One Parting War

The scales will not balance...

photo by Sam Redlark

I.

“There are, in total, three-hundred and sixteen men,” said Ullman. “All are members of the Schutzstaffel der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei. All are officers under my command and will be treated with according respect while they are in the country.”

He spoke mostly in English as it was the common tongue in the room. The furniture that had been present during a previous visit, a few months before, had been removed. The intention, he surmised, was to force him to sit cross-legged. His host, Abulafia, was a fat, middle-aged man, of Arabic descent. His dark hair was styled in a bouffant and his abundant moustache had been similarly puffed up. Unlike Ullman, who spoke with a pronounced German accent, his pronunciation was in the Queen’s English.

“These men: where are they presently located?”

He reached across the low table with the samovar, refilling both glasses with tea.

“They are just inside the border. I am certain you already know this. Permission would have been sought prior to entering the region. However, there were exceptional circumstances necessitating that we advance quickly.”

“You seek free passage to the southern border, where you will exit?”

“We will also require provisions for the journey, and perhaps some suitable replacement vehicles. Given our bond of fraternity during the war, I wonder if these services can be provided without the need for compensation…”

There followed a short pause that seemed pre-calibrated.

“...However.”

Ullman unbuttoned the flap of his holster. As he awkwardly removed the gun, his host raised an opened palm above his head, quelling some hidden threat. The German depressed a catch on one side of the Luger. A cascade of diamonds began to pour from the muzzle and form a small mound on the table.

“I already have diamonds, herr Ullman.”

“Gold then. If not that, there are other resources. Possibly we have access to weapons that would be of use to you.”

Abulafia drank the last of his tea. He pushed the glass across the table, towards his guest, as though it was chess piece.

“To gather your wealth.”

Ullman nodded as though in defeat.

“I doubt there is any commodity you could offer that I cannot acquire for myself,” said Abulafia. “In any case the circumstances have changed: There is no longer a National Socialist German Workers’ Party. You are reviled almost everywhere you set foot. If your men are captured, they will be lined up against the nearest wall and shot. You will likely be put on trial for war crimes and face the gallows.”

Ullman, having positioned the tea glass partway underneath the lip of the table, was very carefully guiding the diamonds towards it, a few at a time.

“It was my intention to return to farming chickens.”

“First you must deal with the birds who returned home to roost. If you and your men assist me with my border war, which has escalated under the shadow of your world war, then I will personally see to your resettlement. Afterwards, there will be no more aimless wandering.”

“After one parting war,” said Ullman.

“A war that you will help me to win,” said Abulafia

II.

“The men of the SS walked across the border, into your country, early in 1946. That is the last time they were seen. There are no eye witness sightings of them in any of the neighbouring countries. Their trail ends here.”

“Theirs is an inversion of the Jewish story,” croaked Abulafia. His hair was grey and very short, as though it had been recently shaved and was growing back. A groove raking his left temple marked the migratory path of an old bullet. “Your people emerged from the desert. Your persecutors vanished somewhere inside of it. There is a balancing of the books.”

A light breeze rained down a shower of sycamore seeds, the spinning helicopter blades scything the air, a few catching updraughts that carried them farther afield. He placed a sheltering hand over his tea glass.

“There is no court on Earth that will balance the injustice that has been imposed upon my people,” said Waldmeier, calmly. He watched as the blob of jam on the tilted spoon, loosened by the steam rising from the tea, slid towards the circle of darkness, and thereafter into oblivion.

“There is an experimental treatment for your illness that has been pioneered by my nation,” he said. “I offer this to you in return for information regarding these mass murderers: The known whereabouts of any who may still be alive, along with any details you may have regarding those who are dead.”

Abulafia took a sip from his tea glass.

“We are of a similar age?” he said.

“I would say so.”

“You were in Germany during the war?”

“I saw what was coming and fled to Switzerland. My family did not grasp the danger.”

“They came to me, as you say, in 1946. I would not deal with them, but I made them an offer; one that they had no choice other than to accept: Assist me in my war along the western border, as was long promised by the German military command. When that has been resolved I will devote my time and my resources towards finding you a safe haven. By then the dust will have settled. We will know the nations who will be willing to accommodate you.”

Waldmeier drew back a breath, but was silenced by the slightly raised hand of his host before he could speak.

“I placed them immediately on the front lines where the fighting was fierce and in a very different style to the way that wars are fought in Europe. None of them survived for more than eighteen months. Those bodies that were recovered, I had buried here in the sycamore grove that was planted by my ancestors.”

“And there were none who made their escape?”

“There was one who was seen, wounded in the leg, making his way into the desert. Nothing awaited him there, besides his own death.”

Waldmeier’s tongue searched a mouthful of tea for the sweetness of the jam but found nothing.

“Tomorrow, I will take you to my nation for treatment,” he said “The sooner it is started, the more likely it is to be successful. All I ask in return is that this grove, where we sit, is chopped down and the wood donated to my organisation.”

“You wish to make something of your enemies?”

Waldmeier tipped his glass, emptying the dregs onto the parched soil.

“No, I wish to burn them.”

III.

“You go to the north, or to the northwestern borders. Those are hard borders, brother. Okay it’s desert, so they can’t patrol all the way along. But when they catch you in their country, first they will cut off your right thumb, and then they will send you back. If they catch you again, they will cut off your left thumb. Then they will cut off all of the fingers, one after the other.

“If you go east, there is the porous border, but it is porous for a reason. They will snap you up and force you to join their army. They will not put you with your other countrymen, who were also caught. They are too smart for that. They will send you on suicide missions, against dissidents, against pirates.”

“Fuck them, I will escape their military,” said Marijani.

Already he was walking to the east. When he was thirty feet away, he bent over and plucked something from the sand: A gold incisor stamped with a crooked cross.

“Already it is paying off,” he cried, holding up the tooth.

Dejen could barely make out the words which seemed to lose energy in the heat before they could reach him. He saw the spark of something pinched between the thumb and finger of a man who was already being turned to silhouette under the slow passage of the sun.