1: Automaton

He feels her lips wet against his, his cheeks pressed against the bars, the rust peeling off. Her hands rub against his chest, feeling, groping, meandering around his girth. Her dark tresses caress his neck. Behind he hears the dripping of water in his cell, the wind howling through the cell bar. Then he feels a jolt. She’s being torn away by guards, sullen, pock-marked, silent. She struggles, they slap her, drag her away.
She Screams “I’ll see you again, one day when we’ll all be free” Her voice is dulcet, it seems to fill the air like the scent of roses. He watches her being pulled out, retreats back into the corner of the cell, huddled, like a kitten clinging to its mother’s womb. The dripping intensifies. It gets louder, till it no longer seems like dripping, but something from outside the realms of nature. The cell fills with coloured fumes. Gradually the cell too fills with colour, it clarifies, as if a rainbow entered the room and started exploring. Then it shakes, he shakes, he turns over on his side.
He Wakes.
He is the focus of attention. Faces surround him, smiling, repressing, it seems to him, laughter at his expense. There’s an awkward moment, then the ice is broken.
“So, you really like that parachute, Private Schillerz. Well, You should do, it may save your life one day. One Day in the near future”
He looked down at his parachute. It was indeed covered in saliva. He tried to think why this may be so. He rubbed the dust from his eyes. As he did, a voice came from the other side of the plane.
“No, I think he has a sweetheart back home, and he is thinking, perhaps, of her”
There is laughter.
Then her remembers.
“No, I was thinking of that movie they showed us at the base camp, just before we left.”
There’s a movement in the corner of the plane. A sallow sergeant looks up from the book he has been engrossed in. He’s Johann Janker, but behind his back, he’s nicknamed “Martin”, after Boorman, for his zealous devotion to the ideals
of the fuehrer.
“This is My Life for Ireland of which you speak?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And what did you think of movie?”
“It was sad, the way they were separated at the end. Beautifully shot, though, and…”
The Sergeant suppressed a frown, and interjected in an irritable tone: “No, my friend, the meaning of the movie. What does it say to you about what we are doing here?”
He paused. “Nothing. I just enjoyed it”
This time the sergeant was unable to suppress his frown.
“This is intolerable. How will we succeed in our historic mission with only such idiots to fight for us?”
There is an uneasy silence, then another NCO speaks up.
“I, too saw this film, and I am interested to know what you think, sergeant”
“Good. This is a film about oppression of hard working peasants by Jewish plutocrats. The young man represents….
“Wait a minute” interrupts his interlocutor, Corporal Spiegel. “This film is set in Ireland, where there are no Jews. The oppressors are surely the English landlords.”
“Yes, of course, but you see London is controlled by the Jews. They run the banks, the government, the police. The landlords are merely their agents”
“You think London is run by the Jews? Why then, did the fuehrer insist that the English should help us to rid the world of their influence”
“England must, of course, help us. But first we have to liberate England. This is why we are here.”
This remark interests private Schillerz. “Why do we have to land in Ireland to free England?” he asks.
“They are our brothers. Read Gobineau, who originated the thesis of Aryan supremacy. They are people of the soil, like us. They work hard. They reject the greedy plutocracy of the Jews in London. They have always allied themselves with their enemies: Philip of Hapsburg Spain, The Jacobins, our own Kaiser Wilhelm. When we land…
He is again interrupted. “If they are, as you ascertain, our brothers, why does our manual warn us that they are dirty and pugnacious?” These words, coming from the thin, firm lips of the Corporal, have a smug, taunting ring. The Sergeant, now showing increasing signs of irritation, replies: “They are people of the soil. They may never have seen foreigners before. It is reasonable for them to be distrustful. But remember, the one foreigner they distrust the most is the Englishman. If we keep this in mind, we can accomplish our mission. Then we can have a world free from the pernicious, penny-pinching….
He stops talking when he realises that the troops have stopped paying attention to him. They are looking out the window at a sight some of them have never seen before: The Sea.
Private Schillerz has never seen the sea before. When his family were offered a Kraft durch Freude holiday he wanted to travel to the North Sea, play in the sand, taste the salt water. Instead he was dragged through the Alps, returning with a running nose and numb toes. As he gazed in wonder at the boundless vistas of azure, he speculated what it must be like to live on an island so remote as Ireland. This was what had attracted him to the mission, rather than any great interest in the country’s history or politics. He thought about the conversation the NCOs had had, and leaned towards the beliefs of the Sergeant, though the corporal’s questions continued to gnaw at him. If the sergeant was wrong, then what was all this for? Why had they joined the HitlerJugend, the party, the abwehr? Why were his friends dying, why would it be so long before he could se his family again? If the sergeant was wrong, then the whole world was absurd.


He had a basic idea what his mission would be. He and the others would be parachuted into different areas in Ireland where they would liase with members of a revolutionary anti-English group called the IRA. They would set up bases from which secret missions into England would be launched. The information they would acquire could help to bring England to its inevitable downfall. He was unsure, however, what the motives of this organisation were. As he understood it, part of their country was still occupied by the English and they were trying to liberate it. Yet he was given to understand that the majority of people did not support them. He reasoned that it was because the country was a decadent democracy and the people there were unwilling to fight.
He wondered what it was like to live in a democracy. How dull and colourless it must be, without the parades, the marches, the concerts, the organised holidays. How the people must run around like headless chickens without a fuehrer to guide them. How they must lack a sense of belonging, the things that the Hitlerjugend gave him and his friends. He thought of some of them, who had died on the snow on the Eastern front. It sorrowed him to think of the sacrifices necessary to liberate the world. He looked around at his comrades on the plane, some reading, some sleeping, some looking out the windows. How many of them would he see again after the war was over?
He looked out again at the sea. Its vastness reassured him, made him understand that he was a small player in the bigger scheme of things.
He thought of the fuehrer descending from the sky like Wotan in Triumph das Willens, the Meistersinger overture playing. He imagined himself being welcomed back like that.
He wondered what the people would be like. He thought it strange that people of certain characteristics fitted so comfortably into certain countries. Germans were strong, resolute, The English were effete, pampered, The Irish were pugnacious, temperamental. How did this state of affairs come about? It was not for him to wonder. It was his duty only to follow his orders.
He drifted back into a reverie. He looked at he faces of those around him. He sensed they shared his fear, his anticipation, his wonder. He listened to the whirring of the aircraft engine. He knew that before long he would be out of this confined space before long and in a world where he would have to improvise.
He looked around the plane again. One of the NCOs was fiddling with a radio, trying to get weather reports. He was chosen for that job because of his excellent English. Private Schillerz always had a problem with the language. He remembered seeing The Blue Angel, the opening scene, where the schoolchildren were trying to recite from Hamlet, and unable to pronounce the English word “the”. He related to this so much. He remembered these times, heady days of his early youth, the anarchy, the chaos, the riots in the streets, he remembered his father, an old Wehrmacht man who had fought for the Kaiser in the last war, say how the country needed a strong leader to bring things back to the way they were. He remembered the way his father used to talk about the old days when there were no cars or telephones and life was simple. He believed it would be this way again, after this war was over. There would be no supine surrender this time, no reparations to greedy Jewish American bankers. There would be a Reich that would last a thousand years. He wondered how many of these years he would be alive. He could die today, if his parachute failed to open, or live for another for another fifty years, maybe even longer. German scientists were making such headway, freed from the theories of aliens like Einstein that they might perfect an elixir before too long. He thought of the Blue Angel again, of Dietrich, blonde, statuesque, smoke escaping seductively from her lips. Were there women like that in Ireland? Were there women like that anywhere?
He turned to the NCO who was operating the radio, asked him how it was going.
“I managed to tune into an Irish radio station, but there is nothing about the war and no weather reports”
“This is strange” he replied. “Perhaps they are afraid that if they give weather reports then we will take advantage of them”
He laughed, and said, “I doubt they are so paranoid”
Private Schillerz reflected, and agreed. He asked when the first drops would be made.
“Within the next half an hour. But you will be one of the last, as you are landing in the west of the country. He pointed out his landing co-ordinates on the map, but it was the island as a whole that grabbed his attention. It seemed so rugged, like the face of an old man who had earned a certain tortured nobility through a life of hardship and toil. He thought of the map of Germany and how it had changed, it seemed to reach out towards the Ukraine before the last war, only to have its hand cut off by the traitors and Jews at Versailles. Now it reached all over Europe, like an octopus spreading its tentacles. So amorphous it was, the map of Ireland seemed like a rock of stability in comparison.
He looked over at the commandos who would shortly be dropped. They fiddled constantly with their ‘chutes, checked repeatedly to see everything was in order. There was a constant motion, as if they feared a lapse into a vortex of fear and anguish if they stopped. He wondered how bad this feeling must be for those on the allied side, who lacked the same sense of historical mission and were only fighting the inevitable. For them, the feeling must be intolerable.
The moment was becoming closer now. Hands were being shaken, messages of support received, heils offered. The southern coast of Ireland was coming into view. It was just as rugged as the map that represented it, the cragged hills seeming to tell tales of woe. Where the sea and the land met both sides seemed locked in perpetual conflict. Above, on the cliffs, a serenity, a stoicism. He noticed how few houses there were. Perhaps this was what home was like before the curse of modernity hit it.
