The Bautzen Prison Incident

East Berlin, 1952

Amidst the sound of dripping water and boots on stone, two guards dragged Gestas Milovik down a prison corridor.

“Los!” barked the tall guard, and sharp garlic spilled from his breath.

In front of a rusted steel door, the second guard rattled his keys and a door squealed open to reveal a wide chamber. The guards dragged Gestas to join two ragged men who were on their knees facing a far green-streaked wall. The guard’s thick hands pressed him down to take his place in line.

He stopped breathing for a moment. This was how they did it, he thought. No blindfold. No priest. Just a nod, a pistol, and a bullet to the back of the head. The three leaned forward and Gestas felt the stable equanimity of the man next to him in the middle. This man breathed calmly, his long hair hanging in his eyes. Did the man welcome death? So many men accept death, but this was not for himself, Gestas thought. He would measure his time. He glanced at the man and recognized him. “Not such a hohes tier big man today, are you? Why don’t you get us out of this?”

A rasping voice came from the third man on the other end. His name was Dismas, a thief. “Shut up. Leave him alone. You and I deserve this, but not him.”

This deserving part might be true, Gestas thought, smiling to himself, remembering the Colonel. From his sweating flat face and broad nose, the Colonel had said, 'See here, Interpreter. It’s not what you did, but what you might do we send you to Bautzen.’

‘I haven’t done anything.'

'But you are still guilty, isn't it so, Gestas?' the Colonel said. 'Not for the what you might do things, but real things, and for no other reason than you could.'

What did this Colonel know about what he’d done? Gestas thought. This Colonel was not in Leningrad for the horror of Belagerung, the Nazi siege. He had not seen the starvation feed on the winter bones of his children. This Colonel had not earned the right for payback on The Reich.

But right then he heard his inner voice, and as much as he hated it, he listened. Maybe, for what you have done, the voice said, you are here today in Bautzen. The red-scarfed girl flashed in his mind, the girl with the braids who kept him from sleeping, the girl who screamed as his Genosse took what was owed from the Germans. This was the girl in his nightmare who they had left in a ditch.

Gestas sensed the tall guard moving behind Dismas. He heard the double click from the cocking of a pistol. The man’s head moved forward toward the wall, and Gestas imagined the muzzle of the pistol prodding the back of the man’s head, teasing. He glanced at the guard. If Dismas turned, and was strong, he could throw the guard off because he was at such an angle he could make his move. The guard was close in, the closest he’d be to the man. But Dismas only shivered. There was nothing in him, Gestas thought. Nothing but the stink of fear.

Gestas jumped as a sharp report of the pistol cracked. Dismas’ head burst forward and he slumped to the floor.

There was silence and the guard stepped behind Gestas. “No,” the guard said. “We’ll do you last so you know what’s coming.” He laughed and moved to the quiet man.

Gestas recognized him. The man mumbled in prayer. But he wasn’t Russian, Gestas thought. The accent was Aramaic.

“No miracles left for you.” the guard said to the praying man, and shot again. The same explosion, the same result of the head slamming against stone, the same slumping to the floor.

He had the same chance as the other, Gestas thought. Just before the trigger is pulled the guard leans to the right. He’s off balance. If you are going to do it, this is when you make your move.

The tall guard stepped over behind Gestas. “Du bist dran,” he said. “You’re next, Gestas Milovik.”

As Gestas had imagined for the others, he could feel the steel muzzle pressed against the back of his head, the prodding of his neck forward, the teasing. He smelled garlic and pictured the guard’s finger squeezing on the trigger.

The world flickered.

In that instant Gestas snapped sideways with all the strength he had left. The guard stumbled and Gestas’ elbow came around to swipe against the pistol. It clattered to the floor. The guard threw his weight at him, but it wasn’t enough. Gestas already gripped the pistol. As he raised it, the guard smiled as if he had just heard a small joke. The pistol exploded and this guard fell. Gestas turned and the other guard had his hands up. The pistol exploded again.

