BLOOD

May 10, 1945

It wasn’t safe to go out, even at night, but Dietrich had to find his wife.

He crouched down against the wall, listening. He’d come home to find the place abandoned, windows smashed and their things strewn about the lawn. He’d gone from room to room anyway, calling her name and pushing over furniture in the irrational hope that somehow she’d been hidden.

He’d found her piano in the koi pond, in the garden she’d loved so much. He’d stared at it until the shadows stretched, touching, and a former neighbor approached him. The older man was German, too, but as different from Dietrich as an apple was from a chair. Fat and sweating, his eyes rolled in his head as he’d delivered the terrible news: collaborators had been rounded up, along with anyone even suspected of aiding the Reich, and interned.

Now, hours later, the moon traced everything in silver.

He tried to banish the man’s face from his thoughts.

Helmut Fritzl had been trained to sit behind a desk, a pale man who’d talked endlessly about Germanizing the Czech vermin and whose eyes reminded Dietrich of raisins in dough. Dietrich, as a soldier in the elite 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, had been trained to die. Fritzl looked down on Dietrich and all the other Frontschweinen, the front pigs, decrying their failure after failure in Russia from the warmth and comfort of his living room.

Fritzl thought Magda and her parents might be at the school.

There was no point in Dietrich going, though; the Soviets had them, or Czech partisans did, and both had been shooting any Germans they could find. Better to flee while he still could. Dietrich, who’d absorbed this news in silence, noted that Fritzl made no mention of his own wife and daughter.

He hoped the partisans butchered Fritzl and ate him. Fritzl and those like him had gotten fat, gorging themselves on food meant for soldiers who’d survived on gruel and less for years. His own uniform hung on him, and it stank. The one creature that’d thrived during Operation Barbarossa was the louse, infesting men on both sides and all their livestock. Shifting slightly, he felt them slide down his back. They crawled around his ears, too, and pooled in his boots.

He boosted himself up onto the wall.

At 189 centimeters he wasn’t a short man, but the wall was a full two meters and thick. Magda had told him, in her letters, that she felt safe behind it. Crouched on top, he froze as he heard footsteps and shouting. Groups of civilians were everywhere, drunk with the excitement of taking back their city. He’d encountered several since fleeing his division’s makeshift garrison, managing to evade all but one. He didn’t want to fight; he wanted Magda.

The men had Czech flags pinned to their lapels. Most carried clubs but two, he saw, had what’d once been German service pistols. He held his breath, praying to a God he no longer believed in that the overgrown lilacs would protect him. Still, if a single man looked up, he’d be done for.

None of them did.

He waited until the noise faded, then dropped down onto the sidewalk.

The unmistakable click, click of his boots would draw other groups and snipers, too. He heard the muffled reports, of snipers taking potshots at each other from high above. If there’d been one atop his own house he’d be dead. He’d shared it with Magda and her parents for four years, most of which he’d spent in Russia. He still thought of it as his house, their house, and the shock of finding it desecrated had been worse than anything he could’ve imagined.

What’d kept him going, during the war, was knowing that she was alright.

It’d never occurred to him that she might not be.

As soon as he could, he crossed onto grass.

Hearing another group approach, he slipped back into the deeper shadows. This group was singing. The Czech language had been banned during the occupation and he couldn’t speak a word, but he could guess; Germans had songs of their own about what happened to enemies, and all of them seemed to have a similar tune.

He fought the urge to scratch and tear at his uniform, to pull it off entirely.

He had no other clothes; even his socks had been stolen, what must’ve been waves of looters leaving him only his spare regalia. Apart from the ubiquitous feldgrau, even the buttons on his dinner jacket bore the Sig runes and all of it was as cursed as he.

He’d seen other soldiers running through the streets, a few of whom he’d recognized, ripping at their cuff titles and tossing them aside. Some perverse impulse prevented him from doing the same. The aluminum thread marked him as an officer in what’d begun as the Führer’s personal bodyguard, but he felt no pride. This was one more remnant of a promise that’d been broken, again and again, to him and to everyone like him.

He wouldn’t forget, even if his leaders had, he’d wave it in their faces and make them look.

Besides, he thought dully, it didn’t matter. Even naked, there was no escape. He, like all SS men, bore his own personal mark of the beast in the form of a blood group tattoo on his upper left arm. The Soviets knew where to look, and so did the bastard Americans.

Czech flags fluttered from window after window, flags their owners had risked certain death to hide during the occupation. A shot rang out and someone screamed. A ceasefire was in effect, but no one cared. He passed underneath an apartment where someone else was listening to the radio. The Czech president was calling for a total liquidation of Germans and had been for almost a week. He was in London, just one more idiot who’d sent men to their deaths without ever seeing their faces.

