Garden of Beasts

he do? Paul wondered. It might be more suspicious to stand up and leave. He hoped the man would fall silent.
    But the German eyed him closely and continued. “You’re of an age. You fought.”
    This was not a question and Paul assumed it would have taken extraordinary circumstances for a German in his twenties to have avoided combat during the War.
    “Yes, of course.” His mind was racing.
    “At which battle did you get that?” A nod toward the scar on Paul’s chin.
    That battle had involved no military action whatsoever; the enemy had been a sadistic button man named Morris Starble, who inflicted the scar with a knife in the Hell’s Kitchen tavern behind which Starble died five minutes later.
    The man looked at him expectantly. Paul had to say something so he mentioned a battle he was intimately familiar with: “St. Mihiel.” For four days in September of 1918 Paul and his fellow soldiers in the First Infantry Division, IV Corps, slogged through driving rain and soupy mud to assault eight-foot-deep German trenches protected by wire obstacles and machine-gun nests.
    “Yes, yes! I was there!” The beaming man shook Paul’s hand warmly. “What a coincidence this is! My Comrade!”
    Good choice, Paul thought bitterly. What were the odds that this would happen? But he tried to look pleasantly surprised at this happenstance. The German continued to his brother-in-arms: “So you were part of Detachment C! That rain! I have never seen so much rain before or since. Where were you?”
    “At the west face of the salient.”
    “I faced the Second French Colonial Corps.”
    “We had the Americans against us,” Paul said, searching fast through two-decade-old memories.
    “Ah, Colonel George Patton! What a mad and brilliant man he was. He would send troops racing all over the battlefield. And his tanks! They would suddenly appear as if by magic. We never knew where he was going to strike next. No infantryman ever troubled me. But tanks . . .” He shook his head, grimacing.
    “Yes, that was quite a battle.”
    “If that’s your only wound you were lucky.”
    “God was looking out for me, that’s true.” Paul asked, “And you were wounded?”
    “A bit of shrapnel in my calf. I carry it to this day. I show my nephew the wound. It is shaped like an hourglass. He touches the shiny scar and laughs with delight. Ah, what a time that was.” He sipped from a flask. “Many people lost friends at St. Mihiel. I did not. Mine had all died before then.” He fell silent and offered the flask to Paul, who shook his head.
    Morgan stepped out of the café and gestured.
    “I must go,” Paul said to the man. “A pleasure meeting a fellow veteran and sharing these words.”
    “Yes.”
    “Good day, sir. Hail Hitler.”
    “Ach, yes. Hail Hitler.”
    Paul joined Morgan, who said, “He can meet us now.”
    “You didn’t tell him anything about why I need the gun?”
    “No, not the truth, at least. He thinks you’re German and you want it to kill a crime boss in Frankfurt who cheated you.”
    The two men continued up the street for six or seven blocks, the neighborhood growing even shabbier, until they came to a pawnbroker’s shop. Musical instruments, suitcases, razors, jewelry, dolls, hundreds of other items filled the grimy, iron-barred windows. A “Closed” sign was on the door. They waited only a few minutes in the vestibule before a short, balding man showed up. He nodded to Morgan, ignored Paul, looked around then let them inside. He glanced back, closed and locked the door, then pulled the shade.
    They walked farther into the musty, dust-filled shop.“Come this way.” The shopkeeper led them through two thick doors, which he closed and bolted, then down a long stairway into a damp basement, lit only by two small yellow bulbs. When his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light Paul noted that there were two dozen rifles in racks against the wall.
    He handed Paul a rifle with a telescopic sight on it. “It’s a Mauser Karabiner. A 7.92-millimeter. This one breaks down easily so you can carry it in a suitcase. Look at the scope. The best optics in the world.”
    The man clicked a switch and lights illuminated a tunnel, perhaps one hundred feet long, at the end of which were sandbags and, pinned to one, a paper target.
    “This is completely soundproofed. It is a supply tunnel that was dug through the ground years ago.”
    Paul took the rifle in his hands. Felt the smooth wood of the sanded and varnished