“Try to remember what I told you,” said Geiger. “You need to keep your mouth shut if we’re going to get out of here alive. This is none of our fucking business. None of our fucking business. Just bear that in mind. Here. Have a drink.”
Geiger produced a silver flask. It was filled with rakija from the Hotel Sunja. Gratefully I took a bite of it and enjoyed letting the stuff burn the coating off my insides; it was the drink I deserved — a drink from the ninth circle of hell — and just to swallow it was enough to leave you silent for several minutes, as if some infernal imp had poured liquid fire down your throat.
We waited half an hour. I tried not to look at the photographs on the wall but my eyes kept on being dragged back there. What was it like to kneel in front of a man who was about to cut your head off with a knife? I could hardly imagine a worse fate than that.
“Where is this bastard anyway?” I asked.
“The guard said he was on the other side of the river. In Donja Gradina. A little island called the place of sighs.” He shrugged. “It sounds nice. Almost relaxing, really. But I have the awful feeling it’s nothing of the sort.”
Finally we heard voices and a tall, dark-haired man wearing a smart gray uniform, black boots, and a Sam Browne entered the room.
“I’m Colonel Dragan,” he said. “I understand that you wanted to see me.”
He spoke perfect German, with a near-Austrian accent, like most ethnic Germans. It was easy to see where Dalia had got her good looks. Colonel Dragan was unsmiling but film-star handsome. His tunic lapels and forage cap had a gold letter U on them but I could have wished that he’d had a letter U branded on his forehead. After the war, I hoped that someone else would think of this and take it upon themselves to mark him out for ostracism and then death.
Geiger and I stood and introduced ourselves; he was, after all, a colonel.
“Might I ask if you were previously known as Father Ladislaus, at the Petricevac Monastery in Banja Luka, and before that, as Antun Djurkovic?”
“It’s been a while since anyone called me that,” said the colonel. “But yes. I’m he.”
“Then,” I said, “I have a letter to you from your daughter,” and opening my briefcase, I gave him Dalia’s letter.
He glanced at the handwritten name and address on the back of the envelope with some incredulity, as if it had been posted on Venus. He even lifted it to his nose and sniffed it, suspiciously.
“My daughter? You say you know my daughter, Dragica?”
“I know her. I’m sure her letter will explain any questions you might have.”
“The last time I saw her she was but a child,” he said. “She must be a young woman now.”
“She is,” I said. “A very beautiful one.”
“But how is it in the middle of the war that Dragica has two errand boys from the SS? Is she so very important? Frau Hitler, perhaps? The last I heard she was living in Switzerland. In Zurich, I think. Or are the Swiss no longer neutral? Has the temptation to invade that ridiculous place become too much for your Hitler?”
“She’s a movie star in Germany,” I told him. “At UFA-Babelsberg in Berlin. As well as being the minister of Truth and Propaganda, Dr. Goebbels is head of the film studio. It’s on his direct authority that I’m here. I’m to wait until you’ve read that letter and see if there’s a reply.”
“I had no idea. She was always beautiful. Like her mother. But a movie star, you say?”
I nodded. I thought it best not to mention that his former wife was dead. That was best left to Dalia’s letter.
“I was a boy the last time I went to the cinema,” said the colonel. “Must have been. It was a silent film.” He frowned. “How did you find me?”
“Your old Father Abbot at Petricevac in Banja Luka. That was your last known address, apparently.”
“Father Marko? I can’t believe that someone hasn’t killed that man. He’s much too outspoken for his own good. Even for a Catholic priest. There are others who were less fortunate than him.”
“I rather liked him,” I lied.
“He pointed us in the direction of the Ustaše headquarters in the town,” explained Geiger. “And there they told us you were most likely here. In Jasenovac. Making bricks.”
“Forgive me, gentlemen, you’ve come a long way. Would you like some lunch, perhaps? Some beer? Some rakija? Some bread and sausage?”
I was about to decline when Geiger answered. “That would be very kind of you, Colonel Dragan.”
The colonel went off to order his men to bring us something and, presumably, to read his letter. I sat on the sofa again. And when, another twenty minutes later, the food and drink arrived, Geiger fell on it hungrily. I watched him eat with something close to contempt but I said nothing. I didn’t need to. My face must have looked like a letter from Émile Zola.
“Not eating?” asked Geiger. He grinned horribly as he ate.
“Strangely enough I don’t seem to have brought my appetite with me.”
“A soldier learns not to pay much attention to appetite. You eat when there’s food, hungry or not. But as it happens, I am hungry. And nothing gets in the way of me and my grub.” With his mouth full of bread and sausage, he got up to inspect the photographs. “Not even those heads and this little wall of Ustaše heroes. Never seen a man having his head sawn off before. You know, lumberjack-style. I’ve seen some terrible things in this war. Done one or two, as well. But I’ve never seen anything like that.”
He turned and stared out the window.
“Why don’t you ask Colonel Dragan if you can have a demonstration?”
“You know, I just might do that, Gunther. Should be easy enough. I don’t suppose those people who were on the train have anything better to do than provide me with some amusement. After all, I imagine they’re all going to die anyway.”
“You mean there are people in those wagons?”
I went to the window and looked out. As Geiger had said, the goods wagons were now open and several hundred people were climbing down from the train and were being herded toward the river and a barge that was already coming to ferry them to their most likely fate.
“Serbs?” I said.
“Probably. Like I said, all the Jews in this part of the world are dead. But there are still plenty of Serbs left to kill.”
From his tone it was hard to determine if Geiger approved of what was happening at Jasenovac or not.
I picked up the bottle of rakija the Ustaše guard had brought and helped myself to a brimful glass. It wasn’t nearly as strong as the stuff in Geiger’s hip flask but that hardly mattered.
“The sooner we’re away from this godforsaken place, the better,” I said.
“I tend to agree with you, Gunther. Although I rather think God might disagree. It’s not God who forsakes us but man who forsakes God. His presence would be more obvious here, of course, if instead of a high wall to imprison and then torture human beings, they’d built a great cathedral. As a celebration of God’s glory and the dignity of man. Just as other men like these men — perhaps their great-great-grandfathers — created a fine cathedral from bricks in Zagreb. On this occasion, however, they built this place to mark where and what man has been. To testify to what we all have within us — that capacity for death and destruction which all men possess. You see, for every Sistine Chapel there are a hundred places like this one, Gunther. And let me ask you this: Truly, is one any less valid as an expression of human endeavor than the other? No, of course not. Personally, I think God’s never far away, even from this shameful horror. Perhaps, ultimately, that’s what makes horror truly horrible. The knowledge that God sees it all, and does nothing.”