The Soviets had marched in the morning before, to cheers, and since then done nothing. The SS fought on in isolated pockets, as much from inertia as hopelessness, and civilians on both sides were using the confusion to settle personal scores. He knew firsthand how brutally efficient the Soviets could be, and didn’t understand what was happening.

A woman screamed. Men laughed. His stomach turned.

He approached the school.

A miasma seemed to envelop him, but he couldn’t tell if it was real or if his mind was playing tricks. He stopped at the door, heart pounding. No sound came from within, and nothing else moved outside.

He tried the door.

It opened.

Each step in these infernal boots split the silence like a gun blast, but no one shouted in warning and no one came running. He moved through rooms that seemed more like tombs, but found no hint as to where the occupants might’ve gone or even that they’d been here at all.

He wanted to call out but didn’t dare, for Magda’s sake and for his.

He couldn’t draw attention, and risk endangering her before he found her. He thought about the woman he’d heard outside. He’d wanted to rescue her, too, wanted to rescue them all but he was one against a horde and Magda was somewhere and she needed him. He had to block the fear, the doubt from his mind or he’d lose his grip on this last shred of sanity.

The nearer he got to the gymnasium, the thicker the miasma grew.

He stopped at this last door, his knuckles white on the handle, and pulled.

It was like running headfirst into a wall.

He gulped for air as his stomach clenched, getting none and instead heaving up the last thing he’d eaten, a few mouthfuls of soup concentrate that he’d split with one of his men that morning. His eyes watering, he wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and surveyed the scene before him. Moonlight poured through the high windows, throwing it into sharp relief. Men, women, and children had been herded together and shot. This hadn’t happened recently, but he could still make out their faces and he forced himself to examine each one.

He’d known what awaited him. He’d smelled death for the first time in Poland. Outside, it’d been the faint but growing whisper of mothballs and rotten eggs. Up close, it was cabbage and garlic and fruit that’d been left too long in the sun, all mixing with the sick-sweet funk of rancid meat.

He turned one woman over, recognizing the grocer who’d been kind to Magda when no one else was. Beside her was someone he didn’t know, her mouth frozen in an open O of shock. He found their block warden, a harmless old man who’d brought them literature. He found the little boy who’d raced his dog down their street, laughing. Not a single one of these people had ever born arms, for the Germans or against anyone else. They were all Czech.

All he could think, with each new face, was not Magda.

She wasn’t here.

He sat down next to their block warden. There was no sound except for his own breathing. This was God’s retribution, and he knew it.

None of his companions had committed a single crime, save for being kind, but no one danced with the Devil and escaped unburnt.

Magda, though, might still be alive.

He looked down at his hands, and thought about Italy.

The school sat at the base of what’d once been a vineyard and was now an orchard, a series of gently rolling hills with a broken path that reminded him of Cervo. There, he’d stood among the grapes and gazed out at the ocean and dreamed about sharing the spot with Magda. His men were all screwing around, married and not. Some of them teased him for not joining in and some of them, in private, offered their sovereign cures for impotence.

What none of them understood was that he didn’t want someone else. He wasn’t unable, although the torment of his loneliness got so bad that he sometimes wished he was. The simple fact of being without her was a constant, throbbing ache that could only be filled with daydreams.

He’d asked permission to go home on that last leave and been denied so he’d watched his men cavorting on the beach, and smiled, and planned for his future. There was a hospital in Cervo and plenty of pretty nurses; he suspected that more than one engagement had come of those weeks, words whispered between lovers who knew that forever meant goodbye.

He’d found a bottle of wine and some ink and spent the afternoon lounging on the grass and writing to Magda, a long letter about how after the war he’d bring her here on their honeymoon. She loved the sea. They’d sit at a café he’d found, he told her, and hold hands and watch the tide come in and later he’d pull her into his arms and take her in this same field.

They’d spent so little of their marriage together, he yearned for the things that other men took for granted. He wanted to hold her against him at night and sip his coffee in the morning and listen to her prattle on about whatever, he didn’t care. He wanted to finally really try for children.

He’d married her in ’41 when he was twenty-three and she was twenty-one but he’d loved her long before that, since before he understood the word. He’d met her when he moved into the house next door; hearing that the new neighbors had a daughter he’d peered through the hedge, hoping to satisfy his curiosity. Instead of a girl, however, he’d found an angel.

