Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/107832.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      due_South
  Relationship:
      Mort/Original_Male_Character
  Character:
      Mort_Gustafson, Harding_Welsh, Julius_Lauchhammer
  Additional Tags:
      Dark, Drama, Holocaust, Flashback
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-08-17 Words: 4222
****** Stronger ******
by vienna_waits
Summary
     Mort is asked to perform an autopsy on the man who tortured him at
     Auschwitz more than fifty years earlier.
Notes
     Folks, this is dark stuff. There is graphic m/m rape of a minor.
     There is graphic noncon m/m between two minors. There is graphic
     violence. Virulent anti-Semitism. And most of the story takes place
     at a concentration camp. Parts of this story are extremely
     disturbing. You have been warned.
     The title comes from this quote: "That which does not kill us makes
     us stronger." –Friedrich Nietzsche
I always enjoy it when I meet someone for the first time, especially if we're
somewhere nice, like a restaurant or the opera house, and I am asked what I do
for a living. "I'm a coroner," I say happily, and then I watch the reaction: my
conversational partner usually recoils and looks down at the floor and fumbles
around for something to say. Once I made a lady drop her champagne glass during
intermission. Fortunately, it missed both her dress and her shoes. I would hate
to be responsible for ruining a fine pair of Manolo Blahniks.
I don't understand why people are so frightened by my job. It's actually a very
pleasant working environment. None of my customers ever tells me to hurry up or
threatens to call the manager, and no one minds if I sing while I work. On the
whole, it's quite peaceful, which is more than I can say for the rest of the
precinct.
Just as a lovely Puccini aria begins to play on the radio, the doors to my
sanctum open for at least the fourth time this morning to admit…Lieutenant
Welsh, breakfast sandwich in hand. He is very blasé about the bodies down here,
unlike some of the detectives.
"Morning, Mort," he says, and takes a big bite out of the sandwich. A bit of
melted cheese drips on the floor, an orangey-yellow splat that rather resembles
three-day-old gall bladder secretions. "Sorry," he says around his mouthful,
and scuffs his shoe over the stain to wipe it off.
I pull the sheet back over the man I'm working on, a Mr. Mulroney, auto
accident. "Good morning, Lieutenant, and it is a lovely one, if I do say so
myself."
Lieutenant Welsh looks around at my windowless room and shrugs. "Sure, if you
say so. You know that old guy, the robbery victim we brought in from the park?"
I gesture to a locker. "Mr. Brown? I haven't had a chance to even introduce
myself yet."
"Yeah, him. The widow is...extremely distraught. So much so that she's been
calling and coming in three times a day to cry in my office and ask about the
investigation. Seems nice enough. I would love to have something to tell her."
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that although the customers themselves never tell
you to hurry up, sometimes other people come in and do that for them. My
mistake. "Of course I will help you," I nod, waving my hand in time with a
particularly lovely passage in the aria. "Normally I would have already gotten
to him, but March always seems to be such a busy month. Even with Constable
Fraser and Detective Kowalski on vacation, it has just been wall-to-wall in
here. But how about I bump Mr. Brown up. I'm almost finished with Mr.
Mulroney."
The Lieutenant looks relieved. "Thanks. If you could send the report up when
you're through, I'd appreciate it." He takes another enormous bite out of his
sandwich, managing not to dribble any cheese this time, and leaves.
Now I am curious to get to this Mr. Brown, so I finish up with Mr. Mulroney as
quickly as I can and get myself a cup of tea, ready to settle in with Mr. Brown
for the remainder of the morning.
I slide Mr. Brown's sheeted body out of the cooler and smoothly onto the gurney
with nary a jolt--no need to jostle them around, even if they can't feel it, it
just seems rude--and roll him over to the examination area, with the microphone
and the nice bright lights to show me so many interesting things.
I put on a new set of gloves--I like to make them snap a little--and take a sip
of tea as I start to roll back the sheet with my other hand.
My eyes widen in horror, and my hand flips the sheet back over the body. "Ne,
ne, ne!" I revert to Czech as I stagger back. The mug is on the floor,
shattered, tea splattered everywhere, but I barely notice. My heart is racing.
I feel faint. My hands are shaking.
