The Secret of Lions (20 page)

Classes lasted well into the evenings. Today
was no different. I took off my shirt and lay down in bed. I turned
on the nearest lamp and started to draw in my sketchbook. The
picture was a non-violent portrayal of the Frenchman’s torture. It
was just a picture of three men in a room together. One of them sat
in a chair of his own free will, no one making him sit. No
restraints. No violence. No one making him answer any questions.
This was the way I wanted to remember it. It helped me to sleep;
back then I could trick myself like that.

64

The morning sun rose over the peaks of the
mountains. It was warmer than usual. The heat melted some of the
snow overnight. The roads were mostly passable. My room was filled
with light. Suddenly I heard a sound. It was a truck. The wheels
shoveled snow behind it and onto the road. This left enormous tire
tracks that stretched down through the mountain range.

My chest encapsulated the echo of my waking
heart. I was not normally quick to rise, but the noise of the truck
woke me. The contents of the truck aroused my curiosity. I wondered
if it had something to do with our project. Sunlight lit the orange
wallpaper that littered my room. And I was up.

I found my pants and met up with some other
boys in the hall. They too had been awakened by the arriving truck.
In fact, the boys on the lower part of the school already waited to
see what was inside of the truck. They sat on the steps to the
entrance of the school. Most of them were still in their pajamas.
No one knew the contents of the vehicle, but they were all curious
and very speculative.

“Peter,” one of the boys screamed out,
“there is a truck pulling up to the school.”

“I know that. Why else would everyone be out
here at 5:30 in the morning?” I replied.

“Did you see all of the armed guards waiting
outside for the truck to stop?” the kid said back.

“No, why are there guards?” I asked.

Now it was definitely worth my getting out
of bed, I’d decided.

The walk down three flights of stairs to the
first floor was not an easy one because the entire school was now
awake and shuffling about in order to see what all the excitement
was. Already rumors flew around. A small crowd began surrounding
the truck. At least they were as close to it as the armed guards
would let them get.

I finally pushed my way to the outside steps
so I could get a better view. I couldn’t stay at my bedroom window;
it would be too hard for me to see anything from there.

Too many kids were scattered in the yard.
They obstructed my view. The guards did their best to hold the kids
back. Everyone watched as a team of armed guards stepped off the
truck. They walked over to Professor Rouscher. He was standing near
the gates to the loading section at the side of the school. He
instructed the guards to unload the contents of the truck into the
large opening of the school’s auditorium.

At first the guards lowered their weapons
and followed his instructions. However, when it was time to open
the back of the truck, they became hesitant. Flagrant doubt
dominated their demeanor. The guard closest to the back of the
truck signaled to the others. He stirred as though he saw something
moving in the truck. Whatever the truck’s cargo was, it terrified
him. The cargo in the truck was alive and restless. The crowd could
hear it rustling around.

We were all startled by how fear-stricken
the guards suddenly were. They were never afraid of anything,
never. The children did not know what to make of the sudden
uneasiness of the most violent and efficient SS police that the
world had ever seen.

The rear guard crept closer to the back of
the truck. His fellow guards urged him to open the rear so that
they could let something out. I wondered what it was.

The guard did as he was told and unlocked
the cab. He opened the gate and stared inside. All the crowd could
see was the darkness of the cab.

“Is it still sleeping?” another guard asked.
He held a tranquilizer gun at the ready.

“I think so,” the first guard said. He
lowered his weapon and lifted a flashlight from behind his belt.
Inside the darkness, he saw it dart through the flashlight’s beam.
He realized he had been mistaken. It was not sleeping. It was very
much awake and alert.

A very rare, African Cape lion with a black
mane and dark fur appeared from out of the darkness. It was easily
the largest in captivity. With intense speed and power, the beast
leapt out from the back of the truck.

