The Third Reich Read online

  “Actually, we were.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “If you were really in my room you must have seen the game board. It was right there.”

  “I saw it. A strange map. I don’t like it. It smells bad.”

  “The map or the room?”

  “The map. And the pieces. Actually, everything in your room smells bad. Doesn’t anyone dare to go in and clean? No. Maybe it’s your friend’s fault. Maybe it’s his burns that stink.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The bad smell comes from outside. Your sewers aren’t made for the summer season. Ingeborg said so herself: after seven at night the streets reek. The smell comes from the clogged drains!”

  “From the Municipal Sewage Treatment Plant. Yes, it’s possible. In any case, I don’t like it when you go up to your room with El Quemado. Do you know what people would say about my hotel if some tourist saw you scurrying along the hallways with that hunk of charred flesh? I don’t care what the staffwhispers. The guests are a different story. I have to be more careful there. I can’t jeopardize the reputation of the hotel just because you’re bored.”

  “I’m not bored. Quite the contrary, in fact. If you’d rather, I can bring the board downstairs and set it up in the restaurant. Of course then everyone would see El Quemado and that would be bad for business. And I’d have a hard time concentrating. I don’t like to play in front of too many people.”

  “Are you afraid they’d think you were crazy?”

  “Well, they spend all afternoon playing cards. My game is more complicated, of course. You’ve got to be a risk taker, you need somebody with a cool and calculating mind. It’s a hard game to master. Every few months new rules and variants are added. People write about it. You wouldn’t understand. I mean, you wouldn’t understand the dedication.”

  “Does El Quemado fit the mold?”

  “I think he does. He’s coolheaded and not afraid to take risks. Though he’s no strategist.”

  “I suspected as much. On the inside he must be a lot like you, I suppose.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m a happier person.”

  “I don’t see anything happy about shutting yourself up in a room for hours when you could be out at a club or reading on the terrace or watching TV. The idea of you and El Quemado roaming around my hotel sets me on edge. I can’t imagine you sitting still in your room. You’re always moving!”

  “We move the counters. And we make mathematical calculations . . .”

  “Meanwhile, the family reputation of my hotel rots like your friend’s body.”

  “Whose body?”

  “The drowned man, Charly’s.”

  “Oh, Charly. What does your husband think of all this?”

  “My husband is sick, and if he found out he’d kick you out of the hotel.”

  “I think he already knows. In fact, I’m sure he does; he’s no fool, your husband.”

  “It would kill him.”

  “What’s wrong with him exactly? He’s quite a bit older than you, isn’t he? And he’s tall and thin. And he doesn’t have much hair, does he?”

  “I don’t like it when you talk that way.”

  “The thing is, I think I’ve seen him.”

  “Your parents were very fond of him, I remember.”

  “No, I’m talking about this season. A little while ago. When he was supposedly in bed, down with a fever, among other things.”

  “At night?”

  “Yes.”

  “In his pajamas?”

  “Wearing a bathrobe, I’d say.”

  “Impossible. What color was the bathrobe?”

  “Black. Or dark red.”

  “Sometimes he gets up and takes a walk around the hotel. Through the kitchen and the service areas. He’s always concerned about quality and making sure that everything is clean.”

  “I didn’t see him in the hotel.”

  “Then you didn’t see my husband.”

  “Does he know that you and I . . . ?”

  “Of course. We tell each other everything . . . What’s happened between us is only a game, Udo, and I think it’s about time to wrap it up. It could end up becoming as obsessive as this thing you’re playing with El Quemado. By the way, what’s it called?”

  “El Quemado?”

  “No, the game.”

  “Third Reich.”

  “What a horrible name.”

  “Perhaps . . .”

  “So who’s winning? You?”

  “Germany.”

  “What country are you? Germany, of course.”

  “Yes, Germany, of course, silly.”

