The Lady from Zagreb Read online

  “I did warn you it wasn’t a place for us. I believe there used to be an SS office at Jasenovac until they closed it a year ago, after the last Jews there were killed. That’s the official reason. No more Jews, no more German interest. What the UNS do with Serbs is their own affair. But from what I heard, the five Germans who had stayed on there couldn’t take it anymore and left, without permission. So it must have been bad. As bad as this, I guess.”

  “UNS?”

  “The Ustaše Supervisory Service. The special police force that guards these camps. And that reminds me, Gunther. When we get to the brickworks, it would be very advisable if you kept your very obvious disgust under control. It’s not just Serbs, Jews, and Roma who disappear in this part of the world. It’s anyone who the UNS decide they’ve taken a dislike to. And that could easily stretch to include me and you. For all I know, those five Germans who were stationed there didn’t disappear at all, but were murdered. You see, these UNS bastards are killing not for ideological reasons like me and the sergeant but because they like to kill and because they take pleasure in cruelty, and you don’t want to piss them off with any of your Berlin airs and graces. Me, I might enjoy the company of a civilized man like you occasionally, but these boys don’t think like that. Out here the better angels of our nature simply don’t exist. Out here there’s just the beast, and the beast is insatiable. Back in Banja Luka that intelligence officer said something about your evil friend Colonel Dragan that I failed to mention. A couple of times he referred to him as Maestrovich, and once he even called him the maestro, which, as I’m sure you know, is an honorific title of respect. Well, you can imagine the sort of thing that commands respect down here. And it isn’t playing the bloody cello. So, please try to remember that when you deliver your fucking letter.”

  I nodded silently.

  “Serb or not, I can’t see the point of killing a woman unless she’s a Prole rifle slut, and she’s had a pop at you,” said Oehl. “And even then, not until you’ve had some fun with her.”

  “You mean raped her,” I said.

  “It’s not rape,” said Oehl. “I’ve never fucked a rifle slut who didn’t want me to fuck her. Really. Even a Prole will try and get you to fuck her if she thinks she’s going to be shot. That’s not rape. They want you to fuck them. Sometimes they want you to fuck them even when they know you’re going to kill them immediately afterward. It’s like they want to die with some life still wriggling inside of them, if you know what I mean. But these girls don’t look like they’ve even been touched.”

  Reflecting that the legal niceties of what constitutes consent were likely to be lost on a man like Oehl, I lit a cigarette with the butt of the other. “Camps,” I said. “You said camps, Geiger.”

  “The brickworks at Jasenovac is just the largest of at least five or six concentration camps in this area. But there could be more. Out here, in this swamp, who knows? I heard tell that they’ve got a special camp just for Roma where all the usual cruelties have been refined to a hellish level.” He shrugged. “But you hear all kinds of things in this country. Not all of them can be true.”

  “I don’t think the Ustaše can teach the SS very much when it comes to cruelty,” I said. “Not after what I saw in Smolensk.”

  “Don’t you now? From what I hear, the SS in Poland is killing Jews with poison gas now, for humane reasons.” Geiger laughed grimly. “No one gets gassed in Yugoslavia. As you can see for yourself.”

  While we were standing there, at least nine or ten bodies floated by like driftwood. Most had their heads bashed in or their throats cut.

  “They smash their heads in with big mallets,” said Geiger. “Like they were knocking in tent pegs. So much for humanity.”

  I sighed and took a double drag on my cigarette and shook my head. “To save bullets, I suppose,” I heard myself say.

  “No,” said Geiger. “I think the UNS just likes cracking Serb skulls.”

  “Why do they throw them in the river like that?” I asked, as if I actually expected an answer that would count as even vaguely reasonable. And the fact was, it wasn’t really a question at all, but an observation born of an infinite sadness and the absolute certainty that I didn’t belong here. I took off my cap, tossed it into the car, and rubbed my head furiously with the flat of my hand as if that might enable me to understand something. It didn’t.

  “Saves the effort of burying them,” said Schwörer. “I expect they think the fish will tidy things up. They’re right about that, too. There’s asp in this river that grow to be at least a meter long. I’ve fished a bit so I know. Had a friend once who caught an asp in the Sava that was twelve kilos. You mark my words, in a month or two you won’t ever know those bodies were here.” It was as much as he’d said since leaving Banja Luka.

