“Off he goes,” Planus observes Scipio as he stalks into the forest. “Off to sew the ground with his seed,”

“We must speak to Caesar,” whispers Titus.

Planus shakes his head. “You know that he’s allowed Scipio his leave because it’s kept the nuisance raids in check.”

“I’m aware,” says Titus. “His method is effective, the locals are terrified,”

“Wouldn’t you be if some marauding monster roamed your land, raping every mouth and hole with a man attached?” Planus asks. “I brought this before my Tribune, and do you know what he said?”

“He’s only buggering the druids,” Titus replies.

Planus gives a start. “You spoke to my Tribune?”

“No, I spoke to mine,” Titus clarifies. “It seems that they’ve all conspired to formulate the same response,”

Chapter X – THE PRICE OF PAIN

Planus and Titus express concern for Scipio's depraved tactics after his father's death, while Castor realizes keeping him away from The Owl is in everyone's best interests.

• BEAR HOUSE
• TAPAS WEB NOVELS
• ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN
• PIXIV NOVELS

Last of the three main characters in ‘The List’ – a limited series about a young Polish man in 1960 Poland whose been killing former Germans and Poles that abused him in the Lebensraum system during the war. He forges a relationship with a younger man, but his homicidal need for revenge doesn’t wane and this puts him in the crosshairs of a young detective who understands his crimes and why they’re bing committed—as he to was in the Lebensraum system for a time.

TW – child death; domestic abuse, antisemitism, ww2, physical and emotional trauma.

Character Notes: “Natan/Natek”

The Germans invade Danzig, where 7-year-old NATAN BYTNER lives with his German-Polish father, Joachim, and his Polish mother, Erzbet. Life improves for his father, an antisemitic administrator who has helped the elected conservative government persecute Jewish locals for years. At the same time, his young, blue-eyed blond wife covertly smuggles Jewish children out of the city with her brother, Viktor.

Throughout 1940, he notices his Polish classmates disappear, along with Polish flags, signs, and merchants. His school closes, and German is the only language allowed at the new school downtown, where his father enrolls him. Things become strained at home after police torch local fishing boats, including his uncle Viktor’s, forcing the man into moving in with them.

Father tosses Viktor out one day after he interferes with him ‘disciplining’ Natek. Not long after this, a Racial Hygiene Court determines that Viktor is a danger to racial purity; while in custody, officials declare him homosexual and ‘cure’ him with complete castration. He later dies, convalescing on the streets.

Joachim, now an intake officer at a nearby labor camp, begins drinking and physically abusing Erzbet. She flees in 1941, taking Natek with her. Her mastery of the language enables them to pose as Germans migrating south, yet her constant fear of being found leads them to move so often that Natek cannot make friends. Erzbet and ‘Natan’ settle into a shared apartment in Dresden with two young widows and their children. On his 11th birthday in 1942, his father barges into the apartment with five German police. Erzbet is dragged into the bedroom and ‘Germanized’ by Joachim and the men. Natan witnesses her rape and flees the apartment.

He wanders the Dresden streets for weeks until a Lebensraum initiative scout collects him. He mentions nothing of his parents, and despite a prominent nose and brown eyes, his platinum blond hair and fluent German get him labeled ‘Aryan.’

Officials place 12-year-old Natan with the Giller family outside Liegnitz (f. Legnica). Ernst Giller is a kind-hearted grocer, and his wife, Edith, is a teacher. Natan fits in easily at school, where other boys look up to him. One day in 1944, he walks in on his classmate, Reinhardt, hastily dressing in the gym locker room after football practice. The boy is circumcised and frightened, yet when the other boys enter, Natan blocks their view, allowing Reinhardt to dress unnoticed.

Natan befriends Reinhardt, ensuring none of the others rough house with him or ‘pants’ him in the game yard. During an overnight sports outing, they take adjacent sleeping cots and stay up late whispering about their missing parents. When the boy takes Natan’s hand, he asks to be called ‘Natek;’ after that night, they secretly speak Polish, and Reinhardt teaches him some Yiddish.