  Spring 1941. I don’t know El Quemado’s name. And I don’t care. Just as I don’t care what country he’s from. Wherever it is, it doesn’t matter. He knows Frau Else’s husband and that does matter; it gives El Quemado a previously unsuspected range of movement. Not only does he fraternize with the Wolf and the Lamb, he also has a taste for the more complex (one supposes) conversation of Frau Else’s husband. And yet why do they talk on the beach, in the middle of the night, like two conspirators, rather than meeting at the hotel? The setting seems better suited to plotting than to leisurely conversation. And what do they talk about? The subject of their encounters—I haven’t the slightest doubt—is me. Thus, Frau Else’s husband has news of me from two sources: El Quemado tells him about the match and his wife tells him about our flirtation. I’m the one at a disadvantage; I don’t know anything about him, except that he’s sick. But I can guess a few things. He wants me to leave; he wants me to lose the match; he doesn’t want me to sleep with his wife. The Eastern offensive continues. The armored wedge (four corps) meets and pierces the Russian front in Smolensk, then goes on to take Moscow, which falls in an Exploitation move. In the south I conquer Sevastopol after a bloody battle, and from Rostov– Kharkov I advance toward the Elista–Don line. The Red Army counterattacks all along the Kalinin– Moscow– Tula line, but I manage to fend it off. The defeat of Moscow entails a gain of ten BRP for the Germans—this according to the Beyma variant. Under the old rules I would have raked in fifteen and left El Quemado not on the verge of collapse but utterly routed. In any case, the Russian losses are heavy: in addition to the BRP cost of the Offensive Option to try to retake Moscow, there are the troops defeated in the effort, their quick replacement hampered by a lack of BRP. In sum, on the Central front alone, El Quemado has lost more than fifty BRP. The situation around Leningrad is unchanged; the line holds firm in Tallinn and in hexes G42, G43, and G44. (Questions that I don’t ask El Quemado, though I’d like to: Does Frau Else’s husband visit him every night? What does he know about war games? Has Frau Else’s husband used the hotel master key to come into my bedroom and poke around? Note to self: scatter talcum powder—I don’t have any—around the door, anything to detect intrusions. Is Frau Else’s husband, by chance, a fellow gamer? And what the hell is wrong with him? Does he have AIDS?) On the Western front, Operation Sea Lion is carried out successfully. The second phase—invasion and conquest of the island— will take place in the summer. For now, the hardest work is done: a beachhead has been established in England, protected by a powerful air fleet stationed in Normandy. As expected, the En glish fleet managed to intercept me in the channel. After a long battle in which I gambled the whole German fleet, part of the Italian fleet, and more than half of my airborne units, I managed to disembark in Hex L21. Perhaps too cautiously, I kept my parachute corps in reserve, which means that the beachhead isn’t quite as liquid as I’d like (impossible to route my Strategic Redeployment in that direction), but even so, it’s a favorable position. At the end of the turn, the hexes occupied by the British Army are the following: the Fifth and the Twelfth Infantry in London; the Thirteenth Armored Corps in Southampton– Portsmouth; the Second Infantry in Birmingham; five air factors in Manchester–Sheffield. And replacement units in Rosyth, J25, L23, and Plymouth. The poor English troops can see my units (the Fourth and the Tenth Infantry) from their hex-dunes
and their hex-trenches, and they’re frozen in place. The long-anticipated day has come. Paralysis extends through the playing pieces to El Quemado’s fingers: the Seventh Army disembarking in England! I try not to laugh, but I can’t help myself. El Quemado doesn’t take it amiss. Very well planned! he acknowledges, though in his tone I note a hint of mockery. Honestly, I must say that as an opponent he never loses his cool. Completely absorbed in the game, he plays as if overcome by the sadness of real war. And finally, something odd to ponder: before El Quemado left I went out on the balcony to get some fresh air, and whom did I see on the Paseo Marítimo talking to the Wolf and the Lamb, though admittedly escorted by the hotel watchman? Frau Else.

  SEPTEMBER 10

  Today, at ten in the morning, I was woken by a phone call giving me the news. They had found Charly’s body and wanted me to come to the police station to identify it. Shortly afterward, as I was having breakfast, the manager of the Costa Brava appeared, exuberant and brimming with excitement.