  “Why didn’t you join the Ustaše?” I asked him.

  “Me, sir? I’m not Croatian. I’m ethnic German, I am. And damned proud of it.”

  In the light of what I’d already seen, I wasn’t feeling proud of being human let alone German so I let that one go.

  We got back into the cars and drove through a thick, dark forest and onto a large marshy plain, where we caught our first sight of the camp, and soon after that we stopped at a checkpoint and were obliged to explain our business to the guards. In the distance, running parallel with the river, we could see a train heading for the camp. The guard picked up a telephone, spoke a few words, and then waved us on.

  “You’re in luck,” said Geiger. “It seems that Colonel Dragan is here. He wasn’t yesterday.” He laughed. “Apparently he was in Zagreb.”

  “That certainly sounds like my sort of luck,” I said. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

  Finally we arrived at the main entrance to what described itself as Camp III. It was easy to see why this was a brickworks; the whole place was enclosed by an enormous brick wall about three meters high, perfectly built, and hundreds of meters in circumference. There was an entrance arch also made of bricks, with a big sign and, on top, an Ustaše shield featuring a U and a Croatian red-and-white flag. Inside the arch was a curiously ornate wrought-iron coaching lamp. Leaving Oehl and Schwörer and the two cars, Geiger and I walked up to the entrance. The Croatian guard escorted us through and it was only now that I perceived the true size of the camp, which was spread across a huge flat plain. The humid, swampy air was thick with the corrupt smell of death and the infernal whine of mosquitoes and I breathed it with more than a little distaste. When the very air contains human decay, it catches on the throat. Running parallel to the Sava River to the east was a single railway track where even now the black steam train we’d seen earlier was making its slow and laborious way to the end of the line.

  In front of us to the northwest were the camp buildings dominated by a single-story barracks that was fifty or sixty meters long; behind these were several tall chimneys and some watchtowers. In the distance we could just about see a lake where even now hundreds of prisoners were at work retrieving clay to make bricks. Everything seemed preternaturally calm, but already my eyes had taken in the body hanging from a nail on a telegraph pole, and then a proper gallows on which were hanging two more bodies. But all that was nothing compared with the sight that awaited us in a little picket-fenced garden out front of the brick-built villa to which we were now escorted. Where someone in Germany might have chosen to display some plants in terra-cotta pots, a rockery, or even a series of ceramic garden gnomes, here there was a virtual palisade of severed human heads. As I mounted the steps to the front door I counted at least fifteen. The guard went to fetch the colonel while, waiting for him inside the villa, we discovered the true horror of exactly how the heads in the garden had been obtained. Surrounding the near mandatory portrait of Mussolini on the neatly papered wall were framed photographs of decapitations—men and women, presumably Serbs, having their heads cut off with knives, axes, and, in one particularly nauseating
picture, a two-man crosscut saw. This was bad enough but it was the smiling faces on the large team of Ustaše men inflicting these cruelties that disturbed me most of all. These pictures made Goya’s disasters of war look like a set of illustrated place mats. I sat down on a poorly sprung sofa and stared unhappily at the toes of my boots.

  “Try to remember what I told you,” said Geiger. “You need to keep your mouth shut if we’re going to get out of here alive. This is none of our fucking business. None of our fucking business. Just bear that in mind. Here. Have a drink.”

  Geiger produced a silver flask. It was filled with rakija from the Hotel Sunja. Gratefully I took a bite of it and enjoyed letting the stuff burn the coating off my insides; it was the drink I deserved—a drink from the ninth circle of hell—and just to swallow it was enough to leave you silent for several minutes, as if some infernal imp had poured liquid fire down your throat.

  We waited half an hour. I tried not to look at the photographs on the wall but my eyes kept on being dragged back there. What was it like to kneel in front of a man who was about to cut your head off with a knife? I could hardly imagine a worse fate than that.

  “Where is this bastard anyway?” I asked.