One day, Natan overhears their gym teacher discussing an upcoming swim meet with Mister Giller. He warns Reinhardt that a visiting Inspector, some man named Haas, expects them to swim naked with the rest of the boys. Reinhardt doesn’t appear at the swim meet; the instructor cancels the meet so everyone can search the nearby woods when the boy goes missing.

That night, Werner Haas dines with the Gillers before questioning Natan about Reinhardt. Mrs. Giller answers many questions, prompting Werner to speak with Natan alone. The Gillers reluctantly acquiesce. Once alone, Haas asks after Reinhardt’s real family, and Natan claims ignorance. Haas shows him a picture of his mother, Erzbet, bruised in a hospital bed. Haas informs him that his father still looks for him. Natan starts sobbing and begs Haas not to return him to Danzig. The next day, Haas takes Natan on a car trip. While driving through the countryside, Natan implores the man to let him stay with the Gillers. Haas takes him to a remote forest outside Liegnitz and parks. He takes a photo of Natan with a flower in his mouth before exposing himself. The man demands Natan perform oral sex. Before he does, Haas angrily drags him from the car, shoves cash into his hand, and orders him to flee.

The money takes Natan as far as Dresden, where the 13-year-old sleeps with other homeless boys at the railyard. Foraging the woods for food, he encounters a group of Russian and Polish soldiers, and though he speaks Polish, they note his German accent and beat him until Reinhardt appears. Reunited with his friend, Natan sleeps in Reinhardt’s tent, encamped with a hidden Jewish faction in the woods. Natan and Reinhardt wash each other in the river and spend the night kissing and touching until morning.

Old enough to carry guns, the boys follow the resistance group into Dresden for a Valentine’s Day massacre. After midnight, allied bombs fall, and Natan loses Reinhardt in the chaos. In the morning, Natan comes across a mountain of bombed debris and sees curly hairs sticking out from the rubble. He buries his face in the corpse’s hair and smells Reinhardt’s soap.

A liberated Polish laborer, Piotr Mikulski, happens upon a sobbing Natan and drags him away before the bombing begins again.

Natek spends his later teens with Piotr, who takes him back to Danzig, now Gdansk. The man enrolls him in school and enlists him in the ‘Armia Krajowa,’ a group of former national soldiers fighting the Soviet takeover of Poland. In 1948, a month after Natek completed school, Piotr’s faction plans to bomb the State Security Office, but officials have the building tightly controlled. Natak sees a familiar face on the docket of planned executions—his father, Joachim. The man will face a firing squad as a collaborator, and Natek can access the building after acquiring a pass to watch the execution. Piotr dismisses this, declaring that Natek will attend university in Warsaw and not involve himself in this plan.

Frustrated, Natek and some other younger members carry out the bombing. On the day of the execution, however, Erzbet finds her son in the crowd. Natek is shocked to see his mother, thought dead; Erzbet tells him she turned over his father and has missed ‘her Natek’ terribly. Overcome, he embraces her before realizing he must stop his comrades from planting the bomb. He approaches a nearby policeman named Kawa and points out the bomb carrier by asking why a young man would wear such a long coat on a hot summer day. While the policeman ponders the observation, Erzbet appears and declares she’s unwilling to sully their reunion by witnessing his father’s hanging. Aware that Kawa watches them, Natak expresses anger and tells her he wants to see ‘that filthy collaborator hang.’ Kawa scolds him and tells him to take his mother home. Natak gets his mother out of the courtyard, and at her flat blocks away, he listens anxiously for an explosion that never comes.

Later that night, he returns to Piotr’s and finds the police raiding his home. The old man shakes his head at Natak, warning him not to approach; gunfire erupts inside before all Natak’s young accomplices emerge. Investigators shoot each man as he tries to flee. Piotr has a heart attack while in custody downtown.

Mortified by his actions, Natak moves in with his mother and attends university in Warsaw as Piotr wanted. Natak finishes university with a degree in sociology, and at his ceremony in 1951, Bazyli Kawa, now an Inspector, recruits him. Guilt prompts Natak to accept with a covert goal to aid local Armia Krajowa factions as their man on the inside.

Natak completes his law-enforcement exams and training in 1953 and, at age 22, is assigned as a beat cop in southern Gdansk. He makes good on his plans and quickly becomes an asset to the anti-communist underground, warning them of impending raids and freeing those apprehended during round-ups.

