Emanations of Hate

Chapter 19

"George, having existed in both states, I can tell you that one of the main differences between the living and the dead is that living people tend to breathe." Heidemann remained paralysed in the doorway and so his visitor resigned himself to not receiving an invitation to enter, and simply pushed his way past his host and strode casually into Heidemann's parlour. The horrified German watched as his visitor pulled off his gloves with the same precision as before and then poured himself a drink.

If the man's back hadn't been towards him, he might have also seen the way his visitor's hand shook as it brought the glass up to his lips.

"I'm sorry to drop by so late George. I suppose it's reasonable to assume that you weren't expecting me."

"Gerald?" the older man finally blurted out. "Gerald, how in God's name can you possibly be here?" he shouted. "I thought…Good heavens man! I saw you, well…disperse."

To his amazement, he received no answer from the other man. He saw Townsend's head drop and heard a strangled choke. The shot glass fell weakly from his hand, its contents spilling out all over the floor. Heidemann saw Townsend's back begin to quiver, and then his whole body was shaking uncontrollably as he turned to face him.

"It was real? Really real?" he whispered.

"Sergeant Carter?"

But Carter couldn't answer. Suddenly he doubled over. Racing past Heidemann, he made a frantic dash into the kitchen. Running after him, the German was just in time to helplessly watch the young man vomit into his sink.

"All those kids…" Carter sobbed in hitching gasps, "All those kids…" His body heaved violently and he threw up again, tears streaming down his face.

Heidemann stood by him, patting him gently on the back until he could feel him calm down a little. Carter turned to him, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

"It's alright," Heidemann reassured him and wet a washcloth, passing it to Carter so that he could clean himself off.

"I didn't want it to be real. Honestly I didn't," Carter explained plaintively, as he fumbled with the washcloth.

"Of course you didn't. Here let me get that," Heidemann said. Carter, still shaking rather badly, had dropped the cloth.

"Not even if it meant I was crazy," Carter continued. "But I guess I got thinking about it so much that…" his voice shuddered and Heidemann looked up quickly, worried that he was about to be sick again.

"I don't understand. Why did you - " He had been about to say, Why did you pretend to be Gerald Townsend? But then he thought that maybe Carter hadn't been entirely pretending. His impersonation had been positively eerie, and the implications of that were rather frightening. Perhaps, unbeknownst to the Sergeant, there was still something of his old friend left in the young man. But that was hardly something to suggest in front of Carter; the man's emotions were already in tatters. So, walking him back into the parlour, he simply asked, "Why are you here Sergeant?"

"I had to know. You see, the more and more I got thinking about it, the more I thought there had to be something wrong with me. It kept going around and around in my head till I couldn't sleep or eat or anything. I couldn't believe it had really happened. I mean who could do something like that? Who could do that to little kids?"

Heidemann guided him to a chair. "I'm afraid I still don't quite understand. You had to know what exactly?"

"I had to know what happened. I had to know if Townsend," his voice broke, "If Townsend and Schuler were real."

"My God! You didn't know? But why didn't you ask the others about it?"

The words all rushed out, "Cause I didn't want them to think I was any more crazy than they already did! I woke up in the hospital and they had me tied to a bed and I was all confused and didn't remember how I'd gotten there and then I started remembering all this crazy stuff and everybody looks at me funny and…"

And Newkirk said the Colonel thought I was crazy.

"And it just seemed to make sense, you see. All this other stuff, it was too awful to believe! And so I thought I must've done something and guys thought I'd gone nuts or I was sick and they put me in the hospital, and so I thought that if I talked about all these things I was remembering, then they'd think that I was really crazy and they'd make me go back and I'd never get out of there. And they must think something's wrong with me cause now the Colonel wants to send me home." He bit his lip. "But I didn't want what happened to those kids to be real!" he cried out suddenly. "I just didn't want to be crazy! But that means all those things happened!"

"Yes, I'm afraid they did," Heidemann admitted. "But Sergeant, your wishing not to be insane didn't cause them to happen. Of course you didn't want to be crazy, who would? The very idea must have been terrifying. But don't believe that for one second that because you hated one option, that that means you desired the other or caused it to be true. All of this began years ago. You probably weren't much older than those children when Schuler started committing these monstrous acts. You mustn't believe that the reality of these terrible events was some sort of - I don't know, some sort of trade off - for your learning that you aren't insane. One event does not affect the other."