This is not "Mr. Brown." I could never, ever forget this face. No ravages of
time or injury could wipe away the visage of this beast. Ever. At Auschwitz, I
knew him as Julius Lauchhammer...
***
Abendappell was finally breaking up, and ragged clumps of prisoners began to
set themselves in motion, shuffling wearily back down the paths to their
barracks and another miserable night fighting the lice and rats, if they were
lucky.
Twin rifle butts came down on my shoulders as I turned to leave the
Appellplatz, making me flinch. "You! Stop!" Two guards suddenly flanked me.
This had never happened to me before. Did they know about the potatoes I'd
filched? Did a guard see me, or did one of my fellow prisoners betray me for an
extra blanket or a less tattered shirt? If so, then I knew very well what would
happen now: they'd take me to the Wall and shoot me. I just hoped they'd aim
for the head, so it would be quick and painless. Such a death was practically a
gift. Rumor had it that people would actually pay the guards to fire head shots
during pre-arranged "escape attempts" so they could avoid public hanging,
freezing to death, typhus, or, worst of all, the nightmarish suffering and mass
hysteria of the gas chamber.
But all the guards said to me was, "Come along," and they shoved me through the
night toward the guards' area of the camp. I tried to keep my wits about me,
but they almost deserted me when one guard extended an arm and yanked me around
a corner into a nicer area where the higher-ranking officers lived.
Maybe they were taking me to the Commandant to shoot me in front of him for his
pleasure? Everyone in camp knew he was a madman, even more so than most of the
guards. For a fleeting moment, I wished I had a bomb under my clothes. I could
detonate it as I stood in front of the Commandant being told what a worthless
piece of Jew-shit I am, not worthy to sully the soles of his boots. Now that
would be worth dying for. I almost smiled at the thought.
We came to something that, in the real world, I might have called a row house.
There were a few steps leading up to a varnished wooden door, and a small
wooden sign hanging from the banister had the name "OSF Lauchhammer" carved in
cursive. Hmm. Not the Commandant. And there were hand-sewn curtains, crisp
white with colorful needlework around the edges, in the front window. I
couldn't tear my eyes away from those curtains. They looked so pretty and clean
and cared for, nothing like the tattered, stained rags we used to cover the
cracked panes of glass that passed as "windows" in our barracks. I could wrap
myself up in those pristine white curtains; I could sleep and dream of my
mother and father and our apartment in Prague and forget this place.
"Hey!" Now I did get a rifle butt to the side of my face, for not paying
attention. I managed not to put my hand to my face or cry out, afraid of
drawing another blow. The front door had opened, and a man, ostensibly
Obersturmführer Lauchhammer, was eyeing me like a housewife picking a roast. He
nodded to the guards and waved me in, and I was granted the frightening
privilege of entering this home.
I had to school myself not to stare at Lauchhammer. He was on the short side,
swarthy, with thick dark hair and a big crooked nose, and even in wartime in a
concentration camp, he managed to be fat. He had a double chin and a big round
face, and big, fat fingers with lots of hair below the knuckles. His glittering
dark eyes completed the impression of gazing upon a rat grown fat on death and
decay. His breath smelled of alcohol, and there was a half-full bottle of
schnapps and a Luger pistol on the table behind him.
He stared openly at me as if I were on display at the zoo, and I instinctively
froze as he reached out to me, but he merely fingered my blonde hair. "For a
piece of Jew sludge, you look almost Aryan," he said, bemused. I thought about
telling him that my father was Norwegian--or maybe that he had been Norwegian,
since I had no idea if he was still alive--but decided against it. I'd probably
just get slapped for it.
"Come." He led me to a bathroom--my word, a real bathroom, with flowered
wallpaper!--and slapped a piece of soap in my hand. I felt like I was dreaming.
It all seemed so unreal.
"Wash," he said, gesturing at the bathtub. He made no move to leave. Ah ha.
Maybe he wanted to jerk off watching a teenager in the shower. There was a time
when I would have been utterly appalled. Now, I just wondered if this officer
was of sufficiently high rank to have hot water come out of the tap.
He was. I silently gave thanks and washed quickly, afraid he would grow
impatient if I took too long. He briefly left and returned with the schnapps
bottle. He took a long pull, and then I saw him stroke the bulge beneath his
pants as he watched me hungrily, but he did not undress. His smile, thin-lipped
and feral, frightened me, but there wasn't much I could do, other than linger
under the hot water for a few moments more before I turned the tap back off.
