“No, no, no,” Bischoff says, the very model of forbearance. “Something you did not know about.”
“What?”
“It seems that, while I have been sneaking around the Atlantic, doing my duty—the Führer has come up with a little incentive program.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems that duty and loyalty are not enough for certain high-ranking officers. That they will not carry out their orders to the fullest unless they receive… special awards.”
“You mean, like medals?”
Bischoff is smiling nervously. “Some generals on the Eastern Front have been given estates in Russia. Very, very large estates.”
“Oh.”
“But not everyone can be bribed with land. Some people require a more liquid form of compensation.”
“Booze?”
“No, I mean liquid in the financial sense. Something you can carry with you, and that is accepted in any whorehouse on the planet.”
“Gold,” says Shaftoe, quietly.
“Gold would suffice,” Bischoff says. It has been a long time since he looked Shaftoe in the eye. He’s staring out the window instead. His green eyes might be a little moist. He takes a deep breath, blinks, and gets the bitter irony under control before continuing: “Since Stalingrad, it has not gone well on the Eastern Front. Let us say that Ukrainian real estate is no longer worth what it used to be, if the deed to the land happens to be written in German and issued in Berlin.”
“It’s getting harder to bribe a general by promising him a chunk of Russian land,” Shaftoe translates. “So Hitler needs lots of gold.”
“Yes. Now, the Japanese have lots of gold—consider that they sacked China. As well as many other places. But they are lacking in certain things. They need wolframite. Mercury. Uranium.”
“What’s uranium?”
“Who the hell knows? The Japanese want it, we provide it. We provide them technology too—blueprints for new turbines. Enigma machines.” At this point Bischoff breaks off and laughs, painfully and darkly, for a long time. When he gets it under control, he continues: “So we have been shipping them these things, in U-boats.”
“And the Nips pay you in gold.”
“Yes. It is a dark economy, hidden beneath the ocean, trading small but valuable items over vast distances. You got a glimpse of it.”
“You knew this was going on but you didn’t know about U-553,” Shaftoe points out.
“Ah, Bobby, there are many, many things going on in the Third Reich that a mere U-boat captain does not know about. You are a soldier, you know this is true.”
“Yes,” Shaftoe says, recalling the peculiarities of Detachment 2702. He looks down at the letter. “Why is Dönitz telling you all of this now?”
“He is not telling me anything,” Bischoff says reprovingly. “I have figured this out myself.” He gnaws on a lip for a while. “Dönitz is making me a proposition.”
“I thought you’d retired.”
Bischoff considers it. “I have retired from killing people. But the other day I sailed a little sloop around the inlet.”
“So?”
“So it seems that I have not retired from going down to the sea in ships.” Bischoff heaves a sigh. “Unfortunately, all of the really interesting ships are owned by major governments.”
Bischoff is getting a little spooky, so Shaftoe opts for a little change in the subject. “Hey, speaking of really interesting things…” and he tells the story of the Heavenly Apparition that he saw while he was walking down here.
Bischoff is delighted by the story, which revives the hunger for excitement that he has kept pickled in salt and alcohol ever since reaching Norrsbruck. “You are sure it was manmade?” he asks.
“It whined. Chunks of shit were falling out of it. But I’ve never seen a meteor so I don’t know.”
“How far away?”
“It crashed seven kilometers from where I was standing. So, ten clicks from here.”
“But ten kilometers is nothing for an Eagle Scout and a Hitler Youth!”
“You weren’t a Hitler Youth.”
Bischoff broods over this for a moment. “Hitler—so embarrassing. I hoped that if I ignored him he would go away. Perhaps if I had joined the Hitler Youth, they would have given me a surface ship.”
“Then you’d be dead.”
“Right!” Bischoff’s mood brightens considerably. “Ten kilometers is still nothing. Let’s go!”
“It’s already dark.”
“We will follow the flames.”
“They will have gone out.”
“We will follow the trail of debris, like Hansel and Gretel.”
“It didn’t work for Hansel and Gretel. Didn’t you even read the fucking story?”
“Don’t be such a defeatist, Bobby,” says Bischoff, diving into a hearty fisherman’s sweater. “Normally you are not like this. What is troubling you?”