It didn’t take long for Gestas to undress the body of the tall guard. He stripped and changed clothes, the brown overcoat felt tight against his taut muscles. It would have to do. Once in the hall, he moved with caution, shadow to shadow. But soon shouts echoed, the sound of boots hammering in stone corridors. With a piercing cry, a siren rang out.

Now there was no shadow to shadow.

Run fast don’t look back hear footsteps behind keep moving find shelter hide—no time to think. Gestas fled down corridor after corridor. A half-dozen men approached as they rushed at him. He pressed into an alcove and the men passed by.

After months in Bautzen, he knew his only chance was the sewer, a break in the stone wall near the showers.

Once there, he kicked at the rotten plaster. A hole opened. He threw his weight at the wall and it gave way. He looked through and stared down at blackness below. The stench overwhelmed him and he gagged. Yet he still climbed down through tangles of pipes, descending in the dark between two walls, one slick step at a time. The algae covered pipes pressed against his palms. When he reached the bottom of the wall, the flowing stream sloshed to his hips in the dark. The air was wet, metallic, and the smell's acidic taste choked down his throat. He pushed forward with his legs, ducking low beneath the surface muck when he was blocked by archways.

The iron grate at the end of the sewer tunnel loosened when he kicked it, but did not give way. The stone was loose on one side, so he clawed to work it back and forth. His hands bled on the slick stone, until, with an animal's guttural rage, he slammed his fists against the loose mortar. The stone crumbled. Could he fit through?

The overcoat was too bulky.

He stripped it off and shoved it through the opening. Once through, he fell hard on a riverbank. He was now outside the prison, but the cold tore at his face. His eyelids frozen, the air felt like fire in his lungs. He ran not knowing where he was going across the frozen river, hobbling like a broken man, lost, and freezing.

At last, up the far bank he climbed over a chain fence and found the railroad yard.

One train shuddered to motion, the rails groaning against the frozen rails. Was it headed west? Was this his best choice? Another train lurched from the west with the open door of a cattle car moving toward him. He leaped when it passed, his hands caught on the frozen edge of an iron ladder, slung his body through the open doorway, and crawled inside.

The scent of damp straw and old urine hung thick. He lay on his side breathing, listening to the rhythm of the tracks. Rubble from the war, abondoned factories—the train a steel serpent finding its way. A surreal vision, the countryside then opened up in the blur of winter, the trees barren and without color, the world frozen in winter crystal.

“We’ve got a live one, Jakub” a voice said.

Gestas stared into the pale light, his eyes adjusting to the dark. A man was hunched at the rear of the car with a ghost-like pallor. Next to him was an old man, Jakub, who had a drawn face and beard hung with ice. A younger man stretched across the old man’s lap. Jakub moved the man carefully aside, the cold settling on him like a shroud. “Forgive me, son. I need to talk with this new one.”

"Yes, father," the man said.

Jacub struggled to Gestas’ side.

“Watch him,” the ghost-man said from the rear. “He’s from Bautzen. Look at his coat. The red armband. He might be a thief.”

Jakub leaned in, his eyes etched in sadness. “I saw you,” he said, now shifting close. “I saw you cross the river. Why did you pick this train and not the other?” He stared into Gestas’ eyes.

Gestas shrugged and glanced away. “I’m running. I didn’t make a choice.”

The old man smiled. “We all choose.”

Gestas shrugged, his lip curled in bitter sarcasm. He didn't know why this old man made him angry. “You know so much about choice,” he said. “What kind of choice did you ever have to make?”

Jakub rose and used his cane to wedge into the door and slide it nearly closed. The car swayed rhythmically in the tracks. “I’m too old to run or choose. I just watch. I’ve always been a watcher.”

Gestas pulled his collar up to brace against the cold. “Watch? Watch for what?”

Jakub peered at Gestas. “I watch a young man who thinks there’s still a door out of the fire, but knows in his heart to cross the Jordan.”

“You talk in parables, old man.”