  “The guard said he was on the other side of the river. In Donja Gradina. A little island called the place of sighs.” He shrugged. “It sounds nice. Almost relaxing, really. But I have the awful feeling it’s nothing of the sort.”

  Finally we heard voices and a tall, dark-haired man wearing a smart gray uniform, black boots, and a Sam Browne entered the room.

  “I’m Colonel Dragan,” he said. “I understand that you wanted to see me.”

  He spoke perfect German, with a near-Austrian accent, like most ethnic Germans. It was easy to see where Dalia had got her good looks. Colonel Dragan was unsmiling but film-star handsome. His tunic lapels and forage cap had a gold letter U on them but I could have wished that he’d had a letter U branded on his forehead. After the war, I hoped that someone else would think of this and take it upon themselves to mark him out for ostracism and then death.

  Geiger and I stood and introduced ourselves; he was, after all, a colonel.

  “Might I ask if you were previously known as Father Ladislaus, at the Petricevac Monastery in Banja Luka, and before that, as Antun Djurkovic?”

  “It’s been a while since anyone called me that,” said the colonel. “But yes. I’m he.”

  “Then,” I said, “I have a letter to you from your daughter,” and opening my briefcase, I gave him Dalia’s letter.

  He glanced at the handwritten name and address on the back of the envelope with some incredulity, as if it had been posted on Venus. He even lifted it to his nose and sniffed it, suspiciously.

  “My daughter? You say you know my daughter, Dragica?”

  “I know her. I’m sure her letter will explain any questions you might have.”

  “The last time I saw her she was but a child,” he said. “She must be a young woman now.”

  “She is,” I said. “A very beautiful one.”

  “But how is it in the middle of the war that Dragica has two errand boys from the SS? Is she so very important? Frau Hitler, perhaps? The last I heard she was living in Switzerland. In Zurich, I think. Or are the Swiss no longer neutral? Has the temptation to invade that ridiculous place become too much for your Hitler?”

  “She’s a movie star in Germany,” I told him. “At UFA-Babelsberg in Berlin. As well as being the minister of Truth and Propaganda, Dr. Goebbels is head of the film studio. It’s on his direct authority that I’m here. I’m to wait until you’ve read that letter and see if there’s a reply.”

  “I had no idea. She was always beautiful. Like her mother. But a movie star, you say?”

  I nodded. I thought it best not to mention that his former wife was dead. That was best left to Dalia’s letter.

  “I was a boy the last time I went to the cinema,” said the colonel. “Must have been. It was a silent film.” He frowned. “How did you find me?”

  “Your old Father Abbot at Petricevac in Banja Luka. That was your last known address, apparently.”

  “Father Marko? I can’t believe that someone hasn’t killed that man. He’s much too outspoken for his own good. Even for a Catholic priest. There are others who were less fortunate than him.”

  “I rather liked him,” I lied.

  “He pointed us in the direction of the Ustaše headquarters in the town,” explained Geiger. “And there they told us you were most likely here. In Jasenovac. Making bricks.”

  “Forgive me, gentlemen, you’ve come a long way. Would you like some lunch, perhaps? Some beer? Some rakija? Some bread and sausage?”

  I was about to decline when Geiger answered. “That would be very kind of you, Colonel Dragan.”

  The colonel went off to order his men to bring us something and, presumably, to read his letter. I sat on the sofa again. And when, another twenty minutes later, the food and drink arrived, Geiger fell on it hungrily. I watched him eat with something close to contempt but I said nothing. I didn’t need to. My face must have looked like a letter from Émile Zola.

  “Not eating?” asked Geiger. He grinned horribly as he ate.

  “Strangely enough I don’t seem to have brought my appetite with me.”

  “A soldier learns not to pay much attention to appetite. You eat when there’s food, hungry or not. But as it happens, I am hungry. And nothing gets in the way of me and my grub.” With his mouth full of bread and sausage, he got up to inspect the photographs. “Not even those heads and this little wall of Ustaše heroes. Never seen a man having his head sawn off before. You know, lumberjack-style. I’ve seen some terrible things in this war. Done one or two, as well. But I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  He turned and stared out the window.

  “Why don’t you ask Colonel Dragan if you can have a demonstration?”