He did not offer me a towel or tell me to put on my filthy uniform. He gestured
to me to follow him again and walked back into the front room, grabbing the
pistol as he walked past the table, and led my still-dripping, naked self down
narrow wooden stairs into a cold, windowless dirt cellar lit by a single
lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
We were not alone. There was another nude boy there, maybe a year or two
younger than I, wet-haired and shivering, sitting on a beautiful velvet settee
with turned mahogany legs.
Lauchhammer growled and swung the Luger around at the other boy's head. "You
scum-sucking beast! Did I tell you you could sit there? Get your lice-ridden,
infected Jew ass off there!"
The boy yelped in fear and leapt away from the settee, landing on the ground
halfway across the room. He stayed there in the dirt on his hands and knees,
hoping to escape further berating if he stayed as small and inconspicuous as
possible.
"Now," Lauchhammer purred, carefully seating himself as far away as possible
from where the boy had been, "I know you Jew-beasts are rutting demons, a bunch
of nymphs and satyrs. You can't help it--your race is allied with the devil
himself. Isn't that right?" He looked expectantly at me, his smile wintry and
menacing.
I wasn't sure if I was shivering from pure terror, the cold, or both. Did he
want me to answer? Would he shoot me if I didn't? What did he wish me to say?
My rising panic made my tongue thick and my wits slow.
Lauchhammer fired, a deafening thunderous sound in the confines of the cellar,
and I heard the bullet buzz past my left ear. I could actually feel the air
moving around the bullet, as if it were an enormous grasshopper leaping past
me. The other boy cried out as he turned his head away and slapped his hands
over his ears.
"Yes, sir," I stammered quickly, trying and failing to keep the quaver out of
my voice, my ears ringing. "Yes, yes sir, we Jew-beasts are rutting demons,
allied with Satan himself. We are insatiable."
Lauchhammer took another long, slow pull off of the schnapps bottle, and it was
his smile that was lecherous and lustful, the face of a satyr in a German
uniform. He reached up and began unbuttoning his uniform jacket, popping one
button at a time with a grotesque flourish, his eyes never leaving mine. The
jacket parted to reveal a stripe of snow-white undershirt clinging to the
bulges on his stomach. "Very good, Jew-boy, very good. Now go and unleash all
of your filthy, wicked, perverse desires on your fellow piece of refuse over
there." He waved his gun hand indistinctly in the boy's direction.
I looked at the boy in horror. He couldn't have been more than twelve or
thirteen at the most. Crouched on the floor, he looked lost and dazed and
scared out of his wits. How could I--? The mere thought made my stomach turn. I
tried to swallow, but my mouth seemed full of dust.
Lauchhammer turned the Luger back toward me. "This time I won't miss. Now get
over there and entertain me, you verminous creature."
I lurched toward the boy, almost stumbling, my hands and feet curiously numb. I
was acutely aware of the cold droplets of water still falling from my hair onto
the back of my neck and running down my cheeks. Lauchhammer hummed a snatch of
Wagner to himself as he hung his jacket on a corner of the settee and peeled
off his house slippers and pants.
"I'm Mortimer," I whispered to the boy as I helped him up.
"Tadeusz," he breathed. "So scared."
"Have to play his game to stay alive," I whispered hurriedly. "Just pretend."
"Now, now," droned Lauchhammer, triumphantly holding his trousers and
undershorts in one hand, "don't start without me. If I don't fold these,
they'll get wrinkled, and my wife will have to iron them." He folded them, a
process which required his utmost concentration, and placed them on an end
table next to the settee before settling back onto the velvet cushions and
giving us his full attention. "OK, let's see some Jew-boy on Jew-boy action.
Kiss, stroke each other, and then you," he growled at me, "you suck him off."
I am not really doing any of this, I vowed silently. I'm just a machine, moving
certain parts in certain ways to stay alive. I'll do anything to live.
Anything.
My lips were trembling as they met his, cold as a marble statue and nearly as
resistant. Quickly, I thought of Kamila Novotna from my old school, the way her
dark hair swung to and fro and her breasts bounced alluringly when she ran down
the street to the tram stop, the way she laughed, her eyes that could smile
even when the rest of her was pretending to be studious.
