And she condemned him to death, death, death.
By 1955 she was squat and shapeless like a frog; I saw her flashing her crazy teeth at the Albanians. On 8.3.55, not quite a week before we sentenced Paul Köppe to death, the Politbüro confirmed his condemnation (the bourgeois get the order backwards). On the same day, in the Rudloff trial, when the General State Prosecutor proposed leniency, the Red Guillotine stepped in to save society from this four-time murderer.
I’ve seen her in a short pale trenchcoat, with her head and knees both bare and her hands in her pockets, striding grimly just behind Comrade Ulbricht, whose trenchcoat is much longer and who wears a tophat almost like a capitalist; his right arm is locked in a salute, the knife-edge of his hand is wedged against the brim of his hat as he and the Red Guillotine march down the rain-shiny tarmac of Potsdam, not quite treading on the reflected heads of the rifle-bearing soldiers who face them in a long, long wall; everybody is saluting except for the Red Guillotine.
In 5.55, when we guillotined Karl-Ernst Hahn and Alfred Rzepio for their failed murder of a taxi driver, a crime which had been suggested to them by American gangster movies, the Red Guillotine cried out: As Comrade Mielke has noted, they have expelled themselves from the working class! and our democratic jurists, in close cooperation with the security organs of reborn Germany, concurred. With her fingers spread and pointing upward, her lips earnestly parted, she stood before the microphone, utterly sincere as she called for another death, another death.
There was a sleepy aspect to her now, as if she were a well-fed sacred crocodile which could always count on receiving the next human sacrifice. Sometimes she only half-opened her eyes. She yawned at times (poor Comrade Benjamin is getting old after all her sufferings!), cutting off the defendant with an upraised finger instead of an angry word-assault. But if he dared to plead his case instead of confessing, or, worse yet, sought to contradict her, then the Red Guillotine could still snap! On 14.9.55, when we liquidated the former Stasi agents Susanne and Bruno Krieger for espionage against our state, the masses cheered like Arctic workers raising their gloved fists in salute in a Roman Karmen movie. All the same, some were disappointed; for the Red Guillotine didn’t give them much of a show. Possibly that was because the Kriegers failed to stick up for themselves. (Susanne Krieger had believed that she wouldn’t be guillotined if she incriminated others. There’s no reason to keep our agreements with such people.)
That same month, when we disposed of Director Nellis of the J. W. Stalin Electrical Works for sabotage, the technical manageress of the factory stationed herself in the courtroom to bring back reports to all his former colleagues. She was there when the Red Guillotine’s round, coarse face grew cheerful, split into smiles, and denounced Director Nellis to pieces. She demanded death, death, death. How could we deny her that treat?
In 1.56, we guillotined the Fascist agents of the United States Werner Rudert and Max Held. When the Politburo confirmed their sentences, her smile grew as full of fat and sugar as one of our intelligentsia parcels. Then she took a nap at her desk, snoring and grinning.
On 4.11.56 she arrived at the courthouse at 0755 hours for the Hagen trial. Nikolai from Stalingrad smiled at her in a sparkle of steel teeth; his greeting always temporarily undid that heavy, pale, somehow distinguished sadness in her head which dragged it down; the dark heaviness of her suit grew bright because his Kalashnikov was shining.
Well, well, Comrade Benjamin, so will another head roll today?
Count on it! laughed the Red Guillotine.
She imagined that he liked her, but he was terrified of her.
And up she went to her office, where a picture-gallery of deceased saints gazed down at her: the pioneer prosecutor E. Melsheimer, the constitutionalist K. Polak, brave G. Dmitroff, who’d defied a Hitlerite court and won, and of course that representative of the international workers’ movement, Felix Dzherzhinsky, whose “organs” have liquidated millions of human beings in our beloved Soviet Union.
They brought in the defendant, whose desperate face reminded her of the white-cratered blackness of our opera house’s scorched facade. The Red Guillotine was already there; she preferred to have her victims find everything already in place. They’d be marched in, and there sat the Red Guillotine at the center of her long high desk, with a bust of Comrade Ulbricht on her left and a bust of Comrade Stalin on her right. In her signature dark suit, white blouse and black cravat, she surveyed the world, her head held high and her arms folded while she gazed complacently down at our socialist reporters and photojournalists, then slowly, slowly turned her head right to inspect her latest prey, who as he was led to his seat in the dock, hemmed in by secret police and the so-called “defense” attorneys, could scarcely help feeling like a pupil late for school. And that was merely the beginning of what he felt; because it’s now time to turn our attention to the dread which her presence somehow injected into people, paralyzing them as if with a spider’s poison, so that they grew confused, submissive, silent. Later on, when they were being led to the whitewashed execution chamber, they spent the last instants of their lives seeking in vain to understand how she had entrapped them; the truth is that her mouth was not eloquent (it didn’t need to be; it licked its lips with a grey and gleeful tongue); her logic could never be recapitulated—how could it be? For the condemned were innocent, by those “objective” human standards which are now obsolete.
Now, who was this one? It seems that when a team of Rubblefrauen were raising up the remains of the gravestones in the Jewish cemetery they heard a noise, so three of them stood round the hole with shovels raised to strike, while the fourth ran for the People’s Police. The Fascist war criminal Hagen had ensconced himself there. What a provocation! The Anglo-Americans had pretended to hang him at Nuremberg, and here he was! He had a tunnel and even a crystal set so that he could receive orders from the enemies of our new Germany. It was the Anglo-Fascist Operation Gold all over again. Our brave People’s Police, led by Oberst H. Scholz, ran to give their aid; Red Army men came speeding down Leninallee in their Vopo-Jeeps. And so we captured the imperialist snake Hagen.
First pursing her fat grey lips, then showing her crooked teeth, the Red Guillotine narrowed her eyes at the defendant, who gazed insolently back at her. Oh, she felt a rage coming on! Meanwhile, in the name of East Germany’s smiling chemists and laughing athletes, our Young Pioneers (ages six to ten) were already shrieking out Down with the traitor! while our Thälmann Pioneers (eleven to fourteen) waved beautifully lettered placards in support of our inevitably just sentence, whatever it might be.
Esteemed comrades and friends! began the Red Guillotine in the name of the people; and her wide little eyes and parted little lips definitely stood ready to do justice. Vigilance against the reptiles! Spies beware! We’ve caught another one!
And still, no matter how she glowered and glared, the Fascist traitor refused to lower his eyes, and thereby revealed his negative attitude. How pale he was! He must have been a long time underground.
All the preparations were ready. His sentence had already been confirmed. She felt that she could hardly rest until he was in the grave, with his head severed from his shoulders.
Confesss your criminal activities, began the Red Guillotine.
Which ones? laughed Hagen.
When Hagen not only refuses to rise for Siegfried’s widow, but lays across his lap the jasper-jeweled sword of the man he’s murdered, the bard who’s made him grows gleeful; what’s more manly than open defiance, especially in the presence of a superior host? Hagen knows he’s doomed, and shows off his hostility in that sword’s beauty and insulting nakedness.