Hobbies

Donny was the first person to refer to me as the ‘Little Man’. I still don’t quite know how the German military came to calling me ‘Der Wenig Mann’. I think he called me that because he didn’t believe that I was ever capable of slicing the scalp off of a human being, because I was small. I understand, yes, I threw up the first time I did it, but I don’t believe that I ever looked incapable of such an inhumane act. I don’t personally think he ever saw it as much of an insult as it was, because he said that he felt proud of me. For what? I wasn’t sure, I just assumed he didn’t think anything of journalism and preferred the career of murdering Nazis. Perhaps that he was proud that someone of my height could achieve such violent things.

Donny was too good at murdering Nazis. He said one time, “When I first got people to start signing my bat, I knew this was going to be great, but when I was headed out to Europe, I knew that this bat would get me places.” And it did. Every single Nazi in Europe was aware of the Bear Jew – a Jewish soldier who would beat the enemy to death with his baseball bat. They feared Donny more than Aldo, which, when I first encountered them, would have surprised me.

I had no idea what he intended to do with his bat until he did it. I just thought that he was a tad deluded, thinking he was some Major League Baseball player, who in reality, was a beauty school graduate (I was never really sure if he actually was, but you didn’t argue with what Aldo had to say) and was destined to cut hair for the rest of his life in what he claimed was “the best barber shop in Boston”.

But having that bat made him more than a hairdresser; and having a tremendous level of skill at beating Nazis to death with it got Sergeant Donny Donowitz his informal title. He was a feared man, that was for sure. Far more feared than little old Smithson Utivich, mainly because of the merciless beatings, brash personality and let’s face it, his bear-like build. The mention of Aldo the Apache would set off fear in the heart of a Nazi but mentioning the Bear Jew would have them literally shitting themselves. Even Hitler was scared of Donny.

I always wondered if, back in the real world, people would class us as sick fucks because of what we did to the enemy. Honestly, mutilating Nazis was one of my new hobbies. I’m pretty sure that the other guys would say this too, probably with an equal amount of hesitation. But it was Donny who said, “We can’t exactly go into an interview in two years and say, ‘My previous job basically consisted of bashing in the brains of Nazi bastards. I’d like to say I had a load of fun doing that.’ They’d look at us like we’d just escaped from a mental hospital.”

I think we all changed after a week in a European forest, killing any Nazi we could. I didn’t think I could ever go back to journalism and I really didn’t think I’d ever see the end of the war. Aldo and Donny got the biggest kick out of Nazi killing than anyone else, Stiglitz got pretty excited (bouncing on the souls of his feet excited) and refused to admit his happiness, but to those two, using their baseball bat and their knife was almost as good as sex.

Those two, I’m sure, were big on sex because whenever we entered a town, they were the first to run off to the nearest brothel. When Lieutenant Archie Hicox appeared, a week before the “tavern” incident, he brought a blonde woman with him, a spy apparently; someone said it was Hicox’s sister. She stayed with us for three days in some house we were squatting in. It was a really nice house, Wicki pointed out the Star Of David on the mantelpiece which bummed everyone out, but it had five bedrooms and behind the overgrown bushes, a garden with a swimming pool. I don’t think I’d ever come across a private swimming pool before – not one that was in somebody’s back yard.

My excitement over the swimming pool was why I knew Donny was screwing that woman. At first I thought there was a woodland animal stuck in the shed – an angry stag or something. But no, peering through the dirty window, I saw that woman kind of perching on a workbench with her legs spread as far as humanly possible while Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz “fucked her senseless”. The humorous thing about that was fact that the girl had no clothes on, yet her large floppy hat was still perfectly positioned on her head.

Donny didn’t speak to me for three days after that situation. He was angry because apparently I’d ran into the house, giggling “like a school girl” and then blabbed about the little romance in the shed to Hirschberg, who then told Omar, who told Wicki, who then told Hicox. Hicox got mad and then apparently called up MI6, who sent another agent to pick up the woman and they were never to be seen again.

I refused to be blamed for Donny’s massacre of about 50 German soldiers the day after the woman had left. I blamed Hirschberg for speaking when he shouldn’t have and I blamed Hicox for overreacting; but I blamed Hirschberg more because if I heard about my sister being fucked into a workbench, I’d make sure she was as far away from the guy as possible. When Donny confronted me about blabbing, I just said, “Look, there’s a time and place for everything. Sex in a shed when Utivich is swimming just doesn’t work, alright?” He then punched me in the ear and I cried for about three hours.

He did apologize to me the morning of the “tavern” incident. He gave me his last cigarette to make up for my ear ache and then let me win at cards. He talked for four hours straight about baseball and what he was going to do after the war; it was all rather non-ambitious and drab for what I thought he’d say. All he wanted to do was go back and help his father run the barber’s shop.

Talking about the future gave me a load of hope that we’d all make it out alive, until we turned up at the rendezvous and Hicox, Wicki and Stiglitz got themselves killed. As soon as Donny and I arrived at the vet, seeing Fraulein Von Hammersmark bleeding all over the place, we shared a look. A look that said, “We’re screwed”.

We were screwed. Aldo taught me to drive a limousine whilst Donny did Von Hammersmark’s hair. I felt like I’d already died because one: I was pretty much certain that the plan was bound to fail and that the next morning, I’d be pressed against a wall with Colonel Hans Landa’s Luger pointed at my skull, and two: everyone I’d come to know was also going to die. In quite a horrific way, if the plan succeeded.

I’d have liked to have thought that Donny was my best friend. Although he was Aldo’s right hand man and slapped me in front of people, I think we were ridiculously close. From the first time I met him and he called me a “skinny midget” there was just this click; this click that indicated that we’d be best friends until we died. I’m sure it was mutual.

He taught me how to play baseball (I didn’t really do sports as a kid), I taught him how to play checkers. When Hans Landa found me asleep in the limousine and threw me into some van with a bag on my head, I cried. When the theatre blew up and I was sitting in the back of that van driven by Hans Landa’s lackey, I cried. You know why I cried? Because Donny fucking Donowitz was dead and he was probably the only person to actually appreciate me.

It took me ages to get over it. I guess I finally realised that I was jealous of Donny, because he died doing what he was passionate about and he made a massive impact on the world. He achieved something in dying and he’d be forever known as a hero. Sure, I was given a medal and a handshake from the president, but my name wasn’t going to be in the history books, for, you know, killing Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels with a machine gun.

It wasn’t just the glory that I was insanely jealous of. It was definitely the fact that he died doing his hobby, killing Nazis.

After that revelation, I decided to find myself a new hobby. I took up cooking. In some strange way, I think Donny would be rather proud. And that’s a nice thought.

- Smithson Utivich, 1952.