Songs of the Dead Read online

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. I wish there were more I could say. But finally I know at least one small thing I can do. “I will never again use that word around you, or any other word like that.”

  “No—”

  “I don’t want to trigger you. You feeling safe is more impor- tant to me than me telling you that you—” I stop myself, then say, “More important to me than me commenting on your looks.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll do what you want,” I say.

  “I know I have to do the work myself. I know you can’t fix it for me. But I want to have that with you. I want you to say it. Not someone else. I want you to help me make that word clean again. I want you to help me make it mean what it’s supposed to.”

  “He never saw me,” says Allison. “Not him, not anyone. They didn’t even see my skin. They saw what they wanted, saw what they’d been trained to see. I was nowhere in their view. He was never holding me against the wall. I was being held, but in all of this, he never perceived me at all. So far as he was concerned, I didn’t even exist.”

  eight

  enemy territory

  Georg Elser was not the only person who tried to kill Hitler, and Hitler’s life was saved not only by fog and by the seemingly meaningless choice of when to set a timer. In an odd way, Elser himself not only almost killed Hitler but in that attempt also saved Hitler’s life.

  In the fall of 1939, as Elser meticulously hollowed out the spot to hold his bomb, others, too, put in place their plans. Chief among the planners were many high-ranking members of the Wehrmacht (German Army) and Abwehr (foreign intelligence), who hated Hitler because they saw, rightly, that he was launching an offensive, illegal, and dishonorable war that could destroy much of Europe and, closer to their hearts, would destroy Germany. But many of these generals, trained in war though they were—which when you get past the abstractions means trained in the art and science of killing en masse—scrupled at assassination. The planners uniformly abhorred Hitler, hated what he was doing, wished he was dead or at least gone, but many—even those who had killed in battle and who commanded campaigns in which hundreds of thousands of lives were lost—could not themselves cross the moral line of killing an individual, especially one who was their leader, that is, one who was higher in their social hierarchy, and most especially one to whom they had sworn personal oaths of loyalty. Many valued their word and their honor more than the lives of those killed by Hitler and his policies.

  But some did not.

  Abwehr Major General Hans Oster had from the beginning recognized that Hitler must die: Hitler’s power over the German people and over the majority of German generals was too great to allow anyone to stop his actions without physically killing him. Oster famously said, “There are those who will say that I am a traitor, but I truly am not. I consider myself a better German than all those who run after Hitler. My plan and my duty is to free Germany, and with it the world, of this pestilence.”

  Oster’s question became: How do we free Germany from this pestilence, when so many refuse to strike? On the first of November, 1939, Oster put the problem succinctly: “We have no one to throw the bomb which will liberate our generals from their scruples.”

  The man to whom Oster said this, Dr. Erich Kordt, replied, “All I need is the bomb.”

  Oster responded, “You will have the bomb by 11 November.”

  Kordt was well-placed to carry off the assassination. His job as a Foreign Ministry spokesperson not only caused him to follow the Foreign Minister “like a shadow,” as one writer put it, but made him no longer subject to identity checks and gave him complete access at any time to the Chancellery. He was even allowed to wait in the main anteroom until Hitler appeared.

  Having decided to make the attempt, Kordt went to the Chancellery more often than normal so the guards would become additionally desensitized to his presence. He told his cousin and a few others close to him of his plans. I do not know what else he said to them, or what they said to him. I do not know if they spoke of his almost certain death.

  Kordt recorded a statement to be delivered after the assassination to the American Chargé d’Affaires and to a member of the Swiss Legation. All that remained was for Oster to provide the explosives.

  This was harder than it would seem. Even a Major General was not allowed to requisition explosives without good reason. Oster told co-conspirator Major Lahousen, head of the Abwehr’s Section II (Sabotage), that someone was ready to kill Hitler. Lahousen requested a few days to figure out how to remove explosives and a detonator from his section. It would be difficult, but could be done.

  Hitler intended to invade France, Belgium, and the Netherlands on November 12 (the invasion was delayed). The plan by the resistance was to get Kordt the bomb, and for him to kill Hitler, on November 11.

  Elser’s bomb went off at 9:20 p.m. on November 8.

  Kordt arrived at Oster’s home late in the afternoon of the eleventh to pick up the explosives. Just as I do not know what Kordt said to his cousin, I do not know what he was thinking as he walked up to the house. I do not know if he considered that this might be the last time he would see trees, the last time he would see Oster’s face. I don’t know if he took in breaths that were extra deep, to taste even the foul city air. I do not know if he was scared, anxious, excited, grim, determined. I do know that he was ready to die. Oster let him in. Perhaps Kordt could see immediately on Oster’s face that something was wrong. Perhaps he could not: perhaps years of organizing resistance to Hitler had taught Oster how to mask his feelings. In any case Oster told him the bad news: increased security following Elser’s attempt had made it impossible to acquire explosives. Had they made the attempt one week earlier, or had Elser’s attempt come one week later, they might have been able to procure the explosives, and Hitler may have been killed. As it was, Hitler survived.

  Kordt begged Oster to let him kill Hitler with a revolver.

  “I can make it through security.”

