Witzenhausen

The young Ludwig rolled up one sleeve and sat down in the dry, enameled bathtub. Reaching in his trouser pocket, he produced a long black case, and rummaged in the rest of his pockets searchingly until he glanced at his coat resting on the cistern. Grabbing the rim of the tub to stabilize himself, he reached into his coat's pocket and withdrew a bottle of diacetylmorphine. With a thud Ludwig fell back in the tub and carefully pulled open the case to peep the syringe therein. After carefully drawing the opiate into the syringe, he tested the needle's structural soundness with a flick, then squirted a small portion into the air to prevent any renegade air-bubbles from giving him a stroke. With a blank expression, he stuck himself subcutaneously and inoculated the substance.

Ludwig gingerly returned the instrument to it's case and snapped it shut, and also secreted the bottle back in his coat. Then, slipping his spectacles into his shirt pocket, he drew up his knees and slid down onto his back, eyes shut.

Ludwig and Wilhelm had been living together in the backwater village of Witzenhausen since the middle of nineteen-forty-five (it was now february of forty-six), sharing a cramped apartment while the Americans were at work doctoring their records, expunging any links to Nazi involvement and falsifying employment histories. Witzenhausen was in the American zone—one of the slices of territory the Allied nations had carved into the Grossgermanisches Reich like some gruesome trophy after the war ended—and the two physicists, like a great many German scientists, were dispatched to the village after their debriefing at Kransberg Castle (called DUSTBIN by the Americans) as a part of Operation Overcast. The idea behind Overcast, as Ludwig understood it, was to to steal away all of Deutschland's great scientific minds and further vulgarize the memory of the new order. Nominally, though, repurposing the Reich's former scientists was for the good of the U.S., as opposed to the further degradation of a once great nation.

Wilhelm and Ludwig had managed to stay together through the entire humiliating dance of capture, transfer, and interrogation. But the real struggle was the seeing the rapine of all their highest ideals before their very eyes—the destruction of the Reich, the loss of the war, the death of the Fuhrer. More than once, Ludwig had thought about taking his pistol in one hand and ending it all, and Wilhelm had also, but the brothers kept one another sane when it seemed all the world had gone just the opposite.

Now, in the tub, Ludwig didn't mind the idea of leaving the fatherland for America. He knew that a new dawn didn't await him in the United States (and in fact he wondered if the sun would ever rise again), but in Germany he'd only be haunted by the ghosts of the new age. At least in America, he might be able to forget.

Ludwig opened his eyes slowly and raised one hand. Looking at it, his expression was blank, but he felt some satisfaction at the numbness. The duck stood up and stepped out of the bathtub, rolling down his sleeve and looking in the mirror. As he buttoned his cuff together, Ludwig opened his mouth and examined one portion of his gums very carefully. During his detainment after initial capture, a couple of American GIs with something to prove knocked two of his teeth out; both anterior premolars adjacent to one another. The gums seemed to be healing properly, and he had made his peace with the circumstances. Ludwig slipped on his coat and exited the bathroom.

The single corridor of the small apartment was, like the rest of the place, littered with what remained of Ludwig and Wilhelm's mortal possessions: mainly books on a range of arcane and recondite subjects, along with notebooks soaked with ink in the form of sloppily written formulae and models. The predominant way the two men dealt with their grief over the war's end was by throwing themselves into their work in physics. Wilhelm's phony diploma from the KWI was enough to fool American intelligence into labelling him a highly skilled scientist, but thanks to his studies with Ludwig his mathematical and scientific abilities were more than enough to justify this status. Likewise, Wilhelm's initiation of Ludwig into the higher mysteries developed Von Drake's understanding of natural phenomenon years ahead of what science alone could achieve. Together, they spent almost every waking moment collaborating on theories which they were sure would win them great adulation in the United States.

Ludwig buttoned his coat (an unfortunate necessity in the unheated, barely insulated hovel) and stepped into the cozy kitchen to see Wilhelm sitting at the booth against the wall, painting a breakfast sausage with mustard. As they greeted one another, Ludwig noticed, in front of the oven, the ' housekeeper ' had come early: Matilda McDuck, a Scottish-american volunteer especially stationed in Witzenhausen during the final stages of the war, and who'd been made to stay in 'West Germany' after the end. Moonlighting as a housekeeper, she and Ludwig had taken a shine to each other, and every other day she would come to the fellows' apartment ostensibly to clean. She'd also sometimes help the two of them with their english (they'd already taught themselves most of the syntax and vocabulary, but Ludwig would pretend not to know some things).

"Here you go, Ludwig," Matilda intoned through her teasing brogue, handing the physicist a chipped plate heaped with piping hot breakfast foods. Ludwig looked down at the comestibles in a haze, then back up at Matilda smiling at him warmly. He grabbed the plate, one of his hands caressing Matilda's own as he took it. Ludwig found it difficult to look her in the eye, and so his stare travelled lazily back down to the food. Even in her winter attire, Matilda's physique caught Ludwig's furtive attention. Then, remembering himself, his gaze shot down to the floor.

"D-... Danke, Frau Matilda," Ludwig said, shyly, before he felt her hand on his chin, delicately lifting his head. Her warm look had been replaced by one of caring concern as she locked eyes with him.

"Ludwig, are you…?" she began, narrowing her eyes.

Sensing the root of her concern, Ludwig quickly answered, "Mein mouth, it, uh, mein mouth h-hurts." He opened his mouth wide, pointing with one hand at where his teeth had been ripped out, and almost dropping the food.

Matilda didn't believe that was entirely the case, as the wound had almost entirely healed, but she didn't want to argue, so she asked him, "Can you eat?" and beckoned him to sit next to Wilhelm.

"Ja, I can- Ja, I can eat," Ludwig affirmed, setting the plate on the table with a clang and crumpling next to Wilhelm, never taking his eyes off Matilda's.

"Alright, that's good. Would you like some milk with it?" She asked, a little disappointed in him. Ludwig's mind was starting to wander, so he only nodded his confirmation and began to eat.

While he was clumsily biting into a slice of toast smeared with something-or-another, he looked to his left to see Wilhelm awkwardly cutting into a tough bratwurst. Wilhelm's right hand was moving very stiffly, and Ludwig could tell it was hurting him that morning. It was an injury that occurred only a week or so after the war, when Wilhelm learned of what the Dutch resistance were doing to former Nederlandsche SS—lynching collaborators, shaving womens' heads and publicly humiliating them; Wilhelm was so incensed that he punched a brick wall and broke the bones in his hand. Even then, he continued raging until Ludwig physically restrained him. He went on for days claiming he was fine until Ludwig had to beg him to visit a physician, and by then the bones had started to heal improperly.

By the time Ludwig thought to offer his help, Wilhelm had already finished and had resumed eating. Matilda set a glass of cool milk in front of Ludwig, and he silently mouthed the word, "Danke." She patted him on the back and walked to the sink, starting to clean the dishes she'd dirtied in preparing breakfast.

A few minutes passed, until Wilhelm had cleared his plate of food (save a few scraps) and crossed his utensils on it before pushing it to the far side of the table. He reached over and grabbed that morning's newspaper from the seat adjacent to the booth. Ludwig, who was picking at his own half eaten plate of food, glanced over to see him unfold the paper and cross his legs, reading it. Ludwig looked back down at his plate, a single fork hovering over it in his hand. He wasn't really hungry.

Ludwig set his fork down on the plate and slumped over, resting his head on Wilhelm's shoulder. As Wilhelm looked over, then shifted his weight to better support him, Ludwig closed his eyes.