During this time, Natek explores his homosexuality at private parties, underground clubs, and daytime movie theaters outside Gdansk. His search for Reinhardt’s remains takes him to a Jewish mortuary center in Warsaw, where he meets Pabian Kletzki, an Orthodox Jewish records keeper. Realizing that Natek is a member of the state police, Pabian and his boss are unwilling to help; sensing their sudden coldness, Natek writes down the name of a local anti-communist leader and asks Pabian to give it to his boss. When he does, the man orders Pabian to help him. Pabian is unmoved by Natek’s alliances; he thinks the state police and the anti-communist gangs are two sides of the same shitty coin.

Pabian changes his opinion of Natek after seeing him barge into a clandestine gay party outside Warsaw. The plain-clothes policeman warns the lesbian organizer of an impending raid, allowing everyone time to get out. Pabian locates Reinhardt Weisz’s remains in Dresden (a skull and an arm) and joins Natek in collecting them.

Natek arranges a burial for Reinhardt in a Jewish cemetery outside Gdansk. Afterward, he invites Pabian to his apartment, promising wine and the new Miles Davis record he got on the black market. Drinks lead to dancing and sex, where Natak asks about Pabian’s missing toes. Pabian speaks of being a child at Sztutowo and how he and many other boys marched in icy cold conditions for almost two weeks and suffered frostbite. Natek talks, for the first time, about his parents, his life with the Gillers, and his time in Dresden.

A week later, his neighbor, a young woman named Mariette, accosts him. She attends the officer training school nearby, and without a preamble, she informs Natek that they’re getting married. Natek refuses until she pulls out photos of him kissing Pabian goodbye that morning. She explains over dinner that a single woman will never make inspector, and if Natek marries her, they can purchase a home, and her American girlfriend can move in as ‘their maid.’

At their wedding reception, Erzbet happily dances with her son and then, overnight, dies in her sleep.

After the funeral, Natek accepts an inspector position in Lodz with Bazyli Kawa in the city’s criminal investigation unit. Mari strikes for an inspector position in Lodz in 1956, but sexist superiors deny her advancement. She eventually earns an inspector rank in nearby Kutno, but it’s in the traffic division. She takes it because Rebecca passes her nursing exams and begins working for a local pediatrician.

Natek purchases a home in Kutno with Mari, ‘renting rooms’ to Rebecca and Pabian in 1960 after Pabian begins work at a Jewish mortuary outside of Kutno.

Natek, like Berek, carries a cadre of demons from his childhood, and although his wartime past doesn’t mirror Berek’s, it’s relatively close in terms of stolen youth.

Natek loses Pabian to cancer while investigating Berek’s murder, forcing him to hyper-fixate on Arik. He knows Berek is sociopathic and suspects Ari loves the man too much to stop him. He is careful to avoid exposing the pair’s sexuality, given his own, so it’s a tightrope situation.

[Some rehash] Character notes for me is a complete bio – everything that happens to a character up to their first scene. These details reveal themselves as motivators or reasons why, and can be shown in flashbacks or through dialogue; so it’s never a waste of time to completely flesh out your character’s life.

CHARACTER NOTES:

Character History: “Ari/Arik”

6-year-old ARIK TARSKI and sister Anya live with their parents above their bakery in the Polish town of Sanok in 1939 Poland. The Tarski bakery thrives on a corner that borders Jewish and Catholic neighborhoods; his mother, Anusha, is Jewish, and his father, Viktor, is Catholic.

After his maternal grandfather leaves for Palestine, his mother takes over the bakery. After the German invasion, new laws forbid Jewish people from having bank accounts and owning businesses, so Anusha signs the bakery to Viktor. 

One day, Arik’s parents show him the hidden room under the basement. It contains a stove, a working, bunk beds, and all of Ari and Anya’s books and games. Anusha tells her children it’s where they must spend their summer vacation—since the Germans closed the lake. Anusha and her children spend many nights there, and it feels like a vacation for Arik and Anya until that day in October when their mother leaves the room and never returns.

The first Einsatzgruppe enters Sanok; they kill Anusha and Viktor.

