The Lady from Zagreb (18 page)

Having secured transport for himself and Sergeant Oehl, and established the latest whereabouts of the SS Prinz Eugen Division captain, Geiger now came to my aid and further established that the man formerly known as Father Ladislaus was now better known as Colonel Dragan.

“It’s a sort of joke, I think,” he said. “Colonel Dragan. It means the dear colonel. The joke being that from what this fellow says, the colonel is much feared around these parts and quite notorious. He’s currently to be found at a place called Jasenovac, about a hundred kilometers back up the road we were just on. It’s a place where they make bricks.”

“Bricks? My God, I’d have thought they had plenty of those outside.”

“You’d certainly think so.”

“How does a Franciscan monk get to be a Ustaše colonel?” I wondered aloud.

Geiger shrugged. “There’s only one way in this country,” he said. “By being an efficient killer of Serbs.”

“Ask him what else he knows about this Colonel Dragan,” I said.

Geiger spoke again and gradually the Ustaše officer became more animated.

“This man you’re looking for, Gunther, is a great hero,” said Geiger, offering me a simultaneous translation. “Adored even and something of a living legend in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was sick with fever for a while—apparently, the marshes at Jasenovac are full of mosquitoes—and it was feared he would die. But lots of good Catholics prayed to God and lit many candles, so now he is back to full health again and, if anything, stronger than before and more feared than ever. But even the Ustaše fear the colonel and for good reason. Because he can’t be reasoned with. That’s what his men say. Once his mind is made up there’s no changing it. His mind is impregnable—that’s what this fellow says. But that you can’t judge a man like Colonel Dragan the way you would judge an ordinary man. He’s anything but ordinary. Perhaps that’s because he used to be a priest, like Father Tomislav, who is also attached to the Ustaše troops in Jasenovac. It may be that it is God who gives the colonel the strength to do what he does. Which is to be a man who can do such terrible things. Perhaps it’s his special relationship with God that makes him strong. That makes him so resolute and a source of inspiration to his men. To all Ustaše who would see this country free from the threat of Communism and the Jews and Muslims, and the peasant stupidities of the Serbian Orthodox Church.”

“And I thought the Nazis had the monopoly on this kind of goat’s shit.”

Geiger opened his cigarette case and offered me one. Then, taking me by the arm we went outside for a smoke. The summer sun was low behind the clouds now and the sky over Banja Luka was the color of blood. At the Serbian Orthodox cathedral, demolition work had stopped for the day but not the cruelty. I could hear a woman crying. Why had I come to this infernal place?

“You know, it seems to me that I’ve heard about this fellow, Colonel Dragan, on my first tour of duty down here. About both these men. Your Father Ladislaus and this Father Tomislav. I heard some pretty terrible things. The sort of things that could only happen here in Yugoslavia. This country is full of hate—the Father Abbot was right about that.”

“What did you hear, Geiger? What kind of things?”

“Terrible things. Something about two monks who were working with the Ustaše. Just a name, really. They used to call them Ante Pavelic’s twin priests of death. That’s right. The priests of death. I heard they killed a lot of people. Not just in battle. And not just partisans—people who need killing—but women and children, too.”

“Because they were Serbs?”

“Because they were Serbs. Look, Gunther, it’s none of my business what you do. But in this country, you’re a fish out of water. In Berlin you probably know what you’re doing, but down here, wearing that uniform, you’re just another target. My advice to you is to stay away from this Colonel Dragan, and from Jasenovac. Leave the minister’s letter here with this fellow, drive back to Zagreb, and get on the next plane home.”

“I’ve thought about that. Don’t think I haven’t. But I’ve a personal reason for making sure the letter gets into his hands. Besides, the minister won’t be too pleased with me if I tell him I could have met this fellow and then funked it. He might not sign my expenses, and then where will I be?”