  “You are never alone with him, and there are too many aides, orderlies, and visitors. Someone would be able to stop you.

  We cannot risk it.”

  Kordt did not make the attempt.

  His brother did. Theodor Kordt was also a diplomat. As Ambassador to England, he passed on all information he could to the British. He pleaded with them to not appease Hitler, to stand up to him, to stop him from invading Czechoslovakia. They ignored him.

  He, like his brother, volunteered to kill Hitler, knowing it would cost him his life. But he, unlike his brother, often met with Hitler, close-up, where no one could stop him.

  A meeting was scheduled. On the appointed day Kordt ate his breakfast, considered it may be his last. He put the gun into his pocket. He went to the Chancellery. He passed one checkpoint, and then another. No sentries searched him. He arrived for the meeting.

  He found that Hitler had, for reasons unknown to Kordt, cancelled the meeting. Kordt went home. He did not make another attempt.

  Nika almost never remains on the table. Even when she repeats to him the lines he has made her memorize, even when she groans or screams from the dull or sharp pains he inflicts, she herself is nowhere in the room. She spends more and more time inside her box of memories, with her mother and father and brother and Osip and the land where she grew up. She was, for a time, afraid to bring any of them out, especially Osip, for fear the man would by association contaminate them, but the solution she realized was to not bring out the box for her to hold and open and look at, but instead to leave the box where it was, deep inside, and for her to crawl into it. There she sits surrounded by those she loves as she listens to the distant screams of someone she no longer knows.

  This is how she spends her time.

  Her bladder brings her back. Her captor—she now knows his name is Jack—has a horror of her bodily fluids, and so periodically uncuffs her, recuffs her hands, and leads her to a toilet in a small room to the side of the basement. He watches out of the corners of hi
s eyes for quick movements as she empties her bladder and bowels and cleans herself. He returns her to the table.

  The third time on the toilet, she sees a way out. On the floor, to her left, sticking up behind a canister of bleach and a bottle of vinegar, she sees the handle of a hammer. She pictures herself reaching down—calmly, calmly now—for the roll of toilet paper, then in a flash reaching over the top of the roll and the cleaning supplies to grasp the hammer and in one movement brings it up to smash his face. She sees blood and a broken cheekbone. She sees him stagger, stumble, hit the door jam on his way to the floor. She sees herself on top of him, hitting and hitting and hitting until there is nothing left of him. She pictures this over and over. She figures the distance, the angles. Can she do it?

  “Hurry up,” she hears him say.

  She reaches for the toilet paper. Her hands linger as she makes up her mind. She is scared. She is too scared. If she tries and fails he will hurt her worse that he already has—if that is at all possible. She will only get one chance. So, she decides, she will prepare herself, watch it again and again in her mind, and next time she will do it.

  Allison says, “I remember the moment I realized what an amazing experience it would be to walk out into the world as a male and see the other half of the human species as composed of those you actually welcomed and wanted in your life. Not only were they not a threat (well, not physically anyway), they were desirable. Life and the world was like a playground, something good, something you really wanted to participate in. The contrast was so stark, so shocking, I had to stop thinking about it. My anger was so great, I felt so betrayed by life, by the earth, by god, by everything and everyone, I wanted to disappear. I didn’t want the rage and the hate, I wanted to love, but all women had been betrayed by the very thing that gives life (I mistakenly thought), and their love had been used against them to destroy them. That feeling remained with me for years. It was and is a terrible, horrible, sickening way to live. I have no words to describe it.”

  I apologize to her, insofar as you can apologize for nothing you have done personally, but for things done by a group of which you’re a member. She knows of my childhood, of my own rapes by my father, of the terror he inflicted, but we both know it isn’t the same.

  It’s different in part because her own father was kind. She often says without a trace of irony that the greatest failing of her childhood was that nothing in it prepared her for the existence of bad men, and for the violence they would later visit upon her. From early on she knew an intimate safety I only discovered after my father left when I was about ten.

  On the other hand, I had little to fear from the world at large, which was a far friendlier place than my own home.

  Nika realizes there will never be a next time, and she wishes she could go back and do it again, only this time do things differently.

  She is not on the table. She is walking along an abandoned road with Osip. It is late at night. The moon is full. It is early spring. Her hand clasps his in the warmth of his coat pocket. She stops and looks down at the shadow of a naked branch as it reaches across the road, sharp, strong, delicate. He stops with her. She can feel his hand. They have never made love. She has never made love with anyone. They walk on. She stops again. It rained earlier, and she can see the moon reflected in a puddle. She looks up through a light haze and sees four stars cradling the moon. “Osip,” she says, and he moves closer, kisses her. She presses her body against his. Their kiss ends. It is late.

  “I’ll take you home,” he says.

  She nods, does not take her eyes from his face. In the distance she hears the first tentative frogs of spring.

  “I’ll take you home,” he says again.

  They walk, her hand holding tight to his, deep in his pocket.

  “Ja hochu idti domoy,” she says.

  Jack looks at her.

  “Ja hochu idti domoy.”

  “Speak English.”

  “I want to go home.”

