Of Knights and Dogfights Read online

  “They’re beating the Jews. The synagogue is burning.”

  Johann sat on his bed in silence for some time, trying to make sense of Willi’s nonsense. “What?”

  “The Jews. People are beating them in the street. The SS are there too… I ran to a local Kripo office as soon as I saw this but instead of getting out into the street and restoring order, they started interrogating me as to who I was and what I was doing out at this hour. In the end, one of them simply told me to mind my own business and go back to school before he reported me… Johann, I know what I saw! Yes, I have been drinking but I’m not drunk! I didn’t just imagine all that!”

  Johann quickly put a finger to his lips, motioning his head towards the bunks, in which their roommates slept. Rudi, with his arm hanging off the top; Walter – with both hands under his cheek, his lips slightly parted.

  He looked at Willi – pale, trembling, and dark-eyed, in the deceiving silver light – muttered a curse under his breath and climbed out from under the covers.

  Making as little noise as possible, he quickly pulled on his uniform trousers, boots, shirt, and a jacket. Looking strangely grim, Willi waited for him patiently by the window. Johann threw another apprehensive look at him, hoping deep inside that it was merely yet another stupid practical joke of his and that he was some actor, finally thinking of a way to get that stupid bet’s money out of him. After all, Willi had promised with such confidence that he’d lure Johann to one of his clubs one way or another… Johann almost regretted telling Willi about Alf; who knew if the fiend decided to use it so callously as leverage. Not that Alf lived anywhere near, but… But Johann had run out of options, at last. And Willi still looked so very glum and sullen, holding the window open for him.

  “If this lands me another record in my personal file,” he only grumbled, with a warning in his voice, as he climbed out onto the windowsill.

  “There are more important things to worry about than your personal file, as of now,” Willi replied, in a voice suddenly harsh and somber and quickly made his way down the gutter.

  They climbed onto the tree and over the wall; raced, invisible and breathless, along the night streets. The mist that gathered overnight concealed the amber glow at first. Johann came to an abrupt halt, catching Willi’s sleeve before he would lose him in the crowd. And a crowd it was; an angry, hatred-filled, ugly-faced mob, screaming their obscenities in the faces of their victims, with the SS troops watching them in silent amusement. The uniformed men, in tall black boots, had done their job it seemed; they dragged their targets out of their beds, threw them into the street at the feet of the mob, started with a couple of baton blows and let the good citizens of the Neues Deutsches Reich finish the job.

  There was only one street in the small town of Schwechat, which had been incorporated into Vienna right after the Anschluss of Austria, where the local Jews lived and conducted their business; the street that had been transformed beyond recognition. Shards of shattered glass crunching under his boots, Johann followed Willi, as though hypnotized, closer and closer to the ghastly scene.

  The synagogue was engulfed in flames. Smashed pieces of furniture and stained glass littered the ground around it, along with sacred rolls of the Torah. One of the Jungvolk boys, of Johann’s Harald’s age, picked one of the rolls and rubbed it over his behind causing a wave of maniacal laughter to erupt from the SS men standing nearby.

  “That’s all they’re good for! Wiping one’s ass with them!” The boy shouted in great excitement over his stunt being received with such delight.

  One of the SS men clapped his comrade on his back. “Your brother is a mad little fellow, Heinz!”

  “That he is.” The one, whom they addressed as Heinz, straightened out with pride, his thumbs casually tucked in his belt with its holster. Johann regarded him in astounded silence as he imagined the thrashing he, Johann, would have administered to Harald firsthand if he ever pulled something of this sort.

  An elderly man with a beard, stained with blood running down from his broken nose, navigated his way around the shambles, his hands trembling as he vainly hoped to locate at least one undamaged roll of the sacred text. The Jungvolk boy hurled a rock into his head, emboldened by his previous success with the troops. The man wiped the blood from his temple and looked up at the boy in utter confusion, as though unable to fully grasp how his fellow townsfolk had suddenly turned into violent murderers in the course of mere hours. And children? It read in his eyes. Not the children too...

