Shit! Suddenly, out of the blue, he saw that his thoughts of enemy planes had perhaps been a premonition. A pair of American P-51 Mustangs swooped down on them. Arno caught on. He cocked his weapon and fired long bursts. And he actually hit the lead aircraft. The aluminum shimmering Mustang ran into trouble and soon disappeared in a trail of black smoke.
Beginners luck! But the second plane in the duo was still there – except that it had disappeared. As Arno stared wildly around the sky it came in underneath them with a long, raking burst of automatic cannon fire, which hit both the bomber’s engines.
Both of the propellers juddered and stopped. The Ju 88 was going down. Nietsky struggled with the controls. For a while he seemed bent on clearing up the situation. But then he suddenly gave up, stood up and gave Arno a wry smile. The pilot walked towards the manhole beyond the wing root, opened it and jumped out. He saved himself down to terra firma with a parachute.
Arno barely had time to be outraged. He had no parachute. He could not fly a plane even if it was not already going into a death spiral, a mass of doomed scrap metal. But he had no desire to die in a crashing plane, in this swirling, tumbling chaos of burning rubber, cordite, bakelite and steel. So he made a drastic decision: he would jump out, straight out into the unknown. He thought: rather die as a free man, floating in the open, than sit in a wreck and wait for the crash.
He left the MG, tightened the flight helmet on his head, edged backward in the diving plane and finally stood at the open door. He saw the sky swirling past, said “I Am” – and jumped out.
He fell freely. And he felt peace. Heaven’s blue fell into his blue eyes, merging with them and becoming one with them. He was one with the universe, one with the entire cosmos. His Spirit Guide had said he would not die in war, well, he wouldn’t die from a bullet, from shrapnel, in a flamethrower blast….
The ground came closer. And closer. Dark forestry rushing up to meet him. Finally, he touched Mother Earth or, rather, a spruce top in a Lower Saxony wasteland. Arno fell through the successive branches of densely growing trees, was whipped and buffeted by layer after layer of branches, dense, rich, resilient layers of spruce branches. It all became a relatively softly intercepting net of greenery, something of a buffer before his contact with the soil. But he didn’t notice when he hit the ground for he had passed out by then.
Each layer of branches had received him and slowed his fall, until he landed on his back on a bed of moss.
He lay on his back, being away from the world for some time. Then he was awakened by rain splashing him in the face. He stared into the grey sky – and then he remembered his fall from grace, remembered the Ju 88, the air battle. Jumping. Falling. So this is what it felt to be dead. Very much like being alive as it happened.
He was alive, he was breathing; this he noticed. Then the sting of scratches on his hands and face. He didn’t need to pinch his arm or something. He saw the fir trees looming above him and he guessed that these could have broken his fall, perhaps…
He thought: the trees helped me. Or something bigger: fate, destiny, karma, God, whatever. I Am.
He thought of the episode in Kharkov in March 1943, the one when he was hit by a bullet which was halted by a weapon belt, a wallet and more. After that he had felt invulnerable, somehow convinced that he wouldn’t die in this war. The Badger had confirmed that. And now he had, miraculously, survived a fall from the sky.
He would not be meeting Mr Death today. But he was wounded – again. For when he tried to get up on his knees he couldn’t. He had broken his leg. Moreover, he had a severe headache. He had concussion, a broken leg and, by being hit by the branches, had picked up a flesh wound in his arm. He fell unconscious again. After a while, he was found there, lying alive on the ground – where he had no rational right to be alive -by a passing farmer.
He was carted off to a hospital in Hanover. He woke up a mass of aches but he got morphine for the pain. He was operated on at once for his wounds, anesthetised as a succession of hospital staff came in to peer at their miraculous survivor. And in that state, that is, in a coma, he dreamt once more.
It was a long, complicated dream. The climax of it had this scene: Standing in a temple, he was given a fiery sword. And with this sword he brought fire to the world, burning it up.
For this we need a separate chapter.
24
Fire Dream
Arno flew from Grafenburg to Hanover in late October 1944. Then there was the air battle and the fall. That left him in Hanover hospital for a while. He was back in the German town where he received his basic German army training in 1941. But this fact didn’t enter his mind. He was drugged and in a coma. He was off dreaming a major dream, the one about burning up the world.
In the first part of the dream he was walking over sand flats. He was clad in an old-fashioned helmet, a cuirassier’s steel breastplate and a cloak. The sun was shining and a bird flew crying overhead. Arno was in high spirits, thinking: I’m a great man, a true hero. I live in a world of adventure, I seek treasures and I find them, so now on to some more gemstones and heirlooms, chests of gold and what-have-you.
The sand flat suddenly changed into a town, a city of shiny metal houses. On the street drove low-slung, fancy cars. The people Arno met in the street were extremely tall, pale and frail, delicate aliens who greeted him with reserve.
The street ended in a square. Under an oak tree sat a man on a chair. Arno approached him, this figure too being elongated but not so alien in his features. It was Ringo Badger, wearing green tunic and silken hood.
“We meet again, Arno.”
“Indeed we do, Badger.”
Arno sat down on a bench beside the man. After the customary politeness, they both took up pipes and smoked, puffing on chocolate-flavored tobacco. Arno told about his search for treasures and weapons. Then he asked him for the Ultimate Treasure in this respect. The Badger advised him to look for the Sword of the Cherubim – a powerful weapon.
“Indeed?” Arno said. “That sounds fine.”
“But be careful. You might burn the whole world with it.”
“Hm. But why not? Why would that be so wrong? I think I’ll go searching for this sword right away. Where is it?”
“This,” the Badger said, “I will not tell you.”
Then it was farewell and a continued search through Dreamland, a continued walk under flying clouds. Arno’s soul was on fire, the thought of the Sword of the Cherubim leaving him no rest. He thought, “I’ll unsheathe the Cherubim Sword and draw fire over the world.”
He headed for a distant mountain. He climbed the bare, black rock, found a cave, went inside and walked down strange paths, saw chambers and halls, heard the drip of water and the echo of falling rocks. Everything was a bit spooky but he felt confident. It felt like home, this having a mission, a task, this was what he wanted most in the world. And now the task was to burn the whole world down.
In the dream he went along inside the mountain, gliding through the levels and wandering now in the cave system’s upper floors. Suddenly he saw light before him. He stepped out of the cave and found himself in a jungle, a forest of lush greenery. And before him in the jungle was a temple, with a dome of shining aluminum that flashed in the sun.
Arno strode up towards the temple, went in and passed through an entrance hall of shimmering black marble. The next room was a large hall adorned with malachite and white marble. And in the middle of the room sat a shining figure on a throne, a divine being with golden hair, an angel dressed in a white robe with a green belt. In his lap he had a sword, a magnificent weapon in a silver scabbard.