Page 75 of Besieger
“The whole building is abandoned,” Erik was saying, still leaning against the door. “The people might come back or they might not. You can take clothes from any of the rooms here, or you can rummage through the other flats. There is bound to be something that will keep you warm if you are caught in a blizzard.”
“Is that how you found your uniform?”
Victor had debated for a long time if he should ask. It had been bothering him since the first night. He was not sure if he was ready for the answer, but he needed to know the truth—whether this man was part of the Reich, or merely a passing mirage. Erik raised his eyes to him, studying his face and then the wounds before he looked down at the clothes he was wearing. Finally, he forced his face into a sombre mask.
“What gave me away?”
“You are a foreigner. And even if you were not, your colouring is wrong forthatdivision. You don’t have any weapons on you either.” Victor raised his good arm and pointed to where a holster would have been across Erik’s chest. He bent some of his fingers, keeping the index extended towards the man. His wrist jerked upwards, an imaginary shot fired.
“Ah,” Erik admitted defeat, and began patting his pockets. He took out a lighter; it glinted gold as it flipped between his fingers before vanishing again. “It is always easier to travel when you look as though you belong. Like you are important.” He did not wait for Victor to contradict him. “When you leave, travel north. The further, the better.”
“And you?”
“We will go home and carry on with our lives as we always have. Perhaps one day, when the world has calmed, we will come back.”
Victor wanted to ask wherehomewas but the question never took root on his tongue. It frightened him what awaited in the skeleton of the home he had left behind; whether the bombs had redrawn the borders of the neighbourhood of his childhood, his workplace, the buildings he had studied, the restaurants and shops he had once frequented. Many nights ago, in another life, he had assured Tobias that Germany would rebuild. That they would rise from the ashes, stronger, better. Now, nestled between the belongings and bedcovers of the dead, the abandoned and the banished, Victor no longer believed in this future.
He drifted to sleep under Erik’s watchful gaze—for once the night was still and the ground felt firm beneath him—and woke up alone. Erik and the other man were gone. Their absence was almost a blessing, and still he called Erik’s name, hoping for ananswer and dreading it. The room next door was silent, the floorboards lay firm in their silence. His friend was gone, the only sign he had ever been there was a pack of British cigarettes (probably stolen) and a lighter on the nightstand. The lighter was made of gold, etched with flowers, and gave a soft click when Victor flipped it open, letting the flame illuminate the barren room. He could trade it for enough Marks for food and petrol, steal a car and drive past the abandoned checkpoints and ditch it at the border.
North, and further north—he would walk and hitchhike and settle down. In school he had once studied an old map of Europe, tracing the continent, mesmerized by the shapes the earth had taken when the plates had shuffled and the oceans receded. Italy resembled a fairytale boot, kicking the islands around it like pebbles. But it was Scandinavia that always caught his eye and imagination, the coastline arching like a crouching tiger, ready to pounce on its prey. He would fit there, in Denmark or Norway, disappear into the crowd, his only giveaway the awkward stutter of the new words and phrases.
Scavenging what little he could find, Victor put on layers of shirts and jumpers, hid his still-bruised hand in ill-fitting gloves. He put on the only pair of shoes whose soles were not holed, tied them at his ankles with string. When he looked at his reflection in the broken mirror, he snorted. Before Erik had found him, Victor was a man in his twenty-ninth year, of tall stature, a broad, firm chest and arms meant for labour. Now his face was pale and worn out by worry and lies. Erik had nursed him back to full health, the tears and bites left by the mongrel had healed, leaving his skin now smooth and pink. The attack was all but a distant memory, a nightmare lost among the many others Victor would carry with him after the war. The mismatched clothes made him look like a woolly beast, his dark-blond hair hidden beneath a knitted cap and scarf, in need of a shave and a haircut. The light reflected and bounced off his pale-blue eyes in an eerie glow, like an animal caught in a snare. Every time he turned his head,examining his reflection, his eyes seemed to shift—amber, green, then blue, and back to amber. The edges of the world were no longer blurred; Victor saw its lines cleaner, sharper.
VICTOR, 1978
In the years after the war Victor collected travel documents and passports, all bearing his photograph under the names of different men. Victor Berg was a hired hand in the fields who watched the cattle graze, and huddled for warmth in the hills of Sondrup Bakker. Ert Agnarsson worked as a carpenter for a small village near Dragør. Klaus Mikkelsen married a dancer in Gävle, only to suddenly disappear, many years into the marriage once people began noticing how he aged slower than his wife. Lars Eriksson crossed the gulf and settled in Turku.
He stayed a few years at a time, never fully putting down roots, forming fleeting friendships, reluctantly laying out his few belongings in the spaces he inhabited. Part of him enjoyed arranging travel plans and securing new accommodations; he welcomed the change of scenery, the invention of a new identity, choosing a new name, starting over like a folk hero, a spy or an adventurer from a children’s book. He made sure to leave only vague traces of his stays in each city and country he went to, picked up bits of the language, and learnt a new trade. From time to time he made brief trips to Germany, avoiding the big cities, and keeping to the countryside and farmland.
