The Metal Man: An Account of a WW2 Nazi Cyborg (16 page)

Mayer staggered back slightly, exchanging an incredulous glance with Bach, Amsel and Weber.

‘
Brucker?
’ he gasped, staring back at the Metal Man.

Ignoring what was taking place between the Metal Man and the four SS soldiers, Schroder stepped determinedly forwards. He walked towards the entrance into this camp, alongside the railway track. Over this entrance was a huge wrought-iron sign, curved in shape, which read –

Germany Needs Your Arms
.

Schroder heard his creation walking just behind him and to one side. His personal bodyguard – at least for now. He –
it
– knew at least one of these soldiers’ names; had even just spoken in the customarily crude manner of the fighting man…

Were the parts of the brain Schroder had used, from the anonymous donor who’d been stabbed to death, now somehow ‘activating’ and taking over the mechanical side of his creation…?

Then, once again, Schroder disregarded this particular puzzle. His mission now: to locate his mother. Nothing else was important.

*

Stood behind the strange little man with the bowtie and the glasses, who was walking alongside the Metal Man into the sprawling camp, the four soldiers consulted among themselves.

‘I was sure… it
had
to be Brucker,’ said Mayer, although his voice was now tinged with doubt.

‘We were sat beside Brucker’s body a good couple of hours,’ reminded Bach, as Amsel and Weber nodded. ‘He was… dead – we all saw that.’

‘I know, but – what that… that thing just said,’ queried Mayer. ‘What the hell
is
it, in any case? A man? A machine? And now – what? It can
speak?
’

‘I don’t know,’ said Weber thoughtfully. ‘Anymore than I know who that little guy is who’s walking beside it. He looks – well, he looks
Jewish
to me.’

‘He said the Metal Man is ‘under my command’,’ noted Amsel. ‘What does that mean, exactly – that he made it? A Jew built this wonder-toy for the Third Reich?’  

‘I’m going in after it,’ declared Mayer suddenly. ‘It said my name – how did it know that? Whatever it is, I’ve got to find out…’

‘This place… I know it’s bad, and God knows what these people inside have suffered,’ began Bach – and something in his voice now made the other three soldiers look silently at him. ‘But – remember… There’re four of us, with only limited ammunition. These people inside are going to be looking to rip us – as German SS soldiers – limb from limb, the slightest chance they get. And that’s before the Ruskies even get here…’ 

‘Bach’s got a point,’ said Weber quietly. ‘As SS men, we don’t want to end up as prisoners of the Russians. Better we just die fighting; or else get back into Germany as soon as we can.’

‘I hear you,’ returned Mayer, his jaw firm, ‘but I’ve got to
know…
’

‘Okay…’ sighed Weber. He turned back and called across to the man named Arnold –

‘We’re going into this camp for a short while! You can stay here, or come with us…’

For a few moments, Arnold first interpreted what had been said into Polish and then the group of five men and women briefly chattered among themselves. They held their outer clothing tight against their bodies in defense against the cold, and looked with stark, fearful eyes in the direction of the camp.

But when Arnold replied, he said –

‘We want to come in with you.’

Weber shrugged.

‘Okay, then,’ he said.

Quieter to Bach, Amsel and Mayer, he remarked –

‘I thought they’d want to stay outside.’

‘They probably think now they’ve got a little protection, so long as they stick with us,’ suggested Amsel.

The four soldiers set off after the Metal Man and his creator, followed by the five Poles.

25

A foul, freezing wind blew through the camp. Long wooden huts with slightly sloping roofs, the windows caged. The train track ran into the camp and ended in an area of the inner courtyard that had a large platform on either side. Several tall steel poles with lights on top.

By the end of the train track there was also a large, brick-built building, partially demolished. The towering chimney and its now-visible damaged, stunted twin, further inside the camp, dominated the horizon.

The snow in the camp had been churned into a filthy, grey and yellow sludge. There was rubble and debris everywhere, and those shaven-headed, cadaverous inmates who shuffled silently around, their eyes fixed on the ground.

Then one bent down, picking up a dented metal tin. Schroder understood that these inmates were scavenging for food, which was to be found lying in places around the camp. Perhaps dropped there by the guards who’d fled some time earlier. Or the camp stores since looted by the inmates…

But the inmates were shrinking back at the appearance of the Metal Man. They were disappearing further inside the camp, hiding behind the huts and buildings.

Schroder coughed, clearing his throat.

Then he said loudly –

‘I am not here, with this machine, to hurt you! I am half-Jewish, and my mother is here. I only want to find her; her name is Schroder. She came here…’

His voice paused, choked.

‘She came here over three years ago.’

He wondered if anyone even understood what he was saying. This camp was in Poland, after all.