I saw it all behind my closed eyes: Kamila and I would miraculously find our
way back to each other in Prague, the horrible war would be over, and she would
look into my eyes and say, "I love you," before I kissed her on the street in
front of my house. There, that wasn't so terrible. Of course, Kamila's lips
were not rougher than an unsanded board, but the illusion held for a few
seconds.
"Yes, that's it--go on, go on," Lauchhammer called, his hand rhythmically
moving on his own flaccid penis as I kissed Tadeusz. "Run your tongue down his
rancid Jew hide and suck his putrid little Jew dick!"
I want to live, I thought violently, and ran my tongue slowly down Tad's throat
and chest, barely touching his wizened and flaky skin, an old man's skin on
such a young boy. The fairly pleasant aroma of soap was overpowered by the
familiar sour stench of fear oozing out of his every pore. It was almost
unbearable to linger so near it, to draw it into me with every panicked breath,
and my own sense of utter desperation rose automatically in response. I
struggled not to curl my tongue in revulsion, trying desperately to come up
with an illusion and failing, every second an hour long--
--and then I was on my knees, my chin brushing through a smattering of pubic
hair, my eyes screwed more firmly shut than ever, and my tongue touched the
edge of poor Tad's--
--oh God, I couldn't even think it. I needed an illusion now, right now.
Maybe...a sausage?
Yes, one of those tasty sausages like Mama and I used to get from the Hungarian
butcher and eat in her heavenly lentil stew. Those sausages were possibly the
most delicious things on Earth, so flavorful and plump and rich. I could see
them clearly in my mind's eye, hung up in long rows of links at the butcher,
and then arranged across the top of Mama's big shiny stew pot like planks in a
raft. And then...the smell of the steam that came off them when you first cut
them open and started to slice them up. My mouth started to water at the
memory.
I gently took the...sausage...and slid it into my mouth, warmth meeting warmth,
and as I moved slowly back and forth, I mentally recounted every instance I
could ever remember of our family eating lentil stew, even trying to flesh out
the details of when it had been, what the weather had been like, and whether
Aunt Anusia had been there, or maybe Grandpa Friedl or Uncle Daniel. Ugh, my
knees were starting to hurt. How much longer was I going to have to do this?
A sob interrupted my thoughts, and I realized with horror that Tadeusz was
starting to cry, backing away from me with a jerk.
My hand automatically went behind his back to draw him back to me, to protect
both him and myself. I risked a slight head-shake at him, more afraid than
ever, actually scuttling on my kneecaps to close the distance between us, and
mouthed, "Keep going. You've got to..."
That was as far as I got before Lauchhammer's arm appeared between us, slamming
Tadeusz down to the ground. This only made Tadeusz cry harder.
Lauchhammer towered over the whimpering figure on the ground. "You limp-dick!
Little baby! You fucking retard! You fucking failure! You fucking Jew!" Each
yell was punctuated by a fierce kick to the ribs. In his drunken rage,
Lauchhammer didn't even notice that he was barefoot.
Tadeusz didn't move any more after the third kick. Panting hard, Lauchhammer
watched him for a moment before aiming the Luger at the boy's face--
--"No!" I cried--
--and pulling the trigger.
I was in such shock, I forgot to breathe until I heard the low, dull sound of
Lauchhammer panting. He turned from his victim with a curiously blank, almost
bored expression on his face, little red-brown splatters dotting his
undershirt, and regarded me dully. "He was dumb," he said, "just a dumb Jew."
He went to the end table, withdrew a small package wrapped in stiff paper from
a drawer, and returned to where I still knelt on the dirt floor. "But you...see
now," he said slowly, the schnapps clearly taking its toll, "I think you're
smarter than he is." He unwrapped the paper to reveal a little lump of lard and
dabbed some of the whitish, vaguely rancid-smelling stuff onto a fingertip.
"Who knows, maybe there's even a little Aryan blood in there somewhere." He
chortled at that and ground his finger into the tip of my nose, leaving a foul,
greasy smear. "And that's why I'm going to enjoy myself, and you're going to
like it." He began rubbing lard up and down his penis and moaning. I kept my
eyes on the dirt.
He shuffled around behind me. "Get on your hands and knees," he ordered. "Do
exactly as I say, or there's a bullet in this for you too."
