The Devil in Gray

Automobiles blacker than the night pummel their way through the torrential downpour, their headlights burning through the midnight darkness.

Peering through the window as my breath clouds the glass, I squint through the lenses of my owlish spectacles. The motorcade’s lead car splashes to a halt in the courtyard—reminding me of a beetle fresh from the mud banks of the lake I swam in as a boy—and for a moment I feel an invisible fist tighten around my throat.

Sliding away from my window, I scoop up my manuscript from the desk and hold it dearly to my bosom. Pacing in circles in front of the hearth, the fire crackled as though laughing at my delirious ways. It illuminated my study and my grandfather’s hunting trophies on the wall. But tonight, nothing could warm me.

My lips silently mouthed a list of names as perspiration slithered down my spine. Was everyone accounted for? Did I forget anything? I threw furtive glances at the dancing flames as though they were accomplices I could not fully trust. The black ashes of my rebellion flittered on the coals like moths. How easy a thing to burn paper.

My lips twist into a kind of smile as think of how difficult I’ll have made it for these beasts to track down my faithful staff. Especially that one boy, Michel. That one was a troublemaker. Rash, opinionated and inexperienced. But their lives—and Michel’s too—were stories of their own and they deserved to see their chapters concluded with dignity, not barbed wire.

I gasp as I hear banging echo from the main hall down below. My time is coming to an end, one way or the other. Prayer crosses my mind, but what kind of a God would listen to me? A selfless man would pray for this war to end, for the safety of the servants who’ve fled.

Wretched man that I am! My charity to them was thin. I am not the altruistic aristocrat they believe. Plagued by ego, I was sick with an unquenchable desire to see my manuscript finished. Yes, even as the Devil was on his way here, I sat at my typewriter, pounding away at the keys so that my story may finish.

There it is again! That loud banging. My blood has turned to ice and it takes all my strength to walk to my door and lock it. How perversely silly of me. There is no point.

BANG! The crash reverberates throughout the halls. Booted footsteps now desecrate the halls of the manor as shouts fill the foyer—not in French, but German.

Dragging my feet to the desk, I rest the completed manuscript on the oakwood, squaring the edges to neatly line up the stack. The manuscript is all I can think of, now.

When a man is facing death, he supposedly reflects upon his time on this earth—his childhood years, those he held beloved. But all I can do is wonder if my book will be praised after its release into the world, or see the darkness that so many stories fall into. There’s a plethora of them condemned to the rubbish heap for every manuscript sent to a publisher. This is what I contemplate as businessmen, farmers, priests, and families are all being ripped apart by blind hatred!

This desk was where I planted myself when there was yet time to escape. And now, the Devil approaches and I have sealed my fate.

A man of high breeding and dignity, I withdraw my pistol from the left drawer of my desk. If death is my reward for staying, I will meet her upon my terms.

As shouts reverberate throughout the house, I gaze at the gun in my hand, and laugh. Laugh so hard that I cry. I could not help but feel grateful in some macabre sense. For months, my memory had been decaying. My doctor—before fleeing to Switzerland—warned me that it could get worse. I was as healthy as a horse, but my mind was losing its grip. He had witnessed cases where a man ages and steadily loses his memory, he warned. The thought of this terrified me. Losing my mind meant not finishing my book.

But my mind had retained its faculties long enough for me to finish my work—and to remember where my revolver was kept.

The shouting edges closer. They are outside the study.

My eyes transfix on the revolver resting in my hand. My left hand. Statistically speaking, I am a minority. I write with my left hand. I eat from my fork with my left hand. I cut with scissors with my left hand. But in the eyes of the Devil, I am not a minority. I am one of millions who must be purged. And so I will shoot myself with my left hand, before they can purge me.

As I press the cold barrel to my left temple, I’m vaguely aware of the violent rattle of the door handle. Squeezing my eyes I pull back on the revolver’s hammer.

The door is thrust open on its hinges with a violent crash of splintering wood. Footsteps pound their way toward me.

Brusque voices declare, “Hier drin! Hier drin!”—In here! In here! Then all falls silent. So silent that I only detect my heartbeat and the crackling laughter of the fire.

Then I hear the signature drag of a cane. In a clipped voice that spits out French, a man asks, “Professor Crémieux? What is this nonsense?”

The first night we met, I was terrified. It was a cordial event, a gala in Vienna where civilized men and women danced the night away and exchanged opinions on art. The Devil had merely one sip of champagne before expressing his hideous view of my people. Hell was reflected in his eyes, and he knew I was one of those people. He would see me burn if he had his way. But that was 1930. This is now.

Disgust writhes in the pit of my stomach and I imagine pulling the trigger, but my finger is frozen.

“Everyone is gone,” I say. “There is no one here you can take away. You are too late.”