As pale as alabaster and with straight, dark hair, she’d smiled sweetly at the blond oaf who’d managed somehow to get himself stuck. He’d been in his Hitlerjugend uniform as he’d just come home from school. He’d been so proud of it and she’d made fun of it, but gently, and he’d gaped at her as she untangled him. Soldiers shouldn’t lose battles to boxwoods, she’d told him, even soldiers in training with cute little daggers strapped to their waists.

Later on, he’d changed that dagger for one bearing the inscription of the SS. Her parents hadn’t been thrilled, about him or his career prospects, they mistrusted Hitler and his promises. Nevertheless, they’d come to Prague with their daughter and her father had taken a job teaching at a different school. Dietrich, who liked the man, had assumed that in time he’d come around—to both Dietrich and National Socialism, which he’d grown up considering the future.

He’d seen what the Great War did to his father, an abusive drunk who blamed his problems on everyone but himself. He didn’t care what art hung in galleries, or what music played on the radio, or who worshipped what god, he wanted a world where a man didn’t come home from the bar and put his wife in the hospital because she had a job and he didn’t.

Dietrich stood.

Outside, he looked up. He didn’t know what time it was, his watch didn’t work, but the moon was high overhead. From the highest hill, he’d be able to see all of Hanspaulka and then he’d decide where to search next. Once he’d found her, he could surrender himself to the Allies. Their camps weren’t so bad and they treated prisoners fairly, even prisoners like him.

After, who knew, but at least they’d be together.

He was halfway up the hill when he saw it.

Something had been hung from a lamp post and it dangled down, forlorn.

No, he told himself. No.

The concrete under his feet was uneven, slab after slab that cut into the fertile soil and looked like the stone on tombs. Her feet were just above his head, swollen and almost black from where the blood had pooled. Her shoes were in the grass and what was left of her dress hung in tatters.

As pale in death as she’d been in life, veins crisscrossed her skin. Her mouth hung open and she stared down at him, her eyes like twin pits. Crows had been at them. He told himself that this was a dream, that he’d wake up soon and she’d be with him. During all those patrols, on all those watches, he’d begged God to let him see her one last time and to hold her and he was the one who should’ve been taken. He moaned a wordless plea to let them please switch places but God didn’t listen to men like him and she was in Heaven, gone forever to a place he’d never be.

Someone approached, and stopped behind him.

He turned.

It was Jan, their old postman. “I wondered if you’d come back.”

He knew the man from Magda’s descriptions more than actual memory, he’d never paid much mind to the old troll although she’d written that he scared her. Jan was friend to no one, agreeing with whoever paid him. He watched as Jan, smirking, took in his ragged air.

“Not so big and fancy now,” Jan said. “Even in your uniform.”

Dietrich said nothing.

“All a bunch of cowards,” Jan continued. “Like most bullies.”

“What happened?”

“We did to them what you did to our women.” Jan spoke with a sick, gloating tone. “We burned her parents alive, but that was after we made them watch.”

“Watch what?” Dietrich grated.

“Such a pretty young thing, although you wouldn’t know it to see her now. We all lined up, took our turns.” Jan’s smile deepened into a leer. “She couldn’t say no to us then, stuck up bitch. There were fifteen of us, more, I lost count and so did she.” He shrugged. “She cried, at first. Then she didn’t. I thought she was dead until we started stringing her up.”

Dietrich felt his fists clench.

“She screamed for help, for you.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That you were dead.” Jan spat. “Seems I was a little premature.”

“Premature?”

“I’m sure the Reds want another chance to set you straight. Or GI Joe. It took her a long time, to choke.”

Dietrich was on the man before he knew he’d moved. He drove Jan down into the grass and, screaming, pulled his dagger from its sheath and stabbed. Blood sprayed across his face, beading in his eyelashes as Jan dissolved beneath him into a pile of muck. He was barely conscious of what he was doing but when he stopped his arm was sore. He spat Jan’s blood from his mouth.

Climbing the pole, he sawed at the rope that held his wife.

He’d dulled his blade, a cheap piece of steel inscribed with words that’d once meant so much: Meine Ehre heißt Treue, my honor means loyalty. The rope frayed, then snapped, and Magda fell. She hit the ground with a dull thud and it felt like being stabbed.

Dropping down beside her, he gathered her into his arms.

She was cold, so cold, even on such a warm night.

He brushed her hair back from her face, and cradled her against his chest. She had to come back, she had to. She couldn’t be gone. His fingers sank into her and he didn’t care, she was his and he was here, at last. He’d never let her go, he couldn’t, he’d keep her and protect her until she came back to him. Somehow. This couldn’t be the end. He wouldn’t let it be.

“Forgive me,” he whispered, his lips barely moving. “Forgive me.”