Now the door of the plane was being opened. He felt the wind rush in, felt it blow on his face, watched the others hold onto their caps and goggles. Such a rush of raw energy filled the plane. This is what the blitzkrieg must have felt like. He watched as commandos struggled to keep maps held in the breeze as they tried to establish their coordinates. He watched the final farewells as the first commando shouted Heil Hitler and leapt. He joined the others to watch him descend. He marvelled at how his body diminished so rapidly, how the ‘chute seemed to materialise from nowhere, and then gradually shrink into nothingness. He thought of how life was like this, how we emerge from the womb, grow to manhood, and then slowly decay. Only an aberration like war of famine could interfere in this process. When this war was over, the world would be forever stable. How lucky he was to be alive at such a momentous hour.
Another reverie, Another Rude Awakening. The sergeant-major taps him on the shoulder,
“It’s not for you to dream, but for you, and for all of us to help bring the dreams of greater men to fruition. Your time to land is coming shortly. Do you need to be reminded of your objectives?”
He is taken a little by surprise.” No, sergeant.” He hesitates, gives the salute.
The sergeant suppresses a frown, returns the salute. “Very well. You are due to land in five minutes, if our coordinates are accurate.
So, the moment had finally come. He would drop through the air and land on an island about which he knew only what his superior officers had told him. His grasp of the language was tenuous and his knowledge of the people was limited. But he had a historic mission to fulfil, and this certainty would allow him to survive.
He shook hands with his fellow troops, checked one final time to se that everything was in order. He looked at the view below. He remembered what it was like when he had seen aeroplanes from the ground and wondered what the view was like from above. He thought of the parachute stories he had heard at base, and then rapidly, suddenly unwilling to confront his fear, of other things, of the women he might meet and what he might accomplish in Ireland. He heard a shout from the cockpit. It was his time.
He held onto the sides of the hatch , clinging like a kitten discovering a new and unfamiliar world. He felt the wind blow into his face, wondered what it would be like to have long, flowing hair that the elements could toss around. He looked at the landscape below, misty now, diced with fields of different, often unfamiliar hues. He wondered what grew in each of these fields.
Another shout interrupted his cogitations. He hand was shaken, he was offered a salute, it was returned. His superior officer shouted Heil Hitler, barely audible above the din of the plane. He breathed deeply, and jumped.
He felt a sudden rush, watched the ground fly up towards him, felt the gusts shake his uniform. He pulled the cord, was jerked back up towards the heavens, then allowed float gently to the ground. He watched the land around him, felt the soft, cold mist in his cheeks. As he drifted towards the ground, he felt this was like an ascent into heaven in reverse. He might have left his body on the plane and left his soul descend into this land of zephyrs and mists. He closed his eyes, breathed the air. He let himself descend slowly, returning to the bosom of mother earth.
As he approached the ground, he noticed he was drifting into a field of bright green. It was unlikely to be grass, he thought, perhaps a vegetable of some kind. As he grew closer, he noticed that they were tall plants, with rough, green leaves, and little white flowers. It was among these strange crops that he would land.
He did so with a thud that left him lying on the ground with one of his boots mired in the coarse stony soil where these plants thrived. He had dislodged some, it seemed, torn it from its roots, and found hard, heavy seeds hanging from them.
Potatoes.
He had seen so many of these in recent years and wondered where they came from, how they grew. Though he came from the countryside himself, it was not an area where these vegetables were grown. He remembered his mother regretting how dependent they had become on these plants. Superstitious thing, she thought that they were evil because they grew under the soil. He tried in vain to assure her that the soil was noble, that the Reich needed to become self-sufficient and that this crop would help it in this endeavour. How old-fashioned she was sometimes, how out of tune with the needs of the new man.
He looked around, tried to establish his coordinates. It wasn’t easy. It was so overcast he couldn’t see the sun. There were few distinguishing landmarks. He took out his compass. It was little help, as he was unaware which direction he was relative to his rendez-vous. He figured he would get to the nearest road and then find his way into town. First of course, he would have to hide his chute. He had forgotten what his instructions were. Should he bury it, or just leave it there, among the potato plants. If he left it there it might be reported to the police, or whatever they were called. But it would take time and energy to bury it, and he had no tools to do so. This was a dilemma. Suddenly he felt alone. He decided it would be better to bury it. He started to dig with his hands. The soil was hard and full of stones. It got beneath his fingernails and some of the sharp pebbles cut his hands. He wondered how anything could grow in such an environment.
He felt sweat start to develop on his brow, then felt a chill as the wind blew on it. Already, he was beginning to feel that this was a strange, paradoxical place, hot and cold, lush and barren, flat and mountainous all at once. He would not be surprised if the people were as pugnacious as the manual had said they were. He continued to dig. He reflected on another irony, how he had never expected to be digging in a field of potatoes as part of his service to the Reich. After the war, there would be no need for Teutons to do such ignominious work, with the Reich expanding to include so many Poles and Ukrainians. Then he thought, maybe it was better not to think too much of the fatherland. He would have to adjust to life here, in this alien land. He dug some more. The soil became even poorer as he dug deeper, more impenetrable. He would have to dig a wider hole and spread it around. But then it would look more conspicuous. Then he fantasised about what would happen to the chute when the war was over. Would it become a symbol of the nation’s liberation? Would there be a statue erected at this spot? He thought it unlikely. He decides to dig a long hole parallel with on of the drills of potatoes where he would bury the chute. He wondered how and when the potatoes would be harvested. Was there big machinery, like at home, or was the land still tilled by the toil of honest hard-working peasants like his ancestors? Yes, maybe he was here in this potato field for a reason, linking him with the blood and soil of his forefathers. He began to dig with more gusto, impervious to the increasing levels of perspiration he was emitting. He hadn’t felt a surge of energy for a long time, not since he saw the fuehrer for the first time. Then he remembered his vow to himself to stop thinking of his homeland.
He finally buried the chute, then noticed how dirty his hands and clothes were. He felt he must look repellent, like a Slav labourer rather than a son of the Reich. But maybe he would be less likely to incur suspicion this way. He started to make his way out of the field, cocking his ear to listen for the sounds of distant traffic. Yet all he could hear was the soil absorbing the mist and the twittering of birds. Was he all alone in the world? Could he survive like this, like one the characters in Fraulien Refenstahls early mountain films? He thought it unlikely, much as the idea of living directly off the land appealed to him. He reasoned that if he kept on walking, he would eventually get to the road, he would ask for directions to where his contact lived. He tried to remember the name, one he had tried to pronounce so often but without any success. He fumbled around in the pockets of his suit. There it was: O Reidigi. How the hell did one pronounce such a name? It sounded like the noises Eastern Europeans must have made while getting drunk and listening to jazz. Then he remembered what Nietzsche said about those who must defeat monsters must also embrace them. After all, had not the fuehrer entered into the pact with the Bolshevik monster Stalin just a year before? Before he could enter into the clammy embrace of those whose names he could not pronounce, he would first have to find them. He walked through one of the drills, the leaves of the potato plants brushing against his legs, the mud filling the soles of his shoes, the sweat dripping from his brow. Then, suddenly, he heard the sound of a car in the distance. He looked, squinted into the distance, and through the mist saw the outline of an automobile moving slowly along the horizon. He would have started running if it wasn’t for the pains in his limbs. He knew he wouldn’t have to sleep outside tonight. This filled him with relief, then an ironic melancholy. Wouldn’t it have made a great story to tell everyone when he got home, how he survived a night in the bogs of Ireland by himself? Then he reflected, it hardly mattered. He would have other tales to tell, other stories of wild adventures and war-winning accomplishments. Even he didn’t he could make them up, after all, he was from the land of Goethe and Schiller and Heine and all those other lofty names from the past that he kept hearing of.
The road came closer now, but he perceived no more traffic. Maybe he would have to walk into town. He didn’t even know which town was which, and was warned not to place too much trust in Irish signposts. Finally he reached the road, shook the excess mud from his boots, and waited for a car to come along. He practiced his Irish accents, thought again of the Blue Angel. He sat by the side of the road, thought he heard a car coming, but then looked up and saw the noise was coming from above. It seemed the big, dark nimbus clouds above his head had considered this an apposite moment to nourish the earth below. He pulled his jacket over his head, thought that this was a sacrifice that he would have to make, and could withstand. After all, he was a strong, resolute, hardy son of the Reich, not a penny-pinching Jew or an effete Englishman or a weak, idiotic Slav or…. He looked up saw that the rain had stopped, it was just a shower. The sun was breaking through the clouds. He had heard that the weather here could be capricious, but he had not expected this. He sat down again, wondered how long it would take before some transport came along. Then he heard a noise coming in the distance, as sort of rumbling cacophony increasing in volume at the slowest imaginable rate. Was it death, walking along the road, dragging his sickle behind him, his bones shaking? Nothing would surprise him in this country. To his relief, he saw an unwieldy cart being carried by a sickly horse driven by an aged man in rags. His life would go on, but he was increasingly unsure what sort of life it would be.