Jakub leaned back against the wood slats of the car. His face was old, and tired. “You are two men in one, Gestas. One demands his life saved, the other simply to be remembered.”

“I’m neither of those,” Gestas said. He looked down at his hands. They were red from the cold. The dried blood had flaked off but still lay in the creases.

The train groaned as it rounded a slow bend. The smell of coal drifted, sharp and burnt.

Jakub rose from the floor and braced on his cane.

“What?” Gestas asked. “What is it?”

The old man hunched over and stared down at Gestas. “What will you ask her when you get there?” He reached in the pocket of his long coat and withdrew a piece of bread, a black rye. “Here, thief. You take this.”

Gestas took a bite from the bread. His face grimaced and he put it in the pocket of the guard’s overcoat he wore. “It’s too sweet,” Gestas said. “I’ll eat it later.”

As dawn turned the black sky a lighter gray, Gestas woke when Jakub jostled his shoulder. The train shuddered in the same rhythm, but had slowed.

“It’s time, Gestas,” the old man said. Together, they slid the car door open. The world was only whites and grays in the dawn, the endless snow sprinkled here and there with lights from distant farms.

Gestas jumped and tumbled on the drifts of snow lining the tracks. The train clattered on ahead of him, leaving him in frozen silence behind. He could not hear any birds, nor feel the warmth of the sun, nor could he sense freedom—only the biting cold and the indifference of the world.

Holding his coat tightly, he punched through the crusted snow with each step heading east. The farms he passed were mostly abandoned. He skirted the others. That afternoon he saw two wolves crossing a low rise with snow blowing around them. They didn’t bother with him, but parted in the far distance, each leaving the other with a steady stride, one tracking east, the other west, as if they couldn’t agree.

As night approached, he built a small fire. After this effort, he collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily, exhausted. Without food, he was weakening. It wouldn’t be long. Maybe tomorrow.

Gestas didn’t remember waking. He didn’t remember the fire from his camp or how many days it had been. He didn't know if it was dawn or dusk under the solid gray clouds. It was as if he had just woken and found himself standing at a tree line at the edge of a field. The air was still and the snow lay unbroken across the flat plain. Across the field, a farmhouse crouched under deep snow which layered its roof. Smoke curled from a thin chimney.

He didn’t know how he’d come here, but he knew the farmhouse. There was the same hill that swept the landscape behind the house that hung like a man’s brow. The hill was covered with snow, but a rock outcropping was the same. He recognized the sag in the farmhouse roofline, the ditch.

As he approached, a gray-haired woman appeared in the doorway.

“Do you have anything to eat?” he called out to her.

“Move on,” the peasant woman screeched back. Behind her, through the doorway, a fire glowed in the hearth.

Gestas turned, but as he did a girl caught his eye on the farmhouse porch. She had a red scarf wrapping her face and her white dress hung thin against her frame. Her hands hung by her sides. She moved off the porch and her bare feet didn't mark the snow as she moved towards him.

From the doorway, the gray-haired woman screamed at him in recognition. “I know you! She was no more than a devochka! A beautiful flower!”

The girl came closer and the red scarf fell away. She was young—nineteen, maybe twenty—with a pale, wind-chapped face and hair braided tight down her back. Her eyes were cautious and alert. She moved like someone waking from a dream, each step slow, deliberate—and then she met his eyes.

At that moment, Gestas knew why he was there.

With the girl in front of him, he dropped to his knees.

“I returned,” he said, crouching forward, his face twisted in pain. “Can you…” The words broke off, lost in the cold.

He looked up, and the expression on her face reflected his agony, but after a time, her features softened. She reached out to gently caress the back of his head, and then stroked his cheek.

He closed his eyes and breathed in, the air clean and full.

The world flickered—

and he was back at Bautzen, smelling garlic. For a split second, he felt the cold muzzle of the guard’s pistol on the back of his head where the girl’s hand had been.

He never heard the sound of the shot. His mind flashed in white static, and then there was nothing. His body slumped to the concrete.