Battleships
Lines of longitude and latitude stretched the empty borders of the map. Each square was touched by the land, and each piece of it had several towns and villages planted in ink, sculptured in writing. Letters darted out on bearings he could barely make sense of. Several of them had red crosses suffocating them, and the weight of it trapped them under rubble. Glass blew about the body laid streets, where red rivers flowed down the sides into drains that were full of it. Rifles lay, out of shots, slightly buried under rock. There was a lighted trigger and the empty carcass of a bomb sitting, waiting to be discovered. It hid amongst fallen rock and a multitude of golden stars, some reduced to points that cut into the wearer's chest. The mouth let out a sound of laughter and the eyes just stared for a moment, and this bomb stirred, waiting to let off another explosion. It stood on shaky legs, and it whispered a victory that left its lips never to enter the ears of the dead, for they could not be stirred. The man's eyes could see no more than inky crosses against the fractured paper, but he knew this was what he was looking at. He also knew that there was no bombing, but this was the power of human destruction. Just one trigger could set it off, and from there it would mark the pages of the map he held.
He looked up, and his eyes scanned his office in Leipsig. Framed, above his desk, Hitler watched him and his features were perfectly still, like he himself had died, although he had never felt more alive. His orders were for these people to be reduced to the corpses, and to be left to rot amongst the gravel that covered their chalky faces. For the children, their stars were so bright. They lay on the bodies, shattered. Each person lay in an unnatural position, with flailing arms and legs that would never be used again. Their faces wore masks, some so badly damaged they were not humanoid. And they were children, beaten to dust. There was no sympathy. He did not feel sorry for them, because the star was the enemy and its dusty golden glow illuminated where it stood with constant fear. Each star spoke the name of death. He was a Nazi, and he had his own symbol to live up to. Three colours merged over each other and blazed on his chest as a logo. The red of destruction against the white of intention against the black of death’s cape. It just sat upon his chest, a layer from his heart, but he held it close to it, for fear of it slipping away and falling into the enemy’s hands. The fear of “komunistem” and “Judem” always hung about in the air. You could breathe it in and the words would clog your throat. His heart was hammering his ribs underneath it and they threatened to snap under the pressure. At the sound of his name, he turned. His eyes stopped staring at the framed Hitler and directed themselves to a young Nazi soldier who stood with one arm by his side and the other up by his face. Almost everywhere had been hit with human destruction, but Leipsig was untouched by death’s hands.
“For you, sir,” and the soldier held out a note that was passed between their touching hands. He uncreased it with care, but he knew what it would say long before the words reached his brain. Then he read it, his eyebrows turned down slightly. He re read it, and twice again after. This was not what he expected. His tear ducts started to water slightly and he blinked his eyes, twice quickly. He creased the paper and folded it across his own lines, handing it back to the deliverer. They couldn’t meet eyes again.
“Tell them yes,” he ordered, his voice slightly cracked.
“Just yes?” The messenger had not read the note, he did not know what this simple word would cause.
“Tell them yes, and I resign,” he was completely turned away.
The young man bowed, both hands by his side, and marched out the way a well trained young soldier should.
The crying man kicked the desk he stood behind, fracturing the wood with his heavy boots. He sat, pulling out the chair heavily and scraping it across the floor. Hitler smiled approvingly at him, and clapped his hands together. His head lay in his hands as he sobbed into them. “No no no no no” he tried to say through his tears. “Tell them no, tell them no, not yes, tell them no.” But the messenger had gone. His shouts just polluted the air, with no ears to pull it away. He stared down at the crossed out map, his eyes blurring the city and street names, and he placed his fourth finger on Munich. The draw made a sound like a drum as he pulled it open, and he took a pen firmly in his grasp. The lid was stuck on quite tightly, so he put it between his teeth and pulled it off that way. The circle he drew around his finger was slightly to the left of Munich, but close enough. Black ink circled his finger as he read the bearing left and up. Numbers played tricks with his mind, flying on the blank pages he hid in his head. Six digits came into his eyes focus, and shocked his brain into believing them. A comma was halfway through, separating them from each other. It was families being torn apart, and the promise of being reunited just meaningless words. It was a golden ticket to the camps that was now corroded and worthless. Bearing number 642,895 crushed his insides. He pleaded his lungs to avoid the air, and his heart to stop. At “yes” 642,895 would be taken in the hands of death.
