The Kindly Ones

This part of the zoo was completely flooded: the bombardments had ripped open the Aquarium and the fish tanks had burst, pouring out tons of water, strewing the lanes with dead fish, crayfish, crocodiles, jellyfish, a panting dolphin that, lying on its side, contemplated me with a worried eye. I waded forward, around the baboon island where babies clutched with minuscule hands the stomachs of their panicking mothers, I wove between parrots, dead monkeys, a giraffe whose long neck hung over a railing, bleeding bears. I entered a half-destroyed building: in a large cage, an immense black gorilla was sitting, dead, a bayonet stuck in its chest. A river of black blood flowed between the bars and mingled with the pools of water. This gorilla looked surprised, astonished; its wrinkled face, its open eyes, its enormous hands, seemed frighteningly human to me, as if it were on the point of talking to me. Beyond this building stretched a long enclosed pond: a hippopotamus was floating in the water, dead, the fin of a mortar shell stuck in its back; another one was lying on a platform, riddled with shrapnel, dying in long, heavy gasps. The water overflowing from the pool was soaking the clothes of two Waffen-SS lying there; a third one rested, leaning against a cage, his eyes blank, his machine gun across his legs. I wanted to go on but I heard bursts of Russian voices, mixed with the trumpeting of a panic-stricken elephant. I hid behind a bush and then turned back to go around the cages across a kind of little bridge. Clemens barred my path, his feet in a puddle at the end of the footbridge, his wet hat still dripping with rainwater, his automatic in his hand. I raised my hands, as in the movies. “You made me run,” Clemens panted. “Weser is dead. But I got you.”—“Kriminalkommissar Clemens,” I hissed, out of breath from running, “don’t be ridiculous. The Russians are a hundred meters away. They’ll hear your gunshot.”—“I should drown you in a pool, you piece of shit,” he belched, “sew you up in a bag and drown you. But I don’t have time.”—“You haven’t even shaved, Kriminalkommissar Clemens,” I bellowed, “and you want to pass judgment on me!” He gave an abrupt laugh. A gunshot rang out, his hat came down over his face, and he fell like a block across the bridge, his head in a puddle of water. Thomas stepped out from behind a cage, a carbine in his hands, a large, delighted smile on his lips. “As usual, I arrive just in time,” he said happily. He glanced at Clemens’s massive body. “What did he want with you?”—“He was one of those two cops. He wanted to kill me.”—“Stubborn guy. Still for the same business?”—“Yes. I don’t know, they’ve gone mad.”—“You haven’t been very smart, either,” he said to me severely. “They’re looking for you everywhere. Müller is furious.” I shrugged and looked around. It had stopped raining, the sun shone through the clouds and made the wet leaves on the trees and the patches of water in the lanes glisten. I could still make out a few scraps of Russian voices: they must have moved a little farther off, behind the monkey enclosure. The elephant trumpeted again. Thomas, his carbine leaning on the railing of the little bridge, had crouched down next to Clemens’s body; he had pocketed the policeman’s automatic and was rummaging through his clothes. I passed behind him and looked to that side, but there was no one. Thomas had turned toward me and was waving a thick wad of reichsmarks: “Look at that,” he said, laughing. “A gold mine, your cop.” He put the bills in his pocket and kept searching. Next to him, I saw a thick iron bar, torn from a nearby cage by an explosion. I picked it up, weighed it, then brought it down with all my strength on the nape of Thomas’s neck. I heard his vertebrae crack and he toppled over like a log, across Clemens’s body. I dropped the bar and contemplated the bodies. Then I turned Thomas over, his eyes were still open, and unbuttoned his tunic. I undid my own and quickly switched jackets with him before turning him onto his stomach again. I inspected the pockets: along with the automatic and Clemens’s banknotes were Thomas’s papers, those of the Frenchman from the STO, and some cigarettes. I found the keys to his house in his pants pocket; my own papers had stayed in my jacket.