Of Knights and Dogfights Read online

  “It gets better!” One of the cadets, sitting on the opposite side of the table, leaned forward so everyone would hear him better. “He was screaming at the top of his lungs that someone did it to him! As though someone would purposely pee in his bed, ha-ha!”

  Johann turned his head to Willi, who kept eating his eggs with the most unassuming of airs.

  “Why would you do that?” Johann whispered into his ear.

  “Look at Walt. He’s smiling,” Willi offered him as a simple explanation.

  Five

  December 1938

  * * *

  The announcement of Christmas leave was celebrated with cheers across the school. Cadets were provided with report cards to present to their parents and Johann studied his with a beaming smile; military discipline, close-order drill, the manual of arms activities, history of aviation, the theory of flight, aeronautic engineering, aerodynamics, and meteorology – almost all excellent entries. Willi burst into the room, waved his report card in front of Johann’s nose and stuck his tongue out before Johann could clip him behind the ear for his teasing. How that rascal, who usually used a textbook as a pillow during classes, managed to pass every single examination with flying colors, was beyond Johann’s understanding. It wasn’t due to any favoritism displayed by the instructors and teachers either; they were equally demanding to all cadets. It was solely due to Willi’s intellect, which managed to absorb everything like a sponge whereas it took Johann hours of poring over his textbooks.

  “So, you live in Beeskow,” Willi began in his tone which Johann knew by now; he had something on his mind. “The train will take you through Berlin on the way there. Why don’t you spend a day with me? I’ll show you the city. You’ll meet my mother.”

  Johann considered the proposition with a mixture of excitement and hesitation. He had already alerted his parents, in his letter, of the date of his arrival and they’d be waiting for him, undoubtedly, his Mutti holding Harald by the hand, which he’d try to yank away, comical and stern in his winter Jungvolk uniform, insisting that he was too old for all that hand-holding…

  “I’ve hardly ever brought any friends home before,” Willi spoke in his nonchalant tone, which he had always used when he pretended not to be bothered by something that, in fact, bothered him immensely, “and my mother would be delighted to see you. I told her about you and your invitation. But if you want to go straight home, I’ll understand. Your family must be missing you terribly.”

  Johann finished polishing his shoes and put away the brush in its case; glanced up at Willi, whose beseeching eyes stared with such silent intensity behind that impenetrable mask of his that Johann didn’t have the heart to refuse him. “All right. Let’s spend the day together. But the next morning, I’m leaving and that’s the end of it! And I’ll have to call my father to warn him about the change of plans.”

  He laughed in embarrassment as Willi nearly crushed him in the tightest embrace.

  On the train, their Luftwaffe cadets’ uniforms were met with much more enthusiasm than their former Hitlerjugend ones, which they had shed after the first day of orientation. Girls, who rode in the same car with their mothers, kept throwing inquisitive gazes in their direction, smiled shyly and this time even stern mothers didn’t seem to mind. The Luftwaffe propaganda leaflets flooded the newspaper kiosks lately and the future knights of the sky suddenly seemed like a mighty good marriage prospect rather than an ordinary ‘Hans’ from the street.

  Willi didn’t seem to pay the faintest attention to them though. He babbled away in the most impassionate of manners, enumerating all of the things that they simply must see in Berlin and drew something on the frozen windows with his finger, a dreamy expression sitting on his handsome face.

  “S-Bahn will take us to the Gleisdreieck Station, from which we’ll take a U-Bahn to my house.” Willi’s words barely registered in his brain as Johann, once again, got immersed in thoughts of his family. “And in the evening, my father will take us out for dinner and entertainment. I already asked him and he’s looking forward to meeting you. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Johann only shook his head absent-mindedly.

  Berlin’s U-Bahn was far louder and much more cramped than Johann could have possibly imagined. He kept mumbling excuses under his breath as he stumbled into people in the dark, whirling crowd, in his determination not to let Willi out of his sight. He only breathed out in relief when they escaped the suffocating tube of the U-Bahn at last.

  Much to his astonishment, Willi hailed a taxi cab – the house is a bit in the outskirts; you wouldn’t want to get there by bus. The “outskirts” turned out to be an apparently affluent area, populated by villas of all shapes and sizes, each twice the size of the house belonging to Johann’s family, which wasn’t considered to be struggling by any means. The door was opened by a maid; a round woman well into her fifties, who rushed to enclose Willi in her embrace and kiss both of his cheeks while Johann shifted his weight, with uncertainty, from one foot to another. Willi’s mother soon appeared as well and Johann instantly guessed where Willi got his good looks from. She was still rather young, in her late thirties perhaps and wore her golden hair in an elegant crown around her head.

  “You must be Johann,” she addressed him in a pleasant voice, while her hand, heavy with rings and bracelets, caressed the long strands on her son’s head.

  Johann clicked his heels and bowed his head, to which Frau von Sielaff only laughed in apparent amusement and pulled him into a sudden embrace as well. Through the cloud of her French perfume, over her shoulder, clad in a delicate silk cloth, Johann saw a young girl run down the staircase, long golden braids shifting with every light step on top of her white BDM blouse. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen but already stunning, alight with the same inner, golden glow which had made Willi so popular with the ladies. Momentarily losing all sense of propriety, Johann forgot to untangle himself from Frau von Sielaff’s arms and stared over her shoulder, wide-eyed and mute, at this infinitely dazzling creature in front of him.

