The train to Poland was full for everyone sitting in coach. But the officers going to Auschwitz sat in first class. Kurt Maihöfer had invited Werner to sit in his cabin with a handful of friends, but Werner had politely refused, lying that he often got sick on train rides and liked to be alone. He honestly just didn't want to sit next to those men.
They were still just Germans to him and not Nazis, they wore the uniforms with the symbols, but he hadn't seen any of them in combat, he'd seen them in the hospital next to him. So they were just fellow soliders, even though he knew they'd all probably done terrible things. He had an especially bad feeling about Maihöfer. He himself couldn't really believe that he was a soldier. A week ago he was dying due to a tumor and now, now he was going to die in one of the worst places of the 20th centrury. Well, maybe he wouldn't die. Auschwitz was safer than the front. But he'd be the one killing other people. Werner knew he couldn't do that. And, even if he somehow could have, in January 1945 the camp was going to be freed by the Soviets. He'd be shot on the spot. He'd still be a dead man on the eastern front.
Everything was surreal to him, he'd accepted that he was there, in the present time that was for him a past time, but he didn't really get it. He knew that certain death faced him; but he didn't really. Knowing that the cancer would actually kill him had only occured to him years after the diagnose. After his body had stopped doing the things it should, after chemotherapy had started, after he'd undergone several surgeries. The first time he'd truely realized that we would die, had been on his twenty-first birthday when he'd gotten drunk (to the dismay of his doctors) and he'd almost drowned in a pond outside. Brian had had to pull him out and drive him home. The near-death experience had opened his eyes.
He would need something similar to happen in this new world, for him to know that he really could die. This wasn't a dream or a novel, it was real life.
He rested his head against the window pane which was cool. He closed his eyes, the gentle chugging of the train lulled him into a light sleep.
The cabin door swung open. Werner cracked his eyes open a little bit. Who'd entered his miniature compartement? To his surprise and delight it wasn't another soldier - it was a woman.
She was young and beautiful, with a round face that looked more Ukrainian than German, long blonde hair that fell over her shoulders like gentle waves and bright blue eyes that sparkled. She was the kind of woman you don't believe is real, not because she looked all dolled up, but because a human being couldn't be so flawless yet also so tangible.
"Guten Abend." She greet him. He nodded in return, unable to answer with words. Werner found himself speechless.
The second he made Marie's aquantaince he realized that he was no longer suffering from a brain tumor - or in the least - not from it's symptoms. Because for once, his body felt healthy and alive and there was absolutly nothing he could want to change about it. As he'd suffered from the tumor he'd constantly felt pain somewhere in his body, there'd been only few moments he'd been spared of some kind of aching. But he'd only felt his injuries when he'd been hospitalized and now he didn't feel anything at all. It was strange to not feel his body anymore. You only really feel a part of your body if it's painful or aroused. And for the first time in years, Werner felt arousal. He shifted in his seat.
"What are you doing in Poland, sir?" She asked. Had the young man not looked at her with his big puppy eyes she would never have talked to a young Nazi. She hated Hitler and everything that reeked of his ideologies but this young man was different. And he'd been staring at her as if he'd like to buy her a coffee.
"I'm on my way to..." He didn't want to answer. She was such a pretty young girl, and saying that he was up and off to the most horrible place in Poland embarassed him. "I'm on my way to Auschwitz." He repeated, adding his destination. He tried to smile but failed. "I'm sorry, I can't say that I look forward to it."
"I wouldn't either, if I were you." She answered with a small smile. Her smile reassured him that she was against the system, like he was. "My name's Marie." She said and stuck out her hand for him to grab and shake.
"I'm Killian."
"That's a nice name. Haven't heard it in a long time."
"Really?"
"Everyone's name is Kurt, Jürg, Hans, Rolf and so on and so forth." She said with a laugh. "Your name isn't typically german, I like that."
"Thank you. Your name is very typically german, I like that too." She could tell from his eyes that the reason wasn't his glorification for das Deutsche Reich. His reason was that he'd always wanted to visit, and had always dreamed of marrying a german girl, but she thought his reason was because he was crossing the border and wanted to think of family and friends back home.
They talked for the whole trip, and at one stop, Werner ran out to buy her a coffee. He asked for her number and got her home phone, but she said that she wouldn't be back home for the next two weeks, so he'd have to wait to give her a call.
And both of them didn't know if there were phones in Auschwitz.