The more time passed, the emptier he felt, drained and consumed with hunger he could never sate. Victor howled with need, wolfed down his meals, tore at the flesh with human hands that trembled and with teeth still aligned in a straight row.
That winter of 1944, while wandering through the new landscape designed by the military planes and bombers, Victor stopped aging. At first, he did not notice it. With each new name and city, he collected stamps and visas, stoic photographs of himself in sepia and black and white. Victor let himself be seduced by the lives he invented for himself, falling in and out of love with strangers, never allowing for an entanglement to take root and fester. After all, it was easier to feign ignorance and lie about his age, pretending to be younger, than having to explain what stirred and rose in his chest with each waxing of the moon.
His first moon hurt. His hands, so recently healed, had started to tremble, the tips of his fingers split as his nails turned into claws. Bones cracked and reformed in a bigger, stronger shape. He tore at his clothes, already wet from the blood and sweat that seeped out of every pore, the skin burning up, his eyesight pulsing. His gums bled, the sides of his mouth tore as if someone had run a blade, carving him from ear to ear. Victor howled in agony, crawling on all fours, giving in, shedding what little human thought he had left.
In the morning he woke up naked, his limbs aching and bruised, caked in mud, slime, and blood. His tongue was thick with the taste of flesh, raw and twitching. Wheezing and shivering, Victor found his way to his lodgings, cursing the brightness of the sun, which hid nothing of the creature he now hosted within.
There were stories, local legends and folklore, of what he had become.Wolflingsandwargs, men who donned the skins of wolves and hunted in a pack. Wolves, big as mountains, that would devour the sun and then the moon. Fenrir, the destroyer of worlds.Vargúlfr, varulv, varkolak. Shapeshifters and lycanthropes. Of all the words, Victor favoured the German one best. Fate had played a cruel joke on him, it had branded him for abandoning his home and brother, forcing him to achieve hisgrandfather’s final and most desperate dream. His grandson, Victor Schwarzschild, had become aWerwolf.
He had survived the beast’s attack only to become one himself.
VICTOR, 2017
Parking at the half-empty street, Victor left the car unlocked and walked the few steps to the shop, balancing the trays. The pastries warmed the metal nicely over his palms, helping him shake the drowsiness that had enveloped him on the drive over. He had spent another night of fright and nightmares of drowning. The terrors were a never-ending cycle which not even the moon could banish. Each night he tossed and turned, riding the waves until he was washed ashore into consciousness. Back to the mundane normality of life.
He could hear the occasional bark of a stray dog or the starting of a car engine, people on their way to work at this ungodly hour. At this time of the year, in the dead of winter, the sunrise came late. The city stirred and woke up in the darkness, societal requirements showing no patience for the sun.
The shop’s doors opened with ease; the little brass bell’s ring was drowned out by the music blaring at full volume. Victor looked at the machines buzzing and grinding, steam rose from a pot, a timer beeped desperately for attention. The only lights in the dive were the spots over the bar and the glow behind the glass of the empty display. The shadows and sounds bounced off the form of a man, dancing with his back to the door and to Victor. The air was poisonous with the smell of caffeine, and Victor felt his pulse quicken with every breath. The smell made him want to sneeze and gag, too strong for his sharpened senses.
Lost in the music, Stefan rocked back and forth, using the handle of a mop as a guitar. His head bobbed in a frenzy, the long dark red hair swayed, the faster he moved. If Victor concentrated, he could make out the sound of a voice, practically yelling the lyrics back at the speakers overhead. The music picked up, a woman joined the vocals of the male singer, and a riff raced towards the climax of the song. Stefan slammed the wooden handle on the floor and in a single motion dropped to his knees, grinding his pelvis and torso against it. His back arched and he gripped the mop with both hands, now thrusting against it.
It was five in the morning and the trays were beginning to weigh down Victor’s patience. Taking a slow, deep breath, he crossed the tiled floor, careful not to brush against the owner of the café. The music was still going as Victor started placing the pastries and croissants on the display, arranging them from memory.
“You are early,” Stefan said, out of breath from the floor. His face was flushed, sweat formed around the eyepatch that covered his left eye and cheekbone.
“I am on time,” Victor answered flatly, sliding the glass door of the display shut.
Stefan huffed and finally stood up. He did it in the same fluid motion that had got him down in the first place. He was tall, but Victor towered over him by a few centimetres. The t-shirt—slightly drenched in sweat around the neck and back—was tight around Stefan’s firm, muscular frame. In physical strength Victor could probably best him man to man: his chest and shoulders were broader than Stefan’s. Years of working in fields and farms had helped him retain and build on his muscle mass.