  She stopped in her tracks as soon as she noticed a stranger on her doorstep, her oval face taking on a guarded expression at once.

  “Mina, come to say hello.” Willi was already by her side, kissing both of her cheeks and nudging her towards Johann without any reservations. “This is my best friend, Johann. Johann, this is Mina, my sister.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you had a sister?” Johann whispered as the two rode in the back of Willi’s father’s Mercedes. General von Sielaff, a decorated officer with a pale, somewhat haggard face, picked them up near the New Chancellery building, the construction of which had almost been completed and at which Johann had been gawking for the past twenty minutes. The General shook hands with Johann, asked Willi if he wanted to eat French, German, or Italian for dinner, nodded his acknowledgment and got into the car, his adjutant – or driver, whatever the hell he was, Johann didn’t quite know – climbing into the driver’s seat.

  “Because you only asked me if I had any bothers.” Willi shrugged, obviously surprised by the question. “Well, I don’t have any.”

  “You could have mentioned her.”

  “Why?”

  “We could have brought her something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Flowers, I don’t know…” Johann turned away, thoroughly hiding his face.

  “Why would we bring her flowers? She’s my sister, not my girlfriend.” Willi shrugged again.

  The restaurant, to which General von Sielaff brought them, was drowning in opulence. The velvet drapes, the starched tablecloths, the finest china with intricate designs on it, the crystal chandelier bathing the main dining room with millions of opalescent lights – it blinded Johann and made him feel completely and utterly out of his element.

  Willi barely scanned the menu, informed the waiter, in his perfectly starched attire, that he’ll have his usual, gulped half of the glass of some nineteenth-century wine and sat with his fist b
utting his chin, looking positively bored, replying in a clipped manner to his father’s few questions about the school. Yes, they feed us just fine. Yes, the classes are interesting. Yes, Herr Hauptmann is being very kind to me. No, no more trouble with the SS. Yes, I know. All right, I will.

  Johann stared at the outrageous prices and wondered if he should order anything at all.

  “Eat your fill,” General von Sielaff said with a polite smile as though reading his thoughts. “You must be starving after your army gruel at school. I want to treat you both tonight, so order whatever you wish.”

  Johann mumbled his bashful thanks and decided to express his gratitude by drinking from the glass, which Willi’s father had moved in his direction. He’d tried wine before and beer too, but only with his father and just to see what it tasted like. The nineteenth-century wine went straight to his head; not only was Johann not used to alcohol but he and Willi had also barely eaten anything, sharing only some nuts they bought from the street vendor. He more than welcomed the food when it arrived; intricately laid out appetizers, some cheese and salads and God knew what else but he noticed that it was only the two of them eating – Willi and he – while General von Sielaff was observing them with the oddest expression on his face.

  He was looking at his son like a man who, after spending years in a foreign country, returns to his native land only to realize that he no longer speaks its language. The oddest mixture of regret and frantic desire to be understood shone in his deep, gray eyes, met with nothing but tolerant indifference in Willi’s amber ones.

  “Wilhelm, do you remember how I used to take you to the Zoologischer Garten when you were little?” He started with uncertainty, not even noticing how he was crumpling the napkin in his long, nervous fingers. “We would buy sunflower seeds and you would feed them to the birds. Do you remember?”

  Willi stopped chewing, raised his head from his plate and shook his head.

  “I was probably what? Three?” Willi offered, as his version of consolation.

  “Yes, I would think.” The General lowered his head, hiding his disappointment behind the glass of wine. “Yes, of course, you wouldn’t remember. You were far too small. You did like animals though.”

  “I still do.” Willi poked a goose with a fork, suddenly losing all interest in it.

  “Wilhelm likes jazz.” General von Sielaff suddenly turned to Johann with a bright smile. “Do you like jazz, Johann?”

  “I suppose,” Johann lied just to appease the man. He looked so positively miserable even with all of those ribbons and crosses on his chest, so abandoned and alone…

  “I’ll take you both to the place that Wilhelm likes.” Willi’s father was almost beaming with joy. “It’s not particularly legal, but Wilhelm always says that rules were only made to be broken, so…” He broke into laughter which sounded artificial; leaned towards Johann and started reassuring him in a soft voice that he shouldn’t worry, that the cabaret was on a sort of a governmental payroll and even the high-ranking SS were frequenting it without any problem. “We’ll have a grand time, you’ll see!”

  As the two proceeded to the exit while General von Sielaff stayed behind to take care of the bill and say a few words to the maître-d, Willi lit a cigarette with a familiar smirk on his face – a mask which Johann had seen far too often when they’d first met. “Pathetic, isn’t he?”

  Johann felt as though someone had hit him in the chest. “Why would you say that? He’s only trying to make you happy.”

  “Should have tried harder not to fuck our maid while my mother was pregnant with his daughter,” he threw over his shoulder before walking briskly outside.