Before anyone could react, the lion had
taken the guard’s head half off. The head hung, still attached, to
his neck. Exposed veins and bones barely held the head onto the
body. It dangled as the body fell to the ground. Blood ran from the
open wound and merged into the snow. Horrified, I imagined a glass
of red wine spilling onto a fine, white satin tablecloth; only in
my eyes the wine was black. The wine filled the honeycomb shapes
made by the cloth’s stitching.

The next guard also carried a tranquilizer
rifle. He responded slowly but managed to fire a single dart into
the lion’s side. The angry lion leapt on him before he could fire
another shot. The lion tore out the man’s throat with its large
razor-like claws. Blood spurted out of the man’s neck and fell onto
the snowy ground.

The crowd of children screamed as they ran
off in different directions. Some of them zigzagged and ran smack
into each other. The lion looked around, confused and slightly
scared. It hesitated for a moment. Then it suddenly leapt through
the crowd of children and locked eyes with me. It ran directly at
me.

The black beast was enormous. Its fur
fluttered from the cold breeze, waving like thick grass at night on
the plains of Africa. It lunged toward me as if to attack, but it
stopped moments before a deadly strike. With interlocked eyes, we
both recognized each other. Deep down in my blood I knew it was my
black cub from years before.

“Mocha?” I asked.

The black lion sniffed me. He did not
attack. Instead, he gave me a look I never thought I would see
again. It was the playful eyes of my black lion cub.

Suddenly, Mocha started to growl at me. At
first I was scared, but then I realized that he was growling at one
of the guards who was standing behind me. The guard thought the
lion was coming for him. Out of fright, he grabbed me.

“Back away, beast!” he shouted.

“No, let me go,” I said. “Put me down!”

“Stop moving, you little brat!” the guard
said.

“Mocha!” I shouted.

The black lion roared at the guard. I felt
the man’s heart skip a beat in his chest. He began trembling. With
lightning-like ferocity, Mocha lunged at the guard. Afraid for his
life, the guard ducked down behind me, using me as a shield against
the lion.

Mocha tried to retract his claws, but it was
too late. He pulled back as much as he could in the last possible
second; if he hadn’t, I would be dead. The tips of his claws
slashed through my sweater and tore into my chest, leaving the
faded scars across my chest and down my abdomen.

The guard slapped his hands down on my
chest, trying to stop the immense bleeding. I felt nothing.
Everything had suddenly become numb. I was going into shock.

Mocha approached us. The guard trembled in
overwhelming fear, but he could not run. Mocha did not attack him
again. He reached his head out and started to lick my wounds.

It was my fault he had gotten caught. As he
tried to save me, one of the guards crept up behind him and fired
his tranquilizer gun into Mocha’s back. The dart hit just above the
creature’s shoulder blades. The animal weakened, stumbled around,
and finally fell down.

The crowd, which had begun to trample each
other, had stopped fleeing. It took some time for the teachers to
calm the other children. One of the guards couldn’t even be found
for a while. He hid, trembling behind one of the maintenance
sheds.

I remember the guard who saved my life ended
up getting a medal for it, even though he’d cowardly hid behind
me

They lifted me up and carried me off
immediately to the infirmary.

The faculty rounded up the missing children
and sent them back into the dorms.

It took six guards to lift the sleeping
lion. Professor Rouscher began shouting profanities at them. He
particularly emphasized their incompetence for allowing the beast
to escape in the first place.

“You have scared the children! And
threatened the Furher’s son’s life!” he shouted at them.

After several minutes, Professor Rouscher,
the guards, and the sedated lion disappeared into the depths of the
school.

As they carried me off into the infirmary, I
remembered staring down at the corpse of the headless guard. We
passed close enough to smell the blood. There was something else.
There was the smell of seared flesh. It was faint, but it was
there. As we neared the double doors, I saw that the claws had
severed the head and left a straight gash. The lion’s attack was so
fast that the slash had partly seared the torn skin.

“Peter, hold on. We are going to get you
fixed up,” one of the professors who followed us said.