The driver pulled the reins of the horse and the cart came to a sudden stop. The horse neighed, the cart shook. The driver placed his hand on his chin, and stared at Private Schillerz, who could think of nothing to say. The driver took off his cap, scratched his receding, unkempt hair, and said: “Bejasus, you’re a quare lookin’ one”
He had no idea what this meant. This did not sound like the English he learnt in school. He knew he would have problems with the language, but he didn’t imagine they would be of this magnitude. He would have to reply, though, otherwise he would look like an idiot.
“I beg your pardon?” “`I beg your pardon’ says he”, replied the driver, mocking his accent, placing particular emphasis on the second word. “You’re not from these parts, are ye?”
Private Schillerz was relieved. He understood this, or at least he thought he did. “No”, he replied, trying to replicate an Irish accent as best he could “I am from Dublin”
“Oh, a city boy, is it y’are? And what might ya be doin’ down in these parts?”
What might he be doing? He was unfamiliar with this linguistic formation, but thought it would be best not to dwell on it. “I’m visiting a friend of mine down here. I got a lift to the last town and someone told me I could walk to…”
A brief moment of panic almost overcame him as he tried to recollect the name of the town where he was to make his rendez-vous. “…Ballanasareshe”
“Ah, bejasus, you city fellas don’t even know yer own language. Sure ‘tis Bailenasaoirse yer looking for, but someone’s been pulling yer leg, ‘cause ‘tis another five miles down the road and sure ye must’ve known there’d be rain comin’. You’d better come with me, why dontcha, ‘cause I’m headin’ that way meself”
He didn’t quite understand all of this but it seemed by the way the driver was pointing at the cart that he was being offered a lift. He got on the rickety cart, thanked the driver, who asked, “and who might you be looking for down here?” inducing another moment of panic. “I’m looking for a…” he gulped, breathed deeply, “Pronchas O Reidigh”
The driver looked back at him, his face suddenly changed from naïve benevolence to a detached suspicion. “Oh, bejasus, there’s some quare stuff going on in his place, if tis Prionsios O’ Reidigh yer talkin’ about. People comin’ and goin’ at all hours. People are wondrin’ what sort of divilment is goin’ on there at all at all. I don’t suppose you’d happen to know, would ye?
He feigned innocence, alarmed at the inability of his new cohorts to keep their activities a secret from the population at large. “No he just a friend, we meet one day in a bar in Dublin, we have a few pints, he says come down my place in the country whenever you please.”
“Bejasus, but yev an awful funny way of tallkin’. I don’t suppose yer one of those German spies that’s supposed to be infiltratin’ the country?”
He was shocked. How could he know? Was it so obvious? Then he looked around, saw the smile on his face, realised it was just a joke. The Irish sense of humour, of which he had been forewarned. He made a reasonable imitation of a laugh, and replied, “No, no, you don’t have to worry about anything like that”
“Well, ‘tis just as well, ‘cause I’ve been hearin’ awful things about what’s goin’ on over there”
Schillerz’ curiosity was now aroused. “Oh yes, what sort of awful things would these be?”
“Oh , some of the stuff I can’t even be repeatin’, ‘tis so awful. But sure we don’t know if tis true or not since the government don’t let us know what’s going on over there in Germany.”
He was now fascinated. Did they have censorship here, like they did in Bolshevik Russsia? He would have thought that there would be a constant barrage of propaganda against his people, as there was in the other democracies. This country was beginning to surprise him more and more. However, he would try to find out what this person’s impression of his homeland was like.
“No please, I am sure I am able to deal with whatever it is you have heard. I am old enough to remember the war against the British and the civil war, you know.”
Schillerz was impressed by his own recollection of Irish history but this drew only suspicion from his interlocutor, who paused a while and said: “Are ye really now, sure ye hardly look a day over twenty.”
Schillerz was a bit disconcerted by this. “No, I am twenty-four. I was very young when all these things happened, but I will always remember them. But please, tell me what you have heard about Germany”, adding, impulsively, afraid to incur suspicion, “up in Dublin it is very hard to find out anything about the war, the newspapers are all censored, people are afraid to talk, you know how it is, yes?”
This succeeded only in reinforcing his suspicions, it seemed. At this moment, it seemed that all his training had left him totally ill-equipped for the realities of this strange land.
“Ah jaysus, go way outta that. Don’t be tellin me you don’t know about the war up in Dublin. I’m sure you know just as much about the book burnin’s and the persecution of the Jews as I do.”
So now he knew the truth. Perhaps indeed there was censorship but allied propaganda was able to penetrate it. Now he knew what he was up against. Nevertheless, he could not let this remark go undefended.
“Perhaps you should not believe everything you hear from the British. After all, it is not so long since they were persecuting us.”
“Tis true, but I don’t be hearin’ this from the British. ‘Tis from tradespeople I know that used to go to Germany before all this Third Reich business started. ‘Tis a shame, they say, the country was such a nice place to visit before all this started.
Schillerz could feel his face turning red with rage as heard this, but did not want to say anything that might give him away.
“Perhaps it is still a nice place, or at least it will be after the war is over. If they are less friendly to traders because they want to become self-sufficient.”
This was a horrible miscalculation, it seemed. It elicited a narrow-eyed, leery gaze, but no verbal response. In the uneasy silence that followed, he tried to absorb the sights and sounds and smells of this new environment, but found that his fear preoccupied him. He needed to engage in conversation again before he would feel secure again. Secure, he thought. What a relative term that had suddenly become.
“So, how far are we from the village are we now?”
“About a mile, over that hill”, was the curt reply. It did nothing to ease his fears. Had his love for the Reich and everything it stood for got the better of his diplomatic skills? Had he jeopardised his whole mission with on misplaced piece of patriotism. He thought for a wile and reasoned that this person would probably report him to the authorities, and even if he did, his comrades in the IRA would have a contingency plan. And what if he did fail? Would not the Reich succeed anyway? Was he not a small cog in a huge machine?
He saw the village coming into view now. It was not like the villages in Bavaria, with their pretty red roofs and wooden shutters. He saw only a deathly dull mixture of grey, black and brown. As he grew closer, he did not hear the sounds he had previously associated with village life. It was as if he was entering a ghost town. He bit his tongue, in a forlorn gesture of self-restraint. He thought of the people in the wehrmacht, dying in the snow on the eastern front. Perhaps they would like to be in his shoes. As he entered the town, he saw not the vivacious peasant children he had expected, but emaciated, forlorn little creatures who seemed to lack either the guile or the energy to play, all dressed in dull, dark grey clothes. He saw older people too, aimlessly leaning against walls, smoking cigarettes, and wearing peaked caps. Was this the country of My life for Ireland? Where were the dances, the parties, the wakes? Where was the jollility, the rambunctiousness? In this town, the only thing that stood out from the endless greyness was the church. It seemed out of place.
As he passed, he caught sight of young children, perhaps seven or eight years of age exiting the church. They were dressed in uniforms, the girls wearing white lace, the boys black suits, like little miniature wedding costumes. He itched to learn what the meaning of this ritual was, but suspected it was something an Irish person, even one from the city would surely know, so he decided to keep his mouth shut. Everything would hopefully be explained in due course. Anyway, he doubted he would get any sort of response from the horse-and-cart driver, who remained taciturn and seemed likely to keep his distance. He would have to communicate with him again, if only to find out where his contacts lived, or even to make sure he was not being led to the police station.
“Are we far from the Reddigs’ house?” he asked, tentatively.
“Just round the corner.” Four, short lethargic word that provided him with immeasurable relief. He would not be led to the authorities, but to his contacts. Was it a historical inevitability, or was it just luck? He knew that the Reich was bound to triumph, but realised that many would have to die to bring about this success. It was not worth thinking about these things right now. This was a moment to enjoy his completion of the first obstacle thrown in the path of his mission.
The horse and cart turned the corner, swinging wildly. He caught on to the sides, making sure his luggage was okay. The driver said nothing, Schillerz decided it would be inappropriate to say anything. They carried on, past the grey houses and black-garbed natives, til they came to a particularly run-down, ramshackle building. Paint peeled off the walls, a few shrubs withered forlornly in the garden, where weeds fought for space with the long, uncut grass. This was how he imagined the houses in Eastern Europe looked, populated by lazy, ill-disciplined Slavs. He wondered who could live in such a place.
“This is the place you’re lookin’ for.”
The driver’s words took a second or two to sink in. Schillerz looked at him perplexedly, then realised the import of his words. It seemed that this is where his base of operations would be. He thanked the driver, failed to notice the disdain on his face. He took his bag, approached the house, then started to feel dizzy. He sat down, breathed deeply, and felt a sense of shame. It was not for sons of the Reich to react like this to adversity. Did the fuehrer head ever spin during his time in jail? Surely not. Then he rationalised. The events of the past few hours would surely disorientate anybody. This comforted him, and he thought once more of the soldiers on the eastern front. This was beginning to become a habit. He felt a bit better now, but then looked up and saw that some short, emaciated old women looking over at him and whispering, it seemed, into each other’s ears. He thought he had better go inside and meet his contacts before he drew any more attention to himself.
