The uniform, p.7
The Uniform, page 7
10
The Oberführer
The grandiose tune leaked through the barn wall. David hobbled toward the horse’s stall in rhythm with it. Crouching to get a look at Desdemona’s bruised haunches, he was pleased at how well the stitches sealed her wounds. He still had to attend to a gash on Desdemona’s left hind leg which he managed with a sprinkle of sulfa powder. She was less pleased than David had been, perhaps expecting another sting from whatever he found in the medic’s kit.
The skittish horse backed away from David, her hooves slamming into the stall planks. The force of her kick rattled the barn wall. “Good girl,” David said in his most soothing voice. “Gooood girl.” He set a calming hand on her haunches, distracting her from the pinch of the morphine injection. And with a half-dozen stitches, her laceration was rendered almost invisible. There wasn’t enough gauze bandaging remaining to wrap her femur, a problem he remedied with strips of floral print bedding. The design made the horse’s bandaging look more festive than medicinal.
The corner of David’s eye again found the image of the wagon and its blood-stained rail. He delayed his veterinary task to consider it. Once again, he dropped the leg of the anvil stand into the wagon hitch. He couldn’t get close enough to move the ladder out of the way and couldn’t summon the strength to pull the wagon over the ladder’s rail. However an adjacent wall, a repository for equestrian gear was near enough that he could stretch toward it and, with full exertion, lift a horse collar and bridle off its rack.
He carried the gear into Desdemona’s stall, gently stroking her withers with each step. He hoisted the horse collar over her head and cooed that she was a good girl. He surrounded her chest and neck with a withers strap. The gear might lift her spirits with its suggestion of an invigorating outdoor sprint. Tying the other end of the withers strap to the anvil hitch, David asked if she was ready.
He tapped her shoulder and gave her a hand signal ordering her to back up. Verifying her training bona fides, she did take a backward step, pulling the anvil stand and wagon hitch forward. The wagon wheels rolled over the ladder rail, flipping it over in the process. The wagon finally came to a stop within David’s reach. He returned the anvil stand to its place along the barn wall. Now, close enough to get a grip on the ladder he dragged it toward a hay bale. He had a clear path to the wagon and stepped toward it, bending close enough to examine the stain. Dark red blood coated its underside.
Looking for the source, he peeked over the wagon’s side rail. A layer of straw rose up inside its cargo area. Tools rested on top of the straw: a shovel, a hammer, and a blanket. David scattered the straw about and forced his fingers a couple of feet deep. He felt… more straw. Scattering it about, he saw nothing more than the wood grain of the wagon’s cargo bed but…Moving his hand a few degrees east, he noticed dark red droplets massing into a scab on the wagon’s wooden base. Farther east, a bloody stream flowed from a corpse.
The sight of Karsten Hausler, or what was left of him, startled David. The body filled out a Gestapo tunic, but the face, beginning to turn a sickly gray, was decidedly less battle-hardened. What David found more disconcerting was the sight of a woman’s panties corking the dead man’s oral cavity. So delicate dangling from Ada’s knees the night before, they found a crueler purpose—to thwart any conceivable slander still pooling inside Hausler’s chest. The harmony between the Reich and its citizens was a fiction.
Just to be sure, David felt the neck for a pulse. There was none. Scanning the body for a wound, David turned the corpse on its side. There was no overlooking the blood soaking the back of the tunic.
****
In the house, Petra pointed at the sheet music, tapping it in time to the key signature while Ingrid took her turn at the keyboard. She was trying her hand at a different German folk song. Not surprising for eleven year-old hands, her playing was all force and no subtlety, an approach that was almost painful to Petra’s ears. Still, she nodded charitably in time to the music. Such were the accommodations people made to the spawn of state apparatchiks. Enno, the proud father, warbled along. Gerte, only partially engaged by the music, scanned the artwork on the walls.
Ingrid finished off the song with a flourish, a prompt for Enno to clap enthusiastically. “Brava, young lady.”