Before we entered the infirmary, I blacked
out, leaving my surroundings and the bleeding bodies that covered
the white canvas of snow with black blood. For some reason, the
color red was black for me, and I could still not remember why.

65

I spent weeks in a hospital bed. All I have
is blurred images of that period of time. I remember it felt like
days, but it was weeks.

“Peter? Peter?” my doctor said. I awoke to
see him staring down at me with a nurse standing behind him.

“Peter can you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes, doctor,” I said.

“Good. I hoped you would recover
nicely.”

“I feel sleepy,” I said.

“That is the medication. Listen, you have
four, deep scars across your chest and abdomen. I sewed them all
shut, but you are going to have some long scars,” he said.

“We need you to just lie here in bed. Okay,
Peter?” the nurse asked.

“What about Mocha?” I asked.

“Mocha?” he asked, confused.

“The lion. Where is he?”

“They took the lion. I have no idea where,
but he is here on campus. We hear him roaring at night,” the doctor
said. “Some nights, he roars something fierce."

He is still alive,
I thought.
Still alive
.

66

Nearly two months had passed since the day
the soldiers brought the lion to the academy; I could not imagine
what they were going to do with an African black-mane lion in an
elite boarding school in the middle of the cold mountains.

I was told whatever the special project
Professor Rouscher was planning had been postponed until I
recovered. He visited me a couple of times while I drifted in and
out of consciousness. I guess we spoke, but I don’t recall
much.

After I was completely recuperated, the day
came when the professor was going to incorporate us into his
special presentation on torture and interrogation techniques.

As an extra security measure the entire
guard staff was called to duty that day. The compound was locked up
like a small fortress. It was impenetrable on all sides.

The rugged mountain slope covered the
western side; a snowy peak lay to the east, and no less than six
armed sentries stood guard at the southern entrance.

Each carried a MP38 machine gun. It was a
close-to-medium range weapon with an extended magazine. The SS
guards preferred it because of its light weight and intimidation
factor. It was good at scaring off unwanted visitors who stopped at
the front gates from time to time.

The year before, a group of British tourists
traveled through and stopped at the gate to ask for directions.
None of the guards spoke English, and somehow the whole thing
escalated into an incident. So they shot the tourists while they
were still in their car. It was the administration’s decision to
burn the car and the remains of the passengers. No one ever came
looking for them. Officials from the British embassy just assumed
they’d gotten lost in the mountains and froze to death.

Today, the number of guards posted around
the gate was depleted due to the presence of the lion. Instead of
there being six guards on duty near the gate, there were only four.
Two extra guards were assigned to monitor the lion. He was caged
throughout the night. As the school slept, the lion’s roars were
constant. Everyone heard him. I could only imagine what they were
going to use him for. I guessed that Mocha was caged somewhere near
the supply area of the school. I could not have been further from
the truth. I found out later that Mocha was actually residing in
one of the classrooms under the dorms.

Monday morning came. The sun was hotter than
usual. The snow melted in places where it was less thick—ledges,
rooftops, handrails, and some of the walkways. I walked alone. I
did not have many friends. Although everyone pretended to like me,
they only did so because their parents made them. They were only
nice to me because they thought Hitler was my father like I did at
that time.

For me, the typical day involved the same
routine set of classes. First at 7 a.m. I went to physical class.
We ran, lifted weights, or trained in hand-to-hand combat. We
learned close-quarter combat, knife combat, and the quickest ways
to kill.

Then the class shifted to a new subject
every two hours. At 9, we had social science. This was where we
studied the general points of politics, German politics mostly.
However, we did dabble in the theories of communism, capitalism and
Leninism.

At 11 we met in a seminar on the strategies
of warfare. We broke for lunch at 1 and returned at 2 when we had
two one-hour courses. The first was art history; it excluded or
cursed all art that was not pro-German, pro-Nazi, or even
anti-Semitic.