He approached the door with trepidation. Again, the varnish was peeling off, cracks ran along the doorstep. A mat, laden with rainwater, offered him it’s languid greeting. A knocker , rusty and immobile hung from the door. He turned around, noticed that the two old women were still talking and looking over at him sporadically. He thought it would be best to knock. He placed his hand tentatively on the knocker, recoiled in pain as a sharp piece of rust cut his finger. He tried to be calm, put his hand into his pocket and took out his handkerchief, held it at the point where he was bleeding, and knocked on the door with the other hand. He waited a few seconds, then heard the echoing of footsteps through the corridor. The door creaked open, and a giant greeted him.
“What can I do for yeh?” he asked
Schillerz did not know what to say. He had never seen such a big man before. He seemed, merely by looking down on him, to be questioning his motives for being there, even for existing. He wore a white shirt, unbuttoned at the top, revealing a broad chest with thick, wiry hair. His face was unshaven, Schillerz’ first thought was to wonder if anyone in the abwehr would have had the courage to ask him to shave.
Schillerz’ hesitated.
“I was given to understand…” he gulped “that a Pronshass O Reddig lived here”
“That’s me” was his reply. “And what might you be wantin’?”
“I be wantin’, I mean I want… I’ve been sent here”
A glint of recognition emerged on the face of the large man. This allowed Schillerz to relax a little.
“I’m… here…”
“You’re here, talkin’ outside my door in a thick German accent. Now that means one of two things. Either the G2 or the Garda Siochana have thought up some uncharacteristically crafty plan to seek me out, or you’re the German agent that I’ve been expecting for months. Now, which is it?”
Schillerz felt a mixture of relief and fear.
“I am from the abwehr, indeed, sir.”
The gargantuan one looked blank for a second, striking fear into Schillerz’ heart, then embraced him, causing him to fear momentarily that his ribs would be broken. He survived, shaken, now confident that everything strange, bizarre and frightening that could happen had already happened.
He was led through the corridor to the basement downstairs. On the way down the heavy-set one said: “The name’s Prionsios by the way, but if that’s too much of a mouthful for yeh, yeh can call me Frank.” “Yes. Frank.” He stuttered. “Frank. Frank is good.”
Frank looked at him quizzically, then asked: “So what took you so long to get here?”
“Well you must understand…”
He was now in the basement. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and walls. A solitary lightbulb was the only illumination. Around a table, some other men, varied in age and appearance, sat playing cards.”
“Gentlemen, said Frank, this is… Oh, Lord Jesus, I never got your name.” He put his hand, somewhat apologetically, on Schillerz’ shoulder.
“I am sergeant Schillerz, abwehr div... „
„’Tis Sergeant Schillerz, the German agent we’ve been waiting for. Hermann, this is Paddy, Micky, Davie, and Tom.”
He shook hands with them all. Before he could regain his composure, Frank said: “Hermann was just telling me why he took so long”
“Oh, well,” he said, caught off guard once more, “ the Reich’s work is spread very thinly right now. There is the East, North Africa, fears too that the U.S might enter the war, we cannot devote all our attention… “ he paused, choosing his words carefully, “to liberating small nations like Ireland.”
He looked around the table, and was relieved to se looks of approval on most face. One, however, stood out from the crowd. He rubbed his stubble pensively. His obvious lack of assent stopped Schillerz’ spiel in it’s tracks, and drew the crowd’s attention to himself.
“So, ‘tis a war of liberation yer fighitn’ is it? I’m sure the folks in Poland and Francce would be fascinated to hear this.”
Frank’s head dropped. He remembered all the struggles he had to make to maintain unity in his organisation, and all the splits that had happened in the last quarter of a century. He had put his own reservations about the Nazis aside in the hope that they could help to bring about a United Ireland. However, Davie, an iconoclast who seemed ill at ease in any form of movement, seemed unable to do so. Frank awaited Schillerz response with trepidation.
“Yes we are indeed on a war of liberation. We are liberating the world from the power of Jewish plutocrats. You have fought their power for hundred of years, and…”
He would have added that this made the two countries natural allies, but he was interrupted by Davie’s harsh, throaty laugh.
“Jewish plutocrats? Would yeh listen to him. Don’t yeh know ‘tis the Protestant landlords and the big farmers we’re fightin’? Sure we never left any Jews into this country”
Schillerz’ frowned. “Yes, but you see they are all agents of international Jewry. In London the stock exchange and the banks are all controlled by Jews. With these powers, they can control agriculture, industry; they make slaves of us all.
“Well, ‘tis a pity your fuehrer didn’t know this when he was writing his book, in which he says England and Germany are natural allies.”
This was too much for Schillrez to tolerate. The audacity of this man, sitting in a basement near an Irish bog, smugly insulting the fuehrer, inspired a paroxysm of rage in Schillerz belly. He lunged across the table towards Davie, arms flailing, unsure of whether to strangle him or just hit him. He was restrained by Frank and Micky who pulled him back by the shoulders as Davie looked smugly on.
“How dare you insult the fuehrer, he rasped, saliva dripping from his lips. He is the greatest man ever to live. He…”
Frank forlornly tried to intervene.
“Schillerz, please… calm down. What’s your first name?” He continued to struggle, but was no match for Frank physically. As Frank grabbed his wrists and held him behind his back, he swung his head violently in either direction, forcing Frank to put him into an ignominious headlock. He had not expected to suffer indignities like these.
Frank asked, “Alright, relax, just tell me, what’s your first fist name.” He sensed that Schillerz was beginning to relax a little, eased his grip on him a little.”
Schillerz’ breathed deeply a few times, trying to regain his composure. Eventually he uttered the word “Hermann”
“Alright Hermann, lets go upstairs and have a talk, the two of us.”
He breathed deeply again. He decided it would be best to acquiesce. He followed him back up the stairs, casting a backward glance at Davie, on whose face the smug expression had not changed, but whom he chose to ignore. He noticed too, that they chose to remain silent until he was out of earshot, when he heard their mumblings echoing through the cobwebbed corridors. He wondered what they were saying, how they perceived him. It was unlikely, he imagined that the word ubermensch would be used. Had he shamed the Reich? No, he reasoned, it was just a minor aberration.
Frank led him into a room upstairs. He checked to see that all the curtains were shut. He peeked through, as if checking there was nobody around. Then he turned on the light. He sat down, invited Schillerz to do likewise, and stared at him for a few seconds. It was an enigmatic stare; Schillerz couldn’t figure out quite what it’s import was. Eventually it was broken with the words, “What made you come to Ireland, Hermann?”
He didn’t really know how to answer this. If he said it was because of a movie he’d watched, it might seem embarrassing. He was wary also, of making any overtly patriotic statement, in view of the trouble this had earlier got him into. He decided on an answer that was a composite of half-truths and tenuous historical understanding.
“I was always aware that Ireland was a beautiful country and that the war might be my only opportunity to visit it. I knew there has always been a conflict between Britain and Ireland and I believe that by helping you, we can help to conquer Britain.”
Frank scratched his stubble again. He dropped the casual tone that he had been using, and suddenly became formal. “Let me make a few things clear. Our wartime alliance is a marriage of convenience. We don’t have any great reverence for your fuehrer, any more than we did for Philip II or the Directory. Furthermore we (in a later age he would have made inverted comma symbols with his fore fingers, but this was 1941 so he just placed added emphasis on this word) are extremely small in number. Many of us died in the civil war, others went along with the new administration, hoping our brethren in the six counties would eventually be welcomed back by constitutional means. And even the remainder are split. Some of us are socialists, some hardline Catholics. Oh, and I should also point out, we’re not very well armed.”
Schillerz’ reaction this time was not one of anger, but of shock and disillusion. He had expected to meet a well-disciplined, well-motivated body of men with whom he could ally himself, but instead he was confronted with this rattle-bag of unshaven misfits. Worse, the criticism of the fuehrer earlier had seemed like mere provocation, now it was revealed as the prevalent view of the organisation that would provide his support network. To have leapt to the defence of his idol would have seemed desperate and futile, so he went for a more reasoned approach.
“Why are you so eager to distance yourself from the motives of the Reich? Do you not realise how much things have gotten better in Germany since the National Socialist party has taken over? Full employment, no more inflation, holidays for everyone? Don’t you want also to live in a country like this?” “All we’ve ever wanted was for all of our people to be free from Britain. Some of us don’t concern ourselves with what’s going on in Germany, some of us, as you can see, disapprove of it. But all us are willing to accept your help.
To Schillerz, who could not quite get his her around the concept of “disapproving” of National Socialism, these words were hard to comprehend. He had to seek some form of clarification.
“How can you ally yourselves with people whose views you do not agree with? What sort of men are you?”
“Have you ever read Machiavelli or…” Frank was about to ask if his books had been burned in Germany but thought this would not be tactful. The name rang a bell for Schillerz but he had to admit he hadn’t. Tired of verbal discourse in a foreign tongue, he elected to shake his head.
“Machiavelli was a philosopher who lived at a time when the city-states in Italy were constantly entering into new alliances, each time thinking up new, more sanctimonious reasons for doing so. This led him to believe that power, not idealism or morality was their reason for doing so. If you’ll permit me to say so, I think he’d have some interesting things to say about the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. And about the fact that you’re sitting down talking to me now”, he added, amused at an irony he had only just realised.
