Of Rats And Heroes chapters 9-10

CHAPTER NINE

Werner Libnits got in front of the entrance to the Kaiser Friedrich
Museum at about twelve p.m. after a two-hour walking. His physical
endurance was equal to that of a stray dog and he was feeling anything
but tired. Still his left leg at the heel where the bitch's teeth had
got hold of him, had began throbbing with pain.
He was hungry again but what was more unbearable to him was the lack of a
puff. The last cigarette butt he had sampled was the one thrown away in
that back alley by the skinny hunch-back he had met at Trabenestrasse.
Werner had witnessed the roughing-up of the Jews right from the beginning
and along with that the hunch-back's to's and fro's during the event.
The guy was an informer no doubt about it, Werner thought. One of those
s.o.bs shadowing most of the important and wealthy Jews, like bloodhounds,
sniffing around for their hideouts, giving them away to those SS baboons
for just a small portion from the overall looting as payoff whenever they'd
manage to dig them out. This particular scumbag had seemed scared shitless
upon seeing Werner poping out of nowhere in the dead of the night, but well
Werner hardly gave a damn about the SS, their stooges and the rest of the
world for that matter.
The only thing he had wanted from that lousy, terrified cripple was his
cigarette butt, as the other man was bound to throw it away sooner of
later. But all this was past history now - events of the previous night,
and Werner had to worry about making it through this new one. He was hungry
all-right, but that was something it could wait. Besides he was trained the
hard way to endure hunger stoically.
But this longing for a fag, oh boy, that was quite something else. Doing
without a cigarette for too long had a shattering effect on his nerves and
mood. Turning his head he saw two taxis stopping in front of the museum
entrance. Two noisy groups of tourists got off the vehicles. The tourists
were dressed in an unusual, rather funny way and from the way they spoke,
Werner decided they were Americans. The foreigners climbed the stairs to
the entrance of the huge building chatting joyfully, exchanged a few
pleasantries with the doorman, then walked passed him and inside the
museum.
But before they walked in, two of them threw two half- smoked cigarettes
into a tin bin placed at one side of the entrance. Although half-smoked the
cigarettes remained invitingly long and.... Werner walked mesmerised toward
the entrance, climbed the stairs carefully stopped short for a while on the
head step waiting in earnest, and when another group of visitors gathered
around the doorman asking questions, he took the few steps to the bin and
fished out the booty. Then he hurried down the steps and toward a tree
grove.
Werner looked cautiously around, then sat down on the grass, underneath a
tree, and resting his back against its trunk, he attacked one of the
cigarettes puffing at it in a way as if it was the last he was smoking for
the rest of his days. His big, strong hands, each holding a cigarette,
were slightly shaking every time he inhaled the fragrant smoke, his lungs
pumping with yearning, sucking-in the invisible mist. So he kept smoking
like a maniac for about five minutes until the stubs began burning his
fingers. Presently he threw away the all too tiny cigarette butts on to the
thick grass and began thinking about that woman.
It was thanks to her that he had spent the last full year behind bars, but
in spite of this fact, he could not take her out of his mind - not for a
minute. Rosa Epstein! A tall, slim vague female figure on the far end of a
darkened back-street in the Sarlotemburg area. He could still feel the
fragrance of jasmines caressing his nostrils. Then the figure was closer and
Werner could remember the two big, slightly slanted eyes, watery like two
small dark lakes set in a pale, almost transparent face crowned by a rush
of long silky hair that caught and reflected the glow of a street light.
Ah, the lady was surely rich and classy, no doubt about it, Werner
thought. Her cloths, her style, her perfume, the way she held up her
beautiful head, all this cried out from miles away that she was coming from
the other bank of life's river. Yeah, right from the other bank where the
place was full of wealth, luxurious mansions crowded with servants and
maids, flashy limos taking to and from schools spoiled little rich brats -
all those things Werner could only look at from across this here bank, the
retched one. So she belonged to aristocracy; and he was nothing but a
lousy bum, famished and miserable even before he was born. This he was; a
nothing, even less than that. But still he had kept alive in his memory her
picture and her name he had never forgotten while in prison.
For twelve full months cut-off from the world, thrown into a dark and damp
cell of the blasted Nazi Dahau Gaol, thinking of that woman, had helped
Werner fight off boredom and loneliness. He had been thinking of her day and
night, in his sleep and while awake, in his cell, in solitary confinement
too, even during the time he was jumped at by four SS assholes who beat the
living day-lights out of him just because they felt it was their duty to
give him a clean and neat bashing every time they learned that one of their
co-jailers was out on a leave of absence. Yes, even during those moments of
unbearable physical pain and harassment, while hallucinating under the
ruthless blows, seeing weird stars and strange flashes of light, thrown on
to the blood- stained floor, huddled almost unconscious and with his body
half way to destruction, his soul, as if acting on its own, was sailing
merrily away like a proud galleon flying her full colours, to meet the
ethereal creature of that night in Sarlotemburg.
And it was thanks to that desperate get-away of his soul and mind that
Werner had managed to withstand the wild beating that particular night, and
it was this wonderful memory always with him - the only wonderful thing
whatever to brighten his otherwise empty and unfortunate life - that had
eased his pain - both physical and mental -throughout his time in prison.
And as if all this was not enough, soon after his release and right before
he had a chance to a few crumbs of food, somebody else's half-smoked
cigarette, and some sort of lousy shelter to spend the night in, Werner had
found himself wondering like in a trance toward this part of the city in
high hopes of seeing her again, of taking a tiny, fleeting glimpse of her
even for a split second. And even from a distance too, so he could rid his
soul from the unbearable burden, so he could ease the burning in his heart
that for a year that day was battling against a turbulent ocean of pure
hell killing him a thousand times each and every minute only to save him as
many so it could kill him again.
His small, slanted, grey like melted lead eyes were fixed on the entrance
to the museum while a voice deep inside him kept shouting: "Go away! Just
turn the other way and walk away. Run man, as fast as your feet can carry
you! This dame is not for you and you know it. She comes from another
world, she belongs to another society and the only thing she'll do as soon
as she sees you right in front of her, popping out of the blue, is to run
away at high gear, or even puke, disgusted by your appearance".
So after too many futile efforts to convince himself to just walk away, he
took off his shabby battle-dress, bundled it up, threw it among the bushes
beyond, then run his hands down along the thread-bare jacket and the
creased, full of ugly spots trousers he wore, in a vain effort to make
himself presentable. And finally, as if pulled by a thousand hands to that
direction, he walked to the entrance to the museum, towards that big
doorway that led to either hell or heaven - he wish he knew what...§

