didn’t even use what they had, only their knives, all discipline forgotten, days on the Farm, the drills, the Old Man’s orders: gone.
They had come at the soldiers with knives, like berserkers. War robbed you of heroics as much as of humanity. Serrated edges. Remembers burying it in the commanding officer’s gut, and drawing it out, entrails spilling on the ice, steaming, the fog rising into the air like a dagger. Remembers running the edge across a man’s neck and feeling the geyser of blood, warm on his hands and face. When the soldiers at last brought up their weapons, they had suddenly realised what they’d done. Breathing heavily, almost as in sexual congress, Fogg shaped the air around them into a weapon. Oblivion punched holes of unbeing through men whose flesh melted.
The rest of their escape was uneventful.
– We nullify each other, the Old Man says. Has already dismissed them. Speaking to himself. Oblivion says, Sir?
– Had there been Übermenschen on just one side, the Old Man says. If only the Nazis had them, for instance. Then the war could go a different way. But having them on every side nullifies the advantage. I’m afraid, gentlemen, that in this war, we are merely common soldiers.
Seems to lose interest. As if their mission, after all, had not concluded favourably. Dismisses them with a wave of his hand. Good work, he says, as they leave. But half-heartedly. Outside, Fogg lights up a cigarette. Oblivion too. It’s war. Everyone smokes. Leave the Bureau, walk down Pall Mall, heading to the river. Cold on the embankment. Stare into the water. Green-grey and murky.
– What would you do … hesitates. What would you have done, in life I mean, if the Old Man hadn’t found you?
Oblivion looks surprised at the question. Doesn’t answer. So little that Fogg knows about him, so little we have been able to dig up. Where had he come from. You? Oblivion says. Fogg shrugs, the question bouncing on him, shapes in the fog from the lights of river traffic, trapped ghosts projected on a screen. Maybe a carpenter, he says. Doesn’t know why he says it. It makes Oblivion smile. A carpenter, he says. Yes, Fogg says. Oblivion says, Really.
Fogg tries to imagine a world in which he is not standing by the railway tracks, the expanding wave rushing towards him, the frozen faces behind the windows of the approaching train, that crystalline shimmer in the air, the gathering fog, the onrush of probabilities hitting him, altering him on a micro-scale, a change he’s not even aware of until it is a done thing, and the faces unfreeze behind the windows, and the train rushes on, and the fog gathers around him like a living thing … no, he can’t imagine it, this alternate present is a blank in his mind. What would he have become? Follow his father into the market stall, off-loading vegetables, shouting, A pound for a pound! Fresh apples, darling, still with the dew of morning on them! Saying, There you go, mate, closed-cap mushrooms in a brown paper bag, the scales, the old cash register, drinks in the pub, slap the missus around on a Friday night, church on Sunday, God looking down on a world unchanged.
– Fogg? I lost you there, Oblivion says.
– Vomacht or not, Fogg tells him, there on the embankment, as an air-raid siren begins to sound, we’d still be soldiers, Oblivion. And there would still be a war.
SIX:
TRANSYLVANIAN MISSION
TRANSYLVANIA
1944
NAZI FORCES ENTER HUNGARY
March 19, 1944
----
In a surprise action, Nazi forces have taken over Hungary in a bloodless operation, code named Margarethe. Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, a long-time ally of Adolf Hitler, was invited by the Führer to the palace of Klessheim, outside Salzburg, Austria, on March 15 for negotiations. It appears Mr Kállay has been secretly negotiating with Allied forces in order to reach an armistice.
As Mr Kállay was in Austria, Nazi forces moved quietly into Hungary, occupying the country without a fight. Mr Kállay
They had come at the soldiers with knives, like berserkers. War robbed you of heroics as much as of humanity. Serrated edges. Remembers burying it in the commanding officer’s gut, and drawing it out, entrails spilling on the ice, steaming, the fog rising into the air like a dagger. Remembers running the edge across a man’s neck and feeling the geyser of blood, warm on his hands and face. When the soldiers at last brought up their weapons, they had suddenly realised what they’d done. Breathing heavily, almost as in sexual congress, Fogg shaped the air around them into a weapon. Oblivion punched holes of unbeing through men whose flesh melted.
The rest of their escape was uneventful.
– We nullify each other, the Old Man says. Has already dismissed them. Speaking to himself. Oblivion says, Sir?
– Had there been Übermenschen on just one side, the Old Man says. If only the Nazis had them, for instance. Then the war could go a different way. But having them on every side nullifies the advantage. I’m afraid, gentlemen, that in this war, we are merely common soldiers.
Seems to lose interest. As if their mission, after all, had not concluded favourably. Dismisses them with a wave of his hand. Good work, he says, as they leave. But half-heartedly. Outside, Fogg lights up a cigarette. Oblivion too. It’s war. Everyone smokes. Leave the Bureau, walk down Pall Mall, heading to the river. Cold on the embankment. Stare into the water. Green-grey and murky.
– What would you do … hesitates. What would you have done, in life I mean, if the Old Man hadn’t found you?
Oblivion looks surprised at the question. Doesn’t answer. So little that Fogg knows about him, so little we have been able to dig up. Where had he come from. You? Oblivion says. Fogg shrugs, the question bouncing on him, shapes in the fog from the lights of river traffic, trapped ghosts projected on a screen. Maybe a carpenter, he says. Doesn’t know why he says it. It makes Oblivion smile. A carpenter, he says. Yes, Fogg says. Oblivion says, Really.
Fogg tries to imagine a world in which he is not standing by the railway tracks, the expanding wave rushing towards him, the frozen faces behind the windows of the approaching train, that crystalline shimmer in the air, the gathering fog, the onrush of probabilities hitting him, altering him on a micro-scale, a change he’s not even aware of until it is a done thing, and the faces unfreeze behind the windows, and the train rushes on, and the fog gathers around him like a living thing … no, he can’t imagine it, this alternate present is a blank in his mind. What would he have become? Follow his father into the market stall, off-loading vegetables, shouting, A pound for a pound! Fresh apples, darling, still with the dew of morning on them! Saying, There you go, mate, closed-cap mushrooms in a brown paper bag, the scales, the old cash register, drinks in the pub, slap the missus around on a Friday night, church on Sunday, God looking down on a world unchanged.
– Fogg? I lost you there, Oblivion says.
– Vomacht or not, Fogg tells him, there on the embankment, as an air-raid siren begins to sound, we’d still be soldiers, Oblivion. And there would still be a war.
SIX:
TRANSYLVANIAN MISSION
TRANSYLVANIA
1944
NAZI FORCES ENTER HUNGARY
March 19, 1944
----
In a surprise action, Nazi forces have taken over Hungary in a bloodless operation, code named Margarethe. Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, a long-time ally of Adolf Hitler, was invited by the Führer to the palace of Klessheim, outside Salzburg, Austria, on March 15 for negotiations. It appears Mr Kállay has been secretly negotiating with Allied forces in order to reach an armistice.
As Mr Kállay was in Austria, Nazi forces moved quietly into Hungary, occupying the country without a fight. Mr Kállay
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