Arik and 10-year-old Anya are out of food in December. They venture out of the basement and find their family bakery closed and its windows boarded. In the Tarski home above it, there’s no furniture or clothes, just appliances. The family paintings are gone, as are their mother’s jewelry and silver menorah. They return to the room with what food they find, and weeks pass before they hear movement upstairs.

Mister Aldo Kreider, a cake shop owner two blocks down, moves into the Tarski home with his teenage wife that January. The children emerge in a month later, shocking the Kreiders. Aldo claims their parents went to Palestine, and everyone thinks they took Arik and Anya. He also claims their parents asked him to run the bakery until their return. His wife, a girl of 16 named Charlotte, brings Ari and Anya upstairs after sunset to prepare bread dough for morning baking; she also tasks them with making pre-dawn bagels and donuts. She lets them sleep in their bedrooms unless they have visitors.

Two years later, Charlotte announces her pregnancy, leading Aldo to join the children for their overnight bakery work. Some nights, Aldo sends Arik upstairs without 13-year-old Anya until one day, Charlotte angrily sends them back to the room without reason. That night, Charlotte attacks Anya, and her water breaks when 9-year-old Arik comes between them. Aldo appears and takes his wife upstairs, and many days pass before he returns with news that his wife and newborn have died.

Aldo lets them back upstairs, and not long after, Anya fakes her affection for him, which confuses Arik. One day, she declares that she’s started to bleed, so she and Ari must leave before Aldo hands her over to the Lemkos (Ukrainians working for the Germans.) Confused, Arik refuses and talks with Aldo about Anya’s plans. He wakes later that night for his baking time to find Anya missing and finds Aldo burning her clothes in the fireplace; he claims Anya fell in love with some Lemkos and fled.

Six months pass, with Aldo and Arik running the bakery. One night, Aldo brings a teenage girl home, and she sees Arik. Aldo feigns shock and pretends to have no idea who Arik is or how he got there. Later, some German soldiers storm into the house, taking the 10-year-old away.

Arik joins hundreds of women and children on a crowded train heading north. He catches the attention of a young German guard named Rance Eibner, who stares at Arik as Aldo did Anya. On the journey’s second day, Arik talks sweetly to Rance, as Anya did with Aldo. Lonely and afraid, Arik follows the young man outside and finds him pissing over the couplers; he boldly offers to hold his penis. After glaring at him for several moments, Rance uses Ari’s hand to pleasure himself and, shamed by his actions, threatens to shoot Arik before sending him back inside. 

At the next stop, soldiers separate the women and corral the children toward another train car. Rance pulls Arik aside and shoves him into the trunk of a parked vehicle. Hours later, the car begins moving, and Arik falls asleep. Rance opens the trunk after sunset, releasing Arik into a countryside he doesn’t recognize. He’s pissed himself, so Rance takes him to a river and washes him. They sleep naked together in the car, and Arik isn’t afraid when Rance touches him because he’s not physically hurt.

Arik considers running away when they stop in Breslau for a new vehicle, but he feels safe playing Rance’s brother. The young man purchases a better car, new clothes, and plenty of food and drives them to Germany. While overnight on the trip, Rance continues molesting Arik, but nothing goes beyond masturbation. 

Crossing the border into Germany, they move into a boarding house in Dębno (renamed Neudamm,) where Arik befriends Misses Ida Ritzer, the matronly widow running the place. Arik bakes with Ida in her kitchen and plays cards with her in the evenings until ‘his brother’ returns from work at the petrol station. One day, Ida questions Arik about his and Rance’s parents and notices that his German isn’t perfect. She also notes that when Arik lets his guard down, he speaks German with a Polish accent.

After the boy repeats Rance’s story about their parents traveling east without them, she questions the young man, and he confesses that Arik is his sister’s son; she married a Pole and chose to die with him. Ida promises to keep the boy’s secret until one night, entering their room without knocking, she discovers Rance performing oral sex on Arik; before they can flee, the police arrive. 