“Alive. Look, I’m not kidding you. This colonel is a real monster. The fact is that even the SS don’t go to Jasenovac if we can possibly avoid it. The place used to be a brickworks, before the war, but now it’s a concentration camp. For Serbs. I believe there were some Jews in Jasenovac, at the beginning of the war, but they’re all dead now. Murdered by the Ustaše.”

After Smolensk, I wondered how bad things could be in Jasenovac. And after all, I was only delivering a letter. Surely I could do that in next to no time. Besides, I’d met the devil before; in fact I was pretty certain I used to work for him. Heydrich was my best guess as to what the devil was really like. And I could not conceive that Croatian mass murderers could be any worse than German mass murderers like him, or Arthur Nebe. But what was I going to tell Dalia Dresner? That her father was a monster? I didn’t think she was going to be pleased to hear something like that.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“No, you look tough enough. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I’ve seen inside your soul, Gunther. There’s still a sliver of decency left in there. There’s your fucking problem. What does Nietzsche say? A man might think he can stare into the abyss without falling in but sometimes the abyss stares back. Sometimes the abyss exerts a strange effect on your sense of balance. Take it from one who knows.”

I shrugged. “I’m still going to Jasenovac. Besides, like you said, it’s on the way back to Zagreb.”

“I like you, Gunther,” said Geiger. “I don’t know why, but I do. Maybe it’s that sliver of decency in you. I envy you that. Me, I’m up to my elbows in blood. But you. You’re different. I don’t know how you’ve managed it in the SD but you have and I admire that. So, you give me no alternative but to go to Jasenovac with you. Think about it. You don’t speak Croatian. Or Bosnian-Serb. Besides, suppose you run into some Proles? Or some hostile musclemen?”

Musclemen was what Oehl was in the habit of calling Muslims.

“I told you. These bastards like to make you suck your own dick. You need me and the sergeant riding shotgun on the road with you. Besides, we’ve got another car now. With a driver. So you’ll be even safer than you were before.”

I had to admit he had a point.

“What about rejoining your SS unit?” I said.

Geiger shrugged. “There’s plenty of time to do that. Besides, now we’re here in Banja Luka, I know a good place to eat and to stay. Tonight you’re my guest. And we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

I
t was a beautiful warm day and we made excellent progress back along the narrow road to Jasenovac. I’d managed to persuade myself that once there I would be halfway back to Zagreb and then Germany, which would somehow make everything all right. You can stand to see almost anything provided you know it isn’t going to be for very long. Reeking of alcohol, Geiger dozed in the passenger seat beside me, while Oehl and another SS man followed in the car behind. A couple of times we saw Ustaše trucks heading the other way but the men inside them paid us little regard. Once or twice we heard the sound of small-arms fire in the distance and as a precaution stopped for a while and had a smoke. But if it was Proles, we didn’t see them. Our new companion, a Croatian SS corporal called Schwörer, was a boy not much older than the one Geiger had shot the previous day. His hair looked like fine gold thread and his complexion was as fair as a schoolgirl’s. He didn’t say much. It wasn’t a place for conversation. He tried to match us smoke for smoke but ended up puking at the side of the road after turning himself green with tobacco, which Geiger thought was very funny. We set off again and, after a couple of hours, we slowed to cross a wooden bridge near the confluence of the Sava and Una rivers. Underneath the light mist that hung above the water like the breath of some foul underwater creature, something caught my eye. I stopped the car and got out to take a look and quickly lit a cigarette when I heard the whine of a mosquito. I never did take to being bitten by anything very much, even if it was female. For a brief moment I thought the object in the water was someone swimming. But as I was about to discover, we were a long way from Wannsee and the Havel and anything as innocent as swimming.

“What is it?” asked Geiger.

“I’m not sure.”