Thoughts buzzed chaotically through and around and into each other like flies
trapped inside in my skull. He was drunk, yes, I could probably get the gun
away from him, could kill him. Revenge. It would be--liberation, heady victory,
the prey become predator. But then what? Escape from Auschwitz? Naked? Not a
chance. His death would only buy me endless pain and misery from the SS. What
if I got the gun and forced him to--but no, forget the gun, you fool, it wasn't
even about the gun any more, it was about power--who had it, and who didn't.
I didn't.
His blocky hands came down hard, digging into my back and kidneys, and then his
semi-erect, anything-but-subtle reminder of his power began burrowing into me.
He wielded his penis like a billyclub, the weight of him slamming me forward
and knocking the breath from me, each brutal thrust bringing excruciating pain.
The bile rose in my throat, and for a moment I thought I would vomit copiously
onto the dirt. My eyes watered, and the agony--I felt like I was being torn
right down the middle, like a sheet of paper--was so intense that I saw stars,
but I concentrated my entire being on keeping my mouth clamped shut. He was not
going to hear me whimper, cry out or plead with him to stop.
"Say, 'Oh, Julius, give it to me, ram it up my tight little Jew ass,'" he
commanded.
I struggled to get a little air, to find my voice, to speak and obey. I must
have succeeded; the ramming became even more frenzied. I began playing Mozart's
Schwanengesang: Frühlingssehnsucht in my head, turning the mental volume all
the way up, until I could imagine that the floor was shaking because of the
music.
***
I realize that I am still standing in the morgue, that there is a dead Nazi
psychopath under a sheet eight feet away from me, and that the
Frühlingssehnsucht is still playing in my head at full blast.
The floor is not trembling, I am.
I mentally pull the plug on the baritone merrily singing about babbling brooks
and sag down into a chair closer to the door. Somehow, the fetid smell of lard
remains, and before I even realize it, I reach up and wipe the tip of my nose.
My heart is racing. I put my head in my hands and concentrate on calming
myself. Deep breath. And release. Again. Deeeep breath...and releeeeeeease.
Maybe it's not him.
Don't be an idiot, of course it was him! I only saw half his face for a split
second, and that was enough.
So he tormented you at Auschwitz. So he probably would have killed you if he
hadn't passed out from all the schnapps. So what? Look at who you've become,
what you've made of your life. He no longer has any power over you unless you
give it to him.
I finally look back over at the table with a sudden epiphany: our fortunes have
undergone a complete reversal. I can do with this man whatever I please. I can
call a newspaperman and recount every gory detail of "Mr. Brown's" crimes to
the world; I can put his shame on the front page of the evening edition. I can
make his name synonymous with "refuse" and "sludge" and "filth." I can
conveniently overlook certain pieces of information that might provide clues to
his killer's identity. I can ensure that his murderer walks free, just as he
himself did for so many years after the war ended. I have the power to make it
all happen.
Should I ruin him? Should I exact my revenge, should I wield this power I have
over him? I just sit there for a few minutes, turning it all over in my head,
imagining the headlines, the sordid spectacle I could set off with a single
phone call.
If our positions were reversed, Lauchhammer would do all of this and more to
me, I have no doubt. But I am not Julius Lauchhammer. I am a better man. I am a
stronger man. I was stronger then, and I am stronger now. I will never forget
what he did to me, what he did to Tadeusz. Never. And do not ask me to forgive,
either. Some atrocities are simply beyond anyone's ability to forgive. But I
can let this go. I am strong enough for that.
I rise slowly from the chair, feeling very solid, very focused, and I get a mop
and a broom and dustpan. I clean up the tea and the bits of my mug on the
floor, humming an old Czech folk tune while I work. We can't have someone
slipping in here and suing the precinct.
I take a deep breath and step back up to the examination table. My hand is
steady as I reach up and turn on the recorder and speak into the microphone:
"This is autopsy number 147/1998, for deceased Marcus M. Brown, last residing
at 521 West Sycamore Street, Chicago, date of death 16 March 1998."
I flip back the sheet once more, and although I am once again startled, I
remain composed, in control: "Initial visual examination would indicate that
Mr. Brown's immediate cause of death was a gunshot wound to the face..."
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