Glory.
It is October and the days are growing short. Shaftoe and Bischoff, both mired in the yet-to-be-discovered emotional dumps of Seasonal Affective Disorder, are like two brothers trapped in the same pit of quicksand, each keeping a sharp eye on the other.
“Eh? Was ist los, buddy?”
“Guess I’m just feeling at loose ends.”
“You need an adventure. Let’s go!”
“I need an adventure like Hitler needs an ugly little toothbrush mustache,” says Bobby Shaftoe. But he drags himself up out of his chair and follows Bischoff out the door.
Shaftoe and Bischoff are trudging through the dark Swedish woods like a pair of lost souls trying to find the side entrance to Limbo. They take turns carrying the kerosene lantern, which has an effective range about as long as a grown man’s arm. Sometimes they go for a whole hour without talking, each man alone with his own struggle against suicidal depression. Then one of them (usually Bischoff) will perk up and say something, like:
“Haven’t seen Enoch Root recently. What has he been up to since he finished curing you of your morphine addiction?” Bischoff asks.
“Don’t know. He was such a fucking pain in the ass during that project that I never wanted to see him again. But I think he got a Russian radio transmitter from Otto and took it into that church basement where he lives; he’s been messing around with it ever since.”
“Yes. I remember. He was changing the frequencies. Did he ever get it to work?”
“Beats me,” Shaftoe says, “but when big pieces of burning shit start falling out of the sky in my neighborhood, makes me wonder.”
“Yes. Also he goes to the post office quite frequently,” Bischoff says. “I chatted with him there once. He is carrying on a heavy correspondence with others around the world.”
“Other what?”
“That is my question, too.”
Eventually they find the wreck only by following the sound of a hacksaw, which reverberates through the pines like the shriek of some extraordinarily stupid and horny bird. This enables them to home in on it in a general way. Final coordinates are provided by a sudden, strobelike flashing light, devastating noise, and a sap-scented rain of amputated foliage. Shaftoe and Bischoff both hit the dirt and lie there listening to fat pistol slugs ricocheting from tree trunk to tree trunk. The hacksawing noise continues with no break in rhythm.
Bischoff starts talking Swedish, but Shaftoe shushes him. “That was a Suomi,” he says. “Hey, Julieta! Knock it off! It’s just me and Günter.”
There is no answer. Then, Shaftoe remembers that he has recently fucked Julieta, and therefore needs to remember his manners. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he says, “but I gather from the sound of your weapon that you are of the Finnish nation, for which I have unbounded admiration, and I wanted to let you know that I, former Sergeant Robert Shaftoe, and my friend, former Kapitänleutnant Günter Bischoff, mean you no harm.”
Julieta, homing in on the sound of his voice in the darkness, responds with a controlled burst of fire that passes about a foot o
ver Bobby Shaftoe’s head. “Don’t you belong in Manila?” she asks.
Shaftoe groans, and rolls over on his back as if he has been shot in the gut.
“What does she mean by this?” asks the bewildered Günter Bischoff. Seeing that his friend has been (emotionally) incapacitated, he tries: “This is Sweden, a peaceful and neutral country! Why are you trying to machine-gun us?”
“Go away!” Julieta must be with Otto, because they hear her talk to him before saying, “We do not want representatives of the American Marines and the Wehrmacht here. You are not welcome.”
“Sounds like you are sawing away on something that is pretty damn heavy,” Shaftoe finally retorts. “How you gonna haul it out of these woods?”
This leads to an animated conversation between Julieta and Otto. “You may approach,” Julieta finally says.
They find the Kivistiks, Julieta and Otto, standing in a pool of lantern-light around the severed, charred wing of an airplane. Most Finns are hard to tell apart from Swedes, but Otto and Julieta both have black hair and black eyes, and could pass for Turks. The tip of the airplane wing is painted with the black-and-white cross of the Luftwaffe. An engine is mounted to that wing. If Otto’s hacksaw has its way, it won’t be for much longer. The engine has recently been set on fire and then used to knock down a large number of pine trees. But even so Shaftoe can see it’s like no engine he has ever seen before. There is no propeller, but there are a lot of little fan blades.
