After the protest in Berlin, Jörg’s corpus let Fritz stay in his room at the apartment. Still trapped in the depths of depression, Fritz never left the room. He did nothing day in and day out, sleeping most of the hours away. When night arrived, he would eat a slice of bread, have some water, briefly browse the newspaper, and then head back to bed. Even cats didn’t sleep as much as him.
Fritz still felt an overwhelming shame over losing control in front of Hubert. He would mutter that he didn’t know why he had acted like that. Even when Jörg’s corpus told him that it was all Nil’s doing so he shouldn’t let it get to him, Fritz whined bitterly that he could have prevented it if he had had more control over himself.
Even so, every day he seemed a little more like his former self. He kept the lilac sprig from Lila in a cup on the table. The white flower still bloomed wide, its sweet fragrance filling the room. Fritz gazed at it every day. Jörg’s corpus wasn’t sure what about it helped him, but the lilac seemed to soothe Fritz’s mind. Or perhaps the flower’s beauty helped Fritz pull himself together.
Jörg’s corpus couldn’t forget Lila’s face when she had handed him the flower.
He didn’t regret the act of going off to war. Not the days he’d spent fighting, nor even how it had brought about food shortages in his homeland.
However, he felt that if he had to apologize to anyone for one thing involving his complicity in the war, it was for crushing the children’s futures, regardless of ethnicity or race.
But Lila’s eyes held no accusation toward anyone.
She hadn’t tried to preach any worldview like a proselytizer.
It touched somewhere deep inside him.
In a certain way, he felt burdened by a load heavier than shame.
She wouldn’t allow him to run away or even die. She simply wanted him to rebuild society as a human being. Or at least that was what her eyes seemed to say.
Jörg’s corpus waited patiently for Fritz to recover. Everyone who went to fight shared the same feelings of failure and futility. A tiny trigger had caused that man—a man who tried to preserve his mind by drawing—to lose all control of himself. That itself was nothing to be ashamed of.
Protests still happened occasionally in Berlin, and Jörg’s corpus would join them. The socialists were fully committed, and when he heard their speeches at the gatherings and helped with the protests, he truly believed they could change the country—but he sensed a grim social trend spreading throughout society.
It had the air of a losing battle. He was overcome with a concrete sensation of imminent danger, though he could not specify what.
During the January protest, Jörg’s corpus felt a new ominousness in the air. He could clearly feel the darkness surrounding the returned soldiers in the Freikorps because he had been a soldier once, too.
The Freikorps’ mentality differed radically from that of the riot police or the officers and guards. They acted on base hatred. While such intensity made sense on the battlefield, releasing it in everyday life was equivalent to setting off a bomb in the city. Such a thing should never happen because it harms everyone. However, they didn’t even try to hide their anger. They wouldn’t refrain from taking it out on anyone they viewed as an enemy. Even if they directed their malice toward only specific individuals at first, at some point they would bear their fangs at everyone.
Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered on the fifteenth, and the news of their arrest flashed across all of Berlin. Jörg’s corpus searched his apartment and ordered Fritz to go back to his town.
Seeing his friend in such an unusual state seemed to bring Fritz back to reality, because he somberly asked, “What’s happened?”
“The Freikorps have started an open hunt for socialists. They killed Liebknecht and Luxemburg and have begun arresting members of the Spartacus League.”
“So now the German government has ordered them to get rid of socialists?”
“I hate to say, but the German revolution is over. You need to leave.”
“You aren’t coming with me?”
“There are still some people I want to check on. I’ll leave as soon as I know they’re safe. Write me once things have settled down. I’ll write, too.”
“It’ll be dangerous by yourself. We should go together.”
“I could have a tail already. And two people would stand out more.”
“You don’t need to worry about others when your life is in danger.”
“Exactly. I agree. But several of my comrades came back from the front with injuries that make it hard for them to get around. They might be too slow to get away on their own. I want to help them while there’s still time.”
“Why do you have to do all that? They’ll find their own way out. You might just end up getting in the way.”
Jörg’s corpus looked over to the table. The flower Lila had given him still bloomed fully. It was a strange flower. It was real, but it never seemed to wilt.
