An Honorable German (49 page)

Max looked down at the ground. Pray God that was true.

“Stay near the garbage truck, Herr Kaleu. Watch me and Carls and be ready. When we make our diversion, go.” Heinz turned,
strolling back to where Carls stood alone in the sun.

Max strapped on the haversack and walked briskly over to hut five, which stood beside the garbage shed in the shadow of the
truck. The garbage workers dumped a can into the back of the truck, then took it back empty to the shed. Max leaned against
the wall of the hut and watched them make another trip, then another, keeping his eyes also on Carls and Heinz loitering by
the flagpole out in the yard.

The trash men returned the last can to the shed and came out with their hands empty. Heinz had still done nothing. Two guards
approached the workers. Just as Heinz had predicted, the four of them all lit cigarettes. One of the guards said something
that made the others laugh. Max’s heart pounded. He glanced up at the guard towers, their mounted guns pointing down into
the compound. In the nearest tower, a soldier leaned on the rail reading a comic book. Suddenly, Carls pushed Heinz with both
hands and Heinz stumbled backward. He shouted something unintelligible, recovered his balance, and punched Carls in the face.
Now Carls was shouting, too, in his deep voice that could wake the dead. “She wasn’t a whore, you swine! She was a proper
young woman!” He punched Heinz in the stomach and cursed him again. “Call her a whore again and I will punch your mouth out
of your asshole!” The guards dropped their cigarettes, ran toward the flagpole. Max dropped to the ground, rolled underneath
the truck.

He wedged his feet above the rear axle, reached up to wrap his arms around the thick pipe running down the center of the undercarriage,
then locked his hands around smaller pipes on either side until his grip felt solid. Heinz and Carls were still cursing at
each other but he couldn’t see them anymore. What he could see were the boots of the two garbage men. They stood with their
backs to the truck, watching the fight. They went on watching for another minute or two, then let their cigarettes fall into
the dust and crushed them out before separating to board the cab from opposite sides. Max heard the truck drop into first
gear, and the pitch of the engine rose as they began to roll forward.

His hands sweated against the greasy pipes. He pulled himself up, closer to the undercarriage, and braced his arms for the
truck to pick up speed. It eased to a stop instead. Max felt his stomach drop. He couldn’t hear over the noise of the engine,
couldn’t see what was happening at the front of the truck. It was like being trapped in the U-boat, waiting for the depth
charges to explode. He closed his eyes. Dear God and the Virgin Mother and all the Saints, just get me outside the fence.
A minute passed. Heinz had said nothing about this part of the procedure, it wasn’t normal, someone had seen him—but then
they lurched forward and were moving again. Max turned his head and saw the little guardhouse pass by, along with the boots
of the sentry on duty.

They were on the outside.

Now the truck began to speed up. The road was dirt and Max heard pebbles turned up by the wheels striking the undercarriage,
but he was far enough behind the front axle to avoid being hit. The vibration of the engine rattled his body, though, and
he wondered how long he would have to hold on.

They drove for five minutes, then turned left onto asphalt. The ride was smoother now and Max’s muscles hadn’t yet begun to
burn. Moving faster, they rolled down the highway for ten minutes, then fifteen. His fingers started to ache. Should have
worn gloves. If his grip gave out, his feet would remain locked in place and he would be dragged into a bloody corpse on the
pavement. Don’t think about that. How long now? Thirty minutes? His muscles burned like fire from holding on. Suddenly the
truck slowed and turned back onto dirt and a heavy smell hit Max in his nostrils: trash.

The land itself smelled like trash.

The truck growled up a hill and turned again, paused, dropped into reverse, then backed to a stop. Max pulled his feet free,
slowly unwound his hands and fingers from the chassis, eased himself to the ground, drew the Nazi dagger from his boot. He
lay still, breathing hard, flat on his back with the haversack on top of him, flexing his cramped fingers. He could see piles
of trash off to either side. One of the workmen jumped down from the cab, walked to the back of the truck, and then the truck
itself began to rise into the air over Max’s head. A hydraulic motor had been engaged and whined loudly above the rumble of
the engine idling beneath the hood.

Sunlight poured in on Max as the body of the truck tilted upward, away from the cab. He was totally exposed but the view of
the man at the back of the vehicle was blocked by the tipping trash compartment, and his partner remained behind the wheel
in the cab. No one else was there—just garbage, stinking heaps of garbage. Max stayed flat to the ground, holding the dagger
down at his side, ready to use. The compartment reached its apex and began dumping its contents. Blood pounded in Max’s ears.
One of these days his heart would just give out, explode from the strain of beating so hard. Could that happen? The hydraulic
motor kicked in again, lowering the empty compartment back down. It seemed to take an age. It locked into place and the motor
cut out. The workman’s boots walked past Max and disappeared upward as he returned to the cab. Max waited.

There was no end to it, really. Survive a sea battle off the Rio Plata, cross the Argentine pampas on foot, and the next thing
you knew, they were sinking a glorified cruise ship out from under you in the Indian Ocean. Survive eleven days in a lifeboat
full of corpses. Get stuffed into a U-boat with a bunch of greenhorn virgins for a crew. Make it through that and your own
German brothers vow to kill you in a nameless POW camp, and if you get away from them you end up sprawled in the foul-smelling
dust of some godforsaken American nowhere, waiting to be run over by a garbage truck.

The truck dropped into gear. Max realized one of the back tires might roll him flat if the driver moved forward at an angle.
He didn’t. The truck moved away and left Max blinking up into the white desert sun. Don’t look back in the mirror, he thought.
Don’t look back in the mirror. He waited to hear the truck pause, hear it turn around and head back in his direction. Nothing.
The sound faded away, leaving only the noise of scattered birdcalls carried on the hot, dry breeze.

