"Ringo,.John.-.Posleen.07.-.Watch.On.The.Rhine.-.Kratman,.Tom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

Babenhausen, Germany, 15 November 2004
There is peace in senility, for some. For others, the weakening of the mind with old age brings back harsher memories.
Few or none in the nursing home knew just how old the old man was, though, had anyone cared to check, the information was there in his file. Among some of the staff it was rumored he was past one hundred, yet few or none of them cared enough to check that either. Though he was almost utterly bald, shriveled and shrunken and sometimes demented, none of the staff cared about that. The old man spoke but rarely and even more rarely did he seem to speak with understanding. Sometimes, at night, the watch nurse would hear him cry from his room with words like, "Vorwдrts, Manfred . . . Hold them, meine Brьdern . . ." or "Steisse, die Panzer."
Sometimes, too, the old man would cry a name softly, whisper with regret, hum a few bars of some long-forgotten, perhaps even forbidden, tune.
It was whispered, by those who washed him and those who spoke with the washers, that he had a tattooed number on his torso. They whispered too of the scars, the burns, the puckermarks.
Everyday, rain or shine, bundled up or not as the weather dictated, the staff wheeled the old man out onto the nursing home's porch for a bit of fresh air. This day, the fresh air was cold and heavy, laden with the moisture of falling snow. What dreams or nightmares the cold snow brought, none ever knew-the old man never said.
At the front door to the home, a matron pointed towards the old man. "There he is."
Another man, one of a pair, clad in the leather trench coat that marked him as a member of the Bundesnachrichtendiest-the Federal Information Service, Germany's CIA-answered, "We shall take care of him from here on out. You and your home need trouble yourselves no further."
Unseen, the matron nodded. Alles war in ordnung. All was in order. Already the two men had turned their backs on her and focused their attention fully on the old man. They walked up to him, one crouching before the wheelchair, the other standing at the side.
The croucher, he in the trenchcoat, spoke softly. "Herr Gruppenfьhrer? Gruppenfьhrer Mьhlenkampf? I do not know if you can understand me. But if you can, you are coming with us."
Some faint trace of recognition seemed to dawn in the old man's watery, faded blue eyes.
"Aha," said trench coat. "You can understand me, can't you? Understand your name and your old rank anyway. Very good. Can you understand this, old man? Your country is calling for you again. We have need of you, urgent need."
* * *
Berlin, Germany, 17 November 2004
And my, my don't those two seem urgent, mused the patron of the gasthaus nestled in an alley not far from where that patron lived. As was his normal practice, the patron sat in a dim corner, nursing a beer. And when will the Gestapo, under whatever name they chose to go by, realize that those coats mark them for what they are as clearly as my Sigrunen-the twin lightning bolts-used to mark me.
The objects of the patron's attention walked from table to table, from customer to customer. The Wirt, the owner and manager of the establishment, looked discreetly at the elderly man, dimly lit in a corner. Shall I tell them?
The patron shrugged. Machts nichts. "Matters not"' You know what they are as well as I do. If they want me they will find me.
Nodding his understanding the Wirt called to the two. "If you are looking for Herr Brasche, that's him over there in the corner."
The patron, Brasche, watched with interest as the two men approached. When they had reached his table, he raised his beer in salute. "And what can I do for the BND today, gentlemen?"
"Hans Brasche?" one of them asked, flashing an identification.
"That would be me," Hans answered.
"You must come with us."
Brasche smiled. If he was afraid, neither of the men who had accosted him, nor any of the other patrons, would have known it. He had never been a man, or a boy, to show much fear.
* * *
Times were hard and getting worse. The calendar on the wall said 1930. As the boy entered the bare cupboarded kitchen, the expression on the mother's face fairly shrieked "fear."
"Your father wants you, Hansi."
The boy, he could not have been more than ten, suppressed a shudder. This was always bad news. He steeled his soul, raised his ten-year-old head, and walked bravely to where his one-armed father-more importantly, the father's belt-awaited him. He knew he could not cry out, could not show fear; else the beating would be worse, much worse.
Afterwards, when the long beating was over, the boy, Hans, walked dry-eyed past his mother, his walk stiff from the bruises, the welts, and the cuts.
The woman reached out to her son, seeking desperately to comfort him in his pain. All she felt was his shudder as her hands stroked his bruises and wounds. "Why, Hansi? What did you do wrong?"
The boy, he was tall for ten but not so tall as his mother, hung his head, buried his face in a maternal bosom and whispered, "I do not know, Mutti. He didn't say. He never says."
"He was never like this before the Great War, Hansi, before he lost the arm."
The boy could not cry, that had long since been beaten out of him. He shrugged. The mother could cry . . . and did.
* * *
Later, in a Mercedes, one of the pair said, "I must say, you are a cool one, Herr Brasche."
"I am old. I have seen much. I have never seen where being afraid, or showing I was if I was, ever did me or anyone else any good. Would it now?"
The other, the driver, answered, "In this case you have no cause to fear, Herr Brasche. We are here to do you a favor."
Hans shrugged. "I have been done favors before. Little good I had of them."
* * *
The times had changed. Plenty and hope had replaced hunger and despair. From the windows, from the street lamps, on the arms of men and women all over Germany fluttered a new symbol. On the radios crackled the harsh, gas-damaged voice of a new hero.
Hans felt his thirteen-year-old heart leap at the sound of his Fьhrer's voice speaking via the radio, to the nation.
"Meine alte Kameraden," began the distant Hitler, and Hans felt his one-armed father, standing beside, stiffen with filial love. "Die grosse zeit ist jetzt angebrochen . . . Deutschland ist nun erwacht . . ." (My old comrades . . . the great time is now brought to pass . . . Germany is now awake.")
"You see, little Hansi? You see what a favor I have done bringing you here?"
To that Hans had no honest answer; nothing from his father came without price.
It was a public radio, one with loudspeakers, intended for the address of a crowd. Uniformed HitlerJugend patrolled, keeping order mainly by disciplined example. Not that much example was needed for Germans of the year of our Lord, 1933; they remained the people who had fought half a world to a standstill from 1914 to 1918. Discipline they had, in plenty.
The father observed Hans' eyes glancing over the uniformly short-trousered, dagger-wielding, hard-faced and brightly beribboned youths.
"Ah, you are interested in the Youth Movement, I see, my son. Never fear. I have arranged for you to be accepted a bit early. They'll make a man of you."
Why, how so, father? thought the boy. Do they have stiffer belts? What new favors will you show me, I wonder.
* * *
Bad Tolz, Germany, 20 November 2004
"Don't do me any fucking favors," snarled Mьhlenkampf.