  “At last! We have to go as soon as possible; the body leaves today for Germany. I just talked to the German consulate. They’re efficient people, I must say.”

  At twelve we were at a building on the edge of town—nothing like the one in the dream I’d had a few days ago—where a young man from the Red Cross was waiting for us with the representative from Navy Headquarters, whom I already knew. Inside, in a dirty, smelly waiting room, the German official was reading the Spanish papers.

  “Udo Berger, friend of the deceased,” the manager of the Costa Brava introduced me.

  The official got up, shook my hand, and asked me if we could proceed to the identification.

  “We have to wait for the police,” explained Mr. Pere.

  “But aren’t we at the police station?” asked the official.

  Mr. Pere nodded and shrugged. The official sat down again. Soon afterward the rest of us—talking all at once and in whispers—followed his lead.

  Half an hour later, the policemen arrived. There were three of them and they didn’t seem to have any idea why we were waiting. Again, it was the manager of the Costa Brava who took it upon himself to explain, after which they had us follow them up and down corridors and stairs until we came to a rectangular white room—underground, or so I thought—where Charly’s body lay.

  “Is this him?”

  “Yes, it’s him,” I said, Mr. Pere said, everyone said.

  With Frau Else on the roof:

  “Is this your hideaway? The view is nice. You can pretend you’re queen of the town.”

  “I don’t play pretend.”

  “Actually it’s nicer now than in August. Less stark. If the place were mine, I think I’d bring up some potted plants, a touch of green. It would be cozier that way.”

  “I don’t want to be cozy. I like it the way it is. Anyway, it’s not my hideaway.”

  “Oh, I know, it’s the only place where you can be alone.”

  “Not even that.”

  “Well, I followed you because I need to talk to you.”

  “But I don’t want to talk to you, Udo. Not now. Later, if you like, I’ll come down to your room.”

  “And will we make love?”

  “Who knows?”

  “You and I have never done it, you realize. We kiss and kiss and we still can’t make up our minds to go to bed together. We’re behaving like children!”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll happen when the conditions are right.”

  “What conditions do you mean?”

  “Attraction, friendship, the urge to escape the unescapable. Everything has to be spontaneous.”

  “I’d do it this minute. Time flies, don’t you know?”

  “I want to be alone now, Udo. Also, I’m a little afraid of becoming emotionally dependent on a person like you. Sometimes I think you have no sense at all and other times I think the opposite. I see you as a tragic soul. Deep down you must be quite unbalanced.”

  “You think I’m still a child . . .”

  “You idiot, I don’t even remember you as a boy. Were you ever one?”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  “Of course not. I have a vague recollection of your parents and that’s all. The way you remember tourists is different from the way you remember normal people. It’s like snippets of film, no, not film, photographs, snapshots, thousands of snapshots, and all of them blank.”

  “I don’t know whether the silly things you say make me feel better or terrify me . . . Last night, as I was playing with El Quemado, I saw you. You were with the Wolf and the Lamb. Would you say that they’re normal people, the kind you’ll remember in the normal way, not as blanks?”

  “They were asking about you. I told them to leave.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Why did it take you so long?”

  “We were talking about other things.”

  “What things? About me? About what I was doing?”

  “We talked about things that are none of your business. Nothing to do with you.”

  “I don’t know whether to believe you or not, but thanks anyway. I wouldn’t have liked it if they’d come up to bother me.”

  “What are you? Just a war games player?”

  “Of course not. I’m a young person who’s trying to have a good time . . . a healthy good time. And I’m a German.”

  “And what does it mean to be a German?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Something difficult, that’s for sure. Something that we’ve gradually forgotten.”

  “Me too?”

  “All of us. Though in your case, maybe a little less so.”

  “I should take that as a compliment, I suppose.”

