A Small Death in Lisbon. Robert Thomas Wilson

told you before that this would be . . . it would have to be . . .’

      ‘I know,’ he said, folding his hands into his lap, ‘but the circumstances are unusual.’

      ‘Won’t they always be unusual?’

      ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

      She lit a cigarette and sighed the smoke out.

      ‘When are they coming?’

      Sachsenhausen was an old barracks turned concentration camp thirty kilometres north-west of Berlin in Oranienberg. Felsen knew of the place only because he’d taken on a political and two Jews to sweep the factory floors. They’d been released from there in 1936 just before the Olympics. They didn’t have to say anything about the conditions in the KZ, the two tendons at the backs of their necks stood out sharply from under their shaved heads – they were fifteen kilos underweight minimum.

      It was an unnerving drive on snow-covered roads from Berlin. The van skidded and slewed across the road. At Sachsenhausen he heard the gates opening and a thunderous pummelling on the panels of the van. The van seemed to run a gauntlet for a hundred metres until Felsen’s nerve was completely shattered. Then silence and only the creak of tyres on snow. The van stopped. The wind moaned. The driver coughed in his cab. The doors opened.

      Felsen got to his feet, felt the stickiness on the edges of his hands which were stained russet from the drying blood on the floor. He stumbled to the back of the van. Outside was a vast white expanse with just two lines across it from the wheels of the van. Far off, perhaps two hundred metres away, it was difficult to judge over the snow’s squinting glare, were trees and buildings.

      The van took off, throwing him out on to the ankle-deep snow. The doors flapped and banged shut and he put his hands up over his head, confused by the sudden noise. At the edge of the enormous flat expanse of snow-covered ground a figure stood at ease. Felsen nosed forward, eyes creased shut. The figure, grey and indiscernible, didn’t move. Felsen flinched at a noise behind him, the sound of sharp metal slicing through snow. He whipped round. There were three men in black SS greatcoats and helmets. The hems of their coats rested on the surface of the snow. One carried a wooden club, the next a spade which he swung in an arc, the blade singing against the crystalline snow. The third held a metre length of steel cable, frayed at the end. Felsen looked back to the figure, as if he might help. The figure had gone. He got to his feet. The men were eyeless beneath their helmets. Felsen’s legs were shaking.

      ‘Sachsengruss,’ said the guard with the club.

      Felsen put his hands on his head and began doing knee-bends. The Saxon Greeting. They kept him at it for an hour. Then they told him to stand to attention for an hour, until his body was shaking with cold and his ears full of the swish from the cable, the slicing of the spade, the tamping of the wooden club. The guards trod a circle around him.

      They removed his handcuffs. The spade flew through the air at him. He caught it in fingers which he expected to shatter like porcelain.

      ‘Dig a path to the building.’

      They walked behind him over the vast area as he dug hundreds of metres of paths. Tears streamed down his face, the snot ran in freezing rivulets from his nose, the steam poured off him thick as bull’s breath. It began to snow. They told him to reclear the paths he’d already made.

      They worked him for six hours until it was completely dark, no light coming from the blacked-out buildings. They faced him out into the darkness and gave him another hour’s Sachsengruss while they told him how he was going to have to clear it all again tomorrow. In the last ten minutes he dropped to the floor twice and they kicked him back up on to his feet. He was glad to be kicked. He knew something from the kicking. He knew they weren’t going to beat him to death with the club, cable and spade.

      They stood him to attention after that until a thin reed of music came floating through the pitch black. They told him to march into the building. He fell over. They dragged him backwards inside. His feet trailed damp lines over the polished floors.

      The warmth of the building seemed to unfreeze his mind and tears poured out of his head, water leaked out of his nose and ears. The music grew louder. He knew it. Mozart. It had to be. All those notes. Voices and laughter came over the music. A familiar smell. The guards’ boots rolled over the polished floors. Felsen’s feet came back to a life of pain but he was grinning. He was grinning because he knew now what he’d suspected before out in the snow – he wasn’t in Sachsenhausen.

      They arrived in a room with chairs and carpets, newspapers and ashtrays – unimaginable civilization after Prinz Albrechtstrasse. They stopped. The guards got him standing. One of them knocked and they took him backwards into the room. A girl giggled. The talking subsided, only the music remained.

      ‘Does the prisoner like this music?’ asked a voice.

      Felsen swallowed hard. His legs trembled. His humiliation stiffened his neck.

      ‘I don’t know whether I should like it, sir.’

      ‘You have no opinion?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘This is Mozart. Don Giovanni. This has been banned by the Party. Do you know why?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘The libretto was written by a Jew.’

      The music was cut.

      ‘Now what did you think of the music?’

      ‘I didn’t like it, sir.’

      ‘Why are you here?’

      ‘I’ve been sent back to school, sir.’

      Felsen’s feet throbbed in his ruined shoes, the blood thumping through them.

      ‘Why are you here?’ asked a different voice.

      He thought for a long minute.

      ‘Because I’m lucky at cards, sir,’ he said, which screwed the tension down in the room so that the girl tittered. ‘Sorry sir, because I cheat at cards, sir.’

      ‘Prisoner, turn around and stand at ease.’

      He didn’t see who was sitting at the table at first. His watering eyes took in the gross quantities of food before anything. Then he saw Wolff, Hanke, Fischer and Lehrer, two other men he didn’t know and a young woman who was smoking through lipstick already smudged.

      Lehrer was smiling. The Brigadeführers were all amused. Fischer broke first and roared and drummed the floor with his boots. They all laughed, banging the table, even the girl, who didn’t know why she was laughing.

      ‘Is the prisoner permitted to laugh?’ asked Hanke.

      They roared again.

      ‘Prisoner Felsen. Laugh!’ shouted Fischer.

      Feslen smiled and started to blink, conjuring mirth from relief. His shoulders began to shake, his stomach pumped and he laughed, he laughed himself helpless, he laughed himself to a retching standstill. He laughed the SS officers silent.

      ‘The prisoner will stop laughing now,’ said Lehrer.

      Felsen’s mouth clamped shut. He returned to ‘at ease’.

      ‘There are some clothes for you in there. Change.’

      He went into the kitchens, stripped and got into a dark suit which hung off him. He rejoined the table.

      ‘Eat,’ said Lehrer.

      He laid waste to the table in his immediate vicinity more thoroughly than a retreating army. The officers talked amongst themselves except Lehrer. ‘Don’t think I’m a bad loser,’ he said.

      ‘I don’t think that, sir.’

      ‘What do you think?’

      ‘I think you are what your name implies . . . a teacher,