  “You know, I just might do that, Gunther. Should be easy enough. I don’t suppose those people who were on the train have anything better to do than provide me with some amusement. After all, I imagine they’re all going to die anyway.”

  “You mean there are people in those wagons?”

  I went to the window and looked out. As Geiger had said, the goods wagons were now open and several hundred people were climbing down from the train and were being herded toward the river and a barge that was already coming to ferry them to their most likely fate.

  “Serbs?” I said.

  “Probably. Like I said, all the Jews in this part of the world are dead. But there are still plenty of Serbs left to kill.”

  From his tone it was hard to determine if Geiger approved of what was happening at Jasenovac or not.

  I picked up the bottle of rakija the Ustaše guard had brought and helped myself to a brimful glass. It wasn’t nearly as strong as the stuff in Geiger’s hip flask but that hardly mattered.

  “The sooner we’re away from this godforsaken place, the better,” I said.

  “I tend to agree with you, Gunther. Although I rather think God might disagree. It’s not God who forsakes us but man who forsakes God. His presence would be more obvious here, of course, if instead of a high wall to imprison and then torture human beings, they’d built a great cathedral. As a celebration of God’s glory and the dignity of man. Just as other men like these men—perhaps their great-great-grandfathers—created a fine cathedral from bricks in Zagreb. On this occasion, however, they built this place to mark where and what man has been. To testify to what we all have within us—that capacity for death and destruction which all men possess. You see, for every Sistine Chapel there are a hundred places like this one, Gunther. And let me ask you this: Truly, is one any less valid as an expression of human endeavor than the other? No, of course not. Personally, I think God’s never far away, even from this shameful horror. Perhaps, ultimately
, that’s what makes horror truly horrible. The knowledge that God sees it all, and does nothing.”

  • • •

  A couple of days later, with Colonel Dragan’s letter to his daughter, Dalia, in my tunic pocket, and Geiger’s cynical words still ringing in my ears, I was back at the Esplanade in Zagreb and, with nothing better to do with myself until I could fly gratefully back to Berlin, I became a German tourist. I might just as easily have stayed in my room at the Esplanade and drunk myself into oblivion with the flask of rakija I had brought back with me. It’s what I felt like doing. I would have done it, too, except for the fear that once I’d started to drink like that I would never stop. Among so many others who were intoxicated with cruelty, who would have noticed one man intoxicated with drink? So, I begged the loan of a map from the concierge and went to explore the city.

  In Zagreb it seemed there were more Roman Catholic churches squeezed into one small space than in the Vatican telephone directory. One of these, St. Mark’s, had a fairy-story roof that was seemingly made of thousands of Haribo candies. On the façade of every other building were Atlantes, as if the place were weighed down with its own history. It was. Between them, the Habsburgs and the Roman Catholic Church had crushed all the tomorrows out of this place so that all that remained was the past and, for most people, a very uncertain future. It was the kind of place you expected to find a Dr. Frankenstein listed in the telephone book, although the last time the scrofulous citizenry had rioted it wasn’t to burn some mad scientist’s castle but the shops and homes of innocent Serbs. Most of the swivel-eyed locals still looked as if they kept a burning torch and a pitchfork behind the kitchen door. I walked along uneven cobbled streets lined with mustard-colored houses, up and down vertiginous wooden stairways and past steep garden terraces with urban vineyards, through open squares the size of Russian steppes with public buildings, many of these a forgotten shade of yellow, like old icing sugar. Approaching the old city gate, I heard a low, human sound, and when I turned the corner I found myself in a vaulted archway where a hundred or so hawk-faced women and potbellied unshaven men stood mumbling their adoration of a shrine to the Virgin Mary, which occupied a place behind a baroque iron fence. But to me it looked and sounded like a satanic mass. Later on I saw a gang of loud young men approaching. It gave me pause for thought when I saw they were all dressed in black. I thought they were Ustaše thugs until I saw their collars and realized they were all priests; and then I asked myself, “What’s the difference?” After what I had seen at Jasenovac, Catholicism didn’t seem like a faith so much as a kind of curse. Fascism and Nazism were bad enough but this more ancient cult seemed almost as wicked.