and, striking out with hands and elbows at the panicking refugees to clear a path for myself, found the stairs, which I fled up four at a time.
The street was deserted, except for three foreign Waffen-SS men charging toward Zimmerstrasse with a heavy machine gun and some Panzerfäuste, paying no attention to me or to the other civilians escaping from the U-Bahn entrance. I started in the opposite direction, running north up Friedrichstrasse, between burning buildings, corpses, burned-out cars. I reached Unter den Linden. A large fountain of water was gushing from a blown water main, spraying the bodies and the rubble. At the corner two grizzled old men were walking along, they seemed not to be paying any attention to the racket of the artillery and the heavy mortar shells. One of them wore the armband of the blind; the other was guiding him. “Where are you going?” I asked, panting.—“We don’t know,” the blind man replied.—“Where are you coming from?” I asked again.—“We don’t know that, either.” They sat down on a crate among the ruins and piles of rubble. The blind man leaned on his cane. The other stared about him with wild eyes, plucking at his friend’s sleeve. I turned my back to them and went on. The avenue, for as far as I could see, seemed completely deserted. Opposite stood the building that housed the offices of Dr. Mandelbrod and Herr Leland. It had been hit a few times but didn’t look ruined. One of the main doors was hanging from a hinge, I pushed it open with my shoulder and entered the lobby, full of marble slabs and moldings fallen from the walls. Soldiers must have camped here: I noticed traces of a campfire, empty cans, nearly dry excrement. But the lobby was deserted. I pushed open the emergency stairway and ran up. At the top floor, the stairs opened onto a hallway that led to the beautiful reception room before Mandelbrod’s office. Two of the amazons were sitting there, one on the sofa, the other in an armchair, their heads leaning to the side or backward, their eyes wide open, a thin stream of blood running from their temples and the corners of their lips; each one held a small automatic pistol with a mother-of-pearl handle in her hand. A third girl was lying in front of the double padded doors. Cold with horror, I went over to look at them close up, I brought my face to theirs, without touching them. They were perfectly turned out, their hair pulled back, clear gloss made their full lips shine, mascara still outlined a crown of long black eyelashes around their empty eyes; their nails, on the pistol butts, were carefully manicured and painted. No breath raised their chests under the ironed suits. No matter how much I scrutinized their pretty faces, I was incapable of distinguishing one from the other, of recognizing Hilde from Helga or Hedwig; yet they weren’t triplets. I stepped over the one who was lying across the doorway and entered the office. Three other girls were lying dead on the sofa and the carpet; Mandelbrod and Leland were at the back of the room, in front of the large shattered bay window, near a mountain of leather suitcases and trunks. Outside, behind them, a fire was roaring, they were paying no attention to the spirals of smoke invading the room. I went up to them, looked at the bags, and asked: “You’re planning on going on a trip?” Mandelbrod, who was holding a cat on his lap and stroking it, smiled slightly in the ripples of fat that drowned his features. “Exactly,” he said in his beautiful voice. “Would you like to come with us?” I counted the trunks and suitcases out loud: “Nineteen,” I said, “not bad. You’re going far?”—“To begin with, Moscow,” said Mandelbrod. “Afterward, we’ll see.” Leland, wearing a long navy blue trenchcoat, was sitting on a little chair next to Mandelbrod; he was smoking a cigarette, with a glass ashtray on his knees, and he looked at me without saying anything. “I see,” I said. “And you really think you can take all that?”—“Oh, of course,” Mandelbrod smiled. “It’s already arranged. We’re just waiting for them to come get us.”—“The Russians? Our men are still holding the area, I should warn you.”—“We know that,” Leland said, blowing out a long puff of smoke. “The Soviets told us they’d be here tomorrow, without fail.”—“A very cultivated colonel,” Mandelbrod added. “He told us not to worry, he’d personally take care of us. The fact is, you see, we still have a lot of work to do.”—“And the girls?” I asked, waving my hand toward the bodies.—“Ah, the poor little things didn’t want to come with us. Their attachment to the fatherland was too strong. They didn’t want to understand that some values are even more important.”—“The Führer has failed,” Leland said coldly. “But the ontological war that he began isn’t over. Who else besides Stalin can finish the job?”—“When we offered them our services,” Mandelbrod whispered as he stroked his cat, “they were immediately very interested. They know that they’ll need men like us, after this war, that they can’t allow the Western powers to walk off with the cream of the crop. If you come with us, I can guarantee you a good position, with all the advantages.”—“You can keep doing what you do so well,” said Leland.—“You’re crazy!” I exclaimed. “You’re all crazy! Everyone’s gone mad in this city.” Already I was backing to the door, past the gracefully slumped bodies of the girls. “Except for me!” I shouted before escaping. Leland’s last words reached me at the door: “If you change your mind, come back to see us!”