Petra might have disagreed, but wouldn’t dare. Not today. Not when she had to remove every conceivable obstacle to their departure. “Very nice, Ingrid,” she said, straining to smile.
Gerte stared at an abstract painting on an adjacent wall. “What in the world?” She could never hold back her disgust at evidence of the modern world.
Petra smiled to reassure Gerte and explained, “Karsten is safekeeping it for Reichsmarschal Goering.”
“Whatever for? It’s degenerate.”
“Would you like me to inform the Reichsmarschal you don’t think much of his taste in art?” Petra took pleasure in the implied threat, especially with these Philistines.
Gerte wondered aloud, “In that case, why didn’t Karsten take it to Berlin?
“Apparently, the Reichsmarschal left for Berchtesgaden.” Petra surprised herself with her ability to summon an impromptu excuse, delivering it with the confidence of a Gestapo bride.
****
David winced, more put off by the sound of Enno’s off-key singing than by the sight of the carcass in the wagon. But then, fate had given him an idea. And a purpose. Such is the appearance of inspiration. He compared the length of his own forearm to Hausler’s.
He tried climbing into the wagon. His leather ankle restraints stretched against the wooden planks of Desdemona’s stall. The planks squeaked but the taut straps forced him to keep a foot rooted to the ground. All he needed was to loosen the leather knot. Reaching toward the tools on the barn wall, he tried the hoof rasp again. He forced its point into the leather knot. He added the leverage of his own weight. The knot held fast but the plank wobbled.
“Aha.”
David adjusted his aim, shoving the point of the hoof rasp between the plank and the stall post. He leaned back, using his weight to lever the plank. The plank complied quickly, popping away from its post. The leather knot, firm as rock, slid free of the unattached plank. The chain still looped around David’s ankle, unmoored from the stall.
He murmured to Desdemona, “Keep this between us.” He spoke playfully, the way you do when you’ve established a genuine connection with someone. That her name was Desdemona only persuaded this Iago, captured in battle, that he might charm her away from Petra.
David dragged the untethered restraints toward the wagon and threw a leg over its side rail so he could climb into its cargo area. He leaned back into the hay, next to the corpse. Lying next to a dead man was discomfiting enough; but seeing the ladies’ briefs stuffed in the dead man’s mouth added a grotesquery to the exercise. He compared his height to Hausler’s. David was an inch taller, but not as broad, not even before he lost muscle mass to undernourishment and labor camp exertions. He tried pulling Hausler’s tunic sleeve free of the inert arm. But rigor mortis kept the limb from bending. The sleeve would not slide off.
Other than stiffness there was little evidence of decomposition. Surely, in the absence of a pumping heart, the dead man’s blood obeyed gravity and pooled in the wagon’s cargo bed. But with luck, the cold air would forestall putrefaction and spare David from breathing in the stench of a rotting man.
David reconsidered the tunic and its potential as a disguise. With any luck, he’d be long gone by the time Hausler’s cells died and went bad. There would be problems, of course. Rolling the body on its side, he grabbed the tunic collar and pulled it backward. As bone ground against bone, shoulders and elbows made crackling sounds, snapping with a lifeless crunch behind Hausler’s body. David kept tugging. Slowly, Hausler’s left sleeve slid toward the wrist and hand. As the uniform tunic pulled free of the left arm, David stood clear of the large bloody patch in back. The shirt underneath the body also bore an impressive bloodstain.
So much for David’s grand disguise. At least a pint of blood stained the prospect that the tunic could be a convincing wrap for anything but a cadaver. Beyond that, the stab wounds made a hash of its seam. On the encouraging side of the ledger, the front of the garment was clean and unwrinkled. David wondered if he could wear it and simply turn its bloody back panel away from viewers. That was surely a delusion. Yet, he wouldn’t let go of the idea that the garment could be repaired.