German soldiers take custody of Rance for desertion, and after speaking with Ida about what she witnessed, they shoot the young man. The Commander questions 11-year-old Arik, still wrapped in a sheet, and he repeats the lie about them being brothers. Ida encourages Arik to be truthful, but when the boy remains silent, she tells the Commander what Rance told her about Arik’s parents. The Commander informs Ida that Rance Eibner has no sister. She asks that Arik remain with her, but when she brings the boy a change of clothes and attempts to remove his sheet, he crouches, saying he’s not allowed to show anyone’ his private.’ The Commander pulls the sheet away and exposes his circumcised penis. He drags Arik out to Eibner’s body and demands to know where he came from; frightened beyond words, Arik confesses everything about being from Sanok and meeting Eibner on the train. Disgusted that Arik ‘came on to’ Eibner, the Commander orders him on a bus bound for Sachsenhausen. Horrified, Ida pleads for Arik; the boy was emulating his sister; he didn’t understand what he was doing. The Commander tells her the boy is a pervert and a Jew; she cries as they drag him away.

Arik prays in Yiddish on the bus, and the Commander strikes him. He then snidely asks if Arik wants to hold his cock for him when he pisses, spitting and slapping him when Arik pleads to know what he’s done wrong. 

At the camp, the Intake Officer hears the Commander’s story and is enraged that a Jewish pervert has bewitched a good German like Eibner. He assigns Arik a pink triangle and drags the boy before the camp Commandant. The intake officer tells the Commandant a sordid story about how Arik seduced the formerly decorated Eibner; revolted, the Commandant orders a complete castration. Disturbed by Arik’s age, the camp Doctor disobeys protocol, putting the 12-year-old to sleep for the procedure. Moments after completion, authorities evacuate the camp as the Soviets cross the border. Soldiers whisk the Doctor away, leaving Arik asleep on the operating table.

Arik wakes in a Polish Red Cross Hospital and finds a golden-haired teen leaning over him [Berek Kozak.] The young man’s curly hair reminds him of a lion, so Arik thinks he’s in Palestine with King David. Thunder booms outside, and the teen flees. Arik touches his crotch and feels pain; he lifts the bandage and finds only a catheter plugged into sutured skin. Before he can cry, thunder booms again outside, and lightning brings the room into view; it isn’t Palestine with King David. Drawn to the gusty wind, Arik sees his family out at the lake; his mother held him during storms like this. Arik pulls the catheter out and walks toward his family–he steps off a collapsed landing and hits the pool’s dirty water.

Arik wakes to Nurse Ruta Koblencja praying in Polish at his bedside. She prays at his bedside daily; she changes his bandages, feeds him soup and solids, and eventually shows him how to pee without the catheter. Ruta tells him he’s still a boy, just a different kind of boy, and explains that some men lose an arm or a leg without dying, so his situation is the same. Comforted by her Polish, Arik listens when she talks of losing all three of her teenage sons in the war. Ruta remains with Arik after they move to a better hospital in Warsaw. Later, Ruta adopts the 14-year-old and drives him back to her home in Kalisz.

Arik matures physically, and though pubic hair covers his scars, he cannot stand seeing his crotch in the mirror. At school, he urinates while sitting down and endures stigma for being excused from showering with others after gym class. After he begins having nocturnal emissions, Ruta surmises some testicular tissue might remain. Arik verifies this when his testosterone levels grow enough that a portion of his scar tissue swells while watching older boys rowing in the river. He feels ashamed using the ball of his hand to masturbate, but Ruta assures him that all men masturbate—and Arik is just like all men. 

At age 16, he confides his attraction to other men, and Ruta tells him to avoid gay prostitutes; those men are in the blackmail business, not the sex business. 

In 1951, his first year of college, 18-year-old Arik develops a crush on a fellow student named Andrej. When the young man’s mother catches them kissing, she calls the police. Reminded of Eibner’s arrest, Arik flees the house, traumatized. Andrej commits suicide in his bathroom after the police capture Arik and take him to a mental hospital. Ruta learns what happened and curses his parents for their ignorance; she tells them they killed their son and will not kill hers. She uses her influence with a judge to have Arik released, but she must wait three days; in that time, Arik endures electric shock therapy to cure his ‘unnatural perversions.’

Ruta sells her home and moves east to Skierniewice, where she purchases a two-story row house in the town center. Arik finishes university a year later than his peers. Ruta laments his introverted state but keeps it to herself when he chooses to remain at home instead of living alone.