To Schillerz this was apostasy, but he realised that there was no point in getting angry. Frank realised he may have antagonised him, and decided to moderate his views.
“Let’s just agree that we both want to fight the English, for whatever reason. Tell me, how much interest do the German high command have in Ireland?”
Schillerz sighed a sigh of relief as the conversation shifted away from politics and philosophy to military matters.
“Ah, well, as I said earlier, we are fighting a war on several fronts, and there is much to consider. But we realise that Churchill was very angry that Ireland chose to remain neutral, and we knew there must be a reason for this. Britain was a tougher nut to crack than we anticipated, and we realise we must explore more avenues in our attempt to defeat her.”
Frank, too, was more comfortable on this ground. They talked for a while of u-boats and arms consignments, of the robbery of arms from the munitions store in the Phoenix Park and Frank’s part in it, of Schillerz’ abwehr training, of his life growing up in the Reich. It seemed that, for all their differences they had much to communicate to each other. They were talking about Frank’s adventures in the war of independence when he suddenly interjected: “Oh, Christ, I forgot about the lads down below. Just a minute.”
Frank was going downstairs, Schillerz imagined, try to convince the more sceptical members of the group that he was indeed a useful ally. His suspicion was confirmed a few minutes later when he came back up call out: “Hermann, come on down.”
He walked down through the dark, damp dusty corridors. Damp and dusty at once? Only in Ireland, he thought. He listened to the mumbling that seemed to anticipate his entry and diminished as he drew closer. As he entered the room, Davie rose to greet him, and the others looked on with ostensible apprehension. Davie seemed less quick on his tongue than he had earlier been. It appeared as if his had been the victim of a tongue-lashing from Frank. He opened his mouth a few times without speaking, then finally managed to get a sentence together.
“Look, ah, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. We, y’know, don’t get too many foreigners ‘round here and I’m not really used to dealing with them. I didn’t really mean any offence”
He tentatively offered a hand of in a gesture of reconciliation. Schillerz thought that, as apologies went, it was pretty feeble but in the circumstances it would be better if he accepted it. He shook his hand awkwardly. It seemed neither of them knew what the other nationalities protocol was on handshaking. He wondered how many similar situations there were around the world at the same instance. The repercussions of this cultural mismatch failed even to make any ripples in the immediate surroundings, as sighs of relief were audible among all the participants in this meeting.
Frank slapped Schillerz on the back, a gesture that would have been intrusive at home but here might have been considered friendly. Frank said, “thanks for being so understanding. Now, d’you want something to eat? Ye must be starvin’”
The reversion to a more informal mode of discourse did not go unnoticed on Schillerz’ part. Was this the way he always spoke, or was he just trying to create an atmosphere of camaraderie? He would have enough time to deduce the answer to this question. More importantly in the immediate future, his answer to Frank’s question was emphatically in the affirmative.
Frank went upstairs tentatively, repeated his precautionary routine. He leaned over the top of the basement stairs, shouted out, “It’s Okay, the coast is clear.” Was this what it was like for the National socialist leadership in the early days? He thought of the belief it must take to get through such tribulations. Perhaps the people in whose company he was now were motivated by similar beliefs, and this was what caused the confrontation earlier. Perhaps when he got to know Davie better he would try to explain this.
Upstairs his hosts were going about preparation of dinner. He saw Davie bending down to pull something out of a big brown bag, the sort that horses ate out of at home. It turned out, he shouldn’t have been surprised to learn, to be full of potatoes, all of different shapes and sizes, some round, some elliptical, some weirdly anthropomorphic. He asked Frank if there was anything he could do to help, he replied with a string of “No’s” and an imprecation to sit down comfortably. “You’re in luck,” he added, “I’ve managed to get my hands on a fine piece of lamb steak.” As Schillerz watched them frantically peel the potatoes, cure the meat and prepare the stock, he marvelled at their ability to cook, but wondered why there were no women to do this job for them. He thought of the story of Baron Munchausen, and Fritz Lang’s Woman on the Moon, where women were able to do the housework all night, leaving men to get on with the more serious things in life. He had heard something about a movie been made of the Munchausen story as well, maybe he would get to see it when he got home.
He watched them place all the ingredients into a big saucepan, the sort that perhaps would be used to make goulash at home. As Frank stirred the pot, it seemed like he had entered a new persona again, that of domesticity. This rag-bag army seemed to lack the sort of chain of command he was familiar with, but strangely, rather than disorientating him, it was sort of endearing. He thought their resourcefulness was admirable. After all, the Reich too was forced to be resourceful in many way, with so many of it’s chains of supply cut off. The room was by now beginning to fill with steam, steam that bore a harsh, salient smell that caused his nostrils to contract reflexively and made his eyes water. The thought that they were trying to poison him flashed briefly across his mind but dispersed like the steam that drifted out the draughty doorways.
“Dinner’s served”, shouted Frank, as the others took their places dutifully. “I don’t suppose Hermann’s had a taste of Irish stew before now, have yeh, Hermann?”
He relied hesitantly, like a shy schoolboy approached by a girl he was attracted to. The question had surprised him a bit, and he was less at ease at the dinner table than he was alone with Frank. “No”, he offered, before he was interrupted by Paddy who interjected with : “Aye, I’d say ‘tis a bit different from your wieners and your schnitzels yeh have back home.” The others assented as a plate was placed on his place. It looked different from anything he had ever eaten, a watery and amorphous mix of potatoes, meat, and vegetables, some of which he could identify, some not. The others looked round eagerly as he placed a piece of meat in his mouth. It was stringy and he found it hard to chew, with little pieces getting stuck between his molars. He took a sip from a glass of water to help him chew, then looked up, nodded, affected a smile, and said “It’s good” Frank again patted him on the back, almost causing him to spit the meat out of his mouth, and said “Dowtcha boy”. Schillerz didn’t know what this meant but didn’t want to go to the trouble of asking, particularly as his food was so difficult to chew. The others were smiling, though, so he assumed it was some sort of compliment. As he struggled to penetrate this strange dish, he looked around anxiously to check if the others were doing the same. No, it seemed they were wolfing the food down as if they had not eaten in days. He felt ill at ease again, but assured himself he would get used to this food. After all, he was acclimatising to the new surroundings, the weather, the language and all the strange modulations with which it was spoken here. As everyone else was finishing, he was only half finished, chewing this impenetrable, stringy meat. He decided he had better concentrate on the vegetables; if he left some of the meat on his plate maybe it might be attributed to travel sickness. The potatoes too, however, were soggy and tasted of meat. It seemed that the dead flesh pervaded the taste of everything in this meal. Then he thought of all the peat he had passed on the way here, and how that was decaying matter as well. Then he thought of the young children he had seen coming out of the church, and was eager to ask about them. He struggled to shift the food around inside his mouth so it wouldn’t sound like he was talking with his mouth full, then turned to frank and uttered his name.
“Yeah?” he replied, between taking a drink of water and placing it back on the table.
“I saw some young children coming out of a church earlier, dressed like adults at a wedding. Can you tell me what that was all about, please?”
At these words Micky almost choked in an effort not to spit out his food. “Bejasus,” he said, pugnaciously “Don’t ye have First communion in yere country at all at all?”
Frank gestured subtly at him to calm down, nodding gently in Schillerz’ direction. He turned to him more overly and said: “It’s a sort of ritual here, when the children make their communion for the first time, to get dressed up and have parties with their families. This is a very Catholic country, don’t you know.”
“I see, Schillerz responded, ponderously, “but those costumes look so expensive, while all around there seems to be so much poverty”
The tension rose, almost imperceptibly at this remark, and Frank knew he would have to choose his words carefully to quell it. “Well, you know, some of the people in this country have very little but religion to keep them going. Many children are uneducated, have little idea of the world outside. Being part of organised religion gives them a sense of belonging to something outside themselves.”
Schillerz was impressed with the clarity of his explanation, but distressed that people here clung on to old superstitions so tenaciously. In view of Micky’s reaction to his earlier question, he thought it better not to comment on this, and instead meekly asked if the people around this table had been through these rituals themselves. This suddenly seemed to animate everyone. Frank was the first with his tale of how he had never seen a photographer before and could not be persuaded to stand still and was seeing little squiggles for days after the flash met his eyes, then Micky, who came from a protestant area of Belfast told everyone about the proddies throwing rocks and the various ways in which this gesture was reciprocated. At first Schillerz listened to these stories with the curiosity of a visitor, but then it occurred to him how these stories wove a tapestry of religious obsession, which disturbed him slightly. How could such outmoded customs still play such an important part in the community life of what was considered by many an Aryan nation?
His cogitations were again interrupted by Frank. “Bejasus, Hermann, but yer an awful one for drifting off into reveries. I’d love to give a penny for yer thoughts.”
Hermann looked a bit confused. “A penny for my thoughts? What does this mean?”
“It means… Oh, never mind,, I’ll explain in the morning. Yeh must be wantin’ to turn in. Ye’ve had such a tirin’ day, yeh must be knackered.” Confusion again. “Knackered? What is knackered”
Frank laughed and patted him on the back “It means very tired, that’s all. I don’t suppose they teach you words like that in English class in Germany.”
