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After the beginning of the winter semester, Ludwig found a small apartment near the university, where he was just offered the position of Teaching Assistant in the Department of Medicine. Compared with the attic he previously had stayed in, the rent was a bit more expensive. But he was allowed to cook in the new place, and the roof would not leak when it rained.
He had to carefully break one coin into two pieces to spend. The monthly allowance was tight after the rent was paid. He would have wanted to buy a new coat before Christmas—the one he brought from Berlin had become so shabby after being darned too many times that he could not even feel the original material. 1946 was not a good year for any place, even in Zurich.
Ludwig's apartment was close to a sewage street, adjacent to the low brick houses of clerks, bartenders, and quackeries. The roof was covered with weeds, dirty cornflowers and dandelions. Several wild birds had built nests on it.
The door was very short. The barbed wire used to block the wind in the window frame was smeared with a layer of black bugs. Everything in the house seemed to have been soaked in the rain that was full of mould, and there was always an odour of raw carrots that would never dissipate. He shared the rent with a careless Italian guy. Feliciano Vargas claimed to be the chef of the Suter Hotel downtown. He had never cooked by himself once.
Every morning, Ludwig took the newspaper from the rusty letterbox outside the door, left two fried eggs for the roommate who had just fallen asleep and then went to work. Feliciano always stayed for the night in the restaurant and did not come back until the daybreak. Sometimes he met his neighbour living downstairs, a penniless student from Vienna. When the weather was not horrible, the Austrian guy would take his violin to perform some pleasing tunes on the street, such as Elgar and Chrysler.
The winter was extremely cold that year. Ice froze from the drain to the small fountain in the town. The violent wind from north blew the roads clean and barren. Ludwig encountered this Austrian named Roderich several times at the subway station, who was always holding his violin, shivering, and trying to keep warm by putting his hands on top of those exhaust pipes. His trunk was thinner than his clothes. He planted himself at the platform like a shaky street lamppost. One could not help but wonder if he was able to survive this winter.
Occasionally Ludwig would share with him some potatoes. But he had his own problems to worry about. The lesson plans in the school could never be finished, and he had to prepare the laboratory every day for class. By thinking of those cold concrete rooms mixed with various odours, and one was directly deprived of the sense of smell once walked in, he guessed that his gastritis might never have a chance to recover.
He did not have family here. His only brother, Gilbert, was enrolled into the army thirteen years ago and took away the Iron Cross that borne the pride of the whole family. It was granted by his great-grandfather during the Franco-Prussian War. Ludwig had seen it when he was very little. The black Iron cross was placed in a silk box. The edge had been oxidised due to age, but it was still shining under the dim kerosene lamp.
As an amulet, it was taken away. At first, they could still receive the scribbled letter from Gilbert on rough straw papers, smelling of heat and earth. Then there was no news after the war began.
Ludwig once imagined that one day Gilbert would appear safely though exhausted at the door of their house—maybe with a crutch, or at most with prosthetics—But this illusion became more and more remote with the advance of the war. Later, just before last Christmas Eve, he heard that their home in Berlin had been turned into ruins during an air raid. So he simply gave up all the hope altogether.
That night he drank excessively for the first time ever. He was vomiting when Feliciano entered his room. He was about to throw out all the potato debris, peas and corns from last meal, yellow grease attached to the intestines and flora, together with all kinds of absurd and naive dreams he had had before. Feliciano ran out to call for help. Then Roderich pushed the door and came in. Ludwig stared at his pale-faced neighbour with his eyes out of focus. The latter gradually faded all the colours in his vague consciousness and became shining like platinum.
—he saw his brother standing in the light and shadow of the room, so energetically and vigorously, just like the day when he left. His chest was covered with medals, like a white flag embellished with iron pieces. He decided not to think about him anymore.
After the new year, the Austrian guy downstairs seemed to had made a fortune. He no longer went out to perform but taught music at home instead. Someone introduced him to a few students, for which he also bought a second-hand upright piano. After having met two or three times in the corridor, Ludwig was very happy to see that he finally ate a few solid meals.