But there were Germans here – of course there were. Stupid. Germans like his mother…

‘
Are you hearing me?
’ cried Schroder suddenly. He could sense rather than see the inmates creeping around the buildings near him, peering out at him and his creation with the gleaming, jet-black armor, its outsized hands holding that huge gun…

A man stepped forwards. He had paper stuffed inside his wooden clogs. He held a ragged grey blanket like a cloak against him. His eyes were deep, staring out at Schroder from some personal well of horror.

‘Why you bring soldiers with you?’ he asked in heavily-accented German. He had only two teeth left; incisors that looked like fangs in his upper gum. ‘That why everyone hide. Me – I not care. I feel like dead already.’

The man then motioned with a flick of his chin behind Schroder. The scientist turned around to see the four SS men cautiously advancing, followed by the five men and women who had the appearance of being peasants.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded Schroder of the soldier in front, who had a flat, open face.

Before Mayer could reply, a woman appeared, holding a baby close against her breast. She approached the Metal Man, staring almost in wonder at it. Then she cried out something in her own tongue, turning back around to face the other, hidden inmates.

They began, cautiously, to emerge.

‘She say that this… metal soldier of yours saved her baby. That it hurt another soldier who try to take the baby from her,’ explained the man with the fang-like teeth. ‘She say this metal soldier is a friend of the Jew, despite the swastika on its arm. That it not attack the Jew even when order to.’

Schroder shook his head.

‘My mother – I want to find my mother,’ he insisted. ‘That is why I am here.’

The man with the fang-like teeth pulled up one of the sleeves of his striped jacket, exposing the inside of his left forearm. There was a tattoo of five numbers, coming after the letter ‘
B
’.

‘You see that letter?’ hissed the man, coming closer to Schroder. His breath was poisonous, indicative of some rank, tumorous disease. ‘I come here over three year ago – as part of what is call ‘Shipment B’.

‘Everyone I arrive here with – many other Jew, and some gypsy, are now dead. I am longest living person here in this camp; most other been here not even a year; a few just one or two week, even. Three times in three year my name is chosen for selection – and three time, by sheer chance, I am in sick-bay, too ill even to walk. So three time I escape the gas chamber.’

The man sighed, and began to cry quietly, almost without change of expression.   

‘Am I lucky? I don’t know,’ he said then. ‘Maybe I think not.’

‘Gas chamber?’ whispered Schroder. ‘What do you…’

He couldn’t finish, staring at the silently weeping man. His thoughts whirled. This man was the only person still surviving, out of those people who’d been transported to this camp over three years ago.

So that meant his mother was –

‘Oh no,
no
,’ he stammered, tears beginning to prick at his own eyes. He stared over at the chimneys, one partially demolished, which arose out of a large, squat, brick-built building.

Two massive chimneys, designed and built for the purpose of emitting –

Smoke
.

Gas chamber.

Schroder gave a hoarse cry as he truly
understood
.

26

Mayer, the three other soldiers and the five Poles looked on in silence at the wretched scene unfolding in front of them. As Schroder cried out, covering his face with his hands, the soldiers shuffled awkwardly. The Metal Man stood impassive, only his head moving slightly, from side to side.

The woman holding the baby was still stood close to the Metal Man. She glared across at Mayer and the others, clearly communicating her hatred of the SS men. Now that she’d informed the camp’s other inmates that the Metal Man was a ‘friend of the Jew’, more people were appearing, circling around the group of outsiders which included the four soldiers. They were not afraid of them anymore – not with the Metal Man here.

He would protect them…

Mayer felt the hatred emanating from all the inmates stood gathered around. Even the few children had set, stern faces. The five Poles looked uneasily at one another, and then at the soldiers.

‘Best to get out of here, I think,’ muttered Mayer.

‘Yes,’ nodded Bach. ‘Let’s start heading – ’

One of the two Polish women – members of the group stood by the soldiers – suddenly spoke. Something loud and impassioned, in her own tongue. She addressed the inmates, looking around at them, and then pointing at the soldiers.

‘What is this?’ murmured Amsel.

‘She is saying how you save us from other soldier in the wood,’ explained Arnold.

He listened a little longer, and then continued –

‘She says you stop us from being shot. She says you are not like other German soldier. That you good men. That you also think camp like this is hell.’

Those inmates who were Polish now appeared confused. To those other inmates who didn’t speak that language, they attempted to explain what had just been said, in snatches of rough German presumably learnt during their time at this camp.

Mayer decided that it was time he said something –

‘You people,’ he began, loudly. ‘This… place… It has nothing to with us…’

Then his voice abruptly fell into silence. Whatever he said just seemed so… ineffectual – empty and hollow in contrast to the sheer horror of this camp…