Actors

By the time Martin reached the train station of his Heimatort (hometown), he had convinced himself that Jan Reißer had been telling the truth and that he genuinely was against the Nazis. It made much more sense that Hirt and Co thought Franz was a softie who didn't like and agree with human experiments than that he didn't agree with the system altogether. There was no need to "test" him. It would be pointless. As for the rest of the conversation, the one Reißer wanted to have, but Martin had stolen from him by chasing him out the door—they could continue it another time.

The change of heart—and the taming of his suspicions had occurred on the train ride. A young lad in his compartment was reading a Newspaper about a theater in Berlin that was soon to perform a show that had first aired years ago and been a great success. Something about a beautiful young woman—Martin hadn't cared to read the rest: it was a quote on the page that had caught his eye. The playwright of the piece, whose name he'd already forgotten—something like Liselotte or Caroline, had said the following words in an interview: In life, as also on stage, it's important to know that we aren't always acting. Sometimes, we're just...there. It's in moments like these that I change the script—when I feel like the actors aren't acting anymore but are living the character."

Martin was convinced that it wasn't a coincidence. Fate—or something similar, was telling him that his comrade wasn't acting.

There was no need to report Reißer.

Martin left the train with a smile on his face and a tune on his lips. He passed by a Kiosk and stopped to buy a fresh pack of cigarettes. "Ich nehm' noch die Tageszeitung obendrauf! (I'll take the newspaper too)". He'd said.

It hadn't been until he was mere minutes away from his great-grandfather's residence that he'd opened the newspaper and read the headlines.

***

"Verdammt nochmal! (German cussing)." Franz bellowed and threw his arm out in a wild gesture of exasperation. "Ich bin ein verdammter Idiot! Zur Hölle mit der Hoffnung—zur Hölle mit den Nationalsozialisten! Zur Hölle mit dem Hitler-Wichser! (more German cussing)"

"It's all my fucking fault," he kicked a chair over. "All of it!" He picked up the whiskey bottle to chuck it at the small window of the attic, but after a moment's consideration, he set it back down with a thud. "I can't do anything about it, either." He stopped flailing around and gently rested his knuckles on the smooth surface of his desk. His chest heaved as he fought for breath. The tantrum he'd been throwing had winded him. "I could have helped the Blumenfelds. If I wasn't such an asshole." He felt the urge to sit down but was too embarrassed to look at the chair he'd kicked over in anger, let alone touch it. "Don't look at me like that." He muttered toward the upturned piece of furniture, avoiding eye contact. "You're judging me, just like Marlene. She will be up here any second wondering what all this ruckus is about." Suddenly, his anger gave way to emptiness, and he sat on the floor facing the door.

"I'm not going to pick you up. Wichser." He spat at the chair lying next to him.

Franz lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply. After a few puffs he already felt better. More grounded. "I should never have," but he didn't finish his sentence because he raised the cigarette to his mouth again. "Maybe I'll set you on fire, then nobody will see how angry I got." He finally looked at his victim and smiled a sad and twisted smile. "If it's my last wish, I'll have you burnt before I die. There is no way that you're making it through this war alive if I don't." Franz laughed sharply and held a match out toward the chair, urging it to talk back and give him a reason—any reason really, to burn it.

As if Marlene could sense the looming disaster about to occur, there was a knock at the door. "Franz?" She pushed it open gently and stepped inside. The first thing she saw was her husband, unnaturally spread out on the floor, a cigarette dangling from his grinning lips, the upturned chair, the match in his right hand, and the half-empty whiskey bottle on the table. "What's going on here?" she asked, her voice stern.

"Ich hab' verschissen. (I fucked up)."

A second glance at the desk and the stack of letters and old photos gave Marlene all the background information she needed. He was upset about the Blumenfelds again. "We've been through this before, Franz. I was here alone; it would have been reckless to keep them here, especially because Abraham and you knew each other well."

"But they didn't come."

"And if they had?"

"Then we could have shot them. All of them."

"You're spiraling, darling." Marlene strode into the room and picked the whiskey glass off of the table, she swept the letters up and shoved them into the box which she closed. Then she stashed the whiskey back behind the door in a box Franz didn't know she knew existed.

He smiled at her as she flittered around the room and cleaned up after his mess. His eyes lingered on her shoulders, on her calves, on her ankles, then back up to her neck and her face alight with concentration and determination. "You are a wonderful woman, Marlene." He said with a small hiccup. "I am glad I married you."

"Thank you." She said with a quick glance at him.

"But I don't deserve you." He said. He let the smoke curl through the air. "I'm not a good husband, Marlene. I apologize for that. You should be with somebody else."

"With whom?" Marlene prompted with a raise of her eyebrows. "No one else in town has a smile like you."

"Nobody else has a tongue like me either," he responded thoughtfully, "if I cut it out, I would still raise my arm for the man who tells the lies. And if they chopped my arm off, I'd use the left one to salute. And when the English or the fucking French tear me apart limb for limb, my heart will still beat in the treacherous fucking beat of the German marches."

"Don't be so gruesome, Franz," Marlene said disapprovingly.

"Fuck me, Marlene," Franz said and suddenly swung himself onto his feet. "Not when you're drunk, Franz. You reek. When was the last time you took a bath?"

"You need another husband." He murmured, letting his head fall against her shoulder. "Someone who...I forgot what I wanted to say. Can you help me with the bath, Marlene?"

"Of course."

***

A few years later, Martin stood in that same room. Instead of letters, newspapers were sprawled out on his desk.