"I know that," Carter protested, a bit unsure.

"Logically you know that, but I want you to get rid of the guilt in your heart before it truly takes hold."

"But I am guilty," Carter whispered, looking away, and Heidemann knew that he had hit the nail on the head. "I did all of those things - "

"Stop right there Sergeant!" Heidemann ordered. "Let us get one thing straight: you did not do those things. Schuler performed those experiments. And Townsend did all of those things to stop him. You had nothing more to do with his actions than if Townsend had stolen your car and run Schuler over with it."

"But I couldn't stop him! I couldn't stop him from taking me over. I couldn't stop him from hurting Newkirk or from hurting the others." His voice grew painfully quiet. "I couldn't stop him from having those two guards killed."

"And Gerald couldn't stop Schuler from murdering those children." The bluntness of this shocked Carter and he stared at Heidemann, who continued, "At least not then. And I couldn't stop Gerald from what he was doing to you. Neither could your friends." He got up and poured both of them a drink and then sat down across from Carter. "Perhaps the hardest lesson we learn in life is that we can't always stop the terrible things that the universe has in store for us. When we're children, we think that adults can, and that when we are grown we will be wise and in control as well. And while we learn intellectually that this is not so, that belief persists in our hearts far longer than we imagine. Possibly this is a good thing; maybe without it we would not be able to occasionally do the remarkable, but as real life forces us to learn differently, it becomes terribly hard on the soul." He glanced at Carter and saw that his words were not really helping.

"Listen to me Sergeant, all of this - what Schuler did and what Townsend did to stop him - none of it happened because you made a mistake or because you weren't strong enough. You were used and that is terrible, but no one would have been strong enough to stop it. You were the victim of events much larger than yourself, as so many people are in this life. You may as well blame the children for letting Schuler take them. No, no, Sergeant. None of this was your fault. It was Schuler's. And what was not his fault was mine."

"Yours? How is it your fault? Aren't you a victim too? You just said - "

"I meant that you were the victim Sergeant. There was nothing you could have done to prevent what happened, either to those children or to yourself and your friends."

"But you didn't do anything."

"I'm afraid that's precisely it. I did nothing. If I had listened to Gerald, and not sent him out to get proof on his own, we might have stopped Schuler. At the very least, Gerald might have lived and we might have been able to deal with Schuler at some future point. My unwillingness to act is what lead to all of this. I wasn't a victim; I had the chance to change events for the better, but I was too much of a coward to try."

Carter frowned. "I don't know, but I don't think that that's true. Maybe you could have done something, but it's not like you can really know for sure. You couldn't know how it was all going to turn out. I mean, how can anybody know what's going to happen just because they don't do something?"

Heidemann smiled sadly, touched by the younger man's defending him. "That's as may be Sergeant, but I can't help but think that if you or any of your friends were in the same situation, that you would have at least attempted to follow Townsend and learn the truth."

Carter opened his mouth, but then closed it again.

"You see? You can't argue with that point."

"Maybe you had other things on your mind," Carter said quietly. Heidemann noticed that he was staring across the room, at a picture of his wife. "She was sick at the time, wasn't she?" Carter asked. Heidemann peered at him uneasily; Carter's voice seemed deeper, more like…

"Yes, I believe that's about when it started. But that's still no excuse."

"No. But as you said, terrible things happen. Perhaps there was a moment when you could have changed things, but you missed it because you were concerned for your wife. And maybe you couldn't think of taking a risk because you needed to be there for her." Carter seemed to be drifting off into a trance. Heidemann leaned forward to examine him more closely. "You know, I was quite fond of her," Carter continued. "When I first came to Germany, I was so much more nervous than I wanted to let on. But she was kind to me."

"Sergeant, you never met my wife. She died in 1939, a month or so before the war started," Heidemann pointed out softly, not wanting to unduly frighten Carter.

Carter made no reply, he didn't even seem to have heard Heidemann. The older man slowly raised his arm and "accidentally" knocked his empty glass off the side table next to where he was sitting. It didn't make much noise as it landed on his thick rug, but it was enough. Carter started slightly and then yawned, oblivious to what appeared to have been happening.

"Herr Heidemann?"

"Yes Sergeant?"

"I'm awfully tired. I think I'd better be going now." As he rose to his feet though, he swayed a little.

"How did you get here Sergeant?"