  Two drunken soldiers, bellowing one of the nationalistic hymns at the top of their lungs, dragged another family out of their house. A woman wailed in the hands of her assailants, scantily clothed, shielding a small girl with her body. Johann noticed that the child’s face was just as bloodied as the mother’s but unlike the woman, she didn’t cry, only stared into nothingness with her wide-open eyes. A shot was fired in the staircase; another SS man emerged, his gun still in hand and the woman suddenly went quiet, her eyes fastened onto the opaque darkness of the staircase with an awed expression about them. Only her mouth moved as she whispered the name of someone, who lay dead with a bullet in the back of his head, still clutching his daughter’s doll with one hand.

  A hand suddenly clasped Johann’s forearm and for a fleeting moment, he was grateful for it, for he could finally shake that never-ending nightmare off himself.

  “What are you two doing here?” The SS man’s eyes stared right into Johann’s. “Are you from the flying school?”

  It was too late to lie. Their uniforms gave them away without any possibility of talking one’s way out of it.

  Another trooper seized Willi’s elbow.

  “Haven’t your instructors taught you to salute and stand at attention when a superior addresses you?” The grip on Johann’s forearm turned outright painful.

  “You aren’t our superiors and we don’t have to salute you. Let go.” Johann couldn’t believe his eyes when Willi insolently yanked his arm out of the trooper’s hand. “And tell your kamerad to let my friend go. Now!”

  Whether it was the alcohol that emboldened him to the suicidal, given the situation, extreme; or it was the sight of a screaming mother and her silent child that affected him so, but Willi’s tone had suddenly turned into steel, just like his eyes, right before Johann’s bewildered gaze.

  The SS trooper stood at least a head taller than both boys. He was at least several years older and at least twice wider in the shoulders. He backhanded Willi with such natural ease as though he was training for it, just like the cadets were training in take-offs and landings. Johann, for some reason, saw a rock flying into Alf’s back some three years ago and experienced the same unrestrained rage rising inside of his chest and acted before he’d thought of the consequences – according to conscience, not logic like he always did. His fist connected with the trooper’s nose with a most satisfying crunch. The second blow landed the SS man onto the sidewalk, littered with the glass which he, himself, broke mere hours ago with his comrades. Willi was already dragging Johann away from the scene, shouting something into his ear, something that just didn’t register in his brain, pulling him into the safety of backstreets which he knew, by now, like the back of his hand, with the enraged SS stomping the cobbled streets with their tall boots, right on their heels.

  Corner, another one; dark alley, dog barking, door opened by some lucky chance. Before Johann knew it, Willi was pressing him into the wall, holding him by his lapels so tightly, the material cut into his skin.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?!”

  “He hit you…”

  “So what?!”

  “No one hits my friends and gets away with it,” Johann concluded with a calmness which he hadn’t quite expected from himself.

  Willi released him and stepped away. A grin appeared on his face right below a small cut on his cheek, lit up by the silver moon. “I didn’t think you were a fighter.”

  “I am when the occasion calls for it.”

&
nbsp; They stood in a dark hallway for a minute, listening to the sounds of the night outside. The dog grew quiet; no steps could be heard echoing off the walls of the narrow street, smelling of cabbage and rotten water.

  “You think they’re gone?”

  “I sure do hope so.” Willi stuck his head outside, turned it left and right. “Come, let’s go. I know a girl who’ll let us in for the night. Can’t go back to school now; they’ll be waiting for us on the way there, that’s for sure.”

  “What about the girl’s parents?”

  “She lives with a friend.”

  “What girl is allowed to live with a friend?”

  “A young woman, all right? Stop it with the third-degree!”

  Johann would find the situation amusing if it weren’t for the very real danger of the troopers expecting them somewhere in the darkness. Much to his surprise, they made it safely to a small house facing the river bank.

  A dark-haired girl opened the door to Willi’s persistent knocking, rubbing her eyes and all of a sudden conscious of the rolls on her head, at the sight of Johann.

  “I’m so sorry,” she laughed, pulling the ends of her robe together. “I didn’t know you were bringing company.”