I pointed at the river and waited for the slow, mud-brown water to bring the object nearer but I already had a strong suspicion about what it was. It was a woman’s body, still wearing a floral dress, and it floated right under the bridge we were standing on—close enough to see that her hands were tied behind her back, her eyes had been gouged out, and a large piece of her head was missing. A second body and then a third were in the water not far behind her and these were women, too, also mutilated. Schwörer stared impassively at these bodies and I got the strong impression that despite his innocent-looking face he was already familiar with such sights as this.

“This river goes right through Jasenovac before it gets here,” said Geiger.

“On its way to Hades, perhaps. And meaning you think that’s where they were killed. In Jasenovac.”

“Probably.”

“Shit.”

“I did warn you it wasn’t a place for us. I believe there used to be an SS office at Jasenovac until they closed it a year ago, after the last Jews there were killed. That’s the official reason. No more Jews, no more German interest. What the UNS do with Serbs is their own affair. But from what I heard, the five Germans who had stayed on there couldn’t take it anymore and left, without permission. So it must have been bad. As bad as this, I guess.”

“UNS?”

“The Ustaše Supervisory Service. The special police force that guards these camps. And that reminds me, Gunther. When we get to the brickworks, it would be very advisable if you kept your very obvious disgust under control. It’s not just Serbs, Jews, and Roma who disappear in this part of the world. It’s anyone who the UNS decide they’ve taken a dislike to. And that could easily stretch to include me and you. For all I know, those five Germans who were stationed there didn’t disappear at all, but were murdered. You see, these UNS bastards are killing not for ideological reasons like me and the sergeant but because they like to kill and because they take pleasure in cruelty, and you don’t want to piss them off with any of your Berlin airs and graces. Me, I might enjoy the company of a civilized man like you occasionally, but these boys don’t think like that. Out here the better angels of our nature simply don’t exist. Out here there’s just the beast, and the beast is insatiable. Back in Banja Luka that intelligence officer said something about your evil friend Colonel Dragan that I failed to mention. A couple of times he referred to him as Maestrovich, and once he even called him the maestro, which, as I’m sure you know, is an honorific title of respect. Well, you can imagine the sort of thing that commands respect down here. And it isn’t playing the bloody cello. So, please try to remember that when you deliver your fucking letter.”

I nodded silently.

“Serb or not, I can’t see the point of killing a woman unless she’s a Prole rifle slut, and she’s had a pop at you,” said Oehl. “And even then, not until you’ve had some fun with her.”

“You mean raped her,” I said.

“It’s not rape,” said Oehl. “I’ve never fucked a rifle slut who didn’t want me to fuck her. Really. Even a Prole will try and get you to fuck her if she thinks she’s going to be shot. That’s not rape. They want you to fuck them. Sometimes they want you to fuck them even when they know you’re going to kill them immediately afterward. It’s like they want to die with some life still wriggling inside of them, if you know what I mean. But these girls don’t look like they’ve even been touched.”

Reflecting that the legal niceties of what constitutes consent were likely to be lost on a man like Oehl, I lit a cigarette with the butt of the other. “Camps,” I said. “You said camps, Geiger.”

“The brickworks at Jasenovac is just the largest of at least five or six concentration camps in this area. But there could be more. Out here, in this swamp, who knows? I heard tell that they’ve got a special camp just for Roma where all the usual cruelties have been refined to a hellish level.” He shrugged. “But you hear all kinds of things in this country. Not all of them can be true.”

“I don’t think the Ustaše can teach the SS very much when it comes to cruelty,” I said. “Not after what I saw in Smolensk.”

“Don’t you now? From what I hear, the SS in Poland is killing Jews with poison gas now, for humane reasons.” Geiger laughed grimly. “No one gets gassed in Yugoslavia. As you can see for yourself.”

While we were standing there, at least nine or ten bodies floated by like driftwood. Most had their heads bashed in or their throats cut.

“They smash their heads in with big mallets,” said Geiger. “Like they were knocking in tent pegs. So much for humanity.”

I sighed and took a double drag on my cigarette and shook my head. “To save bullets, I suppose,” I heard myself say.

