At the end of the road, under the yellow light of a streetlamp stood three young men in civilian uniforms. Their brown caps threw dark shadows over their faces hiding every feature but their grinning mouths. In profile it looked like they had the heads of dogs, long snouts and teeth bared to a snarl. I hid behind a car watching them as they pulled the cobblestones out of the street and threw them with strange precision into store windows, deliberately breaking some and sparing others. When they walked away the nails under their shoes went ‘click, click, click’. I listened and waited. As soon as the sound had disappeared into the distance I ran home. I ripped my name off the plate next to the door bell and sat behind the closed door all night, listening for an opening door, a breaking window or the ‘click, click, click’ of nailed boots.

When I went to the office the next day that street was still littered with glass. Small shards of it in the cracks between the cobblestones reflected the sunlight like pools of water from a nightly rain. People stopped and stood and wondered. A whirlwind had blown through the city, shattering the windows of shops and apartments and then disappeared as fast as it came, leaving us all to wonder if it had just been a bad dream, were it not for all of those tiny crystals.

In 1933 the dogs in the brown caps formed the German government and they came and dragged me to their lair. Watching from behind closed curtains none of my neighbors saw a thing.

The new Germans dwelled in a water tower in the middle of an old working class district that once was red and now was silent. The tower that held their prisoners stood high above the many-eyed house fronts and in between the two worlds there were only 50 meters of trees and screams.

They brought me to the engine room, the belly of the beast. It was cold and wet and smelled like sewage. There were no windows, just a few weak light bulbs, which conjured up as many shadows as light. Many men with their sleeves rolled up past the elbow came ‘click, click, click’. They didn’t ask any questions, they had all the answers. I was an enemy of Germany, a spy, a sodomite, a communist, a Jew. I was everything that did not belong, all the things they hated and feared. They made me their golem, a filthy mass of primordial sin formed into a human-like shape. Soon my limbs were swollen and purple from the beating. Naked and filthy I was born anew.

An old man came to play with me. He wore an expensive looking double-breasted suit jacket with a party pin on it, wide riding breeches and tall black leather boots, polished to reflection. He had the rough features of a prole, but judging by the way he walked and talked he thought himself an aristocrat. When he became excited he had a dirty mouth like an alley cat and dirty thoughts too. He put water in my bowels, filled me up until my belly became so swollen and breathing so hard I thought I would burst. I begged and cried and said I would do anything if he stopped. He told me that he was an important man and if I did well he would let me go back home. All he demanded was for me to hold the water inside my body for some time. Looking at his golden pocket watch he counted down each second. I tried very hard, but to control – and be the subject, not the object of it – was no longer part of my vocabulary. Crawling through the puddle of my own mess and begging him to let me try again, begging him to fill me, I distantly remembered what shame felt like.

Eventually I managed to please him. I was let go a week later, not knowing whether he had kept his promise or the men had simply gotten tired of me.

When I dragged myself up the stairs to my apartment the neighbors were holding their breath and listening behind closed doors. I called my employer to promise I would be able to come back to work in just a few days. He had already found someone to replace me. Permanent loss of vision in one eye and a nervous affection made it impossible for me to find employment again. I sold all of my belongings and emigrated.