David rotated the jacket slowly, back to front, and let a number of repair scenarios unfold in his mind. But the damage to the rear seam wasn’t the only problem. He held the tunic up to his own body to roughly assess the size. Hausler’s brawn meant it wouldn’t be a perfect fit. As he pondered disguise prospects, David again noticed the piano music echoing from the house. An increase in volume signaled the first bars of the crescendo that would end Ingrid’s performance. It occurred to David that if Petra wasn’t playing piano that she would soon pay the barn a visit and ruin David’s plan. The slamming back door and the ring of the rear bell cluster confirmed David’s worry. He quickly made the late Oberführer lie flat, then rearranged the hay in the wagon so it again covered the body. Climbing out of the wagon he used all his strength to hide the evidence. He shoved the wagon away from the horse’s stall. No ladder would interfere with the rotation of the wagon wheel.
He rushed back toward the horse’s stall. Once more, the leather restraints slid around the wooden plank. He had to kick it to stabilize its edge against the stall’s wooden post. Hearing footsteps on the stone path, David scanned the barn to reassure himself that his labors would remain secret. They would not. He had forgotten to hide the bloody Gestapo tunic with the body. It hung in plain sight on the wagon hitch. His heart pumped violently.
David tried to yank the plank free so he could reach the tunic, but it was stuck, jammed against the stall post. He lay on the barn floor, stretching as far as he could toward the wagon hitch until finally managing to hook a finger under the tunic lapel. Just as little Ingrid wandered in through the back door, David shoved Hausler’s coat behind himself into Desdemona’s stall.
He didn’t know what to make of Ingrid’s entrance.
She gave David a wary once-over. “Who are you?”
“Heinrich Himmler.” David flashed a Nazi salute at her.
“Who?” Ingrid didn’t understand the joke or the reference to the Reichsführer. Even National Socialist enthusiasts spared children the burdens of reciting a party directory.
Petra hurried in through the back door and, without a word, marched Ingrid back toward the house. The little girl glanced back at David and asked, “Why is he so dirty?” Petra wasn’t quick-witted enough to supply an immediate answer. Besides, she reasoned, some matters were beyond the purview of children. As she escorted Ingrid over the snowy stone pathway and through the rear door, she encountered Enno and Gerte sizing up a pair of framed lithographs. To Gerte, the trappings of power were actual power.
Delivering Ingrid to the care of her parents, Petra interrupted their preoccupation with the artwork. She issued a warning. “Please be careful. They belong to the state.”
Ingrid didn’t care about degenerate art’s fine points. However, she still wondered about what she’d just seen in the barn. “What is that man doing?” Petra didn’t need to gin up a fiction to answer the girl. In fact, she was relieved to rely on the truth. “He’s taking care of the horse.” “What man?” asked Enno.
Ingrid blurted, “Heinrich Himmler.”
Petra stifled a laugh.
“Who?” probed Enno, a look of worry on his face, rifling through his memories for evidence of a seditious word or thought. As improbable as it seemed that Enno might have to prove his loyalty to the Reichsführer, his brother did operate in circles that occasionally included people like Heinrich Himmler. If someone so august did make himself at home here, Enno hoped he could pass any conceivable test of loyalty. Gerte had no such doubts.
Petra tried to calm his suspicions. “A horse groomer. Karsten hired him. An idiot.”
Enno was not reassured. “Forgive me, Petra, but it’s not much of a birthday without my brother.”
The young widow nodded her agreement. “Apologies. I’m not feeling very festive either.” Then, wondered Petra, had she been given an opening she could use to curtail this celebration. She stepped tentatively toward the front door hoping it would prompt her visitors. To her relief, they followed. She added, “I promise, I’ll call as soon as Karsten returns.”
Enno and Gerte escorted Ingrid through the door and away from the house. As they crossed the road, Gerte whispered, “Something is wrong with her.”
Enno asked, “Should I call Bohn?”
11
Blood Stains
The residue from Karsten Hausler’s fatal wounds still stuck to David’s palms. He feared having discovered the murder more than being charged with it. After all, by the standards of German jurisprudence, he was guilty at birth. What more evidence would they need? On a practical level, he couldn’t give Petra an excuse to accelerate his trip to Ebensee.
He sprang to his feet to hide the evidence. Rushing toward Desdemona, he fashioned several excuses before Petra returned to the barn. Indeed, there was no disguising the sight of David wiping his bloody palms on Desdemona’s bandages.
