Will, стр. 91

‘I knew Lode’s old man had Jews tucked away. Of course he did. He was in it for the money. They were his best friends, those diamond traders. He saw it as an “opportunity”. He said that before the war even started. I knew all about it, but I kept my mouth shut. More to the point, and I repeat, without me, you and your mate, the good-looking butcher’s boy, would be rotting away in a camp now, more dead than alive, or already in a hole in the ground. You get me?’

‘Let go of my coat, Omer.’

‘Let me in. That’s all I ask. Or are you too ashamed? Has the butcher still got a dirty Jew hidden in here paying with sparklers, one who doesn’t know it’s all over?’

‘It’s all over for you. You’re wanted.’

‘And you? What have you done? What’s on your conscience? You’re a two-faced bastard and you know it!’

I push the door open and lead him to the former hiding place of Chaim Lizke, the Jew who got away. He looks around and asks what all the papers are.

‘Poems,’ I answer. ‘I come here to write.’

Omer forgets his own fear and despair for a moment and roars with laughter. ‘You write poems? Who do you think you are? Everything’s fucked, there’s hardly a wall left standing, it’s raining bombs, everyone’s living like rats in a hole, and his lordship writes poetry. He sits down here with a peacock quill and an inkpot and worships his Muse like a born pen-pusher. Is that what you have to do to keep from going mad?’

‘Sit down,’ I say calmly, but I’m already picturing him hanging from a hook by his tethered feet, bleeding into a pan like a slaughtered pig, like Mussolini and his lover, like useless meat.

Omer slumps down on a chair. He’s already forgotten his laughter, it’s all melancholy and self-pity again. ‘My mother’s house got hit last week. I’d been hiding there for months. It took our mum too. Blew her head right off… Do you know what seeing something like that does to you? Your own mother?’ Snot is running out of his nose. He’s not even a caged bear any more, a St Bernard in the snow with a broken leg, unable to do anything beyond softly whimpering.

‘I’ve got gold… If you help me it’s yours. I have to get away from here. I have to go to Spain. I’ve got friends there. You and your mate can arrange documents. Your station is as corrupt as anything, isn’t it? What you did for all those Yids. Can’t you do it for me too? I was born and raised here and I protected you, I protected you… Without me you were…’

‘There’s a blanket over there,’ I say. ‘It gets awfully cold in here.’

Lode laughs, ‘You’re mad.’

I pull out the key.

‘You say you come here to write poems?’

When we enter the hiding place, Omer is nowhere to be seen. I look around, then hear a vague snoring in the dark.

‘Shit,’ Lode whispers. ‘Who’s that?’

Completely exhausted, the lawyer is lying under a blanket and a bunch of old newspapers, like a tramp sleeping rough.

‘Mr Verschueren?’

Omer shoots up as if waking from a bad dream.

‘Leave me in peace! Bunch of bastards!’ he shouts automatically.

Lode looks at me. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘Hold him down,’ I say.

‘But why…’

Omer lashes out, but when he threatens to scramble up, Lode shoves him back down again. I go over to the table with my poems on it and find what I’m looking for in the cutlery drawer.

‘Hold him down on the ground!’

Omer roars, trying to scratch Lode in the face.

I use the hammer Chaim Lizke pulled out that last time to defend himself against us to cave in the lawyer’s skull: bringing it down three or four times in quick succession. Once narrowly missing Lode’s ear, but effortlessly avoiding Omer’s flailing arms. He keeps shuddering; I keep hitting the side of his bald head, now more a bowl of red porridge than a skull.

‘Stop…’ Lode says. His face is covered in blood. Mine too probably.

The hammer is sticky in my hand.

‘You know he needed killing,’ I pant. ‘He couldn’t just die in bed, not him. You agreed with me.’

Lode stares into space.

I search Omer Verschueren’s pockets.

I find a gold lady’s watch.