The Tragic Death of Jozef Schulz
by Berend ter Borg
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I can see you clearly now for the first time. I can see what you are. I
saw you many times the last few years, but always from the corners of my
eyes. Now I can see you in the face and I know that you are an insect,
that you are a fly, that you have six wings and six legs and
multi-faceted eyes, and no human features. But even in spite of that
you have something of a face, you have those fangs surrounding a crooked
mouth, and the facets of your eyes have a gleam in them, something that
can reflect what you think or feel. I suppose that you know already how
I will die, but I suppose I know as well. I'm just going to freeze to
death here. Who would have suspected a creature like you here. Do you
have any sympathy for who I am? I almost hope you do, and then I think I
see something in your eyes, in those facets, a gleam that is
particularly intense, and I dream of a weird curve in your rigid fangs.
I have seen your face, that strange face, before. I saw them in the
bullets and the explosions that menaced me, in the faces of the Russians
in the winter of 1941, those Asian faces, and in the shape of their
tanks. I've seen them, more recently, in the coats of arms that the
SchutzStaffel-soldiers carry on their uniforms. I killed Jews once, at
Kiev in the field of Babi Jar, it cost me no emotions, I'd learned to
suppress them. I saw the expressions on their faces and I knew they saw
you. I've dreamed about you, and I started to wait for you. I feared you
first and then I changed. You are a friend of mine, I love you, I do.
I'd have intercourse with you if I knew how and if my limbs weren't so
frozen. I'm not afraid of anything anymore, the only thing I fear is to
lose you, to never see you in the eyes again. You were my lover,
intended for me from the womb until this moment
and to lose you scares me more than anything. Can you tell me what will
be? We gave that man a ride, we helped, we looked at him and loved him
and he stabbed us through the eyes, through both of them, and then we
were blind. As blind giants we have raged across this continent, this
continent on the edge of which I lie freezing. Will we be punished for
what we have done? Or be punished for who we are? Or is there some crazy
god, some supreme fascist, who will reward us? Is there hope for me or
any man? I have gone all the way, crossed all the great rivers. I come
from the shores of the Rhine, but I crossed the Seine, the Elbe, the
Danube, the Dnjepr and even the Volga although I had to flee again. Are
you the boat that will carry me over this one? Is there a horror even
bigger than losing, adoredgod, great and horrible fly. I am a fly as
well, even though I'm adorned with a uniform. Where will I go? I can
feel you all over me now, you rip me apart. You began at my belly, you
ate all my organs, the stomach to begin and ending at my liver. Then you
ate up into my heart and lungs, then you ate the inside of my spine and
into my brain. Then you shattered all my bones and enjoyed my skin as
desert. The experience delights me, it turns me on and makes me horny
for more. I regret that you can only eat me once and that you have to
desert me now. Whereto I don't know. I love you, and leave you in
anguish.
Sergeant Jozef Schulz went missing during the battle of Stalingrad,
during a bombardment by Soviet artillery. He has never been sighted
again.
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