  She’d realized when he’d walked into the basement that he wasn’t going to uncuff her, that she would never get that chance to hit him with the hammer. She’s not sure how she’d known, but she’d known almost immediately. It might have been the slightly slower pace she’d heard coming down the stairs, or later, when he’d stood over her, the slightly tighter grip he’d held on his knife. His shoulders were more set, and he’d looked at her in a way she did not understand, and at the same time understood too well.

  It’s all over.

  “I want to go home,” she says.

  “Did you ever have a dream,” he says, “where one person kills another, and another, and another? And the killer could be anyone, anyone at all, because everyone is a killer? As the dream wears on you become more and more afraid that you’ll be the next to die, because there are fewer and fewer victims left. The victims tell each other to be quiet so they won’t be noticed by the killer, but it never seems to do any good, because he finds them, one by one. The numbers keep dwindling until there are only four of you left. You know who the killer must be, because one of them is a woman, and you know she isn’t doing it, and the other is crippled, and you know he isn’t doing it. So you go to confront the killer, to stop him forever, but when you get there he is dead. So you know it must be the man who is crippled, and you stand over him, accusing him as he cowers, and you get bigger and bigger and he gets smaller and smaller until you’re standing over him with a knife in your hand and he tries to crawl away but you stab him with the knife and he keeps crawling and you stab him with the knife and finally he doesn’t crawl anymore. And you know he lives with his wife, and you know she lives downstairs, and so you take your knife and you walk downstairs. Did you ever have a dream like that, Nika?

  “And so you wake up from the dream, but when you wake up you find you’re walking down the stairs and there is a knife in your hand, and so you wake up from that dream and you’re still walking down those stairs and you’re still covered with blood.

  “And it’s not a dream, Nika. It’s all there is. This is the whole world and every other world. This is everything.

  “We’re not who we are, Nika. That is the central fact of life. We are who we carry. I have a glimpse into whole other worlds. You do, too. And those worlds are filled with so many just like me, so many who stab and slice and cut and chop and pull who don’t even know what they’re doing. Oh, I know what I’m doing. I know exactly what I’m doing. And I know what I need and I know what I need to do. I know what the problem is.

  “Bodies. Bodies. Women. Bodies. We don’t live here. Don’t you see, Nika? This is not where we live. Even when we dream this isn’t where we live. These bodies are filth, Nika. Our bodies. Your body. My body. They’re not our bodies. They are filth. Nothing but nothing.

  “Did you ever have one of those dreams, Nika, where someone was in your body but when you woke up it wasn’t you and it wasn’t your body? Whose body? Whose filth? Who are you?

  “I know it sounds like I’m still dreaming, Nika. I know you think I’m speaking dream nonsense, but dreams are nonsense, Nika, and I am being very precise. I mean every word I say. Who is dreaming their way into us, and when we dream, who uses our bodies and why do they come here? What do they want and why do they hate us so? Why, Nika? Why do they hate our bodies? But it’s not just our bodies. That is the thing we must always keep in mind, that they are in our minds, Nika, which are just as bad as our bodies. It’s all filth and I want to be clean and I want for it to all end in one clean bright white light. But it won’t and that’s what scares me and that’s why I have to kill you. They have to kill you for a different reason, because you have a body. If I kill you it will be to find out where you go. Because when I wake up I’m still in this body, and I’m still in this dream, and then another dream and another. I don’t know who’s in control, Nika, and that’s what sets me apart from every other man, every other man who paid to put himself inside of you. I didn’t do that, and the reason I’m different than all
the others is that I know I don’t know who’s in control. I know that. Other men don’t. That’s the difference. Do you see? Don’t you see any of it? I don’t know who’s in control. And I’m scared.

  “Doesn’t it scare you that we have bodies? They decay. They don’t last. They’re not firm. Do you get it yet? Do you see what they are saying through me?

  “I am scared. I just want to be loved, that’s all I ever wanted. And for the love to never end. Never. I want something permanent, something that no matter if our bodies rot—when our bodies rot— will still be here. Our bodies are the problem. Our bodies are one problem. They are another. And I don’t know who they are. And I’m scared. Did I tell you I’m scared?

  “I’m scared of what comes after. After the dream. The next one. What’s on the other side? That’s why I’m going to kill you, so you can tell me what’s on the other side. But that’s me. That’s just me. But I’m not in charge. And they’re going to kill you because you have a body. Do you finally get it?

  “I am a scientist and I am a Christian. I am both. I am being precise. Both of those are who I am. But I am dreaming and I am going to wake up and I will still be in this dream.

  “It may seem like I hate you but I don’t. They do, but that’s because you have a body and they don’t. But I don’t hate you. I do hate you for being weak, for being passive, for standing by, for not saving me from them and from everyone. I do. You have to understand how much I hate you for that.

  “But I don’t really hate you. We both just think I hate you. But the ones I really hate are the ones who do this. And I hate them, of course, but that’s not who I’m talking about. Because at least I know who’s in charge. I hate the ones in charge and I hate the ones who—no, I can’t say it. Not to you. Not to me. I know things. I know things you don’t know. But I have to know things I don’t know, too, because if I knew them I wouldn’t be who I am. And I don’t know who I am. I am being very precise, Nika, more precise than you know.”