Rahn was gripped by a species of terror and indecision.
Himmler glanced at his pocket watch. ‘You have thirty seconds to spare their lives.’
Rahn decided to try reason. ‘Listen to me – I don’t know anything about killing a man! Let the children go – they are good German stock, as you said.’
Himmler regarded him, and in that passage from eye to eye Rahn saw a man who was beyond history, beyond civilisation, beyond humanity; he was nothing but a shadow without substance. In a matter of seconds Rahn understood that he alone in that chamber had the freedom to choose, even though he would not escape guilt, no matter what his choice. That was Himmler’s little joke, the illumination he had promised.
Himmler said, ‘You are an expert on mythology, and mythology is steeped in violence. Just pretend you are Achilles and this man is Hector – kill him. You have twenty seconds.’
A strange calm descended over Rahn.
‘Fifteen seconds . . .’
He glanced at those terrified little faces; three lives about to be shattered or finished, one way or the other. He went down into the pit. He looked into the man’s encouraging eyes. Perhaps he had worked all day and had gone to a tavern and voiced his opinions about the Nazis over a beer? Now he was facing the unthinkable – not only his death, but also the death of his children.
‘What are you waiting for?’ The man pushed out his chest like a cock in a fight. ‘Do it!’
‘Ten seconds . . .’
Rahn brought the dagger to the man’s unguarded abdomen, but his arm was paralysed.
‘Do it, Nazi bag of horse-shit!’ the man growled, slapping his stomach, working up a hateful panic.
‘Five seconds . . .’ Himmler said, consulting his watch.
What would the Cathars have done? To kill even to save a life was to commit moral suicide. He could not do it! Moreover, he would not do it! He brought his arm down and dropped the knife.
The man shouted and made a grab for the blade but the guard was in the pit before Rahn could think and in a moment the captive was lying on the ground sobbing.
‘For pity’s sake! My children!’
The moment had passed and Rahn closed his eyes, certain he would be executed along with the man. He held his breath and when the shots came they were deafening. Images now danced before Rahn’s eyelids: he saw himself as a child, running after lightning in the forests near his home; he saw his father reading the paper and heard his mother in the kitchen, humming to the faint sound of Wagner coming from the gramophone. He saw the snow on the pines outside and inside, on the Christmas tree, flickering candles throwing their light on the fresh pfeffernusse cookies and marzipan covered in schokolade that were hanging from the branches. He saw himself inside the village church, a boy of five, urinating into his shoes because churches were spaces with no end, where there was no light, and where he could hear the creaking of evil stepping over the stones with the patience of a pendulum.
He waited for the reproving, interminable darkness to digest him then but it did not and when he opened his eyes he found he was standing as before and the captive was dead at his feet, lying in a pool of his own blood. Beyond the circle he glimpsed those three small bodies slumped on the ground, one over the other, lifeless, still.
‘So how does it feel?’ Himmler asked in his high-pitched voice.
Rahn couldn’t speak for a moment and then gall rose up with suddenness and he leant over and discharged the venison and good Bavarian wine all over the dead man. There was the fire of bile in his nostrils and in his throat. He looked up at Himmler.
‘Why?’ he managed to say.
‘So that you could come face to face with the beast, the power of pure egotism inside you.’
The meaning now came and with it a piercing shame: faced with making a choice between moral annihilation and the lives of those children, he had decided to let the children die.
‘You chose what was right for you, you see? That is pure egotism, don’t you think?’
Anger welled up in Rahn. ‘No!’ he spat. ‘You were wrong to give me that choice! Wrong in the eyes of God!’
‘I don’t believe you were thinking of God for one moment! When you made that decision you were thinking of yourself, of the picture of yourself that you hold so dear. At that moment, you were your own god and so God, as you have imagined Him, is now dead for you!’
Rahn swallowed acid and wiped his mouth. ‘I am a free man!’
‘When you believe you possess freedom, that is when you understand it the least. Freedom comes from knowing the evil within and embracing it. I told you it would be illuminating! Only now do you truly know yourself, and your life will never be the same. You see, now that you know your egotism, you are free to act as you will – unlike most people, who go about thinking they are so good and proper and god-like. The truth is, Herr Rahn, given the choice, a man will always choose himself – this is natural. Those who wish to join our circle must be willing to sacrifice the false image of this God that is inside them for an ideal that is higher, no matter what the cost to their soul. This is the first step to a new life. Until now, to the outside world, you have been SS-Unterscharführer Rahn, unofficially a member of the Allgemeine-SS. Now, you are made SS-Oberscharführer. To those of this circle, you are a member of the Blood of the Schutzstaffel-SS. One day your name will grace a plaque fixed to the back of one of those chairs in the hall above.’ He gave Rahn something. ‘What you hold in your hand is the Totenkopf, the Death’s Head ring. It is only given to those few whom I feel deserve it.’