I know the report from the interior minister, I said. That imbecile from PreuBens, said Rainer. But he said the truth. He said what we already knew. In the summer of 1931 the communists killed more of us than we did of all our enemies on this earth, and there are many. Do you know the face of a communist leaping to kill you? I do, Dieter. He's more ferocious than we are. He believes he has more reasons and -- above all -- better reasons than we do. That makes men kill. The surer one is of one being right, the surer he is in killing. And they feel chosen by history. They are the German worker's movement. They are the ones who will feed the millions of unemployed who are idle, who maraud hungry through our streets. Worse yet: they've been convinced. They are the unity of Germany and Russia, the great front against the capitalism of private property. They even claim to defend the Jews and they hate them more than we do because there is no hate worse than that inside, one a damned race has for itself. They have agile deputies, serpents that attack and poison. That pestilent Remmele, for whom we've reserved a bullet, shouted in the Reichstag: "We are the winners of tomorrow. And the question is no longer who will best whom. That question has been decided". No, no, never! That question is decided today in Germany's streets. Have you read what they promise? Work day of seven hours, equal salaries for everyone, four day work week. They want a nation of idlers, of loafers to raise a broken country. Even the Jew Trotsky praised the Führer. He is not a "killer of Jews", he said. "He's the supreme enemy of the world's bourgeoisie". Röhm vomited in rage and disgust on finding out. He harangued us like a great army. Like men in the middle of the most decisive of battles. And he signaled the horizon of our destiny: "Either the soviet star or the swastika." And here you are, dear friend, asking yourself about being. Or don't you believe that it is the destiny of being what is being played over in this war, today, in the bloody streets of German cities?

Rainer had been living for the past year in an unthinkable place, or perhaps the most to be expected of all. He had rented Hannah's attic. "I hate to admit it", he said. "But my blood burns when I catch the smell the Jewess left between these walls". The place had some inconveniences. He lived between Marburg and Freiburg. But Rainer lived in all Germany, given that in all its territory his war was fought, that of his own kind, the SA. It was in the mystic attic of the absent Jew that his confessions reached further than before. We were eating and drinking in a cold and rosy afternoon. Nothing special: beer, sausages, potatoes. Some wine afterwards. Rainer was one of those blond, pure and stout Aryans that blush as soon as alcohol enters their blood.

It was my question that took everything to an extreme and it was my question that did not surprise him, instead he seemed to enjoy it. An opportunity, he discerned, to narrate his true deeds.

How many communists have you already killed?

He was in his brown uniform, his cap, the armband with the swastika, and cartridge belt. He took out a pistol and laid it on the table.

It's a Luger, he said.

I know what it is. I inherited one from my father. He used it in the Great War.

I also use it in a war. And it's even bigger than the one that liberated your father.

How many communists have you already killed with that Luger?

One does not count the dead in a war, not even one's own.

One, did you kill one?

Of course.

Labels: The Shadow of Heidegger

¶ 5:58 AM