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bad taste?
will." Kaempffer knew that Hossbach's good wishes were as hollow as the promises of resettlement he made to the Polish Jews.
"resettlement center"
Request immediate relocation. Something is murdering my men.
A certain amount of finesse would be required in handling Woermann, too. Kaempffer had an old score to settle with him.
einsatzkommandos
Captain Klaus Woermann stepped to the south window of his room in the keep's tower and spat a stream of white into the open air.
antechamber to Hell.
a room lined with stone blocks, many of them inlaid with peculiar brass-and-nickel crosses. Forty-nine
Wehrmacht,
Why an SS major'? This was a regular army position. The SS had nothing to do with him, with the keep, or with Romania as far as he knew.
Let the SS come. Woermann was now convinced there was an unarmed civilian of sorts at the root of all the deaths in the keep. But not the helpless cringing sort the SS was used to. Let them come. Let them taste the fear they so dearly loved to spread. Let them learn to believe in the unbelievable.
No Prussian could trust a bunch of southerners like that.
The National Peasant Party, for instance, was fanatically anti-German; it was out of power now but still active.
cojoc
caciula
"There are sixteen thousand eight hundred and seven such crosses imbedded in the walls of this keep," said a voice behind him. The accent was thick, the words practiced.
My father spent his life doing it, and his father before him, and so on. My sons will continue after me."
As it was situated, night must always come early to this place.
"Dreams, sir. Bad dreams. And always the same, from what I can gather…something about being trapped in a tiny room with no door and no windows and no lights…utter darkness…and cold…very cold…and something in the dark with you…colder than the dark…and hungry."
"Ask five people and you will get five answers. All different. Some say it was one of the old lords of Wallachia, some say it was a defiant Turk, and there are even a few who believe it was built by one of the Popes. Who knows for sure? Truth can shrink and fancy can grow much in five centuries."
malaise
hokkane baro
gadjé
rokker
The snakes had arrived.
Woermann turned away from the window. So this was the New Order, the New Germany, the ethic of the Master Race. This was how the war was to be won.
"No, not enough! Your SS kills helpless civilians – women, children! I earned this medal fighting men who were able to shoot back. And we both know," Woermann said, his voice dropping to a fierce whisper, "how much you dislike an enemy who shoots back!"
physically stronger – but only physically.
Jugendführer, the Hitler Youth.
He had yearned for a chance to strike back at the vultures who had settled upon the Fatherland after the last war, saddling it with impossible reparations, grinding its face into the dirt year after year after year. His chance had come, and he had participated in some of the great German victories. The Wehrmacht was unstoppable. Why, then, did he feel such malaise? It seemed wrong for him to want to be out of it all and back in Rathenow with Helga. It seemed wrong to be glad that his father, also a career officer, had died in the Great War and could not see what atrocities were being done
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Fahnenjunker
nihilistic Freikorps Oberland
and from there it was not far to the Nazi Party in 1927; after proving his volkisch, his pure German
Major Kaempffer arose from his bedroll and gingerly began removing his long underwear. His bladder had involuntarily emptied during the nightmare.
Sachsengruss
For hours on end he would make them perform the exercise: deep knee bends with arms raised and hands behind the head. Even a man in top condition would be in agony within half an hour. Flick had always found it exhilarating to watch the expressions on the prisoners' faces as they felt their bodies begin to betray them, as their joints and muscles cried out in anguish. And the fear in their faces. For those who fell from exhaustion were either shot on the spot or kicked until they resumed the exercise.
kummel
"Listen to me, Herr Sturmbannführer: Those men were dead when they walked into your room tonight. Dead! We found their blood in the rear corridor. They died in your makeshift prison. Yet they walked off the corridor, up to your room, broke through the door, marched up to your bed, and fell on you. How are you going to fight something like that?"
"Magda…these
They are free spirits, drawn to crowds and laughter and idleness. The fascist mentality cannot tolerate their sort;
And they don't even use one name with any reliable frequency, for they have three: a public name for the gadjé, another for use among their tribe members, and a secret one whispered in their ear at birth by their mother to confuse the Devil, should he come for them. To the fascist mind they are an abomination.”
the future would not be a yawning chasm full of darkness and dread with no exit.
A keep, or donjon as it was called in these parts, was the final inner fortification of a castle, the ultimate stronghold where the lord of the castle stayed with his family and staff.
The Book of Eibon.
De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn;
the other, Cultes des Goules by Comte d'Erlette.
"The Pnakotic Manuscripts, in scroll form! The du Nord translation of The Book of Eibon! The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan! And here – Unaussprechlichen Kulten by von Juntz! These books are priceless! They've been universally suppressed and forbidden through the ages, so many copies burned that only whispers of their titles have remained. In some cases, it has been questioned whether they ever existed at all! But there they are, perhaps the last surviving copies!"
Al Azif in the original Arabic." Magda heard
weak sauce,Wilson.