  “Johann, this is Maria. Maria, this is Johann. I told you about him.”

  “Ah, yes, you did.” Maria grinned, motioning them into the kitchen. “I don’t want to wake Greta. Where are you coming from?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Willi promised. “But can I please use your phone first? I need to call my father.”

  “Of course, by all means. But… at this hour?” She flipped the light on, which Willi turned off at once, but not before his black-eyed acquaintance had caught sight of his face. “Oh, Willi! What did you get yourself into this time?”

  “We got into a little scramble with the SS. Hence the light. Better leave it off; they may be looking for us.”

  Maria only pointed to the table. “You know where the phone is.”

  After General von Sielaff made the necessary calls, Herr Hauptmann’s driver collected the boys from Maria’s house and brought them back to the school, only to escort them straight to the Hauptmann’s office. Inside, next to a familiar couple of SS troopers – one still nursing his bloody nose with a stained handkerchief – a black-clad officer stood, the head of something judging by the insignia, which couldn’t possibly signify anything good, Johann silently concluded.

  He pulled himself up and clicked his heels nevertheless. Surprisingly, Willi followed suit.

  “Here they are,” the Hauptmann announced in a dejected tone, gesturing toward the boys. “Cadet Brandt and Cadet von Sielaff. Was it them, who assaulted you?” He turned to the SS men.

  “Jawohl,” both replied in unison.

  “What do you have to say for yourselves?” the Hauptmann sighed, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

  “It’s all my fault,” Willi started speaking before Johann even had a chance to open his mouth. “I snuck out at night to see my girlfriend, saw these gentlemen…” he shot a pointed glare in the SS men’s direction, “beat a Jewish man with their batons and went to the police to report it. They, however, refused to do a damn thing, after which I decided to bring my friend along, thinking that maybe together we’d be able to help at least someone. But when we arrived at the scene, these fine gentlemen grabbed us in the most insolent fashion, taunting us in a very unseemly, for uniformed men, manner. As I pointed it out, that gentleman hit me across the face, after which Johann, in his desire to protect me, hit his comrade in his face. Since we were very much outnumbered, we fled the streets and hid in my girlfriend’s apartment until Herr Hauptmann’s driver was kind enough to come and collect us. I apologize for my behavior and I am ready to face any consequences of my actions, that is, my sneaking out at night; I, however, will not apologize for any altercations with these two men since, as you can see, they’re just as guilty as us.”

  Judging by the manner in which the Hauptmann pinched his nose, it was not the response he expected to hear. With a pained look on his face, he turned to the black-clad SS officer, started saying something quietly into his ear, making motions with his hands… An old friend’s son; a brat, yes… Something about Reichsmarschall Göring himself… The black-clad officer’s face remained positively unchanged, as unyielding as a wall. He nodded slowly, solemnly; whispered a question. The Hauptmann replied something in jest; the black-clad officer finally grinned.

  “The boys seem to have misunderstood what they saw,” the Hauptmann started in his regular voice, sounding this time very much like a bad actor, with a warning glance in the boys’ direction. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain it to them, Herr Sturmbannführer?”

  “Of course.” The officer’s voice betrayed a Viennese accent, just as noticeable as Willi’s Berliner’s one. “I suppose you two have heard about that outrageous assassination of our Foreign Office diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, committed in Paris by a Jew, Grynszpan.”

  He held a pause, expecting an acknowledgment. The Hauptmann next to him cleared his throat in a particular manner. Johann mumbled a quiet, “Jawohl.”

  “Cadet von Sielaff?”

  “Yes, I did hear that story. Grynszpan was living with his uncle in Paris from what I understand, while his family was expelled from the territory of Germany in police trucks, jeered at and abused by the SS and SA men. I can see how it would move him to retaliate.”

  “If you can see how it would move him to retaliate,” the SS officer mocked, “you can certainly see how it moved us to retaliate. And where did you learn that information about Grynszpan anyway? It wasn’t in the official state newspapers.”

  Willi remained silent.

