That was the last straw. For a week they’d been chasing him around the training ground, making him cram his head with Yeschke’s deeds of heroism and the faces of Yeschke’s many relations; seven whole days from morning till night the pharmacist had had to learn off by heart the orders of the SS—and all that in order to find out not the secret weapon, but the sexual capacities of some slut of a wardress?
Next morning he was awakened by another of them. He had to tell her all about his deeds of heroism at Voronezh. She wanted to see his scars and he got so scared that he started kissing her just to put an end to her inquisitiveness. This one was a flaxen blonde and a bit fatter.
“The Führer is certainly looking on us now ... it will be the Führer’s child. Siegfried Hitler . . .” she said piously, and tripped out as if in a trance. Hutzvalek began to fear he would not last a fortnight at this pace, and nipped her bottle of brandy off her as she left. All day he drank alone in his cell with the naked beauties on the walls, until in the evening he threw the empty bottle at one of them and broke it.
“Are you homesick for your handgrenades?” asked the third woman, who did not even bother to come in a dressing gown. “You can keep your hand in here, in the factory; we often practice on the prisoners with live grenades. . . .” and she placed herself on the bed with the matter-of-fact calm and lack of allure of a patient getting ready for gynecological examination. Hutzvalek started hitting her and she thanked him delightedly.
They kept him occupied like this for a week.
“I want to see the secret weapon,” he said every day. “I was sent for in order to test the secret weapon. My comrades are sacrificing their lives at the front and I am wasting my time here with you. What did you bring me here for?” They just laughed at him, and he could not get out. There was a guard stationed in the corridor day and night, and he did not even know where the passage led. For seven days they did not let him out for a breath of fresh air.
On the eighth evening a man appeared for the first time. He brought no brandy, either. It was Dr. Müller, or at ‘east that was how he introduced himself; his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses and the lower half of his face was covered with a white mask as though he had just come from an operation.
“Thank you. You have been most successful. I shall inform the Führer personally. . . .”
“What about?” Hutzvalek could not make head or tail of the business.
“Within a week you will have a detachment of the most dependable fighters, men you can depend on in every detail. We shall bring our last secret weapon into play. .. .” Müller laughed so much that his mask puffed out. “You will receive a high military decoration.”
“What ever for? Why? What is our last secret weapon?” and the pharmacist took good care to say “our.” In a few words Müller explained everything. The research workers had discovered a way to speed up the maturing of the human foetus. An adult man could be produced seven days after conception.
“Don’t you see the enormous possibilities of the thing? A year ago this discovery could have turned the war in our favor. We could have sacrificed all the living to the front and brought to maturity those who were still in their mother’s womb. Now at least we can be sure of winning the peace. There is little time and little material left; we have to economize with our discovery. I have arranged for the most reliable bitches—I mean loyal German women—to be sent here from the Lebensborn division, which as you know has been providing the Führer with babies since the beginning of the war. They are coupled with the best of our warriors from the front and the home front. Each of you will get your own detachment of soldiers after your own heart; they won’t be young whippersnappers from the Hitlerjugend who turn tail at the first shot or let any softsoap parson talk them round. They will be like you in every respect, because they have just been born into the world. They will be capable of everything, like you. ‘Heil Herod’ can begin. Nobody will try to put it off now. Our last secret weapon has proved its worth.”
He shook Hutzvalek by the hand, barked out a Heil! and disappeared.
He went away in the company of Leni, the only woman he had not been forced to sleep with while he was there. They drove in a darkened car for about four hours and at last stopped in front of a big white building. Leni took him inside.
“This is where they will be waiting,” she pointed. “The mothers will put them here, they will be given an injection, and then the dead bodies will be burnt over there. We shall deal immediately with any attempt to resist. An epidemic will be started in the city, to support the assumption that we want to inoculate all the children. An entire generation will be lost to them. Then if there’s another spot of trouble in fifteen years’ time they will have no men to mobilize. . . .” She smiled dreamily. “When the campaign is completed, we shall blow the whole place sky high.” As she spoke she pointed to a lever near the door. It looked like the main switch on an electric light meter. ...
“We’ll wipe out all the brats in the place,” she said as they went out again. Hutzvalek was still in a daze. Looking round, he saw the outline of the Castle on the horizon. So the place was Prague. He was to kill his own children.
Leni drove him to Holešovice, and as she opened the door and helped him out of his coat without a trace of ceremony, he remembered that Yeschke’s wife was called Leni. So it was his own wife who was to keep guard over him in the Nazi breeding stables. The flat they entered was not at all homely, but in all the rooms there were stacks of weapons, as if they were expecting a siege. “We’ll have to hurry,” said Leni, cleaning the barrel of a light machinegun as lovingly as other women clean their silver. “The Führer fell yesterday. . .”
Hutzvalek dashed out of the house as he was, without his coat. People jumped out of his way and everything in uniform sprang to attention and saluted. Discipline had lasted longer than victory, it seemed. He had to try the third telephone booth before he got one that worked. He dialled Borovetz’s number and listened anxiously to the thing ringing at the other end. It was his last hope. Now he understood why they needed cutthroats. Now he understood why even the most loyal of Hitlerjugend lads did not want to carry out these orders. He had discovered information nobody had ever guessed at. The phone was ringing in vain. He drove out to the wood where they had taken him that first day. It was a strange sight, a high-rank officer of the SS crashing through the undergrowth. Of course he failed to find the hunting lodge. He was sick with fear. Now he was worried for his own children, who had stayed in Prague; now he was really afraid. His hand trembled as he put his note into the hiding place as arranged. He knew it was too late, it was all in vain, everything he was doing was useless because his news could no longer save anyone. He tried desperately to think whom he could warn, what he could do, but everything seemed so fantastic; he was the prisoner of his own uniform.
The least he could do was to go home. There he found three families from East Prussia; their horses were grazing in front of the house. They had no idea where the Hutzvaleks had got to; most likely to the suburbs somewhere. Their Heils were enthusiastic, though, because they recognized Yeschke, who had murdered all the Jews in Estonia. Yeschke the hero of the Aryan East. He slammed the door in their faces. How could he find his family? What was he to do? He went back to Holešovice; it was almost entirely a German quarter, now; the Czechs had been moved out and they called it Little Berlin. It was no surprise to see a big black limousine in front of the door, with the swastika flying on it. Leni opened the door to him in a dirndl skirt. She hurriedly straightened his uniform; General Kopfenpursch was sitting waiting in the dining room to present the front-line hero Yeschke with the Iron Cross with the diamond bar.