"Ummm? Oh, I walked."

For a moment Heidemann wondered how Carter would have explained a lone SS man traipsing through the woods if he had been caught, but then he noticed the younger man squint and put a hand to the side of his face as if he had a headache. "Maybe you should rest here for a bit Sergeant," he said, "You look a tad peaked."

"No, I have to get back," he mumbled, his sheer exhaustion beginning to show through. His eyes opened slightly wider as if he had just realized something. "Boy though, the Colonel's going to be mad!"

"Why?"

"Well, technically I'm AWOL."

"What?"

"I did leave a note! Okay, I didn't say where I was going, but I said I'd be back before roll call," Carter explained. "I just didn't exactly ask permission first, is all."

"I see. Still, I think it would be too dangerous for you to find your way back when you're in this state." Carter seemed to be having trouble even holding his head up. "You'd hardly want to put your friends in danger by your being captured, would you?" Heidemann manoeuvred Carter over to the chesterfield and made him sit down again. "So why don't you rest there and I'll contact Colonel Hogan."

Carter sighed. " 's gonna be mad being put to so much trouble," he mumbled.

"I think he'll be more angry if you put yourself and the operation at risk by doing something foolish like trying to avoid the Germans while you're out on your feet."

" 'spose so," Carter yawned. He obediently laid back against one corner of the chesterfield, feet still on the floor but otherwise curled up with his arms folded across his chest, hands clutching each upper arm as if he were cold. Asleep as soon as he closed his eyes, Heidemann draped a blanket over him, thinking all the while that Carter had to be the most incongruous SS man that he had ever seen.

He went off to radio Papa Bear, a task that he suspected might be somewhat unpleasant.


"C'mon Carter, wake up. It's after four."

Carter could feel someone shaking him. Still desperately tired, he closed his eyes tighter.

But the shaker was persistent and pulled him up to a sitting position. "C'mon now, wake up. We've got to get back to camp."

"No, wanna sleep," Carter murmured, eyes still closed. His head lolled forward and he felt positively ill.

"Open your eyes Sergeant! We've got roll call soon." The shaker was now slapping him lightly on the cheek.

"Here, try and get some of this coffee in him," a second voice said.

Carter was extremely unwilling to wake up, but he knew there was some important reason he was supposed to be listening to the shaker. And the coffee smelled better than anything he had ever smelled before. Besides, there was something he wanted to tell the coffee man, something he had remembered in his sleep. Now what was it?

"There's no time," Colonel Hogan snapped at Heidemann. Awareness came flooding back; Oh boy, Carter thought, the Colonel's really ticked off. Carter felt himself being hauled to his feet and manoeuvred towards the door.

"Wait sir!" Carter pleaded.

"What is it now?" Hogan said, exasperated.

"I - I gotta tell Herr Heidemann something."

Hogan sighed and waved him over to the naturalist. "Do it quickly - we haven't got all night."

Carter shyly took a few steps towards Heidemann, after a wary glance at his CO. "I wanted to say thank you," he began.

"Thank you?" Heidemann was completely stunned. Hogan looked at the two of them, more than a little surprised himself.

"For what you tried to do that night - the offer you made Townsend. You know, to take my place."

Heidemann shook his head. "Please Sergeant, don't thank me for that. It was the only thing I could have done. It should never have been you in the first place."

"It was only me because of an accident, or fate. I don't know really. But it's not something you should blame yourself for. I don't blame you."

"Thank you Sergeant," Heidemann said. He felt both grateful and humbled by the young man's forgiveness.

Carter hesitated a moment and then said, "He forgave you too, at the end. He was mad at you for a lot of the time, but I think he was sorry too. Sorry for…well, a lot of things."

"Was he?" Heidemann asked, a little wistful. "I'm glad if he was able to forgive me. Thank you for telling me."

Carter nodded and then turned and he and Hogan left. After the two Americans had driven off, Dietrich Heidemann went back inside. He sat in his parlour until well after sunrise. Overwhelmed and submerged in his thoughts, he barely noticed it.


The Colonel said nothing at first. He didn't yell at him, or ask him what in the hell he had thought he was doing going AWOL. Normally this might have worried Carter. Now though, he was simply too emotionally spent to care. There was no energy left for worry or fear.

It wasn't until they had turned off the back roads that lead to Heidemann's isolated home that Hogan said anything.