He stood, body exhausted, hanging loose at the joints; his primal will to survive was nearly spent and he knew it. Trash surrounded
him on all sides, the smell powerful—much worse than the inside of a U-boat that had been a month at sea.

Max reached into the haversack and pulled out the new suit of clothes. He stripped down to his underwear and stuffed his tattered
uniform, stained with blood from the fighting the night before, into a soggy cardboard box lying amid the refuse. The suit
must have been made for Heinz—the pants were too short but loose in the waist, and the jacket fit loosely as well. But it
would do. Max wondered where Heinz had even gotten the material. He wondered if it was right to leave Heinz and Carls behind
to deal with the Nazis in the camp. He wondered where in the name of God he was.

Climbing a pile of trash, Max saw that he stood at the center of a vast landscape of garbage. The dump stretched out for hundreds
of meters on either side of him, occupying the top of a rocky plateau, and the birds he’d heard screeching were black-winged
turkey buzzards. They gathered in packs here and there, squawking at one another, fluttering their long dark wings, pecking
at their unearthed treasures with their horrible beaks.

In front of Max a broad valley of scrub brush and white sand stretched out to another line of hills far in the distance. Taking
out his compass, he saw that he was looking south: toward Mexico. There was no sign of life in the valley, save for a single
thread of empty blacktop running down the center of the empty land. It must have been the highway on which the garbage truck
had come, though it could have been any highway at all. The sun was searing now, the distant ridgeline wavering in the heat.
Max could feel sweat on his brow, a scratchy dryness in his throat. He turned and saw one of the vultures staring him down.
The Americans would not know he was gone until the next morning, but then they would know. He looked down at his feet in their
camp-issue cardboard shoes. He was standing on the headless body of a child’s doll, on the disembodied back of a kitchen chair,
on broken milk bottles and cereal boxes and an old cabinet radio, one hundred and twenty kilometers from Mexico. He’d come
halfway around the world and survived five years of war to stand on this trash heap in the desert summer, surrounded by ugly
scavenger birds that might soon be picking the flesh from his bones. Soon enough: he would finally be picked clean.

BAD WILHELM, GERMANY

SIX WEEKS LATER

10 SEPTEMBER 1944

B
UHL FELT A LUMP RISE IN HIS THROAT AS HE LOOKED DOWN AT THE
telegram for Johann Brekendorf. It had come from Berlin and bore the official party seal on the outside of the envelope.
How many had he delivered this year? Several dozen, maybe more; as Kreisleiter, the duty fell to him. “Volk and Führer,” he
would say as he presented the envelopes, or “died for Greater Germany.” These were suggested phrases of condolence sent down
from Party District Headquarters in Kiel, but the words never provided comfort. The tears were rarely immediate now—people
seemed to expect the news; anger came first. They would take the telegram from his hand and stare icily at Buhl, setting their
jaws, saying nothing. Of course the only reason he had not gone off to fight was the important party business he had to attend
to. It was no secret. Seeing him at their door with the telegram, hearing his hollow words of sympathy, he wondered if the
parents of the dead resented him for not having been killed along with all the rest. Resnau, the farmer east of town, had
lost both his boys. He never left the house anymore, his farm going to ruin. Then Bruno, the tavern keeper, his son killed
at Stalingrad, and Maus, who worked in the bakery, his youngest dead in Sicily. Juergen Kraus had been lost on the Volga,
and August Faslem near Voronezh; Friedrich Fuge, shot down over France; Walter Guggenberger, blown up in Libya; Otto Drescher
at Stalingrad; Fritz Zundorf and Kurt Hoferichter in the retreat from Rostov; Reinhard Drescher in Minsk. It seemed as if
all of Buhl’s schoolmates were dead. And now Max was gone.

Buhl stood and straightened his tan party uniform, pinching the blood red swastika armband into place. He walked outside and
mounted his bicycle. Even within the party, only the most senior officials could get petrol anymore. With a push he was off,
pedaling slowly toward the large home where Johann Brekendorf now lived alone. The sky was cloudless, something normally welcomed,
but no longer. A cloudless sky meant American bombers. Nonetheless, the air was warm and pleasantly dense. It was a good day
for walking in the woods, swimming in a lake, or taking the sun.

Buhl parked his bicycle outside Johann’s two-story home and paused. What should he say to the old man, whose wife was twenty-five
years in the grave and whose lover had been shot by men in the same uniform Buhl now wore? Best to say nothing at all. He
took a deep breath, then stepped up to the door. Before he could even reach up to knock it swung open very slowly. Johann
stood silently in the door frame. His weight had fallen off badly; the skin hung slack from his face. Even the ones who lived
were hardly living anymore. Drawing himself up, Buhl gave the stiff-armed Nazi salute and thrust the telegram forward. The
old man refused to take it. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, no words forthcoming. Finally he reached out
and accepted the yellow envelope.

His hands shook so badly that he could hardly get it open. Buhl thought to help him, then thought: I should leave. But he
didn’t. Instead he stood very still on the doorstep, arms hanging loose at his sides, and simply turned his face away. Wildflowers
bloomed among the weeds in front of the house in a patch of dirt that had once been carefully tended by Johann’s gardener,
killed three years ago in Crete. Lazy bees wandered from flower to flower. Their buzzing filled the heavy air. When Buhl looked
up again, Johann was holding the telegram out to him. The old man was weeping, but light burned in his eyes. Buhl took the
paper and read:

Herr Brekendorf,

Your son is alive in Mexico City. My daughter is with him. Both are healthy. More news soon. Heil Hitler, Helmuth von Woller.