“It looks like a turbine,” says Bischoff, “but for air, rather than water.”
Otto straightens up, squeezes his lower back theatrically, and hands Shaftoe the hacksaw. Then he hands him a bottle of benzedrine tablets for good measure. Shaftoe eats a few tablets, strips off his shirt to reveal splendid musculature, does a couple of USMC-approved stretching exercises, grabs the hacksaw, and sets to work. After a couple of minutes he looks up nonchalantly at Julieta, who is standing there holding the machine pistol and watching him with a look that is simultaneously frosty and smoldering, like baked Alaska. Bischoff stands off to the side, reveling in this.
Dawn is slapping her chapped and reddened fingers against a frostbitten sky, attempting to restore some circulation, when the remains of the turbine finally fall away from the wing. Pumped on benzedrine, Shaftoe has been operating the hacksaw for six hours; Otto has stepped in to change blades several times, a major capital investment on his part. Next, they devote half of the morning to dragging the engine through the woods and down a creek bed to the sea, where Otto’s boat is waiting, and Otto and Julieta take their prize away. Bobby Shaftoe and Günter Bischoff trudge back up to the site of the wreck. They have not discussed this openly yet—it would be unnecessary—but they intend to find the part of the airplane that contains the body of the pilot, and see to it that he gets a proper burial.
“What is in Manila, Bobby?” Bischoff asks.
“Something that morphine made me forget,” Shaftoe answers, “and that Enoch Root, that fucking bastard, made me remember.”
Not fifteen minutes later they come to the gash in the woods that was carved by the plunging airplane, and hear a man’s voice wailing and sobbing, completely out of his mind with grief. “Angelo! Angelo! Angelo! Mein liebchen!”
They cannot see the man who is crying out in this way, but they do see Enoch Root, standing there and brooding. He looks up alertly as they approach, and produces a semiautomatic from his leather jacket. Then he recognizes them, and relaxes.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Shaftoe says—never one to beat around in the bush. “Is that a fucking German you’re with?”
“Yes, I am with a German,” Root says, “as are you.”
“Well, why is your German making such a fucking spectacle of himself?”
“Rudy is crying over the body of his lover,” Root says, “who died in an attempt to reunite with him.”
“A woman was flying that plane?” says the flabbergasted Shaftoe.
Root rolls his eyes and heaves a sigh. “You have forgotten to allow for the possibility that Rudy might be a homosexual.”
It takes Shaftoe a long time to stretch his mind around this large, inconveniently shaped concept. Bischoff, in typical European fashion, seems completely unruffled. But he still has questions to ask. “Enoch, why are you… here?”
“Why has my spirit been incarnated into a physical body in this world generally? Or specifically, why am I here in a Swedish forest, standing on the wreck of a mysterious German rocket plane while a homosexual German sobs over the cremated remains of his Italian lover?
“Last rites,” Root answers his own question. “Angelo was Catholic.” Then, after a while, he notices that Bischoff is staring at him, looking completely unsatisfied. “Oh. I am here, in a larger sense, because Mrs. Tenney, the vicar’s wife, has become sloppy, and forgotten to close her eyes when she takes the balls out of the bingo machine.”
CRUNCH
* * *
THE CONDEMNED MAN SHOWERS, SHAVES, PUTS ON most of a suit, and realizes that he is ahead of schedule. He turns on the television, gets a San Miguel out of the fridge to steady his nerves, and then goes to the closet to get the stuff of his last meal. The apartment only has one closet and when its door is open it appears to have been bricked shut, Cask of Amontillado-style, with very large flat red oblongs, each imprinted with the image of a venerable and yet oddly cheerful and yet somehow kind of hauntingly sad naval officer. The whole pallet load was shipped here several weeks ago by Avi, in an attempt to lift Randy’s spirits. For all Randy knows more are still sitting on a Manila dockside ringed with armed guards and dictionary-sized rat traps straining against their triggers, each baited with a single golden nugget.
