Free Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley

you might just as well have put that thing through his eye yourself!
    What are you so god damned scared of? He might be
    innocent, for Christ’s sake? Might not be what you want him to be?”
    “Are you through?” said Freyberg.
    Rudecki was looking—one man to the other—astonished.
    Quinn had never blown his stack like that before. Freyberg
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    had never let him, had never let anyone get out of hand like that.
    Freyberg began to fold his handkerchief, making it as small as something he was going to hide in a matchbox—a specimen, perhaps, for his collection. “Think about it,” he said.
    “There’s all this writing on the walls, all very neat, all very ordered, all lined up in rows, all very…careful.”
    “He was an artist,” said Quinn.
    “That’s right. An artist.” Freyberg looked around the walls.
    “Something of a con-artist, too, for all we know. The bigger the lie, the more we are bound to believe it…didn’t one of them say that? Something like that? And twice told lies become the truth…Years, we’ve had of it now. The Nazi con-game. …”
    “Mauberley wasn’t a Nazi.”
    Freyberg just smiled and went on smoothing and folding
    his handkerchief, turning it over and over in his hands.
    “He hated Nazis,” said Quinn.
    “Mmmmm-hmmm…”
    “He did.”
    “Yes. Yes. I’m sure he did.” Freyberg’s smile was pinched and demeaning. “Why, from what I hear, they all hated
    Nazis. Didn’t they? I mean, I hear that every day. And if I was fool enough to believe it every time I heard it, I’d have to believe there weren’t enough Nazis to form a quorum.
    Were there, Quinn? And the war never happened. And Hitler was just an actor with a moustache made up to look like Charlie Chaplin. So, when Charlie says we should all fall down—we all fall down… .Pratfalls. Yes? And no war. How wonderful. Just to walk out into the lobby and leave it all behind us on a giant movie screen. With the music playing and everyone applauding…I’d like that. I really would.”
    Freyberg squeezed the captive handkerchief tight between his palms and walked away to the windows, his features
    fading until there was nothing left but silhouette: a boy’s head and bones and six feet of rumpled coat got up to look like a man. “But I’d also like this movie to include the scenes at Dachau, Quinn—so you could walk back through the gates and tell me nothing happened there. Tell me that all those
    people were only extras, paid to starve themselves…paid to lie down and play dead. Yes? Hansel and Gretel lying in the ovens…and maybe somewhere a gingerbread house.
    Playtime. Movie time. Make believe.” Freyberg turned to look at Quinn. “You think you might be able to arrange all that?”
    Quinn could only look at his feet.
    “I assume your answer is no, Lieutenant?”
    Quinn put his hands behind his back and waited, still
    looking down. He was aware that Freyberg had begun to
    cruise along beside the walls and would soon be behind
    him. All Rudecki did was hang in suspended animation,
    barely breathing over by the door.
    “Really, you disappoint me, Quinn. After all the training you’ve been given—all the skill you have with words and ideas. ‘Such a fine mind!’ as Colonel Holland says. ‘What a pity to waste it on a demolitions expert… .’ “
    Freyberg came and stood at his shoulder. Quinn looked
    up. Freyberg was smiling at the hanky in his hands. “Colonel Holland thinks so highly of you, Quinn. And I do, too. We talk about you all the time. And we’re afraid some boobytrapped wall is going to blow up in your face—and then
    we’ll lose that fine, fine mind—ka-boom!” He gave a false and patently exaggerated shrug. “And maybe it will, one day. Some wall. Go boom.” Freyberg’s breath smelled of
    peanuts and chocolate—even of candy wrappers, stale and dry and faintly sweet. “But I’ll tell you what. You look at these walls here…” He laid his hand out flat in the air.
    “And maybe