Poland National Rail recruits 23-year-old Arik in ’56, and soon, he makes enough money that Ruta can retire from nursing. Arik eventually becomes a rail-pass account supervisor. He hides his sexuality from everyone except his best friend and fellow manager, Gata. After Ruta accidentally finds some anal pornography Arik bought in Warsaw, he bashfully tells her it’s not something he wants to discuss. A former nurse, Ruta uses her medical identification number and purchases an anal dilatation set for him from Germany. The kit mortifies Arik, yet he uses it and becomes more comfortable with his body. Arik visits movie theaters in Lodz and Warsaw and engages in anonymous with other men. He performs oral sex while masturbating clothed but never lets anyone see or touch his crotch.

Doctors diagnose Ruta with cancer, so Arik takes time off from work in the spring of 1960 to care for her. She passes in November, and he arranges for her burial and viewing.

Arik Tarski is a wildcard whose life gets turned upside down after meeting Berek. Will he end up on the Kill List or heal Berek with his love? Since the couple’s problematic dynamic cannot exist in a vacuum ( there must be consequences or stakes to drive the plot,) I’m adding a third character, one more like Berek – one changed by the Lebensraum—only his horrid experiences don't make him a murderer.

[Some rehash] I write my notes longhand and then dictate them to the computer. Since Microsoft acquired Nuance, the maker of Dragon Naturally Speaking, I’ve found the Word ‘dictate’ tool much improved. Also, I must disable Grammarly and Word-editor to use it because if I don’t, it freezes up, noting errors as I speak.

Character notes for me is a complete bio – everything that happens to a character up to their first scene. These details reveal themselves as motivators or reasons why, and can be shown in flashbacks or through dialogue; so it’s never a waste of time to completely flesh out your character’s life.

CHARACTER NOTES:

Berek Kozak was taken from his Polish mother at age 11 by German officials because he fit their ‘Aryan ideal.’ (Not fiction, this happened to children throughout the occupied territories.) They renamed him Boris, but couldn’t tame him, and the abuse he endured made him into a twisted person.

Around 1954 he makes a ‘Kill List’ of those responsible for his past traumas and begins hunting and then murdering those on that list. In 1960, he reunites with a younger man (Arik Tarski) he met during the war and forges a romantic relationship–unfortunately, he’s homicidal need for revenge doesn’t wane and this puts him in the crosshairs of a young detective (Natan Bytner) who knows he’s responsible not just for this death, but many others since the mid-50s.

BEREK KOZAK (32)

In 1939, Lebensraum initiative scouts posing as wealthy women dolling out candy to children in the occupied territories, approach BEREK KOZAK, a green-eyed blond boy living in Drawkso (renamed, Dramburg during occupation.)

11-year-old Berek runs home to his mother, but soldiers follow him. They enter and seize Berek before his mother can hide him. The men bring him to a hospital where he undergoes a physical examination by Doctor Kleindienst, who deems him ‘Aryan.’

Taken to a Volksdeutsche School outside of Rybarzowice (renamed Reibersdorf), Berek meets Headmaster Wagner, who informs him that he will speak German by next month. Nurse Beck takes him and a few newcomers to their room, and when one boy begins crying, she calls Headmaster Wagner, who beats the boy in front of the others. Renamed ‘Boris,’ Berek excels at German yet endures harsh discipline from his instructor, Miss Muller, for privately speaking Polish to his classmates. Headmaster Wagner also beats him for using his real name. Berek lashes out at Nurse Beck one day, earning him a brutal beating from their physical education instructor, Mister Scheldt.

A year later finds ‘Boris’ favored by Mister Scheldt yet feared by the other boys. His grasp of German is exemplary, as is his behavior. Headmaster Wagner places Boris with the Vogel family, wealthy German transplants living in Lezno (renamed Lissa. Mister Vogel lives with his wife and the elder Misses Vogel. They present ‘Boris’ alongside three blonde daughters as their natural son. When the old woman asks if he’s from Sweden or Denmark, he tells her he is Polish; from then on, she treats him with disdain. ‘Boris’ accompanies Mr. Vogel to his candy shop in town and realizes that German men like Vogel now run many businesses that once belonged to Jewish people. Disheartened, Berek empties the cash register and flees the village by train.