In February he had a new task, which was to re-cut the embalmed cadavers that were dissected beyond recognition by the students, preserve the intact parts into gross anatomy models, and throw away the ones with no teaching value. According to his thrifty Swiss boss, no bone should be wasted until the body had completely rotted into protoplasm.
The staff of the pathology laboratory worked together with him. Toris Laurinaitis, a Lithuanian guy, was responsible for the limbs that were cut off, and he was asked to look after those remaining torsos. The models they made ranged from one-handed skeletons to an arteries fixation model filled with plastic. This work occupied most of their time. The pungent smell of formalin made almost everyone get rhinitis. After staying for two days, Ludwig felt that he could smell the odour all over his body, from his socks to his head wax, and even from the crappy bacon made for dinner.
The cadaver models were made in the basement. He and Toris each occupied a room, whereas Prof. Ivan Braginsky, who was to dismember the bodies into parts of limbs and torso, occupied the large central cold storeroom. Since there were not intact corpses, to begin with, those that ended up in Ludwig's hands could only be described as “wrecks”. The first-year students were too careless. Some of the corpses lost their coastal cartilage, some lost a section of intestines, and there was even one had mould luxuriantly growing from the abdominal cavity. It took Ludwig a long time to clean up.
The torsos and visceral organs soaked in formalin appeared a bit like bacon. They were waxy and firm. Once the autopsy started to take long, he began to feel the hunger. But his painful, swollen eyes and throat did not let him go. They came over from the opposite of the hunger to devour him.
One night Roderich brought some cakes. Ludwig went to open the door for him. The Austrian stared at him for a while and commented that his current face was very suitable for illustration in Divina Commedia.
Ludwig replied that a guy who had been so malnourished just a few months ago was not in a position to say this.
Then they remained silent. After a while, the shirtless Italian poked his head out from behind the door: “Ludi, Ludi, are you wearing my pants?”
The days were like sewage, with the smell of sour rot and mud, gurgling past him. When spring started in March, it rained constantly. The mottled brick wall and floor slowly absorbed all the moisture, and mushrooms grew in his boots overnight.
His work was going to finish at the end of this month. Corpse No. 118 was the last set of cadaver to be processed. This was the torso of an adult male, thin and atrophied, leaving only the part from the scapulas to the pelvis. Since it had not suffered severely from the practice of those reckless students(which was a miracle), Prof. Braginsky asked to make a series of cross-sectional models of the torso, which means that this piece of wreck, about 50 cm long, would be cross-cut into hundreds of pieces in his hands, with each piece like a French pancake and to be framed on the wall.
Ludwig frowned in disgust. The old slicer in the pathology lab had long been expired even before World War ended. The budget here did not allow any replacement of its blades at all. He was even not sure if it was able to cut off the spinal column. Nevertheless, he cleaned up the corpse, buried it with fixative, and put it into the slicer.
The handle shook creakingly, starting from the acromion, cutting down by half a centimetre each slice. Although the accuracy was limited, it was still working. Just when he breathed a sigh of relief, the slicer made a series of harsh rubbing noises, and the blades sank into the chest cavity and stopped moving down-it was stuck.
Ludwig put on pressure on the handle, but the blade did not move. He stood up to inspect and found that the blade was stuck between the second and third ribs of the corpse. There, on the light brown and beige cut surface, there was something shiny with silver. He tapped it with his fingers in rubber gloves and found that it was a small piece of metal.
He ran out of the room and called Torris from next door, who was also covered with oil and dirt. They dug up the fixative and took out the half-cut corpse. Torris incised the skin with a scalpel, separated the subcutaneous tissue and divided the sternum neatly. Then the whole chest cavity was revealed abruptly.
Both of them were stunned. In the chest cavity and at the right-back of the brown heart, a black cross-shaped object, with a dimension of about 4cm, was embedded in the gap between the lung lobe and the pleura. Ludwig carefully picked it out with tweezers and rinsed it under the water.