  “Well, never mind that. I just want you to tell me if you understand our reasoning, apologize to the men in my charge for assaulting them and let’s forget the whole thing. No one needs to be expelled from a school for some silly misunderstanding, does he?”

  Johann swallowed his pride, as he had already done once before when he surrendered to his teachers’ demands for him to become a member of the Hitlerjugend. He knew that it was wrong, so very wrong and unjust, this entire damn situation but at the same time he realized, with painful clarity, that nothing could have been done about it and that his pigheadedness, no matter how justified it was, would only get him expelled from the school and that – throwing away his dream of becoming a fighter ace solely due to some principle – he simply could not afford.

  “I apologize, Herr Sturmbannführer.” He looked into each of the SS men’s eyes. “I apologize to you too, comrades.”

  “Apology accepted.” The officer inclined his head; turned to Willi expectantly.

  Please, don’t be daft and just say it, Johann implored him silently.

  “I apologize,” Willi finally offered.

  The Hauptmann appeared to release a breath that he was holding.

  Hands were thoroughly shaken, right arms raised in the necessary salutes and the black-clad procession left the office.

  “Get out of here, you two,” the Hauptmann muttered right after, gesturing the boys to the door. “I don’t have the strength to deal with you right now. Go to your room, stay there until your morning roll-call and think about what you’ve done. If it weren’t for your father, Wilhelm, you would have long been not only kicked out of here but incarcerated in the Gestapo jail, that’s for sure! Get out, I said!”

  The hallways were deserted, as they should have been; their room, however, met them with anything but silence. Instead of finding their roommates peacefully slumbering as they had left them, Johann and Willi stopped in their tracks at the sight of horrible disarray; blankets and mattresses were thrown onto the floor, the contents of the closets scattered about in the most chaotic of manners, clothes half-hanging out of the opened window. Willi quickly flipped the light against all regulations and gasped at the sight of Walter’s face, smeared with blood and obviously badly battered, as Rudi tended to the biggest cut on his friend�
�s lip. Walter only sniffled quietly; not because he was crying but to stop his nose from bleeding.

  “What the hell happened?” Willi immediately squatted in front of the disheveled couple.

  “Is it because of us?” Johann demanded.

  “Because of you? No.” Rudi shook his head. “Meinzer came in here with his cronies, dragged Walt off his bed and started beating him. I tried to stop them but they threw a blanket over my head and one of them held me the entire time they were beating Walt. Then they did this,” he vaguely gestured around himself, “and left. I was wondering where you two were.”

  “Why did they beat him?” Johann blinked, his mind refusing to process the latest events. Walter was the best pilot in school; moreover, he was well-known all over Germany as a teenage prodigy aerobatics master. He was as nice as they came, never talked back to anyone, never made any enemies. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if Meinzer decided to call on him or Willi in the middle of the night and teach them a thing or two for sassing him, but Walt? It just didn’t make sense.

  “They said, it was because he’s a Jew.” Rudi shrugged again.

  Walter positively refused to meet Johann or Willi’s gaze as both turned to him.

  “Meinzer said… Meinzer said the SS all over the Reich was teaching Jews a lesson—”

  “Shut it, Rudi; will you?” Willi barked in sudden irritation and touched Walter’s hand. “But you’re not Jewish; I know your father – he’s not Jewish!”

  “No, he’s not.” Walter finally looked at him with lackluster eyes, one of which had already started to turn black. “My mother is. I’m a first-degree mischling. I was only allowed here because Herr Reichsmarschall himself signed my entrance papers. He served together with my father and he was very nice to me the few times that I met him.”

  “Don’t worry, Walt.” Willi patted his knee. “I’ll make Meinzer pay for it.”

  By the time they had to go to the showers, the room was clean and ready for inspection. Willi stalled for some reason, waved them off, mumbled something about joining them later and only appeared in the showers ten minutes later. Johann paid no mind to it until he heard guffaws and whispers during the breakfast, soon engulfing the whole mess; Fahnenjunker Meinzer wetted his bed!