When the widow looked in on him, she demanded to know what happened. He knitted together a credible explanation. “A couple of her stitches broke.”
“How?”
“The suturing thread. It was made for humans, not horses.” His justification was bland enough to be plausible. He even offered a bit of reassurance. “Nothing too serious.” If his voice wavered slightly, anyone would think it a normal reaction to the intense hounding by an authority figure.
She couldn’t forgive it. To the Reich, someone was always at fault. “Not serious? You incompetent!” Petra relived the bitter moment, only hours ago, when she came to know what it meant to lose her trust in Karsten. To lose his trust. She always counted on him to shield her from the whims of command. She never gave a thought to the idea that she might lose the appurtenances of state power herself. How could she tolerate Karsten’s accusation, a blood libel reserved for Jews? How could she permit David’s excuses?
David held his ground however strained his logic. In the end, he was the doctor. Patting Desdemona’s stitches, he said, “I can re-do them. I assure you. All I need is more soap and water.”
Snatching the soap basin off the ground, she sent David a look of contempt, resentful at the prospect of performing yet another chore on his behalf. She turned toward the rear door and disappeared through it.
David checked the dead man’s pocket watch: 10:45 AM. There couldn’t be much time left before Leibig returned for him. Until this moment, David hadn’t seriously considered escape, not as long as his captors let him practice medicine. But with all the tools and materials that fell into his hands, however imperfect, he gave the idea serious deliberation. He quickened his attention to the task.
He pulled the tunic out of Desdemona’s stall and held it up to the light of the window. Daylight streamed through the gashed rear seam. It outlined a small bulge in the fabric. He pressed a finger against the pocket lining. It formed the outline of a palm-sized object. It had the feel of metal. Dipping his hand into the interior pocket, David extracted a silver badge. It flashed the image of an eagle perched on a swastika. This was Hausler’s official Gestapo warrant disc, the silver a signal of his superiority over Gestapo personnel below his rank. It also served as a symbol of the power and prestige that drew women like Petra into his orbit. Beyond that, it had been up to Petra to keep him moored to her, body and soul.
Another pocket yielded photo identification for Karsten Alric Hausler. The black and white picture didn’t capture the man’s visual essence, especially the fair complexion that marked him as distinctly Aryan. It was surely Hausler but more like a seasick cousin.
The bell cluster rang too soon, once again, signaling Petra’s return. David quickly turned the Gestapo tunic inside out and hung it off a peg in the horse stall. Taking a precautionary look toward the rear doorway, he was startled at the sight of the dead man’s hand poking out of the wagon straw. He rushed toward it and shoved it below the yellow sprigs. It sprang up anyway, refusing to comply, and in a wave from beyond, would signal to Petra that her defenseless prisoner might bury her. David had his own very good reasons to hide the rigored hand and piled straw several inches higher until it formed a mound. Should it strike Petra as unnaturally tall, he threw a blanket over it.
Back at the horse’s paddock, David re-attached the restraints to the plank and the plank to the post. Suddenly, the horizontal beam didn’t fit. How could that be? Does wood expand in the cold air? Or do these things only happen to members of despised minorities? David solved the conundrum with a frustrated kick that finally jammed the beam into place.
Hot, soapy water sloshed around the basin. It soaked Petra’s wrists during the trip from house to barn. The warmth distracted her from any grief she might have felt for her late, lamented husband. In this place where the man met his end, Petra’s worry over sharing the space with his corpse steered her into a path wide of the wagon. Survival took precedence over marital or national ties. Such was the trouble with a social order that stirred panic whenever the charge of “Jew” was heard. It distorted all relationships. To Petra, the smear was a blood libel. It turned self-defense into high treason.
She delivered the basin to David, and he thanked her gratefully, as if she was the one restoring the horse. Still, Petra couldn’t afford to keep David around. “Don’t thank me,” she warned. “I’m going to get Leibig and be done with you.” In a moment, she made her way, once again, through the rear door.