Scharführer Horn apprehends Berek at Poznan station and out of the city, pulls over, and beats him senseless. ‘Boris’ recovers from his injuries back at the school, and in 1941, Nurse Beck declares him fit for a new placement. The 13-year-old moves into the townhouse of a less-affluent family outside of Opole (renamed Oppeln). Mister and Misses Lang have one daughter, another Lebensraum girl who acquiesces when Berek speaks to her in Polish. Both attend public school in 1941, where ‘Boris beats down the class bully and aggressively pursues the big brother of a friend when he spies the older teen kissing a boy. When Mister Lang discovers him shaking down other children for money, he immediately notifies Headmaster Wagner.

Scharführer Horn appears again, but Berek flees into metro Oppeln with the Lang’s daughter Eleanor (Eliana.) Horn apprehends the 14-year-old and murders the girl in front of his eyes. Frightened into compliance, Berek is put on a bus with twelve other problematic boys bound for a National Political Institute of Education in Sztum (renamed Stuhm). Upon arrival at the camp, their brutal commander, Richter, orders the newcomers to attack one another. When none of them move, he shoots one—telling the boys he will keep shooting down the line until they comply. Berek attacks the boy beside him, compelling others to do the same. Richter watches until ‘Boris’ is the last one standing. Considered ‘the best,’ Boris is given a room with other ‘bests’, a uniform, and a rifle.

Upon turning 15, Richter delivers ‘Boris’ and his battalion to a hotel where dozens of German girls serve drinks and make their intentions clear. Disinterested in women, Berek avoids going upstairs with any of them—but at night’s end, fellow cadets Krause and Hummel push him into a room with one of the girls. Unable to perform, they tell Richter, who then suspects ‘their Boris’ may be homosexual.

The next day, Gestapo officer Haas visits to assess ‘Boris.’ A hidden homosexual, Haas empathizes, and instead of sending ‘Boris’ to a death camp, he orders him to a labor camp. During transport, however, Berek escapes his handlers. He travels the rail lines and makes it as far as Elblag before his recapture. Berek languishes in solitary confinement after Lebensraum officials parse his identification number. No longer a ‘citizen of the Reich,’ they sentence Berek to a farm in the Borderlands. Haas personally escorts him for the drive, but just outside their destination in Kolno, Haas parks and rapes Berek.

Defeated and demoralized, Berek joins eight other Lebensraum failures at the farm of a cruel antisemitic farmer named August Jarosz. Several weeks under Jarosz’s abusive yoke finds him and the others planning a revolt. After beating the 16-year-old for refusing to service his wife, Jarosz ties Berek up in the barn like an animal; the others revolt, but the farmer sets traps, killing most of them. When Jarosz begins murdering the remaining mutineers, his wife calls Haas, who arrives with two infantry officers to round up the three remaining boys: Berek (Boris), Viktor (Van), and Pavel (Paol). After a lengthy stand-off, Horn and the men acquire the boys – killing Van and Paol.

Unwilling to give up on the tall, handsome blonde, Horn keeps the boy awake for days at an installation in Pultusk and reconditions Berek to accept his ‘Boris’ identity. News of the Soviet invasion in 1944 leads Horn’s superiors to take possession of ‘Boris,’ placing him with a Volkssturm unit headed by a sadistic man named Engel. The unit’s job is to protect hiding Germans unable to flee. One day, Berek intervenes when Engel beats a younger Czech boy, and ends up killing the man. When the others turn on him, he kills them as well.

Berek crosses paths in war-torn Warsaw with a group of Soviet soldiers. He earns their trust by telling them where German civilians are bunkering throughout the city. He recounts being taken from his mother and forced to ‘be German.’ Horrified, the soldiers allow Berek, now 17, to raid homes and bunkers. Vasiliev, their leader, assigns Berek to a Polish officer named Wozniak. His bloodthirsty behavior impresses Vasiliev, but a concerned Wozniak tries mentoring the young man. One night, after drinking, Berek kisses Wozniak, who tells the boy never to do anything like that in front of the others.