“No,” said Geiger. “I think the UNS just likes cracking Serb skulls.”

“Why do they throw them in the river like that?” I asked, as if I actually expected an answer that would count as even vaguely reasonable. And the fact was, it wasn’t really a question at all, but an observation born of an infinite sadness and the absolute certainty that I didn’t belong here. I took off my cap, tossed it into the car, and rubbed my head furiously with the flat of my hand as if that might enable me to understand something. It didn’t.

“Saves the effort of burying them,” said Schwörer. “I expect they think the fish will tidy things up. They’re right about that, too. There’s asp in this river that grow to be at least a meter long. I’ve fished a bit so I know. Had a friend once who caught an asp in the Sava that was twelve kilos. You mark my words, in a month or two you won’t ever know those bodies were here.” It was as much as he’d said since leaving Banja Luka.

“Why didn’t you join the Ustaše?” I asked him.

“Me, sir? I’m not Croatian. I’m ethnic German, I am. And damned proud of it.”

In the light of what I’d already seen, I wasn’t feeling proud of being human let alone German so I let that one go.

We got back into the cars and drove through a thick, dark forest and onto a large marshy plain, where we caught our first sight of the camp, and soon after that we stopped at a checkpoint and were obliged to explain our business to the guards. In the distance, running parallel with the river, we could see a train heading for the camp. The guard picked up a telephone, spoke a few words, and then waved us on.

“You’re in luck,” said Geiger. “It seems that Colonel Dragan is here. He wasn’t yesterday.” He laughed. “Apparently he was in Zagreb.”

“That certainly sounds like my sort of luck,” I said. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

Finally we arrived at the main entrance to what described itself as Camp III. It was easy to see why this was a brickworks; the whole place was enclosed by an enormous brick wall about three meters high, perfectly built, and hundreds of meters in circumference. There was an entrance arch also made of bricks, with a big sign and, on top, an Ustaše shield featuring a
U
and a Croatian red-and-white flag. Inside the arch was a curiously ornate wrought-iron coaching lamp. Leaving Oehl and Schwörer and the two cars, Geiger and I walked up to the entrance. The Croatian guard escorted us through and it was only now that I perceived the true size of the camp, which was spread across a huge flat plain. The humid, swampy air was thick with the corrupt smell of death and the infernal whine of mosquitoes and I breathed it with more than a little distaste. When the very air contains human decay, it catches on the throat. Running parallel to the Sava River to the east was a single railway track where even now the black steam train we’d seen earlier was making its slow and laborious way to the end of the line.

In front of us to the northwest were the camp buildings dominated by a single-story barracks that was fifty or sixty meters long; behind these were several tall chimneys and some watchtowers. In the distance we could just about see a lake where even now hundreds of prisoners were at work retrieving clay to make bricks. Everything seemed preternaturally calm, but already my eyes had taken in the body hanging from a nail on a telegraph pole, and then a proper gallows on which were hanging two more bodies. But all that was nothing compared with the sight that awaited us in a little picket-fenced garden out front of the brick-built villa to which we were now escorted. Where someone in Germany might have chosen to display some plants in terra-cotta pots, a rockery, or even a series of ceramic garden gnomes, here there was a virtual palisade of severed human heads. As I mounted the steps to the front door I counted at least fifteen. The guard went to fetch the colonel while, waiting for him inside the villa, we discovered the true horror of exactly how the heads in the garden had been obtained. Surrounding the near mandatory portrait of Mussolini on the neatly papered wall were framed photographs of decapitations—men and women, presumably Serbs, having their heads cut off with knives, axes, and, in one particularly nauseating picture, a two-man crosscut saw. This was bad enough but it was the smiling faces on the large team of Ustaše men inflicting these cruelties that disturbed me most of all. These pictures made Goya’s disasters of war look like a set of illustrated place mats. I sat down on a poorly sprung sofa and stared unhappily at the toes of my boots.

“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.”