  I spent the afternoon at the Andalusia Lodge. Now that the tourists are gone the bar is gradually returning to its true sinister self. The floor is dirty, sticky, covered with cigarette butts and napkins, and there are plates, cups, bottles, and the remains of sandwiches stacked on the bar, everything jumbled together in a strangely desolate and peaceful tableau. The Spanish kids are still glued to the VCR, and sitting at a table near them the owner reads the sports page. Of course everyone knows that Charly’s body has been found, and although for the first few minutes they keep a certain respectful distance, soon the owner comes over to offer me his condolences: “Life is short,” he says without further ado as he serves me my coffee and sits down next to me. Surprised, I muttered something vague. “Now you’ll go home and everything will start over again.” I nodded. Everyone else began to pretend they were watching the movie but they were really listening to what I had to say. Leaning up against the other side of the bar, with her forehead in her hand, an older woman was staring at me. “Your girlfriend must be waiting for you. Life goes on and you have to live it as best you can.” I asked who the woman was. The owner smiled. “That’s my mother. The poor thing is lost. She doesn’t like it when the summer ends.” I pointed out that she was quite young. “Yes, she had me when she was fifteen. I’m the oldest of ten. The poor thing is worn-out.” I said she didn’t look her age. “She works in the kitchen. All day she makes sandwiches, beans with sausage, paella, fried eggs and potatoes, pizza.” I’ll have to come and try the paella, I said. The owner blinked. His eyes were wet. Next summer, I added. “It isn’t what it used to be,” he said gloomily. “Not half as good as it was before.” Before what? “Back in the old days.” Oh, I said, that’s normal, maybe you’ve had it too often and you can’t appreciate it anymore. “Maybe.” The woman, still in the same position, pouted in a way that might have been for my sake but might just as easily have been a commentary on life and time. Behind her sad and wrinkled smile I thought I glimpsed a kind of fierce excitement. The owner seemed to meditate for an instant and then, with obvious effort, he got up and offered me a drink, “on the house,” which I turned down since I hadn’t finished my coffee yet. As he passed the bar he turned and, with his eyes on me, kissed his mother on the forehead. He came back with a cognac in his hand, looking noticeably more animated
. I asked what had happened to the Wolf and the Lamb. They were looking for jobs. Doing what, he didn’t know, anything, construction or whatever. The subject wasn’t to his liking. I hope they find something they like, I said. He doubted they would. He had hired the Wolf a few seasons ago and he couldn’t remember a worse waiter. He lasted only a month. “Anyway, it’s better to be out looking for work, even if no one has any intention of giving it to you, than to bore yourself like a pig.” It was better, I agreed. At least it showed a more positive attitude. “Now that you’re leaving, the one who’ll be bored as a dog is El Quemado.” (Why “dog” and not “pig”? The owner knew how to call things by their names.) We’re good friends, I said, but I doubt it’ll matter that much to him. “I didn’t mean that,” said the owner, his eyes glinting. “I meant the game.” I looked at him without saying anything, the bastard had his hands under the table and was making motions like someone masturbating. Whatever he was talking about, it amused him. “Your game, El Quemado is excited about it. I’ve never seen him so interested in anything.” I cleared my throat and said yes. The truth is that I was surprised that El Quemado had gone around talking about our match. The movie-watching kids were giving us sidelong glances, hardly bothering to hide it anymore. I had the feeling that they were waiting, menacingly, for something to happen. “El Quemado is a smart kid, though he keeps to himself, because of the burns, of course.” The owner’s voice had dropped to a barely audible murmur. At the other end of the bar, his mother or whoever she was me gave me a fierce smile. It’s only natural, I said. “Your game is a kind of chess, a sport, isn’t it?” Something like that. “And it has to do with war, with World War II, doesn’t it?” Yes, that’s right. “And El Quemado is losing, or at least that’s what you think, isn’t it? Because it’s all very confusing.” Yes, in fact. “Well, the match will never be finished, which is all for the best.” I asked why he thought it was better for the match to remain unfinished. “For the sake of humanity!” The owner gave a start and then smiled reassuringly. “If I were you I wouldn’t get him upset.” I chose to sit