Frightened that the other might kill Berek, Wozniak feeds the teen false information about Poles from Poznan imprisoned at Oranienburg. Berek leaves at night for Oranienburg and discovers the camp abandoned but for the sick. He goes through the German records and discovers his mother was never there. He returns to the Soviets to confront Wozniak but finds the man lynched outside Morwitz with a placard around his neck, signifying him as a ‘homosexual deviant.’

Berek breaks down emotionally for the first time; he cries and sleeps and remains under the tree several days until hunger forces him south. He arrives at the Polish Red Cross Hospital located in a partially bombed-out castle outside Bötzow. He smothers a young man on a stretcher, takes his place, and gets brought inside. He sweet-talks the nurses into letting him stay after he’s deemed healthy enough to leave; one of them, the matronly Miss Koblencja, puts him to work cleaning sheets and scrubbing bedpans.

One day, a group of survivors from Sachsenhausen camp arrive; one is a pink triangle prisoner. Berek curiously checks in on the patient and is shocked to find it’s a boy, not a man. The nurses wonder how anyone would consider a young boy to be homosexual. One of the nurses faints while stripping the boy. Miss Koblencja rushes Berek outside and closes the door. He learns from a younger nurse that Soviet soldiers found the boy in the camp medical ward, fully castrated.

The idea of a complete castration excites Berek, who has developed a fetish for scars. Driven to see what a complete castration looks like, Berek sneaks into the triage room and peeks under the boy’s bandages and finds he has no penis and testicles, only new sutures. Compelled by feelings he doesn’t understand, Berek attempts to lick the stitching, but the boy wakes. A storm begins outside, prompting Berek to help the orderlies hang wood panels over the glassless windows. He climbs to the triage ward on the third floor to attach panels over the wind-beaten plastic and spots the 12-year-old out of bed. The boy smiles at the lighting and thunder, mesmerizing Berek. Without warning, the boy walks off the precipice of a broken wall. Berek rushes to the ledge when he hears the screams. He looks down to find the boy floating in the flooded swimming pool. A doctor carries him out of the water and hands him to Misses Koblencja.

Soviet soldiers arrive the following day, and among them is Vasiliev. The men celebrate seeing Berek again, and when Vasiliev gets him alone, he asks if Wozniak ever touched him. He tells Berek that they caught Wozniak with a civilian man and strung him up for being a pervert. Berek masks his rage (for the first time) and assures him that Wozniak never touched him. That night, however, when Vasiliev goes to piss from too much drinking, Berek stabs him with an empty syringe, killing him. Invigorated by enacting his vengeance, Berek crawls back to his bed, and the next day, leaves with the Soviet soldiers.

On his nineteenth birthday in 1946, Berek applies to the job corps in Leba. When the port comes under Soviet control, his grasp of Russian earns him an apprenticeship with national rail. It takes five years for Berek to become a train operator, and in that time he discovers the names of the officials responsible for his collection and the murder of his mother; after one of them stands trial, he visits the mass grave, its location given in testimony, where he collects her ID, dress, shoes, and hair ribbon.

Now a young man, Berek’s route takes him into eastern Germany. While in Potsdam, he spots the former Miss Muller (now Mrs. Constance Steinmetz). Berek stalks the woman before breaking into her town home. He ties her up and forces her to eat until she vomits—he then forces her to eat the vomit. He kills her, leaving a written note about her involvement in Lebensraum and the Germanization school. Next, he visits the passenger rail center and flirts with the girl on duty. After a few sexless dates, he gets her drunk and takes her office key; he then goes through the rail pass records in her office, looking for the people on his ‘List’ like Edgar Kleindienst, Lena Beck, Byron Scheldt, as well as Johan Krause and Klaus Himmel…

Berek kills many on his list before getting a permanent assignment with Polish National Rail’s freight line in 1960. The new route takes him from Berlin to Poznan to Warsaw, and while passing through Skierniewice, he sees Ruta Koblencja’s obituary notice…

I’ve jotted down notes for Arik Tarski’s history – he’s the secondary protagonist caught up in Berek’s quest for vengeance; he becomes Berek’s silent and reserved lover, and beleives that once Berek kills everyone on his list, the pair will settle down and live a decent closeted life.