It was an Iron Cross. Even though it was corroded significantly, he could still recognise its unique arc. The tip was filed off by the blade, revealing an iron-grey texture.
“This man had been injured on the battlefield and had undergone thoracotomy,” Torris took a closer look at the incision and sutures on the chest wall,“ The iron cross was probably dropped in during the operation, and then sewn on again. See? there is the hyperplastic fibrous connective tissue surrounding here…It was too bad, such a medic…” he signed while shaking his head.
Ludwig did not answer. He was trying to identify the numbers engraved on the rusty surface of the Iron Cross. It was too vague, but there was no sign of a swastika. Although the "W" at the top was like a river valley with the dry flow. It had become too shallow to be recognised.
He interrupted Torres who still kept on talking, "Excuse me, where can I find the other parts of this person?”
"I don't know... Maybe check with Prof. Braginsky? He will probably know. What are you going to do?”
The gentle Lithuanian appeared confused. Ludwig had already rushed out.
He was wrong. Toris Laurinaitis had always underestimated his superiors. Even though Ludwig avoided the part of the Iron Cross in his narration, he could not stop thinking about the above impressions. He saw that the big Russian started to show his most familiar smile after listening to his report, with his round rosacea turned pink.
Even if there is any hell of the truth, the Russians would rather throw it into Lake Berga than share it, especially when the other is a German.
“No. 118? It’s a pity. I remember it was amputated when I took over it. Yes, amputation below the knee. There may be remaining hands and thighs in Torris’ room, you may go and check. But…”
He continued to smile merrily, "Probably the legs were also thrown away. After all, only the models of cadavers in good condition are needed, aren’t they?”
Ludwig suppressed his anger, "So, do you know when the body was first sent here, was there any proof of identity?”
"Because there was NO identity certificate, we could buy it when the hospital sent it over. There is no death certificate number on the registration card, either. ”The Russian gave a mocking face, “The war has produced a huge number of corpses. Fortunately, not everyone likes to ask questions like you, Ludwig. ”
He was lying. From the grape-grey eyes to the shaking impatient heels, he was obviously lying. Ludwig felt his clenched fists tremble.
"Don't you worry about his family coming to the door?”
"No one will recognise him," Ivan shrugged. "He died of a third-degree facial burn."
When Roderich went to visit with the pastry that night, he saw Ludwig lying on the bed, dejected. The hearth was dark.
"I thought you were not at home,” Roderich complained. “Is Feliciano not around?-Here is cold as an ice cellar.”
He set fire, boiled a pot of water, and then handed him a cup of tea made with saccharin tablets. Ludwig took it, without even saying thank you. He blinked.
“Are you alright?”
Ludwig didn’t even know what happened himself…he began to tell him, intermittently. He talked about his brother, the bacon-like corpse and the Iron Cross, the good-tempered but gloomy Lithuanian, and other trivial things: his childhood, the white little house in the countryside of Berlin, beer and birds, snow, and the blue cornflowers in the puddles.
Roderich was listening quietly, his mouth squeezed, and the round mole was reflected in the firelight, like a gentle whole note.
“This type of medals were widely awarded during the war. From what you have told me, it is possible that this medal was dropped by someone else during the operation.” he analysed calmly, “In other words, you can neither determine who owned the medal nor who the body was, right?”
Ludwig found to his frustration that his rebuttal was impeccable. He had wanted to argue that it was a medal from his grandfather’s generation, engraved with the words "1870". It was exactly the same as the one he had seen when he was a child. It was unlikely that this kind of medal would appear in a newly dead corpse. But his chest was immediately filled with another, deeper sadness. It was born with a black and frank face, gulping his internal organs.
Trembling and covering his face, he collapsed on the couch. Roderich was waiting for the advent of sobbing. But nothing happened.