More images of The Blue Angel flashed across Schillerz’ mind. He shook his head, as if to dispel them, then said, “Yes, I am indeed very tired. Do you have a place where I can sleep?” “Well, it’s not the Berlin Alexanderplatz but we won’t have you sleeping out in the shed with the cows either.”
As Schillerz had not quite gotten to grips with the concept of ironic understatement, he was unsure of how to react. He looked at Frank briefly, blankly, worriedly, before he was led in the direction of a nod from the later and the words “c’mon”. As Davie started to clean up the plates grudgingly, shaking his head as he scraped much of the meat into the bin, Schillerz was led through the corridors and up the stairs to a door where, predictably by now, the paint was peeling off, the doorknob was stiff and which any attempt to open was met with obstreperous creaking. Once again Frank went through the motions of making sure the curtains were closed. There seemed to be no electricity in this room, so Frank reached for the candle that lay on the chest of drawers and took some matches out of his pocket. Schillerz noticed the word “friendly” on the matchbox. He wondered what could be amiable or approachable about sticks that caused fire. Was there a cult of fire worshipping in this country as well? Not it seemed, if Frank was a typical native he lit the candle with the precision of a surgeon and blew out the match instantaneously, almost reflexively. Then he turned to Schillerz and spoke to him in hushed, intimate tones. He moved his body close to him, as if shielding out any interference. His movements frightened Schillerz a little, but there was nothing threatening in his tone of voice.
“Listen, Hermann, how many people did you encounter on your way here?”
He hesitated, clearly not having anticipated the question. “Oh, just one, I suppose, the man who carried me on his horse and cart.”
Frank seemed eager for more information, trying to elicit it with vigorous hand movements. Schillerz’ response was stuttering, indecisive. “He was old, I suppose, wore clothes like most of the people here, his accent seemed strange at first, but now it seems you all talk this way here.” He sniggered, apprehensively, hoping Frank would not pursue the matter any further. However, Frank responded with the merest rictus, and said: “Look, our position here is a dangerous one. We have many enemies, in the Gardai, among the big farmers, and even among the small peasants. There could be reward money for turning us in. that’s why I have to take all these precautionary measures. Now if you can’t remember anything about the guy who brought you here, that’s regrettable, but understandable. If you can, try and think and tell me in the morning.” Schillerz nodded. “Have you got everything you need?” Schillerz looked around, decided there was nothing he was lacking, and nodded his head. “Alright, then. ‘Night”, Frank said, and patted him on the shoulder, and left the room.
Schillerz sat down on the bed. He found it hard , but reasoned that his fatigue would drag him into the arms of sleep. He looked around the room. Dusty threads of gossamer hung forlornly from its corners, paint peeled from the walls forming arbitrary, rorschachian shapes. A picture of the Virgin Mary in an Umbrian Valley hung from the wall. Inside the unvarnished, rickety frame, behind the smudgy glass, she seemed to exist in another world, a world of ataraxic bliss to which she invited Schillerz with her pellucid hands. He became a bit more sympathetic to his hosts and their compatriots, understood a little more how religion could be seductive to people living in such a bleak land.
He turned away. This was his first chance for uninterrupted reflection, and there was much to reflect upon. He thought about his hosts, strange, paradoxical people who ate mushy, soggy food with their hands, yet could discuss the work of Italian philosophers he had never heard of. He had been brought up to believe that only in a world of order such as the national socialist leadership planned could intellect and culture exist, but these people seemed incongruent with this thesis. He decided to stop thinking about this, worrying what labyrinthine mazes of cognitive dissonance it could lead him down. Anyway, he had more immediate worries. He had yet to radio home, but felt so tired that he decided it had better wait ‘till morning. He should also brush his teeth, he was sure he had brought a toothbrush and toothpaste, though that would entail getting up from bed. He would have to do this in a while, but for now he would enjoy his chance to rest.
In his queasy, exhausted state the lower half of his body exerted an increasing grip on his cognitive processes. Disappointed by the apparent absence of pretty girls here in Ireland, he thought of the frauliens back home, with their blonde tresses and their rosy red skin and their penetrating eyes and high, prominent cheekbones. He felt a tumescence developing in his trousers, but knowing he would never have enough energy or stimulation to masturbate, he decided merely to stroke it gently. This relaxed him, made him feel relatively at ease with himself. He turned over, awkwardly, and looked up at the picture of the virgin. How would he react if he was Irish? With terror, foreboding of a Dantesque, Boschian inferno that awaited him for being guilty of such thoughts? He did not need to have any such fears. He was above them. He was one of the ubermenschen, was born to lead, not to follow the rules of the ancients. He was the new man.
Even the fuehrer, like Bismarck, Frederick the Great and Barbarossa before him needed sleep, he reasoned as his eyes grew heavy and his thoughts less and less coherent. He also remembered something about Alexander the Great holding a marble while he slept, but couldn’t remember what it was, exactly. Surely the fuehrer had gone to sleep once in his life without having brushed his teeth? An ugly image of a crowd at Nuremberg all smelling his halitosis flashed in his mind, forcing him to toss and turn frantically in an effort to dispel it. What strange tricks the mind played on us in our moments of fatigue. What demons from the core of our being were exorcised in this brief, ephemeral moment of weakness. His eyes became heavier, his nasal breathing more and more intense and repetitive.


Suddenly he was back home in Bavaria. He was on top of one of the hill, looking down through the mist on the red-topped houses below. As he looked down, he started to notice people leaving the houses and streaming on to the streets. His curiosity inspired, he started to run down the mountain. He didn’t feel the wind blowing in his face or the dewy grass under his feet, just the thrill of descent. Occasionally he tripped on a stone and went flying into the air only to float back down again and resume his stride. As he closer to the houses below, he saw young children leaving the houses, the girls dressed in white lace, the boys dressed in black suits. They all walked forward as if drawn by some inexorable force, all bearing looks of almost cadaverous severity. He followed them, curious to know where they were going. Though he must have stood out with his height, his age and his dress, none of them looked at him, instead they all looked forward, like horses wearing blinkers. Their ranks swelled as they moved on, more of them streaming down from the mountains and the valleys below, coming from cottages, behind hedges, out of wells. They came closer to a city, lined with trees and percolated with canals, a city of gothic spires and Tudor panels, where there was no litter on the streets and where the air smelled of roses. People waved from these buildings at the gathering throng below, who remained impassively fixated on looking forward. They approached a stadium where they were greeted with wrought iron gate that seemed to open as a result of the sheer force of their presence. They entered, arranged themselves into lines, and awaited the entry of an older man. He stood on the stage, raised his arms aloft. At hat moment there was a crash of thunder and the skies opened, releasing a torrent of potatoes. He cowered, held his head in his hands trying to protect himself from this inundation. The pain was intense, but he looked around and saw the young children catching the potatoes and planting them in the ground. New potato plants grew instantaneously and their leaves started to strangle his neck. Then the ground started to shake and a new crop of potatoes burst volcanically from the earth, and fell again, unleashing another bout of bruising injuries. He started to run, but there was no escape from the deluge.


He woke. He was confused, at first he did not know where he was, what day it was, or how he got here. Then he heard a knocking on the outside door of the house, and mumblings from downstairs. As the knocking grew louder he started to worry that something might be going wrong. He remembered the way the man on the horse and cart looked at him and franks warnings about informers. Then he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and saw the door of his room flying open, with Frank following in it’s frenetic wake. Before he knew it, Frank’s thick wrists were shaking him out of his lethargy.
“Who did you tell you were coming here?” he yelled. Schillerz, too dazed to respond, tried to string a coherent answer together, but could not do so before Frank again yelled, even louder: “Who did you fucking tell you were coming here, you fuckin’ eejit?
“I told you everything before. I have not hidden anything from you. Why are you so angry? “Why am I angry? Because it’s one o’ fucking clock in the morning and there’s fucking police outside our fucking door looking for us. C’mon, get the fuck out of bed and come with us.” As Schillerz reaction was less than instantaneous, he again shouted out: “Get the fuck out of bed! They’ll be knocking down our fucking door within two or three minutes.”
He did as he was told, and fumbled around looking for his clothes and his bag. He struggled to get them on quickly, thought as he was doing do that it might be easier if he took it more slowly. Frank said, c’mon. I’ll take yer fucking bag, you follow us out. And get a fucking move on!”
Frank’s footsteps could be heard thundering down the stairs, and Schillerz thought it prudent to follow in their path. He put on his shoes, tied his laces, felt around the floor briefly to see if there was anything he had left behind, and then, satisfied there was not, he left the room and went downstairs. The four people he had been talking to earlier were there, all agitated and suspicious in varying degrees. As Schillerz came down the stairs, Frank, not wanting to waste any time, said: “Here’s the plan. We get out the back door and run like hell through the fields. When we get to the forest we hide out, then we use Hermann’s radio to get help. You do have a fuckin’ radio, I assume?” His glance darted pugnaciously in Schillerz’ direction.