A few seconds of quiet is followed by a click of the tongue. “Everyone but you, Professor Crémieux. I look forward to your assistance in locating the other rats.”

“I will die before you take me prisoner. I know what happens in your camps.”

“The camps…” the Devil says to my back, absently. “The camps are not for marvelous men like you, Monsieur. Put down your gun and…no harm will come to you. All I demand is your cooperation.”

“How on earth can you possibly guarantee my safety?”

“I will see to it that you are given favorable treatment. All I will need is information.”

“I will not betray my countrymen!”

“It is not betrayal. It is a small thing I ask in exchange for mercy,” the Devil said, his voice taking on an edge. “Others in the SS are not as forgiving as I am.”

Flaring my nostrils, I let out a cry before finally pulling the trigger. “Viva la France!”

And nothing. Then I hear the study erupt in laughter. My gun has condemned me to a sentence worse than death, and I stare blinking as I lower it in front of me.

And then I remembered. The right drawer. I always kept the revolver unloaded and the bullets in the right drawer. My memory failed me. The revolver was as deadly as a butterfly this whole time.

Turning, I face the men who violated my home.

“You may as well kill me here where I stand,” I say, palms open, revolver clattering to the floor. “I would die before betraying my country.”

The gray-clad Devil was the only one not amused. To those who understood French and laughed, he raised a gloved hand for silence; his shoulders drooping from the weight of his own evil, he rested his weight on a bone-white cane. (I’d heard him boast it was made entirely of elephant ivory, the night of the gala). I knew him as a monster but his acolytes knew him as Officer Erich Rust.

“You believe,” Rust continues in French, “that you will live on beyond death.” He appraises me with a calculating glint. His eyes wander to my desk. To my manuscript. “Yes, you believe that you will live on through your writings.”

Where once I felt like a man, I now felt like a mouse before a cat.

“I have eyes everywhere. And what I saw was that you were writing a novel of supposed genius.”

Officer Rust limped to the desk, exuding the odor of liquor as he exhaled. He propped his cane against the wall and gripped my manuscript. I winced as his dark eyes roamed through the flutter of paper, and I focus my attention on the fireplace.

“I will make you a new offer,” he declares. “Give me the information I seek, and I will personally see to it that your novel is published.”

My heart races almost as fast as when I was about to pull the trigger. The words catch in my throat but somehow I manage to ask. “You will?”

Officer Rust grins, firelight refracted in the eagle badge on his uniform. “We are not monsters.”

“But I’ve heard the stories. The Nazis have been burning books and art. And people.”

A shrug this time from the Officer. “Naturally, I can’t condone the publication of something written by a Jew. It would have to be under a German name.”

My stomach drops. “And if I refuse to help you?”

Rust limps to the fireplace. “Then I burn it. And you die. You both will be forgotten.”

Publishing my work under someone else’s name, what a ridiculous idea! And under a German’s name? That would be humiliating. But my words are pure and beautiful. It would be be better they breath and know life under a false name than to be lost forever. But if it burns, there’s nothing. I’m nothing. I clench my hands and shut my eyes, head bowed.

“Come now,” Rust says. “You know what information I seek.”

Staring at the carpet, I hear the words tumble out of my own mouth as though of their own accord.

“Michel Jeujard. There were rumors among the servants that he is hiding in Paris and working at some train station there—I don’t know the exact one. But Michel Jeujard is the one your people have been looking for. Apparently he’s been at it for months, now. He records which paintings have been taken by your men from the Louvre, and relays their destinations to the French Resistance.” I gulp. “I turn a blind eye to his activities, but I am not a part of it.” My stomach has turned to rot.

The stooped officer smirks, his shadow dancing on the carpet. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it my friend?” And with that, he tosses the entire manuscript into the blaze.

My eyes widen and I reach into the heat to save my life’s work, but a hulking man behind Officer Rust shoves me onto my back with his boot, his rifle pressed into my chest. Tears are streaming down my cheeks and into my ears as I wail in agony. “Liar!” I scream as I pound the floor with my fists. I repeat the same word over and over as the papers burn to a crisp.

The Devil retrieves his cane and pokes the embers to nurture the flames, pages curling back in the heat. Through my tears I see fire reflected in his eyes and a grin lifting the corner of his mouth.

“To think you actually believed me,” Officer Rust says, straightening up. “Why would I harbor anything written by a Jew?” He dips his chin and at the signal, the bearish man holding me down now yanks at me by my collar, dragging me to my feet.

Dazed, I blurt out, “Just do it. Kill me. You got everything you wanted.”

The Nazi Officer is already leaving when he says, “When I find Jeujard, I will be sure to send him your regards.” He hesitates before continuing, as though thinking aloud to himself. “I wonder what your fellow countrymen will think of you.” He laughs. “They might just kill you for the meat on your bones. It would be more food than what they’re given.”

And with that, the Devil in Gray hobbles out of my study.