"I had a talk with Heidemann while you were asleep."

"Oh."

"I also had a bit of talk with Newkirk. He told me what he did and about the things he said to you."

"Oh."

"So let's get some things straight," Hogan continued, "First of all, when I asked you if you wanted to go home it wasn't because I thought you were crazy and needed to be locked up somewhere. I just thought that after all of this you might need a break. Second of all, I don't know why Newkirk said those things to you in the first place - "

"Cause of his sister," Carter interrupted. "He was upset about his sister."

"Why? What's wrong with her?"

Carter frowned and tried to remember. Townsend had known - Carter didn't know how exactly - but he had memories of Townsend taunting Newkirk with it on the road while Newkirk had held a gun to his face. Carter wondered if he had found it out because whoever had been in Newkirk had been able to read his friend's thoughts the way Townsend had read his, and then told Townsend. He couldn't remember Townsend going through Newkirk's mind the same way he had the others, but…

Carter shivered. "I don't know," he finally answered. "Newkirk never told me. I just know something was wrong."

"Okay, I understand." Hogan suddenly felt bad at the way he had lit into Newkirk after the Englishman had confessed as to what had gone on the night he and Carter were attacked. But coming back after his mission to find a large group of prisoners frantically scouring the tunnels and the surrounding perimeter for a missing Carter had scared him. Seeing his CO furiously swearing that his wayward Sergeant wasn't going to see the light of day once he found him, Newkirk had told him what had gone on in hopes of explaining what may have driven Carter to do such a thing, causing Hogan to then vent all of his anger onto him. Feeling guilty that he had overlooked the emotional state of not just one of his men that night, but two, he promised himself that he would talk to Newkirk as soon as he could.

However, he still had a few problems at hand. "What I was trying to say though, is that those things he said to you aren't true. Before this whole business with Townsend and Schuler, I had no thoughts of sending you home."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Alright." It was funny, but hearing the Colonel say it didn't make him feel as happy as he thought it would have. He saw Hogan frown at him.

"Andrew, you believed him didn't you? I mean, it wasn't just Schuler and Townsend and waking up all alone in the hospital, was it? That I can understand. Anyone would wonder if they'd gone round the bend after all that. But you thought Newkirk was telling the truth, didn't you?"

Carter swallowed hard. "It's not like I never thought of it, you know? It's not like I never asked myself, 'What kind of man likes to blow things up?' I'd tell myself that it was important, that it was for the war effort, but I'd always kind of wonder. Or at least I did. It was just so nice to finally be good at something! But maybe Newkirk is right. Maybe I don't think about the people I'm hurting anymore. Maybe I never really did."

"Andrew, I know for a fact that that isn't true. That first time, you nearly tore yourself up inside. I know you tried to hide it, but for Heaven's sake, you could barely eat for days. Did you think we didn't notice that?"

"But what about now? I don't do it now, do I?"

"Maybe not Carter, but let's face it, if you did then you'd really go crazy."

"But - "

"But nothing! Hell Carter, I used to like shooting down planes. For every one I'd think, 'We're one little bit closer to this being over'. And I have to admit, I got a thrill out of it. But maybe focusing on that adrenalin rush is the brain's only way of protecting itself; by drawing our thoughts away from what we're really doing. It was too hard to think of the people. You can't - that's one sure way to the loony bin. If I was going to do my job I had to think of them only as inanimate objects - just planes, no people. Let me ask you another question Carter: Did you do it before the war?"

"No."

"Would you do it if I didn't order you to?"

"No."

"Are you going to do it after the war?"

"No!"

"Well then?"

"But sir, I want to do my duty and I want to stop the Germans, but I don't want to hurt anyone, but I like blowing things up and now it's all going round and round in my head till I don't know which way is up!"

Hogan sighed. From the beginning he had worried that someday the consequences of the task he had given Carter would eventually overwhelm him, but Carter's excitement had often reassured him that that day hadn't arrived yet. Now…well, what could he say? He didn't think Carter was crazy. He just like to build things, and he had a marvellous talent for innovation. And then there was the undoubted boost to his self esteem that he must get by not only helping win the war, but by truly being an expert at something. As for the explosions themselves, Hogan had to admit that he usually liked them too. They meant a successful mission was completed. And they were exciting.

If you could forget the people…

"Carter, do you blame me?" he asked suddenly.

"Huh?"