“Yes I do…”
“Good. Here’s your fucking bag.” He shoved Schillerz’ bag into his chest, almost winding him in the process. “Alright, I know these parts pretty well. If ye all follow me we’ll be alright.”
Frank opened the back door as gently as he could, though a knocking on the front door gave him a brief window in which he could make some more noise. At that point he yanked it open and ran out, gesturing to the others to follow him. Schillerz did so, through the muddy puddles and the waste ground at the back of the house, over the hedge, to the fields beyond. He noticed an intense, noxious odour emanating from his shoes and he figures that he had walked through dogshit as well as muddy puddles, something that would have bothered him more at another time. It seemed in this field more potatoes grew. Instead of following right behind Frank, he reasoned it would be better to run in another drill. Then he noticed he was running faster than Frank, and looked behind him at the others, who were running even slower, even though none of them came close to matching Frank’s girth. Were they scared to run faster than him because he was the leader? If so, what sort of people were they?
The need to run faster became more imperative when he saw figures in the distance climbing over the hedge and knew they could only be the police. He upped the tempo, leaving Frank far behind. At the same time the others also ran faster, but he was evidently fitter than any of them. As he ran he kept looking behind but as the distance between him and the others grew his view of events faded. Then he heard a howling in the distance and assumed Frank or one of the others had been caught. If it was Frank, then his girth was clearly of no use to him now. As he view was diminished he assumed the same was true of his antagonists. He stopped, pricked up his ears to hear whatever sounds he could, but there was only silence. What had happened? Had they all been caught? It seemed unlikely. Perhaps some of them had gambled on hiding for a few hours in the hope that they could not be found. He thought maybe he should do the same.
He lay down in one of the drills. There was still no sound, but for the crickets and the gentle hissing of the soil absorbing water. Still, he thought it prudent to lie down, he feared the police may be playing cat and mouse with him, waiting for him to make the first move. But then how long could this go on? They could theoretically keep this game going forever, or else they could search the fields and he would surely be found eventually. But if he got up, he might be seen and this would give his presence away. On the other hand, he would be much easier to locate during the day. He had heard of a decadent Jewish-Czech writer called Kafka who wrote of situations like these. As far as he knew, his books had all been destroyed in Germany because of their unreality. His own situation, however, was not unreal. It was as real as it got. And it required instantaneous decision making. He thought it best to lie in the drill for an hour or so, after which time he would be satisfied that the police had gone. Then he would wander around until he found some place of shelter. He would radio home and request orders.
What motivated this decision? Was it instinct, or the product of his training? Was it good Teutonic sense, the pragmatism of his race? Or was he being forced to act this way be some higher power? Whatever force led him to make this decision now led him to lie down in a field of potatoes for the second time in the space of a few hours. If he was familiar with Lear’s words “As flies to wanton boys we are to the gods” they would probably have some into his head right now but he wasn’t. Up ‘til now he hadn’t been a great bibliophile. He had read Mein Kampf of course, found it difficult to get through, unsurprisingly, it was the work of a genius, a cultured intellectual who was changing history. He was just an ordinary man, a cog in the machine. And he had seen movies, lots of them, from the Lang and Sternberg movies he had seen as a kid to the films of Refienstahl, and Jud Suss, The Wandering Jew and other National Socialist flicks. They had done much to shape his weltanschaaung, but could throw little light on his current situation. He couldn’t see the symbolism of being ground down in the dirt by forces beyond his own control. He didn’t know the psychological importance of potatoes for the Irish, or for downtrodden peoples elsewhere, only that they yielded a large amount per acre, and that this gave them enormous importance for the Reich. Hoping to find something of value in this forlorn experience, he recalled his childhood astronomy lessons and looked up towards the stars. Alas, this was Ireland and the sky was overcast. He could make out a faint glimmer of the moon behind some of the clouds, but that was all. He turned back down, towards the earth. He tried to run his fingers through the soil, but found it too impenetrable. He held his fingers tightly together and made indentations in the soil to loosen it. Then he picked some up and let it run through his fingers. He couldn’t really tell if the soil was rich or poor with only his tactile modality, but the process gave him an activity that occupied his body, if not his mind, and for this he was grateful. After a while he started to feel sleepy again, but feared the consequences of dropping off. He would have to remain alert, so he kept on playing with the soil. He thought of digging up a potato plant that would give him something to play with and keep him from falling asleep, but he figured that that would consume a lot of energy and perhaps make too much noise, drawing attention to himself. He continued to play with the soil, making a bigger and bigger hole with his efforts. He thought of how the same patch of soil was probably tilled a thousand times by people who thought nothing of it but now it had assumed a huge importance for him. Was he going mad, attributing such importance to a piece of soil in a field in Ireland? Hopefully not, as it was only this soil that could keep him awake. To do so was becoming a bigger challenge, as he again felt his eyes grow heavy, he tried to manoeuvre himself into the most uncomfortable position possible in the hope that this would be so unconducive to sleep that he could only remain awake. He shuffled down the drill ‘til he came to a point where his head was now in the hole he had dug. He did not think anyone, not the laziest Slav or the most decadent long-haired degenerate, could sleep in such conditions. But after a while it seemed that he, an upright, well-bred teuton might do exactly that. He thought frantically, at least as frantically as it was possible to think in such a state of fatigue, about how to avoid this fate. He wondered if he had any stimulants to keep him awake in his bag. He remembered being given a pack of various sorts of medication before he left, but it would surely be impossible to tell which was which. What if he took, for instance, a laxative by mistake? Then, surely, he would have reached the point where thing could not get any worse.
Then, as in Triumph das Willens, a saviour began to emerge from the sky. He heard the distant rumble of thunder and knew that rain was on it’s way. He knew, that, paradoxically, he could relax now because there was little or no danger that he would fall asleep. He figured that if it rained, visibility would decrease, the cops, if they were still there, would go home, and he could find a better place to hide. He lay down, let himself get as comfortable as he could, waited for the sound of the thunder to get louder. Then he was struck, not by soft Irish rain, but by a horrible thought: What if it rained really heavily and his bag was not waterproof? Surely his radio would then be damaged and he would not be able to radio home. Then where would he be? There were words to describe this hypothesis, but they were not words a loyal national socialist would use. He felt the surface of his bag. He was reasonably satisfied that it was waterproof, but to be safe he moved his other possessions around a bit to make sure the radio was not making any contact with the surface of the bag. As he was doing so, he heard the thunder grow closer. He did not want to get up until it was actually raining, so when he was satisfied that his radio was safe, he used his bag as a pillow and lay down again. He was just starting to relax again when the thunder rumbled loudly and the skies opened on top of him. This was not soft Irish rain, though. This was a monsoon. He got up, pulled his jacket over his head and started to walk quickly through the drill. The leaves of the plants grew wet quickly and as he ruffled them, the water fell on him. The soil quickly started to grow muddy and he found his balance harder to retain. The top of his jacket quickly became saturated, so he decided to put the bag on top of his head to afford him extra protection, but then he thought the radio might be damaged, and anyway it was affecting his ability to retain his balance. Instead he clutched it under his arm tightly and tried to run faster, but found the mud getting deeper and deeper and the splashing getting more and more intense. He felt the water beginning to penetrate his boots and saturate his socks, producing the sort of noise that a snail made when it was squashed. It was a noise that disgusted him, embarrassed him even, even though there was no-one else around. Living in the chaotic land of anarchy had not yet made him unselfconscious.
He was coming to the end of the field of potatoes. He knew because the plants were getting thinner and further apart. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, though, as it was so dark and so rainy. Soon, though, a hedge came into view, or at least the faint silhouette of one. Something about its aspect led him to believe that he was on a plateau, and that there might be a valley on the other side of this hedge. What led him to believe this? A Jungian folk knowledge of agricultural topography? Or the sense of unbounded optimism that still shone in his Teutonic breast, even in this, surely the most abject or circumstances?
Whatever it was, it proved to be right, because he was indeed standing on a plateau, and when he struggled though the wet and thorny briers a vista was visible to him even through the dark and the rain. He could make out hedges, fields, and… was that a copse in the distance? He did not wait to hear his own response, just threw his bag onto the field below and jumped after it. His landing was little improvement on his parachute jump earlier that day, and he had difficulty dragging his feet out of the mud. He picked up his bag and tried to run, but level of water saturation made this impossible. He walked as quickly as he could, focussed now on the ostensible copse in the distance. He imagined what this place would look like in the daytime, an evocation of Beethoven’s pastoral symphony perhaps, with lambs leaping and cows drinking from euphonious streams. Where were the lambs and the cows now? Locked up, he hoped, in a dry warm shed where they would be unable to make any from of contact with him. Was this not the greatest of injustices, that a mere animal was afforded shelter while he, in a country that he was trying to welcome into the greatest empire the world had ever known, was forced to struggle through ankle-deep mud in this torrential rain? In a more settled state he would have thought of Hegel and his historical dialectics, but he could hardly have been in a less settled state. His only aim now was to reach somewhere dry and the copse in front of him seemed to offer the only such possibility. Then it suddenly struck him that he had learned in German physics that standing under a tree in a lightning storm was dangerous. Was the same true of Irish physics? Yes, of course it was, we were all bound by the same physical laws. The lack of sleep was patently getting to him now.