CHAPTER TEN

Klaus Funke got off the train as quickly as his crippled leg allowed
him to, and crossed the full of commuters platform to the street
outside the huge train terminal.
Humanity rushed past him like an angry swelled-up river and then dispersed
to all directions. No-one seemed to notice him and the fact was quite a
relief to him.
But no. A good number of them slowed down their pace and all too rudely
turned to look at him and his twisted, deformed left leg, as he was forcing
it in a tragically funny way to follow the movements of the rest of his
body, and the ugly hump projecting from the flat of his back like a meaty
little knoll, some with pity, some with outright scorn and sarcasm, making
him seethe secretly with wild rage and indignation.
Right from the days of his childhood whenever the focal point of curious
bystanders he would try to get as far away from them as he could, seeking
to vanish from the face of the earth, so avoiding the too many eyes that
like sharp steely daggers kept stabbing at his very being, while before the
eyes of his soul the same old wonderful, and at the same time nightmarish
dream would begin unreeling - that dream which haunted his existence since
the day he realised that his God-damned mother, his perverted fate, and God
himself - a malignant God, surpassing in cruelty the worst criminals - had
conspired against him in a very nasty way. In such moments the image of
the real world would fade away from his eyes, making way for another world,
this one floating in bright, colourful lights, reverberating with kindness
and gentleness and Klaus, standing in its middle, rose a good six-footer,
healthy and robust, with his left leg strong and straight, and his back
lean and freed from the burden of that hateful hump that its weight seemed
to push both his body and soul ever down, as low as a human being could
bend.
So now he found himself dragging his miserable existence among the crowd
of commuters, withdrawn though in his daydreaming, in this magic world of
kindness and mercifulness until at one point he realised he had reached his
destination.
He stopped by the corner, turned his head slightly, and fixed his hawkish
stare across the street at the imposing building housing the "Kaiser
Friedrich Museum", then he shot a glance at his wrist-watch. It was one
o'clock sharp and the woman who had haunted him in both his sweetest
dreams and his most dreadful nightmares, never left the museum before two
p.m.. So he would wait for her like he had done so many times in the past.
And he would shadow her trying not to loose her, not even for a second,
from his eyes until she led him to her father's hideout.
The woman's father was none else than the much celebrated Julius Epstein,
professor of physics and one of the wealthier German-Jews who, as of late,
had disappeared from the face of the earth.
And then, once Klaus had located the professor's hideout and ensured that
his life was helplessly resting in his two hands, he would try, even
through cynicism and blackmail, to claim what fate had so unjustly and with
such cruel finality denied him: a ticket to sexual intimacy with a woman
and carnal happiness.§