The next day, He found Ivan Braginsky in the central cold storeroom. The Russian was wrapped in a dirty and greasy leather jacket, carrying a chainsaw in his hand. His eyes were red and congested. Obviously, this appearing was more suitable for the atmosphere of the conversation than yesterday. The sewage was flowing across the storeroom with a pungent smell. Large and small wreckages of corpses were everywhere. This was not so much a laboratory as it was a slaughterhouse.
Ludwig came to the point straightly.
“I would like to know when No. 118 was sent here.”
“About 2 or 3 years ago. This batch was all delivered at that time. “Ivan removed his mask, took a pot of vodka from his waistband, and poured it into his mouth. These actions made him more like a butcher.
“Do you have the contact number of that hospital?”
“That was just a temporary clinic. Nobody knows where it is right now. ”he waved his hand impatiently, “all right, I’m gonna work. Get—”
"I want to see other parts of his body." Ludwig did not wait for the other one to finish.
“Go ask Toris—”
“Mr Laurinaitis told me he only received female corpses these days,” he said firmly. The Russian stared at him, his eyes flashing menacingly.
But Ivan suppressed it, then took off his leather jacket and wiped his hands. "You won’t like to see his head." He said quietly.
Ludwig followed him into the exhibition room without saying a word. Ivan pointed to a pile of skulls on the dissection table, colours ranging from dark brown to grey, and explained that one of them belonged to No. 118. —“After all, patients with third-degree burns have only this value.”
He was smiling when he said this and seemed to be proud of the method he had just developed to utilise the wrecks. Ivan had always been smiling. Ludwig noticed. And he was talking to himself with this specious smile.
“I’ve heard from Torris, about that Iron Cross…”
Ludwig felt as if he had been poured into a bucket of formalin in his stomach.
“It seems that the German has aroused your nostalgia,” Ivan patted him friendly on the shoulder,” however, If I inform the authority of your abnormal fascination with the Iron Cross with the Nazi symbol…You know what would happen.”
“…There isn’t any Nazi symbol on that medal!”He squeezed these words out of his teeth.
“I said there is, ”Ivan looked at him coldly, “and…Torris would say that too.”
He observed the other’s expression with satisfaction and patted his shoulder again.
"So, don’t waste your time, Ludwig. To me, it's his honour to be immortal here.”
He had gone. Ludwig stood at the door for a long time, staring at the pile of colourful skulls. Until a voice behind him interrupted.
"Sorry, Ludwig. Regarding that No. 118, the professor said that such a case is quite rare, so you don’t have to make the cross-sectional slices.”
He turned his face. Torres continued softly:
"He wants you to make a coronal section of the thoracic cavity—just expose the iron cross and the surrounding hyperplastic tissue—and then put it in the exhibition room. ”
He nodded to him and walked away. Ludwig went back slowly to his workplace. The trunk that had been cut in half the day before was in the formalin pool. He took an iron rake, scooped up the cadaver, and threw it on the table. The corpse was stiff. His fingers cramped into the slit chest cavity and touched the corner of the Iron Cross.
An idea took shape quickly—no, it was better to say that it had been planned for a long time and finally implemented. He cut a corner from the dead body’s heart and took out the Iron Cross. He tapped them with a piece of tarpaulin sheet, wrapped them, and hide them in his arms. When he was doing this work, his vision was horribly blurred, big tears kept falling down, and he couldn't stop it. He cursed this damn formalin from the bottom of his heart.
When he reached home on that day, Ludwig sat in the room all night. The tranquil darkness stretched out infinitely behind him. A sweet smell of blood permeated the house. When he opened the window, many dead leaves of camphor trees flew in. They only shed their leaves in spring.
It started to rain early in the morning. There was the sound of glass clashing all over the street. The puddles were warm. Roderich’s violin sounded exceptionally clear and bright in the rain.
At the moment, Feliciano pushed in and brought the sticky mist from outside.
“Ludi? aren’t you going to work? Ludi?”
Ludwig ignored him. He took out a tarpaulin bag from his arms and carefully buried it in a flower pot filled with soil. He put the flowerpot on the balcony, and then looked to the east.
There was something in his eyes. It was not the sky.
END.