When he got to the copse, he hoped, this problem would be resolved. Then, paradoxically, he would want the rain to continue, as this would minimise the chances of anyone coming to look for him. The copse was coming closer and revealing itself to be indeed a copse. There was one more hedge to surmount before he reached it, but this time he thought, as he could not get any wetter, he would try to find a gate of a gap of any sort. There was what appeared to be a gate, which by the standards of the day so far was probably a piece of good fortune. He now realised what a relative term that was. When he reached the gate, he gripped it with one of his hands, only to find it covered it rust, a piece of which made a sharp impact on his hand. He thought he might be bleeding, so sucked his hand to try and get the taste of blood, but there was none. Was this because he was not bleeding or because the rain had washed the blood away? He placed his hands inside his jacket and wiped them dry, then bent over to keep his hand dry and let any blood that was to come out spill. He was indeed bleeding. Still, he would have to take a chance on cutting the other hand, so he felt the top of the gate gently to make sure it was not rusty. Then he grabbed it and jumped over. He ran towards the copse now, impervious to the mud splashing beneath his feet. When he felt the rustling of dry leaves under his feet he felt the relief that only comes from the darkest despair, an ephemeral that lasted only as long as it took him to realise that his clothes were soaking wet and that he had nothing to change into. He wished now he had his parachute with him. He sat down, fumbled around in his bag to see if there was anything that would keep him warm. There was indeed a thin waterproof sheet, doubtless put there for just such an occasion. Those people back home thought of everything didn’t they? He started to untie his boots, wished they did not go quite so far up his ankles. He took off his coat and pants, felt his shirt, and when satisfied that is was not all that wet, manoeuvred his bag into the position where the driest side was up, and lay down and tried to sleep. He hoped his dreams would be more pleasant this time.
There did not seem to be too much danger of nightmares in the immediate future, as his dryness was not matched by warmness. He felt a shivering come over his whole body, starting around his ankles and moving up ‘til his teeth started to chatter the way he imagined a skeleton would if attacked by impatient grave robbers. He gritted his teeth to reduce the chattering, but only found that this increased the shivering in the rest of his body, as if it was acting in accordance with one of the laws of thermodynamics; that energy could neither be created or destroyed. He could not remember the name of the German physicist who formulated that particular axiom, but once again, it seemed to be true outside Germany. He started to feel increasingly groggy, but sleep continued to elude him. He tossed and turned to no effect other than to bruise his sides and limbs as they brushed against the rocks and pebbles he lay on. His thoughts grew increasingly incoherent as he entered the phase where he would have been going through REM sleep, which, at the time was a phenomenon without a name. He would start to think of one thing and an image, a thought, a flash of recollection would dart in from another part of his brain like an ariel attack during the blitzkrieg. Yes, that was a good simile: it seemed the inside of his head was becoming a theatre of war, one with rapidly shifting patterns of allegiance, like the Thirty Years war or the Italian wars of the cinquecento.. At one point his memories from home would dominate the land, then his thoughts about the last twenty-four hours would launch a blistering panzer attack. Just as it was driven back, a division of sexual fantasies would coming swarming in from the air with shattering repercussions. Yet his mind would remain fertile through all this chaos, it seemed that, as his comrades were finding on the Eastern Front, there were always reinforcements. Then there would be moments of lucidity, like brief, fleeting ceasefires when he would try to decide if he preferred this anguish to the nightmares he would have to try to make sense of in the morning. He reasoned that the nightmares were better as they just left you waking in a cold sweat that was preferable to spending the whole night in a cold sweat. Maybe dreams acted as a mechanism for flushing out unwanted thoughts. Was he the first to think of this? He knew not. He would look it up when he got home, if he ever got home, that was. These moments of lucidity had passed, and again there was chaos, and the another moment of lucidity where he would wonder what he looked like on the outside, if there was any way the inner chaos could be replicated on the outside. He thought of all the kids in the Hitlerjugend with their identical haircuts and uniforms. It seemed as though they all had the same thought, the same feelings. But surely some of them new anguish like this, underneath the surface, behind the eyes, in each person’s own private realm. Perhaps even the fuehrer knew moments of anguish like this. If he knew music like Mussourgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain it would probably have come into his head right now but the musical part of his brain was crammed with Strauss waltzes and Lehar arias, none of which were particularly apposite to this suffering. In another moment of lucidity, he tried to make lists of different things, a tactic that had led him into the arms of Morpheus in previous fits of insomnia, but this time it failed. He had gotten to the seventh most beautiful girl he had ever seen when he totally forgot what he was thinking about and only got to who came ninth in the last Bundesliega before the war broke out. It seemed he was doomed to a nigh without sleep. He thought of taking out his radio and contacting his superiors, but he would surely sound so incoherent that they would assume it was some sort of diversionary tactic from the British. Anyway, there was little they could do to help him sleep, short of singing a lullaby, which he did not think they would be favourably disposed towards doing. No, this anguish would surely continue until morning. When it came, it came not with Homeric rosy fingers but with a slouching, lugubrious gait that could not shake off the mist nor suck the moisture back into the atmosphere. He guessed the guys in North Africa got the long end of the stick on the rosy-fingered dawn thing. Nevertheless, the pale grey light did reveal a pretty rustic scene. He got up, shook his weary limbs, and wandered around. It seemed he was alone in this world. The cows evidently were still locked up in their sheds, but judging by the lengths of grass in the pastoral fields they would be back before long to chew of the wet green cud. A stream passed by through a ditch near the copse, gushingly after the previous nights deluge. In the distance, through the mist, he could see hills rolling and figured that was the way to safety. Yet in all his hours of hypercogitation he had not come up with a way to reach this destination.
So he walked. He did not walk in any particular direction, except away from where he was coming. He wasn’t even sure why he walked, perhaps he was trying to clear his head, shake his brain cells into some sort of cohesion before he could radio home and look for help. He was reaching the stage in crisis management where the crisis doesn’t seem like a crisis for a brief while. If his plight was that of a car falling into the sea, this would be the moment where he was waiting for the car to be fully submerged before he waited for the water pressure to be neutral and opened the doors. His mind was briefly blank, as if all his thoughts had exhausted themselves and gone for a rest. With his bag hanging over his shoulder and his boots dragging through the mud, he felt more like a gypsy than a soldier of the Reich. He rubbed his chin, felt the strange, unfamiliar gristle of stubble, looked at how long his fingernails had grown. Yet he did not fell ignominious, as he would have at home, but liberated. He felt no sudden desire to rip is bag open and look for his razor and his wash things. No-one was watching him here, even if they were they would not know who he was. Even if he radioed home, they would not know what he looked like. If he was a bit more coherent, this freewheeling attitude would have surprised him, but he had been through too much to ever be surprised by anything right now. He was also reaching the stage where the unfamiliar, or unheimlich as his compatriots would call it, was becoming briefly familiar, in the ephemeral period before another culture shock would come along and disorientate him. The rolling hills, the wet, dewy grass with it’s clumps of daisies, the deciduous trees and the untidy hedgerows all felt Heimlich to him all of a sudden. He walked through these fields as if he had been doing so all of his life, though he did not even know where he was going.
He took a look at his watch, saw that it was around 5 in the morning. He wouldn’t have to worry about cows grazing for a while. So he breathed in the fresh country air, listened to the birdsong, and walked. It felt liberating to walk without any destination in mind, to be able to saunter aimlessly rather than march in unison with a hundred others. He felt a contentment, far from ataraxia or nirvana, but much closer to either of these sensations than he had known in a while. As he walked down the hill towards another hedge, he started to feel sleepy again. He knew he could not walk much farther, and decided he would take a chance on finding a dry spot in the shelter of this hedge. As he ambled towards it, he heard the gushing of a stream and spotted a gap where it looked like he could lie down. Yes, reader, a paradox, the only dry place he could find was right next to the stream, where the trees that sucked its waters provided shelter. It seemed nature was in tune with the chaos of the last twenty-four hours of Schillerz’ life. He lay down and slotted into a comfortable position on the compressed dust, this, must be a place that was traversed quite a lot he thought, and then fell asleep.

Next thing he knows, Schillerz is being chased by a pack of hungry wolves through muddy fields through the rain. Occasionally he turns round, sees the anger on their faces, catches a glimpse of the foam dripping from their sharp, chiselled teeth and their tongues hanging out rabidly. His sweat mingles with the rain and gives him the shivers, he breathes in and out intensely. He reaches a forest where he hopes he will find a tree he can climb and find safety. He comes to a clearing where there is a fire lit. He sees a human figure standing between him and it. When he gets closer, he sees that this person is wearing a national socialist uniform. He grabs this person in a frantic combination of relief and desperation. The figure turns round. It turns out to be the fuehrer. He is relieved, momentarily. But then he notices something. The fuehrer isn’t saying anything, just breathing very deeply. Then his face starts to grow more pilose, his nose starts to extend. He is turning into a wolf. But he doesn’t make a sudden grab at Schillerz’ neck, mauling him and eating him doesn’t seem that high on his agenda. He just breathes, breathes deeply, like the sound of an infant breathing in the womb, breathing deeply.