Sokal's Story (Part III)

Suddenly from below came Celina’s yells, that the madam was telephoning. Sokal in his sanctuary did not have and did not want to have a telephone. He went quickly downstairs. 

“She’ll be here before ten,” he said when he soon returned upstairs. 

It was almost seven. 

“So I’m heading out soon,” I said. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, we’ve got plenty of time, and I want to finish my story, if I haven’t bored you completely. Anyway Celina will bring tea soon and some cake. And your train isn’t until nine fifty seven, because I know by memory the whole fucking train schedule.”

When everything was already packed, Sokal at the last moment tucked in to a zipped side pocket of the backpack a large loaded pistol and a spare round, taken from his aunt’s husband’s room. 

It was a fifteen shot browning caliber 9 mm with a scope set to five hundred meters. This weapon came in very handy for Sokal in the last weeks of the war, but that was a whole different story. 

The Walther, with which Tante Ute was killed, he hid into his coat pocket. The whole time he was a bit regretful that he did not tell Zeleck everything, but he decided that in the end it was better he was coming into it blindly. 

Before seven in the morning he was already ready. He checked again whether in every room and in the kitchen the curtains in the window were drawn. In the small room next to the kitchen, where were stored different domestic devices, he found a good stock of flammable liquids. 

At the last moment he poured them everywhere he could, and the contents of the fifteen liter canister he brought in yesterday he allocated for the parlor and the front room, ending by the entrance doors. 

The most gasoline he poured around the chaise longue, on which dead Tante Ute’s body rested, and on the SS-man, who despite the fact that from time to time he was losing consciousness, knew well what holocaust soon awaited him. 

Punctually at seven Sokal put on the backpack, placed the two suitcases outside the door, and doubled back to the doors dividing the entryway from the anteroom, crouched down and to the thin layer of gasoline he had just poured a moment ago put a lit match. 

When he saw the fast moving tongue of flame, he closed the doors between the entryway and anteroom, and then, with all four locks, the entrance doors, grabbed the suitcases, and after less than thirty seconds was putting them in the trunk of the Citreon. 

Soon, passing the posted at every larger intersection SA patrols or some other uniformed formations, they raced already in the direction of Radetzkyplatz, to before then turn right and drive to Ring. 

Zeleck, to whom he narrated in brief the entire history of the last several hours, said that already the day before after his behavior he had began to suspect that something not so good had happened. 

He tried even to telephone, but no one picked up. He asserted that Sokal had to disappear from Austria as quickly as possible. 

Because of the present situation every border was tightly shut and very guarded, so that, as this week Hermann Goering himself had said, these kinds of people won’t escape with their riches. 

In Sokal’s case Goering most likely had in mind the fortunes of his aunt. When they were on the Luxenburgerstrasse, Zeleck suddenly turned into some small, empty, thin street, after which he and Sokal placed the whole stash under the double bottom of the trunk, leaving in sight two spare tires, a toolbox, the second canister and aunt’s green English galoshes. 

“Now it will be safer,” he said, moving on.