expectantly, in silence. “I don’t think he likes Germans.” Charly liked El Quemado, I remembered, and he claimed it was mutual. Or maybe it was Hanna who said that. Suddenly I was depressed and I felt like going back to the Del Mar, packing my bags, and leaving immediately. “The burns, you know, were inflicted on purpose, it was no accident.” Had it been Germans? Was that why he didn’t like Germans? The owner, hunched over so that his chin almost grazed the red plastic surface of the table, said, “The German side,” and I realized that he was talking about the game, Third Reich. El Quemado must be crazy, I exclaimed. In response I felt myself pierced by the resentful gazes of the movie watchers. It was just a game, that’s all, and the man was talking as if Gestapo counters (ha-ha) were about to stomp on the face of the Allied player. “I don’t like to see him suffer.” He’s not suffering, I said, he’s having fun. And he’s using his brain! “That’s the worst of it, the kid thinks too much.” The woman behind the bar shook her head and then dug in her ear. I thought about Ingeborg. Had we really had drinks here and talked about our love in this dirty, smelly place? It’s no surprise that she got tired of me. My poor, faraway Ingeborg. Every corner of the bar was steeped in misfortune, the inescapable. The owner screwed up the left side of his face: he drew his cheek up until it hid his eye. I didn’t remark at his dexterity. The owner didn’t seem offended; beneath it all, he was in a good mood. “The Nazis,” he said. “The real Nazi soldiers on the loose around the world.” Uh-huh, I said. I lit a cigarette. Little by little, this was all beginning to seem otherworldly. Then was it Nazis who were responsible for his burns, was that the story? And where had this happened, and when and why? The owner gave me a superior look before replying that El Quemado, in some hazy distant past, had been a soldier, “the kind of soldier who has to fight tooth and nail.” Infantry, I deduced. Immediately, with a smile on my lips, I asked whether El Quemado was Jewish or Russian, but such subtleties were beyond the owner. He said: “No one crosses him, the very thought of it petrifies them” (he must be talking about the louts at the Andalusia Lodge). “You, for example, have you ever felt his arms?” No, not me. “I have,” said the owner in a sepulchral voice. And then he added: “He spent last summer working here, in the kitchen, it was his own idea, so I wouldn’t lose customers, you know, tourists don’t want to see a face like that, especially when they’re drinking.” I said that it wasn’t that simple; tastes differ, as everyone knows. The owner shook his head. His eyes shone with a malicious light. I’ll never set foot in this dive again, I thought. “I would have liked him to stay on here, I have a lot of respect for him, that’s why I’m happy that the game will end in a draw, I’d hate to see him get in trouble.” What kind of trouble was he talking about? I asked. The owner, as if admiring the scenery, stared for a long time at his mother, the bar, the shelves of dusty bottles, the soccer club posters. “The real problem is when a person can’t keep a promise,” he said thoughtfully. What kind of promise? The light in the owner’s eyes suddenly dimmed. I admit that for an instant I was afraid he would cry. I was wrong. The stubborn bastard laughed and waited, like an old cat, fat and evil. Is this something to do with my dead friend? I ventured carefully. With my dead friend’s girlfriend? With one hand on his stomach, the owner exclaimed: “Oh, I don’t know, I really don’t know, but it’s cracking me up.” I didn’t understand what he meant and I was quiet. Soon I would have to meet El Quemado at the entrance to the hotel, and for the first time the prospect made me somewhat uneasy. The counter, dimly lit by some yellow hanging lamps, was empty; the woman had gone. You know El Quemado, tell me something about him. “Impossible, impossible,” murmured the owner. Through the partially closed windows, the night and the damp began to creep in. Outside, on the terrace, only shadowy figures remained, swept occasionally by the headlights of cars turning offthe Paseo toward the center of town. Glumly, I imagined myself searching for the well-hidden road to France, far from this town and vacation days. “Impossible, impossible,” he again murmured sadly, hunching in on himself as if he were suddenly very cold. At least tell me where El Quemado is from, for Christ’s sake. One of the moviewatching kids glanced over his shoulder at our table and said he’s a ghost. The owner gazed at the boy with pity. “Now he’ll feel empty, but he’ll be in peace.” Where is he from? I asked again. The movie-watching kid stared at me with an obscene smile. From here.