“I feel that way every time I think of the girl who gave me that flower,” he continued forlornly. “We were just pawns to be used and discarded in the war. The lowest-ranking soldiers in every country were all like that. We only fought because we didn’t want to die, but now that we’re home we don’t need to live that way.”
Thinking of his other self, the person who had taught him that, made him sentimental. He had rejected that idea fiercely then. Because that was all he could do at the time. But the beauty of this flower caused those words to seep deep into his soul.
He continued. “If I leave the city now without doing anything, then I wouldn’t feel like a human being anymore. Regardless of what I did on the battlefield, I don’t want to throw away my pride at being human. Abandoning my comrades because I’m scared of the Freikorps makes me nothing but a coward. So I have to do what I can to help them, and when I’m satisfied, I’ll leave straightaway.”
Fritz gripped his hand. “No. If that’s how you feel, then I really can’t leave you here.”
“It’ll be okay. And don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“But—”
Just then, a voice spoke up in the room as though to cut in on their conversation. “Excuse me for interrupting.”
The two men turned toward the voice and saw the monster Jörg standing there…dressed in a long cape like Count Silvestri. Today he was showing himself to Fritz, who looked back and forth comparing the two. Fritz let out a wild yelp, sounding like a dog that had been rudely woken up from where it napped beneath a ray of sunlight.
Jörg’s corpus set a hand on Fritz’s shoulder and spoke slowly. “Calm down. There’s nothing to be scared of. He’s another me.”
“I didn’t know you had a twin brother.”
“I don’t. He’s half of my soul. The human called Jörg Huber is the combination of me and this guy. We exist apart from each other and have our own distinct personalities.”
“I don’t understand this at all.”
“Don’t think too hard about it and just think of this guy as another me. He has the same name. You don’t have to try to differentiate between us.”
He turned back to Jörg and asked, “Why are you here?”
Jörg said, “If you have the time to argue, then come with me. I’ll take you out of here so you can escape to another country. We’ll need to make a stop at a certain inn on the way, though.”
“What are you after?”
“I can’t leave my corpus to face danger, can I? I’ve seen the cruelty of the Freikorps with my own eyes. You could never face such mania head-on. You’re better off fleeing to a safer country. Fritz, you can make a name for yourself in the art world in a country with freedom. You’ll be a big success.”
Jörg then turned to his corpus and winked through a smile.
“You could be a stylist in the fashion world or for movies. If such glamorous work isn’t for you, then why not own your own chic hair salon? Live a carefree life doing what you want.”
“You don’t get to decide our lives for us.”
“Germany lost the war and still chose violence. It’s going to continue to be savage. Once they’re done hunting the socialists, they’ll find other targets soon enough. Any society that learns to eliminate outsiders with force is destined to use violence to crush its own people. There’s no point in staying in a country like that. You were probably just thinking about going somewhere else inside Germany, but going abroad is the better option.”
“Can you guarantee that wherever you take us to will always be just and peaceful?”
“Has a country like that ever existed? At the moment, however, there are plenty of places better than Germany.”
Jörg pointed at the door. A strange design covered the door panel. Countless geometric shapes, lines, and letters filled a circle.
“If you’re worried about your friends, I can go speak with them. But first I’d like you two to go through this door.”
“I sincerely appreciate your kindness.” Fritz eyed Jörg dubiously. “But nothing in life comes free.”
“I want one of your paintings when you become a successful artist. Once I find a painting of yours that I like, then you give it to me for free.”
“Deal. I’ll tell the people I work with that if a man named Jörg Huber ever shows up at the gallery, I promised him that he could have one painting of his choosing for free. It will be effective even after my death.”
“Wonderful. I look forward to the day.”
Jörg opened the door to reveal not the hallway of the apartment building, but a pitch-black expanse. The sight of it alone terrified Fritz. “I don’t know about this. I have to get a lot of things from my house, and I need to tell my family where I’m going.”
“As I said, we’ll be stopping by an inn first. Feel free to use it as a base until you decide your final destination.”
“But—”
Jörg’s corpus pulled Fritz forward by the arms. “It’s pointless worrying about what’s on the other side. Let’s just jump on through.”
And the two men plunged into a darkness that might contain even the slightest bit of hope.