"Do you blame me? For making you do all this. For making you blow things up and for sending you out on dangerous missions."

"No, of course not. That's your job."

"But I put you guys in danger."

"Sir, you can't think like that. You guys, you think that I don't know, that I don't understand, but I do. Maybe I don't like it and maybe I don't always remember it, like that time Peter got captured and you said we weren't going after him, but I know." (1)

Hogan shook his head; it was definitely too early in the morning for this. "I'm sorry Carter, you've lost me. You know what?"

"I know that keeping us safe can't be your first job. I mean, it can't be cause otherwise you'd send us all home right?" Carter smiled for a second at that last part. "Anyway, I know that maybe someday you'll have to order one of us, or even all of us, to do something you know we won't come back from, and don't get me wrong, I really, really don't want to die, but that's how it is. We're pretty lucky here I guess. Most guys, they've got to go into battle all the time knowing that they're not all gonna come back. You've always got a plan, but maybe someday you won't, or it won't work, and you'll still have to order us to do it anyway and that's okay."

"That's okay?"

"Well okay, it's not okay, but…" All of a sudden his voice broke, "We gotta stop'em. Townsend, he showed me…" He turned his head away and couldn't speak for a few minutes. "So you can't feel guilty about ordering us to do dangerous things!" he argued emphatically when he found his voice again. "That's just how it's gotta be. I know it, and the guys know it, so you can't let it get in the way."

"And neither can you Andrew," Hogan said as he pulled over to the side of the road. They were nearly back at camp and from there they'd go the rest of the way on foot. "Look, I like parts of my job and the parts that I don't, I still have to do anyway. I don't like putting you guys in danger, but if I spent all my time thinking about it I'd go nuts. It sounds pretty damn callous I know, and quite frankly, there are times when I worry about what this war is doing to me - I think everyone does at some point - but you're right, we've got to stop them. More than any other war, I truly believe that this war is a fight against evil. So you're not crazy, alright? No matter if you stay or go, it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you."

"But things change and you might feel like you can't do this anymore, and if so, I have to know about it. And I need you to be honest. I won't hold it against you if you say no. Sometimes the way we can best serve changes for one reason or another. That's why I'm not a flyer anymore. And if you need a bit of a rest, that's nothing to be ashamed of either. Driving yourself into the ground means you won't be able to fight later. But I need to know."

Carter pondered all of this for what seemed like a long time. "Colonel?"

"Yes Carter?"

"Do you know about the other camps?" Carter asked softly.

Oh God, I would have given anything if he hadn't found out about those, Hogan thought to himself, and wondered what exactly Townsend had shown Carter.

"Yes Andrew, I'm afraid I do."

Hogan expected the younger man to say something else, but Carter only sat there, his face away from Hogan, his shoulders shaking.

"Carter, do you want to talk about - "

"No!" he cut Hogan off hoarsely. He swiped quickly at his eyes with his sleeve. "I'm sorry, I just can't talk about that right now sir, okay?"

Hogan nodded. "You do know that you can come to us though, right?"

Carter nodded. Then he drew in a deep breath and pulled himself together. "Do the others know?" he asked.

"Not that I'm aware of. I've never told them if that's what you mean."

"You wouldn't have told them and not me?"

"No. You're part of the team Carter. Other than a few things I've been forced to tell Kinch because he's second in command, I've never told the others anything and left you out of the loop."

"Okay." He said nothing for a little while. "Colonel?"

"Yes Carter?"

"I think I'd like to stay and do my job."

For Colonel Robert E. Hogan, there was one thing that made up for him not being a flyer anymore, and that was the opportunity to truly get to know the men under his command. He had lead men before, but until coming to Stalag 13, until he had been forced to deal with the people under him in such close quarters, he had been unaware of the true depths of other people's potential for courage and dedication. It was a constantly eye-opening experience.

"I'm glad Carter," was all he said. He placed a hand of the back of Carter's neck. "So now your first order is this: get back to the infirmary and get some rest before Wilson goes on the rampage, and then after you wake up, you can move back into the barracks."

"Yessir," Carter replied, tired but smiling. After they had abandoned the staff car and made their way through the emergency tunnel, Carter docilely let himself be lead off by Wilson.

As he watched them go, Hogan cursed this war and the job he had to do. He could only pray that both he and Carter had made the right decision.


(1) I think it was "How to trap a Papa Bear."