Randy selects one of the bricks from this wall, creating a gap in the formation, but there is another, identical one right behind it, another picture of that same naval officer. They seem to be marching from his closet in a peppy phalanx. “Part of this complete balanced breakfast,” Randy says. Then he slams the door on them and walks with a measured, forcibly calm step to the living room where he does most of his dining, usually while facing his thirty-six-inch television. He sets up his San Miguel, an empty bowl, an exceptionally large soup spoon—so large that most European cultures would identify it as a serving spoon and most Asian ones as a horticultural implement. He obtains a stack of paper napkins, not the brown recycled ones that can’t be moistened even by immersion in water, but the flagrantly environmentally unsound type, brilliant white and cotton-fluffy and desperately hygroscopic. He goes to the kitchen, opens the fridge, reaches deep into the back, and finds an unopened box-bag-pod-unit of UHT milk. UHT milk need not, technically, be refrigerated, but it is pivotal, in what is to follow, that the milk be only a few microdegrees above the point of freezing. The fridge in Randy’s apartment has louvers in the back where the cold air is blown in, straight from the freon coils. Randy always stores his milk-pods directly in front of those louvers. Not too close, or else the pods will block the flow of air, and not too far away either. The cold air becomes visible as it rushes in and condenses moisture, so it is a simple matter to sit there with the fridge door open and observe its flow characteristics, like an engineer testing an experimental minivan in a River Rouge wind tunnel. What Randy would like to see, ideally, is the whole milk-pod enveloped in an even, jacketlike flow to produce better heat exchange through the multilayered plastic-and-foil skin of the milk-pod. He would like the milk to be so cold that when he reaches in and grabs it, he feels the flexible, squishy pod stiffen between his fingers as ice crystals spring into existence, summoned out of nowhere simply by the disturbance of being squished.
Today the milk is almost, but not quite, that cold. Randy goes into his living room with it. He has to wrap it in a towel because it is so cold it hurts his fingers. He launches a videotape and then sits down. All is in readiness.
This is one of a series of videotapes that are shot in an empty basketball gym with a polished maple floor and a howli
ng, remorseless ventilation system. They depict a young man and a young woman, both attractive, svelte, and dressed something like marquee players in the Ice Capades, performing simple ballroom dance steps to the accompaniment of strangled music from a ghetto blaster set up on the free-throw line. It is miserably clear that the video has been shot by a third conspirator who is burdened with a consumer-grade camcorder and reeling from some kind of inner-ear disease that he or she would like to share with others. The dancers stomp through the most simple steps with autistic determination. The camera operator begins in each case with a two-shot, then, like a desperado tormenting a milksop, aims his weapon at their feet and makes them dance, dance, dance. At one point the pager hooked to the man’s elastic waistband goes off and a scene has to be cut short. No wonder: he is one of the most sought-after ballroom dance instructors in Manila. His partner would be too, if more men in this city were interested in learning to dance. As it is, she must scrape by earning maybe a tenth of what the male instructor pulls down, giving lessons to a small number of addled or henpecked stumblebums like Randy Waterhouse.
Randy takes the red box and holds it securely between his knees with the handy stay-closed tab pointing away from him. Using both hands in unison he carefully works his fingertips underneath the flap, trying to achieve equal pressure on each side, paying special attention to places where too much glue was laid down by the gluing-machine. For a few long, tense moments, nothing at all happens, and an ignorant or impatient observer might suppose that Randy is getting nowhere. But then the entire flap pops open in an instant as the entire glue-front gives way. Randy hates it when the box-top gets bent or, worst of all possible words, torn. The lower flap is merely tacked down with a couple of small glue-spots and Randy pulls it back to reveal a translucent, inflated sac. The halogen down-light recessed in the ceiling shines through the cloudy material of the sac to reveal gold—everywhere the glint of gold. Randy rotates the box ninety degrees and holds it between his knees so its long axis is pointed at the television set, then grips the top of the sac and carefully parts its heat-sealed seam, which purrs as it gives way. Removal of the somewhat milky plastic barrier causes the individual nuggets of Cap’n Crunch to resolve, under the halogen light, with a kind of preternatural crispness and definition that makes the roof of Randy’s mouth glow and throb in trepidation.