As he travelled through the morning mist of the Glasgow streets, he peered from the window at the passing scenery. It was a long way still to Edinburgh and he had time to take in the sights of the people and buildings. After a short while, everything became one grey portrait with no frame or signature in the corner, only a reminiscent vision of a time long ago. Whizzing past as the car sped up, the figures of people in coats and hats, some in raincoats that resembled cowls, wandered around in the cloak of fog and drizzle. The background was more opaque, but he could discern the grand, old buildings with their pointy roofs and the occasional spire which pointed to a careless god. They stood in cold dead stone, leering darkly over the specters that roamed the city streets in their aimless existence and he envied them their ignorance.
The sound of the car radio faded into a crackle and the newscast that had been on since he stepped into the luxury car, gradually transformed into Marlene Dietrich’s rendition of ‘Lili Marleen’. Static persisted on the radio, but he could hear the deep allure of her low-toned words float seamlessly over him, the same static that maintained the grey tableau before his eyes. Without any disturbance, he watched the modern pedestrians turn into his countrymen, the tarmac streets turned to cobbles and he was transported back to the Nalewki quarter, Warsaw, 1940.
Herman Lockhart looked down at the restraint on his wrist and saw a white armband with a blue Star of David upon it. He frowned in the sway of Marlene’s intoxicating echo and closed his eyes to make sense of the experience, but his effort was instead rewarded with a most dire memory that he had carefully buried over the years. Now it reached to him again from the soft soil of the unmarked grave, bothering the beauty of the green grass he had planted over the bed of death beneath. A putrid boney hand of the past took him by the ankle and burned his sins into his skin as he tried to run.
The awful memory grew flesh as he fell to the ground and smelled fresh gun powder in his nostrils. He could hear the sweet song still playing somewhere in the sky above him, as if some unseen and ever present loudspeakers conveyed her tale across miles of barren land and barbed wiring. But in his immediate vicinity, he could hear Dr. Gould’s voice. He was still on the ground, his face inches from the grass and he dared not look behind him.
“Look at me, Professor,” Nina said in a voice so clear he thought it was his own. Her tone was firm and challenging, as always, especially when he had heard her debating with scholars and academic peers.
“No. No,” he groaned in regret, pinching his eyes shut and smelling the wet soil in the grass entwine with the smell of furnace smoke.
“Why not? We need to talk, remember? Our meeting in Warriston Cemetery, remember? Just turn around and look at me,” she insisted, but Herman Lockhart could not face the beautiful historian he had betrayed. Guilt consumed him as he heard a man speaking to her, no, two men. Then suddenly Nina Gould began to protest wildly, her voice cut off by a violent grip to her neck, from the sounds of it.
“I’m so, so sorry, Nina!” Professor Lockhart begged for pardon, but she said nothing other than spewing death threats from behind the palm of a stronger individual. Professor Lockhart wept for the fate of his long standing colleague and client, but he could not face her. He simply could not look her in the eye after he had delivered her into the foulest embrace of a psychotic right wing elitist, which, may have sealed the doom of the world.
A painful moment in time replayed itself in his mind, forced by some unnatural power he could not resist.
In the streets of the Nalewki quarter of Warsaw, where he was a youth during the World War II, he was walking with his sister. Only a few nights before the Nazis had unexpectedly closed the ghetto, not allowing anyone to leave unless they wanted to meet their end swiftly and violently. Being teenagers, their mother had sent them to Kowalski, a well- known troublemaker in the close knit community, who was still, even after the executions of several Jews in his building, trading artifacts for food that he procured in his nefarious way.
Hermann’s mother had asked her children go out at dusk to see Kowalski and trade one of her most precious possessions for a loaf of bread and some fish. It was a peculiar item they had to trade, but they asked no questions. They were thrown into a time of crude danger where life meant nothing to their captors and slavery was a blessing. No more did they question any orders for fear of a bullet to the brain, but deep inside them there still lingered the rebellious nature of free will and the need to disobey. Under the radar of the oppressors, a lot of them moved, convening and assisting one another where they could. In terrible times like these, they had no choice but to rely on the help of their neighbors and in turn offer what they had.
In the half dark of the dusk, the two snuck into the brick building where Kowalski would have a look at the item they brought to barter with. They went up the narrow dark steps, hearing the German shouts on the other side of the wall where they were no longer allowed to pass. It was a freezing cold night, the sidewalks covered with old snow, half eaten by the day. On the stairs, it reeked of burnt coal and urine. Hermann felt his hands burn even in his pockets, stiff from the cold. His sister tailed him closely as they approached the illuminated doorway of Kowalski’s front door.
He suddenly appeared, cigarette drooping from his cracked dry lips. Over his beady eyes, his hat cast a shadow that accentuated his cheek bones, making his cheeks look more sunken than they were. The stubble of his beard gleamed in silver and his raspy voice whispered, “What are you doing here? Go home.”
“But my mother told you we were coming,” Hermann said, confused by the man’s unusual behavior. Normally Kowalski would be loud and vulgar. In his house there were always people, all kinds of people, but none of them wholesome. Now, it was quiet behind him in the sharp yellow glow of his ceiling light. Usually he only had two lamps shining in his house, but now all the lights were on and a strange sound of murmurs and rummaging came from deeper in the residence.
“For god’s sake, just go home! Both of you. Now!” Kowalski gritted his teeth in the lowest tone he could muster. His eyes came into view to both the children. They were wide and serious, not in rage, but in warning. He flicked his eyes sideways a few times to gesture that they should go, planting his calloused old hands against the doorframe. Outstretched, his skinny arms blocked their way from coming in.
“Was ist hier los?” They heard a loud, authoritative voice from inside the house, and immediately Kowalski winced, closing his eyes and freezing in his position.
“Just some dumb kids, Obersturmführer,” he answered without turning away from Hermann and his sister. “They are looking for my son, but he is not here…” he raised his voice to chase them off, “…and I don’t have time for silly children now.”
The siblings could see that Kowalski was warning them, and started walking away, but that same chilling voice summoned them back from the doorway where Kowalski had now disappeared from.
“Bitte,” was all it said, but that one word filled them both to the brim with terror. In their hearts, they could feel the rising doom envelop them and they knew they had to adhere… or die. “Come inside, please.”
The man sounded cordial, but so did they all. Demons with angelic voices singing lullabies to the souls they ripped from bodies, which was the nature of the Nazi. Now, all they could do was comply and hope for the best. Kowalski was seated in the corner of his dirty living room, looking quite pitiful against the moldy stains of the chipping beige paint of his apartment. In the bright light, it looked even more down-at-heel than usual and the two siblings stood tightly against one another in the entrance hall. The officer insisted with a smile, that they have a seat on the couch. Then he took his place opposite them and leaned forward to speak.