  Johann stood in the middle of the hallway, getting in the way of the patrons and waiters, trying to decide whether to stay and wait for Willi’s father or follow Willi outside. The latter seemed rude.

  “Is he upset with something?” General von Sielaff’s voice sounded just above his ear. “He gets moody when he drinks.”

  “He drinks far too much for his age,” Johann noted, strangely emboldened by alcohol. “I worry about him. He goes out almost every night, catches a ride to Vienna and goes to all of those clubs, sees all of those women far older than him… He’ll get in trouble one day.”

  “It’s my fault, I suppose.” The man sighed. “It was me who introduced him to the nightlife. I thought it was something he’d be interested in.”

  “You should talk to him, Herr General.”

  The man broke into mirthless laughter. “I can’t quite tell him to stop now, can I? He’s an adult now, a grown man. Who am I to order him around?”

  “You’re still his father.”

  Von Sielaff only nodded slowly. “All right, I’ll talk to him.”

  For some reason, Johann didn’t believe he’d actually go through with the promise.

  The cabaret, dark, smoke-filled and impossibly loud, was indeed filled with all sorts of uniformed men. Grouped around small tables, littered with liquor glasses, they leered at the stage where a scantily dressed girl was performing, her face reminding Johann of a painted mask. Someone brought cognac – on the house, of course! Johann cringed but drank because Willi drank and Willi’s father drank and the girl on Willi’s lap drank, this one though wearing a dress of some sort. Johann saw how Willi was staring at her while she danced on the stage, how General von Sielaff called up a maître-d without Willi noticing and slipped a few bills into his big palm. As soon as the act was over, the girl was promptly escorted straight to the General’s table and almost placed on Willi’s lap, by the maître-d himself. And the General was back to his sad staring and his small, miserable smile, desperately trying to buy the affection that had been long lost and which acknowledged no currency any longer.

  Johann was almost relieved when, with a heavy head full of the effects of yesterday’s liquor, he waited for his morning train on the platform.

  When Johann saw Willi climbing off the steps of the train and holding his hand out to a girl in a warm gray overcoat, his eyes widened in astonishment.

  “I thought I’d bring Mina along.” Willi greeted him with his usual mischievous grin. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Instantly at a loss for words, Johann almost broke into laughter. You don’t mind, do you, was Willi’s signature way of saying, I already did something without consulting you and I’m assuming that it’ll turn out just grand. Johann loved structure and order more than anything and loathed surprises, yet this new stunt of Willi’s he just couldn’t resent, in spite of himself.

  “Welcome to our little town,” Johann said quietly, shaking Mina’s gloved hand with the utmost gentleness. “I know it’s nothing like Berlin but—”

  “It’s good to see you again,” she interrupted his mumbling, her cheeks emanating a soft pink glow.

  Willi stood next to them, shifting his eyes from one to another and clearly doing his best to conceal a huge knowing grin.

  “Heil Hitler!”

  Johann turned around to the shout and saw his little brother Harald; right hand rigid and straight at the eye level, heels together, posture erect and frozen at attention. The train arrived later than they expected due to the previous night’s snowstorm which had slowed down all of the trains in the area. Harald, in his winter Jungvolk uniform, was waiting patiently along with his brother; finally touched Johann’s sleeve and asked him for permission to go inside the station to use the facilities. As it always happens, in his absence, the train had arrived.

  Willi chortled in response and put his hand to his forehead instead. “Good morning, young fellow. You must be Harald.”

  “Jawohl, Cadet von Sielaff!” Another shout followed in tow with the sharp click of the heels.

  Eyebrows raised in amusement mixed with something else, Willi shifted his eyes to Johann. The latter only sighed and made a vague dismissive gesture with his hand.

  “Harald hopes to be accepted into the Napola in February. So, he’s training for it.”

  Willi’s smile
dropped at once and Johann instantly recalled the reason. Wilhelm told him, during one of those rare moods of his when he allowed himself to open up to his friend that his father offered him an almost guaranteed acceptance into one of those elite schools, which, according to their propaganda, prepared future leaders of the Reich in their midst. Needless to say, in most cases, it meant mostly the SS, which Willi had grown to despise by the tender age of fifteen.

  Only the best of the best would be accepted, the propaganda leaflet said, only the brightest, strongest, and the most inspired. It was the “inspired” part which caused Willi such revulsion. He could have easily proven his Aryan ancestry far beyond the recommended five generations; his academic reports only had excellent marks in them; he was a natural athlete and, as his teachers and Hitlerjugend leaders always remarked in his report; a natural born leader. The problem, which this natural born leader had with the National Political School, was that he utterly rejected National Socialism and everything that it stood for.

  His mother raised him to believe that all people were born equal to one another and no one had the right to judge anyone. She was the strongest woman he’d ever known; in an age when a divorce was frowned upon and a woman, raising her children on her own and working for a living was something out of a fantasy book, she decided that she would be better off without her no-good husband and to hell with anyone who thought differently. Willi admired her greatly, admired her almost open disdain of social norms and particularly the newest racial policies and decided that she was much wiser than all of his political leaders put together.

  “Why do you want to study at the Napola?” He asked Harald.