Behind him, he heard the swing of the door, and the polished, dark oak wood swung open, revealing the soldier who was hidden behind it. He too wore the red, white and black upon his chest, and his coat was buttoned to his neck. A light brown hat sat on his hair, the colour of which would not be deciphered from it. It just perched there, like a parrot in a tree. Once again the crying man’s name forced him to look. He tried to shield his eyes but the redness of his cheeks verbally told the visitor he had been crying.
“Officer,” the visitor saluted him with his left.
He nodded his head, to show he was alert and listening.
“I received word from our messenger that you were resigning will you confirm?” He spoke without pausing, and each letter sounded perfectly.
The officer did not look the speaker in the eye, but he just gazed upon the map that lay in front of him, weighted with wood. As for the speaker, he sat on the very edge of the desk, staring at the black circles and the red crosses, occasionally lifting his gaze to meet the distant eyes of the listener.
“Are you noughts or crosses?” He asked.
Now the officer did look up.
“It’s battleships,” he replied, “a hit on Stuttgart, several on and around Munich. I mark the places where death has left his own.”
The two men just looked at all the hits. There were no misses.
“And the ratio? How many bodies for a cross?”
They both fell silent, because it was not one to one and their were more than fifty crosses dotted around the map. If each individual cross was a row of streets taken down then...
“One to a hundred? Maybe a couple of hundred?” The officer answered at last.
“I can tell you care. You care about the death of our enemys?”
He didn’t reply, but he didn’t care. No sympathy rolled through his head and reflected in his eyes.
“It just feels worse when it is your orders, and that people will die from your orders.”
The soldier lost it.
“I don’t understand you. We have a war to fight and we can not deal with backstabbers. So shut up and do your job. Because we will die if you don’t.”
The officer stood.
“How would you feel if you were actually the one ordering the deaths?” He asked.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
“Fine!”the soldier replied, “go set your weak mind free.”
He was startled.
“I AM YOUR OFFICER, AND YOU TELL ME TO KILL MYSELF.” His tone calmed slightly, “I should have my men shoot you.”
Both of them were breathing heavily, and were left with red upon their cheeks. When the officer sat, he was the same watered mess he had been before.
“And I do resign.” He needed to make it clear.
The soldier turned, speaking with the words slightly muffled by his back.
“You resign because you do not have the capability to order death?” He asked.
The sitting man stared at the speaker, who had gone to the listener in less that ten seconds. His eyes fell upon him, fixed and unable to move, and the reply slipped slowly and cautiously off his tongue, like he really had to think it through and still couldn’t get it right. He paused in several places as he spoke, without blinking.
“If you were in my position... every day I see more crosses on my map. More of my ships are sunk... because me, I order the deaths. I do not care about the lives, my good soldier, no. I just care that they are not all our enemy.”
They were not all the enemy. In fact, no one was the enemy. The officer carried on:
“Lest we forget, we are at war with Britain. We are in a navy race, an arms race. Our men are out there, in the freezing mud. They are cold and go to bed each night with no guarantee they will wake up the next day. The food they eat is minimal and has often gone off. Water is scarce. Hospitals are over flooded and nurses work overtime to try get them back on their feet. It is used bandages that cover their many gunshot wounds, cleansed in dirty river water first. Grenades are set off to catch them mid step. They run, they all think, at other young men, but they are actually running at death. He greets them like a father. The way he holds the souls in his arms and cradles them is...”
But the young soldier held up his hand to cut him off.
“No, you can’t talk that way. We are winning the war.”
“Like he is trying to send a young child to sleep,” the officer finished his previous speech.
“The difference is... it’s a very long sleep.” The soldier added, turning back round.
“Aren’t we winning the war? You can’t talk that way!” The speaking officer cracked a smile.
The soldier moved his gaze to the door. He kept his eyes completely still, just watching, thinking, watching. “If it’s too much for you, I can take over.” He spoke the words without turning back to look at the listener, who was fixated on the back of his head. He breathed them in through his ears. He tasted them on the top of his tongue. They tasted sour like a lemon.
“What do you think?” The soldier pressed.
The officer was silent, still. The voice could not displace him where the rooms bright light could blind him. He was frozen in time, an invisible bullet lodged deep in his skull. Hitler was above him still, as wordless writing conscripted upon the wall. The four points on the Nazi flag impaled his body and no sounds could flow out his mouth. The tears had stopped, but they left dried up rivers on his cheeks.
“Sebastian.”
